Guerrilla marketing for information services?

“Guerrilla marketing” describes unconventional marketing strategies with which to achieve significant effects – with a fraction of the budget of “traditional” marketing campaigns. This article aims to give an introduction to “guerrilla marketing” principles and discuss suitability of this marketing approach for information services.

Whether guerrilla marketing strategies may be suitable for introducing information services and the necessary prerequisites for that are explored based on applying cross‐case analysis findings from industry examples to information services. This is based on a conceptual framework illustrating differentiating and positioning hypotheses for information services.

It is argued, that guerrilla marketing strategies may be applied for information services whenever a product‐like representation for such a service can be developed and a link to emotional values be established. Furthermore, for the product‐like representation there must be coherent target groups to be identified and relevant user scenarios be created for them.

This article provides a conceptual framework related to the question of how to increase acceptance and degree of utilization of information services in their relevant target groups. By discussing the possibilities of marketing strategies with limited resources, this article provides alternative ways of thinking and acting for information services mediators such as, for example, librarians. This is of particular relevance for this community, as information services mediators generally need marketing efforts to gain spread for their information services offer – but usually are faced with strictly limited marketing budgets.