Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days

One Dynamic Blueprint to Maximize Profits and Increase Customers
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With 30 days of consistent effort, you can upgrade and enhance your organization’s entire approach to marketing.

The guerrilla marketing creed is that it’s possible to achieve conventional aims (like sales and profits) using unconventional methods (like investing energy in your marketing and not just more money). When it comes to marketing, the missing “secret sauce” is usually all their time getting in position to start marketing when in reality they should be just getting into action. Energy, passion and enthusiasm can cover up a lot of gaps in your marketing know-how.

Guerrilla marketers take the time to decide where they want to do business. They don’t even attempt to be everything to everyone. Instead, guerrillas focus on one part of the marketplace and serve that segment as well as possible. When it comes to marketing, knowing where you don’t want to play is just as important if not more so than knowing where to play.

Guerrilla marketers also view marketing as an investment rather than an expense. For example, if you spend $3,000 to generate an additional $5,000 in new business, your marketing hasn’t cost you anything. Marketing that works is an investment, and when marketing works well, the return on investment can be impressive. It’s only when marketing is done wrong and doesn’t work that it becomes an expense Guerrillas focus on developing and using marketing that works.

A marketing plan, the ultimate result of this 30-day process, offers a simple strategy or set of strategies, a marketing calendar, an evaluation system, and a selection of weapons and tactics that give you complete control of your marketing.

–Jay Levinson and Al Lautenslager

Have you ever wondered why you don’t have all the clients or customers you need? Many times it’s because you can’t decide where to begin marketing, you aren’t sure where to put the pieces together, or you can’t stay motivated and focused. You are capable of doing many of the things required for effective marketing, but the real question is, will you? Action is what guerrilla marketing is all about. You start by formulating a set of simple, effective things to do consistently to address today’s marketing challenges.

–Jay Levinson and Al Lautenslager

U: Unabashed

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Inject some unabashed enthusiasm into whatever new products you’re developing. Customers want that.

Most people in the business world are too serious. They’re so focused on making money they don’t even give themselves permission to smile anymore. If you can come along with a product that just strikes a whimsical note and makes them smile, that little spark of enjoyment can enable your product to be much better received.

Take, for example, a new bathroom accessory collection designed for Target. This is a set of cup holders, tub accessories, bath mats and toothbrush holders with a common theme. A talented twenty-something industrial designer, fresh out of school, was assigned to come up with some new ideas for a collection to be styled specifically for children. She attacked the assignment with gusto, and came up with a collection called “Beneath the Bubbles” Each piece of the collection was whimsically styled like sea life. There was Wally the Whale, a blue tub-spout protector. Crabby the Crab was a toy bag that attached to the walls of the bathtub. The centerpiece of the collection, however, was Stan the toothbrush holder. Not only did Stan hold two toothbrushes in his rounded starfish arms but there was also a button in the center of his tummy that children could push to make Stan sing. Stan’s song went for about a minute—which just happened to be the amount of time the American Dental Association recommended children should brush their teeth for.

When the collection was presented to buyers, they were a little bit skeptical, but the designer’s enthusiasm won them over and proved to be somewhat contagious. They decided to take a risk on the collection, and it turned out to be a genuine home run for Target. Grandmothers everywhere rushed to buy the collection for their grandkids hoping to encourage them to brush their teeth more often and for longer.

Enthusiasm, like laughter, is infectious. Go spread some around. Infect as many people as you possible can. You’ll be amazed at the change in the environment!

–Robyn Waters

If you can’t get excited about your own products, just imagine how uninspired and unenthused your customers must be feeling.

–Robyn Waters

Progress is a nice word, but …

Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator, and change has its enemies.

–Robert Kennedy

The Keys to Reengineering Success

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To succeed at reengineering, follow these guidelines:

1. Always start with the customer and work backwards
2. Move fast
3. Tolerate risk
4. Accept imperfections along the way
5. Don’t stop too soon

In short, reengineering is the opposite of business as usually.

Taking each of the guidelines in turn:

1. Always start with the customer and work backwards
Business processes exist solely for the purpose of creating a satisfied customer–they have no other valid reason to exist. Therefore, reengineering at its very heart means a realignment of the company’s resources towards the goal of meeting the needs of the customer.

From an internal perspctive, the best way to generate enthusiasm for a reengineering program is to set ambitious goals that stretch and challenge the organization. People won’t be motivated to abandon the familiar and adopt the reengineered processes unless they are inspired by the vision of what the company is becoming. Provide that spark of motivation.

2. Mover fast
Reengineering is a dramatic, radical process. It simply cannot be undertaken slowly or deliberately. Reengineering must be achieved quickly and decisively–otherwise the forces of internal resistance (for the way things have historically been done within the company) will overwhelm and impede the process.

Reengineering must be done at speed–the faster the better. Experience has shown there is generally a 12-month window of opportunity for a successful reengineering initiative.

3. Tolerate risk
Change–and therefore progress–always involves risk. Therefore, in undertaking reengineering, the people who are by nature risk-averse will feel disoriented and disfranchised.

Experience has shown probably the only way to offset the fear of change within an organization is to demonstrate dramatically the greatest risk of all comes from sticking with the status quo. If people can be convinced “business as usual” probably means being unemployed very soon, they’ll suddenly develop a voracious appetite for trying something new.

4. Accept imperfections along the way
No reengineering program ever emerges full-blown right out of the box. Reengineering is always an iterative process–where something new is tried and expanded on if it doesn’t. That means there will be partial failures along the way as a normal, expected part of the process.

The key is not to avoid mistakes but to learn from them and move on.

5. Don’t stop too soon
Many organizations suspend reengineering when they see the first sign of success. Others stop at the first hint of a problem. Both actions are equally damaging to the long term success of the organization.

The true breakthroughs always require perseverance and patience.

We believe that reengineering is the only thing that stands between many U.S. corporations–indeed, the U.S. economy–and disaster.

–Michael Hammer & James Champy

T: Translate

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Not all trends are relevant, so you’ve got to translate them into something meaningful for your customers.

There re actually vast oceans of trends out there waiting to be picked up on. There are tone of good ideas, loads of information and inspiration by the bucketful available in the world of business. However, not all of these trends will be of equal importance to your customers. To make a trend relevant, it’s got to do something your customers actually want and need.

For example, everyone knows cell phones have become quite sophisticated. LG Electronics of South Korea decided to develop a cell phone that was on-trend for customers in the Arab world. They came up with the Qiblah mobile phone that uses GPS technology to always point to Mecca. The phones can even store text from the Koran and will beep when it is the appropriate hour to offer prayers. This is taking technology and using it intelligently to provide a product with features customers will value highly.

Good research into trends must include finding a way to translate technology capabilities into a meaningful advantage. Put another way, great trends are always consumer-centric. You have to listen to what your customer genuinely needs and then translate the capabilities of modern technology into features they will love. Do that consistently well and customers will be singing your praises far and wide.

Avoid literal translations of any trend concept or hot idea. It’s hard to differentiate yourself when you merely copy what’s already out there. Think about how a musical score translates notes and sounds into emotions. There are a limited number o notes, but musicians have been arranging them into endless versions of original music for centuries.

–Robyn Waters

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