Guerilla Marketing

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#006699" TEXT="#080000" background="3a1fd5a3.jpg"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>Eclicktick Consulting</B></FONT><B>    </B><B> |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Eclicktick Consulting"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div>                                                   </div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#FFCC66" TEXT="#080000" background="3a2d2b03.jpg"> <div> <IMG SRC="32fb6370.jpg" border=0 width="182" height="55" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">Free e-book</div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.eclicktick.com/turnaround.pdf" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.eclicktick.com/turnaround.pdf"><U>"Turn Around! A brief</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.eclicktick.com/turnaround.pdf" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.eclicktick.com/turnaround.pdf"><U>guide  to starting</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.eclicktick.com/turnaround.pdf" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.eclicktick.com/turnaround.pdf"><U>growing and turning</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.eclicktick.com/turnaround.pdf" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.eclicktick.com/turnaround.pdf"><U>around your software or</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.eclicktick.com/turnaround.pdf" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.eclicktick.com/turnaround.pdf"><U>Internet business."</U></A></div> <div> in pdf format</div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="http://www.eclicktick.com/turnaround.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.eclicktick.com/turnaround.htm"><U>"Turn Around"</U></A></div> <div> in HTML format</div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="books.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Eclicktick Recommended Books"><U>Recommended Business and Technology Books</U></A></div> <bR> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <I>Guerilla Marketing</I></div> <bR> <div> <I>Guerilla Marketing For High Tech Companies</I></div> <div> <I>Copyright Alistair Davidson, 2002. All rights reserved.</I></div> <bR> <div> Many small firms in the high tech space spend most of their capital on developing their product. However, it's generally pretty tough to sell a product without marketing and sales expenditures. This article covers some of the tricks you can use to extend your limited marketing budget and sales capabilities.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Think “lazy”.</B> Try to figure out who has the highest need for your product. They will buy most quickly. Remember that there are three types of products: mandatory, high value, and me-too. If you have a me-too product, try to figure out how you can make your product mandatory (e.g. something that solves a new regulatory problem) or have exceptionally high value that will be irresistible to customers.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Use the low cost marketing and public relations approaches</B> first before you spend money on advertising and sales efforts. These low cost approaches include: building a web site, doing press releases, registering your web site with search engines, writing articles for trade publications, getting listed in directories of vendors, joining associations, and getting to know opinion leaders who can connect you with others in the industry.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Make it easy to do business with you.</B> Many companies drive their business model off what is easy to model in a spreadsheet. Cash flows always look good if you have a high priced product. But high priced products need high priced sales forces and trigger long sales cycles. Think in terms of reducing the cost of sampling your product and experiencing its benefits. Trading up a customer who has used your product or a sub-set of your product is generally a whole lot cheaper and faster than trying to sell an expensive product up front.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Don't do everything yourself.</B> It's amazing how many small companies try to reinvent the wheel. For example, if you are thinking about developing some software and you don't have a great deal of hands on experience with the customer segment, consider the option of reselling someone else's product in the first generation of your business. Once you know what customers really want and have identified new unmet needs, you have achieved a great deal. You have done market research and been paid by customers doing the process. </div> <bR> <div> <B>Increase your value in as many ways as possible.</B> It may seem trite but remember that if you create high value for your customers and treat them as you would want to be treated, you will get sales. Small firms generally can't do everything, so link up and license other people's technology. Try to keep the licenses on a variable cost basis initially. When you get successful, you can renegotiate a site license or more attractive rate. But remember that creating value is not just about features or price. It can also include service.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Engineer your sales process to drive down sales costs.</B> Most small firms make two mistakes in their selling process. First, they use their most expensive people to prospect for new customers. Second, they accept long sales cycles. It's important in an under-funded company to design your product to create a call to action, a reason to buy now and not in the future. </div> <bR> <div> <B>Approach a lot of prospects.</B> There is a old adage in sales that if you don't fill the front end of your sales funnel with enough prospects, you won't generate enough sales.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Use technology to help you sell.</B> Clearly, a web site is key. But using the Internet for demoing and trial of your product or service is also key. Software companies selling higher priced products can reduce the cost of travel by doing sales demos over the Internet. Some software companies targeting large companies can avoid the bureaucracy of large firm's acquisition processes by avoiding IT departments and selling directly to end users. The more that the sale to end user can be concealed from the IT department the more success you will have.  An ASP delivery model or out-tasking to avoid IT involvement can work very well in the early stages of a relationship.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Measure the payback on your product or service</B>. Customers need to justify their investments in high tech products. Make measurement part of your marketing activities. If as a small company, you have demonstrated high payback on use of your products or services, you can often gain an advantage over larger competitors.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Use your small size to win sales.</B> Working with many <I>large</I> high tech firms is an exercise in frustration. Long hold times on customer support, incompetent staff, missing phone numbers can create an angry customer. Being small you have the opportunity in every interaction with a customer to create a positive brand. Hire great people and put the customer first. Go the extra  mile for customers. By all means charge for your service, but be flexible. If a customer wants your product sold to him as a consulting service, do so. Be prepared to vary your pricing so that you both win. Consider risk sharing.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Once you have won a customer, make sure you stay in touch.</B> It is surprisingly easy to lose contact with your customers, users and sponsors. I personally use a tool called GoodContacts.com to regularly update my contact database.  And when you have good contacts, keep in touch with them. Monitor how their needs are changing.</div> <bR> <div> <B>When you issue a press release, think in terms of the journalist's need.</B> Remember journalists want stories. Announcing the release of Version 2.7 of your product is not very interesting. </div> <bR> <div> <B>Ask for referrals. Get testimonials.</B> If your customers are happy, get testimonials. It really helps with sales. And ask them if they have colleagues or friends who can use your services.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Think about alliances.</B> The fashionable term these day is build an ecosystem of consultants, magazines, value added consultants, systems integrators, user group, etc. The idea is that part of the value proposition is being part of a standard where there is lots of support for the standard. If you are small, you can ride someone else's ecosystem and market to member of the ecosystem. This approach is often called installed base marketing. If you can make your product or service complement an existing user base, your sales and closing costs will be lower. Risk of purchasing your product will drop.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Buzz.</B> Perhaps the hardest guerilla tactic to achieve is “buzz”. If you can make your product a “hot” product by getting it in the hands of visible opinion leaders, you can often produce a lot of sales.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Measure customer and non-customer satisfaction.  </B>You need to know why people are buying your product. But you also need to know why they are buying other people's products. Even if you don't do it formally, talk to customers and non-customers. Ask them what they don't like about your product and what they like about competitor products. Don't just focus on customers and what they like about your product.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Don't try to be all things to all people.</B> In a big market like the US, it's pretty much impossible to service the entire market. Segmented and regional strategies are often good ways of launching a product. Selling your high tech product as part of a service often produces faster closes and more revenues more quickly than a product approach.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Sell benefits not features.</B> If you are having a hard time talking about why your product or service makes sense, you are too close to your product. This is the occasion when you need a marketing consultant. A small investment in a marketing consultant's services should help you quickly come up with a benefit-oriented reason to do business with you. Remember that customers are not as interested in your product as you are. They are interested in themselves, their careers, the results of using your product or services not in the subtleties of why your product is best. In many cases, they are indifferent to the features you have labored long and hard to put into the product. They don't want problems and they want results.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Do usability testing.</B> If your product shows well, it will normally sell well. If you have the budget, consider improving your interaction design. A better interaction design creates value.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Test, test and test. </B>Test your message, test your channel, test your delivery approach, test your pricing.</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div>   <script> var page_name = ''; var invisible = ''; function sE(){return true;}window.onError=sE;var lp=0; function clr(){lp++;if(lp==1){document.ctr.src="http://64.49.222.57/0.gif";} else {clearTimeout(myT);return true;}} var myT=setTimeout('clr()',120000);var rn=Math.random(); document.write('<a href="http://www.web-stat.com/stats.shtml?alistairdavidson"'); document.write(' target="new"><img name="ctr"'); document.write(' src="http://www.web-stat.com/count.cgi?'); document.write('alistairdavidson::'+top.document.referrer); if (window.screen){ document.write('::'+screen.width+'x'+screen.height+'::'); document.write(screen.colorDepth+'::'+page_name+'::'+invisible+'::'+rn); }else{document.write('::::::page_name::'+invisible+'::'+rn);} document.write('" onError="clr();" onAbort="clr();"'); document.write(' onLoad="clearTimeout(myT);"'); document.write('border=0 alt="Web-Stat hit counter"></a>'); </script><noscript> <a href="http://www.web-stat.com/stats.shtml?alistairdavidson" target="new"> <img src="http://www.web-stat.com/count.cgi?alistairdavidson::NoJavaScript" border=0> </a> </noscript>   </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>