Week 4 - Guerilla Marketing

Ladies and gentlemen, we are presenting a chapter of Guerilla Marketing that is the bane of every procrastinator on the planet: COMMITMENT.

Now don’t get me wrong, the idea here actually outlines an effective strategy to overcome such “personality deficiencies”, but it doesn’t mean it’s not extraordinarily, mind-numbingly, pulling-your-hair-out difficult for some people to execute.  I say this tongue in cheek, since I most certainly fall into the category.  I like to think of myself as “deadline-oriented” instead of a hopeless procrastinator.

I spent at least an hour looking at memes for this image instead of finishing my blog today. "Image Source".

So, let’s talk about how we get around this.  Set multiple deadlines!  Yes, nothing crushes the soul of a procrastinator more than realizing that development milestones should have their own deadlines.  So how do we do that?  With a plan!  The book puts it in no uncertain terms; build a plan and commit to the plan.  That commitment is expressed by application of time and resources.  Also, to clarify for those of you who are actively scrolling through Facebook while trying to finish reading my blog.. consistent application of time and resources.

But one might ask, where does the plan come from?  Fear not my equally inept business professionals, for Guerilla Marketing has us covered!  It advises us to start with an assessment of the current marketplace to understand where your organization fits into the wider industry, how it’s currently perceived and how you want to be perceived (think mission statement) and what resources you have to execute an advertisement strategy.  It’s also the time to examine how other companies in the industry execute branding and advertisement as well.

This, however, is just the background research level.  The text gives us a 7-line strategy building technique to ensure we’re hitting the right marks on our march to a successful campaign:

1. Purpose: What’s the point of marketing?  What do we hope to achieve?

2. How: What’s the operational concept?  How are we sharing/caring?  How does it achieve market advantage or express/insinuate a need for products or services?

3. Target:  Is the product or service catering to a particular age, gender, specialized population, etc.  How does the strategy point toward the noted interest group(s)?

4. Marketing Weapons: What guns are firing the “How”?  Is it print media, live events, social media, television and other digital media, or a combination of all?

I took a coffee break before 5 through 7, mostly because I can’t sit still that long, but partly because, interestingly enough, the last 3 bits are more relevant to the goals of your underlying strategy and market research than active planning.

5. Position: What’s the market “niche” of your organization?  How do you fit into the world and how do you want to express it?

6. Identity: I mentioned this is previous posts, but Identity and position are close.  I’ve personally defined identity as values-based, while position is operations based.  This works for me, but you do you.

7. Budget: Lets recycle to the top here.  I mentioned application of resources.  Time and money.  How much time and how much money are you dedicating (committing) to your marketing program?  

Anyways, that’s a quick rundown of the points I grabbed from chapter 4 in Guerilla Marketing.  I’m going to go rearrange some rooms in my house, so I have an excuse to delay some more actual work.