Is Guerrilla Marketing Dead?

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You may think guerrilla marketing is dead, but really it’s evolved with the times. If you haven’t done the same, then you need to take a leap forward to get the most impact from your marketing dollars.
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<strong>What is Guerrilla Marketing?</strong>
Jay Conrad Levinson coined the term guerrilla marketing in 1984 with the release of his book, <em>Guerrilla Advertising.</em> In military terms, guerrilla refers to an unconventional form of warfare used by armed civilians, often against a force with superior numbers and weaponry. It relies on surprise, sabotage, and the ability to hide among a crowd. Guerrilla marketing is a take on advertising that uses similar tactics to gain attention.

The primary advantage of guerrilla marketing is its ability to increase a marketer’s impact using less costly resources than traditional advertising. It relies on high energy, imagination, and ingenuity. The idea is to take your customers by surprise, make a lasting impression, and create the kind of buzz that gets people talking.

The following two examples will help you wrap your mind around this strategy:

1) A new, locally based beverage company posted creative flyers on light poles and other public structures all around town. These flyers looked more like graffiti than advertising. Nobody even knew what it was all about, but the images stayed in their minds. After approximately three months of bombarding the public with these images, a billboard was displayed which used the same images, but also identified the company and the product. A brand was created before anyone knew what the brand was for. This is guerrilla marketing.

2) Compare this to a strategy used by a national research organization. They created billboards and took out full-page magazine ads that compared a neurological disorder with child abduction. These fundraising advertisements included the organization’s name and contact information. The shock factor backfired and complainants formed organized protests. This isn’t guerrilla marketing. It’s simply disrespectful and in poor taste. There is a difference.

<strong>How Has Guerrilla Marketing Evolved?</strong>
If you visit Jay’s site, you’ll see that guerrilla marketing is alive and well and evolving with the times. Guerrilla marketing is online — and you should be, too. Guerrilla marketing values permission-based marketing strategies — and you should, too. Guerrilla marketing uses popular culture to make an impression — and you should, too. Guerrilla marketing emphasizes ethical communications that are also creative and unique. And that’s exactly what you need!

When guerrilla marketing first became a hit, consumers were inundated with “professional” advertisements on television, radio, magazines, and newspapers. Now, it seems anywhere and everywhere we turn we encounter ads — they’re even in public restrooms! If we were numb before, we’re deadened now.

Advertising and “traditional” marketing just doesn’t have the impact it should for the dollars companies spend. And it’s no wonder when there’s so much advertising in so many places that it seems we never get a break from it. Guerrilla marketing breaks through all that clutter by being different. Not just different from your competitors, but different from its own past.

<strong>How Can You Use Guerrilla Marketing?</strong>
You can use guerrilla marketing to get the scattered attention of your target customers by becoming a bit more creative in the ways you reach out to them. Surprise them. Capture their interest. Offer something of real value.

Remember guerrilla warfare. You can’t rush success. Guerrillas knew that. Civilians battling a superior force with superior arms would spend years, decades, even generations fighting for what they believed in with whatever means they had. Take a lesson from them.

First, know that your business is worth fighting for. Second, you won’t win the success you want instantly. Third, you need to build your credibility with your target audience (i.e. the civilians you’re saving), not with your competitors (i.e. the superior force).

With these three things in mind, break out of the marketing box you’ve fallen into and prioritize communicating with your customers. Surprise them with how helpful, genuine, and trustworthy you can be. Sabotage the competition by offering a better value with better intentions. Don’t be afraid to blend in and mingle with your customers. After all, they are the only ones who really matter. Be one of them. Help them. Build a future with them.

This isn’t a battle for sovereignty or freedom. It’s a battle for the hearts and minds of your customers. The secret isn’t a parlor trick or a timely fad. You can’t take their trust. They have to give it to you. You have to earn your customers’ trust. If you can do that, then you can evolve into the future with them right by your side.

Direct Mail Is Alive and Well, Thank You

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Marketing fads come and go. Marketers today have a bewildering array of choices never seen before. Consequently, busy business owners don’t always know who to listen to in order to find what is working most effectively right now. Everyone can claim their systems and tools are the secret to a never-ending stream of prospects and customers.

Is Direct Mail Worth Exploring For Your Business?

Have you noticed that many of the Internet companies (like Google, among others) have been increasingly turning to direct mail to advertise their services? The reason is that old school direct mail worked long before the Internet and has been working for smart marketing in businesses all along. It just happened not to be the flavor of the day, thereby not getting much attention.

Now that the furor and publicity surrounding the “free” aspect of social media marketing has settled into the reality that free doesn’t necessarily equal real customers, smart marketers are looking for real campaigns that result in real customers.

Living Together in Harmony

Leveraging one proven marketing channel is great, but taking advantage of two or more is better. As effective as one channel may be, you limit the potential impact when using a single platform. With an integrated marketing strategy, you position yourself to maximize the real potential of your campaign.

The truth is that direct mail can still deliver real results when done correctly. In fact, direct mail works even better when coupled with email marketing and Internet marketing. When coupled with other channels, direct mail has the capacity to be even more targeted, personalized, and effective than when any of these channels are implemented alone.

To make this work and deliver results, it’s very important that the messaging and branding be consistent across all the channels you use. The logo, tag line, messaging, design, and colors used in one campaign should be reinforced across all media to generate stronger results and a more powerful impression. Consistency allows each campaign to feed off the other and deliver a bigger bang for the investment.

This is how big brands are able to leverage the power of multimedia messaging. Today, with the availability of affordable, short-run digital printing, you don’t need a large budget. It’s realistic and available for businesses of all sizes.

An example of a campaign that works extremely well is a new customer campaign. Nothing shows appreciation like a nicely designed, professional-looking direct mail piece delivered to your new customer soon after they become a client. People know that an email costs nothing to send but that a direct mail piece has a real cost.

Now you can follow that up with some informative emails to educate your new customer about how you can help them solve their problems. In the emails and direct mail pieces, ask your new customer to also connect with your brand on social media. Now you can further develop a bond with your new customer by sharing your values and core messages across all media.

Marketing success is about momentum. An integrated, multidimensional campaign, implemented consistently throughout the year, keeps the marketing ball rolling forward. This allows your business to be fresh on prospects’ minds when they’re ready to buy. The more consistent your brand, marketing message, and integrated approach, the better your results will be.

Your customers consume information in different ways. You can’t guess or assume one is better than another. Showing up in the physical mailbox, in their email inbox, and on the web assures that your brand is leaving no stone unturned. Having an integrated marketing strategy assures your business will be seen and heard. If just showing up is half the battle, then implementing this multidimensional approach is your call to action to make yourself ready for new customers on the business battlefield.

Be Your Business

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Every business would like to grow sales and profits. The future of the business and the livelihood of its employees depend on it. So, as business owners, we go to networking events, make phone calls, send out mailers, and even spend time on social media. Yet growing the business is never as easy or simple as that.

Making prospects aware of your products and services is important. If you don’t do it, no one else will. But that’s only one part of the equation. There’s something far more important that needs to be done first.

When a doctor goes into surgery, steps must be taken beforehand to prepare the patient. No patient would want the doctor to arrive on the day of surgery and begin poking holes and cutting skin at random to find the issue causing the problem. Yet many businesses go about prospecting and looking for new customers in the haphazard way of the unprepared surgeon.

To win more business, first you must isolate the pain points. What’s the problem your business can solve for your prospect? The more descriptive and specific you can describe the pain, the better. Yes, it takes a little effort to find specific problems for each type of potential customer, but you should notice trends and common traits you can use to attract a wider group of prospects.

After you’ve identified the major pain points, you can present the solution your business provides to solve the problem. Now it’s time to communicate this message.

Having a focused message before you market helps attract and retain the types of customers you want in the first place. The tighter the message, the better return you’ll get on your marketing spend.

Not many prospects care how many years you’ve been in business, how pretty the customer lobby is, or how incredibly innovative and cool your brochure or website look. Your prospects care about themselves. They worry about their problems. Outline what those issues are, and then tell them how you will make their problems disappear.

Oftentimes, your prospect may not even be aware of the problem. It’s your job to show them. Maybe you can save them time or money solving a problem they didn’t even know about. This is how you can make your print communication and all your other marketing messages more powerful. Identify the pain and show them how you can make their lives better by engaging your business.

It’s your knowledge and awareness of specific problems that will earn the trust of your prospect. Customers are attracted to businesses that best educate, communicate, and present expertise in the problems they want to solve. The best way you can do that is to not just represent your business but BE your business.

Being your business essentially means focusing on your brand and what it communicates to your marketplace. Your brand is more about your message than your logo. It’s more about content than design. Once you have your message finely tuned to what your audience is seeking from your business, only then will prospecting and growing your business feel like swimming with the current rather than against it.

5 Keys to Getting Past the Gatekeeper

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In business, the term “gatekeeper” refers to the person who has the authority to control access to the decision maker in the company. The gatekeeper guards and monitors traffic to the person in charge. In most companies, getting an appointment with the decision maker requires getting past the gatekeeper.

Selling to the decision maker requires learning the art and skill of gracefully getting past the gatekeeper. Here are five keys to help you get started:

Key #1: Speak with authority.
Whether you’re the CEO of your company or not, you need to speak with confidence. You want to be perceived as a person of authority making the call. Speak with authority, assurance, and self-confidence. Gatekeepers are trained to keep salespeople out but are much more likely to let an authority figure through.

Key #2: The gatekeeper is your friend.
The gatekeeper can be your ally if you treat them with the utmost respect and courtesy. Remember that they have a job to do and that they may even have the power to make decisions on whether or not to buy. It’s vital to recognize from your first contact that dealing with a gatekeeper can be a make or break proposition.

Key #3: Ask for help.
Everyone likes to feel useful and helpful. People like to help others, but few like to help a salesman. Put yourself in the position of a person needing help instead of a pushy salesperson. You can quickly disarm a gatekeeper by asking questions to help both of you. You want to speak with the correct person, and they don’t want anyone wasting the time of the person they are protecting.

You can accomplish this by asking a simple question right at the beginning. For example, “I provide (your services) and believe that (decision maker’s name) is the person that I should be speaking with. Is that correct?”

By asking for help in this way, you have gotten to the point quickly and have empowered the gatekeeper to either begin the conversation by asking you to set an appointment or by directing you to the right person.

Key #4: Referrals are a big help.
Obviously, having a name to use as a referral to the decision maker can help pave the way in getting past the gatekeeper. Another, less used referral method occurs when you make an initial call to a company and someone informs you that you should be speaking with someone else (and gives you that person’s name). Using the name of the person you spoke with as a point of reference when calling the person they referred you to can help to break the ice and move you past the gatekeeper.

Key #5: Make it fun.
Very few people will admit that they actually enjoy making a cold call. You can help take the drudgery out of it by setting goals for yourself and building momentum from there. Begin by setting up a variety success metrics, such as finding the right decision maker’s name, determining the best times to call, leaving your name and number for a call back, and making a small connection or bonding with the gatekeeper. Success can mean more than getting through to the decision maker and setting up an appointment. Celebrate the smaller victories along the way.

There’s truth in the adage that cold calling is a numbers game. The more calls you can make, the more chances you’ll have of getting appointments and closing sales. Likewise, the more positive contacts you can make with a gatekeeper, the better your odds of turning that person into an ally who will let you through to the decision maker you’re hoping to reach.

Are You a High-Margin Business?

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Achieving profit is the real goal of being in business. Profits are what allows a business to invest and grow. Some businesses have higher profit margins than others. That can be due to the type of industry, the competitive landscape, and economic conditions.

There’s often a direct correlation between the margins a business can charge and the amount of pain their products and services help to ease in the minds of the customers who buy them. Increasing this real and perceived value will directly impact profit margins.

Most businesses have a mixture of customers. To become a high-margin business, your goal must be to move the needle from lower-value customers to higher-value ones. The first step is to identify the types of customers your business attracts and pursues. Here are a few general characteristics to consider.

Low-Value Clients:

  • A large number are required in order to sustain profitability
  • Typically cause the most headaches
  • Want you to lower your prices
  • Make you feel like a commodity
  • Position you as the lower-value provider
  • Can and will leave you for a lower price at any time

High-Value Clients:

  • Provide greater profitability, so fewer are needed to help you reach your financial goals
  • Generate higher value with fewer headache
  • Help position you as an authority and valuable partner vendor
  • Give you higher credibility in the eyes of your other prospects

So how can you increase your perceived value?

  • Educate – Sell by teaching and sharing your expertise. Nothing is more powerful in positioning you as a business that is worthy of higher fees than actually showing how your products and services solve problems for your customers.
  • Show Results – Include testimonials and success stories from your past customers to help prospects understand what kind of real-world value you provide. Third-party validation works much better and is more believable than the same information stated as your own.
  • Offer a Powerful Guarantee – Guarantees not only help remove some of the doubts your prospects may have but also show that you believe in your products and services enough to stand behind them. Strong guarantees and warranties allow you to justify charging higher margins.
  • Get Endorsed – When possible, get an endorsement from a well-respected and known personality who can verify the quality and value you bring to the table. Your prospects will know that such a person would not vouch for a shoddy business or service. This increases the perceived value of your business in their eyes.
  • Promote – Promote your awards, achievements, membership associations, charitable contributions, and any other resources that will speak to your involvement in the community and the values you bring. Each of these builds further trust in the eyes of your audience. Each bit of added trust allows you to charge higher fees and margins in your business.

By increasing both the real value for your customers and the perceived value seen by your prospects, you will be able to increase your profit margins. Lots of companies can solve problems for their customers. Those that are able to tell the story of what, how, and why they solved those problems — and to do so in a way that resonates with prospects — are the ones that achieve higher margins.

Is Your Business Sellable?

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One of the goals of every business owner should be to build a company that is worth selling. Whether it is actually put on the market or not is another matter.

A business that is worth selling is growing, vibrant, and healthy. That’s why it’s in the best interest of everyone involved in the company to continually work toward building a sellable business.

Many metrics are used to measure the worth of a sellable business. One of the key metrics is the ability of the business to generate recurring revenue.

There are several ways to achieve a consistent, recurring revenue stream. Not all will work for every type of business, product, or service. Here are a few ideas to consider, depending on the types of services and products you provide.

Long-Term Sales Contracts

One method of building recurring revenue is to offer contracts that tie a client to a long-term engagement. A customer could be enticed to sign a contract if they are offered preferred pricing and services. An example of this can be seen with most cell phone contracts. The multi-year contracts are offered as a way to get a free or discounted cell phone in exchange for signing a two or three year contract. The buyer gets the cell phone quicker, and the cell phone provider locks in a guaranteed, predictable revenue stream.

Service and Maintenance Contracts

Some businesses can offer service contracts for after-sale support. For example, an IT company will charge for installing and setting up a network in a business but could also charge a yearly support fee to keep the network up and running free of viruses. Maintenance contracts can be a great source of additional revenue throughout the year. In many automotive dealerships, the service bays bring in much higher profits than the car sales departments.

Product and Service Training Fees

If your product or service involves a learning curve, customers would get more value from their purchase if you also offer training and certification after the sale. Product training becomes a true win-win, as the customer gets better use of their purchase, while you get additional revenue from an existing client. Many software companies offer training for their products to help their buyers understand and use the software to its potential.

When your business can generate sales from multiple revenue streams that support each other, the risk to a potential buyer is reduced dramatically. The business becomes a much more attractive candidate.

Predictable, recurring, multiple income streams make a business seem less risky to a potential buyer. So the sooner you start building recurring revenue streams in your business, the better your position will be if and when the time comes to sell.

How to Be the Master in Your Field

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Pablo Picasso created paintings the world has marveled at for decades. Looking with awe at these masterpiece creations, it would be perfectly logical to imagine that the distinctive brush strokes were made by someone with a natural gift — a gift not achievable by most.

Although Picasso’s talent is undeniable and his style unmistakable, that genius was actually developed in a surprising way that many don’t realize.

From the time Picasso was a young boy, he was formally trained by his father in oil paintings and figure drawings. And what method did his father use to train young Pablo? Jose Picasso was an artist who believed the best training for his son required formal and disciplined copying of the masters’ work. For many years, young Pablo Picasso fervently reproduced paintings, drawings, and plaster casts of the masters. He not only copied religiously but also experimented with a variety of styles, theories, and ideas, until he developed his own voice and distinctive style.

So what does this have to do with business?

The ideas of meticulous practice and of learning a skill by emulating the leaders in a field are not as common today as they were in the days when apprenticeships were more common. In a world that craves instant gratification, people often overlook the hard work required to develop any talent and simply assume it just comes naturally to those who are gifted.

The good news is that there is a short-cut. The bad news is that even the short-cut requires some sweat equity.

Not everyone can become a Pablo Picasso. Not entirely because of the natural talent gap (though that’s part of it), but also because of the not-wanting-to-put-in-the-hard-work-required gap.

There’s incredible power available to you in muscle memory. Muscle memory is “consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repetition.” When any task is repeated over and over, a muscle memory is created which allows one to perform the task almost effortlessly.

Olympic and professional athletes, concert pianists, and all other performers in the top of their field are perfect examples of muscle memory in action. They have practiced and performed so often that their performances seem to be effortless. That is the power of muscle memory.

Muscle memory can also apply to business mastery. It requires finding the leader in the field, analyzing and dissecting what they have done, and then recreating and reproducing those skills, often while adding your own unique style and flair. Practice often until muscle memory takes over. If it worked for Pablo Picasso, it can work for you.

The Five Dollar Workday

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Five Dollar Background

Henry Ford, the famous Ford Motor Company founder, was known for many things. Among them was his role in promoting the assembly line as a viable means for mass-producing automobiles, a process that made cars more affordable for middle-class Americans.

Ford had a global vision with consumerism as one of its centerpieces. He had an intense commitment to lowering costs through systemization and building a more process-driven company.

This focus made his next move (which is not as well known) quite a shock at the time.

The Five Dollar Workday

In January 1914, Henry Ford made a radical decision. He increased Ford Motor Company employee wages from $2.34/day to $5/day (equivalent to approximately $110 today) and reduced the workday from nine hours to eight.

While this was one of the most generous pay hikes of its time, Ford didn’t do this simply out of the goodness of his heart. At the time, the Detroit area was already becoming known for companies offering higher-than-average pay. In addition, the boredom of repetitious, assembly-line work led to higher employee turnover rates. One of the underlying reasons behind Ford’s move to increase wages was the desire to attract and retain top-notch employees by effectively creating golden handcuffs.

Ford used his PR machine and news journalist contacts to spread the word about the generous pay. Soon, there were thousands of applicants at every Ford factory, which allowed the company to hire only the best applicants. The fortunate hires stayed with Ford much longer than they otherwise might, since they couldn’t get similar pay elsewhere. In one bold move, Ford had managed to solve most of his company’s labor problems.

But higher employee retention was only one benefit of Ford’s plan. Within two short years of the pay raise, Ford’s profits increased by 200% to $60 million per year. Within five years, Ford Model T’s were rolling out at the rate of one every 24 seconds, much faster than the 12 days each had initially taken to produce. By the end of 1914, the 13,000 Ford Motor Company employees were producing 260,000 automobiles annually, while the rest of the automotive industry produced 280,000 combined.

At the time, much of corporate America did not view employees as an asset. Instead, they were seen as part of a company’s expense. With this single move, Ford was able to open the eyes of the corporate world. Ford had created a workforce that became a model for the eight-hour workday and HR departments of today. More importantly, he set the pace for the eventual rise of middle-class America. Ford employees could actually afford to buy one of the cars they produced.

With the $5-per-day pay hike, Ford was able to reduce employee turnover, increase the pool of high-quality applicants, reduce absenteeism drastically, and attract top-notch employees. The corresponding morale increase led to the highest productivity rates in history.

So what’s the moral of this story? What can we glean from it and apply to our own companies in the 21st century?

When companies shift their mindset from viewing employees as an expense item on the financials to an asset with vast potential, they can begin to see brighter possibilities for the whole company as well. Employees who truly believe they are appreciated and feel valuable to their company are much more likely to be highly productive and happy with what they are doing. Content employees are much less likely to actively seek opportunities elsewhere. Loyal, long-term employees lead to stability and customer satisfaction.

Henry Ford made a big splash with his five-dollar workday. The same kind of impact can be made today by implementing innovative ideas that show employees you appreciate what they do.

Studies and surveys have shown that higher pay is not the top motivator for employees to stay with their company. Feeling valued, being content in their role, and accomplishing larger goals are more important criteria. Find effective ways to instill those feelings in your employees, and you can make your own splash.

8 Skills Successful Entrepreneurs Have That Others Don’t

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There are skills you can learn from textbooks, skills you can learn in business school, and skills and lessons passed down from mentors and peers. Then there are the skills that can only be learned in the school of hard knocks and the real world. An entrepreneur who wants to be a true leader must understand which skills are the most important in order to lead a healthy and growing business. Here are eight of the most critical skills which differentiate successful entrepreneurs from others.

1: Patience and Persistence
The life of an entrepreneur includes facing many closed doors. Successful entrepreneurs have grit. They focus on the end goal and have the patience to see it through to completion despite the roadblocks.

2: Planning Skills & Time Management
Entrepreneurs must wear many hats and are often pulled in many different directions throughout the day. It’s critical, therefore, that plans and goals are flexible enough to handle unexpected surprises when they occur. Successful entrepreneurs set the GPS for their lives and businesses so they know where they are going every hour of every day.

3: Communication & Persuasion
Whether speaking with a prospect, a customer, an employee, or a stakeholder, it’s critical that the message and key concepts are presented clearly. When the point is made with focus and clarity, the chance for ambiguity falls by the wayside. Leaders know how to communicate and how to persuade.

4: Confidence & Sales Skills
Successful entrepreneurs are able to sell their products, services, ideas, and passion not only to the outside world of customers but also to their internal team of employees. That requires confidence and sharp sales skills. Successful entrepreneurs can sell anything.

5: Knowledge and Learning Skills
Successful entrepreneurs are passionate about continuous growth and improvement. When others think they know all there is to know, these leaders will push themselves to expand their horizon. They set aside an hour or more each day to read and learn about new, noteworthy industry advances they can apply to their business.

6: Realistic Optimists
No one can avoid bad news. Losing customers and having employees quit is part of life for any entrepreneur. The difference comes in how people view these challenges. The successful entrepreneur doesn’t hide bad news under the rug, but has learned instead to deal with it quickly and move on to the task at hand without being dragged down.

7: Resourcefulness and Managing Cash Flow
Resourcefulness is a great trait for any entrepreneur. The ability to think creatively and come up with out-of-the-box solutions is a must-have skill. This goes hand in hand with being able to manage the cash flow of the business. It’s a skill that shouldn’t be outsourced and one that the most successful entrepreneurs have learned very well.

8: Intense Focus
What separates the most successful entrepreneurs from others is their ability to focus intently on the goals and tasks at hand. In a world of short attention spans and constant noise, these leaders are able to put blinders on when needed, unplug from all the unnecessary distractions, and see the task all the way through. That is perhaps the biggest difference between successful and ultra-successful entrepreneurs.

Becoming a successful entrepreneur is not about what you are now, but what you do today and tomorrow. You now know eight critical skills to work on to be what you are meant to become. Start working on them today.