The seven steps to marketing commitment

From: http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/1996/11/04/smallb6.html?t=printable

Friday, November 1, 1996

The seven steps to marketing commitment
Sacramento Business Journal - by Bill "Guerrilla" Gallagher, Ph.D.

It has been several weeks since I have written about your critical commitment to marketing your business. I must remind you that 62 percent of all of the 750,000-plus businesses that start up each year in North America are out of business after four years. I don't want yours to be one of them. Just in case this is the first and only guerrilla column you're ever going to read, here's the cold truth:

Note: This information is critical for your business. CRITICAL!

The U.S. Department of Commerce tells us that the main reason most businesses fail is because of a failure to focus enough energy on marketing. If I don't hear about you (i.e., your marketing), I won't know how to buy from you. And, you'll be out of business. Bummer!

In your new business, you or someone close to you in your organization must be committed to marketing your firm's products and services.

Remember, marketing means everything from conceiving of a new product or service to packaging it, promoting it, selling it, delivering it and holding on to new customers so that they will buy from you again and again.

As an entrepreneur, you must be committed to marketing. All of your employees must be aware of your marketing commitment. How? If you're sharp, you will have developed it together with them.

Your firm's commitment to marketing can be found in your Guerrilla Marketing Plan. This is not some huge document. Because it's guerrilla, it's short and sweet. Maybe seven or fewer sentences long.

Your Guerrilla Marketing Plan must include five critical identity elements which are each a refinement of one another. Also included are your Marketing Calendar and your Marketing Budget.

1. The benefit(s) to the consumer. For example: "Our product(s) and service make our customers look better, be more successful, feel safer, be more liked by others, and forever free from pain."

2. Your positioning: What business are you in? For example: "We are a unique gourmet grocery store stocking over 10,000 speciality items, located in the upscale, swank village of Diamond Springs."

3. Your target market. "Our marketing is targeted at 20- to 40-year-old, middle-class women with interests in poetry, fine food, cats and piano sonatas."

4. Your niche within that market. "We will be the most expensive and best exercise facility in town. To support this, we will have the best looking male and female sports trainers in the county."

5. Your list of marketing tools and techniques. For example: "Marketing tools to be employed will include:

• Newspaper ads run weekly in three papers.

• A window display that changes weekly.

• Numerous signs inside that merchandise and cross-merchandise.

• A co-op yellow pages ad.

• Quarterly theme open-house parties (e.g., Super Bowl, blow-up sumo wrestling contest, adult Halloween spook alley).

• Quarterly seminars or lectures.

• Local cable TV ad campaign.

• Local talk-radio advertising.

• Postcard mailings every two months.

• Brochure.

• A catalog.

• A one-time "big" magazine ad.

• Tie-ins with all local dealers.

• Access to co-op funds."

6. A month-by-month implementation timetable or marketing calendar.

For example:

Tool JAN. FEB. MAR.

NPR Ads Window Signs Greetings Cable TV

7. Your marketing budget. A good rule of thumb is 7 percent to 10 percent of gross sales.

Bill Gallagher is head of Guerrilla Sales & Marketing in Diamond Springs and co-author of "Guerrilla Selling." For more information on the topics and ideas in this column, call (800) 800-8086 or send e-mail to bguerrilla@aol.com.