Business Coaching

Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification February 25

I recommended the Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification program to someone last week who wanted to know if I would train him to be a business coach.

Today I have just spoken to Mitch Meyerson, the founder of the program and he told me that the next course starts on February 25th, 2009.

If you want to be a business coach or a marketing coach then this is a great chance to link your business to the biggest name in small business marketing in the world.

I wish I'd done it years ago rather than in 2007.

Even though I thought I was well prepared in marketing - having studied it for over 20 years, I really gained from the structured program and it is extremely well received by clients.

You can read more at the Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification Program website.

While I was on the program I was blogging, so if you want a week by week review, you can find out about my thoughts on the coaching program.   

Become A Guerrilla Marketing Coach

Do you like the idea of linking your skills to the world's best known brand of small business marketing advice by becoming a Guerrilla Marketing Coach?

I finished my Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification Program in December 2007 and in this blog you will find weekly updates.

The overall course is excellent and has really helped to drive my business forward. I offer Guerrilla Marketing coaching as an easy start into my more extensive and expensive business coaching programs - see my Guerrilla Marketing Coaching Services.

I recommend the Guerrilla Marketing Coaching course to any small business coach or marketing coach who wants to:

1. Learn more about Guerrilla Marketing
    
2. Experience a top rate coaching experience from group leader Mitch Meyerson
    
3. Sample the great technology that really brings the group together in a way that I have never experienced before and where you learn a lot from your fellow members. 
    
4. The chance to become involved with publishing a book with Mitch Meyerson or even Jay Conrad Levinson. At least one of my classmates has received agreement to write their own Guerrilla Marketing book and really put themselves on the map.

I strongly recommend that you take a look at the Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification Program.

My only regret is that I didn't do the course sooner.

I really believe that anyone involved in small business marketing has to become very familiar with the Guerrilla Marketing techniques. We don't have big budgets to spend, so we have to make sure that we leverage what we have to the maximum.

The course seems to only run about three times a year. Miss the next class and you will have to wait for fur or five months and maybe even later as Mitch Meyerson becomes involved in more projects.

Why not take a look at my thoughts about each of the weeks on the Guerrilla Marketing Coach program. The blogs tell the story of my journey to be a Guerrilla Marketing Coach.

Introduction

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

Week 7

Week 8

Week 9

Week 10

Week 11 & 12

The next program starts on November 10, 2008 - sign up here.

Guerrilla Marketing Association

If you are serious about learning Guerrilla Marketing and becoming a Guerrilla Marketing Coach I recommend that you subscribe to the Guerrilla Marketing Association which is Jay Conrad Levinson's small business club.

There is a free 30 day trial to the Guerrilla Marketing Association and the site is absolutely packed with resources to help any small business including videos of Jay Conrad Levinson presenting at a conference.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Guerrilla Marketing Coach Course - Week 11 & 12

Week 11 of the Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification program focused on helping us to fine tune our selling skills.

It doesn't matter how good you are at creating leads, if you lack the ability to convert some of those leads into customers and this week we covered the ten biggest mistakes salespeople make.

will be posting a similar item on my blog that is currently on my website so I'm not going to say much about the sales mistakes covered in the Guerrilla Marketing course.

What I would do is to encourage you to study the behaviours of salespeople you come into contact with. Look closely at their techniques:

• Do they seem genuinely interested in you and your issues?
     
• Are they listening to what you say and answering your questions or are they like typical politicians and want to say what they want to say?
     
• Do they help you to clarify your problem and make it easier for you to understand the issues and buy a solution or do they baffle you with science?
     
• Do they have a good level of product knowledge?
     
• Do you feel that they are making it up as they go along, trying to appear more knowledgeable than they really are?
     
• Do you feel manipulated?

Having looked at what not to do, the course then moved in to what to do in a kind of guerrilla selling - so that's trying for maximum results from a minimum of inputs.

The material was a useful overview but didn't have anything that was a radical departure from other selling systems - see my posting - The best sales system.

The big thing about selling is that you need to be prepared and have the confidence in your selling system to use it in the heat of battle.

Unlike marketing which can be seen as an intellectual activity done away from the customers, selling is done face to face or on the telephone in an immediate call and response. You say something and your customer responds and then you do, either moving your prospective customer towards a "Yes" decision or away from it. You can only gain that confidence through knowledge and practice.

I am glad that this week's material was included in the course since it is such an important area but it wasn't one of the stronger weeks but then I have been exposed to a host of sales training audios and books.

Week 12

The last week was just a final chance to ask questions about the course and hear about the gains people have made from attending the Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification program.

From what I heard on the call, we are all in total agreement. The course has been great and we all have significant takeaways in terms of the impact on on own businesses as well as the learning and the expected status of being a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach (subject to final exam).

Through no fault of the course, my developments have been pushed to one side because of severe, unexpected work pressures from one particular very large client.

It has been frustrating but this blog shows that my vision of my business is getting sharper. My passion has always been about helping small businesses to make more money but I hadn't really seen how I could do it beyond one-to-one coaching and consultancy.

But this blog, the focus on the business development superstars and bringing you the best business development ideas from free videos and reports through to structured programs is my way of reaching out to small businesses across the world. The great thing is that it seems to be working.

Those recommended development programs include the Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification program. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who wants to enhance their business advisory skills in terms of marketing and coaching. It would have been great value without the Guerrilla Marketing brand but because successful course attendees can brand themselves as a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach and link to the biggest selling small business brand in the world, the value is extraordinary.

I also very highly recommend the Guerrilla Marketing Association.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Back to Guerrilla Marketing Week 10

Guerrilla Marketing Coaching Course

I have just been listening to the week 11 Guerrilla Marketing coaching call and Mitch Meyerson has confirmed that there are still spaces available for the next course starting on 14 January 2008.

The course has been put together by Mitch and Jay Conrad Levinson to train certified Guerrilla Marketing coaches.

You can see details of my thoughts about each week of the course on my Guerrilla Marketing Coach blog.

You will see that I rate it extremely highly and I wish that I had done it years ago. My advice is to grab this chance while you can because it will fill up quickly and Mitch only runs about three of these courses per year.

See my blog for more details or if you have confidence in the brand (and it is the number 1 small business marketing brand) you can jump straight to the sales letter for the Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification program.

If you are interested in Guerrilla Marketing, then I also strongly recommend that you take a good look at the Guerrilla Marketing Association.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification Program Week 10

I suppose it was inevitable. After nine great weeks on the Guerrilla Marketing Coach course, week 10 was a disappointment to me.

The subject this week was "Leveraging Your Guerrilla Marketing Attack" so I can't deny that it's not an important topic.

To be fair though, the feedback from the other coaching trainees was very positive so I think it's one of those classic "it's not you, it's me!" moments.

Week 10 was different in several ways.

First I am seriously over-committed at the moment and I'm working far too many hours.

Second I broke my working habit and that put me in funny territory.

Because I like to see the big picture early on, in all the other weeks I have read and noted the week's workbook and thought about the homework.

Then I've listened to the coaching call from our Guerrilla Marketing Coach trainer Mitch Meyerson and the call has built on my understanding. You see, Mitch's coaching style is certainly not to repeat the material that's in the work book. He knows that we can read that for ourselves.

Instead we talk around the subject but because I've done the work up front, I see how it all fits together.

But in Week 10 I rushed into the call. partly because I wanted to hear about what one of the other Guerrillas (Cara Lumen) said about us working together (see posting "What's In Your Shopping Cart?" and you can expect to see more postings from Cara on The Business Coaching Blog.)

The third reason was that the topics covered in the notes included two of my weak areas that seem to take me outside my comfort zone - public speaking and media public relations.

So let's look at those in turn.

Public Speaking

I've read somewhere that more people fear public speaking than dying so I'm not alone.

The fear of having to go up in front of a crowd of people and talk for 30 minutes about a subject of my choosing fills me with dread.

But me being me there is a twist.

I love leading workshops and small training groups for full day and half day sessions where there may be 6,8 or 12 people who I may not have met before. It's fantastic and gives me such a buzz to see other people getting so much out of it.

Crazy I know but we all have our little quirks and idiosyncrasies.

In my mind there are big differences between public speaking and leading workshops and training seminars.

One of course is the numbers. The workshop only has 12 people. The public speaking event may have 150 so that does make a difference.

Second is the desire of the people to hear what I have to say, to listen and to take action.

In the workshop people have paid to attend and they want to learn from me. In the public speaking event, I wouldn't be the the main attraction and people drawn by someone else may have little interest in what I say.

Third is the level of personal interaction.

In the workshop there is a two way conversation because I encourage questions as we go along. I may not answer them if it is covered in my material later on but I want people to understand. In public speaking the talk is one way. I speak, they listen or daydream, or doodle...

Now I know that I need to get over this. To step outside my comfort zone and prove to myself that I can keep an audience's attention. To entertain and educate at the same time.

But not just yet. I'm too busy.

Media Public Relations

For my clients I know the benefits and for some I believe that it is an essential marketing weapon but for me, well that's a different matter.

Perhaps it's my shyness coming out.

Perhaps I'm wary of the celebrity culture that is developing where untalented people are famous for being famous.

Perhaps it's my suspicious of people who constantly want to gain attention and where there is more style than substance.

But I am kicking myself because earlier in 2007 I had an incredible public relations opportunity but I turned it down.

The BBC (that's the UK's national television company) contacted me and said that they wanted to do a television show about how accountants had moved into business development work to help small companies to grow and prosper. Would I be interested in helping them?

Durrgh!

How could I say "No"?

But I did.

My lower brain took over.

I was in full defensive mode.

The last thing I needed was to make a fool of myself on national TV.

Of course after a shot of self esteem I now realise that I would have been brilliant...

Public relations for my own business is another area that I must work on and with the success of my blog I'd love to write a newspaper or magazine column.

So editors beware. I am now transmitting thought-waves to you.

"You want a business advice column. Go directly to Google, search on Business Coaching Blog, be wowed by my writing style and get in touch."

I am available to the highest bidder with the widest circulation!

It's worth a try although I know that I've got to be more proactive so:

2008 Resolution Number 1 - Find myself a newspaper column.

Conclusion

It's pretty clear to me that it wasn't a Week 10 issue but a personal one.

I am still very impressed with the Guerrilla Marketing Coach certification program. It has been a great experienced and my business focus and objectives have really developed over the last ten weeks.

If you would like to join the next course then don't delay. I am sure that one will be starting in early 2008.

The groups are deliberately kept small and it would be a shame to miss out. I wish I had found and done this course years ago.

Click on the link for details of the Guerrilla Marketing Coach certification program and at a minimum register your interest so that you are kept updated.

There's a great Brian Tracy question on zero based thinking.

"Knowing what you now know, would you still make the same decision?"

Yes absolutely.

I just don't understand why no one told me about this great course before.

But now you do know, so just pop along to the GM Coach website and I also recommend that you sign up to the Guerrilla Marketing Association.

To Your Success

Your Profit Coach

Paul Simister

Business coaching for customer focused entrepreneurs

Guerrilla Marketing Week 9

Guerrilla Marketing Week 11 & 12

Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification Program Week 9

This week the topic was "Guerrilla Marketing Online".

For Guerrillas the appeal of the Internet is high with it's potential for low cost lead generation and for establishing a channel for permission marketing (Seth Godin is a guerrilla marketer and has authored several books with Jay Conrad Levinson).

The course content is based on a book Mitch Meyerson and Mary Eule are publishing in January called "Mastering Online Marketing." Based on what was covered this week and how good "The Success Secrets Of The Online Marketing Superstars" is, you can be sure that I will be at the front of the queue.

I liked the simple way Mitch clarified the goal of a website - "to turn strangers into lifetime customers."

Now that's not new.

It is after all the goal of all marketing. I've blogged before on the importance of working to increase your lifetime value of a customer.

What was new to me was thinking about this in terms of a website.

Let's be honest.

Many websites just go into a sell mode straight away and never deviate from that path. But you don't want to become involved with someone who sells, sells, sells. After all meet someone like that at a party and you quickly edge away.

I've tried to be a bit different by giving away lots of information, both here and on my main website and through my newsletter.

That reminds me.

Have you signed up for my newsletter yet. If not, can I suggest you do because it currently includes the Better Business Focus email newsletter so it's not just me that's writing. Recent editions have featured leading experts in their specialist areas.

Where do you go to sign up? Just here! But remember - come back.

Did you like the free reports that were included as my ethical bribe to tempt you to sign up? One business adviser in the UK suggested that I sell one as an e-book and thought that I could ask at least £10 but it's yours for free, just for signing up and you can opt-out at any time.

I haven't strayed off the point. I'm trying to show you some of the lessons in action.

I'm trying to begin a relationship by tempting you to sign up and by linking to other of my blogs I'm making it easier for you to get more out of this blog and the whole contact experience with me.

Navigation is such an important issue and in too many websites I get stranded.

I go looking for something and then it seemed to vanish before my eyes. So again that's why I've put the effort in to write full indexes for all my subjects (just look bottom left of the page).

So what are the important things about online marketing?

1. People must be able to find the website
      
2. People must like the website when they get there
      
3. People need to be encouraged back to visit again and again
      
4. Your website must be easy to use
      
5. If it's a commercial website, you must have good products.

Finding the website

Regular traffic is essential but unfortunately too many websites are built with little regard for how search engines work because the designer gets too clever.

So you need to be thinking traffic from the start and that means focusing on your key words.

The critical point here is to do your research. When I first did it I was stunned at the difference between business plan and business planning. It would have been very easy to optimise around the wrong phrase.

But there is a downside to targeting the most popular phrase.

That's what everybody else is trying to do.

And they may have far more money for pay-per-click campaigns and be able to afford a great search engine optimisation consultant.

So you can see that there is a balance to be struck around aiming for keywords that are searched regularly combine with low competition. That's where this comes back to the Guerrilla Marketing philosophy of acting intentionally. Deciding what you are going to do and then doing it.

People Must Like The Website

Does it look good?

Is it clear what you are trying to do? Is the content relevant to what you are looking for?

Is it cluttered with the Adsense campaigns that try to attract your attention elsewhere?

Do people want to spend time on the website and browse through other pages?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and out tastes will differ.

People Need To be Encouraged To Come Back

I've already mentioned the importance of people opting-in to a newsletter (or a mini-course). You did opt-in to my newsletter didn't you or if you prefer, what about the RSS feed?

The blog feed has the advantage that you find out what is going on with my blog but you remain in control over whether you come back because you've seen something relevant but you don't get the great free reports and you don't get the Better Business Focus newsletter.

But regular communication isn't the only way to encourage people to come back.

The whole feel of the website is essential.

Does it have high quality content that looks as if it is regularly updated?

If it does, and it's relevant to what people are looking for, then they will want to come back.

Your Website Must Be Easy To Use

For me that's about being easy to read - the style of the writing and the font/size of the letters. I just hate websites that have me peering hard a little letters in reverse type, yellow on orange.

Readability is definitely an issue. Some of the articles I read are just so boring...

Any website must be easy for people to find what they are looking for and when they follow links, they need to work.

The website should flow. If someone wants to know more, then the design should make it easy for people to find.

You Must Have Good Products

If you want to sell from your website, then design issues will only go so far.

The products and services must do what they say and they must be offered with credibility.

I work hard to find you the very best of business development advice from a small selection of gurus with outstanding reputations. Not only can you buy their products or services through the links on this blog, you can also be sure that my own business coaching is heavily based on their work.

You know that I'm on the Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification program because I'm telling the story every week and if you are a regular reader, you can tell the changes that I'm making to the blog as we go along.

But it's the same with the others. I have spent my money investing in their materials.

Conclusion

Week 9 was another excellent week on the course although the material covered was much more extensive than I've hinted at here.

But I do like Mitch's view of developing the relationship and his comparison with dating.

So ask yourself, are you romancing your prospective customers or heading for a "slap in the face" as they flee when you frighten them away by looking for something they are not ready to give?

For more information see the Guerrilla Marketing Association.

Guerrilla marketing Week 8 or Guerrilla marketing week 10

Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification Course Week 8

Sorry I am still a couple of weeks behind and the content of week 8's course is one of the reasons.

This week we covered "Fusion Marketing and Affiliate Marketing".

In simple terms - how we can help someone else help us to help them while making a profit from the deal.

That's right.

We looked at working with other people so that together we generate far more leads than we would on our own but the material also covered joint ventures and longer term alliances.

Mitch Meyerson, the leader of our group, quoted his alliance with Jay Conrad Levinson for this course (The Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification) together with his joint ventures with Michael Port on "The Product Factory" and the "Online Traffic School".

This is very relevant to me because I have just been asked to go into an equity partnership with a client on a new venture.

These are exciting times.

Then we examined affiliate schemes on the Internet - both in terms of earning a commission from selling other people's products and from having your own affiliate scheme to help sell your products and services.

This is an area I have played with in the past but I decided that it was about time I got serious as my blog is building critical mass and having more hits each week.

But there are a few common sense rules.

The most important of these are that you must only promote the highest quality of products from reliable and respectable sources.

Anything less and it will rebound on you badly.

This is certainly one of the interesting things about the Internet. Bad news can travel fast and far so you have to control your reputation.

So you may be asking what are the main affiliate schemes that I recommend:

This course - The Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification program from Jay Conrad Levinson and Mitch Meyerson.

A junior version for small business owners wanting to learn more about Guerrilla Marketing - the Guerrilla Marketing Jumpstart Program or Toolkit again by Jay Conrad Levinson and Mitch Meyerson.

The Guerrilla Marketing Association - Jay Conrad Levinson's way to keep you in touch with all the developments and changes in guerrilla marketing. There is also a massive library of past recordings.

Quality is essential but your affiliate products must also appeal to your target market.

With The Business Coaching Blog, my niche is small businesses so there is no value in me promoting products that are focused on Fortune 500/FTSE 100 companies. It would be a waste of time.

But you can also turn affiliate schemes around.

Do you have products that can be sold with the help of other people and are you prepared to pay a commission for those leads?

The challenge is then to find the right software solution to help you manage the affiliate scheme. Fellow member of the course, Cara Lumen is a guest blogger and has explained what to look for in a shopping cart.

Once again this has been an excellent week that has helped me in the way I advise clients but also helped me to focus my own business.

I continue to give the Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification program a very strong recommendation. If you are a business coach, a marketing coach or an aspiring coach then I do recommend that you take a good look at it. The courses are deliberately kept to a small group and it's a process that works very well.

Guerrilla marketing week 7 or Guerilla Marketing week 9

Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification Week 7 - Procrastination

The course continued while I was on holiday so I missed two classes.

This has put me behind but I listened to the recording of the coaching call for Week 7 yesterday together with reading the workbook.

In Week 7 we move away from the Guerrilla Marketing element of the course back to the coaching element as we considered procrastination and other pitfalls.

Do you procrastinate?

Do you put off until tomorrow what you should do today?

We all do it some degree.

Perhaps you are not feeling inspired for that particular task and you know that if you do it today, you won't do it very well. Or perhaps there is some doubt nagging away at the back of your mind. Do you know the feeling? When you can't identify what it is but you know that something isn't quite right.

Unfortunately some people are much worse than others and find it very difficult to start taking constructive action or to maintain that action.

The effects can be devastating - both on the business and on the individual who loses confidence and always feels guilty.

In the course we looked at various reasons why people procrastinate, how they justify the action to themselves and what to do about it.

Some of the reasons are obvious.

If you don't know how to do a task - because it is difficult and/or unfamiliar - then there is a natural tendency to put it off. Most of us don't like asking for help or admitting that we are struggling although it is the sensible thing to do.

Or perhaps you are worried about the fear of failure. It can be paralysing.

I was listening to a Peter Thomson CD and heard a story about his son who had a great attitude. His son went to the school dance and there was a girl there he liked. He plucked up his courage and went and asked for a dance but the girl said No.

Peter wanted to know how his son had coped with this rejection and was amazed by his lad's answer. It went something like this "Dad, she wasn't dancing with me before I asked and she didn't dance with me after. I didn't lose anything because I never had it to lose."

Isn't that a fantastic attitude to have but so true? Haven't we all been scared of losing something that we didn't have?

Procrastination is a learnt activity but it can be unlearnt by encouraging people to try to do things and then seeing the benefits of their actions.

This is a fascinating area and one that I intend to learn more about.

Mitch Meyerson who runs the Guerrilla Marketing Coaching program is a psychologist and has authored three books:

• Six Keys To Creating The Life You Want - Amazon UK USA
     
• When Parents Love Too Much UK USA
     
• Designing The Life Of Your Dreams UK USA

The Amazon reviewers like the books and I'm going to buy the first one. I'll let you know what I think. I have to admit that I have tended to be sceptical about this type of book but I do believe in trying something once.

I continue to be extremely impressed with the Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification Course. I wish I'd done it years ago but I also wish that I wasn't quite so far behind with my homework.

Back to Guerrilla Marketing week 6.

Forward to Guerrilla Marketing week 8.

My Journey To Be A Guerrilla Marketing Coach Week 6

This week in the Guerrilla Marketing Coach Certification Course we covered "Presenting Yourself With Impact".

It is a cliche but "you only get chance to make a good first impression" and as Guerrilla Marketers we know that everything we do that impacts a customer or prospective customer from the origination of the idea to the conversion to a customer who buys regularly has to be intentional.

Our workbook for this week covers:

• Our seven word description of what we do.
     
• Our thirty second elevator pitch to convince someone to take away our details.
     
• Looking good on the web.
     
• Looking good in email.
     
• Successful telephone techniques.
     
• Face to face selling.
     
• Presentations.
     
• Guerrilla Marketing Yourself.

In our coaching call, the focus was on the first two - the seven word description and the elevator pitch.

Do you have a way to summarise your business in a short statement that makes someone you meet go "Wow that sounds interesting. Tell me more"?

Do you create emotional impact that connects with the other person or does your statement sound  so cheesy that you won't use it?

Or perhaps you go into business speak and come out with words that sound impressive but don't mean anything eg "we leverage the fiscal opportunities to enhance shareholder value" when you could say "we help you to pay less tax and keep more of your profits".

Business-speak is a particular phobia of mine and something I saw far too often on company websites and in corporate communications. I like to keep things simple and straightforward.

Communication only works if your listener or reader receives your intended message and isn't left translating corporate jargon.

I've got some homework to do in this area for my own business as I have decided that my existing statements are not as effective as they can be.

To show the impact let's look at what could be said about Guerrilla Marketing:

In seven words "get more customers on a shoestring budget" - that works for me. It communicates the purpose  and main benefit of Guerrilla Marketing and has the key differentiating factor.

Many marketing programmes will help you to get more customers, only Guerrilla Marketing specifically focuses on low cost and no cost marketing weapons.

While we never honed a longer sentence, we were shown how we could use the tools of Guerrilla Marketing to come up with powerful statements for our longer elevator pitch.

"Our 16 Guerrilla Marketing Competencies will allow you to assess your marketing capabilities within 10 minutes and the 7 sentence Guerrilla Marketing Plan will give you laser like focus on your marketing strategy so that you generate more leads, convert more of those leads into customers and increase your profits.

That doesn't sound cheesy or bland does it?

Instead it cuts to the chase and makes it clear why Guerrilla Marketing is such a popular solution for small business owners looking to make more marketing impact with their small marketing budgets.

You can learn more about the Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coaching Course by following the link or if you are a small business owner attracted by the idea of Guerrilla Marketing then I recommend the Guerrilla Marketing Jumpstart program also put together by Mitch Meyerson.

There is one final achievement to comment on.

At last my fingers have learnt that it is Guerrilla with two r's and two l's and not guerilla marketing, guerrila marketing or guerila marketing and certainly not gorilla marketing.

Back to Guerrilla Marketing Week 5.

Forward to Guerrilla Marketing Week 7.

Guerrilla Marketing Coaching Course Week 5

The weeks are racing by with Christmas rushing rapidly towards us.

The good news is that just after then I should be a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach.

This is now Week 5 and once again I have to commend the group on how well everybody is working together. I have never experienced anything like it as there is a real sense of team spirit and involvement as we get to know each other. That's the big advantage of keeping the course limited to a small, intimate group.

While I like to think that we are a great group I also have to commend Mitch Meyerson for his facilitation and the technology used is fantastic for this type of experience. Call recordings available on-line within hours for those of us whose body clocks don't fit with the time schedule and daily updates to the forum are sent to us by email.

In Week 4 we looked at the first 4 steps of the 7 Step Guerrilla Marketing Plan so you won't be surprised to learn that in Week 5 we covered:

Step 5 - Choosing our Guerrilla Marketing weapons

Step 6 - Clarifying our identity

Step 7 - Determining our marketing budget

Guerrilla Marketing Weapons

Guerrilla Marketing is famous for its 100 Marketing Weapons, many of which are free to use.

Jay Conrad Levinson first used this idea when he wrote the first Guerrilla Marketing book in the mid eighties because while he was teaching his University students he was asked to recommend a marketing book for small businesses.

Despite an extensive search in the California University libraries (see how much easier things are now with Amazon) he couldn't find one suitable for any business that couldn't commit to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per month on marketing.

He spotted his niche and Guerrilla Marketing was born and these 100 Guerrilla Marketing Weapons have been a core foundation ever since.

I am also a member of the Guerrilla Marketing Association (described as a Guerrilla Marketing Support Service to Maximise Your Small Business Profits and full of an incredible amount of resources) and there are a series of recordings where Jay runs through the 200 Guerrilla Marketing Weapons.

The idea is not that you use them all but the list is a powerful technique for helping you to review the weapons that you do use and analysing whether you get the best impact from them and for identifying new weapons to try out.

Jumping across gurus temporarily, Jay Abraham has a similar concept that businesses can't rely on one method of lead generation in what he called the Diving Board principle of business growth (relying on one support) to using the Power Parthenon (where your marketing is based on multiple supports or pillars).

For example just take one weapon - your business card. Take it out and have a good look.

• Does it look good and create a strong impression? Remember you only get one chance to create first impression.
   
• Does it have all your details - your name, company name, position, telephone number, mobile number, address, website, email address or do you choose to deliberately leave some items off?
   
• Does it say what the company does? I have a collection of cards from people I can't remember and it doesn't even say what service the business provides.
   
• Does your card carry your slogan and USP or a list of services or benefits? The best cards are printed on the back as well as the front.
   
• Have you let a designer loose on your card so the writing is impossible to read because of the colour contrasts or is the font tiny?

As you can see, there are lots of things to consider on just this one simple weapon that used well can lead to more business but used badly will create a poor impression and a worthless exchange of cards at a networking event.

Clarifying Your Identity

Banish the word image - it means a false pretence.

Instead what matters to a Guerrilla Marketer is Identity - who you really are.

Guerrillas don't pretend, they are!

Your Marketing Budget

Guerrilla Marketing is for people with big dreams but small budgets but some money does have to be spent on marketing.

Many of the 100 weapons are free but a Guerrilla chooses the weapons carefully, deploys them to maximum impact and continues but as the business grows, the percentage of turnover spent on marketing reduces.

It is easy to spend money on marketing - a Guerrilla makes sure that the money spent is spent effectively through testing and continual improvement or abandonment (sometimes you discover that particular weapons are just unsuitable).

After we finished this Seven Step Guerrilla Marketing Plan we then moved on to two more core Guerrilla Marketing concept:

1. The Marketing Calendar - who you plan out your Guerrilla Marketing Attack in detail - what, where, when, how, how much
      
2. Researching Your Competitors - a Guerrilla learns what they can about competitors, both to help them create differentiation and to make sure that they are not lagging in any key aspect of the customer relationship experience.

Once again, it has been another excellent week although we do seem to have a lot of homework to do before next Wednesday night.

If you would like to learn more about becoming a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach then follow the link. The next course starts on the 15th January 2008 and I understand that it is already over 50% full.

If you are a small business owner and would like to know more about how Guerrilla Marketing can help your business then you will be interested in the Guerrilla Marketing Jumpstart program that Mitch Meyerson also runs.

Back to Guerrilla Marketing Week Four

Forward to Guerrilla Marketing Week Six