Marketing, for you, your family and your start up

Guerrilla Marketing for the layman:

The Guerilla Marketing Handbook (Guerrilla Marketing) by Jay Conrad Levinson

Guerrilla Marketing, as described by Jay Conrad Levinson is an unconventional way of performing marketing activities on a very low budget.It is argued that if one uses guerrilla tactics, you will find your company's small size an advantage and you will be able to obtain publicity more easily than a large company, you will be closer to your customers and more agile.Levinson identifies the following principles as the foundation of Guerrilla

Marketing:Guerrilla Marketing is specifically geared for the small business.. It should be based on human psychology instead of experience, judgement, and guesswork.. Instead of money, the primary investments of marketing should be time, energy, and imagination.. The primary statistic to measure your business is the amount of profits, not sales.. The marketer should also concentrate on how many new relationships are made each month.. Create a standard of excellence with an acute focus instead of trying to diversify by offering allied products and services.. Instead of concentrating on getting new customers, aim for more referrals, more transactions with existing customers, and larger transactions.. Forget about the competition and concentrate more on cooperating with other businesses.. Guerrilla Marketers should always use a combination of marketing methods for a campaign.. Use current technology as a tool to empower your marketing. Only 4% of new businesses make a sizeable profit after 5 years. Lack of marketing savvy is one of the main reasons businesses fail.

Review your marketing strategy, and the techniques you use, viral marketing in it's different forms is a low cost and effective way to get your message out, have a read on the early days of Apple, and how they got the message out to the world. As a start up you need to get the message out in a manner that suits your business model and vision, following the four P's rule of marketing , and construct your marketing plan around the four P's, you don't market a dog clipping service in the FT, or a financial services company in the beano....ok I know but you can allow me some licence.

Guerrilla marketing is more about matching wits than matching budgets. Guerrilla marketing can be as different from traditional marketing as guerrilla warfare is from traditional warfare. Rather than marching their marketing dollars forth like infantry divisions, guerrilla marketers snipe away with their marketing resources for maximum impact.

Some of the reasons why you buy something:

1. To make more money – even though it can’t buy happiness

2. To become more comfortable, even a bit more

3. To attract praise – because almost everybody loves it

4. To increase enjoyment – of life, of business, of virtually anything

5. To possess things of beauty – because they nourish the soul

6. To avoid criticism – which nobody wants

7. To make their work easier – a constant need to many people

8. To speed up their work .....

you could add to the list , someone said there were 51 reasons to buy, target your marketing in away that raises the awareness in the mind of the future customers, marketing in 90% about winning new customers.

Slainte

Gordon