15 Secrets of Guerilla Marketing

Why not post this list next to your desk to help keep your marketing on track?

By Jay Conrad Levinson

The most important things you need to know about marketing are in this article. In the few minutes it takes you to read this, you’ll learn more basic truths about marketing than you’d pick up with a score of MBA degrees under one arm and all the marketing books ever written under the other.

Memorize these 15 words—each one represents a major guerrilla marketing secret—and then live by them. I’m giving you a memory crutch so that you’ll never forget these words: All 15 words end in “ent.” Run your business by the guerrilla concepts they represent and your marketing dreams will come true.

1. Commitment: You should know that a mediocre marketing program with commitment will always prove more profitable than a brilliant marketing program without commitment. Commitment makes it happen.

2. Investment: Marketing is not an expense, but an investment—the best investment available in America today, if you do it right. With the 15 secrets of guerrilla marketing to guide you, you’ll be doing it right.

3. Consistent: It takes a while for prospects to trust you, and if you change your marketing, media and identity, you’re hard to trust. Restraint is a great ally of the guerrilla. Repetition is another.

4. Confident: In a nationwide test to determine why people buy, price came in fifth, selection fourth, service third, quality second. In first place? People said they patronize businesses in which they are confident.

5. Patient: Unless the person running your marketing is patient, it will be difficult to practice commitment, view marketing as an investment, be consistent and make prospects confident. Patience is a guerrilla virtue.

6. Assortment: Guerrillas know that individual marketing weapons rarely work on their own. But marketing combinations do. A wide assortment of marketing tools is required to woo and win customers.

Restraint is a great ally of the guerrilla. Repetition is another.

7. Convenient: People now know that time is not money—time is far more valuable. Respect this by being easy to do business with and running your company for the convenience of your customers, not yourself.

8. Subsequent: The real profits come after you’ve made the sale, in the form of repeat and referral business. Non-guerrillas think marketing ends when they’ve made the sale. Guerrillas know that’s when marketing begins.

9. Amazement: There are elements of your business that you take for granted, but prospects would be amazed if they knew the details. Be sure all of your marketing always reflects that amazement. It’s always there.

10. Measurement: You can actually double your profits by measuring the results of your marketing. Some weapons hit bull’s-eyes. Others miss the target. Unless you measure, you won’t know which is which.

11. Involvement: This describes the relationship between you and your customers—and it is a relationship. You prove your involvement by following up; they prove theirs by patronizing and recommending you.

12. Dependent: The guerrilla’s job is not to compete but to cooperate with other businesses. Market them in return for them marketing you. Set up tie-ins with others. Become dependent to market more and invest less.

13. Armament: Armament is defined as “the equipment necessary to wage and win battles.” The armament of guerrillas is technology: computers, current software, cell phones, pagers, fax machines. If you’re technophobic, see a techno-shrink.

14. Consent: In an era of nonstop interruption marketing, the key to success is to first gain consent to receive your marketing materials, then market only to those who have given you that consent. Don’t waste money on people who don’t give it to you.

15. Augment: To succeed online, augment your website with offline promotion, constant maintenance of your site, participation in newsgroups and forums, email, chatroom attendance, posting articles, hosting conferences and rapid follow-up.

Restraint is a great ally of the guerrilla. Repetition is another.

And remember: Always check with your compliance office first, before completing any marketing.

Copyright 2003. All rights reserved.

Jay Conrad Levinson is co-author of Guerrilla Marketing for Financial Advisors (Trafford Publishing 2003), which is available online at www.financialadvisormarketing.com.