Business Coaching

New Secrets of Guerrilla Marketing

The latest call from Jay Levinson on the Guerrilla Marketing Association was on the new secrets of Guerrilla Marketing which have now crept up to eighteen fundamentals that you need to incorporate in your marketing.

The first secret is Commitment to communicating your message and Jay re-told the story of how Malboro cigarettes totally changed its image and fortunes with the "Come to Malboro Country" advertising campaign. One year later and 18 million dollars later, the brand image and market position hadn't changed.

The President of Philip Morris believed and knew that people were loyal to cigarette brands so it would take time to change. After eighteen months sales started to take off and over the last forty years Malboro has become the world's leading brand.

The core message is that commitment to a good marketing campaign will work better than half hearted commitment to a brilliant marketing campaign.

This is one of Jay Levinson's regular messages but he has now added two new items since the latest edition of Guerrilla Marketing was published
.
It is surprising that the two new items were not included before because they are absolutely fundamental to marketing success.

Secret 17 is Implement - those who take action win, those who don't take action don't win. It's as simple as that.

Secret 18 is Congruent - all your marketing messages must pull in the same direction which is a slightly different twist to two of the long term Guerrilla Marketing secrets.  

For Guerrilla Marketers, this may be familiar material but I always find two big advantages from listening to the same piece of great advice multiple times:

1. The benefits of repetition. The more you hear it, the more familiar you become with the ideas and the more likely you will automatically apply the ideas.
     
   
2. It encourages you to realise that perhaps you are not applying the secrets of Guerrilla Marketing as effectively as you could do. While Jay doesn't say this, I would recommend that you work down the list and ask yourself two questions
    
   "How am I showing my commitment to my marketing?"
    
   "Are there areas where my commitment has not been as strong as it should be?

Regular readers know that I am a certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach and really buy into the Guerrilla Marketing ideas.

The way I see the Guerrilla Marketing Association is that it is the marketing service you hope your competitors don't get to find out about before you do.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Guerrilla Marketing On The Internet

The last Guerrilla Marketing Association call featuring Jay Conrad Levinson was "The Truth of Guerrilla Marketing on the Internet" and it was fascinating to hear Jay explain how Guerrilla Marketers can take advantage of the Internet.

Here are a few points that struck home to me although the entire call was packed with high quality content.

First of all to succeed in Internet marketing you must understand the basic marketing principles. Obvious I know when you think about it but I see too many people go along to a website designer and have an attractive website designed but with no consideration to the marketing message and how to monetarise it.

The second item from the call which made me stand back and reflect was when Jay Conrad Levinson said that you don't need a website to market on the Internet.

Now that's an interesting idea isn't it. Doing away with the expensive website that nobody finds and instead concentrating on

1. Marketing to existing customers and leads by email
    
2. Using social networking sites like Facebook and business networking sites like Ecademy
    
3. Article marketing and the content sharing sites like Squidoo and Hubpages
    
4. Having a blog (which is like having your own website) or just becoming a regular commentator on other blogs and making enough of an impression so that people want to follow you
    
5. Using bulletin boards and forums
    
6. Selling on Internet auction sites like eBay

It may not be the best strategy long term but it is difficult to create an effective presence on the Internet and it will become even more difficult.

Just as in magazine advertising, the more clutter there is, the less individual items are noticed. Having a website is only the answer if you are attracting traffic.

But there is a credibility issue.

Often prospective customers will encounter you through another marketing channel and then take a look at your website. The beauty of the Internet is that it is anonymous and you can find out more without having to reveal your interest.

In cases where prospective customers expect you to have a website, then you do need one because otherwise your credibility will be in doubt.

The final idea that I am going to write about from this Guerrilla Marketing Association call is the rule of thirds.

Jay Conrad Levinson is only two aware of what happens with websites and his advice is to split your budget into thirds and spend the first third of developing the website, the second third on promoting it so that prospective customers either know about and look for it or can find it and the final third on maintaining the website.

This last point is important. How often have you visited a website and immediately realised that the website is badly out of date, perhaps promoting an event that happened nine months ago. It immediately creates an impression but not one that you want.

Remember everything a Guerrilla Marketer does is intentional.

If you have a small business and you want to improve your marketing, I strongly recommend the Guerrilla Marketing Association. It is a subscription service but you get a free trial period. The membership website is packed with resources to help you and I believe that the price is a bargain.

To Your Success

Paul Simister

Your Profit Coach, business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

© Planning & Control Solutions Ltd 2008 All Rights Reserved

Marketing Using The Powers Of Psychology

I have just listened to Jay Conrad Levinson's latest broadcast on the Guerrilla Marketing Association - Guerrilla Marketing with Psychology.

This is an area that I am very interested in and have bought and started to read Jay's book co-written with Paul Handley called "The Guerrilla Marketing Revolution" which I understand is being launched in the US as "Guerrilla Marketing For The Unconscious Mind" although it is available under the original title at the moment.

You can buy at Amazon UK or USA

People Buy Emotionally

Jay reiterated a message I first learnt from Michael Gerber's E Myth Mastery book - people buy emotionally (with their unconscious or subconscious minds - I am not too certain of the difference) but justify their purchase with logic.

This means that to be successful we have to market to both the unconscious mind so that people feel good about the idea of buying as well as marketing to the rational mind so that they can build reasons to justify the purchase to themselves.

E Myth & Psychographics

The E Myth Mastery book goes into a quite a lot of detail about how people seek emotional gratification and the art and science of psychographics. It is highly recommended (Amazon UK or USA). In fact I was disappointed when I bought the expensive E Myth Mastery coaching modules that the book contained the full story in this area.

I have been there.

I want something (a want is emotional) and then I search around for reasons to justify why my intended purchase makes sense.

Marketing With Psychology

Coming back to the Guerrilla Marketing with Psychology call, Jay Levinson didn't head off into that direction as I thought he might and nor did he move into Robert Cialdini's thoughts on influence and persuasion.

Instead Jay discussed the importance of repetition to get through to the unconscious mind. It is why TV advertisements are repeated again and again.

You may have already read or heard that it takes about nine exposures to a message to move someone from total apathy to being ready to buy.

Does that make you stop and think about that one-shot direct mail campaign that didn't seem to do as well as you'd hoped? If marketing is the process of moving someone from cold to hot, you will have only moved them by a few degrees - from icy cold to cold.

It gets worse.

Jay Levinson says that on average people only see one in three of your messages.

If someone is exposed to your advert three times, they will have only registered it once. So the nine sightings need to create a buyer require about twenty seven exposures.

With direct marketing techniques you may hope to do better although with a long sales letter, it takes some familiarity to move from "Looks interesting. I will read sometime." to "Looks just what I need. I will read right now."

You know that I am not going to spill the beans on the whole call. That wouldn't be respectful of the Guerrilla Marketing Association's intellectual property and remember you can sign up for a free trial (I think its 30 days).

It is important to remember that you are marketing to the logical and emotional parts of the mind.

Does It Feel Right Emotionally?

The stated message has to make sense but what's known as the meta message has to feel right.

I am sure that you have experienced the situation where what the salesman says or what a sales letter says makes sense but you get an uncomfortable feeling that everything is not as it should be.

Effective marketing is making sure that your stated message and meta message are consistent.

Freudian Marketing v Skinnerian Marketing

Jay Levinson also talked about the difference between Freudian marketing based around changing attitudes to buying (based on repeated exposure to a sales message) and Skinnerian marketing which aims at modifying purchase behaviour through special incentives.

This is definitely an area of marketing where people will go much further. The more we understand about the laws of human behaviours as applied to buying - the what, the how, the when and in particular the why, the more successful we can be at using those factors to influence our target customers.

At least we can if we understand the psychology of buying of marketing and buying but what if your competitors find out and you don't?

You can find out more about the Guerrilla Marketing Association and how it helps to keep Guerrilla Marketers up-to-date with all the latest marketing ideas and technologies by following this link.

Update

Since I wrote this blog, Mark Joyner has re-released his infamous Mind Control Marketing book which was previously withdrawn "because the world wasn't ready."

Mind Control Marketing

This link also includes a free report to download "Secret Hot Buttons Which Make Customers Spend Like Crazy." It's not Mind Control Marketing but it is free.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

The Guerrilla Marketing Attack

It has taken me too long to listen to the late January call with Jay Conrad Levinson on the Guerrilla Marketing Association. The call is titled the Guerrilla Marketing Attack.

As Jay says "Guerrilla marketing is not a spectator sport - theory won't get you to your destination but action will."

There is a new book "The Start Up Guide To Guerrilla Marketing" to help people to start the process although there have been others like "Guerrilla Marketing in 30 days" with a similar purpose so until I see the book, I can't compare or recommend.

There are now 200 Guerrilla Marketing Weapons with more than half free to help you to find prospective customers and to turn them into "customers for life" who also recommend you to others. (Details are available through the Guerrilla Marketing Association as Jay Conrad Levinson gave 6 calls covering all the weapons in about six hours.)

Jay went through the Top Ten Attributes of Guerrilla Marketing (sorry but for you to find out, you will have to subscribe as I have to watch the Guerrilla Marketing copyright).

Jay did talk about the importance of tapping into your existing customers to power your new customer acquisition strategy through referrals and testimonials which nicely links with my custompreneur (customer focused entrepreneur) revolution.

Next Jay talked about the Top Ten Attitudes of Guerrilla Marketers.

This included the commitment to speed based on the fact that customers will resent it if you waste their time. Do you know any interesting stories about bad customer service? If so it would be great if you could follow the link and leave a comment.

Finally he went on to talk about the Ten Steps To Launching Your Guerrilla Marketing Attack.

Did you know that in the USA, the average business spends 4% of its sales value on marketing? I would expect something similar in the UK so it is a big number and that probably excludes the time taken by a small business owner.

This was an excellent call as a summary of the Guerrilla Marketing approach. Even if you are familiar with it I am a big believer in the power of repetition. I used FasterAudio to listen to the call at 134% saving me 15 minutes.

You may like to know that I have created another Squidoo page (yes I am still addicted) that looks at using small business marketing based on the Guerrilla Marketing approach or you can go straight to the Guerrilla Marketing Association. I believe it is a great resource for small businesses looking to improve their marketing.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Who Is Michael Port?

If you had asked me six months ago, back in early September 2007 "Who Is Michael Port?" I would have replied "I don't know. Are you sure you don't mean Michael Porter, famous strategy guru and Harvard professor?"

But six months is a long time and I have been amazed how many roads lead back to Michael.

Now if you ask me I will tell you "Michael Port is the guy to call when you're tired of thinking small."

Pretty neat catchphrase isn't it.

Michael Port specialises in helping small business owners and in particular self employed coaches, consultants, trainers and other service professionals to boost their revenues and make much more profit.

He's a best selling author, a great speaker, an online business coach and an Internet marketer.

Background

Michael has been blessed.

Good looking, charismatic, intelligent and from what I've seen so far a nice guy, Michael Port's career took a dramatic change in direction.

This is the man who became bored with the idea of being paid to kiss beautiful women.

You see Michael is a classically trained actor and has appeared in a range of TV shows of which the most famous in the UK is "Sex & The City" and a few films.

He found it boring. Too much waiting around.

A new career in business called, where he became a senior manager in various companies in the top end health and fitness industry before deciding to create his own consultancy firm.

The Many Roads That Lead Me To Michael Port

1. He is a contributor to Mitch Meyerson's great book "Success Secrets Of The Online Marketing Superstars". He co-wrote the chapter on "How to create products for the web." This was the book which inspired me to start this blog.
    
2. On the Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification program run by Mitch Meyerson, I quickly learnt that Mitch and Michael had a couple of joint ventures - The Product Factory and Traffic School.
    
3. I started working with some of the Guerrilla Marketing Coaches and two of them told me how great The Product Factory and Traffic School programs are and I browsed over to the websites myself to have a look. By this time, the Michael Port brand meant something to me.
    
4. I keep on a close eye on the people I consider to be the leading small business gurus so I take a little look at Michael Gerber's site promoting "In the Dreaming Room" occassionally and who should pop up on the home page in the video and as the only testimonial but Michael Port.
   
   Can you imagine the honour of receiving such a prominent position from one of the most famous business gurus in the world? There are plenty of testimonials on the Dreaming Room testimonial page although not mine from when I went to the October 2006 London Dreaming Room.
   
   This flagged to me that Michael Port was someone I needed to learn more about.
    
5. I listened to the Guerrilla Marketing Association interview with Michael Port a couple of weeks ago intending to write a short review to promote the GMA which is probably the best small business marketing service in the world.
    
6. This week as I report in Flattery gets you everywhere I was approached to review Michael Port's next book before it is published called "Beyond Book Yourself Solid."
    
7. I have ordered his first book "Book Yourself Solid: The fastest, easiest and most reliable system for getting more clients than you can handle even if you hate marketing and selling". Inspired title Michael and I hope I love the book.
    
8. I spent too much time in the small hours of last night prowling around the Michael Port website. I watched the videos and signed up to the Think Big Monday's club and received a free chapter of his first book but there is also a free 30 minute audio recording on personal branding which is excellent.
    
   Even more than that I found the treasure trove of past recordings of interviews and Q&A calls which most people would charge for. I do recommend that you spend some time on Michael's website because you will find it very rewarding.
   
   Just don't do it at 2:30 am because it is too interesting and I didn't get back to bed until well after 4:00 am.

Is Michael Port Any Good?

I like what I've seen and heard and I'm pretty hard to please but I haven't spent any money so I asked one of my Guerrilla Marketing buddies to write a short testimonial. Over to you Tina:

‘Michael Port’s charisma, vibrant energy, warmth and passion for his work and his students travels far across the Atlantic Ocean to South Africa where I participated on two of his virtual product creation courses. Thousands of miles away yet I felt totally connected with him. The word ‘exponential’ wasn’t part of my vocabulary, or business or personal growth, until I completed my first Product Factory with Michael Port and Mitch Meyerson. They have created a learning environment with the sole purpose of supporting you to succeed and excel at what you do best. Michael Port is a remarkable marketing coach and mentor. If you have the opportunity to be part of one of his classes or read his book, grab it! It will be an experience that will stretch you and leave you richer.’

Tina Cook, Multimedia Marketing and Wellness Marketing Coach and Co-founder of Secret2LoveYourLife.com (hope the pink is the right shade!)

Another of the Guerrilla Marketing Coaches I know well, Cara Lumen has contributed several articles already to this blog has agreed to write reviews for The Traffic School and Product Factory.

The Guerrilla Marketing Association Interviews Michael Port

Deep in the Guerrilla Marketing Association archives there is an interview with Michael (I recommend that every small business who needs to market joins the Guerrilla Marketing Association). This interview gives me a good idea of what Michael is like.

In my coaching I talk about a concept called customer value and the attributes that make up how a customer defines value in the context of "value of money".

I hadn't consciously turned this arrangement around until I listened to this call.

I know that customers make many decisions based on what they value but I hadn't considered the implications that people express what they value through the products and services they buy.

Isn't that interesting?

Buying one thing means not buying something else or perhaps not meeting the savings goal for the month.

Intuitively I had known it. If a person buys one luxury good or status symbol, they are likely to buy others and are therefore a prime target for other luxury goods suppliers. The owner of a Ferrari is going to be tempted by Armani suits for example.

This wasn't developed in the interview but I hadn't thought about what it means psychologically and how it can be applied to find the hot buttons for other, less obvious products which appeal to the same values or motivational drivers.

I am interested in pyschographics and marketing to the subconscious or unconscious mind and this is an area I want to explore in more detail.

The interview is really about promoting the "Book Yourself Solid" book and the 15 week intensive Book Yourself Solid Coaching Program (sorry the current program just started on 30 January 2008 although if you hurry there may be some spots left.) I was impressed by the statistics Michael Port reeled off on the course.

In fact I was impressed by two things:

1. He had the statistics and clearly cared enough to follow up the results of the course after twelve months. How often do you see that?
    
2. 93% of people who used the system properly increased their number of clients by 30% and increased their revenue by 40% in the first year alone.
   
   Very impressive. I had a look at the course and it is different to many I see.
   
   Also very refreshing is the complete absence of sales letter hype. Take a look at a very refreshing way to promote a course filled with details of what the course will cover and how it will work.

Let me ask you the question that Michael asked on the GMA call.

"Do you have a red velvet rope policy?"

What do I mean? Have you seen a popular night club where the bouncers only let in a particular type of people?

So how do you make sure that you attract the clients who you can do your best work with?

If you don't have this type of policy you will find yourself working with less than optimal clients so they won't get the best results and you won't get the maximum satisfaction from your work.

I love these ideas  which put you in control of who you work with and I've explained to others that it is tremendously liberating to fire your worst clients - those that with the benefit of hindsight, you wouldn't let past the red velvet rope. Of course you can only do it when you are not desperate for revenue from any source but remember Michael is teaching you to book yourself solid.

Michael Port Services & Solutions

Michael Port Website - I recommend that you sign up to his Think Big Mondays club.

Remember I haven't tried the following services myself but they look good and I trust the people who have told me how good Michael is.

Book Yourself Solid Coaching Course

The Product Factory - learn to create your own signature products (the sales letter is more of a traditional sales page) but it does look good.

Traffic School - how to get more traffic to your website and persuade more people who land on it to buy.

Come back soon and I will have read and reviewed Michael's existing "Book Yourself Solid" book but in the meantime do yourself a favour and pop over to his website. I know you will be as impressed as I was.

I have written far more than I intended to but I do feel inspired so thanks for that Michael and if you visit the blog, please do leave a comment.

To Your Success

Paul Simister

Your Profit Coach, business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Exit Strategies For Visitors To Your Website

I listened to a fascinating Guerrilla Marketing Association interview last night with Greg Cesar, "webmaster to the gurus". Greg has designed websites for Internet Marketing masters including Rich Schefren and Stephen Pierce so you can be sure that he excels.

I picked up much from the call but the area I will focus on here is the topic of website exit strategies.

It seems that most of us don't have an exit strategy for visitors to our websites but we should. Now that I've heard the interview I am kicking myself that I haven't focused on it before.

I am not a techie so I have no idea of the complexities involved but you will see some of these practices on other websites.

Why Do People Visit Your Website?

For any website, some of these factors will apply.

1. They are looking to buy something.
    
2. They want to find out more about you.
    
3. They want information about a particular topic.
    
4. They want to be entertained.

What Do YOU Want People To Do When They Visit Your Website?

You probably want some or all of these actions to happen when someone visits your website.

1. They buy something.
    
   
2. They sign up to your newsletter or RSS feed (you have signed up to mine haven't you?)
    
3. They download your white papers and reports with your contact details.
    
4. They click on your affiliate links.
    
5. They take the time to have a good browse and appreciate the effort you have gone to putting the website together.

On the basis that all marketing exists to fill customers needs and wants and a highly satisfied customer is likely to be a repeat customer, most of all you want your visitor to find whatever it is they are looking for on your website.

People Don't Stick Around

Your website visitors will be very impatient and make quick decisions about whether your site is relevant to them or not. Those decisions may be wrong.

I watch my traffic to this blog and I see some people land on one page for a search term when I know that there is a much better page elsewhere on the blog. So what if there was a way to help your visitors achieve their objectives on your website.

You Need An Website Exit Strategy

Imagine if you could send one last message to someone who decided to move away from your website.

Options include:

1. If they have bought, then while they have their credit card in their hand and they are still in the buying mood, offer up-sells and cross-sells.
   
   You will see this on many business information sites which tempt you to buy a $29 e-book and then offer an audio program for $79 on a related topic. Amazon also do it - "people who bought this also bought this" with the implied "you should too".
   
   This is a classic Jay Abraham style method for increasing your transaction values.
    
2. If they hadn't signed up to your newsletter, a pop up or final screen could appear saying "Before you leave, take this opportunity to sign up for the Business Development Superstars newsletter packed with tips to help you to increase your profits and received the Jay Abraham "Windfall Profits Paradox" report for FREE with the sign up box included to make it easy - click here if you want to sign up for my Superstars newsletter.
   
   Yes, I am sure that you will have made the offer elsewhere but it may not have been noticed. This Stompernet video shows how little people see at any one time.
    
3. If they came from a search engine and didn't linger on your website, what if another page appeared that said "you may find these pages relevant for business prosperity" (or whatever it was they searched for).
   
   You may have the answer people want, but if it doesn't appear on the page they clicked, they will often assume that they need to move elsewhere.
    
4. If a visitor came to buy a product but didn't, what if a page appeared that said "thank you for visiting our site and we are sorry that you didn't buy. To help us provide a better service to you in future could you please answer a few questions about why you visited our site and why you are leaving. As a thank you, we will give you this e-book or a $10 voucher to redeem against future purchases."
   
   Can you see how valuable that information would be? Perhaps you don't sell what they wanted but you could if there was enough demand. Perhaps people find it difficult to navigate around your website, don't like its appearance or find it difficult to read.
   
   All this feedback would allow you to improve your marketing because it is coming directly from prospective customers.
    
5. Following on from this, if people gave a price based reason for non-purchase what if another offer was made at a lower price.

In my opinion, website exit strategies offer considerable potential for increasing your profits provided you do them well and without causing too much inconvenience.

You don't want offer after offer appearing with the customer finding it impossible to get away. Just one "Are you sure we can't help?" message could make a big impact on your website profits.

Testing & Measuring Your Website Exit Strategies

There are many possible alternatives that you can try so I fall back on my standard rules for profit improvement:

1. Be clear on your goals. For example if you are going for the relationship building approach, you would use the newsletter reminder rather than offering an expensive, probably irrelevant product.
    
2. Learn from how other people use website exit strategies. Now that you have read this, you will notice many more. What do you like and what do you find intrusive? Ask other people what they think.
    
3. Experiment. If your website has a number of main gateways, you may want to try implementing an exit strategy on one while you watch what happens.
    
4. Test and measure. Try different things but set your metrics up to measure what happens. Keep testing alternatives against your goal.

The recording with Greg Cesar is available through the Guerrilla Marketing Association - probably the best small business marketing service in the world.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Best Small Business Marketing Service In The World (Probably)

In this article I am going to ask you to imagine the best small business marketing service in the world.

I want you to think big and to help to inspire you, I decided to find the Carlsberg "probably the best lager in the world" adverts posted as videos on YouTube.

Do you dream about a Chinese Takeaway like this?

Do you dream about a delivery service like this?

Do you dream about flatmates like this?

Are you ready to dream about the Best Small Business Marketing Service In The World?

Here are a few ideas that I think you may want:

1. Information from one of the top small business marketing gurus in the world.
    
2. A focus on small businesses and low cost/no cost marketing ideas to help those with even the smallest of marketing budgets.
    
3. A weekly interview with specialist marketers about new areas that could put you ahead of your competitors before they even know there is a new game with a chance to ask any questions you have.
    
4. Regular interactive calls with an experienced marketing coach. Your chance to ask the marketing questions you want answered and to hear answers to other people's questions.
    
5. A forum to post questions and receive answers from experienced marketing coaches and other members who have solved your current problems.
    
6. Daily marketing tips.
    
7. An enormous library of past resources with specialist advice on the areas that you are most interested in, available to you 24 hours per day, seven days per week.

Is there anything else that you can think of that you would want from the best marketing service in the world?

Probably The Best Small Business Marketing Service In the World

At this stage I would like to introduce you to the Guerrilla Marketing Association and let's look at each of the points above.

1. Information from one of the top small business marketing gurus in the world who is regularly featured.
   
   Jay Conrad Levinson is the author of the best selling Guerrilla Marketing books with over 15 million books sold in 44 different languages (correct as at January 24 2008).
   
   I understand that this is the biggest selling series of business books in the world.
    
2. A focus on small businesses and low cost/no cost marketing ideas to help businesses with even the smallest of marketing budgets.
   
   Jay Conrad Levinson turned his thoughts to small business marketing in the early eighties after a successful career in big brand advertising because he discovered that all the marketing resources expected you to spend a fortune.
   
   Guerrilla Marketers have become famous for using their imagination instead of money to create marketing success but when they do spend money on marketing, to do it in a low cost, high impact way.
    
3. A weekly interview with specialist marketers about new areas that could put you ahead of your competitors before they even know there is a new game.
   
   As well as the monthly call with Jay Conrad Levinson, other famous speakers have included Michael Gerber, Chet Holmes, Stephen Covey and many other authors and specialists.
    
4. Regular interactive calls with an experienced marketing coach. Your chance to ask the marketing questions you want answered and to hear answers to other people's questions.
   
   Calls are scheduled with Anthony Hernandez on Monday nights.
    
5. A forum to post questions and receive answers from experienced marketing coaches and other members who have solved your current problems.
   
   The forum is active with plenty of posts.
    
6. Daily marketing tips.
    
   Today (January 24) a tip about planning a publicity campaign, yesterday was about presenting and the day before was covered selling books and e-books. These are wide ranging tips that cover all areas of marketing.
    
7. An enormous library of past resources with specialist advice of the areas that you are most interested in, available to you 24 hours per day, seven days per week.
   
   This is the big benefit of the Guerrilla Marketing Association. Other subscription organisations only give you access to the new material but the GMA opens up its vast library of past recordings. This is a real gold mine and the first place I look if I want to know more about any area of marketing I am unfamiliar with.
   
   Past topics include website design, webinars, selling your book, high traffic search engine optimisation, developing information products, word of mouth marketing ...
    
8. Bonuses
   
   Exclusive access to the Guerrilla Marketing Boot Camp Videos (all 14 of them),
   
   Guerrilla Marketing Insider - a monthly website Guerrilla Marketing magazine
   
   Guerrilla Marketing For The New Millennium - that acts as your Guerrilla Marketing primer. Chapter 12 is "Guerrilla Marketing as sex" !!! Guerrilla Marketing is good but...
   
   The 21 day Guerrilla Marketing Emergency Profits Plan that takes you through developing and implementing a profitable marketing campaign on a day by day basis.

How You Will Benefit From The Guerrilla Marketing Association

Subscribing to the Guerrilla Marketing Association and acting on the information treasures inside can totally change your business.

First let me take a little inspiration from Carlsberg again:

So if a sports drink can do this to a squirrel, imagine what all the marketing advice from the Guerrilla Marketing Association could do for your business.

1. The confidence to take action and improve your existing marketing weapons.
    
2. The information you need to prepare yourself to talk to specialists about implementing new technology weapons.
    
3. Identifying many new ways that you can promote your business - there are now 200 identified Guerrilla Marketing Weapons and in six calls with Jay Conrad Levinson, they are all covered.
    
4. Answers to marketing questions that have been worrying you. Questions that you wanted answered but didn't know where to turn.
    
5. Much less searching on the Internet for information. The Guerrilla Marketing Association becomes the first place you look because you know the quality is high.
6. The ultimate benefit is more sales, faster growth and increased profit...but only if you take advantage of the resources provided and take action.

The Guerrilla Marketing Association Is So Good, It Has Given Me A Problem

I am a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach but I feel honour-bound to tell people who come to me for marketing advice about the Guerrilla Marketing Association.

I am asking my clients to sign up for the Guerrilla Marketing Association and the BusinessSummaries book service so that there is a common information source. My coaching can then focus on implementation of the marketing solution rather than teaching people about ideas and techniques before we look at applying them to their business.

But It Gets Even Better

The service isn't free but it does cost less than a cup of coffee per day. A small investment when marketing is the source of your future business.

The best bit...you can try it for FREE. You have 30 days to decide whether you like it and in the meantime you get full access to the Guerrilla Marketing Association resources.

That shows how confident Jay Conrad Levinson is in the Guerrilla Marketing Association. When other people would worry about people taking advantage, Jay sets the example of the giver mentality.

Isn't that a refreshing change.

The Guerrilla Marketing Association...probably the best small business marketing service in the world!

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Penny Sansevieri Secrets of Red Hot Internet Publicity

In the next Guerrilla Marketing Association weekly coaching call, Roger C. Parker will be talking to book marketing and publicity expert Penny Sansevieri about her latest book, Red Hot Internet Publicity.

This call is a "must attend" event for authors interested in promoting their book, regardless of what the subject is and who published it.

This interview is as important for self-published authors as it is for authors whose books have been published by the largest publishing houses in the world.

Why Publish A Book

There has been much talk recently, a lot of it prompted by Rich Schefren and his Attention Age Doctrine (very well worth downloading and it is free) about gaining attention and being seen as the natural expert or maven in your niche.

Jay Conrad Levinson and Monroe Mann, in the Guerrilla Networking book have turned traditional networking on its head and said that you need to be concentrating on becoming the person that people want to meet.

Having a book successfully published and becoming a top seller is probably the best way of achieving both. Do it and you will be seen as the natural expert that people want to meet

Who is Penny Sansevieri

Penny's book, Red Hot Internet Publicity: An Insider's Guide to Marketing Your Book on the Internet, is as up to date as it is relevant.

Penny's worked with some of the biggest names in publishing. She's watched the Internet change over the years, and become an absolutely indispensable part of author marketing today.

Penny is also the author of From Book to Best Seller: An Insider's Guide to Publicizing and Promoting Your Book. You can learn more about Penny at her Author Marketing Experts, Inc., website, www.amarketingexpert.com.

What You Will Learn From This Call

• More website traffic and more conversions. Learn how to drive more traffic to your website and how to encourage sign-up's and sell more books.
   
• Press releases--then and now. Learn why online press releases can outlast and outperform their predecessors.
   
• How to take a "Virtual Author Tour" (trademark)--without leaving home. Penny Sansevieri pioneered this technique in 2004; she's so familiar with it that she has actually trademarked the term!
   
• Leverage your book to greater profits. Learn how you can sell highly-profitable additional information products to readers throughout the world.

How Do You Get To Hear The Call?

You have to join the Guerrilla Marketing Association here.

This is Jay Conrad Levinson's way of keeping Guerrilla Marketers around the world up-to-date with all the latest Guerrilla Marketing techniques.

There is a fee charged per month but you get a 30 day trial period to make sure that you know that you will recover the cost of the subscription many times over. There is an immense amount of information in the GMA website including all the recordings of the weekly calls.

I can't recommend it highly enough and the cost is small compared to what you will gain if you act on just a small proportion of what you will learn.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

2008 New Year Resolutions Guerrilla Marketing Style

Jay Conrad Levinson, the Father of Guerrilla Marketing appeared on the Guerrilla Marketing Association teleclass on 2nd January 2008 to talk about 2008 new year's resolutions for Guerrilla Marketers.

I didn't listen live but I picked up the recording later in the week and listened to it yesterday.

If you would like to learn more about the Guerrilla Marketing Association you can do here.

You get a 30 day free trial and access to a massive library of past recordings.

The Guerrilla Marketing Association is the best way to keep up to date with all the latest marketing developments for small businesses and I recommend it very highly. 

Review Of The Guerrilla Marketing Resolutions Teleclass

Jay Conrad Levinson and regular host Roger Parker had each prepared a list of five resolutions or commitments for the new year and Jay's wide had added three more.

My first takeaway, was that your new life starts right now.

It doesn't have to be January 1 when you make new resolutions or commitments.

It can happen any time of the year so all you have to do is:

• reflect on what you want or
   
• what problems or issues you want to correct,
   
• resolve to commit to taking action and
   
• stop living in the past and start living in the future.

I'm not going to list or summarise the contents of the call because you can listen to it yourself for free by following the links to the Guerrilla Marketing Association and signing up for your 30 day trial.

I will pick up on a couple of the recommended resolutions and add my own thoughts.

One warning, the technology let them down in this call as Jay Conrad Levinson kept cutting out which was frustrating. While it was fixed in the end, it took too long and I expect better and from the calls I have listened to, it usually is.

Try One New Marketing Tactic That You have Never Tried Before

Jay Abraham warns people about relying on the diving board principle of business growth, where new leads just come from one source and this is one of the strengths of Guerrilla Marketing and the Guerrilla Marketing Association.

When Jay Conrad Levinson wrote one of his first Guerrilla Marketing books, he identified 100 Guerrilla Marketing Weapons that you could mix and match.

Some will appeal to you and some won't.

Some will work for you and some won't.

The big idea is that you experiment to find the right blend for you. That way you create something that has much more impact because each weapon can build on and take strength from another.

You know that 2 + 2 + 2 = 6 but a well structured marketing campaign built on appropriate marketing weapons used well creates something extra - it becomes 2 x 2 x 2 = 8.

There are so many weapons that recently the list of Guerrilla Marketing Weapons has been extended from 100 to 200.

Even better there are six calls within the past recordings of the Guerrilla Marketing Association library that take you through them all.

Jay Conrad Levinson has decided to convert these six calls into a new book because so many people are still buying his early Guerrilla Marketing Weapons book.

On this call Jay suggests that you should commit to trying one new weapon.

If you haven't already gone through the list and cherry picked, I would recommend that you are more aggressive.

I would suggest that you pick one new weapon to implement a month or overhaul an existing weapon that could or should be working better than it currently does.

Listen to the calls, take notes and work through the list of Guerrilla Marketing Weapons (or marketing tactics).

• Which weapons/tactics do you currently use?
     
• Of those weapons/tactics that you currently use, make an assessment
   
    -  Which work really well for you and you are delighted with the results?
   
    -  Which work well but you realise you don't do often enough?
   
    -  Which give you OK results but are expensive or time consuming? Try to work out your cost per lead and cost per customer. Can you improve your results or should you reduce your cost or time spent on these marketing tactics?
   
    -  Which give you poor results? Can you think of a way to improve their effectiveness now that you have listened to the Guerrilla Marketing association calls. Are there specialist calls that focus on these particular tactics and tools that you can listen to? If not, it would appear that you should stop using them but first check that you are not getting compounding effects.
  
  For example you may think that your website does not generate any leads but contact some of your new customers from other sources and ask them whether they looked at your website and whether it formed any part of their purchasing decision.
   
• For the weapons that you don't use, which look, sound and feel right to you and for your business? Take each of these and rate them 1 to 10 with 10 being the highest for these three factors
   
    -  the likely impact on your business
   
    -  the ease of implementation
   
    -  the estimated cost to implement - at this stage I would work on a rating of high, medium, low and free and set your own scales.
   
• Decide which weapons you are going to implement/test this year and decide which you will do which month. Write the month and weapon commitment down, pin a copy on the wall by your desk and write the relevant weapon objective in your diary at the start of every month as a reminder.
   
• Start implementing your January weapon / tactic straight away. There is no time to waste because the sooner that you start, the sooner you will start seeing results.
   
• Make sure that you monitoring the results of your marketing. At the very minimum, find out where any new lead comes from and which leads convert into customers over what time period.

Create More Balance In Your Life

I wrote more on the first suggested resolution than I intended so I will keep this one short.

One of the big problems for owners of small businesses is getting the work / life balance right.

The most powerful advice I have seen in this area comes from Michael Gerber and his book "The E Myth Revisited" which I believe is a must read for every small business owner.

It emphasises the importance of business design and building your business so that it works for you. I cover this important topic in Your Primary Aim.

Conclusion

Are you ready to start Day 1 of your new business life now that you have made your business resolutions and commitments?

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister
Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach

Join the Guerrilla Marketing Association - 30 day free trial

Cash Flow Options For Service Providers

Are you looking for new and unique ways to "lock in" customer loyalty?

Is your business characterized by cycles of "feast or famine?"

Would you like to explore ways to begin each month with positive cash flow and a partially filled-in calendar?

On the next Guerrilla Marketing Association expert interview, host Roger C. Parker will be exploring Cash Flow Options for Service Providers. Roger's Expert Interview guest will be Rona Dahlgren, from www.morepaymentchoices.com.

Rona is a loyalty marketing consultant with a background in accounting and cash flow management. Rona's been researching how Liquidity-Based Loyalty Programs are building businesses in a wide variety of fields. Attend this call, and you'll learn:

• What is a Liquidity-Based Loyalty Program?
     
• What are their defining characteristics?
     
• What benefits do they offer clients?
     
• How do they benefit service providers?
     
• How can one of these programs build customer loyalty?
     
• What types of businesses offer them?
     
• What are the key questions to ask when considering offering a program?
     
• What are the best ways to promote these programs?