Do You Dress For Success Like This?
What Do You Mean: No?!
Way back in 1996, Jay Conrad Levinson, outrageously famous for his Guerilla Marketing brand, published his Guerilla Marketing Online Weapons. It’s so ancient that he has to define email in his glossary for his readers.
So, what is guerilla marketing? It’s the aggressive use of unconventional, free, or low-cost tactics, such as your email signature or using an intriguing way to introduce your business that makes people just absolutely die to learn more.
In 177 pages, he lists and explains how to use 100 free or low-cost tools, listed under obviously obsolete topics such as:
- service
- customer comfort
- goodwill
- coupons and samples
- intelligence gathering, and
- attitude
Things happen much faster with instant communication today than in 1996, and beyond comprehension compared to the telegram days of 1984, when Guerilla Marketing itself appeared. But before you commit yourself to a Web 2.0 marketing diet and load your plate with MySpace and Facebook presences or Web 1.0 pay-per-click ads to drive traffic to your website in the hopes that some of them will spill over and buy your products and services, make sure you’ve built your business on a time-tested foundation. So you don’t have a chink in your armor.
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A “time-tested fundation” has a short half-life in Web time. That’s why a lot of social networking sites launch beta versions of themselves and get their early adopters to help them work out the kinks.
thy sarcasm sometimes eludes me in toneless text, sans your smile… I’m curious about:
“obviously obsolete topics such as:
* service, * customer comfort, * goodwill, * coupons and samples, * intelligence gathering, and * attitude”
I don’t see you espousing “service and goodwill” as being “obviously obsolete,” so would you please expand on this with a bit more clarity? I certainly have re-thought coupons and samples as being non-productive over the past year, so I’m getting a mixed message.
The list above has time-tested fundamentals that need to be in place before moving on to cutting-edge initiatives (web 2.0). Consider a business bringing lots of prospects — but having an attitude that delivers poorer service and comfort: it will be hard to build a repeat or referring customer base. (btw: coupons and sampling can work nearly anywhere with anything.)
I’m an old school guy Bill and a lot of this new age marketing stuff makes me laugh a bit inside. Here is the skinny: If you are attentive…I mean really attentive to your business..like the simple stuff..returning phone calls in a timely fashion, showing up for appointments on time or earlier, not looking like a bum when you come in, listening to a prospect rather than spewing your goods….THAT is what is important to your customers. As for reaching them…sorry..I still work from the premise that a referral is the best possible introduction possible, regardless of tactics to reach propsects. Get in the field, push the flesh and do some old fashioned network marketing. SEO programs are a must these days, but having a consistent message spread through personal interaction (on the phone or in person) works great. With the advent of E-Mail and instant messaging, we’ve lost the essence of what works best. As a customer, It is so easy to hide behind voice mail, but try to hide when you are in the lobby showing up on a cold call or unscheduled “drop by”….call me old fashioned, but let’s rewind the clock back a few ticks. Thanks for hearing me out. Good stuff man! As for body armor, the casual look sprinkled with spotty gray hair, a notepad and an open mind works well for me!