-Our guest blogger- Jay Conrad Levinson is the author of the best-selling marketing series in history, “Guerrilla Marketing,” plus 30 other books. His books have sold 14 million copies worldwide. His guerrilla concepts have influenced marketing so much that today his books appear in 41 languages and are required reading in many MBA programs worldwide. He was a teacher and sounding board for The Shift Doctors (Tracy Latz, M.D. and Marion Ross, Ph.D.) ; and after many discussions strongly encouraged us to publish a book Entrepreneurial Alignment: How To Overcome Self Sabotage in Business designed to assist people who struggle with implementing tools learned in business or entrepreneurial coaching programs due to self-sabotage. For more on Jay Conrad Levinson visit www.gmarketing.com
Marketing Your Marketing
Don’t limit your marketing merely to the media you’re using. Market it all over the place. Anything worth promoting is worth cross-promoting.
Guerrillas know that all the media work better if they’re supported by the other media. Put your web site onto your TV commercial. Mention your advertising in your direct mail. Refer to your direct mail in your telemarketing. Plants the seeds of your offering with some kinds of marketing and fertilize them with other kinds.
You’re not really promoting unless you’re cross-promoting. Your trade show booth will be far more valuable to you if you promote it in trade magazines and with fliers put under the doors of hotels near the trade show. Guerrillas try to market their marketing.
Your prospects, being humans, are eclectic people. They pay attention to a lot of media so you can’t depend on a mere one medium to motivate a purchase. You’re got to introduce a notion, remind people of it, say it again, then repeat it in different words somewhere else. That share of mind for which guerrilla strive? They get it with they combine several media. They say in their ads, “Call or write for our free brochure.”
They say in their Yellow Pages ad, “Get even more details at our website.” They enclose a copy of their magazine ad in their mailing. They blow up a copy to use as a sign. Their website features their print ads.
Guerrillas are quick to mention their use of one medium while using another because they realize that people equate broadscale marketing with quality and success. They know that people trust names they’ve heard of much more than strange and new names;, and guerrillas are realistic enough to know that people miss most marketing messages — often intentionally. The remote control is not only a way to save their steps but also a method of eliminating marketing messages.
No matter how glorious their newspaper campaign may be, guerrillas realize that not all of their prospects read the paper so they’ve got to get to these people in another way. No matter how dazzling their website, it’s like a grain of sand in a desert if it is not pointed out to an unknowing and basically uncaring public.
Cross-promoting in the media is another way to accomplish the all-important task of repetition. One way to repeat yourself and implant your message is to say it over and over again. Another way is to say it in several different places. Guerrillas try to do both. Nothing is left to chance. If you saw a yellow pages ad that made you an offer from a company you’ve never heard of and another with the same offer except that the ad said, “As advertised on television,” you’d probably opt for the second because of that added smidgen of credibility. I rest my case.
The psychology of marketing requires basic knowledge of human behavior. Human beings do not like making decisions in a hurry and are not quick to develop relationships. They certainly do want relationships, but they’ve been stung in the past and they don’t want to be stung again.
They have learned well to distrust much marketing because of its proclivity to exaggeration. All too many times they’ve read of sales at stores and learned that only a tiny selection of items were on sale. They’ve been bamboozled more times than you’d think by the notorious fine print on contracts. And they’ve been high pressured by more than one salesperson.
That’s why they process your marketing communications in their unconscious minds, eventually arriving at their decisions because of an emotional reason even though they may say they are deciding based on logic. They factor a lot about you into their final decision — how long they’ve heard of you, where your marketing appears, how it looks and feels to them, the quality of your offer, your convenience or lack of it, what others have said about you, and most of all, how your offering can be of benefit to their lives.
Although they state that they now want what you’re selling, and they do it in a very conscious manner, you can be sure they were guided by their unconscious minds. The consistent communicating of your benefits, your message and your name has penetrated their sacred unconscious mind. They’ve come to feel that they can trust you and so they decide to buy.
Any pothole in their road to purchasing at this point might dissuade them. They call to make an inquiry and they are treated shabbily on the phone? You’ve lost them. Do they access your website for more information and either find no website or find one littered with self-praise You’ve lost them. They visit you and feel pressured or misunderstood? They’re gone.
You’ve got to realize that the weakest point in your marketing can derail all the strong points. Excellence through and through, start to finish, is what people have come to expect from businesses, and these days, they won’t settle for less. The insight you must have is that marketing is a 360 degree process and you’ve got to do it right from all angles at all times. When it comes to marketing, people have built-in alarm systems, and any shady behavior on your part sets the bells to clanging, the sirens screaming.
It is very difficult to woo a person from the brand they use right now to your brand. Although they are loathe to change, they do change. And when they do, they patronize businesses that understand the psychology of human beings and the true nature of marketing.
Loads of Light to all!
Jay Conrad Levinson with Tracy Latz, M.D.and Marion Ross PhD. (a.k.a. “The Shift Doctors”)
**The Shift Doctors (Tracy Latz, M.D. & Marion Ross, Ph.D.) are available for keynote talks, classes, events or for seminars (1/2 day or up to 2 day) on Energy Medicine personal transformation, team-building, motivation, anger management, intuitive development, or collaboration for private groups, conferences, corporations or corporate events. Contact them at info@shiftyourlife.com or find out more about their books, DVD’s, CD’s and tools for personal transformation at www.shiftyourlife.com.
– For more on Jay Conrad Levinson visit www.gmarketing.com