Bigwig Briefs: Guerrilla Marketing: The Best ofGuerrilla Marketing

by Jay Conrad Levinson  ISBN:1587620677

Aspatore Books © 2003 (96 pages)

This text explores the ins and outs of guerrilla marketing,and covers topics such as technology and guerrillamarketing, attacking the market, media and marketing,what makes a marketer, money and marketing, and muchmore.

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Best selling author Jay Levinson shares the now world famous principlesbehind guerrilla marketing, in the first ever “brief” written on the subject.Items discussed include the Principles Behind Guerrilla Marketing, What Makesa Guerrilla, Attacking the Market, Everyone Is a Marketer, Media Matters,Technology and the Guerrilla Marketer, and Dollars and Sense. A must readfor any big time marketing executive, small business owner, entrepreneur,marketer, advertiser, or anyone interested in the amazing, proven power ofguerrilla marketing.

Bigwig Briefs-Guerrilla Marketing-The Best OfGuerrilla Marketing By, Jay Conrad Levinson

Published by Aspatore Books, Inc.

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First Printing, September 2001 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright © 2001 by Aspatore Books, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Nopart of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in adatabase or retrieval system, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the United States CopyrightAct, without prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 1-58762-067-7 Library of Congress Card Number: 2001093289

Bigwig Briefs Editor, Ginger Conlon Cover design by Rachel Kashon, Kara Yates

Material in this book is for educational purposes only. This book is sold with the understanding that neitherthe author nor the publisher is engaged in rendering legal, accounting, investment, or any other professionalservice.

This book is printed on acid free paper.

If you are a C-Level executive interested in submitting a manuscript to the Aspatore editorialboard, please email jason@aspatore.com with the book idea, your biography, and any additionalpertinent information.

Special thanks also to: Ted Juliano, Tracy Carbone, and Rinad Beidas

The views expressed by the individuals in this book do not necessarily reflect the views shared by thecompanies they are employed by (or the companies mentioned in this book). The companies referencedmay not be the same company that the individual works for since the publishing of this book.

About the Author

Jay Conrad Levinson is the author of the best-selling marketing series in history, “Guerrilla Marketing,” plus24 other business books. His guerrilla concepts have influenced marketing so much that today his booksappear in 37 languages and are required reading in many MBA programs worldwide.

Jay taught guerrilla marketing for ten years at the extension division of the University of California inBerkeley. And he was a practitioner of it in the United States - as Senior Vice-President at J. WalterThompson, and in Europe, as Creative Director at Leo Burnett Advertising.

He writes a monthly column for Entrepreneur Magazine, articles for Inc. Magazine, a syndicated column fornewspapers and magazines and online columns published monthly on the Microsoft and GTE websites. Jayhas also served on the Microsoft Small Business Council and the 3Com Small Business Advisory Board.

Chapter 1: What is Guerrilla Marketing?

Overview

Guerrilla marketing is pursuing conventional goals using unconventional means.

Guerrilla marketing begins with an idea for how to generate profits for a business and becomes a circle whenthat business has the blessed patronage of repeat and referral customers. I used to compare guerrillamarketing with textbook marketing, but guerrilla marketing is becoming textbook marketing. In a few years itwill be traditional marketing. It seems the only way to fly.

There are 18 strategies that differentiate guerrilla marketing from what is currently considered traditionalmarketing:

Invest Time, Not Money

Traditional marketing says that a marketer's primary investments should be money. With guerrilla marketingthe primary investments should be time, energy, and imagination. If marketers are willing to invest enoughtime, energy, and imagination, they don't have to invest as much money.

I know people who spend $30 a month doing guerrilla marketing. They post signs on bulletin boards, maybeon college campuses, or maybe in communities where a lot of people gather around bulletin boards. Many ofthese marketers use email. They get the names of people from user groups, so they know that these peopleare interested in this particular topic. And email is free, so they can conduct much of their marketing thatway. They might write articles that get posted on other companies' Web sites. That takes time, energy, andimagination, but it does not take money. So it's very possible to market successfully for $50 to $100 amonth. Naturally, the more companies invest, the more profits they'll make-if they're going about everythingelse right.

Measure Performance by Profitability

Traditional marketing measures its performance by sales or by store traffic, while guerrilla marketing focuseson profits. Anybody can achieve high sales, but it takes talent to generate ever-increasing profit.

One reason people go into business is to give themselves joy in life and to provide balance in their lives, butthe main reason is to earn a profit. Too many people lose sight of that and focus only on sales, thinking that,“The more people I get into my store or the more people I get responding to my offer, the more money I'llmake.” Sometimes they'll get a lot of people into their stores and they'll make a lot of sales. But they're notmaking much money, because they're not making a lot of money on each sale and the cost of doingbusiness is subtracting even more. That's why guerrillas find it extremely important to focus only on profits,because that's ultimately how executives build their businesses.

Know the Tools

Traditional marketing seems to intimidate a lot of people, because it's enshrouded by mystique. Peoplearen't quite sure what marketing is. They're not sure if it includes sales and they're not certain if advertisingreally is marketing. Guerrilla marketers feel no sense of intimidation and to them there is no mystique aboutmarketing.

Spend Small

Traditional marketing has always been geared to big businesses with big bankrolls. Although big businessesand Fortune 500 companies buy boxes of guerrilla marketing books at a time, the reality is that guerrillamarketing is geared to small businesses, to the small-business owner with big dreams but a tiny bankaccount.

Eliminate Guesswork

Traditional marketing has always been based on experience and judgments-it's a fancy way of guesswork.Guerrillas cannot afford to make wrong guesses. So as much as possible guerrilla marketing is based onpsychology. For example, guerrilla marketers know that 90 percent of purchase decisions are made in theunconscious mind, and they know that a slam-dunk manner of accessing the human unconscious mind isthrough repetition.

Maintain Focus

Traditional marketing says that companies should grow their businesses large and then diversify into differentfields and different services. Guerrilla marketing says that companies will probably get in trouble if they dothat; the ability to maintain focus will lead to a company's success much more than its concept ofdiversifying.

Grow Geometrically

Traditional marketing has always said that companies should add new customers one at a time. That's anexpensive way to grow: arithmetically. Guerrilla marketing tries to grow companies geometrically, enlargingthe size of each transaction and having more transactions with each customer. This approach taps theenormous referral power of a company's existing customers, because it costs so much less to sell to anexisting customer. While the company is doing that it's also adding new customers. If a company is growinggeometrically it's hard to not turn a profit and to not stay in business successfully.

Follow Up

Follow up is a big issue, because so few people do it. Traditional marketing seems to have aimed at makingthe sale, period, while guerrilla marketing is big on follow up. Guerrilla marketers say, “You have to make asale and then follow up with that customer.” In the United States nearly 70 percent of lost business is lostdue to apathy after the sale, not to poor service or shabby quality. It's lost due to customers being ignoredafter the purchase. That's why guerrillas follow up with all of their customers and stay in touch withcustomers once they become customers. Marketers can't wait for customers to come to them; they have toconstantly be proactive and be in touch with customers, any way they can-post cards, mailings, email,faxes, telephone calls, anything-as long as the marketers are telling customers that they're important.

Create Partnerships

Traditional marketing says to scan the horizon for the competition and see what companies to obliterate;guerrilla marketing says to forget the competition and scan the horizon for those businesses with which thefirm might cooperate. The reason is simple: Marketing partners lower the total marketing costs and theincrease the reach of both partners. So cooperation, not competition, is the name of the game for guerrillas.

Use “You” Marketing

Traditional marketing is “me” marketing. A prospect goes to a company's Web site and it says, “Let me tellyou about me; let me tell you why my company is so big, why my company is so wonderful.” Guerrillamarketing is “you” marketing. It says, “Here's how you can benefit from trying this new service; here's howyour life could be made better if you try this new product. It's all about you and not about me.” Guerrillamarketing is always oriented to the customer, not the company, because people are interested inthemselves more than in any company.

Help Customers Succeed

Traditional marketers have always been interested in taking and in seeing how much money they can getfrom each of their customers. Guerrilla marketing is all about giving. Guerrilla marketers think about what canthey do to help their customers succeed at their goals, because the wider the conduit through which acompany's generosity flows, the wider the conduits will be when the profits flow back.

Use Marketing Combinations

Traditional marketing would have people believe that just advertising works or that just having a Web siteworks, or that just direct mail works; guerrilla marketing says that's just not true. It's folly to believe that.Advertising doesn't work alone anymore, neither does having a Web site, and certainly direct mail doesn'twork alone. So what does work? The only thing that works these days is marketing combinations, runningadvertising and having a Web site and doing direct mail. All three will help each other work. The days ofsingle-weapon marketing have been relegated to the past; we're living in a time in which only marketingcombinations work. It makes me sad to see so many wonderful Web sites out there that there's no way toknow about unless someone happens upon them. If those companies marketed their sites in other media,that marketing combination would make their Web sites successful.

Build Relationships

At the end of each month traditional marketers count up how much money they've brought in, while guerrillamarketers count up how many new relationships they've made. Guerrilla marketers know that relationshipsare vitally important, and the longer the relationships, the more sales they will eventually make and the moreprofits they will eventually earn. So guerrillas cherish every relationship they make.

Embrace Technology

Traditional marketing never really made an allowance for technology, primarily because technology was toocomplex, expensive, not quite powerful enough, and it was hard for the average small-business owner tounderstand. That has all changed. The biggest change in technology is that it has become easy to use. Soguerrilla marketing requires that marketers be technocozy. If marketers are technophobic they should makean appointment with their technoshrinks, because technophobia is fatal these days. And technology is moreinexpensive, more powerful, smaller, and far less complex than it used to be.

Target Individuals

Traditional marketing always aims its messages at groups, the larger the group the better. Guerrillamarketing aims its message at individuals, just a few individuals at a time; if it's going to be a group, thesmaller the group the better.

Consider the Details

Traditional marketing only identifies the mass weapons of marketing like radio, television, magazines,newspapers, and the Internet. As a result, many other marketing tools get overlooked, such as the way acompany's telephone is answered. That's an important part of marketing, because some of the mostimportant people on earth, customers and prospects, call on companies. What happens in traditionalmarketing is that some of the marketing happens unintentionally, leaving at great risk whether the marketingwill be good or bad. Guerrilla marketers are aware of all the details of marketing, including the attire worn bytheir companies' representatives and how their employees treat people on the telephone. Guerrilla marketingis always intentional and nothing is left to chance.

Gain Consent

Traditional marketing has always aimed to make the sale with the marketing. Because there is so muchmarketing going on today, it's hard to make a sale with one piece of marketing. So guerrilla marketingattempts to gain consent from prospects to receive a company's marketing material. Once a business hasgained that consent, it markets only to those people. When a company does that, it's not wasting its moneyby mailing to or marketing to disinterested people.

Increase the Marketing Arsenal

Finally, traditional marketers have always had a limited arsenal. As I said, they usually go for radio,television, magazines, newspapers, direct mail, telemarketing, and Internet. Guerrilla marketing identifies100 different marketing weapons (see Appendix 1) and 62 of them are free. The idea of guerrilla marketing isto become aware of all 100 marketing weapons and to use as many as is feasible; to pay careful attention tothose weapons and eliminate those that aren't working. Companies that use guerrilla marketing are going tofind out that their marketing arsenal may consist of 20 different weapons, and of those 20 weapons maybehalf of them are free. So the size of the arsenal of the guerrilla marketer is much larger than the arsenal forthe traditional marketer.

Change Is In The Air

These 18 differences not only summarize the contrast between guerrilla marketing and traditional marketing,but also point to the way marketing is heading. Take the Internet as an example. Over the past few years theInternet has really begun to leave its infancy and become a pre-adolescent. People are beginning to learnhow to use the Internet and that has made a major change in marketing.

The other big change is the idea that there is so much marketing coming down the pike that it's difficult formarketing to make its sale. That's why these days guerrillas go for consent from people and then market tothose people.

There is so much marketing in so many forms: radio, television, magazines, newspapers, billboards, onlinebanners, email. Because there is so much of it, almost all of it is interruption marketing. It's interrupting theperson's day. Hardly anybody watches television with the idea of watching the commercials, therefore whenthe commercial comes on it's interrupting them. When people get an email about something they're notinterested in they're just going to delete it, because it's interrupting their day and the flow of their lives.

There is so much interruption marketing right now that marketers need to do something to stand apart fromit. The way to do that is to use some interruption marketing to get consent from people. Companies do thatby offering prospects a free brochure or by directing them to a Web site; then they get prospects' consent toreceive more marketing materials via email or via them requesting the free brochure. The majority will not givetheir consent, and companies don't mind, because that means they can save money by not marketing tothose people anymore. But a small portion will give consent. Those people want to receive the marketingmaterials, they're interested in what the company has to say and what it has to offer. Once they've given acompany their consent, its marketing budget gets much smaller. When a sale is made, it requiresmomentum to be established, and when someone gives consent, that begins the momentum.

One other change that has had and is having a dramatic effect on marketing is the low cost of televisionadvertising, which has dropped significantly because of cable television, and the low cost of magazineadvertising, because there are more regional additions of magazines. Those low costs of major media makeit possible for every business to market in more arenas.

Those are ways that marketing has changed, but there's more to come. Technology is going to changemarketing significantly. It's going to make almost all marketing far more interactive. Consumers will even beable to interact with television commercials. The more that consumers are allowed to be interactive, the moreguerrilla marketing will flourish. Guerrilla marketing will change as technology changes. Guerrilla marketersdo not resist change. In fact, they try to embrace change not for the sake of change but for the sake ofimprovement.

It's Just Human Nature

Technology will continue to change, but human beings will continue to be pretty much the same as theywere a century ago. They still want a good value, they still want to be treated as individuals, they still like asmile, they like eye contact, they like people using their names. Consequently, although guerrilla marketerswill embrace the technological changes that are pouring out of laboratories, they will always keep in mindthat human nature has not changed much.

Marketers need to understand what's first and foremost on every human being's mind: the person himself orherself. People do not think about companies or products or services; they think about themselves. In theback of their minds whenever they read a marketing message is, “What's in it for me? What am I going toget out of it?” Although marketing has changed substantially in the past 100 years, especially the past 10years, human nature really hasn't. The whole human race is selfish. Self-interest is at the basis of everythingwhen they're reading marketing messages. Marketers must speak to the people not about their companiesbut about the people themselves.

This is one reason so many companies, even those with huge marketing budgets, aren't getting themarketing right. Another significant reason is that marketing and advertising agencies have always been thedomain of young people and the market is not young people. The market is primarily older people. It's gettingolder and the advertising people are getting younger. The people who create advertising worship at the shrineof cleverness and cuteness. They're big on “me too”-ism and they try to copy other advertisers. This is amajor mistake. The people who create marketing these days seem to be embarrassed that it's marketing.They don't want consumers to know that it's an ad that's running on television. They try to hide that withcelebrity endorsements or special effects or wonderful music; as a result they create fabulous films that areineffective advertising, ineffective marketing. Guerrilla marketing, on the other hand, is always going to be invogue, because it's able to grow with the times while keeping in mind that people don't.

Chapter 2: What Makes a Guerrilla? Guerrillas are rarely born guerrillas, but can develop the 12 personality characteristics that make a guerrilla.They are as follows:

Patience

It takes quite a while for a marketing message to penetrate a person's mind before they'll want to buy aproduct, and to hang with a marketing program long enough to do that requires patience.

A research firm conducted a study to determine how many times a person must be exposed to a marketingmessage to move them from total apathy to purchase readiness-when they're ready to buy. Amazingly, theresearchers came up with nine. A company has to penetrate a prospects' mind nine times, but for everythree times a company puts up a marketing message, prospects are not paying attention to two of them. Soif a business puts out the word three times, it has penetrated prospects' minds one time. Nothing happensthen. If it puts the word out six times it has penetrated the prospects' minds two times. All that happens thenis that they realize they've heard of that company before. The business puts out the word nine times and nowit's penetrated three times, and the prospects realize that they've heard of the company someplace beforeand they know they've seen its marketing and they know unsuccessful companies do not continuemarketing. So now the firm puts the word out 12 times and has penetrated the prospects' minds four times.This is when they start asking other people if they've heard of the company. After the business has put themessage out 15 times it has penetrated prospects' mind five times. This is when they decide to read everyword of the ad or to send for the free brochure or to access the firm's Web site.

Most small businesses that have put the word out 15 times figure that plan isn't working so they abandon itand start from scratch. Guerrillas have to hang in there until a person's mind has been penetrated nine times.This is why the first characteristic definitely is patience.

How long has the Green Giant been ho-ho-hoeing in his valley? For a long time, and it didn't work at first.Consumers think that Green Giant is a big company, but it started as a little group of farmers in Minnesotawho needed a common name to market their products. So they named the group Green Giant. Nothinghappened at first, but eventually it caught on. This demonstrates that patience is number one.

Patience is sorely lacking among failed marketers, but patience seems to be present, for example, in thepeople who created and supported the Marlboro cigarettes campaign, “Come to where the flavor is.” If theywere impatient they would have discontinued the Marlboro man after one year, but they had the patience tohang in there and that's what made it work.

When I joined Leo Burnett Advertising in l963, Marlboro was perceived as a feminine brand and was the31st-largest-selling cigarette in the country. Marlboro's brand managers asked if we could do anything aboutit. We sent a couple of photographers and an art director to a friend's ranch in west Texas and told them todo nothing but shoot photographs of working cowboys. While they were doing that, we invented a fictionalplace called Marlboro country and came up with the theme line “Come to where the flavor is.” When thephotographers came back, we pasted the words on the pictures. We felt very good about that, so we went toNew York to show it to the Marlboro brand group. They liked it so much they agreed to invest $18 million thefirst year.

We rented the music to the Magnificent Seven, because in those days it was legal to hock cigarettes onradio and television. We had billboards, magazine ads, and newspaper ads all over the place making theMarlboro man a cultural icon. At the end of the year we went back to get our high fives and our pats on theback. Instead we discovered that this brand was still the 31st-largest- selling cigarette, and the focus groupinterviews showed us that it was still perceived as a feminine brand. This gave us a reason to be alarmed.We thought we were doing everything right. Everybody knew who the Marlboro man was, everybody knewwhat Marlboro country was; the marketing was all over the place, and yet the brand hadn't budged.

Switch to today and Marlboro is the number-one-selling cigarette in America-number one to men, numberone to women-and the number-one-selling cigarette in the world. In fact, one out of every five cigarettes soldin the world is Marlboro. But here's the shocking thing about it: Nothing has changed in the marketing. It's

still the Marlboro man, it's still cowboys, it's still “Come to where the flavor is,” it's still Marlboro country, andthere's no more radio or television. We learned then that the best way to make a marketing campaignsucceed is through patience and commitment to it. Marketers who are expecting an easy fix aren't going toget it. If the Marlboro brand group had expected an easy fix, at the end of a year they would have fired us andstarted something new. Instead, by being patient and by being committed to their campaign, Marlboro is nowknown as the best-marketed brand in history.

Patience works for small firms as well. There are local companies, like European Sleepworks in Berkeley,California, that do not have a budget anywhere near that of Marlboro, but they understand the concepts ofpatience and commitment. European Sleepworks went from being just a little bed store to a store that nowoutsells Sealy, Serta, and Simmons in the Berkeley community.

Imagination

Imagination doesn't mean dreaming up headlines or graphics. It means that marketers must realize, forexample, that when they send a direct mailing to customers, those customers are going to be assaultedwith a blizzard of direct mail and that people throw away most direct mailings they receive. So how are themarketers going to get their letters opened? One way to do it is to spring for first-class postage, which is 34cents. But instead of using a 34-cent stamp-because anybody can do that-the marketers should put 11stamps on the envelope: a 7-cent stamp, two 4-cent stamps, three 3-cent stamps, and five 2-cent stamps.When a person gets a letter with 11 stamps they're not going to ignore it. They're going to open that letterfirst, because they've never seen a letter with 11 stamps. And they'll read the contents. Marketers needimagination in that way, or in where they place a sign, or what they'll say on a banner.

Sensitivity

Guerrillas are sensitive to their marketplace, to the time of the year, to the time in history, and to what theeconomy is like. They are sensitive to the place in which they are marketing, because marketing in ruralcommunities might be very different from marketing in urban communities. They're sensitive to what theircompetition is doing. But mainly they're sensitive to what's on their customers' and prospects' minds rightnow. And if they have that sensitivity, their marketing will be that much better.

Ego Strength

If a marketer embarks on a powerful marketing campaign and does everything right, the first people to tire ofit will be coworkers and associates and friends and family. These people will say, “I'm getting bored with yourmarketing. Don't you plan to change it soon?” Marketers need to realize that these people know beans aboutmarketing. Give them a nice warm hug and send them on their way, because the prospects' minds havebeen penetrated only two or three times and they're certainly not bored with the marketing. The reality is thatprospects' minds have to be penetrated nine times before a message takes hold and spurs them to action.So marketers need an ego to stand up to the people who love them the most but give them the worstmarketing advice.

Aggressiveness

When guerrilla marketers learn that the average business invested 4 percent of sales in marketing in 2000they say, “Is that all? What would happen if we invest 8 percent?” When they learn that there are 100different marketing weapons and realize that they are only using five of them, they wonder which of the other100 weapons they could use. So guerrilla marketers are aggressive in their spending and in their use ofmarketing weapons. In early 2001, the average Inc. 500 company invested 11 percent of revenues inmarketing; aggressiveness is one of the things that got them there.

Flexibility

Guerrilla marketers embrace change. They do not try to ignore it in the hope that it will go away, because itwill not go away. Guerrilla marketers are open to change and they embrace it when it can improve theircompanies.

Generosity

Guerrillas are generous people. Rather than thinking of what they can get from each customer, guerrillamarketers try to think of what they can give to customers. They view marketing as an opportunity for them tohelp their prospects succeed at whatever their goals are, whether it's losing weight or gaining money,building a company or gaining friends, finding a mate or making their house look more beautiful. They have agoal and the job in marketing is to educate them in how to succeed at it. Guerrillas try to think, “What can Ido to help that person succeed at that goal?”

In fact, my own career highlights have nothing to do with the promotions and the raises, and everything to dowith me watching clients I'm servicing enjoy increased profits and sales and growth. Nothing gives me moreexcitement than when I write an ad or a television campaign for a customer or post something on their Website and find out that a lot of sales, a lot of traffic, and a lot of profit came from what I did. Tied for first placewith that is when people say, “I've read your books, I've attended your lectures, and now my business isworth $200 million dollars and I wanted to thank you for that.” I write in order to get people to that level.

One of the best ways to help customers succeed is with information, so guerrillas are willing sharers ofinformation. We're living in the age of information, and one thing that guerrillas are generous with isinformation on their Web sites or on brochures that they send out or in their newsletters or in plain givinggifts. They are generous people by nature, because customers are attracted to companies that give thingsaway and repelled by companies that just try to take.

Energetic

Successful guerrillas are high-energy people. They have a proclivity to continue doing things to help theirmarketing, and it's easy for them to take action because of their high energy level. They are blessed withhigh energy, especially when it comes to marketing. They never feel burnt out, because they're so excited atthe concept of spreading the good word of their companies, their products, or their services. Their marketingis high energy because they're high energy.

Knowledgeable

Sea gulls fly in constant circles in the sky looking for food, and when they find it they land and eat their foodand then they rise up in the sky again to fly in circles; that's their most powerful instinct. Guerrilla marketershave one instinct that is just as strong, and that is the need for constant learning. They know that they areliving in an age in which it's no longer a matter of learning everything about anything. Instead it's learning onething after another, because information is changing and new information is thrust upon us constantly.Guerrillas know that unless they are constantly learning, they are falling behind. That is why guerrillamarketers are constantly learning.

Personable

Successful guerrilla marketers are people people. They like people; they enjoy knowing what makes peopletick, because it's people who will sell their products, it's people who will buy their products, it's people whowill make their products or services. It's really all about people. Guerrillas are intensely interested in otherpeople, and that makes it easy for them to craft marketing messages that are oriented to people rather thanto things or even ideas. And this is the key to making marketing motivating to customers-by talking aboutthe person, not about the company, and by letting prospects know how they would benefit by becomingcustomers. Guerrilla marketers make marketing motivating by letting people know how their lives will improveby using their products. They do that by talking about the person, not about the product.

Focused

Guerrillas have the ability to maintain their focus. They don't get distracted by opportunities to diversify andintroduce new brands and new lines. A lot of marketers who are not guerrillas get their companies up to acertain size and then they start looking around for ways to diversify. Successful guerrillas are able tomaintain their focus. They are supermen when it comes to maintaining their focus. If marketers maintain theirfocus there's a good chance that they're going to build confidence in the company in their prospects' mindsand consequently achieve their goals.

Proactive

A hallmark of guerrillas is their ability to take action. Marketers start with a brief plan. The hardest thing to dois to breathe life into that plan by taking action. If marketers spend too much time planning, they'll never takeaction on that plan. The idea is to have a brief marketing plan. A guerrilla marketing plan is only sevensentences long. Once that's done, everything else is action, so marketers don't have to go through what wecall analysis paralysis. They have their plan and now is the time to commit to that plan and live up to it andbreathe life into it.

Marketing is not a theory, it's not something someone just learns. Unfortunately, a lot of marketers readbooks, attend seminars, go online and get information, and they absorb all that information but they don't doanything about it. They keep it inside of themselves. We say these people have one-way brains. They absorba lot of information but they never take action.

Guerrillas have two-way brains. They absorb the same amount of information from the same books andseminars and Web sites, but they take action based on what they learn, because they know action is thepurpose of the exercise. Sitting and planning isn't going to bring any profits into a company's bank account,taking action will.

Chapter 3: Attacking the Market Once marketers understand the differences between traditional marketing and guerrilla marketing and takethe time to acquire the traits necessary to be a successful guerrilla marketer, it's time to plan and implementtheir attack. This is a 10-step process.

Step One: Research

Before diving into a plan, guerrilla marketers must do their homework. They have to research their ownmarkets to see what competitors are out there. They need to research their product to determine what thereal benefits are, and talk to customers to find out what they perceive as the benefits. And they shouldresearch which benefits are most meaningful to both customers and prospects. Guerrillas have to researchthe media to see what media are available for their companies. For example, many marketers don't know thelow cost of television these days. Businesses can be on prime-time television for $20 or less for one30-second television commercial in almost any major market because of cable and satellite television.

Research also includes examining the competition, because many companies aim for the same customersand prospects. Guerrillas must research their industry to find trends and to see what are the newest thingsthat organizations are able to offer to their customers.

Most important, guerrilla marketers research their customers to find out what makes them tick-whatmagazines they read, what newspapers they subscribe to, what TV shows they watch, where they go online,what trade shows they go to, what is their family make up, what sports teams they follow. When marketersstart learning about their customers, then they know what to look for in their prospects. Marketers have toconduct research into those prospects, because the prospects hopefully will become customers.

There are many ways to learn about customers. The best and the most inexpensive way is to prepare acustomer questionnaire that asks a lot of questions of the customers about themselves. Be sure to have aparagraph at the top of the questionnaire that says, “We're sorry to be asking you so many questions, butthe more we know about you the better service we can be to you.” That makes sense to people, so they'lltake the time to answer questions. Ask questions about what TV and radio shows they watch, askquestions about their families, their favorite sports teams, their kids' favorite activities at school. Marketerswho learn about their customers in that detail can, for example, send a Thanksgiving Day card that says,“Happy Thanksgiving and congratulations on your daughter being named to the cheerleading squad,” insteadof sending a plain Christmas card like every other company. Guerrillas use the information they gain aboutcustomers to create really personalized marketing messages. And by gaining those insights into customersit's easier to find out where to find more people like them, people who match a target-customer profile.

Finally, guerrilla marketers must research the Internet. Markets are changing so rapidly that the only way tofind out about what's happening is by researching the Internet.

If marketers do all that research-their market, their product, the media, their competition, their industry, theirprospects and customers, the technology of the day, the benefits they offer, and the Internet-they're doingthe right kind of research to get their marketing plan off to a fast start.

Step Two: List the Benefits

It's now necessary to write a list of the benefits the company offers. Put a star next to those benefits that arecompetitive advantages, because that's where marketers should really hang their marketing hats. It'snecessary to be clear on the benefits and on the competitive advantages.

Step Three: Select the Weapons

Next, marketers must select the weapons that they're going to use. They may select a lot of weapons, butthe amount should not be overwhelming, because it's necessary to take those weapons and put them inpriority order and put a date next to each one of them. This creates a commitment to the date by which eachweapon will be launched. And put a person's name with each weapon, because somebody's going to be incharge of launching that weapon-maybe the ad agency, maybe the marketer herself, maybe the director ofmarketing.

Step Four: Create a Plan

The next, crucial step is planning. Why? Why is a road map necessary to someone making a cross-countrytrip? And why are navigation aids necessary to people making long flights? They help propel them towardtheir goals. A marketing plan does the same thing. It lets marketers know what their goals are and thendirects them toward those goals. Marketers who start without a plan will probably head off in the wrongdirection and may lose sight of their goals as they continue on. A marketing plan serves as a road map totheir goals. It forces marketers to focus on what their marketing should do.

It's also necessary for guerrillas to set milestones at the start of a campaign. It's important for marketers toquantify their goals in order to quantify how many and what kind of responses they want, what kind of profitsthey need, what kind of sales, and how fast turnover has to be. Marketers must quantify those things withmilestones in writing. It's not enough to say, “We'll build our business this year.” Instead marketers shouldsay, “We will build our business to achieve an 11 percent growth in profits within the end of one year.” Thatway they're much better equipped to keep track of how well they're doing. Marketers need to put theirmilestones in the form of specific numbers.

Although planning is vital, the final marketing plan should be brief. One of the reasons for the failure ofbusinesses, especially small businesses, is either failure to start with a plan or having a plan that's socomplicated it's hard to follow. A guerrilla marketing plan is only seven sentences long:

1. The first sentence tells the specific purpose of the marketing itself, and it ought to be a shortsentence. This is the best way to start any marketing plan. Maybe the purpose is to get people tosend for a free video, or to get them to visit a Web site or come to a store or call an 800 number.

2. The second sentence tells the benefits the marketing will stress to achieve the company'spurpose. For example, if people don't buy this shampoo, they won't have good-looking hair. Andit's important to stress the benefits in a short sentence, because marketers shouldn't put out allthe benefits, just the main benefits.

3. The third sentence tells the target audience. Sometimes there may be more than one targetaudience, but again that's a short sentence. The target audience may be bigger when it's a largebusiness that may be able to use even more marketing weapons and use them more heavily thana traditional guerrilla with a limited budget. Large companies can aim for a larger niche in themarketplace; they can't operate with small niches. They need larger niches, bigger chunks ofhumanity. Guerrillas with small businesses can operate successfully with a small niche; theyhave more warmth and personal contact.

4. The fourth sentence is the only long sentence, and should be written as a list. It enumerates themarketing weapons that the marketer plans use. The best approach is to start out with a long listand try a lot of weapons and see which ones are proven in action.

5. The fifth sentence tells the company's niche in the marketplace, what it stands for. When peoplehear the name of a company, what's the first thing that enters their minds? That is the niche, andthat should be stated in writing in the marketing plan.

6. The sixth sentence tells the firm's identity, its personality- not its image, because an image issomething phony. An identity is what a company really is. All companies have a personality, andthe best thing to do is put it in writing in the marketing plan. Then that personality will comeshining through in all of the firm's other marketing materials.

7. The seventh sentence tells the marketing budget. Guerrillas should express their marketingbudget as a percentage of their projected gross sales, not their previous year's sales, becausethen they're operating in the status quo. If they want to operate in growth mode they make it apercentage of their projected gross sales in the coming year.

The average American business invests 4 percent of gross sales in marketing. Fifty percent of companies goout of business within five years, so guerrilla marketers don't want to do things the way the average businessdoes. Guerrillas don't try to do anything that average businesses do. They try to rise above the average, sothey're willing to invest more than 4 percent of their projected gross sales in marketing. Ten percent is agood place to start. Once marketers get that 10 percent, they're building share of mind. As they build shareof mind that percentage can drop, because total dollars will grow but the amount of money put into marketingcan stay the same. As a result, the percent guerrilla marketers invest in marketing decreases each year,even though their profits increase.

But the marketing budget for a small business would be very different from that of a large firm. Although thepercentage may be the same, the absolute dollar expenditure would be much larger on the part of a largecompany. Big businesses need to do that to support their overhead, but most guerrilla companies are leanmachines and don't have as large an overhead.

That's all guerrilla marketers really need to get going with their plan. They can have 200 or 300 pages ofdocumentation later on, but the marketing plan should start with a brief seven-sentence strategy. This is truewhether the plan is for a small business or a huge conglomerate. Each one will have its own purpose. They'lleach have their own specific benefits. Other than that, the marketing of big and small businesses is prettymuch alike. In fact, Proctor & Gamble is as big and as sophisticated a marketing company as anyone willever find, but its marketers use three-to five-sentence marketing plans to begin. They may have a lot ofdocumentation later, but they start with simple plans that are easy to understand and easy to follow.

Step Five: Build a Calendar

Once the plan is written, it's time to make a guerrilla marketing calendar on which marketers should projectout for one year what they're going to be doing month by month when it comes to marketing. The marketingcalendar lists five things: the months of the year, the thrust of the marketing for each month, the media beingused each month, how much money will be invested in marketing each month, and a grade for each month.The grades should be A, B, C, D or F, so that the second year's marketing calendar eliminates thosemonths that only got C's, D's, or F's. Guerrillas only use those that get A's and B's. The third marketingcalendar should have only things that got an A the year before.

One important thing to remember is to never cut back on marketing in a down cycle. This is a wonderful timeto continue marketing and win over a lot of customers who ordinarily would not have known about thecompany. Marketers can only do this properly if they have a marketing calendar from the start that tells themwhen they are going to be doing their marketing, and based on the history of their businesses, they will knowwhen the up periods and down periods are. It's a huge mistake to cut back during a down period.

Step Six: Find Fusion Partners

The next step is finding fusion-marketing partners. These are businesses that can share the marketingburden with a company; firms that have the same kind of standards, the same kind of prospects. BusinessWeek calls it cooperative marketing, other people call it co-marketing, guerrillas call it fusion marketing.Fusion marketing partners will help marketers spread the word and reduce their marketing costs.

Step Seven: Launch the Attack

Now it's time to launch the marketing attack. The way to launch it is in slow motion. Don't unleash all of themarketing weapons at once. Launch them one at a time. Guerrillas want to feel comfortable financially thatthey're not spending too much and emotionally that they don't have too many balls in the air when theylaunch that attack. My average clients take 18 months to launch a full-scale guerrilla marketing attack. Thelaunching doesn't take place until after those first six steps have been accomplished.

Step Eight: Maintain the Attack

Here's where it gets hard. More money is lost in maintaining the attack than during any other step. It's easyto do the first six steps, but to maintain the attack is difficult, because people expect instant results andmarketing does not in most cases deliver instant results. That's why marketers must be patient and maintaintheir attack.

Marketing plans should be for 10 years, and every six months marketers should reevaluate them to see ifthey have to make any changes.

If marketers make a marketing plan that's good for one year, they're probably going to make changes to itnext year. The correct way for guerrillas to plan is backward. They start with their goal, and then they put inthe steps to help them achieve that goal. Therefore, guerrilla marketing means keeping it simple and keepingit brief, because other people in their company are going to read the marketing plan and guerrilla marketerswant to get those people on their wavelength. Those people will be able to do that if they read a simple, clearmarketing plan.

As good as that plan may be, marketers must think, “This is something that's going to guide me for the nextthree or five or 10 years.” If marketers think in those terms, it's easier to commit to it. Yet, it's necessary toreevaluate a marketing plan every six months to see if there's any tweaking that has to be done. Ideally,guerrillas will be able to make little tweaks and little changes with no major alterations. I tell my clients whenthey write a marketing plan, “You have to promise to live by this plan for the next three years.” Although theyswallow hard when I tell them that, they find at the end of the year, after they've made a couple of minorchanges, it's easier to go with a plan that's created for three years or five years or longer. Ten years is whatmarketers should have in mind, because if they have a marketing plan that they think will guide their effortsfor the next 10 years, it will be much easier to commit to that plan. Especially in light of the length of time ittakes for marketing plans to produce significant results.

I tell my clients that if they do everything right they probably won't see any results from their marketing forthe first three months and then they'll see definite results at the end of six months and every monththereafter their profits should continue climbing. A company can't penetrate a person's mind nine times in ashort period of time. As a result, guerrilla marketers know it's going to take time. They're not quick toabandon their marketing because it didn't do something the first 30 days or the first 60 days; it hardly everdoes.

When most people see a product or a commercial or a marketing message or an email for something theylike they're not going to buy it that day. They're going to think about it, they're going to talk to other peopleabout it, they're going to want to see if that company is here to stay. So most people are in the wait-and-seecategory versus the buy-right-now category. Because of the vast amount of people in the wait-and-seecategory, marketing takes a while to take hold. If it happens in three months you're pretty darn lucky, and ifit doesn't happen after six months then you're probably doing something wrong. But it does take time and itrarely happens instantly unless there is a very special time-dated offer (e.g. You must take advantage of thiswithin the next 15 days or this price will be withdrawn). Marketers may get action from an offer like that, butthey can only do that once in a while.

Step Nine: Keep Track

The ninth step is to keep careful track, because guerrillas are going to use a large number of marketingweapons. Some weapons are going to hit the center of the bull's eye, some are going to miss the targetentirely. Finding out from each customer what caused them to buy will show which marketing weapons areworking and which aren't. So keeping track is crucial .

Step Ten: Make Improvements

Finally, start to improve in all areas. Improve the message, improve the media, improve the budget-whichmay mean lowering it-and improve the results achieved from the marketing.

Guerrillas who go through those 10 steps will probably succeed on the marketing front. And guerrillas shouldstart marketing as soon as they have a marketing plan, a follow-up plan, and a referral plan, and as soon asall of their employees are able to read those plans and get on that wavelength. And even more important isthat once guerrillas start marketing, they realize that a marketing attack is not something that they do oncein a while. It's a never-ending process. A process, not an event, and it constantly goes on. Once a companybegins marketing it really should never stop. Too many people view marketing as an event, as somethingthat we do now and then or we do when we feel like it or when the economy is right. The reality is, it shouldalways be going on all the time.

Tweaking your Marketing

Usually, the best and most successful marketing is not created with the first ad or the first direct mail piece.Instead, it's the product of improvements made with minor but crucial changes in details, called tweaking.Tweaking is a significant part of steps eight and ten of launching and implementing a marketing attack.

Embracing the concept of tweaking will dramatically improve the results guerrillas gain from any marketingprogram, but especially a direct marketing campaign. Great campaigns don't usually get fired from a cannonto hit the center of the target. Instead, they come close to the target and it's tweaking that moves them tothe bull's eye.

Tweaking adds firepower to messages.

Tweaking means devoting energy to finding an even better mailing list, an even more cogent message for anenvelope or mail subject line, a still better way to state a message. The more research marketers continueto do, the more they'll learn what customers love about their companies-and about their competition.

The best tweakers are the experimenters. Although they may have a winning direct response campaign offand running, they are constantly testing other markets, other messages, other direct marketing methods,tweaking here and there to build their marketing muscle.

Even though repetition is vital for a marketing message to take hold, tweaking can help improve the impact ofthe message. Take direct marketing as an example. Great results rarely happen instantly in marketing, andthat includes direct marketing campaigns. Even the best have to be tweaked or they atrophy with time. Thesense of urgency that is so necessary for direct marketers becomes less immediate with repetition. Whererepetition is crucial for mass marketing to take hold, it is of lesser importance in direct marketing. Certainly,offers may be repeated, but the line marketers don't want to cross is a lot closer than they think in thisarena.

Most guerrillas play an endless game of increasing not only their response rates, but more important, theirprofits, with each marketing effort they make. Their primary ally is not their budget but their desire to tweak,to improve, to break records. They are not defeated by failures in their experimentation, merely enlightened.

Guerrillas know that records are established to break, not to serve as a permanent standard. That meanschange is part of the game in order to steadily increase profits. It means new records are being establishedon a regular basis, not because of major new marketing campaigns, but because of minor improvements ona consistent basis.

Customers are changing and guerrillas are keeping abreast of their new wants and needs, their expectationsand hopes. What worked like a miracle last year may be a total loser this year. That direct mail campaignthat generated so much profit for one firm last year is being surpassed considerably by its Web site thisyear. But these marvelous things aren't going to happen because of a flash of genius. Instead, they'll happenbecause of tweaking and experimentation.

One of the rewards of tweaking is that marketing gets noticed, especially in a society besieged with directresponse marketing. Guerrillas are fully aware of the proliferation of direct response marketing in the worldtoday. They see it on their computer monitors, in their mailboxes, on their telephones, on radio, ontelevision, on signs, and in the magazines and newspapers they read. Their awareness gives them theinsight that it is more difficult than ever for their snowflake to be noticed in the blizzard. There are countlesssnowflakes out there, each one enticing and insisting on attention, money, time, and a meeting of the minds.How can guerrillas make their snowflake the one that starts the avalanche of thought that leads to a sale?

Guerrillas begin to answer this from the inside of their prospects' minds. What do they read or watch? Whatare their foremost interests? It's certain that they do not respond to direct response offers, but that they dorespond to what captivates their interest. So marketers must create an offer that is so fascinating toprospects that they are truly enticed. That offer should be more about them than about the product orservice. If it looks like all the other direct response pleas, it will be tossed or ignored just as they are. It muststand apart from the other offers being made to them on a non-stop basis. It must be unique to their eye.

Guerrillas accomplish this by using alternate modes of delivery, unique graphics and colors, precision timing,brutal honesty, emotionally-charged verbiage, and a tangible feeling of one-toone communicating. They neverwaste the time of their prospects and never try to say everything to everybody, but concentrate instead onsaying something to somebody.

Their tweaking includes studying what their competition is doing and then doing it better. They research whatmarketing tactics are working for others and then adapt these tactics to their own need. They experimentwith technology. They learn from customers exactly what motivated them to become customers. Researchand patience, along with serious tweaking, help their snowflakes weather the storm.

Chapter 4: Everyone is a Marketer

Overview

An integral part of successful guerrilla marketing is getting buying from everyone in the company. Thismeans that everyone in the company should be involved in marketing. Everybody is in the marketingdepartment, not just the people whose titles have marketing in them, like marketing director or vice presidentof marketing. The person who answers the phone at a store or office is part of marketing. Every employeewho customers have any contact with is part of its marketing team and they should know that. They shouldbe exposed to the firm's marketing plan, so they can get on the same wavelength. The best companies tellall their employees that they're all members of the company's marketing team.

This is the case whether the company has one employee or 10,000. The marketing is not really too different.A company still needs a marketing plan, and still needs commitment to marketing. The difference is that in acompany with one person that person has total control over what she's going to say to all of her customers;in a large firm the marketer or president or CEO has to be sure that everybody sees things the way he does.

That's why a company with solid marketing has one person in charge of the marketing. That person is calledthe designated guerrilla. The designated guerrilla could be a person inside the company, it could be thedirector of marketing, or it could be an outside ad agency or consultant. But the best designated guerrilla onearth is the person who runs the company, the CEO, because he can delegate many functions but he can'tdelegate the passion and the vision that he feels. And although everybody is a member of a firm's marketingteam, the company president or CEO should be in charge of all marketing.

The Power of Enthusiasm

When the president or CEO is in charge of marketing, it can significantly alter the level of enthusiasm for thecompany and its marketing. Enthusiasm, which is crucial to successful marketing, starts at the top. Theperson who's running the marketing show or running the company has to be blessed with this enthusiasm.It's best expressed by the word passion. If people don't feel passion for their companies, they had better gointo another line of work, because passion fuels enthusiasm and enthusiasm fuels the firepower ofmarketing. If someone is an enthusiastic leader, that enthusiasm is contagious. It will spread throughout anorganization. It's important that the person who speaks to all the employees convey this enthusiasm andpassion at all times, because that's something that spreads from the leader to the employees and from theemployees to the customers.

Enthusiasm is one of the most important attitudes that is necessary for a guerrilla. The way for marketers toinfuse their employees with it is to demonstrate it themselves: If the top marketing executive or the CEO orthe president is enthusiastic, the employees are going to become enthusiastic; if the marketer or CEO orpresident is not, no matter what the employees are like, they probably won't be enthusiastic.

And whether the company has one employee or 10,000, it's also necessary to instill confidence in thecompany in their minds. One of the best ways to do so, in addition to enthusiasm from top executives, isthrough advertising. If employees see the firm's commercials on television, or if they see its ad in amagazine, that's going to make them more confident in the company and more enthusiastic about workingfor it. They may or may not visit its Web site, but if they're watching TV and they see the company'scommercial, it's going to increase their enthusiasm level and pride in the company.

Many marketers select their media not only based on what their prospects and customers will see but onwhat their employees will see. They do this because when employees see their employer in a marketingforum, they're going to pay close attention and they're going to feel a sense of pride in the company and thatwill help fuel their enthusiasm.

Involve Employees in Marketing

Once guerrillas have instilled that enthusiasm, it's necessary to prepare company employees tocommunicate the marketing message. There are a few ways to do this. One is to create a marketing plan.As I mentioned in Chapter 2, a guerrilla marketing plan is only seven sentences long. The two main reasonsit is so short are that it forces marketers to focus when they're creating it, and if it's short every member ofan organization will be able to read and understand it-and it won't put them to sleep because it's pages andpages long. If marketers involve employees in the company's marketing plan and ask them for feedbackthey'll feel even more involved with the firm and with its marketing. All company owners should involve theiremployees in their marketing by saying, “This is our marketing plan. What do you think of it? Do you haveanything to add? Do you think we're doing anything wrong?” If employees feel that they're contributing,they're going to take a much more active role in helping to market their companies.

One more thing: All employees should see the firm's ads or read its direct mail letters or see itscommercials before they run, so they can feel part of the inside group, and they can feel they're reallyinvolved in marketing. If they are exposed to these materials before they run, they'll feel that sense of innercircle.

Again, this makes it easier to instill in employees that no matter what their job, they are on the marketingteam. And it will make them more understanding when the marketer or CEO or president reminds them thatwhatever their job title and whatever their responsibilities are the company will be judged by the employeesand their actions.

Regardless of what other kinds of marketing businesses do, those touch points, those moments of truthwhen there is contact between a customer and a member of a company, to that customer that member ofthe company is the company. Therefore employees must realize that they can help propel their companiesforward by rendering simple, friendly service. On the other hand, if they are busy or in a bad mood, that'sgoing to reflect on the company as well. Customers are going to think that's what the company is like.

Building Customer Confidence

Employee enthusiasm ties in strongly with gaining customers' confidence.

There are five reasons people patronize a business. The number five reason is price. Selection is fourth,service is third, quality is second, and the number one winner is that people patronize businesses in whichthey're confident. The way guerrillas make them confident is by committing to a marketing campaign, socustomers can sense that commitment. And that commitment can be best demonstrated if everyone in theorganization is onboard with the marketing. It means being consistent with marketing messages; whencustomers see that marketers are consistent that's going to confirm that the marketers are sure ofthemselves. That will make customers sure of the marketers. And if marketers are patient, and hang in therewith that commitment and that patience, it will also make customers more confident.

The more times customers see a company's marketing and the more they see it's not really changing much,the more confident they will be in that company. It's all a matter of credibility. If a business doesn't havecredibility it's going to have an uphill battle; if it has credibility, that paves the path to a sale. Guerrillas gaincredibility by being consistent, by marketing in places where their prospects are payingattention-magazines, newspapers, whatever TV shows they watch.

The quality of the materials guerrillas use for marketing also will either build or undermine customers'confidence. That means, if a marketer is going to create a brochure it better be a good- looking brochure. Itbetter not have any typos or misspelled words, it better not be inexpensively produced. The cheapnessshows, and that's going to undermine the marketer's credibility.

So aim for credibility with marketing, and the credibility automatically leads to confidence, and time givescustomers confidence. No matter how good a message is, if people see it just once it's going to be hard forthem to be confident in the offering. But if they see a company's identity conveyed over a period of time, itwill give that business credibility and it will give customers confidence.

The Art of Follow-Up

Creating confidence is a powerful way to build long-term relationships with customers. So is the commitmentdemonstrated by good follow-up.

One of the keys to follow-up is listening. Guerrillas master the art of listening. When they send out customerquestionnaires, instead of just asking yes-or-no questions they also ask, “What are the three things you likebest about our company? What three suggestions would you have for us to improve?”

When marketers involve their customers by asking them questions like that, and listen to their answers andtry to act on that information, those marketers are setting up a long-term relationship. When guerrillas followup with customers, staying in touch with them on a regular basis via a newsletter or direct mail or telephonecalls or personal visits, it's that constancy of contact that builds a long-term relationship.

It's the realization that the same thing that makes marriage work is what makes marketing work, and that'scommitment. It's the single key to successful marketing: commitment and being able to maintain amarketing program. The thing that gets in the way of that is false expectations, because even the bestmarketing doesn't work instantly. Marlboro, which is now known as the best-marketed brand in history, wasthe 31st-largest-selling cigarette brand at the beginning of 1961. One year and $18 million later it was stillthe 31st-largest-selling cigarette brand. Switch to 2001 and Marlboro is the number-one-selling cigarettebrand in the world and it hasn't changed anything in its marketing. It's still cowboys, it's still Marlborocountry, it's still “Come to where the flavor is.” The hero of that campaign is not any of the people whocreated it but the president of Philip Morris, who understood the value of commitment.

I'll use a new word: cathexis, the degree of emotional involvement a person feels with a brand. Cigaretteshave a very high cathexis brand. Many people define themselves by the kind of cigarette they smoke, ittakes a long time to get them to switch brands. But shampoo, for example, is a very low cathexis brand. Themajority of women in America will switch shampoo several times during the course of the year, because theydon't feel any emotional involvement with their shampoo. They're looking for new things all the time. If a newshampoo comes out and makes a new claim, many people-men and women alike-will be willing to try it.How long it takes for marketing to work depends on the cathexis of the current customers. If they'reemotionally attached, it's going to be a while to get them to switch. People who drive Chevrolets driveChevrolets all their lives, because a car is something that people have an emotional attachment to. If not,everybody would drive Yugos.

So guerrillas need commitment, not only to their marketing plans but also to all of their existing customers.Customers will sense that commitment, they'll sense the fact that the marketers are staying in touch withthem. The marketers are not ignoring them, they're providing those customers with good, valuableinformation.

If guerrilla marketers do that, then customers are going to find out that the marketers have begun a long-termrelationship. And the more marketers stay in touch with customers, the more that relationship will last.

Building a Brand that Sticks

The longer the relationship lasts, the more solid the brand identity becomes in the customers' minds. Thekey word to remember is cohesion, which means that once marketers decide what their brands should be,whether it's conveyed by a visual format or a logo or a theme line, that has to be present in all of the firm'smarketing materials. In many companies one person creates direct mail letters and another person writesthe brochures and somebody else does the Web site. There should be cohesion, everybody should bepulling in the same direction using that same visual format and company identity, the same theme line, thesame logo. If all of a company's marketing materials carry the same basic message, that will startestablishing a brand over time. The more cohesive the marketing is, the more firmly entrenched the brandbecomes.

People don't do this. Instead they delegate different functions to different people. That's why I say ifeverybody reads a company's marketing plan they're all going to be pulling in the same direction rather thanin different directions. In branding the key is not only cohesion but also repetition of a company's name andwhat its primary benefits are-in all media, regardless of how the firm is attempting to do its marketing.Whether it's online or offline, as long as there's the repetition and cohesion, a brand will begin to becomeestablished.

Beware Bad Marketing

Buy-in. Cohesion. Commitment. These are all vital, but will mean little without a solid marketing message.The best piece of advice I ever received during my career was to forget the advertising and the marketing andto make the product or the service interesting. By doing that I've saved a lot of money for my clients andfound the correct solutions to their problems. Most marketers seem to focus on making the marketing or theadvertising interesting, and that's not what it's about. It's about making the product or service interesting.When I was given that advice in 1963, by my boss, Leo Burnett-who was my idol-it made me realize thecorrect way to go about any marketing assignment.

This relates directly to the role creativity plays in marketing. Creativity is a misunderstood word. Somemarketers think creativity means getting awards and getting pats on the back and having people tell themhow clever their commercials are. But creativity in the arts is one thing and creativity in the markets issomething totally different. Creativity in the arts is supposed to give self-expression to the artist andfulfillment to the viewers. That's fine for the fine arts, but when it comes to creativity in marketing the onlycreativity is that which turns a profit for a company.

During the 1999 Super Bowl there were a couple of great commercials, one by Monster.com and one byHotJobs.com. The commercials were clever and they generated tremendous response the next day for thosecompanies. As a result, in the 2000 Super Bowl a host of other dot-com companies jumped on thatbandwagon and tried to make clever commercials. Their commercials were so clever that viewers didn't knowwhat companies were running them. The advertising was too wrapped up in its own cleverness to let viewersknow what company it was and why they should be purchasing from that firm.

My wife and I play a game while we're watching television to figure out who the heck a commercial is for. Wejust can't figure it out. Sometimes you find out in the last three seconds, but frequently you never find out. Ifyou do hear their name, you don't know what they make. Dot-com companies are playing follow the leaderright over the cliff, because they're thinking that marketing should be clever. They don't realize that it shouldbe motivating and it should create desire within the minds of the prospects.

Innovation is also something that guerrillas are wary of, because a lot of innovation isn't ready for prime timeyet and a lot of customers aren't ready for new innovations yet. The idea is to not be old-fashioned but to becareful against being avant-garde. What guerrillas want to be is in the same place their customers are, usingtechnology that matches theirs, using creativity that they understand and that will help the guerrilla'scompany generate a profit.

The Six Worst Marketing Mistakes

There are six major mistakes that companies are making in their marketing:

Marketing to the Wrong Target

Businesses market more to non-customers than they do to customers. They ignore their customers andkeep marketing to prospects, while in reality they should be marketing more to their customers. Since itcosts one sixth as much to sell something to an existing customer than it does to sell that same thing to anew person, it makes sense to market more to current customers, and to get follow-up sales and referralbusiness.

Using Too Much Vampire Marketing

Vampire marketing is marketing that uses humor or special effects or cleverness that gets in the way of themessage. Companies are using too much of it. People tend to remember the most clever part of a marketingmessage; businesses prefer people to remember their offer, to remember why they should be buying what itis that the firm is selling. Vampire marketing sucks attention away from the main offer. People will rememberit was a joke, but they don't remember the offer.

These days special effects are so easy to do with television that many marketers get carried away and try tobecome Steven Spielberg. In reality they're not Steven Spielberg, they're marketers. Instead of using specialeffects, guerrillas use the brute force of a really good idea to put across their message.

Overemphasizing the Internet

Some marketers think that having a Web site will do the job for them. The reality is that Internet and onlinemarketing helps with the job, but it does not do the job.

Failure to Experiment and Test

Another big mistake is failure to experiment and test. Marketers may not get it right the first time. They maywant to spend $1,000 in print advertising, but they might have to spend that $1,000 dollars in different placesfirst, to find out what tool or medium they should use. Guerrillas must experiment and they must test theirmarketing ideas, so they know what to commit to. Once they get that campaign, it's going to be tested tokeep making changes. Guerrillas try to stick with one campaign and modify it as necessary. This saves theircompanies money and it gives the campaign a chance to take root and flourish.

Not Committing to a Campaign

Far and away, the biggest mistake that marketers make is failure to stick with one campaign. They expectinstant results from their marketing, and if they don't get it-even though they might have a wonderful plan, awonderful program, a marvelous theme line, and great offers-people might not respond immediately. As aresult the marketers assume they are doing everything wrong and start from scratch.

Expecting Immediate Results

The graveyards of marketing are littered with wonderful campaigns that were abandoned too soon. That is agreat cost of money to the companies that abandoned them. One of the reasons people think marketingdoesn't work is because they don't give it a chance to take hold. They have unrealistic expectations andexpect marketing to work instantly. If it doesn't, they figure they're doing everything wrong, so they abandonit. Marketing doesn't usually work right off the bat. In real life marketing takes a while to work.

Chapter 5: Media Matters An integral part of any successful guerrilla marketing campaign is choosing the right media in which todeliver the message. Surprising to some marketers, deciding which media are appropriate is not really abouta company's competitive advantage or its products' benefits as much as what that firm's message is. Eachof the media have a specific power, and a guerrilla's job is to tap in to the power of that specific media.

Here is a list of major media (in alphabetical order) and the strengths and drawbacks of each:

Billboards

The only purpose of a billboard is to remind people where they've seen a company before and to remind themof what else that firm is saying and doing. Businesses can't do too much of a selling job on billboards. Manytraditional marketers expect too much of billboards and try to put too much information on them. It's hard tomake a sale just with billboards. They can't do the whole selling job, but they can remind people of wherethey've heard of a company before and how they can benefit from doing business with that firm.

Brochures

The strength of brochures is their ability to give details. But marketers need to be careful of what details theyinclude. Too often companies make a fair investment producing good brochures, only to find that they'reoutdated in a short time. Don't dare say anything like, “Our company is four years old,” because next yearwhen the firm is five years old it will need a new brochure. Instead, say, “Our company was founded in 1996,”because that's always going to be true. Don't show any pictures of employees in a brochure, because nextweek one of them could be picked up for being a serial killer. Brochures must be created to be as timelessas possible, so it's not necessary to keep producing new ones.

Classifieds

Nobody reads the classified ads unless they're looking for a specific thing, so information is the power there.Detailed information is what people are looking for in a classified ad. The cost of classified ads is low, but sois the readership. Still, only real life prospects read the classified sections, so companies don't have tospend a fortune gaining attention.

Direct Mail

The power of direct mail is urgency. Direct mail works much better if a business has an offer that expireswithin a short time. Adding the element of urgency to direct mail will garner a much better response.

The disadvantage of direct mail is that it didn't earn the title “junk mail” by accident. Much of it is junky.Consequently, it is hard to get customers to open direct mail envelopes. So one of the most important thingsin direct mail is the envelope. Marketers must get past that first barrier. That's why postcard mailings are sogood, because there's no envelope.

Fliers

The power of fliers is economy. They can be created, produced, and distributed for hardly any money, andthey frequently can deliver instant results. The only disadvantage with fliers is that if they're poorly producedthey will undermine the company's credibility.

Internet

The greatest power of the Internet-and this is something that makes the Internet different from all the othermedia-is interactivity. One disadvantage of the Internet is that many marketers fail to capitalize on thisinteractivity, because they treat their Web sites like a television commercial. But that's not what it's like.Interactivity is what the Internet is about: Get people's attention and then inform them and try to involve themand answer their questions. Let them register to get a free newsletter and take advantage of the interactivityof the Internet.

Most people use the Internet because of speed and convenience. Too many marketers take too long beforeresponding to emails or fail to update their sites on a regular basis; they get in the way of the speed, whichis what attracted people to the Web site in the first place.

Magazines

The greatest power of magazines is credibility. Readers will attach to the advertiser the same credibility thatthey associate with the magazine. For businesses that need credibility, magazine ads are one of the bestways to get it. But because of the high cost of consumer magazines, I suggest running one full- page ad in aregional edition of a national magazine, then using the reprints forever. When people see “As advertised in Time magazine,” they tend to think lofty thoughts about that advertiser. And never forget that you're knownby the company you keep. That means, if a small business advertises in Time it will be keeping companywith IBM, AT&T, Microsoft, and the other huge names that run regular ads in that magazine. Guerrillas alsocan run ads regularly in business or trade magazines, but consumer magazines are just too pricey forsmaller companies.

Newspapers

The power of the newspaper is the news. Marketers who decided that the best marketing medium for theircompany is the newspaper need to create marketing that's newsy, because that's what people readnewspapers for.

Although it's possible to generate a great deal of business by running one large newspaper ad for, say, asale, one big ad is really not enough. It will help promote that sale, but generally guerrillas don't always wantto have sales. That attracts the worst kind of customers, ones who are attracted to price only, and thatmeans a diminishment of profits. So if a company is in a newspaper, it should be running on a regular basis.The ads don't necessarily have to be big, but they should run on a regular basis.

There is a great deal of competition in the newspaper business, there are many other companies that areadvertising; the competition isn't just a firm's direct competitors but everybody who advertises.

Radio

Radio's greatest power is intimacy. Radio is usually a one-onone situation; frequently it's just a person intheir car driving and listening to the radio. So when a company is talking to them it's one on one. Don't yell atthem, just whisper in their ear, because they're paying attention.

Remember, though, that the key to success with radio is the frequency of the advertising. If a companydoesn't run its ads frequently enough, the advertising won't work.

Signs

The power of signs is that they generate impulse reactions. When customers see a company's sign theyshould remember all of its other marketing materials. Seventy-four percent of all purchase decisions aremade right at the place of purchase, because signs generated the impulse to purchase.

One of the disadvantages of signs is that they stand alone and often don't connect with a firm's othermarketing. Unless the signs connect with the company's other marketing, they probably won't work verywell.

Telemarketing

The power of telemarketing is the rapport. Only in telemarketing can a business establish a two-way rapportimmediately, via the telephone. It's impossible to do that with most other media.

Unfortunately, telemarketing has a bad reputation. This is mostly because there's so much of it going onthese days and telemarketers seem to call at times that are convenient for them but inconvenient forprospects and customers. For example, telemarketers have learned that the best time to call is arounddinnertime, and that upsets a whole lot of people.

Television

Television's greatest power-and everybody who does television knows this, but amazingly a lot of othermarketers don't seem to know this-is the ability to demonstrate. Businesses can't demonstrate a product aswell in any other media as they can on television.

But with television the ads have to be on a lot, because not a lot is not enough. A company can run onenewspaper ad for a sale it's having and might get a great deal of business because of that one ad. But if thatfirm runs one television commercial, almost no matter what it does, it's not going to work. Businesses thatadvertise on TV need to have a schedule in which the ads are running several times a day, several days aweek, several weeks a month on a regular basis. Like radio, with television it's necessary to have thatfrequency, and unless companies have the money to afford to be on enough times, TV advertising won't workfor them.

Another disadvantage with television is that special effects are so easy and inexpensive that some marketersget carried away with them. Most people mute the television set when the commercial comes on, whichmeans it's necessary to tell the story visually. If the ad is not telling the story visually, it's not telling thestory. A good way to prove that a commercial is good is to see it with the sound off before it runs. If it tellsthe story with the sound off, it means the marketers who created it are doing a good job.

Trade Shows

Trade shows are attended by people in a buying mood. A guerrilla's job at a trade show is to make sales andtake names. In the week following the show guerrillas must contact all the prospects who visited theirbooths, because people forget lightning-fast.

It's tough to man a trade show booth, because of the intensity and attention required. But it is worth theeffort. I have some clients who get 90 percent of their business at trade shows. And trade shows are growingin both effectiveness and popularity.

Yellow Pages

Detailed information is what people are looking for in the yellow pages. They don't just want a company'sphone number, they want to know its competitive advantages. It's also important to include those advantagesin yellow pages advertising, because business are going to be on the same pages as their competitors.Customers probably will be reading the ads of all of the businesses listed, so that's where a company'scompetitive advantages come into the greatest play.

The fact that all of a firm's competitors are listed alongside it is one of the disadvantages of the yellow pages.One of the silliest things that happens in marketing is that companies get yellow pages ads and then theyrun radio and television ads and end them by saying, “You'll find our location conveniently listed in youryellow pages.” If they do that, they're directing customers to all of their competitors. Guerrillas put theirlocation in their ads and in their marketing materials and never direct people to the yellow pages. Let themfind the firm in the yellow pages on their own, because they're going to be seeing all of its competitors at thesame time.

Media Measures

Concerning all the media, it's important to remember that people really aren't paying attention to marketingmost of the time. When they are paying attention, they're only paying attention with a portion of their mind.This is why it's necessary to talk to them about themselves and not about the product; they're always readyto listen to information about themselves or about how they're lives can be made better. That's why repetitionis so crucial, because they have to hear a message more than once. It usually takes nine times or more ofcustomers hearing messages (remember that it takes three messages for every one that actually sinks in)before they're ready to do business with a company.

So the idea is for guerrilla marketers to capitalize on each of those media they have selected. It's not amatter of competitive advantages, it's a matter of what customers read and what they listen to, what theypay attention to-and knowing that information, using it to capitalize on the power of the media the marketerselects.

It's also a matter of selecting the right mix of media. In other words, deciding which media will work best inconjunction with each other. The best way to do that is by testing, because few marketers have a good gutinstinct as to which media is going to work best for them. I know a lot of people who thought TV would workbest for them, but when they tried radio they found that radio outperformed television. So the idea here is notto rely on gut instincts but to test. The best way to know what to test is by using the customerquestionnaires I discussed in Chapter 2. These allow marketers to find out which media are reachingcustomers and then test the media that are already reaching them. That's where guerrillas find more peoplejust like those existing customers.

When it comes to selecting the right number of media to use together, more is better-but only if they'reproven in action for the marketer's company. A business might advertise in newspapers and magazines, onradio and television, and do direct mailing and online marketing at the same time. If the company does that,each of those media will help the others. Businesses that don't have the money to use all those mediashould just use the ones that they can afford to use properly. It doesn't make sense for a company to be onradio, television, magazines, and newspapers if it can only afford a light schedule of any one of those.

The idea is for companies to be noticed in the media they use. Once they get noticed in one of them theirchoice will be, “Do we want to use more of this particular medium, because it's working so well, or should wetry taking this message and putting it on television or putting it in newspapers?” The guiding force for acompany is to pick the medium that works best for that firm in particular, and once the medium is workingright, try to add new ones. The term for that is 360-degree marketing. It means it's hard to reach peopletoday using just one medium; guerrilla marketers have to come at them from all sides.

The best way to decide if a medium is working right is to test. It is a simple arithmetic process: What does itcost to run that ad and what kind of payoff did the firm get from the ad? If a marketer wants to test threenewspapers, she runs ads in three newspapers and makes a slightly different special offer in each ad. Then,by virtue of the people who talk to the company about those specific offers, it's easy to discover which ofthose three media is working the best.

Guerrilla marketers have to constantly try to improve the return they're getting on that marketing investment.The best way to do that is to constantly test one medium versus another. Once marketers pick the medium,they need to start testing the right size ad or the right length commercial. And keep testing to improve that.There's no such thing as getting the perfect message on the perfect medium, because it's necessary toconstantly try to improve whatever message and whatever medium the company is using.

If, during testing, marketers discover that a medium is not working, it may be necessary to drop that mediumfrom the marketing plan. The question is, how long does a company stay with a medium if it's not working? Itdepends on the medium, but for mass media-radio, television, magazines, newspapers- expect to advertisefor at least three months before seeing any deliverance that it's working. Now it's different when marketingonline or using direct mail; marketers can know instantly how well those media are working.

It's a major luxury to be able to see results instantly, but I tell my clients that if they do everything rightthey're not going to see that their marketing is working for the first three months. After three months, theybegin to get glimmers that it's working, and after six months they'll know for sure whether a medium is

paying for itself. It is a matter of waiting that much time. Of course, for a big company like McDonald's thatcan put a few million dollars a month into its marketing, the results come across that much faster. But formost businesses it is a matter of at least three months.

The Price is Right

It is a waste of money to invest in a medium if the firm doesn't have the budget to support the frequencynecessary to attain results. But if price isn't an issue, far and away in 2001-I might change my tone on thisin 2005-television is still the undisputed heavyweight champion of marketing. More people watch televisionthan pay attention to any other medium. Although television commercials are costly, the price is coming waydown due to cable television. So TV is the most powerful of all the media, but coming up fast on the outsideis the Internet.

Americans are learning to buy things in a new way. They're learning to buy things online. As long asmarketers realize that the Internet is just another marketing medium-it's not the entire world-and takeadvantage of the interactivity it offers, it's the next best marketing medium.

After that it depends on the business. The smart thing for a new business, for instance, is to run a full-pagead in a regional edition of a well-known national magazine. Let's use Time magazine as an example. It mightcost $80,000 for a full-page ad in a national edition, but a small guerrilla won't have that kind of money. Sothe company might run a one-time, full-page ad in a regional edition in one city, say the San Franciscoedition of Time, at a cost of $2,200. People who subscribe to magazines don't know that they print regionaleditions. They just see that the firm has a full-page ad in Time, as does IBM and Rolls Royce. Businessesare known by the company they keep; Rolls Royce and IBM will continue to run ads every week or everymonth in Time. The guerrilla's job is to run that ad once and to take advantage of the reprints that are madeavailable by the publications. Reprints cost just a penny each or less. Start using that full-page ad that ranonly once and put it up on the company's Web site, make it part of future brochures, future mailings: “Asseen in Time magazine.” That will give the firm a whole lot of credibility, and new companies need credibilitylike crazy. For them magazines may be the best medium.

If, however, a guerrilla marketer is strapped for cash, he may want to try another approach. My single favoriteis to do what we call the two step. For the two step, a company needs a brochure. Then it runs a lot of tinyads in publications read by its target audience. In the ads say one good thing about the company and thensay, “Call or write for our free brochure.” Most people will not call or write for the free brochure, but those whodo are really raising their hands and pointing at themselves and saying, “I am a torrid prospect.” Statisticsshow that 25 percent to 33 percent of people who request a brochure will become customers. If they send forthe free brochure, the marketer's job is to send them a personal letter thanking them for requesting thebrochure, because people are besieged by 2,700 marketing messages every day. For them to single onecompany out, to contact it for its free brochure, that's a big act of intent on their part, so guerrillas send thema letter thanking them for requesting the brochure, send them the brochure, and within a week get back tothem again to take them to the next level, whether it's a personal visit or a consultation. That's a veryinexpensive way to market, because when a person says, “Please send me your free brochure,” they'rereally saying, “Please send me all the details of why I should buy from you.” That's why the two step is aninexpensive way to get a lot of information to a company's best prospects. And it's one of my favorite ways ofmarketing, because it has consent marketing built right into it.

Allocating the Budget

Whatever a company's budget may be, it's important to allocate that budget correctly. The best way toapproach this is one medium at a time. First, test a medium to find out if it's working. Then ask, “Do we dropthis, do we continue doing it the same way, or do we add more of it?” If a business is using two radiostations and is beginning to get good business, the first thing to think of is not going on television ornewspapers, but going on four radio stations, because radio has proven that it is working for that firm. If thecompany goes at it one at a time, it will begin to learn which of the media are pulling best.

The truth is that it's hard to know how to allocate the marketing budget the first year, because what guerrillasreally should do is make a marketing calendar on which they project ahead month by month where thecompany will be marketing. At the end of the year it's then necessary to compare the firm's cash flow and itsfinancial records with the marketing calendar. Marketers can then see what they were doing in a particularmonth that was working and what they were doing in another month that wasn't working. So the next yearthe marketing calendar is loaded with things that were working and it gets rid of all those things that didn'twork.

At that point guerrillas will begin to have a feeling of how to allocate their marketing money. There's no lawthat says a marketer must allocate it to several media. Some marketers spend 90 percent of their budgetsjust on trade shows or 90 percent just on television. It's really a matter of getting your feet wet and seeingwhich media work best for the company and one by one adding to them and eliminating the ones that don'twork as well.

Chapter 6: Technology and the Guerrilla Marketer

Overview

In Chapter 1 I explained that one of the characteristics of guerrillas marketers is that they are technocozy. Ifthey are technophobic they make an appointment with their technoshrink, because technophobia is fatalthese days.

The major revolution in technology over the past decade, which overpowers all the others, is the simplicity oftechnology. People talk about technology as having improved because the cost has gone down, the powershave gone up, and that it has the ability to perform more functions. But the biggest breakthrough is that aperson doesn't have to be an engineer or a computer nerd in order to operate technology. Technology wascomplicated and now it isn't. User manuals are now written in clear English, but a lot of technology is soeasy to use that it's not even necessary to read the user manual. The reality is that there is no longer a needto be technophobic.

Guerrilla marketers embrace technology. This means more than using the Internet as a marketing tool.Guerrillas are as virtual as they can be, and virtual means connected. That means having a pager, a cellphone, a laptop, email, fax, and anything else that makes it easy for customers to get in touch with them.

The fact is, keeping in touch with customers and staff is important. Guerrillas have to keep lines ofcommunication open to their customers, so those customers can talk to them whenever it is convenient forthe clients-to either complain, or ask for a favor, or comment, or ask for service. When customers know theyare connected to a company at all times, they are going to feel a lot better about the relationship that theyhave with that business.

In fact, technology has given small businesses an unfair advantage, because it allows them to act inmarketing service like the big spenders, without the need to spend big. Technology has not only leveled theplaying field, but tilted it in favor of guerrillas. Guerrillas can use their computers and desktop publishing toproduce lots of material that used to be expensive, like audio visual aides, booklets, brochures, businessforms, catalogues, club ID cards (if they have a frequent buyers club), coupons, fliers, flip charts, invitations,multimedia presentations, newsletters, personalized greeting cards, point of purchase materials, postcards,proposals, questionnaires, stationery, and trade show materials. Technology is way beyond the Internet andit gives small business a major league advantage.

Using the Internet

But today technology also means the Internet. The Net is one of the many recent technologicalbreakthroughs that guerrilla marketers can use. And like other technologies, it has leveled the playing fieldfor small businesses. It has put the guerrillas on equal footing with the huge companies. The Internet allowsfirms to compete in areas where it's not really the size of their Web sites that matters. It's their ability toinvolve people in their businesses, to initiate a dialogue with those people, and to use email.

The Net allows businesses to have a global reach, if that's important to them. It lets companies put in oneplace all the information that people need to know about them and how they would benefit by doing businesswith those firms. The cost of this would be more than prohibitive if a company tried to put all of thatinformation into the context of a newspaper or magazine ad. It would cost too much money for the space, orin the context of radio and television, it would cost too much for the time. But businesses can put all thatinformation on their Web sites and it isn't going to cost much at all. That's a major breakthrough, because itenables marketers to list all the ways that customers will benefit from doing business with the companyrather than picking only the one that will fit into an ad.

The Internet also improves companies' overall marketing ability, because of the give and take the Internetallows. It is possible to interact with people in ways that are just not possible using standard media. Thename of the game in marketing is to establish relationships, and the Internet is the best tool ever to establishreal relationships with people all over the world. The Internet allows organizations to host conferences at nocost to attendees, to have online chats with customers, to contribute information to user groups.

The Internet has given guerrillas and small businesses a lot more power, because it's not how much moneycompanies spend online, it's how well they use their sites and how much attention they pay to theircustomers. This is why guerrillas must understand marketing in order to market online successfully. Thereare a hundred different weapons for marketing, online marketing is just one of them.

Marketing Online

Online marketing means a lot more than having a Web site. Online marketing means using email, it meansjoining and participating in forums and user groups and posting things there. It means getting the emailaddresses of other people in those forums in order to contact them, going into chat rooms where people arediscussing a topic of common interest and getting their email addresses as well. Those are all free ways tomarket.

Company executives can host online conferences-many Internet service providers present conferences forwhich they need industry experts as panelists or hosts. Although only a couple of hundred people or fewerwill come to that online conference, thousands will download transcripts of it. Again, that's free.

Another way of using online marketing is to write articles for other people's Web sites. Most Web sites arestarved for good content. Marketers who offer to post articles for them and to write articles for their readersthat includes information about that guerrilla's company and services will find a lot of free marketing there.

Using the Internet, guerrilla marketers can do a great deal of research on their competitors, industry, andcustomers. They can take advantage of the free classified ads sections that are all over the Internet. Manynow allow graphics to be shown for free.

All those ways of marketing-chats, email, forums, hosting conferences, posting articles, doing research,using classified ads, and being active on the search engines-cost nothing and none of these things involvehaving a Web site. People think in terms of Web sites costing a lot of money. I say that it's not going to costa lot, and it is not the only way to market online, there are many other ways.

Even so, having a Web site is a key way to market online and interact with customers-as long as guerrillasremember that having a Web site helps with the job of marketing a company, but it doesn't do the job. A lotof marketers think that having a Web site will take care of their hard work, but the reality is that they stillhave to do all the hard work, with a little help from the Web. One of the biggest mistakes someone can makeis thinking that they don't need to know anything about marketing, they just need to have a great Web siteand then everything will take care of itself.

What do People Want Online?

What do people want online? This is a question guerrillas often ask themselves. But the experts don't seemto agree on what people want. It's not what marketers think it is. It's not advertising's new frontier. For mostpeople, whether they are using the Internet for business or pleasure, what they want when they go online isto accomplish something. So understanding a consumer's motives once he or she logs on is a necessity.

Even so, some marketers see the Web as a vast, new field for advertising messages, assuming that whilepeople may be online to do something else, if a company can entice them with flash, it can sort of trick theminto paying attention to its products and services. Guess what. That's not gonna happen.

Other marketers seem to subscribe to the notion that people are looking for entertainment on the Internetand therefore they construct messages aimed at persuading while playing. In other cases the time-honoreddirect-response model wins out: Grab people when you can, get them to take an action, and then market,market, market.

The answer may be that consumers have and want significantly more control than we give them credit for.Today Webmeisters are in control. Sort of. In a perfect cyberworld, people will be in control. Sort of. Tworecent studies shed light upon this dilemma. One was conducted by Zatso; the other was conducted by thePew Research Center. Both studies illuminated the answer to what people want to do online: They want toaccomplish something. They're not aimless surfers hoping to discover a cybertreasure. Instead, the averageNet user turns out to be a goal-oriented person interested in finding information and communicating withothers; interested in doing something he or she set out to do.

The Zatso study, “A View of the 21st Century News Consumer,” looked at people's news reading habits onthe Web. It revealed that reading and getting news is the most popular online activity after email. One out ofevery three respondents reported that they read news online every day, with their interests expandinggeographically-local news was of the most interest; U.S. news the least. The guerrilla thinks, “That meansemail is number one. How might I capitalize on that?”

Personalization is seen as a benefit, too. Seventy-five percent of respondents said that they want news ondemand and nearly two out of three want personalized news. The subjects surveyed like the idea that they,not some media outlet, control the news they see. They feel they're better equipped to select what they wantto see than a professional editor. Control seems to be the issue. So guerrillas use this information bythinking of ways to market by putting the prospect in control.

The Pew Research Center study revealed that regular Net users are more connected with their friends andfamily than those who don't use the Internet on a regular basis. Almost two thirds of the 3,500 respondentssaid they feel that email brings them closer to family and friends-significant when combined with the fact that91 percent of them use email on a regular basis. It took VCRs 25 years to achieve such market penetration.

What do people in this study seem to be doing online when they're not using email? Half go online regularlyto purchase products and services, and nearly 75 percent go online to search for information about theirhobbies or purchases they are planning to make. Sixty-four percent of respondents visit travel sites, and 62percent visit weather-related sites. Over half conduct educational research, and 54 percent hunt for dataabout health and medicine. A surprising 47 percent regularly visit government Web sites, and 38 percentresearched job opportunities. Forty-five percent use instant messaging, and one third play games online.Even with all the hype in the media, only 12 percent trade stocks online.

What does this mean to guerrillas who market online? It means that if they're constructing a site forgoal-oriented consumers, they had better make sure the site can help facilitate their seeking. Rather thanfocus on entertainment, flash, and useless splash screens, the most effective sites are those that helppeople get the information they want when they need it. Straightforward data, information that invitescomparison, and straight talk are going to win the day.

The Rule of Thirds

Once a business does decide to have a Web site, there is one crucial rule it must follow if it's going tomarket online with that site: the rule of thirds. This means that once a company decides to go online anddetermines what its budget is going to be, it should invest that online marketing budget as follows: one thirdin the development of the Web site; another third to promote the site; the final third on maintaining it.

Most businesses spend three thirds developing their Web sites. As a result they don't promote the site, sono one knows its there, because in cyberspace one is invisible. Companies don't maintain their Web sites,because they put so much work in creating it in the first place. They just kick back and put their feet up andthink the world will beat a path to their door or to their Web site.

Web Site Success Strategies

Of course, it is the rare site that has anyone beating a path to it. There is a great deal involved in creatingand maintaining a successful Web site. Every site has to emphasize eight success elements equally. If not,the site is doomed.

These are the eight elements:

Planning

Start by asking, “Why do we want a Web site?”

People think that having one will magically make their business. The reality is that they must have a reasonfor the Web site, whether it be dissemination of information or dialog with customers.

A client of mine who owns a furniture store resisted going online like crazy. He said he didn't want to sellbeds and furniture online, but then he realized that having a Web site is just one more marketing weapon. Sohis plan was to use the site strictly to advertise his physical store. People can go to the site and read thingsthat he couldn't afford to put in the context of a newspaper ad, the ad would be too big, or in the context of a30- second television commercial. Visitors can't buy anything on the site, but his sales have more thandoubled since he has had it- even though no more than 15 or 20 percent of his marketing budget goes intohis site. It has been a marketing weapon that he says is the most valuable one he's ever used, and he'sused them all.

Content

The content on a Web site should reflect the answers to the questions most frequently asked of a companyby its customers and prospects. Think of the questions they ask, then put those answers down on the site.Content has always been known as king of the Web site, it will get a person to a site and bring them backfor more. So the content is crucial.

An integral part of having the right content is personalizing it. To market online it's necessary to tell people atthe very beginning, when they first go to a site, what the site is all about and what they are going to gain byspending their time there.

Most Web sites contain information about the company itself, which is like walking into a room and tellingeveryone to shut up and listen to you talk about yourself. Here's what makes me great, here's what makesme desirable, here's what should make you want to do business with me, here's my history, here are thebenefits and features I offer. No one would walk into a party and do that, or get away with it. But many Websites do that; that's the way they act.

Instead, guerrillas have to approach everything from the standpoint of that visitor to their site. They shouldtalk about that visitor, which is the visitors' favorite topic. Guerrillas have to talk about them right off the bat.That's the way they start realizing that the company has them in mind, not itself.

There are more than 100 million people online; they don't want to feel like they are 100 million people, theyeach want to feel like an individual. When guerrilla marketers get in touch with people, it is important to doas much as they can to personalize their messages to them. This means first approaching the site from thestandpoint of what's on visitors' minds right now and what their goals are. One of the definitions of marketingis the ability to help customers and prospects succeed in whatever their goals are. This is the marketer'sopportunity to show them how to succeed at those goals by using the firm's product or service. So ifmarketers have their customers' goals in mind, they'll be able to orient their Web site to those goals.

Design

The Internet has something called the stay-or-bail moment, which is when a person goes to a Web site andtakes three seconds to decide whether he is going to stay and look it over. If the site is confusing or sparse,he will bail and click to another site. The design of the Web site is what keeps visitors there.

Involvement

Often overlooked, involvement is a key success factor for any site. That refers to the fact that having a Website is not like running a television commercial or having a print ad. It is an involving, interactive opportunityunlike magazines, newspapers, television, and radio. A Web site should involve visitors by asking them toregister to get on a mailing list, or to get a free newsletter, to get tips on the company's areas of expertise oron the customers' related interests, or to register to join a contest or sweepstakes. By involving people witha back-and-forth dialogue, guerrillas are taking advantage of the interactivity of the Internet. Many marketersdon't do that.

Although marketers can create some level of interactivity with ads by saying, “Please send for a freebrochure,” it is a whole lot easier on the Internet by saying, “Click here to receive our newsletter, or to receiveour new specials, new products, or new services that we will be offering.” Well-run Web sites have thatinteractivity built into them, and have a lot of opportunities for people to give their consent to receive acompany's marketing materials. I love it when I get an email from Amazon that says, “The last book youbought was so and so, and we think you'd like these three books that have just come out.” I love Amazon'sway of doing database marketing. It shows that the company knows what I like. As a result, I almost alwaysact on the emails, because they recommend just the kind of books I would be interested in.

It's also important to have that give-and-take opportunity in which the site gives customers the chance tosign up for something to demonstrate their interests. These days there has been a lot of talk of permissionmarketing, which we call consent marketing. Businesses should use their Web sites to gain people'sconsent to receive additional marketing materials. If they sign up for a newsletter or mailing list they aregiving a company their consent to be marketed to. That means that firm can save money by not marketing todisinterested people, and by marketing like crazy to those people who have given their consent.

Production

Once guerrillas select the content and design, they need to decide how they are going to produce the Website. There is a plethora of software available that makes it simple to do so-just click a button and it poststhe site. So production can be relatively easy.

Now, these first five areas, most marketers can handle and do. They can do the planning, content, dynamitedesign, and some of them know how to involve their visitors and produce their Web sites. The next threeareas are why Web sites fail.

Follow-Up

Once a person gets in touch with a company's Web site, its marketers or salespeople have to follow up assoon as possible.

People use the Internet as a device to save time, and if marketers don't follow up with them in a timelyfashion, they're not taking advantage of the time-saving capability of the Internet.

Promotion

Marketers also often fall on their face in the area of promotion. The moment guerrillas think of being online,they have to think about how to constantly promote their firms' site-online and offline. A company's Webaddress has to be on all its signs, stationary, business cards, business forms, and any place else thatpeople are looking to get information about that firm. In addition, the URL should be used in advertising:radio, television, magazine, newspapers. Everywhere a business can possibly put its Web address, itshould. Any place a firm markets its business, it should put its Web address.

During the 1999 Super Bowl there were two dot-com advertisers, HotJobs.com and Monster.com. They bothhad a tremendous upswing in response and visitors to their Web sites the day after the Super Bowl. Duringthe Super Bowl in 2000 there were many dot-com advertisers, but most of them missed the point like crazy.That's because they were technology kinds of people, Internet kinds of people, and they were clueless whenit came to television advertising. Their advertising was way too cute and obtuse for people to understand, anddidn't make it easy for viewers to find their way to those companies' Web sites. As a result a lot of themfailed, and because Super Bowl commercials are so expensive, some of them actually failed to the point ofgoing out business.

The fact is, advertising has a new power. The power of advertising used to be to try to get people to buy aproduct or to create a desire for a product. Now all that advertising really has to do is to get people to go tothe advertiser's Web site. That is much easier to ask them to do than to ask them to write a check or takeout their Visa card. So promoting a Web site is crucial, and advertising is one of the ways to do it.

Many people are living in two worlds: the online world and the offline world. Most people live offline. Eventhose who are heavy-duty computer users live in the offline world more than the online world. So, the way tolet them know about a Web site is primarily offline. It's possible that they may be online and see a link to acompany's Web site. Or a business might invest in banners, which are more and more proving to beineffective, to get people to its site. But people are living offline, they read the newspaper probably every day,they probably watch TV, they listen to the radio while they are commuting. That's where to reach people andlet them know about a Web site.

There's another great way to promote a site offline. One that's strength is its simplicity: Businesses cansend postcards to customers and prospects, just letting them know that they now have a Web site that isoriented to their success and is going to significantly help them. They will pay attention, because it is apostcard rather than a line in an ad. Don't put more than a simple announcement on the postcard; those whoare interested will visit the site and those who don't, well, they're probably not the right target.

There are however, a few solid strategies for promoting a site online. One of online marketing's greateststrengths is that it's good for giving people information to help them succeed at their goals. If a business hasinformation on its Web site and every time people visit it, let's say once a week, they learn something newthat will help them succeed at their goals, that firm is using its Web site properly. The company not onlygets those visitors as regular customers and gets them to subscribe to its newsletter and be on its mailinglist, it gets satisfied customers who will start mentioning the Web site to their friends.

This idea of viral marketing should always be in the back of a guerrilla's mind, meaning always ask whetherthe site is providing information so valuable that people will share it and the URL with their friends. If a firmcan build “email this page/article to a friend” technology into its Web site, it is engaging in viral marketing.The Internet is a wonderfully easy way for people to spread the word about businesses to their friends,because their friends will gain from it. That means if I go to a Web site and read an article on marketingfurniture online, I would definitely send it to my client who's in that business, and say, “Michael, you ought toread this.” When I send it, the article will naturally have the name of the Web site on it, and that's the waythat he might spread the word to some of his friends in the furniture business.

Maintenance

A Web site is like a brand new baby, it requires constant attention, constant changing, constant nurturing,and has to be kept fresh all the time. If the people visit a Web site and love it, and come back to it a fewweeks later and it is exactly the same as the last time they saw it, they may never return again. So,guerrillas must maintain their sites and keep them feeling fresh and new on a regular basis.

If guerrilla marketers emphasize these eight elements they will succeed online.

Chapter 7: Dollars and Sense

Overview

In the end, what marketing comes down to is return on investment (ROI). Marketing is supposed to be aninvestment and businesses should get a good return on it if they do it right.

There are so many important components to marketing, but the single most important one is to start with amarketing plan and then commit to that plan. Guerrillas who do that are going to be making the most of theirmarketing investment. Also, they aren't going to have to spend money producing new marketing material ona regular basis, because they have a plan that they're committed to.

The other crucial thing is to make sure that marketing messages are directed to increasing the company'sprofits. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, these days the advertising world is populated by younger people whoseem to be self-conscious about advertising. They are embarrassed that they are running an ad. As a result,a lot of commercials are gorgeous films with wonderful music and special effects and acting and celebritypresenters, but they are not oriented towards increasing profits. That's because the people creating themarketing messages don't have profit in the back of their minds, what they have in mind is winning an award.So they win the award but the company goes out of business.

Again, this is why it is crucial that marketing messages do not have vampire marketing in them. There is agreat deal of vampire marketing out there right now, using special effects or cleverness that suck attentionaway from the basic premise and the basic offer, because the people who created the marketing weren'tclear in the beginning about what they wanted that commercial to do. They think that just getting visibility forthe company's name is enough. But even that can be difficult, especially when viewers have to wait until theend of a commercial to figure out what company the ad is for.

Tracking and Measuring

Those two things-committing to a plan, and making sure the message is oriented towards profit-are two ofthe most important ways to create ROI. Another is monitoring and tracking marketing expenditures. It's oneof the most crucial jobs guerrillas have. According to Andrew Carnegie, marketers will probably waste 50percent of their marketing investment; it is vital to know which 50 percent. That is the whole idea of guerrillamarketing: to be aware of all the marketing weapons the company can use, use a lot of them, keep track ofthe ones that are hitting the bull's eye, discover which ones are missing the mark entirely, and eliminate themarketing elements that don't work.

The name of the game for guerrillas is not to use as many marketing weapons as possible but to use onlythose that have been proven in action for their companies. Keeping track, measuring responses, and findingout from everybody who buys from the firm where they heard of it is crucial.

Tracking is one of the most important jobs a guerrilla can do. Most marketers don't do it because it's hard.To force salespeople and customer service reps to assist with this tracking, guerrillas have to make it part oftheir company policy that when someone writes an order they include not only the customer's name, thedate, and the product number but also include where they heard of the firm. Most people will say that a friendtold them about it, even though they've seen nine of the company's ads, visited its Web site three times, andseen four commercials, because they don't like admitting that they are being influenced by marketing. So if aperson says, “A friend told me,” it's then necessary to ask them if they watch television and if they saw thefirm's commercial on this show or that. It's also important to ask whether they read magazines and if theysaw the company's ad in a particular magazine. It's necessary to take people beyond the “a friend told meabout it” answer, because that's not usually the truth.

All of this is important because tracking is one definitive way to ensure that a company's marketinginvestment pays for itself. That means if a firm invests $1,000 in newspaper advertising and after checkingresponses its marketers discover that it has garnered $4,000 worth of profit-not sales-as a result of that ad,that's one way of proving the ad was successful.

It also means that because guerrillas do a lot of follow-up marketing, often one of their goals is to get a newcustomer and maybe just break even on that first sale. Knowing that it costs one sixth as much to make asale to an existing customer than to a new one, guerrillas recognize that they will make the money on thefollow-up. For example, say the first time a company invests in print advertising it invests $1,000 but onlygarners a $500 profit. Some marketers might think that is a failure. But if the firm got 100 new customersand those customers will be lifetime customers, it may mean that the ad was a success. So, guerrillas haveto track in order to go beyond profits and look into how many new relationships the marketing helpedestablish. Without tracking how new customers come to a company, it's impossible for guerrillas to properlytrack and monitor the success, or not, of their marketing.

Marketing by the Pound

One key to achieving a solid return on investment is to understand marketing in terms of dollar amount.Realizing that marketing varies based on company and industry type, let's look at how companies might useguerrilla marketing if they have a marketing budget of $1 million, of $100,000, or of $10,000, or if they had nobudget at all.

The first step, crucial to beginning any type of marketing campaign with any size budget is to send outcustomer questionnaires and learn about customers-what newspapers they read, what trade shows they goto, what TV shows they watch, what radio stations they listen to, and what Web sites they visit. Guerrillaswho find out about those current customers and what media is capturing their attention will know how to plantheir media expenditures.

Businesses that have $1 million are able to dominate a few media. They can't dominate national television,because $1 million will barely pay for a commercial on some shows. But if they want to use local televisionto target their local market, they can dominate television, radio, and newspapers at the same time. They canalso use direct mail and be online.

I keep using the word dominate, because companies that have $100,000 wouldn't have enough money todominate as many media. So they might only want to dominate radio and local newspapers. Businessescan spend $100,000 being a dominant force on local area radio. The way to do this is not to run on a lot ofstations but to dominate one station, and once a firm achieves that, dominate another station. Then do thesame with newspapers. If a company is a dominant force, consumers are going to equate that dominanceand those omnipresent marketing messages with success. They know that unsuccessful companies don'tmarket.

Organizations that have $10,000 have to steer clear of radio, television, magazines, and newspapers,because they probably can't dominate them. In that case, the firms should look into direct marketing,running small ads in local newspapers and in specialized magazines. In the ads, offer a free brochure andalways mention the company's Web site. These businesses can't really attempt to go to the big media,because $10,000 will barely make them noticeable. Companies don't want to ever be in a situation like that.Guerrillas want all of their marketing investments to pay off. That's why media like direct marketing and theInternet will work better for firms with a $10,000 budget.

Marketing for Free

Even if a company has no budget, there are a myriad of marketing tools available. For example, I mentionedin Chapter 5 that there are many ways to market online without having a Web site: participation in forums,chat groups, and writing articles for other organizations' sites. Another way for guerrillas to market with nobudget whatsoever is to get involved in their communities, where they can do a great deal of networking andmeet a lot of prospects. It won't cost anything but time, energy, and imagination. This means offering freeconsultations, free seminars, or free demonstrations, or even giving away free samples.

Guerrillas whose firms have no marketing budget also can market without any expense by writing a columnfor a local publication for free, with the agreement that the article will include the company's name, Webaddress, mailing address, and phone number. Many newspapers will be happy to publish a column as longas it provides information that is of value to their readers and isn't a sales pitch for the author's company.Marketers who don't have the time to write a weekly column can offer to write an article with the same kind ofagreement.

I have a client who was running an ad campaign in a newspaper who asked to write a column for that paper.He said he would do it for free, and they said sure. He called me a few months later and said he was gettingso much business from his column that he wanted to know if he should discontinue the advertisements. Itold him that's dirty pool; they did you a favor by letting you have a column, and now if you cut back yourmarketing budget, you are sort of turning your back on the people who got you there in the first place. Youmight cut down on your marketing budget, but don't cut it out entirely.

For marketers who enjoy public speaking, a relatively undiscovered tactic is to offer to appear as the keynotespeaker for one of the many clubs in their community. Those clubs would love to have a speaker come inand speak for a half hour on their area of expertise. But they have to know that the marketers are speakingto their club and not selling their businesses. Guerrillas should give attendees' information relevant to theirinterests during the speech, then pass out brochures afterward. Guerrillas can get a great deal of businessfrom these people. They know the marketers are giving their time for nothing for their club, and they are goingto reward them by becoming customers. And again, it is not going to cost anything but time, energy, andimagination.

Similarly, guerrillas can offer themselves as guests on talk shows. Be careful not to sound like a companyad, because viewers don't want an infomercial, they want a person who is a fascinating conversationalist.Becoming a television talk show guest or radio talk show guest costs nothing, and it's a good way to market.

In fact, the news and media need you more than you need them, so publicity is a great tool. Publicity is notthat hard to get. If guerrillas have real news for, say, a magazine or newspaper, the publication will publishthe articles. The key to it is to have news, and of course to have as many publicity contacts-on a first-namebasis-as possible. Once marketers get publicity they can't just sit back. Then the marketers' job is to makereprints of those articles and put them up on their companies' Web sites and make them a part of any futuremarketing or mailings or brochures.

Using desktop publishing is another great strategy. It costs next to nothing to produce circulars orpostcards. In every area, in every metropolitan community, there are hosts of community bulletin boards. Inthe San Francisco Bay area, for instance, there are 800 locations of community bulletin boards on whichpeople post their 3X5 cards or their advertising circulars. This has become such a good way to market smallbusinesses that there's now a company in the Bay area called the Thumbtack Bugle. All it does is talk tobusinesses about their target market and point them in the direction of the 200 bulletin boards that bestreach those prospects. Thumbtack Bugle has done so well that it has spawned a competitor called TheDaily Staple that does the same thing.

The truth is, guerrillas can do this by themselves. They can learn these locations and post the circulars forthemselves. When I first moved to the Bay area I had to hire a typist. I hired a woman who said she is a veryactive marketer. She said that she had all the business she could handle. I asked her how she got it. Shesaid that she put up circulars at all the universities. When I asked her how much she spent on marketing,she said maybe $30 a year. By taking advantage of community bulletin boards, guerrillas can reach the rightprospects and it costs next to nothing. And that opportunity is growing, because there are more and morecommunity bulletin boards.

Columns, articles, speaking engagements, free consultations, free seminars, free demonstrations, usingdesktop publishing. These are dynamite ways to market without investing much money or any money at all.

David and Goliath

Even small companies with little to no marketing budget can act like tough competitors. Not just amongother small businesses, but against much larger firms. Small organizations can compete with bigbusinesses by outservicing them.

Big businesses tend to have service policies. That's a losing strategy in the 21st century. A service policylimits what companies can do. The reality is that service is anything the customer wants it to be, and asmall business is able to do that. Small businesses can outservice and outpersonalize big businesses. Theycan develop warmer bonds with people and longer relationships.

A small business is able to offer more personalized service and form more human bonds with people.Guerrillas have to talk to people, and before they talk about business, they should talk about their kids,about their sports teams, about the Super Bowl-anything but politics or religion-talk to form that personalbond before the business bond gets strong. Big businesses are just too impersonal to have that bond.

But small businesses beware: Fortune 500 companies are learning that the personal touch, one-on-onecommunication, works for them as well as for small businesses. Rather than doing the mass mailing ortelemarketing, they may pick out their key customers and send a personal letter to those people or make apersonal phone call. While guerrillas don't think twice before posting 3x5 cards or circulars on bulletinboards, big companies don't think of doing those kinds of things. But some large firms now understand thatthey can use some of the same marketing tactics as small businesses, and that just because it'sinexpensive doesn't mean it won't work.

When large firms learn that guerrillas follow up, they begin to do more follow-up than they ever did before.And big companies that have never had a marketing strategy that calls for maximum word-of-mouthmarketing are learning that, like guerrillas, they can use word-of-mouth marketing to spur sales. Bigcompanies have learned that guerrillas get a lot of business just by becoming involved in their communities.Big businesses rarely have community involvement as a part of a marketing strategy, but they're learning toask, “Why shouldn't we do that?” They're realizing that they're able to use many of the tools of guerrillas inthe quest to make their own big businesses bigger.

One of the biggest things they're learning is commitment to a marketing plan, because they're learning thatthe biggest cause of advertising failure is abandoning it too soon. Big companies, because they have deeppockets, tend to abandon their marketing too soon. Guerrillas can't afford to do that, and now big companiesare learning that they don't have to keep changing their marketing, their logo, their theme, and that maybe bysticking to those things and using the weapons that got them there, they will achieve their goals. So bigbusinesses are learning a lot from guerrilla marketing.

How Guerillas Economize

When guerrilla marketers think of economizing, they don't necessarily think of trying to save money. Whatthey do think of is getting the absolute most from any money they invest in marketing. They realize thatthere are two kinds of marketing: expensive and inexpensive. They know that expensive marketing is thekind that doesn't cover the investment they've made in it, while inexpensive marketing pays rich rewards fortheir investment. Guerrillas have the insight to know that economizing has nothing to do with cost; it haseverything to do with results.

To be sure, guerrillas adopt a philosophy of frugality and thrift. They know well the difference betweeninvesting in something disposable, such as paper and accounting services, and investing in something that'struly an investment, such as a telephone system or customer-tracking software-items they would use on adaily basis. There's a big difference in these two expenses. So don't be surprised to learn that guerrillasrarely waste their time and effort on relatively low-cost, disposable purchases, but are willing to expend thetime and energy to enjoy a large savings on an expense that's really an investment in disguise. A key toeconomizing is to think not in terms of purchasing, but in terms of acquiring. That may mean bartering,sharing, renting, modifying an existing item, or borrowing it.

Guerrillas are also keenly aware of when it makes sense to hire a pro, knowing that amateur-lookingmarketing is an invitation to disaster. They might hire a highly paid, professional designer to give theirmarketing items a powerful visual format, then use their own staff members or themselves to continuegenerating marketing materials that follow this same format. They learn from any consultant they hire.

By understanding that economizing does not mean saving money but investing it wisely, guerrillas test theirinvestments on a small scale before plunging headlong into any kind of marketing. They have no fear offailure, providing that the failures are small ones and knowing that even one success in 10 tries meansdiscovering a path to wealth and profitability.

They know in their hearts that money is not the key to happiness or success, but that enough of it enablesthem to have a key made. Real frugality is more about priorities and results than just saving money.

Of all the methods of wasting money and not economizing, the number one leader in marketing is failure tocommit to a plan. Untold millions have been invested in marketing campaigns that had everything right aboutthem except commitment on the part of the marketer. Guerrillas know that it takes time for an investment topay off and instant results are rarely part of the deal.

Abandoning a marketing campaign before it has a chance to flourish squanders money in three ways. First,it means all prior investing in the campaign has been for naught. Second, it means new investing will benecessary to generate the share of mind that precedes a share of market. Third, it means creating newmarketing materials all over again.

Small-business owners have other ways to waste money as well. Many of them invest in research instead ofdoing it themselves. Others commit to a campaign they haven't tested. Still others create marketingmaterials that must be updated regularly, rather than creating timeless marketing materials. When acompany brochure says that the firm has been in business five years, it must updated the next year. Whenit says that the firm has been in business since l995, that's always going to be the truth.

High on the list of ways that small business marketers waste precious funds is their proclivity to invest inamusing marketing, funny marketing, even uproarious marketing. Marketing has an obligation to put moneyin a company's coffers, not smiles on the faces of its prospects.

The most common method of economizing is also one of the most overlooked: marketing to existingcustomers. It costs one sixth as much to sell an item to an existing customer than to sell that same item toa non-customer. The price of discovering and convincing likely customers is astronomical when comparedwith the price of doing the same with current customers. Database marketing has lowered the cost ofguerrilla marketing and yet some business owners fail to even try to make repeat sales.

Guerrillas avoid buying what they want and don't really need, don't fall prey to slick salespeople representingnew and unproven marketing tools, avert bad decisions by not making quick decisions, and constantly ask

themselves, “If I didn't need this yesterday, why do I need it today?”

Don't Overlook Bartering

I remember vividly my first experience scuba diving. As soon as I went beneath the surface of the sea, Irealized that an entire world existed every day within my own world-and I wasn't at all aware of it. Whether ornot I knew of it, that world was still alive and happening.

The same is true of the world of barter. It's alive and happening, now more than ever. Yet mostsmall-business owners are completely clueless as to its existence-and its value to their companies. To fullycomprehend the magnitude of barter in today's economy, consider that in 1998 more than 55 percent ofmedia was not purchased, but was obtained by barter. And that's just media. Many other goods and servicesare obtained for no money whatsoever simply by bartering.

Almost all small businesses need products or services that other small businesses provide. Thesecompanies may be very interested in bartering for what they need. When that happens, a firm can get what itneeds for a fraction of its normal cost, because the company will be paying with its own services or goods attheir full retail price.

Barter enables small businesses to address a pressing need: cash flow. By empowering businesses to tradetheir goods or services for the goods or services offered by other businesses, bartering facilitates complexexchanges among multiple businesses. Any unused time, inventory, or capacity can be transformed intobusiness value. Small businesses around the world are learning to conserve cash, find new customers, andconvert their excess time or capacity into the things they need. All it takes is a simple barter.

Since learning of the immense power and economy of bartering, I have personally bartered my ownmarketing services for a solar heating unit for my pool, a big-screen TV, a hot tub, an electric scooter for mywife, a year's supply of coffee, a palm tree, a vacation in Hawaii, a cruise to Russia, and scads of secretarialservices. I say this only to open minds to the variety of goods and services available to those who are willingto trade what they have for what they want and need.

Many small business owners want and need products and services for both their business and theirnon-business lives. Often these offerings are just too expensive to purchase and don't fit into their budgets.But by bartering, they do not require any cash outlay and fit easily into anyone's budget.

Bartering is at the very core of guerrilla marketing, because rather than requiring a financial investment, itrequires only an investment of time, energy, and imagination. Simply by visiting a site such aslassobucks.com, the astute small-business owner can learn of offerings that can make the differencebetween success and failure, growth or stagnation.

What one firm may consider to be an overstock of inventory or downtime for its employees can betransformed into exactly what another company needs right now. In the past such complex barterarrangements were time-consuming and often led to frustration. But as the online world grows, barter hasbecome much simpler, much faster, and within the reach of any small business. What companiesdesperately need today but just cannot afford, may be theirs tomorrow-and easy to afford.

Traditionally, small businesses had to rein in their growth plans because they didn't have the money to fueltheir dreams. But guerrillas are rapidly learning that they don't need money. They already have just what isnecessary for them to acquire the goods and services they desire. All it takes is opening their minds to theconcept of barter.

Centuries ago barter was commonly used by small businesses, but as cash assumed a greater role in theeconomies of nations, barter seemed to fall by the wayside. Today that trend has been reversed and barter isassuming a greater role than ever.

Small businesses are realizing that they already have just what it takes to get what they need-and get it in ahurry. It is not complicated. It is not time-consuming. It is not reserved for huge corporations with a lot ofclout. The business and marketing plans of an increasing number of small companies include bartering forresources. The executives of these firms now comprehend that rather than visiting their banker they cansimply click their mouse and enter a world where they are welcome, a world teeming with valuable offeringsthat can shift them into hyper-profitability.

Whether or not marketers discover barter, it will continue to thrive, continue to propel small businesses totheir goals, and continue to become an integral part of the world economy. For these reasons, guerrillasshould enter this world and become intimate with the benefits it offers their businesses.

Spend Marketing Dollars Wisely

Whether a guerrilla runs a small businesses or works for a large conglomerate, it's vital to spend the firm'smarketing dollar's wisely. It all begins with marketers doing research into their market, product, media,competition, industry, prospects, customers, benefits their companies offer, and the Internet. Next is to writea list of the benefits the company offers with a star next to the benefits that are competitive advantages,because that's where a firm should hang its marketing hat. Then marketers need to create a seven-sentencemarketing plan (the purpose of the marketing; how to achieve the purpose, what benefits and competitiveadvantages to stress to achieve the purpose; the target audience; the marketing weapons to be used; thecompany's niche in the marketplace; the firm's identity; and marketing budget expressed as a percentage ofprojected gross sales) that will form the framework for all of their marketing. The next step is to create amarketing calendar. After that is complete, guerrillas should find fusion marketing partners who will helpspread the word and diminish the costs of marketing.

Finally it's time to launch the attack-in slow motion. This means, introduce each marketing weapon one at atime. On average my clients take 18 months to launch an attack.

The hardest part is the next step, and that is to maintain the attack and keep it going and not to expectinstant results. During this time guerrillas must monitor and track their marketing to discover whichmarketing weapons are working and which aren't.

The last step is to start improving the message, media, budget (cutting it), and results the company isgetting for the marketing dollars it is investing.

Guerrillas who do all of these things will surely achieve success. But in the end, if I had 30 seconds in anelevator to tell someone how to succeed in marketing I would say only this: “Start with a simple plan andthen commit to that plan.” It all comes down to that.

Appendix 1: The 100 guerrilla marketing weapons are as follows:

1. Marketing plan

2. Marketing calendar

3. Niche/position

4. Name of company

5. Identity

6. Logo

7. Theme

8. Stationery

9. Business cards

10. Signs inside

11. Signs outside

12. Hours of operation

13. Days of operation

14. Window display/home page

15. Flexibility

16. Word of mouth

17. Community involvement

18. Barter

19. Club and association memberships

20. Partial payment/credit

21. Cause marketing(environment, fighting diseases)

22. Phone demeanor

23. Toll-free phone number

24. Free consultations

25. Free seminars/clinics or free estimates/appraisals

26. Free demos

27. Free samples

28. Giver versus taker stance

29. Fusion marketing (leads/referrals)

30. Marketing on telephone hold

31. Past success stories

32. Employee attire

33. Service/customer bliss

34. Follow-up/listening

35. The company owners and their employees

36. Gifts

37. Catalog

38. Yellow page ads

39. Columns in publications

40. Articles in publications

42. Newsletter

43. All of a company's audiences

44. Benefits list

45. Competitive advantages

46. Computer

47. Selection

48. Contact time with customers

49. How staff says hello/good-bye

50. Public relations

51. Media contacts

52. Online (Web/forums/email/chats)

53. Neatness

54. Referral plan

55. Guarantee

56. Telemarketing (scripts)

57. Gift certificates

58. Brochures

59. Electronic brochures

60. Location

61. Advertising

62. Sales training (weekly)

63. Networking

64. Quality (what customers get)

65. Reprints and blowups

66. Flip charts

67. Opportunities to upgrade

68. Contests/sweepstakes

69. Classified ads (newspapers/magazines/online)

70. Newspaper ads

71. Magazine ads (that include a toll-free number and URL)

72. Radio spots

73. TV spots

74. Infomercials (55 percent view; 41 percent buy)

75. Movie theater ads

76. Direct mail letters (with an envelope that stands out and a P.S.)

77. Direct mail postcards

78. Postcard deck

79. Fax-on-demand

80. Special events

81. Show display

82. Audio visual aids

83. Spare time

84. Prospect mailing list

85. Research studies (companies should do their own)

86. Marketing insight

87. Speed

88. Testimonials

89. Posters

90. Enthusiasm and passion

91. Credibility

92. Spying

93. Easy to do business with

94. Brand name awareness

95. Designated guerrilla (preferably the CEO or president)

96. Customer mailing list

97. Sharing

98. Reputation

99. Competitiveness 100. Satisfied customers