My notes on “Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days” by Jay Conrad Levinson and Al Lautenslager

What is your competitive advantage? Is it enough?

• Write down every reason you can think of to do business with your company. Now do the same for your top competitors. Scratch off the common ones. Are the remaining reasons good enough to be your competitive advantage? Do you need more?
• Asking your customers why they do business with you will provide you with your competitive advantages

Template for an elevator speech

• Your name, company, challenge at hand, unique solution that implies an advantage for the customer
• Eg “My name is Lawrence from Maximum Benefits Insurance Company. We know there are many choices and much confusion when it comes to selecting health insurance. We’ve developed a menu of services based on 5 basic variables that cuts through the clutter and suggest the optimum plan for you instantly

Is purchasing based on emotions or logic?

• The most compelling benefits are those that provide emotional or financial return
• People make purchasing decision based on emotion first, logic second. Logic follows because purchasers will rationalize their purchase decision based on features and benefits

Benefits that lead to competitive advantages

• How to find the benefits of your products and services: Keep asking “so what?”. Once you are convinced chances are you’ve reached the benefit
• A benefit will improve the life, cost, health or well-being of someone
• A benefit you offer that the competition doesn’t is a unique benefit and a competitive advantage
• Creating an advantage that is difficult to duplicate is the ultimate competitive advantage

Do you have an identity or an image?

• An identify is what you really are. If you screw up then that’s what someone remembers, in that one person’s mind, your screw-up is your identity
• Image is often phony
• Customers and prospects are very good at knowing which is which

One-off advertising or repetition?

• Repetition establishes contact and starts a relationship with the prospect or viewer
• If your budget is tight, run frequent, smaller ads
• How many? Your target markets notices 1 in 9 ads. If it takes 3 ads for them to take action 9 x 3 = 27 repetitions

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Here is the first in this list:

I didn’t get it at first – but the “fleas” are people walking accross the foyer of an office building or mall, so this is the view for people looking down from the 3rd or 4th floor.

Pretty clever huh?

Here are 79 more: The 80 Best Guerrilla Marketing Ideas I’ve Ever Seen

I’d looooove to brainstorm with you and come up with clever ideas like this for your business. Call me today (07) 575 8799 or email me

- Sheldon.

Which one is your favourite?

Tell me in the comments below.

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Whilst driving to Mount Maunganui yesterday I spotted these tiny billboards strapped to street light polls and road signage opposite Mount Maunganui High School:

4 Lessons You Can Learn From These Guerilla Miniature Billboards

What can you learn from this clever “guerilla” method of advertising? Could you replicate this strategy for your business?

1. Do it cheap.

• They are made of the core-flute just like real estate signs.
• There is no graphics.
• You could get them made for about $10 each.
• Budget looking can be very effective. When you get junk mail in your letterbox at home do the crappy hand-written flyers get your attention first before the sleek professional Warehouse/Dick Smith/KFC flyers? For sure.

2. Keep your message simple.

• Mountain bikers know what “MTB” means so this headline captures the target audiences attention.
• On a full size 6m x 3m billboard your word limit is about 11. So in this case you have about 5 words.
• What simple 4 or 5 word headline can you use to cut through to your target audience?

3. Choose a single call-to-action.

• In this case, you just visit the website if the headline “MTB Downhill Racing” appeals to you.
• The website address is related to the headline so it’s reasonably easy to remember.
• On a website you can state 5 or 6 different ways to contact you, on a miniature billboard you must choose just one.
• A website address is very good. A phone number could work but many people prefer to check you out anonymously via a website rather than call a number and get “sold to”.

4. Repeat your message.

• Normally you don’t get the chance to repeat a standard 6m x 3m billboard 20 metres down the road, because it’ll double your costs.  So you are only giving your billboard one chance to be read as your potential customers zoom past at 50 kph or 100 kph.
• In this case there were 3 miniature billboards about 20 metres apart.
• I didn’t really notice the first, but I quickly read the second, and I read the third carefully.
• It made an impression that a single exposure would not have.
• In fact, I turned my car around and stopped on the side of the road, took some photos, wrote this article and visited www.mtbtauranga.co.nz.  That’s the magic of repetition.

“Great, but are these billboards legal?”

Probably not. The Tauranga City Council probably has a bylaw which prohibits this sort of guerilla advertising, and other councils around the country do too I bet.

If they get a complaint from the public (or your competition!), the council will take them down for sure (you probably won’t even get fined!).

But until then, you’ve got yourself some very cheap and effective advertising, so go for it!

Like this idea?

I have a million more.  Give me a call on (07) 575 8799 to tell me about your business and we can think up some clever ideas about how to generate more sales for you. At the very least sign up to this blog using the form on the right!

- Sheldon.

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