Guerilla marketing is all about getting maximum results with minimal resources. However, you shouldn’t get this confused with the futile effort of trying to get maximum results with NO resources.
In the current economic times you want to cut waste as much as possible, but I’ve talked with a lot of misguided business owners who are saying things like, “I’m not going to do any marketing that costs money until the economy turns.” Obviously, that’s their choice – I happen to think it’s a wrong one, but they’ll have to learn that lesson themselves.
Ironically, the people who are saying this haven’t adjusted their sales expectations to account for the decrease that will happen when they scale back to zero on the marketing budget.
I have a client who’s currently learning this lesson. We’ll call him Tom (not his real name). We developed a marketing strategy for Tom around a year ago. In it we outlined a list of campaigns & tactics to get him to his sales goal for the next 12 months. We showed him where his company was lacking in the marketing department & how we could work with him to fill those holes & get him on track. We started working with him and everything was running along fine – then (you guessed it) the issues with the economy started rearing their ugly heads early this past fall.
At first it was relatively minor things like reducing the size of a mailer or cutting back on the number of promotional products ordered. Then it got more drastic. Tom was printing his own letterhead on cheap paper and cutting entire programs. Finally it got to where he said he didn’t want to spend any money on any marketing, but he was still expecting to get the results we projected from the full strategy. By this point his solid strategy has been stripped down to the bones.
Free and do-it-yourself marketing can only take you so far. And if you’ve been putting out a professional presence and do a quick 180 to the amateur zone – it can do a lot more harm than good. People will think someone else has bought your business or, worse yet, you’re about to go out of business.
A long time ago I heard someone say, “You can’t churn butter with a toothpick.” And it rings very true when it comes to marketing your business. You can (and should) go through and trim the fat – take a look at why things did or didn’t work. But if you cut it to the quick expect your business to drop along with it. For all of you who are thinking of marketing as something that can be cut completely I strongly urge you to take a look at my post Follow the Advice of Douglas Adams.
Just a reminder: I won’t be posting next Monday because I’ll be attending a conference/expo all week. However, I’ll be back on January 19th. Have a good one folks & keep out of the box!
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