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Here's the problem: Your prospects and customers have short attention
spans and millions of businesses attempting to attract their attention.
Here's the solution: 360 degree guerrilla marketing. It communicates
with your prospects and customers from all directions and across
long periods of time.
Here's the bonus: This kind of marketing is never intrusive, such
as telephone calls during dinner, and very inexpensive -- even when
you employ the wide range of weapons available to you, more now
than ever because of the staggering growth of the Internet.
Most business owners select a wimpy arsenal of marketing weapons,
figuring that if they spend enough, they're covering the bases.
Today, there are more bases than ever and if you're not attending
to most of them, opportunities are speeding past you at lightning
speed.
The reason to employ 360 degree guerrilla marketing is because
most prospects are in the market for what you sell only a small
fraction of the time. If you're not talking to them at that time,
they'll talk to somebody else. With less than 360 degree guerrilla
marketing, your chances of connecting with them at that fleeting
moment are cut down dramatically.
The fragmenting of media is still another reason to go all-out
with marketing and still another opportunity to go easy on your
budget because fragments cost much less than whole parts -- TV to
selected neighborhoods runs a teeny fraction of the cost of TV to
the nation. Guerrillas employ 360 degree marketing by blending low
tech and high tech with high touch and high care.
They are always available to their customers via their Website,
email address, answering device, fax, snail mail address and telephone,
with many also connecting by pager and fax-on-demand software. They're
involved in their communities, connecting with prospects face-to-face
in non-business settings. You can be sure they have an active referral
system, tapping the enormous referral power of past customers to
learn the names of potential customers.
They produce and mail brochures -- printed, audio or video, or
all three. They take networking seriously and appreciate that rare
chance to ask questions, listen to answers and learn of problems
they can solve. Guerrillas are joiners of clubs to learn industry
information, meet movers and shakers, and contribute their time
and energy to the organization. They offer free consultations and
demonstrations whenever possible and set up alliances with other
companies in co-marketing ventures -- especially online.
They are linkers of the highest order. There's a good chance they
publish a newsletter, possibly even a catalog. Many pen a column
for a publication read by their prospects and run a stand-out Yellow
Pages ad if businesses such as theirs gain customers that way. They
offer their speaking services for free to local groups and have
warm, trusting relationships with people at the media in which they
hope to gain publicity. When they get it, they make reprints to
post and mail.
360 degree guerrilla marketing means they may run classified or
small display ads offering their brochure and directing people to
their Website. Many maintain awareness on the radio, with cable
TV, in business magazines or regional editions of national magazines.
They use signs wherever feasible and stay in touch regularly with
both prospects and customers with postcard and standard mailings.
Do they send questionnaires to prospects and customers? Bet on it.
Even when they're doing all this, they're still engaging in only
180 degree guerrilla marketing.
Reality today means the other 180 degrees comes from their wise
presence and impressive activity online. The magic words are presence
and activity. Onliners see them not only at their own content-rich
website, but also actively participating in forums, chat rooms,
and with email that Netizens have requested. 360 degree guerrillas
are frequently mentioned in online news reports, host online conferences,
and run contests at their site.
As new opportunities arise online, and arise they do on a daily
basis, guerrillas seize and test them, making sure their aim encompasses
all 360 degrees of marketing. Combining all this weaponry on a continuing
basis, over a long period of time rather than in spurts, is a tough
job. But succeeding with a small business isn't supposed to be fast
or easy. By using 360 degree guerrilla marketing, succeeding does
become far more of a certainty.
(C)2000 Jay Conrad Levinson
www.gmarketingcoach.com
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