Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing. Jay Levinson Conrad

you don’t have now.

Trait 1: Patience

      The identification of this trait began with a study in which researchers were asked a very tough question: “How many times must your message penetrate a person’s mind in order to transform them from total apathy, meaning, they’ve never heard of you, to purchase readiness, which means they’re dying to buy from you?” Astonishingly, the researchers came up with an answer. It was nine. Your message must penetrate people’s minds nine times before they’re ready to buy from you. That’s the good news. The bad news is that for every three times you put out the word and expose them to your message, they’re only paying attention one time. After all, they do have more important things to do with their lives than focus on your marketing.

      So you put out the word three times and your message penetrates their mind one time. What happens then? Nothing happens. So you put out the word six times and penetrate their minds two times. What happens then? They faintly realize that they’ve heard your name before. But that’s as far as it goes. Now you put out the word nine times, penetrating their minds three times. What happens then? Something does happen: They realize they’ve seen or heard your marketing before, and they know that unsuccessful companies don’t market. The momentum has started, but they’re not even close to buying what you’re selling.

      Sticking with the drill, you put out the word—by radio, television, newspaper ads, print ads, e-mail, signs, banners, whatever—a total of 12 times, penetrating their minds 4 times. What happens then? Not much. They may look around for other signs of your existence, perhaps even ask a friend about you, but they certainly aren’t ready to buy from you yet. You put out the word 15 times, penetrating their minds 5 times. What happens then? Something wonderful happens. They read every word of your copy. They pay close attention to your commercial. If you list your web site—and we sure hope that you do—they click over to it and check you out. If you offer a brochure, they request it. The momentum leading to the sales picks up, but notice, they do not buy from you.

      Your message must penetrate people’s minds nine times before they’re ready to buy from you.

      At this point, you begin to feel frustrated. After all, you’ve peppered your market with powerful messages, but they do not beat a path to your door. It does enter their minds to own what you’re selling, but they are just plain not ready to buy from you. Not yet. Maybe never. Here’s where most business owners abandon their campaigns. They figure they’re doing everything wrong and that they need a new message, new media, a revamped web site. The truth is that they’re doing everything right. But marketing just doesn’t do what they expected it to do. They expected it to work in a hurry.

      Listen up. Marketing does a lot of good things, wonderful things. But one thing it rarely does is work in a hurry. Get serious. Don’t be like those companies that decide to forsake their marketing investments and start all over again at square one. We wince at the thought. Doing that is called “sellus interruptus.” The sale is never consummated. Here’s where you’ve got to hang in there and continue to put out the word. You put it out there 18 times, penetrating the minds of your increasingly interested prospects 6 times. What happens at that point? They begin to think of when they’ll make the purchase, where they’ll get the money. But they do not buy.

      So you put out the word 21 times, penetrating their minds 7 times. This is when they tell others that they’re planning to purchase from you. They may even note it in their datebooks or on their Blackberries. Put out the word 24 times and you’ve penetrated their minds 8 times. This is when they check with whomever they usually check with before making big ticket purchases. This is when they actually plan the day and the time that they will buy from you. You see nothing to indicate that they’re ready to take the plunge onto your customer list. But you continue marketing, putting out the word 27 times. You’ve penetrated their minds 9 times. Nine times. What happens then? They come in and they buy from you. They treat you like an old friend. You don’t know them from Adam or Eve, but you have built up a strong sense of familiarity and familiarity is the factor that breeds sales.

      How on earth did you bring about this blessed state of affairs? You did it with patience, the personality trait that opened heaven’s doors. Without your patience, it just wouldn’t have happened. With patience, it almost always happens. If you don’t have patience or can’t develop patience, we hope you either leave the marketing department or find another line of work. Patience makes it happen. Some people think that marketing is a miracle worker. Not true. It’s patience that works the miracles.

Trait 2: Imagination

      This trait may not mean what you think it means. It doesn’t necessarily mean the creativity to dream up clever headlines, compelling graphics, zippy copy, or memorable slogans. Instead, it refers to how you contend with reality.

      Lots of companies come up with jazzy headlines, graphics, copy, or slogans. If you do, too, you’re just one in a large crowd. That kind of imagination will not help you stand out in a crowd. What you need is the kind of imagination that helps you stand apart from the crowd. One more clever headline isn’t going to do that for you.

      In a jam-packed media environment, you need much more than that. You’ve got to face more than your competition—and we certainly don’t want to undermine them because they’re getting smarter every day. The truth is that you’ve got to face reality head on and you’re got to do something to rise above it. You’ve got to do something your prospects and customers have never seen before so that you can capture and hold their attention better than any competitor anywhere, anytime.

       THE GUERRILLA MARKETING FLORIST

      This is an example of a true guerrilla spirit: a tiny investment, a huge imagination, and a happy payoff. People will always spend money to solve a problem before spending to improve something that is already OK. A guerrilla marketing florist knows that this is true in every area of life and not just business-to-business marketing.

      After all of the social expressions of the year-end holidays, flower sales can drop off until Valentine’s Day. One florist’s solution is a small road sign that simply asks, “How mad is she?” He never had a busier January thanks to the sign.

      Let’s say you’re doing a direct mailing. You certainly won’t be the first, but you certainly do want to be the best. How do you do that? By printing something unusual on the envelope? Face it, everybody and their cousin does that. There’s no guerrilla genius necessary to come up with a set of words or pictures that will beg the recipient to open their envelope. But guerrillas have the imagination to break through that direct mail clutter and get their mailing noticed, their envelope opened, and their message read. They have the imagination to do something their audience has never seen before and that even you have never seen before.

      It begins with their willingness to pop for first-class postage. We’re not talking about breaking the bank here. We’re only referring to you being willing to invest in 41 cents worth of postage, the cost of a first-class stamp. But you don’t buy a 41-cent stamp. Anyone can buy that kind of stamp. You certainly do not use a postage metered stamp because that has “boring” stamped all over it.

      Do you invest in a beautiful, brand new commemorative stamp? Too easy, and to be honest, too common. Instead, you take your 41 cents worth of postage and you invest in fourteen stamps. You buy two six-cent stamps, five three-cent stamps, and seven two-cent stamps. That’s 14 stamps totaling 41 cents, the same as a regular 41-cent stamp.

      You put those 14 stamps on the envelopes, do your mailing, and realize that when the recipients receive their envelopes, it will probably be the first time in their lives that they’ve ever seen an envelope with 14 stamps! That envelope will catch their attention first. It will be opened first. And the contents inside will be read first. When you study direct mail, you’re taught that the average response rate is 2 percent. People who send envelopes with 14 stamps enjoy a 20 percent response rate and even higher. We’ve heard of response