Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing

marketing meme used by Hotmail: “Get your free e-mail at Hotmail.” That’s it. How simple can you get?

Features are the things inherent in your product or service. Benefits are what the buyer gets from your product or service. The following examples will help clarify the distinction between the two.
• Driver airbags. Feelings of safety and security
• Ergonomic chair. Relieves pressure on spine, stress-relief
• Telecoaching. No commute, accept calls from anywhere
• Drill bit. Creates holes easily to help you complete your project.

Draw a circle around any benefits you offer that are not offered by your competitors. Those are your competitive advantages.

Geoff Ayling, in his superb book, Rapid Response Advertising (Business & Professional Publishing, 1999), provides wannabe guerrillas with a full 50 reasons why people buy.

People do not buy because marketing is clever, but because marketing strikes a responsive chord in their minds, and its resonance makes them want the advantages of what you are selling. Your customers do not buy because they’re being marketed to or sold to. Instead, they buy because you help them realize the merits of owning what you offer.

They said that creativity comes from knowledge. The more knowledge you have, the more creative you can be. Applying creativity to the arts listed above has the purpose of human enjoyment. Applying creativity to your business has the primary purpose of generating profits. If it doesn’t generate profits, it’s not creative.

In his brilliant book, Permission Marketing (Simon & Schuster, 1999), Seth Godin advises us to go for consent instead of the sale, then broaden that consent.

Market to individuals rather than groups.
The idea is to think cellular. A big population of small cells exists in your community, industry, and interest group. Target the center of each cell, knowing your message will radiate to others. Once again, respect the power of the individual.

NANOCASTING
“Nanocasting” is a new word coined by Errol Smith, a brilliant guerrilla marketing associate of ours. To understand nanocasting, imagine you have a product, say Viagra for example. If you were to advertise your product on national televison, that would be called “broadcasting.” If you were to advertise it on a cable channel that is geared toward men, let’s say Spike or ESPN, that would be considered “narrowcasting.” If you refined your marketing to be shown on television during shows that are geared toward men’s health, that would be referred to as “microcasting.” But the most precision type of marketing would be to target your advertisements to men’s televison, on health channels, on episodes that are dealing specifically with the problem of erectile dysfunction. Now that’s NANOCASTING!

Nonguerrillas think that marketing is over once the sale had taken place. Guerrillas know that that is the moment that the real profits are determined. One business owner might click the money into his account and forget you forever. Another might have arranged it so that his auto-responder sent you a thank-you note within two minutes of receiving your order, plus a coupon good for a generous discount next week. This gets followed, always automatically, by enticing purchase ideas that add a substantial amount of profits to his back account.