Guerrilla Marketing Basics

Deborah Bifulco of The Coach Academy brings us basic Guerilla tips for small business:

Most of my work is with start up businesses in the professional practices field, so Guerrilla Marketing is the most used tool in my arsenal.  And, frankly, Guerrilla Marketing is a lot of gun – it uses creativity, time and imagination in place of big bucks.  But before the creative part of the marketing occurs, some basic “grunt work” has to be done.  And, one of the areas entrepreneurs seem to struggle with the most is translating their services/products into customer-oriented benefits.

Most of us have a tendency, when asked what our company does, to talk in terms of features.  For example, if you own a landscaping company you might lead off with something like “We mow lawns.”  Seems simple enough, right?  But “mowing” isn’t what customers buy.  Customers buy solutions.  So, what problems might be solved by mowing?

o        The homeowner will have more time

o        The yard will look good and reflect well on the homeowner

o        The homeowner will have more time for (fishing, golfing, family time, etc.)

Ideally, one of the first steps of any good marketing plan will involve listing out every single thing your company does/sells and them coming up with two to three benefits for each.  If you are having a hard time translating your features into benefits, try asking your customers what they get out of their relationship with you – what problems have you solved for them?

Once you’ve got a good list of clearly stated benefits, start using these in every single element of your marketing … emails, advertising, newsletters, website, etc.   And, remember, people buy solutions.

Online Reputation Management

So many businesses successfully leverage the buzz that can be efficiently built online. Press links, frequent updates and insightful posts can position yor business as a leader.

The down side to the speed of info publishing is that it's not often vetted. In a lot of cases, it's outright false. And time and again, courts have sided with the internet service provider so posts are not removed.

There are many different paths that cyber-slammers take, from identity theft using false accounts which appear to be you, to SEO-based techniques that propogate their negative feedback through social networks, to the toughest to refute, so-called rip off and fraud sites.  Turn down a person in a job interview for solid grounds and you may face their wrath via online and anonymous rants. It can be scary, and costly to counter.

BusinessWeek.com ran a piece last month with tactics you can use when an irrational (ex)customer or disgruntled employee hits the online world.

Three which we highly recommend:
Build positive presence online. This way, when people search you and your domain, they will come upon the things about your business you want them to know.
Stop clicking back to the bad news every two minutes. Not only are you driving yourself nuts, but you're increasing hit rates which makes the post more appealing to search engines
Watch your own name AND alternate spellings and domain extensions. There are services and utlities you can use for this as well listed in the complete post linked below.

Once on the web, always on the web is the harsh reality of bad PR. The good news though is that works for positive messages and client feedback. Focus your energy on a strategy that increases visibility of the positive, rather than one suppresses the negative. It will put you in a better frame of mind and be a lot more productive in the end.

The full article can be found on BusinessWeek.com. Additional PR strategies can be found in the OED Online Community.