Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days

One Dynamic Blueprint to Maximize Profits and Increase Customers
(13100)

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

Reengineering the Corporation

A Manifesto for Business Revolution
(13500)

Reengineering means to disregard all the assumptions and traditions of the way business has always been done, and instead develop a new, process-centered business organization that achieves a quantum leap forward in performance.

To achieve reengineering success, a fresh perspective and approach is required. A clean sheet of paper is taken and, given what is currently known about customers and their preferences, a new organization is developed which will optimize the process of creating satisfied customers. Reengineering is the process by which the organization that exists today is retired and the optimal version of the new organization is constructed.

Reengineering is the opportunity to develop the rules by which business in the future will be conducted rather than being forced to operate by the rules imposed by someone else. As such, reengineering underpins every attempt to seize and maintain a true competitive advantage.

Business reengineering isn’t about fixing anything. Business reengineering means starting all over, starting from scratch.

–Michael Hammer & James Champy

Jim Cramer’s Real Money

Sane Investing in an Insane World
(13700)

Your personal investment strategy cannot exist in isolation. There are no such thing as universal rules or insider secrets that will apply to everyone all the time. Rather, your investment strategy can and should very in sync with your individual investment goals, which will change and evolve throughout your working life.

There are only two genuine reasons why you should invest:

Why invest?

1. To save for retirement: Apply the 25 rules of investing

2. To have some discretionary funds: Apply the 10 commandments of trading

The rules of trading and the rules of investing are quite distinct and different. Many newcomers fail to understand or make this distinction and end up taking ideas that apply in one context and applying them to situations that actually require an entirely different approach. This can be detrimental to your ability to achieve your investment goals, and almost guarantees that you’ll get caught up in the periodic periods of “irrational exuberance” that typify the stock markets.

The Trendmaster’s Guide

Get a jump on What Your Customer Wants Next
(14600)

Contrary to generally accepted wisdom, new trends aren’t always spotted early by ultra-hip types who are much cooler than everyone else. At the very best, these people help keep a business up-to-date with what’s going on in the world. They’re trend trackers. Instead, you need to become a trendmaster–someone who initiates a new trend and translates it into ideas and concepts that make sense for your own company and customers. The good news is everyone can become a trendmaster by adopting the right mind-set and by applying the A-Z tools and tricks of the trendmaster trade.

I believe that anyone can use these tools to become even more aware of the world around them. Even if you weren’t born with a trend spotting bone in your body, you don’t have to be a follower forever. These days no one can afford to be just catching on as others are already moving on! Recognizing and reacting to trends is a learned skill, and it can be acquired without extensive time in the streets of Milan or the high schools of Orange County. If you’ve ever witnessed a trend unfolding and said to yourself, ‘I should have seen coming,’ there’s hope. Your too can become a trend master and get a jump on your competition.

–Robyn Waters

There’s no one right answer, no one-size-fits-all trend. Be the cheerleader of possibilities for your team. Encourage input and participation from everyone. Stay open to new ideas. Think about it: nothing dampens enthusiasm and passion faster than can’t or nevers.

–Robyn Waters

Making Strategy Work

Leading Effective Execution and Change
(13800)

The key to actually executing a chosen strategy is what happens after the decision is made. If things are left to their natural path, most businesses will fail to execute their chosen strategy, and will instead continue doing what they have always done. To get an organization to implement a chosen strategy successfully, a unified and integrated approach to execution is required.

To make your chosen strategy work, concentrate on getting five key factors right as well as paying attention to the context:

1. Corporate Strategy
2. Corporate structure Integration
3. Business strategy Short-term objectives
4. Business structure
5. Incentives and controls

The context

1. The organization’s ability to manage change
2. The culture of the organization
3. The organizational power structure
4. The overall leadership climate

Next Page »