Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing. Jay Levinson Conrad

The Pitfalls of Being an Entrepreneur

       Just Being a Guerrilla Gives You an Edge

       CHAPTER 22 - SUCCEEDING WITH A GUERRILLA MARKETING ATTACK

       The Ten-Step Attack Plan

       The Guerrilla Entrepreneur’s Life Is a Love Story, for Love Illuminates the Way ...

       Dedication

       GLOSSARY OF COMMON MARKETING TERMS

       INDEX

       BE PART OF THE INNER CIRCLE BY JOINING THE GUERRILLA MARKETING ASSOCIATION

       Subscribe to Entrepreneur Magazine

       Copyright Page

       ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      Our primary and sole acknowledgement goes to Mark Langley, the solid gold guerrilla marketer who helped us buy the house we now own. He demonstrated all the attitudes and attributes we would pray to find in a real estate expert, and took two years to find exactly what these guerrillas ordered and get a healthy start-up in a new home in a brand new town

      Our book owes a ton of gratitude to Mark.

      —Jay and Jeannie Levinson

       People Are Saying

       “Forget the retired business executives with the firm handshakes and the sincere eye contact. Forget the SBA. Forget the seminar speakers with the expensive haircuts and the million-dollar smiles. If you want the best, most proven, most widely used and easiest-toimplement advice in the world on how to market a start-up business, go no further than Jay and Jeannie Levinson’s new book. They know what really works, and you need to know what they are so generously willing to share with you.”

      —DAVID GARFINKEL, AUTHOR OF ADVERTISING HEADLINES THAT MAKE YOU RICH

      “If you are starting a business on a tight budget, this book is for you! The Father of Guerrilla Marketing reveals dozens of high impact, low-cost strategies for getting new customers using time, energy, and imagination. If you want to start making money from your new business, get this book!”

      —MITCH MEYERSON, FOUNDER OF GUERRILLA MARKETING COACHING

      “Guidance for new marketers, reminders for experienced ones, and useful tips for everyone. I educate individuals on how to build businesses that will succeed and last, I know first-hand that marketing is key for any entrepreneur. I am so thrilled that Jay and Jeannie have written this fabulous book sharing their expert knowledge. I have seen personally, their incredible results, they have proven to be the best of the best in guerilla marketing. You need to read this book today; adopting this mindset, it will be difficult for you to not be successful. They are the BEST at the game!”

      —LORAL LANGEMEIER, THE MILLIONAIRE MAKER, CEO AND FOUNDER OF LIVE OUT LOUD, INC.

       PREFACE

      Running your own business is an armload of responsibilities. Marketing your company is still another Everest-sized bump in the road you must surmount. If you market with less than the skill of a guerrilla, you poison your business and your future. If you know what the guerrilla knows, marketing gives your business vigor and immortality,

      Although precious few know this, there actually is a way to assure that you’ll market the right way and attain the profits that are the fruits of guerrilla marketing.

      That way is to start in the right place. Many business owners start out in the wrong direction, doomed to become a depressing statistic in reports of the 50 percent of small businesses that fail the first year and the 95 percent that fail within the first five years. Many of these now forgotten companies had the goods to carry them to greatness. But they didn’t have the marketing savvy.

      There are so many businesses just like those that are now sad memories that we wrote this book to set those ventures on the right course before it’s too late. In these pages, we stand behind them, take them by the shoulders, gently cradle their heads, aim them in the right direction, then give them a nudge and watch entrepreneurial gravity go to work.

      Some of these companies are at the starting line or nearing it. Other companies are already in the race, giving it their all. All these companies can benefit bigtime from the guidance offered in this book.

      Are successful guerrilla entrepreneurs born or made? Both is the right answer. You’ll learn the answer about yourself in a few pages and you’ll discover a few minor changes you can make to bring about major results. By results, we refer to an increase in your profits and your free time. That’s our goal with this book. If it’s yours, too, you’ve hitched to the right star.

      As you go deeper into the exhilarating options for marketing your business in true guerrilla fashion, you’ll walk the walk as we talk the talk. You’ll learn about a guerrilla marketing strategy, plan one, then create one that you’ll be able to use for the next one to ten years.

      The ease and the wisdom that went into that strategy will easily translate into the guerrilla marketing calendar you create to guide you through the up and down days of a high-energy economy and put you in control—a rare experience for many business owners.

      You’ll see just how you must proceed to get the most from the internet—a giant until you realize that it’s a pussycat in disguise. We’ll help you get cozy with the internet because it now ranks up there with oxygen, water, and sunlight.

      We figure that our Guerrilla Marketing books will be a whole lot more valuable to readers now that they can start at the start as you’re about to do.

       CHAPTER 1

       WHERE TO START

      We have good news and better news about guerrilla marketing. The good news is that you’re already at the starting point with this page of this book. The better news is that it gets easier and more fun as you continue on through the remaining pages.

      A solid and successful guerrilla marketing attack has a beginning and a middle, but if you’re doing it right, it has no ending. The beginning is right here and right now, when you develop the mindset of a guerrilla. The middle is when you breathe life into all the tactics of a profitable campaign. The ending never happens, unless you decide to sell your business or tire of endless profits.

      Because we want you to partake of those endless profits, we want you to get off to a running start. The way to do that is to have the personality of a successful guerrilla marketer. If you don’t have that personality yet, we’ll show you just how to develop it. You also need to have special attributes—the kind possessed by guerrilla marketers basking in success. The way to get those attributes is to be born with them or to generate them yourself—something we’ll teach you to do in the upcoming pages.

      A solid and successful guerrilla marketing attack has a beginning and a middle, but if you’re doing it right, it has no ending.

      You also need the right attitudes. Without them, you’re sunk before you begin. With them, you’re already poised for victory and destined