A Summary of A Book: Guerrilla Marketing: Secrets for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business

Nevin Tan

107604076

Over 15 million copies and in 44 languages, Guerrilla Marketing series of books are considered as ‘the marketing bible’ of our era.

In its basic definition, guerrilla marketing means unconventional marketing intended to get maximum results from minimal resources.

Coined by Jay Conrad Levinson, guerilla marketing is more about matching wits than matching budgets. Guerilla marketing can be as different from traditional marketing as guerilla warfare is from traditional warfare. Rather than marching their marketing dollars forth like infantry divisions, guerilla marketers snipe away with their marketing resources for maximum impact.

"Jay is one of the foremost business marketing experts in
the world. No one knows how to use the weapons of the trade better
than industry expert Jay Levinson."
Entrepreneur Magazine

When Guerrilla Marketing was first published in 1983, Jay Levinson revolutionalized marketing strategies for the small-business owner with his take-no-prisoners approach to finding clients. Filled with hundreds of solid ideas that really work, Levinson's philosophy has given birth to a new way of learning about market share and how to gain it. In this completely revised and expanded third edition, Levinson offers a new arsenal of weaponry for small-business success in the next century. Filled with strategies for marketing on the Internet (explaining when and precisely how to use it), tips for putting other new technologies to work, programs for targeting prospects and cultivating repeat and referral business, and management lessons in the age of telecommuting and freelance employees, this book is the entrepreneur's marketing bible in the twenty-first century. (www.books.google.co.uk)

In wikipedia.org, Guerrilla Marketing is defined as an unconventional system of of promotions on a very low budget, by relying on time, energy and imagination instead of big marketing budgets. The term has since entered the popular vocabulary to also describe aggressive, unconventional marketing methods generically.

Levinson's books include hundreds of "Guerrilla Marketing weapons," but they also encourage the guerrilla marketer to be creative and devise his own unconventional methods of promotion.

Levinson says that when implementing guerrilla marketing tactics, small size is actually an advantage instead of a disadvantage. Small businesses and entrepreneurs are able to obtain publicity more easily than large companies; they are closer to their customers and considerably more agile.

Yet ultimately, according to Levinson, the Guerrilla Marketer must "deliver the goods". In The Guerrilla Marketing Handbook, he states: "In order to sell a product or a service, a company must establish a relationship with the customer. It must build trust and support. It must understand the customer's needs, and it must provide a product that delivers the promised benefits."

Levinson identifies the following principles as the foundation of guerrilla marketing:

• Guerrilla Marketing is specifically geared for the small business and entrepreneur.
  
• It should be based on human psychology instead of experience, judgment, and guesswork.
  
• Instead of money, the primary investments of marketing should be time, energy, and imagination.
  
• The primary statistic to measure your business is the amount of profits, not sales.
  
• The marketer should also concentrate on how many new relationships are made each month.
  
• Create a standard of excellence with an acute focus instead of trying to diversify by offering too many diverse products and services.
  
• Instead of concentrating on getting new customers, aim for more referrals, more transactions with existing customers, and larger transactions.
  
• Forget about the competition and concentrate more on cooperating with other businesses.
  
• Guerrilla Marketers should always use a combination of marketing methods for a campaign.
  
• Use current technology as a tool to empower your marketing. (www.wikipedia.org)

In an age of seconds count, Guerrilla Marketing is the handbook of most of us in our attemp to turn our small business into a big one.