Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing. Jay Levinson Conrad
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or even half of them, but you ought to be aggressive enough to want to know of their existence so you can select the ones that seem most appropriate for you. Guerrillas have a large selection. You’ll find the entire list of 200 weapons waiting for you in Chapter 10.
When you learn that the average American business invested 4 percent of gross revenues in marketing in 2006, you’re aggressive again. You think, “Only 4 percent? What if I invested 6 percent? Eight percent? Ten percent? You know that the average business goes out of business within five years. The last kind of company you want as a benchmark is an average business.
The average American business invested 4 percent of gross revenues in marketing in 2006.
You’re aggressive in your thinking and in your investing. Guerrillas save money not by failing to spend it but by not wasting it. Aggressiveness is your hallmark. You’re among the first to use some of the new weapons of marketing. You probably have a blog. You’ve already begun podcasting. You’ve been hard at work compiling your opt-in list. This kind of aggressiveness is the sign of a leader.
Because you’re aggressive in your thinking and your investing, your competitors fear you, respect you, follow you, and acknowledge your leadership. The media come to you for quotes, resulting in your getting the lion’s share of free publicity. Very little goes to the lambs.
At a party or any social function, you may hide behind the foliage, speak in a soft voice, be a practicing wallflower. But when it comes to marketing, you’re a lion. You’re the king or queen of the entrepreneurs. You’re a marketing titan—known for your visible and omnipresent marketing. As you may have heard, size doesn’t matter. It’s all about attitude. And yours is characterized by your aggressiveness.
Trait 6: Embracing Change
You know it and we know it: The only thing certain is change. No matter what happens in the life if your business, change is the only certainty. How you deal with change makes an enormous difference in your success—or lack of it. You can ignore change, hoping it will go away. But we’re here to tell you that it won’t go away. You can disdain change, detest change, or fight change. Or, you can be a guerrilla and embrace change. Be careful in how you interpret this. Change for the sake of change is not a good thing. But change for the sake of improvement is a very good thing. Don’t let your negative attitude or fear of change prevent you from benefiting from the improvements.
Face up to the fact that change will continue to happen all around you, especially in marketing. How you deal with that change is what makes you a guerrilla. Get to know change on an intimate basis. Love it or hate it, but don’t pay it no heed. Millions of people lost billions of dollars because they ignored the internet. Millions more lost millions more dollars because they accepted it too soon and misused or abused it.
Millions of people lost billions of dollars because they ignored the internet.
When we urge you to embrace change, we want you to do it at the right time and for the right reasons. That takes study. That means you must pay careful attention. That means not following the crowd but following your own good instincts. Don’t make the all-too-common mistake of wanting to make a change but also wanting to wait for the prices to go down. While they’re taking their own sweet time going down, you could be losing a fortune while competitors are building an unsurmountable lead due to their willingness to invest at the outset while their own competitors are asleep at the wheel and saving pennies when dollars are at stake.
Embracing change is a matter of timing and knowledge, vision and guts. Guerrillas who possess this trait are rarely mired in the past and usually poised for the future. Does that describe you? We hope so.
Trait 7: Generosity
Guerrillas view their marketing as a chance to help their prospects and customers succeed at their goals. Whether that goal is earning more money, expanding a business, getting a job, losing weight, attracting a mate, or improving their golf score, they try to find ways to help them achieve their goals. Knowing that we’re living smack dab in the middle of the Information Age, they are very generous in providing information.
Sometimes that information is imparted by a web site. Or it can be given in the form of an e-book, free report, consultation, seminar, or lecture. Often, instead of giving information, they give something of worth and value to their customers.
THE FULLY OCCUPIED BUILDING
A series of apartment buildings in Los Angeles had a 70 percent occupancy rate. But one of the buildings had a 100 percent occupancy rate. How did this happen? That particular building put up a sign that said, “Sign a lease . . . get free auto grooming.” What the devil is auto grooming? That meant management hired a person to wash the tenants’ cars once a week. The salary it paid the car washer was easily worth the difference between a 70 percent occupancy rate and a 100 percent occupancy rate. The building management simply asked itself, “What might our tenants appreciate?” The answer was simple. And their generosity in regularly performing the simple act of a weekly car wash was the difference between a highly profitable building and a so-so profitable building. No rocket science here, only common sense and a spirit of generosity.
Ask yourself, what might my prospects and customers appreciate for free? A ballpoint pen? A calendar? A pocket calendar? A refrigerator magnet? The answer need not be lavish or expensive, but merely an expression of your generosity. Flowers, plants, free samples . . . these are some of the myriad ways you can prove your generosity. You’ll see that they go a long way toward bonding with your prospects and customers. They’re easy to come up with if you have the spirit of generosity, if that generosity is part of your personality. Bonus for you: It’s fun to give rather than receive.
Trait 8: High Energy
To practice constant acts of generosity, to consistently prove your imagination, to be aggressive in your deeds, to assess and accept change . . . all of those require a consistent display of energy. If you don’t really have that energy, you can’t really put your heart into all of your actions. And putting your heart into them is part of the deal. Customers know if you’re doing something because you have to and doing that same thing because you want to. They’re attracted to businesses that want to serve, that want to make their customers happy.
Guerrilla marketers know that by doing the work they love, they never work a day in their lives.
Because being a guerrilla marketer is a full-time job, that takes energy—not sometimes energy, but all-the-time energy. A ho-hum attitude is very apparent, just as a willing attitude is easy to see. For that reason, we have seen that high-powered, highly successful guerrillas happen to be high-energy people. They bristle with energy. Everything about them is electrifying. They spread their energy throughout their workplace, even away from it. It’s no surprise that they get a lot done, moving forward at all times. They are quick to greet customers, sincere in their customer relations, and ready to act without hesitation. They seem to want to take action. And the reason is that they are possessed of more than their share of energy.
That helps them do the job at hand and then be ready to take on the next job. They are happy in their work, even awaken each morning looking forward to doing the work they love. That, by the way, is a key to their high energy—doing the work they love. They know that by doing the work they love, they never work a day in their lives. This love of work is always manifested by their high-energy level. That’s what it takes to do all the tasks at hand, then be ready to take on more. You can sense their energy level when you see them work. Amazingly, they don’t even work to demonstrate that energy. It is part of their overall personality. If you cannot make it part of yours, if high energy is not second nature to you, perhaps you should pursue a more mellow line of work. But if you can make it part of yours, you have the personality of a guerrilla who is bound for success.
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