Guerrilla Marketing 4th Edition - Jay Conrad Levinson - 5 Stars

The full title is "Guerrilla Marketing: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies For Making Big Profits From Your Small Business, 4th Edition" by Jay Conrad Levinson.

This is my fourth Five Star recommended book (see book reviews for the others) that I believe all small business owners should have in their business book library.

No wonder Guerrilla Marketing is the biggest brand in small business marketing with a record 14 million Guerrilla books sold. For a list of other Guerrilla books available see my Jay Conrad Levinson index.

Background

Guerrilla Marketing started back in 1983 when Jay Conrad Levinson was asked to recommend a good small business marketing book to his students at the University of California in Berkeley. he searched and searched but he couldn't find one.

All the marketing books written said that you needed a vast marketing budget of hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend each month to build a brand.

Seeing a clear market opportunity he wrote his own small business marketing book and started what is now a huge branded network of people and resources, all focused on helping small business owners and entrepreneurs improve their marketing.

I was captured and brought into the Guerrilla Marketing fold by one simple phrase:

"It's for people with big dreams but tiny wallets."

That's me and my clients and it's probably you too.

A Look at the Book - Guerrilla Marketing

It's a big book at 368 pages with small typing, little white space and no diagrams. My only criticism is in the presentation because I would have liked it to be easier to flick through and pick out the main points.

Instead you have to read it through.

But that's not really a hardship.

it's very well written, concise and it certainly fires up the imagination with its high quality, up-to-date content.

Right Up-To-Date

This is very much a marketing book for the 21st century as Chapter 11 on E-Media Marketing Shows with sections on:

• List building
   
• Blogs
   
• Podcasting
   
• Nanocasting (commercial podcasting based on direct marketing principles)
   
• E-mail
   
• Your website
   
• Subscription websites - take a look at Jay Conrad Levinson's own subscription website, the Guerrilla Marketing Association. I'm a member and the content is excellent.
   
• Teleseminars
   
• Webinars
   
• RSS (Real Simple Syndication)
   
• E-books
   
• Affiliate programs
   
• Automated marketing
   
• Search engine optimisation
   
• Landing pages

As you can see, the book isn't just about old-age techniques but it also gives you practical advice on the cutting edge where you can gain an advantage compared with your bigger but slower moving competitors.

And because this is Guerrilla Marketing aimed at people looking for big results from small budgets, none of the techniques need cost you a fortune.

Back To The Basics

I rather jumped ahead of myself in my excitement.

I wanted to show you that although Guerrilla Marketing has been around for nearly 25 years and Jay Conrad Levinson had many years marketing and advertising experience before he wrote the books, the book is for marketing in 2007 and 2008.

Fundamental to understanding Guerrilla Marketing is the viewpoint that "marketing is every bit of contact your company has with anyone in the outside world."

Now that really puts marketing at the very centre of your business. Everything you do is marketing because it leaves an impression (good or bad) on other people.

So are you a giver or a taker in any relationship? Guerrillas know that by giving first, they will get much more back from most people. OK perhaps not from everyone but from enough people to make it the right policy to follow.

What Is Guerrilla Marketing?

In Chapter 1 Jay Conrad Levinson contrasts guerrilla marketing with traditional marketing over 20 points.

The most important and number 1 on the list is that traditional marketing requires you to spend money to build and maintain your brand. In Guerrilla Marketing, you can replace that money by investing time, energy, imagination and/or information.

Secrets Of Guerrilla Marketing

In Chapter 3, the author explains the 16 monumental secrets of Guerrilla Marketing, the very foundation stones that guerrilla marketing is based on.

If you know Guerrilla Marketing, then these are the "ent" words. All the words end in "ent" to help you learn and remember them.

One of those words is Commitment and Jay Conrad Levinson tells the story of the Marlboro Man advertising campaign started when Marlboro was a low selling brand seen as feminine in market research.

The Marlboro Man campaign ran for a year (linking the cigarettes to cowboys, the American heritage and countryside).

When they did the market research, they discovered that the brand was in just the same market share position and was still seen as a feminine brand.

But Joseph Cullman IV, chairman of Philip Morris believed in the campaign and brand image, gave it his full commitment and the book says that 1 in 5 of every cigarette now sold in the world is a Marlboro.

I realise that a massive worldwide advertising campaign isn't in the territory of a guerrilla marketer but it does underline how important commitment can be.

Are you intrigued to know what the other 15 ent words are and wondering whether they are just as insightful? Well there's one obvious way to find out.

Guerrilla Marketing Plan

Do you believe that business planning and marketing planning is a long-winded and a time consuming exercise that you just don't have time for?

Well think again if you are a guerrilla marketer.

You need to apply imagination and do things intentionally so that requires disciplined thinking and planning.

But the great news is that the Guerrilla Marketing Strategy is just seven sentences long. It's all there is Chapter 4.

Guerrilla Marketing Weapons

Much of the book is about the 200 Guerrilla Marketing Weapons that you can use. There used to be just 100 Guerrilla Marketing Weapons but more are discovered all the time as technology changes and more imaginative ideas are created.

The book takes looks at some of the weapons although it's only at the end of the book that you realise what Jay Conrad Levinson was doing as there is now count down or count up throughout the book until the summary on page 337.

These 200 Guerrilla Marketing Weapons are split into various chapters:

• Minimedia (1 to 30) - business cards, personal letters, postcards etc
     
• Maximedia (31 to 37) - advertising, direct mail etc
     
• E-Media (38 to 76) - see above
   
• Info-media (77 to 98) - case studies, newsletter etc
     
• Human Media (99 to 122) - you, networking etc
     
• Nonmedia (123 to 156) - PR, fusion marketing etc
     
• Company Attributes (157 to 183) - name, meme, opening hours etc
     
• Company Attitudes (184 to 200) - easy to do business with, focus etc

Now what I like about lists like these as a business coach is that it's easy to take any one guerrilla marketing weapon and do a 30 minute workshop with a company to look at how well the weapon is currently used, what ideas can people think of and which ideas should be put into action.

"Guerrilla Marketing" by Jay Conrad Levinson is a great book and I recommend it very highly to all small business owners who need to get the maximum impact from their marketing budget.

Order this book from Amazon UK or USA

It doesn't replace Jay Abraham's "Getting Everything you Can..."  (my other 5 star marketing book) because the two are very different but complementary. Guerrilla Marketing is much more structured and tactical while Jay Abraham's ideas can be described as strategic opportunitistic profit maximisation.

If you are interested in Guerrilla Marketing, then I also recommend the Guerrilla Marketing Association.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs