By Jay Conrad Levinson
JAYVIEW@aol.com
All you ever need to know about marketing is in this month's column. In the few minutes it takes you to read this -- and download it if you're serious about success -- you'll learn more down and dirty home truths about marketing than you'd pick up with a score of MBAs under one arm and all the marketing books ever written, including mine, under the other. In last month's column, I told you the ten ways that guerrilla marketing differs from textbook marketing. Now, I'm going to let you in on the 12 words that guarantee you will exceed your most optimistic projections, however obscene they may be.
MEMORIZE THESE 12 WORDS THEN LIVE BY THEM.
I'm giving you a memory crutch so that you'll never forget these words. All 12 words end in the letters "ENT." Run your business by the guerrilla concepts they represent and you'll be in marketing heaven.
1. COMMITMENT: You should know that a mediocre marketing program with commitment will always prove more profitable than a brilliant marketing program without commitment. Commitment makes it happen.
2. INVESTMENT: Marketing is not an expense, but an investment -- the best investment available in America today -- if you do it right. With guerrilla marketing to guide you, you'll be doing it right.
3. CONSISTENT: It takes a while for prospects to trust you and if you change your marketing, media, and identity, you're hard to trust. Restraint is a great ally of the guerrilla. Repetition is another.
4. CONFIDENT: In a nationwide test to determine why people buy, price came in fifth, selection fourth, service third, quality second, and, in first place -- people said they patronize businesses in which they are confident.
5. PATIENT: Unless the person running your marketing is patient, it will be difficult to practice commitment, view marketing as an investment, be consistent, and make prospects confident. Patience is a guerrilla virtue.
6. ASSORTMENT: Guerrillas know that individual marketing weapons rarely work on their own. But marketing combinations do work. A wide assortment of marketing tools are required to woo and win customers.
7. CONVENIENT: People now know that time is not money, but is far more valuable. Respect this by being easy to do business with and running your company for the convenience of your customers, not yourself.
8. SUBSEQUENT: The real profits come after you've made the sale, in the form of repeat and referral business. Non-guerrillas think marketing ends when they've made the sale. Guerrillas know that's when marketing begins.
9. AMAZEMENT: There are elements of your business that you take for granted, but prospects would be amazed if they knew the details. Be sure all of your marketing always reflects that amazement. It's always there.
10. MEASUREMENT: You can actually double your profits by measuring the results of your marketing. Some weapons hit bulls-eyes. Others miss the target. Unless you measure, you won't know which is which.
11. INVOLVEMENT: This describes the relationship between you and your customers -- and it is a relationship. You prove your involvement by following up; they prove theirs by patronizing and recommending you.Ê
12. DEPENDENT: The guerrilla's job is not to compete but to cooperate with other businesses. Market them in return for them marketing you. Set up tie-ins with others. Become dependent to market more, spend less.
These 12 concepts are the probably reason that the guerrilla marketing books are now the most popular in the world, are published in 29 languages, are required reading in many MBA programs, and have spawned a newsletter, audiotapes, a video, and a software program.
To get a free catalog of all guerrilla products, call 1-800-748-6444. In California, call 415-381-8361. Or e-mail your request to GM Intl.
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