marketing Archives - Page 19 of 21 by Mark Murnahan

Marketing Without a Budget: Guerrilla Marketing Tips

Juan Martin Diez: 18th Century Guerrilla

If you struggle to produce the money needed for marketing, you had better learn some guerrilla marketing, and fast! You should always assume that somebody else in your market segment has deeper pockets and the longer you wait the harder it will be to reach the customers. When marketing a business with a small marketing budget or no marketing budget at all, you can still improve your chances of success using free or very low cost guerrilla marketing.

How to Grow a Business Without a Marketing Budget

I do not want to let you down, but the truth is that it absolutely cannot be done. You will have to budget something, and if it is not money, it will be time … probably a lot of time. Be ready for that, and budget your marketing time. Set aside a scheduled time to learn more, do more, and earn more. This is your business we are talking about and if you have a family to feed, like I do, it really starts to seem worth it to make it a success. Budget your time well, because although you may think you are too busy to budget time for marketing, the truth may be that you are just busy with the wrong things. If you are marketing your business well, time in other areas will almost surely free up for you. While you are budgeting time, be sure to budget enough to finish reading this article. I have some guerrilla marketing tips for you.

Useful Guerrilla Marketing Tips

I am going to give you some free and effective guerrilla marketing tips that you can start using today. I will also welcome your thoughts and additions, but if I try to add more than a short list, I will be writing this all day. This is only intended to help prime you for the task of marketing your business.

Guerrilla Marketing Tip Number One: Get Uncomfortable

If you are sitting back in your easy chair feeling comfortable about your marketing, you are not ready for this. If you are marketing without a budget, and you are comfortable about your marketing, you are really not ready for this.

One of the first things I would suggest for anybody trying to grow a business is to get uncomfortable. The more uncomfortable you are, the more likely you are to take serious measures to do something about it. If you relax and think things are just fine, you are just asking for that comfortability to all slip away. I have been in business for over 20 years and I have seen the good times and the bad times. I remember joking with my wife while living in my ivory tower and having a whole lot more time and money than I ever thought I could want or need and saying “I’m tired of living like this.” I actually joked but also kind of meant it, because while earning more per year than an average family does in ten years can be fun and all, a fall can also happen a lot faster. I have seen it … the hard way. Never get too comfortable, and always find reasons that you are “tired of living like this.”

Guerrilla Marketing Tip Number Two: Find Success and Follow It

Find success and follow it! Look for what successful people have done and learn from their experiences. I am not saying to imitate their every move, but rather to learn what they know and find ways that it can be applied to your marketing efforts. Many successful people will blog about their experiences and are happy to share what is in their head. Read blogs until your eyes hurt! Although it may seem like a waste of time at first, look at it this way; if you want to know how to do something better, doesn’t it make sense to use what others have learned instead of trying to learn it all the hard way?

Do not believe everything you read, but choose carefully and read a lot. Pay attention! Pick out a handful of blogs and spend some time to do more than just scan and click. Your competition is scanning and clicking through a lot of information. You want to learn and improve your business profitability, so what you should know is that even a little of the right information is better than a lot of average information. Get involved and find information pertinent to your industry. Find information from marketers who know marketing. Find things that challenge convention, because conventional is what everybody else is doing. Here are some blogs to help you get started, and of course I should mention that I have a blog archive with many nice trinkets to share.

Don’t just sit there! Learn opinions from other readers and add your comments. Note that while you are commenting that there is a place to enter your web address URL and it will create a link back to your website. If you are active in blogs, those links can add up to a lot. It is also a great way to become familiar with other frequent readers or people who had a common interest. Reach out to them and find out what works for them. Also be sure to read “10 Really Good Reasons to Blog” … seriously, add it to your time budget and read it!

Guerrilla Marketing Tip Number Three: Look Where Your Market is Looking

Look where your market is looking. I want to be really clear on this when I say that your customers are using the Internet. I was recently visiting with an old client of mine who is in the railroad construction business. They came to me about a website several years back, because they knew that they were supposed to have a website. They did not really know why, and their biggest focused use of it was to find job applicants. Even today, they still find it hard to comprehend that the people out there who make decisions about who will build their railroad bridge or railroad extension are using the Internet. Think of it this way, if you were running this company, even if they are not using the Internet to search for where to buy a railroad bridge, you should be there to increase their awareness of you. The company spends virtually zero money or effort in marketing, yet they want more business. This is what happens when you stop saying “I’m tired of living like this.” The moral of the story: Don’t get railroaded by thinking that your customers don’t use the Internet. Unless your potential customers live in caves without computers and no cellular signal, they are using the Internet every day. Just because you do not sell the product online or receive immediate gratification does not mean you can slide by without it. Selling more of what you offer does not always mean you are pitching them your next deal. There is a reason that Mc Donalds runs ads that say “You deserve a break today” and not just “$.99 Big Macs for a limited time at participating locations.” Branding is important, and the company the potential purchaser has heard of will have the upper hand.

Guerrilla Marketing Tip Number Four: Guerrilla Marketing is a Stepping Stone

You should be aware of some basic assumptions about companies that try to perform marketing without a budget. You need to know this before you can overcome it. If your marketing budget is small, we can make a couple of accurate assumptions. Whether these assumptions are right or wrong, it is very likely how your prospective customers and your competition will perceive your business, so be aware of this. Here is the first assumption about marketing without a budget: If you do not have a marketing budget, it is pretty likely that you are broke. Successful companies that can afford marketing do not flinch at the idea of investing in growing their market share to squeeze you out of the picture. This brings me to the second assumption about marketing without a budget: Wouldn’t you, if you were them?

You could just try the old line that you don’t spend money on marketing because you are trying to keep your cost low. Sorry, anybody who has ever been in business will see right through that one. Let’s face it, your cost is lower when your company is productive and making money. Marketing does not create a net loss … it creates profit, money, business, customers, growth, market share … you know, all of those things you want more of. Marketing lowers your cost by making your business successful.

Guerrilla marketing is a good way to get started, but businesses that do not reinvest in professional marketing services will often fall into a wasteful trap that they are not able to get out of. Once you have seen the benefits of good guerrilla marketing, use it for professional marketing. You probably answered affirmatively when I asked “Wouldn’t you, if you were them?” Stop imagining that you are above this one very basic law of successful business: It takes money to make money. Remember that without experienced marketing talent, it will be much harder to get your hands on money. It is like a chicken and egg question, only worse: What came first, the money or the money? The more you invest, whether time or money, the more you will receive in return. If you use guerrilla marketing as a stepping stone to grow beyond your current constraints, you will then understand why you did all that reading i assigned you.

I will have some more tips for you soon, so budget your time and keep coming back.

Will Your Customers Wait for a Flat Tire?

Do your potential customers know that they need your product or service offering? You may be surprised to find that many marketing shortcoming are not only in lack of exposure, but also because potential customers failed to see a need … or enough need to do business with you. Maybe you have addressed this question before, but perhaps I can help you with a different spin.

Imagine First Generation Drivers

Back when cars first gained popularity as a mode of transportation, most people did not know much about them. The first generation drivers were pretty clueless about the new “horseless carriages”, but they sure were eager to learn. They had a lot of crashes back in those days. I can imagine why they crashed. Just picture the kids back then having to actually hand write their text messages on paper!

Try to imagine the days before anybody had a father to nag them about checking their tires. Cars need maintenance, but in the beginning, most people didn’t know anything at all about tire care. Drivers overlooked maintenance and had a lot of breakdowns. My father told of his first car, which was a Ford Model T Roadster. Stop right there, I am not all that old. My dad was about a hundred and twenty something when I was born. Anyway, he said it seemed like he blew a tire every time he turned a corner. This created a need for better tires. Not just a need for better tires, but also used tires, tire repair, tire changing, and of course some good tools for changing the tires. All of the sudden, there was an emerging market. It became a pretty huge market that made many people such as the Firestone family abundantly wealthy. Tires were expensive, and people tried to use them as long as they could. They would drive them until they blew out. It is why the term “tire kicking” is still used today. Back then, people would kick the tires because if the tires had been repaired, kicking them would help them to know if there was a “boot” in the tire. No, not the kind of boot on your foot, but a piece of rubber that was used inside the tire to repair it.

Now, back to the Firestone family, the Firestone’s did not get wealthy only because there was a market need. They helped people to understand their need, and they did this better than the rest of the tire companies who competed with them.

How Would You Market Tires?

When you imagine your market, try to think like the earliest tire companies. Pretend that you are the first company to try and explain to people about tires. What would you do, and what would you say? Would you wait until their tired blew out and they knew they had a need, or would you try to help them to be safer by knowing when their tires were getting too old? Would you teach them about tire pressures and how to make their tires last longer, or would you hope they wore them out sooner so you could sell more? TIP: Even tire companies selling the same tire but who help customers prolong their tire life have “better tires” because they last longer.

Think about how you would reach those early drivers. How would you let them know, not only that you exist, but how you would impress upon them that they need your tire store and not just the closest tire store to where their next tire blows out. How far would you reach to grow that market if the big obstacle was to help people understand that they are safer when you are their tire guy?

Exposure is a huge component of marketing, but never forget that there are already a lot of people who know about you, but do not realize how much they need you, or why you sell “better tires” than the others.

People Don’t Repair Good Tires

People do not repair good tires that hold air. This occurred to me as I consider the Internet marketplace. A lot of people who really need the marketing services which I provide just don’t know how much it can help or how bald their tires are. Do you need a better tire seller?

Are You Too Good at Your Job?

Being too good at your job can damage your vision. What I mean is that when you are too closely involved, it can become easy to miss something that is right under your nose. It seems that a lot of people are their own worst enemy when it comes to their business, and especially as it relates to their marketing. I hear it all the time that a client will hold onto delusions that they know their market inside and out. They blame the industry, their customers, or the economy for problems instead of realizing they have made some mistakes. The truth is that they are often just too closely involved. I am sure you have seen something that you can relate this to, right?

I even feel this way in my job a lot of times. Since I know a lot about Internet marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), I forget that a lot of people are just not so familiar. If you are good at something, it is easy to forget that the world is made up of all types and that the more you specialize, the more you become blinded. Addressing this with clients is an interesting challenge to me, because I frequently provide concrete evidence to show them just how wrong they are and how much business they have been missing. Then I have to present it in a way that does not make them feel stupid for not seeing it and addressing it sooner. People hate feeling stupid, and I don’t always have such a soft hand at pointing things like this out. I am that guy who will tell people what they need to hear rather than candy-coating a turd and telling them what they want to hear. I am a great marketer but because of that, I lack the wasteful schmoozing that some people expect to get when they spend a lot of money. This is my example of being so focused that I don’t see so well. I hope that you can realize it if there are instances like this in your work, too. Recognizing it is a good step in the right direction … I think … or rather, I hope.

It is common to use bad judgment or to be complacent when addressing matters within your own industry. It is why people use the analogies of a cobbler with barefoot children or a plumber with leaky pipes. It is easy to just think we are so good at something that we know how long we can put a task off before things break. It can also be easy to think we are doing all the right things, while we are actually just making things worse. Allow me to share an extreme real life example.

Jeff is Too Good at His Job to be Sick

I am reminded of many years ago when I had a roommate who was a physician. He woke up one morning and he was very sick. He could barely stand up, but of course he didn’t need a doctor. He figured that since his abdomen hurt that he just needed some antacid. He swigged a big dose of about three different over-the-counter antacids and headed to work.

Later that day as he was doing rounds at the hospital, it got worse … a lot worse. I got a call from an old school friend’s mother that evening. It kind of surprised me because I had not spoken to this woman in the prior 15 or more years. She was calling for professional reasons, as she is a nurse who worked with Jeff (the roommate). She called to let me know that while Jeff was at work, he had become so sick that he needed an emergency surgery. His appendix had perforated and he was in really bad shape. He made the mistake of diagnosing himself and it finally took a doctor friend to force him to go to the emergency room where a formal diagnosis was made. His condition was worsening fast, and if not for the intervention, it would have been life-threatening in very short order.

Jeff is a sub-specialist with over 15 years of post-secondary medical training from some of the most prestigious medical schools in the world. He is extremely talented in his field of medicine, but he was just too close to see the problem. I am not a doctor, and even I knew enough to tell him to stop by the emergency department to drink a GI cocktail just to see if the pain went away. If not, it would be a sign of something worse. He didn’t take my tip, nor several coworkers advice throughout the day, and he suffered a lot for it.

Jeff’s instance makes a good example of just being so good at a job or too closely involved to have good judgment. I see business instances similar to this often enough to believe that most people can find a similar oversight in their work.

My work involves a lot of different markets, and I am always thinking about how to best reach my clients’ prospective customers. Not so unlike Jeff, I am my own worst patient. I think a lot of us are this way but we become too blind to recognize it. We get so wrapped up in our respective jobs that we put things off or make costly mistakes.

It is very likely that you are overlooking a lot of potential in your business, too. Recognizing the ailment is an important step to recovery. Don’t be a “Jeff”! Putting things off will often make for a much longer recovery.

What Do People Want and Where Do You Fit In?

Knowing what people want is an important part of effective marketing. Knowing where you fit into the customer’s plan is critical to success. It is not a simple one-answer question and it requires a close look at what people want, why they want it, and how you can help them get more of those things they want. Knowing where you are in this big picture is often difficult, because you are on the inside and trying to find a view from the outside. I want to offer you some help.

Note that this is not a matter of fitting your product or service into what you think people want, but what they actually want.

Humans Are Highly Evolved and Sophisticated Creatures

We humans are highly evolved. We think differently than most animals. We think differently enough that we have sometimes even become arrogant about it. We think we can fight what is in our nature, and that we are totally in control. We even came up with a word to make instinct seem more evolved, and we called it “emotion”. Emotion is what drives us to many of the choices we make, whether we like it or not. Emotions bring us closer to our friends, emotions cause us to argue with our friends, and emotions help us to find the right mate. Wait, but couldn’t the same things be said of instinct? Instincts drive us to be with others like us, instincts cause us to compete and fight within our packs, instincts are what make this mate or that mate right for us, and instincts are what drive us to buy things. Seriously, emotions are synonymous with instincts, and I make this point because we cannot fight our instincts. If I tell you that you cannot fight your emotions, I may reach some of you, but when I put it in terms of the lion with the biggest mane, it is because I want you guys to hear me, too.

Let us just consider, for a moment, that we are each hunters and gatherers. Like it or not, that’s where I am going with this. If I am a better hunter and gatherer, I will be rewarded. OK lions, that means I will have the best den, the best mate, and the best and most delicious gazelle. If you do not believe me on this, take a look at statistics on divorce. When a lion has a broken ankle, (not providing well) the mate (male or female … because ladies, you really are the ones who rock my blog) is far more likely to kick you out of the den or at very least to the other side of the den until you can show them the gazelle. I hope we are clear on this, because I want to tell you a little more about instincts and why some things sell so much better than others.

We have all heard that “sex sells”, but have you really looked deeper into why sex sells?

Why Does Sex Sell? Because People Instinctively Want Sex!

There are very basic non-sexy reasons that sex sells, and the sooner you realize it, the better. Aside from finding something to eat, there is not a single more instinct-driven action in our world than to pass along our genetics and keep our species alive. Without sex, nobody would be here and reading my blog. Yes, like it or not, your mother and father had sex … probably a lot.

People beat around the bush about the topic, and it is taboo for some people which makes it even more desirable. We avoid talking to grandmother about it, but let’s face it: sex sells. It sells news, it sells products, and it sells hope … in numbers that nothing else can compete with … not even close! There is no need for you to be shy when I tell you that sex sells, because grandmother is not watching. Even if grandmother was watching, she could probably tell you a good thing or two about sex. I know, it seems impossible, right?

In case you have any doubts on this topic, let us consider how you feel about the words mastectomy, castration, hormone disorder, or erectile dysfunction. I don’t mean just clinically, but how they affect people. These are some of the most frightening things that can happen to a human being. Castration is often considered one of the most cruel and unusual punishments possible, and in case you have not noticed, plastic surgery (namely fake boobs) is a pretty profitable field. On top of that, “erectile dysfunction” could easily be the overriding view of our life and time if we were dug up by anthropologists in a couple thousand years.

When a company embraces a market directive of not only the fact that sex sells, but how they can position themselves such that others are instinctively driven to their product, they win! They have the biggest profit margins and they have the biggest market, and all because they give us what we want. Just look at Calvin Klein as an example of this. Have you ever purchased one of their products or had sex with somebody who did? They offer jeans to make butts look better, scents to make people smell sexier, but really, above all, they market to instincts. They are not conning you, but rather simply understand what people want and they know how to deliver it.

So you may ask “what of other markets”. Instinct holds answers there, too. If you are a successful plumber, instincts tell us that backed up sewage is not healthy and that we should call you. If you are a successful restaurant, instincts tell us that your food will make us more satisfied than the others. If you are a successful car dealer, instincts tell us that you have a better way for us to go out to hunt and gather. As crazy as it may seem to you, even the seemingly least desirable or ridiculous things you may ever purchase are there because somebody had a better way to appeal to your instincts (emotions).

How Can I Harness Instincts?

Since you read this far, you are probably wondering just how you can harness instincts to explain how very valuable and useful your products or services are. The good news is that it is not as ugly or difficult as you have probably imagined. It takes a careful look at what you do and how it really fits into things that people want and need. Knowing where you are in this big picture is usually pretty hard, because you are on the inside and seeking a view from the outside.

My tip is to realize where and what you are. Be aware of yourself and why you do the things you do. It is a huge step to understanding where you fit in the pack and how you can help the rest of the pack survive stronger than without you. When the pack is stronger because of what you do, you become a success.

From my standpoint, I realized a long time ago that I do things because I am a lion with huge claws and teeth, and I know why I do things. There are instinctual reasons that I ride a motorcycle that is ten feet long and why I purchase amazing items. In my case, I want sex … just like nearly everybody else.

How this works into the pack and makes my pack stronger is that I help them to do the same. I help people to earn more money, which helps them to have more of the things that they want. I help people to find where they fit into the pack. I hope that I have helped you. If you need more help and want to grow your pack, just ask me.

What Will it Take to Double Your Business?

Have you ever asked yourself what it will take to double your business? Adjust this question to your business however you like, but you should always be able to answer the question. If you operate very small or new business, doubling it is a pretty easy task. If you have been around a while and have a significant market share in your industry, this may be a pretty lofty goal. If you want to be “realistic” (by the way, realism is very subjective), maybe you want to increase your business by 15 percent, 25 percent, or 35 percent. Whatever the number, ask yourself what it will take to achieve it, and set a course to do it. Make a goal and treat it like an egg. Keep it warm, keep it safe from harm, and nurture it every day.

Treat Your Business How You Want it to Hatch

Successful business people ask what it will take to grow their market. Successful companies, even the small ones, treat their business like it is a big one, and like it will eventually hatch into a huge one. This is a pretty important principle that drives many companies to massive success.

Lately it seems that many companies have given up on the hope of growth and just beg to keep the market they have. A shocking truth I often find is that many businesses have a lot more means to grow than they give themselves credit. Many of them are too backed up in bureaucracy and indecision to actually make the efforts it will take to achieve growth. Executives are so afraid of losing their jobs for making a bad decision that they make the worst decision of all, which is indecision.

Don’t Lose your Business in the Marketing Omelette

There is often a simple answer to increase your business, but finding that answer is the tricky part. A truth about businesses today is that as the economy changed quickly in the past couple years, marketing changed even faster. Marketing became more confusing, and companies have to be a lot more creative to reach those elusive customers. It seems insane to me that as competition is stronger, a lot of companies have either tried really hard at doing all the wrong things or just gave up to take a “wait and see” attitude toward their market. They gave up on their egg and are letting the competition come and peck away at it. They ran out of ideas, and stopped seeking that simple but elusive answer of how to keep growing.

Business Growth Requires Defined Efforts

Flight does not happen by accident, and if you ever want that egg to hatch and fly, you must take good care of it. Achieving business growth requires defined efforts and careful attention. Here is that question for you, again. What will it take to double your business? If you cannot answer this with a clearly defined plan for success, there are people who can help. It is my job to make companies successful. Ring me up at *REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE* (*REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE*) and I will be happy to help you in the right direction. If I am not the guy to help you, rest assured that I know people who will be delighted to work with you. I am always happy to pass along a referral. Most importantly, don’t give up on your egg and do something to nurture it every day. Success is likely a whole lot more achievable than you give yourself credit.