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