Week 1- MBA 6101- Guerrilla Marketing

Week 1- MBA 6101- Guerrilla Marketing 

One of the things I love most about Chicago is its love for sports, regardless of if the team is good or not. Sports are something that can all bring up in passing or when trying to fill time in a meeting. There is an up-and-coming Chicago Sports podcast that discusses one of these teams in particular, the Monsters of the Midway, the Chicago Bears. "What's Going on Chicago" started 9 years ago by Bryan Cocallas and his passion for the sport and team can be heard through each episode. 

For my marketing project, I am going to focus on growing "What's Going on Chicago's" digital reach to expand the listening base and to potentially gain sponsors. This will be done through utilizing search engine optimization, digital marketing campaigns, and guerrilla marketing techniques. Guerrilla marketing is a marketing strategy that uses unconventional practices to promote something. Author Jay Conrad Levinson discusses this concept in his book Guerrilla Marketing. Unlike traditional marketing techniques, guerrilla marketing utilizes creativity, energy and information to draw customers in, while all being controlled by the marketing team and ideally run by small businesses. This is a way to have customers view an idea differently and to earn a profit from it. 

Guerrilla marketing focuses on the idea that single channel advertising alone will not have the same successful result as marketing combination. This will involve multiple different channels like social media, radio, web ads, etc. For "What's Going on Chicago?" I am going to focus on diversifying the types of advertisement and using the different guerrilla marketing weapons of marketing to see if that will grow the podcast's listening base. This will include social media, web ads and the countless other weapons of marketing available. With the large supply of sports podcasts already on the market, it is important to stand out to gain a potential listeners interest.