Bigwig Briefs: Guerrilla Marketing: The Best of

Guerrilla Marketing
by Jay Conrad Levinson

ISBN:1587620677

Aspatore Books 2003 (96 pages)

This text explores the ins and outs of guerrilla marketing,
and covers topics such as technology and guerrilla
marketing, attacking the market, media and marketing,
what makes a marketer, money and marketing, and much
more.

Back Cover
Best selling author Jay Levinson shares the now world famous principles
behind guerrilla marketing, in the first ever brief written on the subject.
Items discussed include the Principles Behind Guerrilla Marketing, What Makes
a Guerrilla, Attacking the Market, Everyone Is a Marketer, Media Matters,
Technology and the Guerrilla Marketer, and Dollars and Sense. A must read
for any big time marketing executive, small business owner, entrepreneur,
marketer, advertiser, or anyone interested in the amazing, proven power of
guerrilla marketing.

Bigwig Briefs-Guerrilla Marketing-The Best Of

Guerrilla Marketing
By,
Jay Conrad Levinson
Published by Aspatore Books, Inc.
For information on bulk orders, sponsorship opportunities or any other questions please email
store@aspatore.com. For corrections, company/title updates, comments or any other inquiries please email
info@aspatore.com.
First Printing, September 2001 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Copyright 2001 by Aspatore Books, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No
part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a
database or retrieval system, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the United States Copyright
Act, without prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 1-58762-067-7
Library of Congress Card Number: 2001093289
Bigwig Briefs Editor, Ginger Conlon
Cover design by Rachel Kashon, Kara Yates
Material in this book is for educational purposes only. This book is sold with the understanding that neither
the author nor the publisher is engaged in rendering legal, accounting, investment, or any other professional
service.
This book is printed on acid free paper.
If you are a C-Level executive interested in submitting a manuscript to the Aspatore editorial
board, please email jason@aspatore.com with the book idea, your biography, and any additional
pertinent information.
Special thanks also to: Ted Juliano, Tracy Carbone, and Rinad Beidas
The views expressed by the individuals in this book do not necessarily reflect the views shared by the
companies they are employed by (or the companies mentioned in this book). The companies referenced
may not be the same company that the individual works for since the publishing of this book.
About the Author
Jay Conrad Levinson is the author of the best-selling marketing series in history, Guerrilla Marketing, plus
24 other business books. His guerrilla concepts have influenced marketing so much that today his books
appear in 37 languages and are required reading in many MBA programs worldwide.
Jay taught guerrilla marketing for ten years at the extension division of the University of California in
Berkeley. And he was a practitioner of it in the United States - as Senior Vice-President at J. Walter
Thompson, and in Europe, as Creative Director at Leo Burnett Advertising.
He writes a monthly column for Entrepreneur Magazine, articles for Inc. Magazine, a syndicated column for
newspapers and magazines and online columns published monthly on the Microsoft and GTE websites. Jay
has also served on the Microsoft Small Business Council and the 3Com Small Business Advisory Board.

Chapter 1: What is Guerrilla Marketing?

Overview
Guerrilla marketing is pursuing conventional goals using unconventional means.
Guerrilla marketing begins with an idea for how to generate profits for a business and becomes a circle when
that business has the blessed patronage of repeat and referral customers. I used to compare guerrilla
marketing with textbook marketing, but guerrilla marketing is becoming textbook marketing. In a few years it
will be traditional marketing. It seems the only way to fly.
There are 18 strategies that differentiate guerrilla marketing from what is currently considered traditional
marketing:

Invest Time, Not Money

Traditional marketing says that a marketer's primary investments should be money. With guerrilla marketing
the primary investments should be time, energy, and imagination. If marketers are willing to invest enough
time, energy, and imagination, they don't have to invest as much money.
I know people who spend $30 a month doing guerrilla marketing. They post signs on bulletin boards, maybe
on college campuses, or maybe in communities where a lot of people gather around bulletin boards. Many of
these marketers use email. They get the names of people from user groups, so they know that these people
are interested in this particular topic. And email is free, so they can conduct much of their marketing that
way. They might write articles that get posted on other companies' Web sites. That takes time, energy, and
imagination, but it does not take money. So it's very possible to market successfully for $50 to $100 a
month. Naturally, the more companies invest, the more profits they'll make-if they're going about everything
else right.

Measure Performance by Profitability

Traditional marketing measures its performance by sales or by store traffic, while guerrilla marketing focuses
on profits. Anybody can achieve high sales, but it takes talent to generate ever-increasing profit.
One reason people go into business is to give themselves joy in life and to provide balance in their lives, but
the main reason is to earn a profit. Too many people lose sight of that and focus only on sales, thinking that,
The more people I get into my store or the more people I get responding to my offer, the more money I'll
make. Sometimes they'll get a lot of people into their stores and they'll make a lot of sales. But they're not
making much money, because they're not making a lot of money on each sale and the cost of doing
business is subtracting even more. That's why guerrillas find it extremely important to focus only on profits,
because that's ultimately how executives build their businesses.

Know the Tools

Traditional marketing seems to intimidate a lot of people, because it's enshrouded by mystique. People
aren't quite sure what marketing is. They're not sure if it includes sales and they're not certain if advertising
really is marketing. Guerrilla marketers feel no sense of intimidation and to them there is no mystique about
marketing.

Spend Small
Traditional marketing has always been geared to big businesses with big bankrolls. Although big businesses
and Fortune 500 companies buy boxes of guerrilla marketing books at a time, the reality is that guerrilla
marketing is geared to small businesses, to the small-business owner with big dreams but a tiny bank
account.

Eliminate Guesswork
Traditional marketing has always been based on experience and judgments-it's a fancy way of guesswork.
Guerrillas cannot afford to make wrong guesses. So as much as possible guerrilla marketing is based on
psychology. For example, guerrilla marketers know that 90 percent of purchase decisions are made in the
unconscious mind, and they know that a slam-dunk manner of accessing the human unconscious mind is
through repetition.

Maintain Focus
Traditional marketing says that companies should grow their businesses large and then diversify into different
fields and different services. Guerrilla marketing says that companies will probably get in trouble if they do
that; the ability to maintain focus will lead to a company's success much more than its concept of
diversifying.

Grow Geometrically
Traditional marketing has always said that companies should add new customers one at a time. That's an
expensive way to grow: arithmetically. Guerrilla marketing tries to grow companies geometrically, enlarging
the size of each transaction and having more transactions with each customer. This approach taps the
enormous referral power of a company's existing customers, because it costs so much less to sell to an
existing customer. While the company is doing that it's also adding new customers. If a company is growing
geometrically it's hard to not turn a profit and to not stay in business successfully.

Follow Up
Follow up is a big issue, because so few people do it. Traditional marketing seems to have aimed at making
the sale, period, while guerrilla marketing is big on follow up. Guerrilla marketers say, You have to make a
sale and then follow up with that customer. In the United States nearly 70 percent of lost business is lost
due to apathy after the sale, not to poor service or shabby quality. It's lost due to customers being ignored
after the purchase. That's why guerrillas follow up with all of their customers and stay in touch with
customers once they become customers. Marketers can't wait for customers to come to them; they have to
constantly be proactive and be in touch with customers, any way they can-post cards, mailings, email,
faxes, telephone calls, anything-as long as the marketers are telling customers that they're important.

Create Partnerships
Traditional marketing says to scan the horizon for the competition and see what companies to obliterate;
guerrilla marketing says to forget the competition and scan the horizon for those businesses with which the
firm might cooperate. The reason is simple: Marketing partners lower the total marketing costs and the
increase the reach of both partners. So cooperation, not competition, is the name of the game for guerrillas.

Use You Marketing

Traditional marketing is me marketing. A prospect goes to a company's Web site and it says, Let me tell
you about me; let me tell you why my company is so big, why my company is so wonderful. Guerrilla
marketing is you marketing. It says, Here's how you can benefit from trying this new service; here's how
your life could be made better if you try this new product. It's all about you and not about me. Guerrilla
marketing is always oriented to the customer, not the company, because people are interested in
themselves more than in any company.

Help Customers Succeed

Traditional marketers have always been interested in taking and in seeing how much money they can get
from each of their customers. Guerrilla marketing is all about giving. Guerrilla marketers think about what can
they do to help their customers succeed at their goals, because the wider the conduit through which a
company's generosity flows, the wider the conduits will be when the profits flow back.

Use Marketing Combinations

Traditional marketing would have people believe that just advertising works or that just having a Web site
works, or that just direct mail works; guerrilla marketing says that's just not true. It's folly to believe that.
Advertising doesn't work alone anymore, neither does having a Web site, and certainly direct mail doesn't
work alone. So what does work? The only thing that works these days is marketing combinations, running
advertising and having a Web site and doing direct mail. All three will help each other work. The days of
single-weapon marketing have been relegated to the past; we're living in a time in which only marketing
combinations work. It makes me sad to see so many wonderful Web sites out there that there's no way to
know about unless someone happens upon them. If those companies marketed their sites in other media,
that marketing combination would make their Web sites successful.

Build Relationships
At the end of each month traditional marketers count up how much money they've brought in, while guerrilla
marketers count up how many new relationships they've made. Guerrilla marketers know that relationships
are vitally important, and the longer the relationships, the more sales they will eventually make and the more
profits they will eventually earn. So guerrillas cherish every relationship they make.

Embrace Technology
Traditional marketing never really made an allowance for technology, primarily because technology was too
complex, expensive, not quite powerful enough, and it was hard for the average small-business owner to
understand. That has all changed. The biggest change in technology is that it has become easy to use. So
guerrilla marketing requires that marketers be technocozy. If marketers are technophobic they should make
an appointment with their technoshrinks, because technophobia is fatal these days. And technology is more
inexpensive, more powerful, smaller, and far less complex than it used to be.

Target Individuals
Traditional marketing always aims its messages at groups, the larger the group the better. Guerrilla
marketing aims its message at individuals, just a few individuals at a time; if it's going to be a group, the
smaller the group the better.

Consider the Details

Traditional marketing only identifies the mass weapons of marketing like radio, television, magazines,
newspapers, and the Internet. As a result, many other marketing tools get overlooked, such as the way a
company's telephone is answered. That's an important part of marketing, because some of the most
important people on earth, customers and prospects, call on companies. What happens in traditional
marketing is that some of the marketing happens unintentionally, leaving at great risk whether the marketing
will be good or bad. Guerrilla marketers are aware of all the details of marketing, including the attire worn by
their companies' representatives and how their employees treat people on the telephone. Guerrilla marketing
is always intentional and nothing is left to chance.

Gain Consent
Traditional marketing has always aimed to make the sale with the marketing. Because there is so much
marketing going on today, it's hard to make a sale with one piece of marketing. So guerrilla marketing
attempts to gain consent from prospects to receive a company's marketing material. Once a business has
gained that consent, it markets only to those people. When a company does that, it's not wasting its money
by mailing to or marketing to disinterested people.

Increase the Marketing Arsenal

Finally, traditional marketers have always had a limited arsenal. As I said, they usually go for radio,
television, magazines, newspapers, direct mail, telemarketing, and Internet. Guerrilla marketing identifies
100 different marketing weapons (see Appendix 1) and 62 of them are free. The idea of guerrilla marketing is
to become aware of all 100 marketing weapons and to use as many as is feasible; to pay careful attention to
those weapons and eliminate those that aren't working. Companies that use guerrilla marketing are going to
find out that their marketing arsenal may consist of 20 different weapons, and of those 20 weapons maybe
half of them are free. So the size of the arsenal of the guerrilla marketer is much larger than the arsenal for
the traditional marketer.

Change Is In The Air

These 18 differences not only summarize the contrast between guerrilla marketing and traditional marketing,
but also point to the way marketing is heading. Take the Internet as an example. Over the past few years the
Internet has really begun to leave its infancy and become a pre-adolescent. People are beginning to learn
how to use the Internet and that has made a major change in marketing.
The other big change is the idea that there is so much marketing coming down the pike that it's difficult for
marketing to make its sale. That's why these days guerrillas go for consent from people and then market to
those people.
There is so much marketing in so many forms: radio, television, magazines, newspapers, billboards, online
banners, email. Because there is so much of it, almost all of it is interruption marketing. It's interrupting the
person's day. Hardly anybody watches television with the idea of watching the commercials, therefore when
the commercial comes on it's interrupting them. When people get an email about something they're not
interested in they're just going to delete it, because it's interrupting their day and the flow of their lives.
There is so much interruption marketing right now that marketers need to do something to stand apart from
it. The way to do that is to use some interruption marketing to get consent from people. Companies do that
by offering prospects a free brochure or by directing them to a Web site; then they get prospects' consent to
receive more marketing materials via email or via them requesting the free brochure. The majority will not give
their consent, and companies don't mind, because that means they can save money by not marketing to
those people anymore. But a small portion will give consent. Those people want to receive the marketing
materials, they're interested in what the company has to say and what it has to offer. Once they've given a
company their consent, its marketing budget gets much smaller. When a sale is made, it requires
momentum to be established, and when someone gives consent, that begins the momentum.
One other change that has had and is having a dramatic effect on marketing is the low cost of television
advertising, which has dropped significantly because of cable television, and the low cost of magazine
advertising, because there are more regional additions of magazines. Those low costs of major media make
it possible for every business to market in more arenas.
Those are ways that marketing has changed, but there's more to come. Technology is going to change
marketing significantly. It's going to make almost all marketing far more interactive. Consumers will even be
able to interact with television commercials. The more that consumers are allowed to be interactive, the more
guerrilla marketing will flourish. Guerrilla marketing will change as technology changes. Guerrilla marketers
do not resist change. In fact, they try to embrace change not for the sake of change but for the sake of
improvement.

It's Just Human Nature

Technology will continue to change, but human beings will continue to be pretty much the same as they
were a century ago. They still want a good value, they still want to be treated as individuals, they still like a
smile, they like eye contact, they like people using their names. Consequently, although guerrilla marketers
will embrace the technological changes that are pouring out of laboratories, they will always keep in mind
that human nature has not changed much.
Marketers need to understand what's first and foremost on every human being's mind: the person himself or
herself. People do not think about companies or products or services; they think about themselves. In the
back of their minds whenever they read a marketing message is, What's in it for me? What am I going to
get out of it? Although marketing has changed substantially in the past 100 years, especially the past 10
years, human nature really hasn't. The whole human race is selfish. Self-interest is at the basis of everything
when they're reading marketing messages. Marketers must speak to the people not about their companies
but about the people themselves.
This is one reason so many companies, even those with huge marketing budgets, aren't getting the
marketing right. Another significant reason is that marketing and advertising agencies have always been the
domain of young people and the market is not young people. The market is primarily older people. It's getting
older and the advertising people are getting younger. The people who create advertising worship at the shrine
of cleverness and cuteness. They're big on me too-ism and they try to copy other advertisers. This is a
major mistake. The people who create marketing these days seem to be embarrassed that it's marketing.
They don't want consumers to know that it's an ad that's running on television. They try to hide that with
celebrity endorsements or special effects or wonderful music; as a result they create fabulous films that are
ineffective advertising, ineffective marketing. Guerrilla marketing, on the other hand, is always going to be in
vogue, because it's able to grow with the times while keeping in mind that people don't.

Chapter 2: What Makes a Guerrilla?

Guerrillas are rarely born guerrillas, but can develop the 12 personality characteristics that make a guerrilla.
They are as follows:

Patience
It takes quite a while for a marketing message to penetrate a person's mind before they'll want to buy a
product, and to hang with a marketing program long enough to do that requires patience.
A research firm conducted a study to determine how many times a person must be exposed to a marketing
message to move them from total apathy to purchase readiness-when they're ready to buy. Amazingly, the
researchers came up with nine. A company has to penetrate a prospects' mind nine times, but for every
three times a company puts up a marketing message, prospects are not paying attention to two of them. So
if a business puts out the word three times, it has penetrated prospects' minds one time. Nothing happens
then. If it puts the word out six times it has penetrated the prospects' minds two times. All that happens then
is that they realize they've heard of that company before. The business puts out the word nine times and now
it's penetrated three times, and the prospects realize that they've heard of the company someplace before
and they know they've seen its marketing and they know unsuccessful companies do not continue
marketing. So now the firm puts the word out 12 times and has penetrated the prospects' minds four times.
This is when they start asking other people if they've heard of the company. After the business has put the
message out 15 times it has penetrated prospects' mind five times. This is when they decide to read every
word of the ad or to send for the free brochure or to access the firm's Web site.
Most small businesses that have put the word out 15 times figure that plan isn't working so they abandon it
and start from scratch. Guerrillas have to hang in there until a person's mind has been penetrated nine times.
This is why the first characteristic definitely is patience.
How long has the Green Giant been ho-ho-hoeing in his valley? For a long time, and it didn't work at first.
Consumers think that Green Giant is a big company, but it started as a little group of farmers in Minnesota
who needed a common name to market their products. So they named the group Green Giant. Nothing
happened at first, but eventually it caught on. This demonstrates that patience is number one.
Patience is sorely lacking among failed marketers, but patience seems to be present, for example, in the
people who created and supported the Marlboro cigarettes campaign, Come to where the flavor is. If they
were impatient they would have discontinued the Marlboro man after one year, but they had the patience to
hang in there and that's what made it work.
When I joined Leo Burnett Advertising in l963, Marlboro was perceived as a feminine brand and was the
31st-largest-selling cigarette in the country. Marlboro's brand managers asked if we could do anything about
it. We sent a couple of photographers and an art director to a friend's ranch in west Texas and told them to
do nothing but shoot photographs of working cowboys. While they were doing that, we invented a fictional
place called Marlboro country and came up with the theme line Come to where the flavor is. When the
photographers came back, we pasted the words on the pictures. We felt very good about that, so we went to
New York to show it to the Marlboro brand group. They liked it so much they agreed to invest $18 million the
first year.
We rented the music to the Magnificent Seven, because in those days it was legal to hock cigarettes on
radio and television. We had billboards, magazine ads, and newspaper ads all over the place making the
Marlboro man a cultural icon. At the end of the year we went back to get our high fives and our pats on the
back. Instead we discovered that this brand was still the 31st-largest- selling cigarette, and the focus group
interviews showed us that it was still perceived as a feminine brand. This gave us a reason to be alarmed.
We thought we were doing everything right. Everybody knew who the Marlboro man was, everybody knew
what Marlboro country was; the marketing was all over the place, and yet the brand hadn't budged.
Switch to today and Marlboro is the number-one-selling cigarette in America-number one to men, number
one to women-and the number-one-selling cigarette in the world. In fact, one out of every five cigarettes sold
in the world is Marlboro. But here's the shocking thing about it: Nothing has changed in the marketing. It's

still the Marlboro man, it's still cowboys, it's still Come to where the flavor is, it's still Marlboro country, and
there's no more radio or television. We learned then that the best way to make a marketing campaign
succeed is through patience and commitment to it. Marketers who are expecting an easy fix aren't going to
get it. If the Marlboro brand group had expected an easy fix, at the end of a year they would have fired us and
started something new. Instead, by being patient and by being committed to their campaign, Marlboro is now
known as the best-marketed brand in history.
Patience works for small firms as well. There are local companies, like European Sleepworks in Berkeley,
California, that do not have a budget anywhere near that of Marlboro, but they understand the concepts of
patience and commitment. European Sleepworks went from being just a little bed store to a store that now
outsells Sealy, Serta, and Simmons in the Berkeley community.

Imagination
Imagination doesn't mean dreaming up headlines or graphics. It means that marketers must realize, for
example, that when they send a direct mailing to customers, those customers are going to be assaulted
with a blizzard of direct mail and that people throw away most direct mailings they receive. So how are the
marketers going to get their letters opened? One way to do it is to spring for first-class postage, which is 34
cents. But instead of using a 34-cent stamp-because anybody can do that-the marketers should put 11
stamps on the envelope: a 7-cent stamp, two 4-cent stamps, three 3-cent stamps, and five 2-cent stamps.
When a person gets a letter with 11 stamps they're not going to ignore it. They're going to open that letter
first, because they've never seen a letter with 11 stamps. And they'll read the contents. Marketers need
imagination in that way, or in where they place a sign, or what they'll say on a banner.

Sensitivity
Guerrillas are sensitive to their marketplace, to the time of the year, to the time in history, and to what the
economy is like. They are sensitive to the place in which they are marketing, because marketing in rural
communities might be very different from marketing in urban communities. They're sensitive to what their
competition is doing. But mainly they're sensitive to what's on their customers' and prospects' minds right
now. And if they have that sensitivity, their marketing will be that much better.

Ego Strength
If a marketer embarks on a powerful marketing campaign and does everything right, the first people to tire of
it will be coworkers and associates and friends and family. These people will say, I'm getting bored with your
marketing. Don't you plan to change it soon? Marketers need to realize that these people know beans about
marketing. Give them a nice warm hug and send them on their way, because the prospects' minds have
been penetrated only two or three times and they're certainly not bored with the marketing. The reality is that
prospects' minds have to be penetrated nine times before a message takes hold and spurs them to action.
So marketers need an ego to stand up to the people who love them the most but give them the worst
marketing advice.

Aggressiveness
When guerrilla marketers learn that the average business invested 4 percent of sales in marketing in 2000
they say, Is that all? What would happen if we invest 8 percent? When they learn that there are 100
different marketing weapons and realize that they are only using five of them, they wonder which of the other
100 weapons they could use. So guerrilla marketers are aggressive in their spending and in their use of
marketing weapons. In early 2001, the average Inc. 500 company invested 11 percent of revenues in
marketing; aggressiveness is one of the things that got them there.

Flexibility
Guerrilla marketers embrace change. They do not try to ignore it in the hope that it will go away, because it
will not go away. Guerrilla marketers are open to change and they embrace it when it can improve their
companies.

Generosity
Guerrillas are generous people. Rather than thinking of what they can get from each customer, guerrilla
marketers try to think of what they can give to customers. They view marketing as an opportunity for them to
help their prospects succeed at whatever their goals are, whether it's losing weight or gaining money,
building a company or gaining friends, finding a mate or making their house look more beautiful. They have a
goal and the job in marketing is to educate them in how to succeed at it. Guerrillas try to think, What can I
do to help that person succeed at that goal?
In fact, my own career highlights have nothing to do with the promotions and the raises, and everything to do
with me watching clients I'm servicing enjoy increased profits and sales and growth. Nothing gives me more
excitement than when I write an ad or a television campaign for a customer or post something on their Web
site and find out that a lot of sales, a lot of traffic, and a lot of profit came from what I did. Tied for first place
with that is when people say, I've read your books, I've attended your lectures, and now my business is
worth $200 million dollars and I wanted to thank you for that. I write in order to get people to that level.
One of the best ways to help customers succeed is with information, so guerrillas are willing sharers of
information. We're living in the age of information, and one thing that guerrillas are generous with is
information on their Web sites or on brochures that they send out or in their newsletters or in plain giving
gifts. They are generous people by nature, because customers are attracted to companies that give things
away and repelled by companies that just try to take.

Energetic
Successful guerrillas are high-energy people. They have a proclivity to continue doing things to help their
marketing, and it's easy for them to take action because of their high energy level. They are blessed with
high energy, especially when it comes to marketing. They never feel burnt out, because they're so excited at
the concept of spreading the good word of their companies, their products, or their services. Their marketing
is high energy because they're high energy.

Knowledgeable
Sea gulls fly in constant circles in the sky looking for food, and when they find it they land and eat their food
and then they rise up in the sky again to fly in circles; that's their most powerful instinct. Guerrilla marketers
have one instinct that is just as strong, and that is the need for constant learning. They know that they are
living in an age in which it's no longer a matter of learning everything about anything. Instead it's learning one
thing after another, because information is changing and new information is thrust upon us constantly.
Guerrillas know that unless they are constantly learning, they are falling behind. That is why guerrilla
marketers are constantly learning.

Personable
Successful guerrilla marketers are people people. They like people; they enjoy knowing what makes people
tick, because it's people who will sell their products, it's people who will buy their products, it's people who
will make their products or services. It's really all about people. Guerrillas are intensely interested in other
people, and that makes it easy for them to craft marketing messages that are oriented to people rather than
to things or even ideas. And this is the key to making marketing motivating to customers-by talking about
the person, not about the company, and by letting prospects know how they would benefit by becoming
customers. Guerrilla marketers make marketing motivating by letting people know how their lives will improve
by using their products. They do that by talking about the person, not about the product.

Focused
Guerrillas have the ability to maintain their focus. They don't get distracted by opportunities to diversify and
introduce new brands and new lines. A lot of marketers who are not guerrillas get their companies up to a
certain size and then they start looking around for ways to diversify. Successful guerrillas are able to
maintain their focus. They are supermen when it comes to maintaining their focus. If marketers maintain their
focus there's a good chance that they're going to build confidence in the company in their prospects' minds
and consequently achieve their goals.

Proactive
A hallmark of guerrillas is their ability to take action. Marketers start with a brief plan. The hardest thing to do
is to breathe life into that plan by taking action. If marketers spend too much time planning, they'll never take
action on that plan. The idea is to have a brief marketing plan. A guerrilla marketing plan is only seven
sentences long. Once that's done, everything else is action, so marketers don't have to go through what we
call analysis paralysis. They have their plan and now is the time to commit to that plan and live up to it and
breathe life into it.
Marketing is not a theory, it's not something someone just learns. Unfortunately, a lot of marketers read
books, attend seminars, go online and get information, and they absorb all that information but they don't do
anything about it. They keep it inside of themselves. We say these people have one-way brains. They absorb
a lot of information but they never take action.
Guerrillas have two-way brains. They absorb the same amount of information from the same books and
seminars and Web sites, but they take action based on what they learn, because they know action is the
purpose of the exercise. Sitting and planning isn't going to bring any profits into a company's bank account,
taking action will.

Chapter 3: Attacking the Market

Once marketers understand the differences between traditional marketing and guerrilla marketing and take
the time to acquire the traits necessary to be a successful guerrilla marketer, it's time to plan and implement
their attack. This is a 10-step process.

Step One: Research

Before diving into a plan, guerrilla marketers must do their homework. They have to research their own
markets to see what competitors are out there. They need to research their product to determine what the
real benefits are, and talk to customers to find out what they perceive as the benefits. And they should
research which benefits are most meaningful to both customers and prospects. Guerrillas have to research
the media to see what media are available for their companies. For example, many marketers don't know the
low cost of television these days. Businesses can be on prime-time television for $20 or less for one
30-second television commercial in almost any major market because of cable and satellite television.
Research also includes examining the competition, because many companies aim for the same customers
and prospects. Guerrillas must research their industry to find trends and to see what are the newest things
that organizations are able to offer to their customers.
Most important, guerrilla marketers research their customers to find out what makes them tick-what
magazines they read, what newspapers they subscribe to, what TV shows they watch, where they go online,
what trade shows they go to, what is their family make up, what sports teams they follow. When marketers
start learning about their customers, then they know what to look for in their prospects. Marketers have to
conduct research into those prospects, because the prospects hopefully will become customers.
There are many ways to learn about customers. The best and the most inexpensive way is to prepare a
customer questionnaire that asks a lot of questions of the customers about themselves. Be sure to have a
paragraph at the top of the questionnaire that says, We're sorry to be asking you so many questions, but
the more we know about you the better service we can be to you. That makes sense to people, so they'll
take the time to answer questions. Ask questions about what TV and radio shows they watch, ask
questions about their families, their favorite sports teams, their kids' favorite activities at school. Marketers
who learn about their customers in that detail can, for example, send a Thanksgiving Day card that says,
Happy Thanksgiving and congratulations on your daughter being named to the cheerleading squad, instead
of sending a plain Christmas card like every other company. Guerrillas use the information they gain about
customers to create really personalized marketing messages. And by gaining those insights into customers
it's easier to find out where to find more people like them, people who match a target-customer profile.
Finally, guerrilla marketers must research the Internet. Markets are changing so rapidly that the only way to
find out about what's happening is by researching the Internet.
If marketers do all that research-their market, their product, the media, their competition, their industry, their
prospects and customers, the technology of the day, the benefits they offer, and the Internet-they're doing
the right kind of research to get their marketing plan off to a fast start.

Step Two: List the Benefits

It's now necessary to write a list of the benefits the company offers. Put a star next to those benefits that are
competitive advantages, because that's where marketers should really hang their marketing hats. It's
necessary to be clear on the benefits and on the competitive advantages.

Step Three: Select the Weapons

Next, marketers must select the weapons that they're going to use. They may select a lot of weapons, but
the amount should not be overwhelming, because it's necessary to take those weapons and put them in
priority order and put a date next to each one of them. This creates a commitment to the date by which each
weapon will be launched. And put a person's name with each weapon, because somebody's going to be in
charge of launching that weapon-maybe the ad agency, maybe the marketer herself, maybe the director of
marketing.

Step Four: Create a Plan

The next, crucial step is planning. Why? Why is a road map necessary to someone making a cross-country
trip? And why are navigation aids necessary to people making long flights? They help propel them toward
their goals. A marketing plan does the same thing. It lets marketers know what their goals are and then
directs them toward those goals. Marketers who start without a plan will probably head off in the wrong
direction and may lose sight of their goals as they continue on. A marketing plan serves as a road map to
their goals. It forces marketers to focus on what their marketing should do.
It's also necessary for guerrillas to set milestones at the start of a campaign. It's important for marketers to
quantify their goals in order to quantify how many and what kind of responses they want, what kind of profits
they need, what kind of sales, and how fast turnover has to be. Marketers must quantify those things with
milestones in writing. It's not enough to say, We'll build our business this year. Instead marketers should
say, We will build our business to achieve an 11 percent growth in profits within the end of one year. That
way they're much better equipped to keep track of how well they're doing. Marketers need to put their
milestones in the form of specific numbers.
Although planning is vital, the final marketing plan should be brief. One of the reasons for the failure of
businesses, especially small businesses, is either failure to start with a plan or having a plan that's so
complicated it's hard to follow. A guerrilla marketing plan is only seven sentences long:
1. The first sentence tells the specific purpose of the marketing itself, and it ought to be a short
sentence. This is the best way to start any marketing plan. Maybe the purpose is to get people to
send for a free video, or to get them to visit a Web site or come to a store or call an 800 number.
2. The second sentence tells the benefits the marketing will stress to achieve the company's
purpose. For example, if people don't buy this shampoo, they won't have good-looking hair. And
it's important to stress the benefits in a short sentence, because marketers shouldn't put out all
the benefits, just the main benefits.
3. The third sentence tells the target audience. Sometimes there may be more than one target
audience, but again that's a short sentence. The target audience may be bigger when it's a large
business that may be able to use even more marketing weapons and use them more heavily than
a traditional guerrilla with a limited budget. Large companies can aim for a larger niche in the
marketplace; they can't operate with small niches. They need larger niches, bigger chunks of
humanity. Guerrillas with small businesses can operate successfully with a small niche; they
have more warmth and personal contact.
4. The fourth sentence is the only long sentence, and should be written as a list. It enumerates the
marketing weapons that the marketer plans use. The best approach is to start out with a long list
and try a lot of weapons and see which ones are proven in action.
5. The fifth sentence tells the company's niche in the marketplace, what it stands for. When people
hear the name of a company, what's the first thing that enters their minds? That is the niche, and
that should be stated in writing in the marketing plan.
6. The sixth sentence tells the firm's identity, its personality- not its image, because an image is
something phony. An identity is what a company really is. All companies have a personality, and
the best thing to do is put it in writing in the marketing plan. Then that personality will come
shining through in all of the firm's other marketing materials.
7. The seventh sentence tells the marketing budget. Guerrillas should express their marketing
budget as a percentage of their projected gross sales, not their previous year's sales, because
then they're operating in the status quo. If they want to operate in growth mode they make it a
percentage of their projected gross sales in the coming year.
The average American business invests 4 percent of gross sales in marketing. Fifty percent of companies go
out of business within five years, so guerrilla marketers don't want to do things the way the average business
does. Guerrillas don't try to do anything that average businesses do. They try to rise above the average, so
they're willing to invest more than 4 percent of their projected gross sales in marketing. Ten percent is a
good place to start. Once marketers get that 10 percent, they're building share of mind. As they build share
of mind that percentage can drop, because total dollars will grow but the amount of money put into marketing
can stay the same. As a result, the percent guerrilla marketers invest in marketing decreases each year,
even though their profits increase.

But the marketing budget for a small business would be very different from that of a large firm. Although the
percentage may be the same, the absolute dollar expenditure would be much larger on the part of a large
company. Big businesses need to do that to support their overhead, but most guerrilla companies are lean
machines and don't have as large an overhead.
That's all guerrilla marketers really need to get going with their plan. They can have 200 or 300 pages of
documentation later on, but the marketing plan should start with a brief seven-sentence strategy. This is true
whether the plan is for a small business or a huge conglomerate. Each one will have its own purpose. They'll
each have their own specific benefits. Other than that, the marketing of big and small businesses is pretty
much alike. In fact, Proctor & Gamble is as big and as sophisticated a marketing company as anyone will
ever find, but its marketers use three-to five-sentence marketing plans to begin. They may have a lot of
documentation later, but they start with simple plans that are easy to understand and easy to follow.

Step Five: Build a Calendar

Once the plan is written, it's time to make a guerrilla marketing calendar on which marketers should project
out for one year what they're going to be doing month by month when it comes to marketing. The marketing
calendar lists five things: the months of the year, the thrust of the marketing for each month, the media being
used each month, how much money will be invested in marketing each month, and a grade for each month.
The grades should be A, B, C, D or F, so that the second year's marketing calendar eliminates those
months that only got C's, D's, or F's. Guerrillas only use those that get A's and B's. The third marketing
calendar should have only things that got an A the year before.
One important thing to remember is to never cut back on marketing in a down cycle. This is a wonderful time
to continue marketing and win over a lot of customers who ordinarily would not have known about the
company. Marketers can only do this properly if they have a marketing calendar from the start that tells them
when they are going to be doing their marketing, and based on the history of their businesses, they will know
when the up periods and down periods are. It's a huge mistake to cut back during a down period.

Step Six: Find Fusion Partners

The next step is finding fusion-marketing partners. These are businesses that can share the marketing
burden with a company; firms that have the same kind of standards, the same kind of prospects. Business
Week calls it cooperative marketing, other people call it co-marketing, guerrillas call it fusion marketing.
Fusion marketing partners will help marketers spread the word and reduce their marketing costs.

Step Seven: Launch the Attack

Now it's time to launch the marketing attack. The way to launch it is in slow motion. Don't unleash all of the
marketing weapons at once. Launch them one at a time. Guerrillas want to feel comfortable financially that
they're not spending too much and emotionally that they don't have too many balls in the air when they
launch that attack. My average clients take 18 months to launch a full-scale guerrilla marketing attack. The
launching doesn't take place until after those first six steps have been accomplished.

Step Eight: Maintain the Attack

Here's where it gets hard. More money is lost in maintaining the attack than during any other step. It's easy
to do the first six steps, but to maintain the attack is difficult, because people expect instant results and
marketing does not in most cases deliver instant results. That's why marketers must be patient and maintain
their attack.
Marketing plans should be for 10 years, and every six months marketers should reevaluate them to see if
they have to make any changes.
If marketers make a marketing plan that's good for one year, they're probably going to make changes to it
next year. The correct way for guerrillas to plan is backward. They start with their goal, and then they put in
the steps to help them achieve that goal. Therefore, guerrilla marketing means keeping it simple and keeping
it brief, because other people in their company are going to read the marketing plan and guerrilla marketers
want to get those people on their wavelength. Those people will be able to do that if they read a simple, clear
marketing plan.
As good as that plan may be, marketers must think, This is something that's going to guide me for the next
three or five or 10 years. If marketers think in those terms, it's easier to commit to it. Yet, it's necessary to
reevaluate a marketing plan every six months to see if there's any tweaking that has to be done. Ideally,
guerrillas will be able to make little tweaks and little changes with no major alterations. I tell my clients when
they write a marketing plan, You have to promise to live by this plan for the next three years. Although they
swallow hard when I tell them that, they find at the end of the year, after they've made a couple of minor
changes, it's easier to go with a plan that's created for three years or five years or longer. Ten years is what
marketers should have in mind, because if they have a marketing plan that they think will guide their efforts
for the next 10 years, it will be much easier to commit to that plan. Especially in light of the length of time it
takes for marketing plans to produce significant results.
I tell my clients that if they do everything right they probably won't see any results from their marketing for
the first three months and then they'll see definite results at the end of six months and every month
thereafter their profits should continue climbing. A company can't penetrate a person's mind nine times in a
short period of time. As a result, guerrilla marketers know it's going to take time. They're not quick to
abandon their marketing because it didn't do something the first 30 days or the first 60 days; it hardly ever
does.
When most people see a product or a commercial or a marketing message or an email for something they
like they're not going to buy it that day. They're going to think about it, they're going to talk to other people
about it, they're going to want to see if that company is here to stay. So most people are in the wait-and-see
category versus the buy-right-now category. Because of the vast amount of people in the wait-and-see
category, marketing takes a while to take hold. If it happens in three months you're pretty darn lucky, and if
it doesn't happen after six months then you're probably doing something wrong. But it does take time and it
rarely happens instantly unless there is a very special time-dated offer (e.g. You must take advantage of this
within the next 15 days or this price will be withdrawn). Marketers may get action from an offer like that, but
they can only do that once in a while.

Step Nine: Keep Track

The ninth step is to keep careful track, because guerrillas are going to use a large number of marketing
weapons. Some weapons are going to hit the center of the bull's eye, some are going to miss the target
entirely. Finding out from each customer what caused them to buy will show which marketing weapons are
working and which aren't. So keeping track is crucial .

Step Ten: Make Improvements

Finally, start to improve in all areas. Improve the message, improve the media, improve the budget-which
may mean lowering it-and improve the results achieved from the marketing.
Guerrillas who go through those 10 steps will probably succeed on the marketing front. And guerrillas should
start marketing as soon as they have a marketing plan, a follow-up plan, and a referral plan, and as soon as
all of their employees are able to read those plans and get on that wavelength. And even more important is
that once guerrillas start marketing, they realize that a marketing attack is not something that they do once
in a while. It's a never-ending process. A process, not an event, and it constantly goes on. Once a company
begins marketing it really should never stop. Too many people view marketing as an event, as something
that we do now and then or we do when we feel like it or when the economy is right. The reality is, it should
always be going on all the time.

Tweaking your Marketing

Usually, the best and most successful marketing is not created with the first ad or the first direct mail piece.
Instead, it's the product of improvements made with minor but crucial changes in details, called tweaking.
Tweaking is a significant part of steps eight and ten of launching and implementing a marketing attack.
Embracing the concept of tweaking will dramatically improve the results guerrillas gain from any marketing
program, but especially a direct marketing campaign. Great campaigns don't usually get fired from a cannon
to hit the center of the target. Instead, they come close to the target and it's tweaking that moves them to
the bull's eye.
Tweaking adds firepower to messages.
Tweaking means devoting energy to finding an even better mailing list, an even more cogent message for an
envelope or mail subject line, a still better way to state a message. The more research marketers continue
to do, the more they'll learn what customers love about their companies-and about their competition.
The best tweakers are the experimenters. Although they may have a winning direct response campaign off
and running, they are constantly testing other markets, other messages, other direct marketing methods,
tweaking here and there to build their marketing muscle.
Even though repetition is vital for a marketing message to take hold, tweaking can help improve the impact of
the message. Take direct marketing as an example. Great results rarely happen instantly in marketing, and
that includes direct marketing campaigns. Even the best have to be tweaked or they atrophy with time. The
sense of urgency that is so necessary for direct marketers becomes less immediate with repetition. Where
repetition is crucial for mass marketing to take hold, it is of lesser importance in direct marketing. Certainly,
offers may be repeated, but the line marketers don't want to cross is a lot closer than they think in this
arena.
Most guerrillas play an endless game of increasing not only their response rates, but more important, their
profits, with each marketing effort they make. Their primary ally is not their budget but their desire to tweak,
to improve, to break records. They are not defeated by failures in their experimentation, merely enlightened.
Guerrillas know that records are established to break, not to serve as a permanent standard. That means
change is part of the game in order to steadily increase profits. It means new records are being established
on a regular basis, not because of major new marketing campaigns, but because of minor improvements on
a consistent basis.
Customers are changing and guerrillas are keeping abreast of their new wants and needs, their expectations
and hopes. What worked like a miracle last year may be a total loser this year. That direct mail campaign
that generated so much profit for one firm last year is being surpassed considerably by its Web site this
year. But these marvelous things aren't going to happen because of a flash of genius. Instead, they'll happen
because of tweaking and experimentation.
One of the rewards of tweaking is that marketing gets noticed, especially in a society besieged with direct
response marketing. Guerrillas are fully aware of the proliferation of direct response marketing in the world
today. They see it on their computer monitors, in their mailboxes, on their telephones, on radio, on
television, on signs, and in the magazines and newspapers they read. Their awareness gives them the
insight that it is more difficult than ever for their snowflake to be noticed in the blizzard. There are countless
snowflakes out there, each one enticing and insisting on attention, money, time, and a meeting of the minds.
How can guerrillas make their snowflake the one that starts the avalanche of thought that leads to a sale?
Guerrillas begin to answer this from the inside of their prospects' minds. What do they read or watch? What
are their foremost interests? It's certain that they do not respond to direct response offers, but that they do
respond to what captivates their interest. So marketers must create an offer that is so fascinating to
prospects that they are truly enticed. That offer should be more about them than about the product or
service. If it looks like all the other direct response pleas, it will be tossed or ignored just as they are. It must
stand apart from the other offers being made to them on a non-stop basis. It must be unique to their eye.

Guerrillas accomplish this by using alternate modes of delivery, unique graphics and colors, precision timing,
brutal honesty, emotionally-charged verbiage, and a tangible feeling of one-toone communicating. They never
waste the time of their prospects and never try to say everything to everybody, but concentrate instead on
saying something to somebody.
Their tweaking includes studying what their competition is doing and then doing it better. They research what
marketing tactics are working for others and then adapt these tactics to their own need. They experiment
with technology. They learn from customers exactly what motivated them to become customers. Research
and patience, along with serious tweaking, help their snowflakes weather the storm.

Chapter 4: Everyone is a Marketer

Overview
An integral part of successful guerrilla marketing is getting buying from everyone in the company. This
means that everyone in the company should be involved in marketing. Everybody is in the marketing
department, not just the people whose titles have marketing in them, like marketing director or vice president
of marketing. The person who answers the phone at a store or office is part of marketing. Every employee
who customers have any contact with is part of its marketing team and they should know that. They should
be exposed to the firm's marketing plan, so they can get on the same wavelength. The best companies tell
all their employees that they're all members of the company's marketing team.
This is the case whether the company has one employee or 10,000. The marketing is not really too different.
A company still needs a marketing plan, and still needs commitment to marketing. The difference is that in a
company with one person that person has total control over what she's going to say to all of her customers;
in a large firm the marketer or president or CEO has to be sure that everybody sees things the way he does.
That's why a company with solid marketing has one person in charge of the marketing. That person is called
the designated guerrilla. The designated guerrilla could be a person inside the company, it could be the
director of marketing, or it could be an outside ad agency or consultant. But the best designated guerrilla on
earth is the person who runs the company, the CEO, because he can delegate many functions but he can't
delegate the passion and the vision that he feels. And although everybody is a member of a firm's marketing
team, the company president or CEO should be in charge of all marketing.

The Power of Enthusiasm

When the president or CEO is in charge of marketing, it can significantly alter the level of enthusiasm for the
company and its marketing. Enthusiasm, which is crucial to successful marketing, starts at the top. The
person who's running the marketing show or running the company has to be blessed with this enthusiasm.
It's best expressed by the word passion. If people don't feel passion for their companies, they had better go
into another line of work, because passion fuels enthusiasm and enthusiasm fuels the firepower of
marketing. If someone is an enthusiastic leader, that enthusiasm is contagious. It will spread throughout an
organization. It's important that the person who speaks to all the employees convey this enthusiasm and
passion at all times, because that's something that spreads from the leader to the employees and from the
employees to the customers.
Enthusiasm is one of the most important attitudes that is necessary for a guerrilla. The way for marketers to
infuse their employees with it is to demonstrate it themselves: If the top marketing executive or the CEO or
the president is enthusiastic, the employees are going to become enthusiastic; if the marketer or CEO or
president is not, no matter what the employees are like, they probably won't be enthusiastic.
And whether the company has one employee or 10,000, it's also necessary to instill confidence in the
company in their minds. One of the best ways to do so, in addition to enthusiasm from top executives, is
through advertising. If employees see the firm's commercials on television, or if they see its ad in a
magazine, that's going to make them more confident in the company and more enthusiastic about working
for it. They may or may not visit its Web site, but if they're watching TV and they see the company's
commercial, it's going to increase their enthusiasm level and pride in the company.
Many marketers select their media not only based on what their prospects and customers will see but on
what their employees will see. They do this because when employees see their employer in a marketing
forum, they're going to pay close attention and they're going to feel a sense of pride in the company and that
will help fuel their enthusiasm.

Involve Employees in Marketing

Once guerrillas have instilled that enthusiasm, it's necessary to prepare company employees to
communicate the marketing message. There are a few ways to do this. One is to create a marketing plan.
As I mentioned in Chapter 2, a guerrilla marketing plan is only seven sentences long. The two main reasons
it is so short are that it forces marketers to focus when they're creating it, and if it's short every member of
an organization will be able to read and understand it-and it won't put them to sleep because it's pages and
pages long. If marketers involve employees in the company's marketing plan and ask them for feedback
they'll feel even more involved with the firm and with its marketing. All company owners should involve their
employees in their marketing by saying, This is our marketing plan. What do you think of it? Do you have
anything to add? Do you think we're doing anything wrong? If employees feel that they're contributing,
they're going to take a much more active role in helping to market their companies.
One more thing: All employees should see the firm's ads or read its direct mail letters or see its
commercials before they run, so they can feel part of the inside group, and they can feel they're really
involved in marketing. If they are exposed to these materials before they run, they'll feel that sense of inner
circle.
Again, this makes it easier to instill in employees that no matter what their job, they are on the marketing
team. And it will make them more understanding when the marketer or CEO or president reminds them that
whatever their job title and whatever their responsibilities are the company will be judged by the employees
and their actions.
Regardless of what other kinds of marketing businesses do, those touch points, those moments of truth
when there is contact between a customer and a member of a company, to that customer that member of
the company is the company. Therefore employees must realize that they can help propel their companies
forward by rendering simple, friendly service. On the other hand, if they are busy or in a bad mood, that's
going to reflect on the company as well. Customers are going to think that's what the company is like.

Building Customer Confidence

Employee enthusiasm ties in strongly with gaining customers' confidence.
There are five reasons people patronize a business. The number five reason is price. Selection is fourth,
service is third, quality is second, and the number one winner is that people patronize businesses in which
they're confident. The way guerrillas make them confident is by committing to a marketing campaign, so
customers can sense that commitment. And that commitment can be best demonstrated if everyone in the
organization is onboard with the marketing. It means being consistent with marketing messages; when
customers see that marketers are consistent that's going to confirm that the marketers are sure of
themselves. That will make customers sure of the marketers. And if marketers are patient, and hang in there
with that commitment and that patience, it will also make customers more confident.
The more times customers see a company's marketing and the more they see it's not really changing much,
the more confident they will be in that company. It's all a matter of credibility. If a business doesn't have
credibility it's going to have an uphill battle; if it has credibility, that paves the path to a sale. Guerrillas gain
credibility by being consistent, by marketing in places where their prospects are paying
attention-magazines, newspapers, whatever TV shows they watch.
The quality of the materials guerrillas use for marketing also will either build or undermine customers'
confidence. That means, if a marketer is going to create a brochure it better be a good- looking brochure. It
better not have any typos or misspelled words, it better not be inexpensively produced. The cheapness
shows, and that's going to undermine the marketer's credibility.
So aim for credibility with marketing, and the credibility automatically leads to confidence, and time gives
customers confidence. No matter how good a message is, if people see it just once it's going to be hard for
them to be confident in the offering. But if they see a company's identity conveyed over a period of time, it
will give that business credibility and it will give customers confidence.

The Art of Follow-Up

Creating confidence is a powerful way to build long-term relationships with customers. So is the commitment
demonstrated by good follow-up.
One of the keys to follow-up is listening. Guerrillas master the art of listening. When they send out customer
questionnaires, instead of just asking yes-or-no questions they also ask, What are the three things you like
best about our company? What three suggestions would you have for us to improve?
When marketers involve their customers by asking them questions like that, and listen to their answers and
try to act on that information, those marketers are setting up a long-term relationship. When guerrillas follow
up with customers, staying in touch with them on a regular basis via a newsletter or direct mail or telephone
calls or personal visits, it's that constancy of contact that builds a long-term relationship.
It's the realization that the same thing that makes marriage work is what makes marketing work, and that's
commitment. It's the single key to successful marketing: commitment and being able to maintain a
marketing program. The thing that gets in the way of that is false expectations, because even the best
marketing doesn't work instantly. Marlboro, which is now known as the best-marketed brand in history, was
the 31st-largest-selling cigarette brand at the beginning of 1961. One year and $18 million later it was still
the 31st-largest-selling cigarette brand. Switch to 2001 and Marlboro is the number-one-selling cigarette
brand in the world and it hasn't changed anything in its marketing. It's still cowboys, it's still Marlboro
country, it's still Come to where the flavor is. The hero of that campaign is not any of the people who
created it but the president of Philip Morris, who understood the value of commitment.
I'll use a new word: cathexis, the degree of emotional involvement a person feels with a brand. Cigarettes
have a very high cathexis brand. Many people define themselves by the kind of cigarette they smoke, it
takes a long time to get them to switch brands. But shampoo, for example, is a very low cathexis brand. The
majority of women in America will switch shampoo several times during the course of the year, because they
don't feel any emotional involvement with their shampoo. They're looking for new things all the time. If a new
shampoo comes out and makes a new claim, many people-men and women alike-will be willing to try it.
How long it takes for marketing to work depends on the cathexis of the current customers. If they're
emotionally attached, it's going to be a while to get them to switch. People who drive Chevrolets drive
Chevrolets all their lives, because a car is something that people have an emotional attachment to. If not,
everybody would drive Yugos.
So guerrillas need commitment, not only to their marketing plans but also to all of their existing customers.
Customers will sense that commitment, they'll sense the fact that the marketers are staying in touch with
them. The marketers are not ignoring them, they're providing those customers with good, valuable
information.
If guerrilla marketers do that, then customers are going to find out that the marketers have begun a long-term
relationship. And the more marketers stay in touch with customers, the more that relationship will last.

Building a Brand that Sticks

The longer the relationship lasts, the more solid the brand identity becomes in the customers' minds. The
key word to remember is cohesion, which means that once marketers decide what their brands should be,
whether it's conveyed by a visual format or a logo or a theme line, that has to be present in all of the firm's
marketing materials. In many companies one person creates direct mail letters and another person writes
the brochures and somebody else does the Web site. There should be cohesion, everybody should be
pulling in the same direction using that same visual format and company identity, the same theme line, the
same logo. If all of a company's marketing materials carry the same basic message, that will start
establishing a brand over time. The more cohesive the marketing is, the more firmly entrenched the brand
becomes.
People don't do this. Instead they delegate different functions to different people. That's why I say if
everybody reads a company's marketing plan they're all going to be pulling in the same direction rather than
in different directions. In branding the key is not only cohesion but also repetition of a company's name and
what its primary benefits are-in all media, regardless of how the firm is attempting to do its marketing.
Whether it's online or offline, as long as there's the repetition and cohesion, a brand will begin to become
established.

Beware Bad Marketing

Buy-in. Cohesion. Commitment. These are all vital, but will mean little without a solid marketing message.
The best piece of advice I ever received during my career was to forget the advertising and the marketing and
to make the product or the service interesting. By doing that I've saved a lot of money for my clients and
found the correct solutions to their problems. Most marketers seem to focus on making the marketing or the
advertising interesting, and that's not what it's about. It's about making the product or service interesting.
When I was given that advice in 1963, by my boss, Leo Burnett-who was my idol-it made me realize the
correct way to go about any marketing assignment.
This relates directly to the role creativity plays in marketing. Creativity is a misunderstood word. Some
marketers think creativity means getting awards and getting pats on the back and having people tell them
how clever their commercials are. But creativity in the arts is one thing and creativity in the markets is
something totally different. Creativity in the arts is supposed to give self-expression to the artist and
fulfillment to the viewers. That's fine for the fine arts, but when it comes to creativity in marketing the only
creativity is that which turns a profit for a company.
During the 1999 Super Bowl there were a couple of great commercials, one by Monster.com and one by
HotJobs.com. The commercials were clever and they generated tremendous response the next day for those
companies. As a result, in the 2000 Super Bowl a host of other dot-com companies jumped on that
bandwagon and tried to make clever commercials. Their commercials were so clever that viewers didn't know
what companies were running them. The advertising was too wrapped up in its own cleverness to let viewers
know what company it was and why they should be purchasing from that firm.
My wife and I play a game while we're watching television to figure out who the heck a commercial is for. We
just can't figure it out. Sometimes you find out in the last three seconds, but frequently you never find out. If
you do hear their name, you don't know what they make. Dot-com companies are playing follow the leader
right over the cliff, because they're thinking that marketing should be clever. They don't realize that it should
be motivating and it should create desire within the minds of the prospects.
Innovation is also something that guerrillas are wary of, because a lot of innovation isn't ready for prime time
yet and a lot of customers aren't ready for new innovations yet. The idea is to not be old-fashioned but to be
careful against being avant-garde. What guerrillas want to be is in the same place their customers are, using
technology that matches theirs, using creativity that they understand and that will help the guerrilla's
company generate a profit.

The Six Worst Marketing Mistakes

There are six major mistakes that companies are making in their marketing:

Marketing to the Wrong Target

Businesses market more to non-customers than they do to customers. They ignore their customers and
keep marketing to prospects, while in reality they should be marketing more to their customers. Since it
costs one sixth as much to sell something to an existing customer than it does to sell that same thing to a
new person, it makes sense to market more to current customers, and to get follow-up sales and referral
business.

Using Too Much Vampire Marketing

Vampire marketing is marketing that uses humor or special effects or cleverness that gets in the way of the
message. Companies are using too much of it. People tend to remember the most clever part of a marketing
message; businesses prefer people to remember their offer, to remember why they should be buying what it
is that the firm is selling. Vampire marketing sucks attention away from the main offer. People will remember
it was a joke, but they don't remember the offer.
These days special effects are so easy to do with television that many marketers get carried away and try to
become Steven Spielberg. In reality they're not Steven Spielberg, they're marketers. Instead of using special
effects, guerrillas use the brute force of a really good idea to put across their message.

Overemphasizing the Internet

Some marketers think that having a Web site will do the job for them. The reality is that Internet and online
marketing helps with the job, but it does not do the job.

Failure to Experiment and Test

Another big mistake is failure to experiment and test. Marketers may not get it right the first time. They may
want to spend $1,000 in print advertising, but they might have to spend that $1,000 dollars in different places
first, to find out what tool or medium they should use. Guerrillas must experiment and they must test their
marketing ideas, so they know what to commit to. Once they get that campaign, it's going to be tested to
keep making changes. Guerrillas try to stick with one campaign and modify it as necessary. This saves their
companies money and it gives the campaign a chance to take root and flourish.

Not Committing to a Campaign

Far and away, the biggest mistake that marketers make is failure to stick with one campaign. They expect
instant results from their marketing, and if they don't get it-even though they might have a wonderful plan, a
wonderful program, a marvelous theme line, and great offers-people might not respond immediately. As a
result the marketers assume they are doing everything wrong and start from scratch.

Expecting Immediate Results

The graveyards of marketing are littered with wonderful campaigns that were abandoned too soon. That is a
great cost of money to the companies that abandoned them. One of the reasons people think marketing
doesn't work is because they don't give it a chance to take hold. They have unrealistic expectations and
expect marketing to work instantly. If it doesn't, they figure they're doing everything wrong, so they abandon
it. Marketing doesn't usually work right off the bat. In real life marketing takes a while to work.

Chapter 5: Media Matters

An integral part of any successful guerrilla marketing campaign is choosing the right media in which to
deliver the message. Surprising to some marketers, deciding which media are appropriate is not really about
a company's competitive advantage or its products' benefits as much as what that firm's message is. Each
of the media have a specific power, and a guerrilla's job is to tap in to the power of that specific media.
Here is a list of major media (in alphabetical order) and the strengths and drawbacks of each:

Billboards
The only purpose of a billboard is to remind people where they've seen a company before and to remind them
of what else that firm is saying and doing. Businesses can't do too much of a selling job on billboards. Many
traditional marketers expect too much of billboards and try to put too much information on them. It's hard to
make a sale just with billboards. They can't do the whole selling job, but they can remind people of where
they've heard of a company before and how they can benefit from doing business with that firm.

Brochures
The strength of brochures is their ability to give details. But marketers need to be careful of what details they
include. Too often companies make a fair investment producing good brochures, only to find that they're
outdated in a short time. Don't dare say anything like, Our company is four years old, because next year
when the firm is five years old it will need a new brochure. Instead, say, Our company was founded in 1996,
because that's always going to be true. Don't show any pictures of employees in a brochure, because next
week one of them could be picked up for being a serial killer. Brochures must be created to be as timeless
as possible, so it's not necessary to keep producing new ones.

Classifieds
Nobody reads the classified ads unless they're looking for a specific thing, so information is the power there.
Detailed information is what people are looking for in a classified ad. The cost of classified ads is low, but so
is the readership. Still, only real life prospects read the classified sections, so companies don't have to
spend a fortune gaining attention.

Direct Mail
The power of direct mail is urgency. Direct mail works much better if a business has an offer that expires
within a short time. Adding the element of urgency to direct mail will garner a much better response.
The disadvantage of direct mail is that it didn't earn the title junk mail by accident. Much of it is junky.
Consequently, it is hard to get customers to open direct mail envelopes. So one of the most important things
in direct mail is the envelope. Marketers must get past that first barrier. That's why postcard mailings are so
good, because there's no envelope.

Fliers
The power of fliers is economy. They can be created, produced, and distributed for hardly any money, and
they frequently can deliver instant results. The only disadvantage with fliers is that if they're poorly produced
they will undermine the company's credibility.

Internet
The greatest power of the Internet-and this is something that makes the Internet different from all the other
media-is interactivity. One disadvantage of the Internet is that many marketers fail to capitalize on this
interactivity, because they treat their Web sites like a television commercial. But that's not what it's like.
Interactivity is what the Internet is about: Get people's attention and then inform them and try to involve them
and answer their questions. Let them register to get a free newsletter and take advantage of the interactivity
of the Internet.
Most people use the Internet because of speed and convenience. Too many marketers take too long before
responding to emails or fail to update their sites on a regular basis; they get in the way of the speed, which
is what attracted people to the Web site in the first place.

Magazines
The greatest power of magazines is credibility. Readers will attach to the advertiser the same credibility that
they associate with the magazine. For businesses that need credibility, magazine ads are one of the best
ways to get it. But because of the high cost of consumer magazines, I suggest running one full- page ad in a
regional edition of a national magazine, then using the reprints forever. When people see As advertised in
Time magazine, they tend to think lofty thoughts about that advertiser. And never forget that you're known
by the company you keep. That means, if a small business advertises in Time it will be keeping company
with IBM, AT&T, Microsoft, and the other huge names that run regular ads in that magazine. Guerrillas also
can run ads regularly in business or trade magazines, but consumer magazines are just too pricey for
smaller companies.

Newspapers
The power of the newspaper is the news. Marketers who decided that the best marketing medium for their
company is the newspaper need to create marketing that's newsy, because that's what people read
newspapers for.
Although it's possible to generate a great deal of business by running one large newspaper ad for, say, a
sale, one big ad is really not enough. It will help promote that sale, but generally guerrillas don't always want
to have sales. That attracts the worst kind of customers, ones who are attracted to price only, and that
means a diminishment of profits. So if a company is in a newspaper, it should be running on a regular basis.
The ads don't necessarily have to be big, but they should run on a regular basis.
There is a great deal of competition in the newspaper business, there are many other companies that are
advertising; the competition isn't just a firm's direct competitors but everybody who advertises.

Radio
Radio's greatest power is intimacy. Radio is usually a one-onone situation; frequently it's just a person in
their car driving and listening to the radio. So when a company is talking to them it's one on one. Don't yell at
them, just whisper in their ear, because they're paying attention.
Remember, though, that the key to success with radio is the frequency of the advertising. If a company
doesn't run its ads frequently enough, the advertising won't work.

Signs
The power of signs is that they generate impulse reactions. When customers see a company's sign they
should remember all of its other marketing materials. Seventy-four percent of all purchase decisions are
made right at the place of purchase, because signs generated the impulse to purchase.
One of the disadvantages of signs is that they stand alone and often don't connect with a firm's other
marketing. Unless the signs connect with the company's other marketing, they probably won't work very
well.

Telemarketing
The power of telemarketing is the rapport. Only in telemarketing can a business establish a two-way rapport
immediately, via the telephone. It's impossible to do that with most other media.
Unfortunately, telemarketing has a bad reputation. This is mostly because there's so much of it going on
these days and telemarketers seem to call at times that are convenient for them but inconvenient for
prospects and customers. For example, telemarketers have learned that the best time to call is around
dinnertime, and that upsets a whole lot of people.

Television
Television's greatest power-and everybody who does television knows this, but amazingly a lot of other
marketers don't seem to know this-is the ability to demonstrate. Businesses can't demonstrate a product as
well in any other media as they can on television.
But with television the ads have to be on a lot, because not a lot is not enough. A company can run one
newspaper ad for a sale it's having and might get a great deal of business because of that one ad. But if that
firm runs one television commercial, almost no matter what it does, it's not going to work. Businesses that
advertise on TV need to have a schedule in which the ads are running several times a day, several days a
week, several weeks a month on a regular basis. Like radio, with television it's necessary to have that
frequency, and unless companies have the money to afford to be on enough times, TV advertising won't work
for them.
Another disadvantage with television is that special effects are so easy and inexpensive that some marketers
get carried away with them. Most people mute the television set when the commercial comes on, which
means it's necessary to tell the story visually. If the ad is not telling the story visually, it's not telling the
story. A good way to prove that a commercial is good is to see it with the sound off before it runs. If it tells
the story with the sound off, it means the marketers who created it are doing a good job.

Trade Shows
Trade shows are attended by people in a buying mood. A guerrilla's job at a trade show is to make sales and
take names. In the week following the show guerrillas must contact all the prospects who visited their
booths, because people forget lightning-fast.
It's tough to man a trade show booth, because of the intensity and attention required. But it is worth the
effort. I have some clients who get 90 percent of their business at trade shows. And trade shows are growing
in both effectiveness and popularity.

Yellow Pages
Detailed information is what people are looking for in the yellow pages. They don't just want a company's
phone number, they want to know its competitive advantages. It's also important to include those advantages
in yellow pages advertising, because business are going to be on the same pages as their competitors.
Customers probably will be reading the ads of all of the businesses listed, so that's where a company's
competitive advantages come into the greatest play.
The fact that all of a firm's competitors are listed alongside it is one of the disadvantages of the yellow pages.
One of the silliest things that happens in marketing is that companies get yellow pages ads and then they
run radio and television ads and end them by saying, You'll find our location conveniently listed in your
yellow pages. If they do that, they're directing customers to all of their competitors. Guerrillas put their
location in their ads and in their marketing materials and never direct people to the yellow pages. Let them
find the firm in the yellow pages on their own, because they're going to be seeing all of its competitors at the
same time.

Media Measures
Concerning all the media, it's important to remember that people really aren't paying attention to marketing
most of the time. When they are paying attention, they're only paying attention with a portion of their mind.
This is why it's necessary to talk to them about themselves and not about the product; they're always ready
to listen to information about themselves or about how they're lives can be made better. That's why repetition
is so crucial, because they have to hear a message more than once. It usually takes nine times or more of
customers hearing messages (remember that it takes three messages for every one that actually sinks in)
before they're ready to do business with a company.
So the idea is for guerrilla marketers to capitalize on each of those media they have selected. It's not a
matter of competitive advantages, it's a matter of what customers read and what they listen to, what they
pay attention to-and knowing that information, using it to capitalize on the power of the media the marketer
selects.
It's also a matter of selecting the right mix of media. In other words, deciding which media will work best in
conjunction with each other. The best way to do that is by testing, because few marketers have a good gut
instinct as to which media is going to work best for them. I know a lot of people who thought TV would work
best for them, but when they tried radio they found that radio outperformed television. So the idea here is not
to rely on gut instincts but to test. The best way to know what to test is by using the customer
questionnaires I discussed in Chapter 2. These allow marketers to find out which media are reaching
customers and then test the media that are already reaching them. That's where guerrillas find more people
just like those existing customers.
When it comes to selecting the right number of media to use together, more is better-but only if they're
proven in action for the marketer's company. A business might advertise in newspapers and magazines, on
radio and television, and do direct mailing and online marketing at the same time. If the company does that,
each of those media will help the others. Businesses that don't have the money to use all those media
should just use the ones that they can afford to use properly. It doesn't make sense for a company to be on
radio, television, magazines, and newspapers if it can only afford a light schedule of any one of those.
The idea is for companies to be noticed in the media they use. Once they get noticed in one of them their
choice will be, Do we want to use more of this particular medium, because it's working so well, or should we
try taking this message and putting it on television or putting it in newspapers? The guiding force for a
company is to pick the medium that works best for that firm in particular, and once the medium is working
right, try to add new ones. The term for that is 360-degree marketing. It means it's hard to reach people
today using just one medium; guerrilla marketers have to come at them from all sides.
The best way to decide if a medium is working right is to test. It is a simple arithmetic process: What does it
cost to run that ad and what kind of payoff did the firm get from the ad? If a marketer wants to test three
newspapers, she runs ads in three newspapers and makes a slightly different special offer in each ad. Then,
by virtue of the people who talk to the company about those specific offers, it's easy to discover which of
those three media is working the best.
Guerrilla marketers have to constantly try to improve the return they're getting on that marketing investment.
The best way to do that is to constantly test one medium versus another. Once marketers pick the medium,
they need to start testing the right size ad or the right length commercial. And keep testing to improve that.
There's no such thing as getting the perfect message on the perfect medium, because it's necessary to
constantly try to improve whatever message and whatever medium the company is using.
If, during testing, marketers discover that a medium is not working, it may be necessary to drop that medium
from the marketing plan. The question is, how long does a company stay with a medium if it's not working? It
depends on the medium, but for mass media-radio, television, magazines, newspapers- expect to advertise
for at least three months before seeing any deliverance that it's working. Now it's different when marketing
online or using direct mail; marketers can know instantly how well those media are working.
It's a major luxury to be able to see results instantly, but I tell my clients that if they do everything right
they're not going to see that their marketing is working for the first three months. After three months, they
begin to get glimmers that it's working, and after six months they'll know for sure whether a medium is

paying for itself. It is a matter of waiting that much time. Of course, for a big company like McDonald's that
can put a few million dollars a month into its marketing, the results come across that much faster. But for
most businesses it is a matter of at least three months.

The Price is Right

It is a waste of money to invest in a medium if the firm doesn't have the budget to support the frequency
necessary to attain results. But if price isn't an issue, far and away in 2001-I might change my tone on this
in 2005-television is still the undisputed heavyweight champion of marketing. More people watch television
than pay attention to any other medium. Although television commercials are costly, the price is coming way
down due to cable television. So TV is the most powerful of all the media, but coming up fast on the outside
is the Internet.
Americans are learning to buy things in a new way. They're learning to buy things online. As long as
marketers realize that the Internet is just another marketing medium-it's not the entire world-and take
advantage of the interactivity it offers, it's the next best marketing medium.
After that it depends on the business. The smart thing for a new business, for instance, is to run a full-page
ad in a regional edition of a well-known national magazine. Let's use Time magazine as an example. It might
cost $80,000 for a full-page ad in a national edition, but a small guerrilla won't have that kind of money. So
the company might run a one-time, full-page ad in a regional edition in one city, say the San Francisco
edition of Time, at a cost of $2,200. People who subscribe to magazines don't know that they print regional
editions. They just see that the firm has a full-page ad in Time, as does IBM and Rolls Royce. Businesses
are known by the company they keep; Rolls Royce and IBM will continue to run ads every week or every
month in Time. The guerrilla's job is to run that ad once and to take advantage of the reprints that are made
available by the publications. Reprints cost just a penny each or less. Start using that full-page ad that ran
only once and put it up on the company's Web site, make it part of future brochures, future mailings: As
seen in Time magazine. That will give the firm a whole lot of credibility, and new companies need credibility
like crazy. For them magazines may be the best medium.
If, however, a guerrilla marketer is strapped for cash, he may want to try another approach. My single favorite
is to do what we call the two step. For the two step, a company needs a brochure. Then it runs a lot of tiny
ads in publications read by its target audience. In the ads say one good thing about the company and then
say, Call or write for our free brochure. Most people will not call or write for the free brochure, but those who
do are really raising their hands and pointing at themselves and saying, I am a torrid prospect. Statistics
show that 25 percent to 33 percent of people who request a brochure will become customers. If they send for
the free brochure, the marketer's job is to send them a personal letter thanking them for requesting the
brochure, because people are besieged by 2,700 marketing messages every day. For them to single one
company out, to contact it for its free brochure, that's a big act of intent on their part, so guerrillas send them
a letter thanking them for requesting the brochure, send them the brochure, and within a week get back to
them again to take them to the next level, whether it's a personal visit or a consultation. That's a very
inexpensive way to market, because when a person says, Please send me your free brochure, they're
really saying, Please send me all the details of why I should buy from you. That's why the two step is an
inexpensive way to get a lot of information to a company's best prospects. And it's one of my favorite ways of
marketing, because it has consent marketing built right into it.

Allocating the Budget

Whatever a company's budget may be, it's important to allocate that budget correctly. The best way to
approach this is one medium at a time. First, test a medium to find out if it's working. Then ask, Do we drop
this, do we continue doing it the same way, or do we add more of it? If a business is using two radio
stations and is beginning to get good business, the first thing to think of is not going on television or
newspapers, but going on four radio stations, because radio has proven that it is working for that firm. If the
company goes at it one at a time, it will begin to learn which of the media are pulling best.
The truth is that it's hard to know how to allocate the marketing budget the first year, because what guerrillas
really should do is make a marketing calendar on which they project ahead month by month where the
company will be marketing. At the end of the year it's then necessary to compare the firm's cash flow and its
financial records with the marketing calendar. Marketers can then see what they were doing in a particular
month that was working and what they were doing in another month that wasn't working. So the next year
the marketing calendar is loaded with things that were working and it gets rid of all those things that didn't
work.
At that point guerrillas will begin to have a feeling of how to allocate their marketing money. There's no law
that says a marketer must allocate it to several media. Some marketers spend 90 percent of their budgets
just on trade shows or 90 percent just on television. It's really a matter of getting your feet wet and seeing
which media work best for the company and one by one adding to them and eliminating the ones that don't
work as well.

Chapter 6: Technology and the Guerrilla Marketer

Overview
In Chapter 1 I explained that one of the characteristics of guerrillas marketers is that they are technocozy. If
they are technophobic they make an appointment with their technoshrink, because technophobia is fatal
these days.
The major revolution in technology over the past decade, which overpowers all the others, is the simplicity of
technology. People talk about technology as having improved because the cost has gone down, the powers
have gone up, and that it has the ability to perform more functions. But the biggest breakthrough is that a
person doesn't have to be an engineer or a computer nerd in order to operate technology. Technology was
complicated and now it isn't. User manuals are now written in clear English, but a lot of technology is so
easy to use that it's not even necessary to read the user manual. The reality is that there is no longer a need
to be technophobic.
Guerrilla marketers embrace technology. This means more than using the Internet as a marketing tool.
Guerrillas are as virtual as they can be, and virtual means connected. That means having a pager, a cell
phone, a laptop, email, fax, and anything else that makes it easy for customers to get in touch with them.
The fact is, keeping in touch with customers and staff is important. Guerrillas have to keep lines of
communication open to their customers, so those customers can talk to them whenever it is convenient for
the clients-to either complain, or ask for a favor, or comment, or ask for service. When customers know they
are connected to a company at all times, they are going to feel a lot better about the relationship that they
have with that business.
In fact, technology has given small businesses an unfair advantage, because it allows them to act in
marketing service like the big spenders, without the need to spend big. Technology has not only leveled the
playing field, but tilted it in favor of guerrillas. Guerrillas can use their computers and desktop publishing to
produce lots of material that used to be expensive, like audio visual aides, booklets, brochures, business
forms, catalogues, club ID cards (if they have a frequent buyers club), coupons, fliers, flip charts, invitations,
multimedia presentations, newsletters, personalized greeting cards, point of purchase materials, postcards,
proposals, questionnaires, stationery, and trade show materials. Technology is way beyond the Internet and
it gives small business a major league advantage.

Using the Internet

But today technology also means the Internet. The Net is one of the many recent technological
breakthroughs that guerrilla marketers can use. And like other technologies, it has leveled the playing field
for small businesses. It has put the guerrillas on equal footing with the huge companies. The Internet allows
firms to compete in areas where it's not really the size of their Web sites that matters. It's their ability to
involve people in their businesses, to initiate a dialogue with those people, and to use email.
The Net allows businesses to have a global reach, if that's important to them. It lets companies put in one
place all the information that people need to know about them and how they would benefit by doing business
with those firms. The cost of this would be more than prohibitive if a company tried to put all of that
information into the context of a newspaper or magazine ad. It would cost too much money for the space, or
in the context of radio and television, it would cost too much for the time. But businesses can put all that
information on their Web sites and it isn't going to cost much at all. That's a major breakthrough, because it
enables marketers to list all the ways that customers will benefit from doing business with the company
rather than picking only the one that will fit into an ad.
The Internet also improves companies' overall marketing ability, because of the give and take the Internet
allows. It is possible to interact with people in ways that are just not possible using standard media. The
name of the game in marketing is to establish relationships, and the Internet is the best tool ever to establish
real relationships with people all over the world. The Internet allows organizations to host conferences at no
cost to attendees, to have online chats with customers, to contribute information to user groups.
The Internet has given guerrillas and small businesses a lot more power, because it's not how much money
companies spend online, it's how well they use their sites and how much attention they pay to their
customers. This is why guerrillas must understand marketing in order to market online successfully. There
are a hundred different weapons for marketing, online marketing is just one of them.

Marketing Online
Online marketing means a lot more than having a Web site. Online marketing means using email, it means
joining and participating in forums and user groups and posting things there. It means getting the email
addresses of other people in those forums in order to contact them, going into chat rooms where people are
discussing a topic of common interest and getting their email addresses as well. Those are all free ways to
market.
Company executives can host online conferences-many Internet service providers present conferences for
which they need industry experts as panelists or hosts. Although only a couple of hundred people or fewer
will come to that online conference, thousands will download transcripts of it. Again, that's free.
Another way of using online marketing is to write articles for other people's Web sites. Most Web sites are
starved for good content. Marketers who offer to post articles for them and to write articles for their readers
that includes information about that guerrilla's company and services will find a lot of free marketing there.
Using the Internet, guerrilla marketers can do a great deal of research on their competitors, industry, and
customers. They can take advantage of the free classified ads sections that are all over the Internet. Many
now allow graphics to be shown for free.
All those ways of marketing-chats, email, forums, hosting conferences, posting articles, doing research,
using classified ads, and being active on the search engines-cost nothing and none of these things involve
having a Web site. People think in terms of Web sites costing a lot of money. I say that it's not going to cost
a lot, and it is not the only way to market online, there are many other ways.
Even so, having a Web site is a key way to market online and interact with customers-as long as guerrillas
remember that having a Web site helps with the job of marketing a company, but it doesn't do the job. A lot
of marketers think that having a Web site will take care of their hard work, but the reality is that they still
have to do all the hard work, with a little help from the Web. One of the biggest mistakes someone can make
is thinking that they don't need to know anything about marketing, they just need to have a great Web site
and then everything will take care of itself.

What do People Want Online?

What do people want online? This is a question guerrillas often ask themselves. But the experts don't seem
to agree on what people want. It's not what marketers think it is. It's not advertising's new frontier. For most
people, whether they are using the Internet for business or pleasure, what they want when they go online is
to accomplish something. So understanding a consumer's motives once he or she logs on is a necessity.
Even so, some marketers see the Web as a vast, new field for advertising messages, assuming that while
people may be online to do something else, if a company can entice them with flash, it can sort of trick them
into paying attention to its products and services. Guess what. That's not gonna happen.
Other marketers seem to subscribe to the notion that people are looking for entertainment on the Internet
and therefore they construct messages aimed at persuading while playing. In other cases the time-honored
direct-response model wins out: Grab people when you can, get them to take an action, and then market,
market, market.
The answer may be that consumers have and want significantly more control than we give them credit for.
Today Webmeisters are in control. Sort of. In a perfect cyberworld, people will be in control. Sort of. Two
recent studies shed light upon this dilemma. One was conducted by Zatso; the other was conducted by the
Pew Research Center. Both studies illuminated the answer to what people want to do online: They want to
accomplish something. They're not aimless surfers hoping to discover a cybertreasure. Instead, the average
Net user turns out to be a goal-oriented person interested in finding information and communicating with
others; interested in doing something he or she set out to do.
The Zatso study, A View of the 21st Century News Consumer, looked at people's news reading habits on
the Web. It revealed that reading and getting news is the most popular online activity after email. One out of
every three respondents reported that they read news online every day, with their interests expanding
geographically-local news was of the most interest; U.S. news the least. The guerrilla thinks, That means
email is number one. How might I capitalize on that?
Personalization is seen as a benefit, too. Seventy-five percent of respondents said that they want news on
demand and nearly two out of three want personalized news. The subjects surveyed like the idea that they,
not some media outlet, control the news they see. They feel they're better equipped to select what they want
to see than a professional editor. Control seems to be the issue. So guerrillas use this information by
thinking of ways to market by putting the prospect in control.
The Pew Research Center study revealed that regular Net users are more connected with their friends and
family than those who don't use the Internet on a regular basis. Almost two thirds of the 3,500 respondents
said they feel that email brings them closer to family and friends-significant when combined with the fact that
91 percent of them use email on a regular basis. It took VCRs 25 years to achieve such market penetration.
What do people in this study seem to be doing online when they're not using email? Half go online regularly
to purchase products and services, and nearly 75 percent go online to search for information about their
hobbies or purchases they are planning to make. Sixty-four percent of respondents visit travel sites, and 62
percent visit weather-related sites. Over half conduct educational research, and 54 percent hunt for data
about health and medicine. A surprising 47 percent regularly visit government Web sites, and 38 percent
researched job opportunities. Forty-five percent use instant messaging, and one third play games online.
Even with all the hype in the media, only 12 percent trade stocks online.
What does this mean to guerrillas who market online? It means that if they're constructing a site for
goal-oriented consumers, they had better make sure the site can help facilitate their seeking. Rather than
focus on entertainment, flash, and useless splash screens, the most effective sites are those that help
people get the information they want when they need it. Straightforward data, information that invites
comparison, and straight talk are going to win the day.

The Rule of Thirds

Once a business does decide to have a Web site, there is one crucial rule it must follow if it's going to
market online with that site: the rule of thirds. This means that once a company decides to go online and
determines what its budget is going to be, it should invest that online marketing budget as follows: one third
in the development of the Web site; another third to promote the site; the final third on maintaining it.
Most businesses spend three thirds developing their Web sites. As a result they don't promote the site, so
no one knows its there, because in cyberspace one is invisible. Companies don't maintain their Web sites,
because they put so much work in creating it in the first place. They just kick back and put their feet up and
think the world will beat a path to their door or to their Web site.

Web Site Success Strategies

Of course, it is the rare site that has anyone beating a path to it. There is a great deal involved in creating
and maintaining a successful Web site. Every site has to emphasize eight success elements equally. If not,
the site is doomed.
These are the eight elements:

Planning
Start by asking, Why do we want a Web site?
People think that having one will magically make their business. The reality is that they must have a reason
for the Web site, whether it be dissemination of information or dialog with customers.
A client of mine who owns a furniture store resisted going online like crazy. He said he didn't want to sell
beds and furniture online, but then he realized that having a Web site is just one more marketing weapon. So
his plan was to use the site strictly to advertise his physical store. People can go to the site and read things
that he couldn't afford to put in the context of a newspaper ad, the ad would be too big, or in the context of a
30- second television commercial. Visitors can't buy anything on the site, but his sales have more than
doubled since he has had it- even though no more than 15 or 20 percent of his marketing budget goes into
his site. It has been a marketing weapon that he says is the most valuable one he's ever used, and he's
used them all.

Content
The content on a Web site should reflect the answers to the questions most frequently asked of a company
by its customers and prospects. Think of the questions they ask, then put those answers down on the site.
Content has always been known as king of the Web site, it will get a person to a site and bring them back
for more. So the content is crucial.
An integral part of having the right content is personalizing it. To market online it's necessary to tell people at
the very beginning, when they first go to a site, what the site is all about and what they are going to gain by
spending their time there.
Most Web sites contain information about the company itself, which is like walking into a room and telling
everyone to shut up and listen to you talk about yourself. Here's what makes me great, here's what makes
me desirable, here's what should make you want to do business with me, here's my history, here are the
benefits and features I offer. No one would walk into a party and do that, or get away with it. But many Web
sites do that; that's the way they act.
Instead, guerrillas have to approach everything from the standpoint of that visitor to their site. They should
talk about that visitor, which is the visitors' favorite topic. Guerrillas have to talk about them right off the bat.
That's the way they start realizing that the company has them in mind, not itself.
There are more than 100 million people online; they don't want to feel like they are 100 million people, they
each want to feel like an individual. When guerrilla marketers get in touch with people, it is important to do
as much as they can to personalize their messages to them. This means first approaching the site from the
standpoint of what's on visitors' minds right now and what their goals are. One of the definitions of marketing
is the ability to help customers and prospects succeed in whatever their goals are. This is the marketer's
opportunity to show them how to succeed at those goals by using the firm's product or service. So if
marketers have their customers' goals in mind, they'll be able to orient their Web site to those goals.

Design
The Internet has something called the stay-or-bail moment, which is when a person goes to a Web site and
takes three seconds to decide whether he is going to stay and look it over. If the site is confusing or sparse,
he will bail and click to another site. The design of the Web site is what keeps visitors there.

Involvement
Often overlooked, involvement is a key success factor for any site. That refers to the fact that having a Web
site is not like running a television commercial or having a print ad. It is an involving, interactive opportunity
unlike magazines, newspapers, television, and radio. A Web site should involve visitors by asking them to
register to get on a mailing list, or to get a free newsletter, to get tips on the company's areas of expertise or
on the customers' related interests, or to register to join a contest or sweepstakes. By involving people with
a back-and-forth dialogue, guerrillas are taking advantage of the interactivity of the Internet. Many marketers
don't do that.
Although marketers can create some level of interactivity with ads by saying, Please send for a free
brochure, it is a whole lot easier on the Internet by saying, Click here to receive our newsletter, or to receive
our new specials, new products, or new services that we will be offering. Well-run Web sites have that
interactivity built into them, and have a lot of opportunities for people to give their consent to receive a
company's marketing materials. I love it when I get an email from Amazon that says, The last book you
bought was so and so, and we think you'd like these three books that have just come out. I love Amazon's
way of doing database marketing. It shows that the company knows what I like. As a result, I almost always
act on the emails, because they recommend just the kind of books I would be interested in.
It's also important to have that give-and-take opportunity in which the site gives customers the chance to
sign up for something to demonstrate their interests. These days there has been a lot of talk of permission
marketing, which we call consent marketing. Businesses should use their Web sites to gain people's
consent to receive additional marketing materials. If they sign up for a newsletter or mailing list they are
giving a company their consent to be marketed to. That means that firm can save money by not marketing to
disinterested people, and by marketing like crazy to those people who have given their consent.

Production
Once guerrillas select the content and design, they need to decide how they are going to produce the Web
site. There is a plethora of software available that makes it simple to do so-just click a button and it posts
the site. So production can be relatively easy.
Now, these first five areas, most marketers can handle and do. They can do the planning, content, dynamite
design, and some of them know how to involve their visitors and produce their Web sites. The next three
areas are why Web sites fail.

Follow-Up
Once a person gets in touch with a company's Web site, its marketers or salespeople have to follow up as
soon as possible.
People use the Internet as a device to save time, and if marketers don't follow up with them in a timely
fashion, they're not taking advantage of the time-saving capability of the Internet.

Promotion
Marketers also often fall on their face in the area of promotion. The moment guerrillas think of being online,
they have to think about how to constantly promote their firms' site-online and offline. A company's Web
address has to be on all its signs, stationary, business cards, business forms, and any place else that
people are looking to get information about that firm. In addition, the URL should be used in advertising:
radio, television, magazine, newspapers. Everywhere a business can possibly put its Web address, it
should. Any place a firm markets its business, it should put its Web address.
During the 1999 Super Bowl there were two dot-com advertisers, HotJobs.com and Monster.com. They both
had a tremendous upswing in response and visitors to their Web sites the day after the Super Bowl. During
the Super Bowl in 2000 there were many dot-com advertisers, but most of them missed the point like crazy.
That's because they were technology kinds of people, Internet kinds of people, and they were clueless when
it came to television advertising. Their advertising was way too cute and obtuse for people to understand, and
didn't make it easy for viewers to find their way to those companies' Web sites. As a result a lot of them
failed, and because Super Bowl commercials are so expensive, some of them actually failed to the point of
going out business.
The fact is, advertising has a new power. The power of advertising used to be to try to get people to buy a
product or to create a desire for a product. Now all that advertising really has to do is to get people to go to
the advertiser's Web site. That is much easier to ask them to do than to ask them to write a check or take
out their Visa card. So promoting a Web site is crucial, and advertising is one of the ways to do it.
Many people are living in two worlds: the online world and the offline world. Most people live offline. Even
those who are heavy-duty computer users live in the offline world more than the online world. So, the way to
let them know about a Web site is primarily offline. It's possible that they may be online and see a link to a
company's Web site. Or a business might invest in banners, which are more and more proving to be
ineffective, to get people to its site. But people are living offline, they read the newspaper probably every day,
they probably watch TV, they listen to the radio while they are commuting. That's where to reach people and
let them know about a Web site.
There's another great way to promote a site offline. One that's strength is its simplicity: Businesses can
send postcards to customers and prospects, just letting them know that they now have a Web site that is
oriented to their success and is going to significantly help them. They will pay attention, because it is a
postcard rather than a line in an ad. Don't put more than a simple announcement on the postcard; those who
are interested will visit the site and those who don't, well, they're probably not the right target.
There are however, a few solid strategies for promoting a site online. One of online marketing's greatest
strengths is that it's good for giving people information to help them succeed at their goals. If a business has
information on its Web site and every time people visit it, let's say once a week, they learn something new
that will help them succeed at their goals, that firm is using its Web site properly. The company not only
gets those visitors as regular customers and gets them to subscribe to its newsletter and be on its mailing
list, it gets satisfied customers who will start mentioning the Web site to their friends.
This idea of viral marketing should always be in the back of a guerrilla's mind, meaning always ask whether
the site is providing information so valuable that people will share it and the URL with their friends. If a firm
can build email this page/article to a friend technology into its Web site, it is engaging in viral marketing.
The Internet is a wonderfully easy way for people to spread the word about businesses to their friends,
because their friends will gain from it. That means if I go to a Web site and read an article on marketing
furniture online, I would definitely send it to my client who's in that business, and say, Michael, you ought to
read this. When I send it, the article will naturally have the name of the Web site on it, and that's the way
that he might spread the word to some of his friends in the furniture business.

Maintenance
A Web site is like a brand new baby, it requires constant attention, constant changing, constant nurturing,
and has to be kept fresh all the time. If the people visit a Web site and love it, and come back to it a few
weeks later and it is exactly the same as the last time they saw it, they may never return again. So,
guerrillas must maintain their sites and keep them feeling fresh and new on a regular basis.
If guerrilla marketers emphasize these eight elements they will succeed online.

Chapter 7: Dollars and Sense

Overview
In the end, what marketing comes down to is return on investment (ROI). Marketing is supposed to be an
investment and businesses should get a good return on it if they do it right.
There are so many important components to marketing, but the single most important one is to start with a
marketing plan and then commit to that plan. Guerrillas who do that are going to be making the most of their
marketing investment. Also, they aren't going to have to spend money producing new marketing material on
a regular basis, because they have a plan that they're committed to.
The other crucial thing is to make sure that marketing messages are directed to increasing the company's
profits. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, these days the advertising world is populated by younger people who
seem to be self-conscious about advertising. They are embarrassed that they are running an ad. As a result,
a lot of commercials are gorgeous films with wonderful music and special effects and acting and celebrity
presenters, but they are not oriented towards increasing profits. That's because the people creating the
marketing messages don't have profit in the back of their minds, what they have in mind is winning an award.
So they win the award but the company goes out of business.
Again, this is why it is crucial that marketing messages do not have vampire marketing in them. There is a
great deal of vampire marketing out there right now, using special effects or cleverness that suck attention
away from the basic premise and the basic offer, because the people who created the marketing weren't
clear in the beginning about what they wanted that commercial to do. They think that just getting visibility for
the company's name is enough. But even that can be difficult, especially when viewers have to wait until the
end of a commercial to figure out what company the ad is for.

Tracking and Measuring

Those two things-committing to a plan, and making sure the message is oriented towards profit-are two of
the most important ways to create ROI. Another is monitoring and tracking marketing expenditures. It's one
of the most crucial jobs guerrillas have. According to Andrew Carnegie, marketers will probably waste 50
percent of their marketing investment; it is vital to know which 50 percent. That is the whole idea of guerrilla
marketing: to be aware of all the marketing weapons the company can use, use a lot of them, keep track of
the ones that are hitting the bull's eye, discover which ones are missing the mark entirely, and eliminate the
marketing elements that don't work.
The name of the game for guerrillas is not to use as many marketing weapons as possible but to use only
those that have been proven in action for their companies. Keeping track, measuring responses, and finding
out from everybody who buys from the firm where they heard of it is crucial.
Tracking is one of the most important jobs a guerrilla can do. Most marketers don't do it because it's hard.
To force salespeople and customer service reps to assist with this tracking, guerrillas have to make it part of
their company policy that when someone writes an order they include not only the customer's name, the
date, and the product number but also include where they heard of the firm. Most people will say that a friend
told them about it, even though they've seen nine of the company's ads, visited its Web site three times, and
seen four commercials, because they don't like admitting that they are being influenced by marketing. So if a
person says, A friend told me, it's then necessary to ask them if they watch television and if they saw the
firm's commercial on this show or that. It's also important to ask whether they read magazines and if they
saw the company's ad in a particular magazine. It's necessary to take people beyond the a friend told me
about it answer, because that's not usually the truth.
All of this is important because tracking is one definitive way to ensure that a company's marketing
investment pays for itself. That means if a firm invests $1,000 in newspaper advertising and after checking
responses its marketers discover that it has garnered $4,000 worth of profit-not sales-as a result of that ad,
that's one way of proving the ad was successful.
It also means that because guerrillas do a lot of follow-up marketing, often one of their goals is to get a new
customer and maybe just break even on that first sale. Knowing that it costs one sixth as much to make a
sale to an existing customer than to a new one, guerrillas recognize that they will make the money on the
follow-up. For example, say the first time a company invests in print advertising it invests $1,000 but only
garners a $500 profit. Some marketers might think that is a failure. But if the firm got 100 new customers
and those customers will be lifetime customers, it may mean that the ad was a success. So, guerrillas have
to track in order to go beyond profits and look into how many new relationships the marketing helped
establish. Without tracking how new customers come to a company, it's impossible for guerrillas to properly
track and monitor the success, or not, of their marketing.

Marketing by the Pound

One key to achieving a solid return on investment is to understand marketing in terms of dollar amount.
Realizing that marketing varies based on company and industry type, let's look at how companies might use
guerrilla marketing if they have a marketing budget of $1 million, of $100,000, or of $10,000, or if they had no
budget at all.
The first step, crucial to beginning any type of marketing campaign with any size budget is to send out
customer questionnaires and learn about customers-what newspapers they read, what trade shows they go
to, what TV shows they watch, what radio stations they listen to, and what Web sites they visit. Guerrillas
who find out about those current customers and what media is capturing their attention will know how to plan
their media expenditures.
Businesses that have $1 million are able to dominate a few media. They can't dominate national television,
because $1 million will barely pay for a commercial on some shows. But if they want to use local television
to target their local market, they can dominate television, radio, and newspapers at the same time. They can
also use direct mail and be online.
I keep using the word dominate, because companies that have $100,000 wouldn't have enough money to
dominate as many media. So they might only want to dominate radio and local newspapers. Businesses
can spend $100,000 being a dominant force on local area radio. The way to do this is not to run on a lot of
stations but to dominate one station, and once a firm achieves that, dominate another station. Then do the
same with newspapers. If a company is a dominant force, consumers are going to equate that dominance
and those omnipresent marketing messages with success. They know that unsuccessful companies don't
market.
Organizations that have $10,000 have to steer clear of radio, television, magazines, and newspapers,
because they probably can't dominate them. In that case, the firms should look into direct marketing,
running small ads in local newspapers and in specialized magazines. In the ads, offer a free brochure and
always mention the company's Web site. These businesses can't really attempt to go to the big media,
because $10,000 will barely make them noticeable. Companies don't want to ever be in a situation like that.
Guerrillas want all of their marketing investments to pay off. That's why media like direct marketing and the
Internet will work better for firms with a $10,000 budget.

Marketing for Free

Even if a company has no budget, there are a myriad of marketing tools available. For example, I mentioned
in Chapter 5 that there are many ways to market online without having a Web site: participation in forums,
chat groups, and writing articles for other organizations' sites. Another way for guerrillas to market with no
budget whatsoever is to get involved in their communities, where they can do a great deal of networking and
meet a lot of prospects. It won't cost anything but time, energy, and imagination. This means offering free
consultations, free seminars, or free demonstrations, or even giving away free samples.
Guerrillas whose firms have no marketing budget also can market without any expense by writing a column
for a local publication for free, with the agreement that the article will include the company's name, Web
address, mailing address, and phone number. Many newspapers will be happy to publish a column as long
as it provides information that is of value to their readers and isn't a sales pitch for the author's company.
Marketers who don't have the time to write a weekly column can offer to write an article with the same kind of
agreement.
I have a client who was running an ad campaign in a newspaper who asked to write a column for that paper.
He said he would do it for free, and they said sure. He called me a few months later and said he was getting
so much business from his column that he wanted to know if he should discontinue the advertisements. I
told him that's dirty pool; they did you a favor by letting you have a column, and now if you cut back your
marketing budget, you are sort of turning your back on the people who got you there in the first place. You
might cut down on your marketing budget, but don't cut it out entirely.
For marketers who enjoy public speaking, a relatively undiscovered tactic is to offer to appear as the keynote
speaker for one of the many clubs in their community. Those clubs would love to have a speaker come in
and speak for a half hour on their area of expertise. But they have to know that the marketers are speaking
to their club and not selling their businesses. Guerrillas should give attendees' information relevant to their
interests during the speech, then pass out brochures afterward. Guerrillas can get a great deal of business
from these people. They know the marketers are giving their time for nothing for their club, and they are going
to reward them by becoming customers. And again, it is not going to cost anything but time, energy, and
imagination.
Similarly, guerrillas can offer themselves as guests on talk shows. Be careful not to sound like a company
ad, because viewers don't want an infomercial, they want a person who is a fascinating conversationalist.
Becoming a television talk show guest or radio talk show guest costs nothing, and it's a good way to market.
In fact, the news and media need you more than you need them, so publicity is a great tool. Publicity is not
that hard to get. If guerrillas have real news for, say, a magazine or newspaper, the publication will publish
the articles. The key to it is to have news, and of course to have as many publicity contacts-on a first-name
basis-as possible. Once marketers get publicity they can't just sit back. Then the marketers' job is to make
reprints of those articles and put them up on their companies' Web sites and make them a part of any future
marketing or mailings or brochures.
Using desktop publishing is another great strategy. It costs next to nothing to produce circulars or
postcards. In every area, in every metropolitan community, there are hosts of community bulletin boards. In
the San Francisco Bay area, for instance, there are 800 locations of community bulletin boards on which
people post their 3X5 cards or their advertising circulars. This has become such a good way to market small
businesses that there's now a company in the Bay area called the Thumbtack Bugle. All it does is talk to
businesses about their target market and point them in the direction of the 200 bulletin boards that best
reach those prospects. Thumbtack Bugle has done so well that it has spawned a competitor called The
Daily Staple that does the same thing.
The truth is, guerrillas can do this by themselves. They can learn these locations and post the circulars for
themselves. When I first moved to the Bay area I had to hire a typist. I hired a woman who said she is a very
active marketer. She said that she had all the business she could handle. I asked her how she got it. She
said that she put up circulars at all the universities. When I asked her how much she spent on marketing,
she said maybe $30 a year. By taking advantage of community bulletin boards, guerrillas can reach the right
prospects and it costs next to nothing. And that opportunity is growing, because there are more and more
community bulletin boards.

Columns, articles, speaking engagements, free consultations, free seminars, free demonstrations, using
desktop publishing. These are dynamite ways to market without investing much money or any money at all.

David and Goliath

Even small companies with little to no marketing budget can act like tough competitors. Not just among
other small businesses, but against much larger firms. Small organizations can compete with big
businesses by outservicing them.
Big businesses tend to have service policies. That's a losing strategy in the 21st century. A service policy
limits what companies can do. The reality is that service is anything the customer wants it to be, and a
small business is able to do that. Small businesses can outservice and outpersonalize big businesses. They
can develop warmer bonds with people and longer relationships.
A small business is able to offer more personalized service and form more human bonds with people.
Guerrillas have to talk to people, and before they talk about business, they should talk about their kids,
about their sports teams, about the Super Bowl-anything but politics or religion-talk to form that personal
bond before the business bond gets strong. Big businesses are just too impersonal to have that bond.
But small businesses beware: Fortune 500 companies are learning that the personal touch, one-on-one
communication, works for them as well as for small businesses. Rather than doing the mass mailing or
telemarketing, they may pick out their key customers and send a personal letter to those people or make a
personal phone call. While guerrillas don't think twice before posting 3x5 cards or circulars on bulletin
boards, big companies don't think of doing those kinds of things. But some large firms now understand that
they can use some of the same marketing tactics as small businesses, and that just because it's
inexpensive doesn't mean it won't work.
When large firms learn that guerrillas follow up, they begin to do more follow-up than they ever did before.
And big companies that have never had a marketing strategy that calls for maximum word-of-mouth
marketing are learning that, like guerrillas, they can use word-of-mouth marketing to spur sales. Big
companies have learned that guerrillas get a lot of business just by becoming involved in their communities.
Big businesses rarely have community involvement as a part of a marketing strategy, but they're learning to
ask, Why shouldn't we do that? They're realizing that they're able to use many of the tools of guerrillas in
the quest to make their own big businesses bigger.
One of the biggest things they're learning is commitment to a marketing plan, because they're learning that
the biggest cause of advertising failure is abandoning it too soon. Big companies, because they have deep
pockets, tend to abandon their marketing too soon. Guerrillas can't afford to do that, and now big companies
are learning that they don't have to keep changing their marketing, their logo, their theme, and that maybe by
sticking to those things and using the weapons that got them there, they will achieve their goals. So big
businesses are learning a lot from guerrilla marketing.

How Guerillas Economize

When guerrilla marketers think of economizing, they don't necessarily think of trying to save money. What
they do think of is getting the absolute most from any money they invest in marketing. They realize that
there are two kinds of marketing: expensive and inexpensive. They know that expensive marketing is the
kind that doesn't cover the investment they've made in it, while inexpensive marketing pays rich rewards for
their investment. Guerrillas have the insight to know that economizing has nothing to do with cost; it has
everything to do with results.
To be sure, guerrillas adopt a philosophy of frugality and thrift. They know well the difference between
investing in something disposable, such as paper and accounting services, and investing in something that's
truly an investment, such as a telephone system or customer-tracking software-items they would use on a
daily basis. There's a big difference in these two expenses. So don't be surprised to learn that guerrillas
rarely waste their time and effort on relatively low-cost, disposable purchases, but are willing to expend the
time and energy to enjoy a large savings on an expense that's really an investment in disguise. A key to
economizing is to think not in terms of purchasing, but in terms of acquiring. That may mean bartering,
sharing, renting, modifying an existing item, or borrowing it.
Guerrillas are also keenly aware of when it makes sense to hire a pro, knowing that amateur-looking
marketing is an invitation to disaster. They might hire a highly paid, professional designer to give their
marketing items a powerful visual format, then use their own staff members or themselves to continue
generating marketing materials that follow this same format. They learn from any consultant they hire.
By understanding that economizing does not mean saving money but investing it wisely, guerrillas test their
investments on a small scale before plunging headlong into any kind of marketing. They have no fear of
failure, providing that the failures are small ones and knowing that even one success in 10 tries means
discovering a path to wealth and profitability.
They know in their hearts that money is not the key to happiness or success, but that enough of it enables
them to have a key made. Real frugality is more about priorities and results than just saving money.
Of all the methods of wasting money and not economizing, the number one leader in marketing is failure to
commit to a plan. Untold millions have been invested in marketing campaigns that had everything right about
them except commitment on the part of the marketer. Guerrillas know that it takes time for an investment to
pay off and instant results are rarely part of the deal.
Abandoning a marketing campaign before it has a chance to flourish squanders money in three ways. First,
it means all prior investing in the campaign has been for naught. Second, it means new investing will be
necessary to generate the share of mind that precedes a share of market. Third, it means creating new
marketing materials all over again.
Small-business owners have other ways to waste money as well. Many of them invest in research instead of
doing it themselves. Others commit to a campaign they haven't tested. Still others create marketing
materials that must be updated regularly, rather than creating timeless marketing materials. When a
company brochure says that the firm has been in business five years, it must updated the next year. When
it says that the firm has been in business since l995, that's always going to be the truth.
High on the list of ways that small business marketers waste precious funds is their proclivity to invest in
amusing marketing, funny marketing, even uproarious marketing. Marketing has an obligation to put money
in a company's coffers, not smiles on the faces of its prospects.
The most common method of economizing is also one of the most overlooked: marketing to existing
customers. It costs one sixth as much to sell an item to an existing customer than to sell that same item to
a non-customer. The price of discovering and convincing likely customers is astronomical when compared
with the price of doing the same with current customers. Database marketing has lowered the cost of
guerrilla marketing and yet some business owners fail to even try to make repeat sales.
Guerrillas avoid buying what they want and don't really need, don't fall prey to slick salespeople representing
new and unproven marketing tools, avert bad decisions by not making quick decisions, and constantly ask

themselves, If I didn't need this yesterday, why do I need it today?

Don't Overlook Bartering

I remember vividly my first experience scuba diving. As soon as I went beneath the surface of the sea, I
realized that an entire world existed every day within my own world-and I wasn't at all aware of it. Whether or
not I knew of it, that world was still alive and happening.
The same is true of the world of barter. It's alive and happening, now more than ever. Yet most
small-business owners are completely clueless as to its existence-and its value to their companies. To fully
comprehend the magnitude of barter in today's economy, consider that in 1998 more than 55 percent of
media was not purchased, but was obtained by barter. And that's just media. Many other goods and services
are obtained for no money whatsoever simply by bartering.
Almost all small businesses need products or services that other small businesses provide. These
companies may be very interested in bartering for what they need. When that happens, a firm can get what it
needs for a fraction of its normal cost, because the company will be paying with its own services or goods at
their full retail price.
Barter enables small businesses to address a pressing need: cash flow. By empowering businesses to trade
their goods or services for the goods or services offered by other businesses, bartering facilitates complex
exchanges among multiple businesses. Any unused time, inventory, or capacity can be transformed into
business value. Small businesses around the world are learning to conserve cash, find new customers, and
convert their excess time or capacity into the things they need. All it takes is a simple barter.
Since learning of the immense power and economy of bartering, I have personally bartered my own
marketing services for a solar heating unit for my pool, a big-screen TV, a hot tub, an electric scooter for my
wife, a year's supply of coffee, a palm tree, a vacation in Hawaii, a cruise to Russia, and scads of secretarial
services. I say this only to open minds to the variety of goods and services available to those who are willing
to trade what they have for what they want and need.
Many small business owners want and need products and services for both their business and their
non-business lives. Often these offerings are just too expensive to purchase and don't fit into their budgets.
But by bartering, they do not require any cash outlay and fit easily into anyone's budget.
Bartering is at the very core of guerrilla marketing, because rather than requiring a financial investment, it
requires only an investment of time, energy, and imagination. Simply by visiting a site such as
lassobucks.com, the astute small-business owner can learn of offerings that can make the difference
between success and failure, growth or stagnation.
What one firm may consider to be an overstock of inventory or downtime for its employees can be
transformed into exactly what another company needs right now. In the past such complex barter
arrangements were time-consuming and often led to frustration. But as the online world grows, barter has
become much simpler, much faster, and within the reach of any small business. What companies
desperately need today but just cannot afford, may be theirs tomorrow-and easy to afford.
Traditionally, small businesses had to rein in their growth plans because they didn't have the money to fuel
their dreams. But guerrillas are rapidly learning that they don't need money. They already have just what is
necessary for them to acquire the goods and services they desire. All it takes is opening their minds to the
concept of barter.
Centuries ago barter was commonly used by small businesses, but as cash assumed a greater role in the
economies of nations, barter seemed to fall by the wayside. Today that trend has been reversed and barter is
assuming a greater role than ever.
Small businesses are realizing that they already have just what it takes to get what they need-and get it in a
hurry. It is not complicated. It is not time-consuming. It is not reserved for huge corporations with a lot of
clout. The business and marketing plans of an increasing number of small companies include bartering for
resources. The executives of these firms now comprehend that rather than visiting their banker they can
simply click their mouse and enter a world where they are welcome, a world teeming with valuable offerings
that can shift them into hyper-profitability.

Whether or not marketers discover barter, it will continue to thrive, continue to propel small businesses to
their goals, and continue to become an integral part of the world economy. For these reasons, guerrillas
should enter this world and become intimate with the benefits it offers their businesses.

Spend Marketing Dollars Wisely

Whether a guerrilla runs a small businesses or works for a large conglomerate, it's vital to spend the firm's
marketing dollar's wisely. It all begins with marketers doing research into their market, product, media,
competition, industry, prospects, customers, benefits their companies offer, and the Internet. Next is to write
a list of the benefits the company offers with a star next to the benefits that are competitive advantages,
because that's where a firm should hang its marketing hat. Then marketers need to create a seven-sentence
marketing plan (the purpose of the marketing; how to achieve the purpose, what benefits and competitive
advantages to stress to achieve the purpose; the target audience; the marketing weapons to be used; the
company's niche in the marketplace; the firm's identity; and marketing budget expressed as a percentage of
projected gross sales) that will form the framework for all of their marketing. The next step is to create a
marketing calendar. After that is complete, guerrillas should find fusion marketing partners who will help
spread the word and diminish the costs of marketing.
Finally it's time to launch the attack-in slow motion. This means, introduce each marketing weapon one at a
time. On average my clients take 18 months to launch an attack.
The hardest part is the next step, and that is to maintain the attack and keep it going and not to expect
instant results. During this time guerrillas must monitor and track their marketing to discover which
marketing weapons are working and which aren't.
The last step is to start improving the message, media, budget (cutting it), and results the company is
getting for the marketing dollars it is investing.
Guerrillas who do all of these things will surely achieve success. But in the end, if I had 30 seconds in an
elevator to tell someone how to succeed in marketing I would say only this: Start with a simple plan and
then commit to that plan. It all comes down to that.

Appendix 1:
The 100 guerrilla marketing weapons are as follows:
1. Marketing plan
2. Marketing calendar
3. Niche/position
4. Name of company
5. Identity
6. Logo
7. Theme
8. Stationery
9. Business cards
10. Signs inside
11. Signs outside
12. Hours of operation
13. Days of operation
14. Window display/home page
15. Flexibility
16. Word of mouth
17. Community involvement
18. Barter
19. Club and association memberships
20. Partial payment/credit
21. Cause marketing(environment, fighting diseases)
22. Phone demeanor
23. Toll-free phone number
24. Free consultations
25. Free seminars/clinics or free estimates/appraisals
26. Free demos
27. Free samples
28. Giver versus taker stance
29. Fusion marketing (leads/referrals)

30. Marketing on telephone hold

31. Past success stories
32. Employee attire
33. Service/customer bliss
34. Follow-up/listening
35. The company owners and their employees
36. Gifts
37. Catalog
38. Yellow page ads
39. Columns in publications
40. Articles in publications
42. Newsletter
43. All of a company's audiences
44. Benefits list
45. Competitive advantages
46. Computer
47. Selection
48. Contact time with customers
49. How staff says hello/good-bye
50. Public relations
51. Media contacts
52. Online (Web/forums/email/chats)
53. Neatness
54. Referral plan
55. Guarantee
56. Telemarketing (scripts)
57. Gift certificates
58. Brochures
59. Electronic brochures
60. Location
61. Advertising
62. Sales training (weekly)

63. Networking
64. Quality (what customers get)
65. Reprints and blowups
66. Flip charts
67. Opportunities to upgrade
68. Contests/sweepstakes
69. Classified ads (newspapers/magazines/online)
70. Newspaper ads
71. Magazine ads (that include a toll-free number and URL)
72. Radio spots
73. TV spots
74. Infomercials (55 percent view; 41 percent buy)
75. Movie theater ads
76. Direct mail letters (with an envelope that stands out and a P.S.)
77. Direct mail postcards
78. Postcard deck
79. Fax-on-demand
80. Special events
81. Show display
82. Audio visual aids
83. Spare time
84. Prospect mailing list
85. Research studies (companies should do their own)
86. Marketing insight
87. Speed
88. Testimonials
89. Posters
90. Enthusiasm and passion
91. Credibility
92. Spying
93. Easy to do business with
94. Brand name awareness

95. Designated guerrilla (preferably the CEO or president)

96. Customer mailing list
97. Sharing
98. Reputation
99. Competitiveness 100. Satisfied customers

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