How Guerrilla Marketers Use A Simple Technique to Target Audiences
Journey maps work, especially when you as the marketer are far (physically and/or psychologically) from the experience of the actual user—patients, donors or convention goers. At a recent convention I attended, a couple of marketers really had mapped their user experience so well they found a great way to reach convention goers.
Las Vegas Monorail. This car is empty, but when the conference started it was standing room only.
Sure, you could buy expensive banners or interior signage at the convention hall. I’m sure that was quick and easy (and expensive) for most vendors. But the true guerrilla marketers found a “captured” audience.
The journey mapper found there were only three ways to get to the convention: You could take a cab/Uber, bus or the monorail system. The guerrilla marketers placed audio ads on the monorail which was perfect for the traveling convention audience.
Most people were looking out the window or at phones: It’s an awkward moment for most passengers riding so close with strangers, so the sound of the audio is welcome relief and it seems more effective than the placards on the inside of the monorail car. The only issue is the ads were the same from day 1 to day 7. The advertisers needed to understand the issue of ad fatigue. They also needed to take into account how people change what they view as important from the beginning of the convention week to the end of the week–it is not the same.
The expert guerrilla marketer is an expert journey mapper.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle. After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant. He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.” Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.” One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College. Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board. Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.
