Guerrilla Marketing Weapons: 100 Affordable Marketing Methods For Maximizing Profits From Your Small Business
To succeed in your business, one of the areas you must not toy with is the marketing of your products. Your cash inflow will suffer without effective marketing activities, and that could affect the smooth running of your business.
Marketing campaigns can be expensive, however, as a small business owner; you should discover affordable, yet effective ways to market your products. Jay Conrad Levinson revealed in his book, Guerrilla Marketing Weapons: 100 Affordable Marketing Methods For Maximizing Profits From Your Small Business, lots of result-oriented marketing methods you can afford.
And see below, an excerpt from the book. Enjoy it!
Weapons That Produce Instant Results
The man asked the pet store owner why one particular parrot was priced at $5,000. “Because he can sing ‘Deck the Halls,’ ” explained the proprietor.
“I’ll pay you five thousand dollars if the bird can sing that song,” said the skeptical shopper. Without a moment’s hesitation, the bird burst into song, filling the pet shop with a hearty rendition of the classic Christmas carol.
The man wrote a check for $5,000, took the bird home, and amused himself each evening by requesting the tune. A few weeks later, the man had a big Christmas Eve party at his house. While the parrot was being admired, the man announced to his guests that the bird could sing “Deck the Halls.” Many of the guests doubted it and a bet was taken up, the host betting $5,000 that the bird could sing the song in its entirety.
“Sing the song,” the man smilingly requested of his parrot. But there was absolute silence. “Sing ‘Deck the Halls,’ ” said the man, a bit louder. Still nothing; not a sound to be heard. “Sing it! The song!” implored the man. Again, cold, unbroken silence.
Forlornly, the man paid the $5,000 to his betting guests, who soon left. When everyone was gone, he faced the silent parrot. “Why didn’t you sing that song?” the man demanded.
“Dumbhead!” shot back the parrot. “Think of the odds you’ll get with ‘Auld Lang Syne’ next week!”
Many of the weapons that produce the instant gratification business owners seek are often employed at less than 100 percent effectiveness because they’re used too soon or too often or too much to the exclusion of other weapons.
Often the weapon is underpowered because the timing is wrong. The parrot knew that. The profits would be far higher if they waited just one week. Although these weapons can and do produce money in a hurry, the key to succeeding with many of them is restraint. .
Guerrilla marketing is not oriented to devoting your efforts toward obtaining instant results.
Guerrilla marketing focuses your attention on the long-term view, on staying in business, growing, and prospering for as long as you want.
Quick-fix marketing denies you those freedoms. Guerrilla marketing does have quick results inherent within it. Sometimes you absolutely need a healthy injection of cash into the flow.
But you’ve got to balance that with healthy injections of customer bonding. Guerrillas want both: money and lasting customer relationships.
All 16 of the following instant income weapons have been used by businesses, large and small, to generate sales and profits-snap!-that quick.
Because of the nature of your business, you won’t be able to stock your arsenal with all 16 of these, but you will be able to find a way to use some of them, and just 1 or 2 can bring a smile to your banker’s face. Because with every page and every word you are becoming more and more of a guerrilla. I know you’ll realize the need to experiment, to try as many of these as you possibly can, eliminating the time-wasters, concentrating on the cash-attracters.
Some of these seem tiny and insignificant when viewed on their own. Doorhangers, for example, hardly seem like a way to bring home the bacon in a hurry. But when a spectacular offer is made on them, requiring a phone call by the homeowner, and that call results in a sales presentation that becomes a bona fide sale with a world-class profit, the door hanger is no longer tiny.
The connection from the prospect’s wallet to your deposit slip is like a long steel chain. Few of the weapons can reach the whole distance. But when they combine as links, the chain reaches. A doorhanger is a link. Small, but made of tempered steel.
Inside signs are the first of the weapons we’ll investigate. Because they generate impulse sales, “instant results” is what interior signage can accomplish.
Although preparing for a trade show takes months, the results trade-show displays produce occur in a flash, with one flash after another at the trade show-if you go about your trade show marketing properly.
Fairs and flea markets don’t require a whole lot of waiting around. You make the sale or you don’t. Even if you make only one sale for every hundred people who see your booth, if ten thousand people show up, you’ll be making many sales.
Special events can be used to generate publicity, goodwill, or instant sales. Sometimes you can obtain all those good things. With a bit of imagination, or a resourceful PR person, the possibilities for special events are unlimited.
Searchlights and blimps are turning out to be companions of special events because they call attention to them, serving as links in the chain, albeit one link filled with helium.
Seminars and workshops can bestow instant authority on you–or instant money, depending on how you set them up. Courses and lectures were examined as instant credibility builders in Chapter 5. So we’ll view seminars and workshops as instant profit builders here in Chapter 8.
Effective displays can move merchandise, in the blink of an eye, from the display to the customer’s hands. Such displays must be included in any chapter that looks into guerrilla marketing weapons that produce instant results.
Demonstrations are famous for the speed at which they get the prospect’s name on the dotted line. The vacuum cleaner salesperson spills the dirt on the carpet, then vacuums it up, demonstrating the cleaner and making the sale. Well, it’s not always that easy. On second thought, for some guerrillas, it is.
Consultations are a method of demonstration in that they enable you to demonstrate your wisdom, or better yet, your ability to solve problems, or perhaps even produce instant results. What we have here is a weapon that can produce instant results because it shows others how to obtain instant results.
Sales presentations are designed solely to result in a sale. After all, there’s the opening contact, then the sales presentation, and finally, the close. Many people know that sales presentations are supposed to bring about instant results. They just don’t know how to do them. To the rescue, Chapter 8.
Direct-mail letters are weapons that you keep stockpiled so you can have them ready rather than develop them after you discover you need them. Either way, if they’re part of a more comprehensive marketing effort, they can bring in the cash in a great big hurry.
Direct-mail postcards can do the very same thing with less of an investment, take less time to create, and offer more of a chance that the recipient will read your offer.
Postcard deck offers are coupons masquerading as postcards joined up with many other masquerading postcards encased in a plastic wrap. Of the 100 guerrilla marketing weapons, this is probably the fastest-growing.
Booths for malls are also increasing in popularity because malls are proliferating, as is awareness of the need to market like a guerrilla. A booth is the perfect opportunity. A mall is the perfect place.
This is a great book by all standard, and I very much gladly recommend it to you if you would like to learn about Investing and growing your money.
