Guerrilla marketing warfare strategies are strategies designed to wear-down the enemy by a long series of minor attacks. Rather than engage in major battles, a guerrilla force is divided into small groups that selectively attacks the target at its weak points. To be effective, guerrilla teams must be able to hide between strikes. They can disappear into the remote countryside, or blend into the general population. The general form of the strategy is: Attack . . . Retreat . . . Hide . . . Attack . . . Retreat. . . Hide . . . Attack . . . etc. It has been said that “Guerrilla forces never win wars, but their adversaries often lose them”.
Strengths
The main strengths of guerrilla strategies are :- Because you never attack the enemy’s main force, you preserve your resources.
- It is very flexible and can be adapted to any situation, offensive or defensive.
- It is very difficult to counter with conventional methods.
Guerrilla marketing involves
In the business arena, this involves :- 1) targeted legal attacks on the competition
- 2) product comparison advertising
- 3) executive raiding
- 4) short-term alliances
- 5) selective price cuts
- 6) deliberate sabotage of the competitions test markets, marketing research, advertising campaigns, or sales promotions
- 7) orchestrating negative publicity for a competitor
No matter how successful the guerrilla becomes, he/she should never act like a market leader. A guerrilla marketer must be flexible. They must be able to change tactics very quickly : this includes abandoning a market segment, product, product line, brand, business model, or objective. Guerrillas are not ashamed to make a strategic withdrawal.
The strategy is suitable when:
- the target competitor has relatively strong resources and is well able to withstand a head-on attack
- the attacker has moderately weak resources
