Consider Joining Business Networking International

Do you hate to stand up and speak? Are you uncomfortable distilling the essence of your business to a 60-second "informercial?"

If you answered "yes" to either question, you're probably a good candidate for joining a local chapter of Business Networking International. BNI is a nationwide firm with chapters throughout the country, in cities large and small. Chapters are limited in size, so you may have your choice of chapters in your area.

Each week, BNI members meet to share referrals and deliver a 60-second description of their own business. You'll be surprised at how your confidence will grow, the more often you stand up and present. You may develop some strong friendships while profiting from valuable qualified business referrals.

To locate a chapter in your area, visit www.bni.com.

Separate Web Design from Production and Maintenance

One of the reasons many non-Guerrillas fail to take full advantage of the web is that they are "hostage" to their web designers. Every change requires them to schedule a call with their web designer....and wait for the work to be done...and wait for the inevitable invoice.

Guerrillas, however, understand the distinction between "design," "production" and "maintenance."

"Design" involves creating a unique and pleasing mix of layout, text and colors.

"Production" involves getting the site online and all e-mail links working properly.

Design and production can be complicated, but maintenance is something every Guerrilla Marketer should know how to do. Programs like Macromedia Contribute 2 make it easy for Guerrillas with simple word processing abilities to keep their web site fresh and up to date.

Machine readable forms do not necessarily see what our eyes see. Many registration forms on the Internet accept only ASCII characters. There is no problem if you enter the text directly into the form, but if you cut and paste from Word or other programs, while it may look fine in the form, when you submit it the form will be unable to read any 'Smart' Quotes, dashes, or other specially formatted characters. 'Smart' quotes are the tapered curved quotation marks that look much better than straight Shift-7 hashes, but carry a hidden danger. You may not even see it, but the machine will read it as random symbol marks or even as Chinese characters! You risk having your address, tag line, or company name garbled without even knowing it! Write in Word by all means, but copy it into a text editor first. Don't be outsmarted by 'Smart' Quotes.

William Reed
Guerrilla Marketing Master Trainer
www.gmarketing-genius.com

Double-check the Quality of your Free Trial Offers

Last weekend, a friend of mine attended a "Free Getaway Weekend" at a Cape Cod timeshare. The firm offering the "getaway" probably had $50 invested in her, by the time she arrived, given printing, mailing, telemarketing costs, etc.

However, her "free trial" was a total bust:

* The television was broken in the room she stayed in.
* The refrigerator was broken.
* There was no coffee for the coffee maker.
* The carpet was stained.
* The appliances were rusted.
* The ice machine had been "disconnected for the winter."
* There was obvious mildew in the hot tube and the water was slimy

When she mentioned these deficiencies, she was told: "people who take advantage of these value packages usually don't buy."

Needless to say, she didn't.

But, what about your free trials? Do you put your best foot forward, or are your appliances rusty, too?

Copying and Pasting from E-mail to Word

Often, you only need to print or save a single sentence or paragraph out of a long e-mail. In this case, printing the entire e-mail is wasteful because you end up printing all the header and footer information associated with the e-mail.

Easiest solution is to copy the relevant sentence or paragraph and paste it into a Word document, then save or print from there.

You can also save sentences and paragraphs from a variety of e-mails into a single Word document, which helps you keep track of important ideas scattered over several e-mails.

Printing using Word's Selection feature

Often, there's no reason to print an entire page from a Word document.

You may only need to print a single sentence or paragraph, perhaps one that you're carefully proofing or want to share with a coworker.

In this case, highlight the text you want to print, select Print, and when Word's Print dialog box appears, simply click the "Selection" button. Only the highlighted words will be printed.

E-mail address reminder in an age of Spam

One of my clients is an interior decorator. We've communicated by e-mail several times.

A couple of days ago, I received an e-mail from an address I didn't recognize. The return address was similar to "Pretty Kitty" at AOL. The subject line was something to the effect of: "Let's get together!"

Not recognizing it, I deleted it.

Yesterday, I get a phone call: "Why didn't you respond to my e-mail?"

"What e-mail?"

I took me a few moments to realize that I had deleted an important message. But, whose fault was it? In this day of increased concern over uninvited e-mail, it's the sender's responsibility to have an e-mail address that clearly and instantly identifies the sender.

Reinforcing presentation visuals with client references

Last week, I attended a great presentation. The presenter did many things right, including "talking" rather than "reading" her visuals.

Most important, she followed the "one idea per visual" idea. But, she went one step further. Not only was there a separate visual for each of her firm's services, she included the name of a client for whom the firm had provided the service right on the visual. Just the name, no elaboration.

The name was enough, however, to prompt her to describe the client case study and continue talking to the audience, rather than "reading" words everyone there could already read.

Once again, less is more

Yesterday, I described how a presenter reinforced every one of her points with a name of a client for whom the firm had provided the service.

What was interesting, however, was that when she provided TWO client names, instead of one, she considerably weakened her presentation.

Whereas the presence of a single case study reinforced the point, two client names not only cluttered the visual, weakening it by making it appear crowded and hard to read, but the two names competed with each other...and neither name emerged with
any impact.

One name prompts a case study. Two names encourages confusion. Points get mixed up, and the presentation begins to drag.

Excellence example of Preprinted Second Color Accents

The next time you're in your local Barnes & Noble bookstore, pick up a copy of their Events newsletter, listing current and upcoming author readings and signings.

Notice how good looking the sheet is. Pay particular attention to the fact that the accent colors, green and salmon (orange-pink), are limited to words and graphics that are unlikely to change from issue to issue.

Text that is changes is printed in black.

This permits Barnes and Noble to preprint the second colors in great quantities, and ship them to their stores around the country. These preprints form a framework for each individual store to run through their black and white laser printers or photocopiers.

Production costs are low because each store's unique issue is photocopied or printed at rock bottom price, yet the overall impact is that of a three color print job!

How can you put this idea to work? Newsletters, business cards, flyers?

Folder hierarchy reinforces importance

About two years ago, I experienced a marketing Renaissance when I simply added a "01 Promo" folder to the root directory of my computer.

Now, whenever I Open, Save, or Save As a file, the first thing I see is "01 Promo"
which visibly reminds me that the first priority of any good Guerrilla is to constantly think in terms of marketing.

Once again, the old adage, "Out of sight, out of mind" proves to be true.

Keeping Marketing Projects Accessible and Organized

Inside my 01 Promo folder, there are 10 subfolders. These correspond to the major marketing activities during the year: 01 Planning, 02 Newsletters, 03 Web site, 04 Testimonials 05 Articles, 06 Press Releases, 07 BNI, 08 Fulfillment, 09 Affiliates, 10 Press photographs.

The numbering is crucial, as it is a great timesaving to have the Promo folders appear in the order of their importance, rather than alphabetically.

Inside each category of folder, there are separate sub-folders for individual projects, or--in the case of newsletters--newsletter topics organized by month.

What I wished I knew about filenames fifteen years ago

When I began writing, I've wasted hundreds of hours of time, and lost thousands of dollars of income, by not having a consistent system for file names and locations. I often had to recreate illustrations from memory (or from looking at illustrations in a published book).

Now, I have a simple way of keeping track of each element of each chapter of each book. I start with a folder named Writing, which is divided into Articles, Books, E-books, On-line, and Audios. Each category, each publication and book has its own folder. Within these folders, there are separate folders for each article or each book.

Within the Articles and Publication folders, each article has its own folder. Everything associated with the article--phone calls, e-mails, illustrations, text, Mind Maps, etc.--are kept together in this folder. The same is true for each topic written for online sources.

Within the Books folder, there is a separate folder for each book title. Each title folder has separate folders for each chapter, in addition to separate folders for "correspondence," "table of contents," "front matter," "back matter," etc.

More important, everything associated with each chapter goes into a single folder, illustrations and text, all drafts, etc. I used to store illustrations in a separate folder, but this was a disaster, as my books are filled with illustrations, and when a chapter was moved from one location to another in the book, it was extremely hard to locate the illustrations.

Sounds obsessive, but take it from me: a consistent file naming and location system can save the day.

Confirmations drive web site traffic

When is the last time you asked newsletter recipients on your opt-in e-mail list to confirm their continued interest in receiving your publication?

How do you know your e-mails are not being routinely deleted because the recipients are no longer interested?

You may want to send a yearly "confirmation" message, asking members to "click here to confirm your continued interest" or including a link to your web site page.

This has the secondary benefit of driving traffic to your web site, especially important if you have made redesigned your site or added new features during the previous year.

Margins in documents to be printed by clients

Avoid placing text or graphics too close to the edges of pages that you distribute to clients as e-mail attachments or web site downloads.

Printers differ in the "live area," or portion of the page they can print on. Header and footer information too near the top or bottom of your pages, for example, may not get printed. When it doubt, leave approximately three-quarters of an inch border around all four sides of a page.

Always hyphenate body copy

Hyphenation is a software feature that splits words too long to fit at the end of one line. The first syllable, or syllables, appear at the end of the first line, and the remaining syllables are moved to the second line.

Hyphenation is equally important for text set both justified (lines of equal length, with varying word spacing) and flush-left/ragged-right (lines of differing lengths, with consistent word spacing).

If you fail to hyphenate paragraphs of justified, word spacing in lines containing a few long words will be noticeably large. Word spacing in lines containing several short words will be noticeably cramped.

Failure to hyphenate flush-left/ragged-right text results in lines of distractingly different length. Often, a line containing several short words will be very long, followed by a very short line containing a few long words.

Never hyphenate headlines or subheads

Always turn hyphenation off in headlines and subheads. Hyphenation creates awkward headlines and subheads.

To eliminate headline hyphenation in a document that is otherwise hyphenated, manually break the headline at logical points by entering a Hard Return (usually done by holding down the Shift key while pressing Return).

Subheads should not require hyphenation, anyway, because subheads should be limited to one line.

Always double-check hyphenation

Always check for properly hyphenated words.

Watch out for situations where words like "therapist" are split into: "the" and "rapist."

Limit hyphenation to two consecutive lines. When too many lines in a row are hyphenated, it's a clue that your type size is probably too large for the column width you have chosen.

Avoid hyphenating proper nouns, like names or places.

Familiarize yourself with non-breaking spaces

Readers judge your credibility and the value of your message by tiny details.

One tiny detail that tells a lot concerns non-breaking spaces. When entering names like Roger C. Parker, use a software feature called "non-breaking spaces" to keep Roger and C. from appearing at the end of one line, and Parker from appearing at the next. When non-breaking spaces are used, the software will move the entire word group to the next line.

In a similar way, avoid splitting the name of a city and its state, or a month and the day and year that follows.

Often, the only way to avoid trouble is to rewrite the sentence--or a previous sentence, in order to fit the word grouping together on one line.

Eliminate double spaces in documents other write

When working with text that others have created, use your software program's Replace feature to eliminate two spaces following periods (or other punctuation.)

Many people first learned to type on a typewriter, and were taught to press the space bar twice after a period. This was necessary then, but creates serious problems now.
Two spaces in a row each expand when the text is justified (i.e., set in lines of equal length), creating large, distracting spaces between sentences.

Simply select Edit>Replace and instruct your software to Find every instance of two spaces and Replace them with one space.

No time to write a book? Are you sure?

Yesterday, I attended a book signing with Robert Parker. Robert (no relation) is the author of the best-selling Spenser for Hire series. He generally publishes three new books a year.

Someone asked him: "How much do you write?"

His answer: "fI write 5 pages in the morning, and 5 pages in the afternoon."

"Every day?"

"Nope! Just Monday through Friday. I like my weekends off."

Parker's words reinforced other authors who don't attempt to write books at one sitting, but, instead, concentrate on consistent daily output.

If you have just 45 minutes a day, you can become a published author. At worst, just get up a little earlier, or go to bed a little later each day.

Emphasize Return on Investment, not Costs

One of the easiest traps to fall into is to discuss the how's and why's of a proposed implementation plan to the extent of forgetting about the benefits.

Instead of saying that a proposed venture to increase sales of a $100 product will cost $8,000.00, for example, tell the prospect that "sales of just 80 units will replace out-of-pocket costs--and then show how the proposed project will create those 80 sales, i.e.

* 30 sales from __________________.

* 15 sales from _________________

* 35 sales from _________________

This emphasize puts your proposal into an entirely new perspective.

What did Penthouse know about the power of the press?

According to the current Rolling Stone, before the first issue of Penthouse Magazine was even printed, entrepreneur Bob Guccione printed and mailed a four-color subscription brochure to members of the religious clergy throughout England.

Why did he do this? Did he really think members of the clergy would subscribe to Penthouse?

Of course not! Bob knew the power of controversy. The resulting outcry from pulpits throughout the land did more to publicize and promote Penthouse than Bob could have ever afforded, had he sent brochures to every mail in the country over the age of 18. Penthouse took off like a rocket because Bob knew how to get the press talking.

Do you? If not, Guerrilla Publicity is a good start!

Guerrillas communicate visually whenever possible

Guerrilla Marketers strive to replace words with visual images.

Visuals communicate at a glance, as a glance at page 22 of the February This Old House illustrates. It's not very revealing to say that debris from demolished buildings each year could build a wall 30 feet high and 30 feet wide along the East and West Coasts.

It's quite another to show a drawing of front end loaders creating a 30 foot high pile of debris along the borders.

Whenever possible, replaces words in sentences with information graphics like charts, graphs, lists, tables, organization charts, and timelines.

Display formatted documents on your web site

Guerrillas are always on the lookout for new technologies which solve old problems.

Macromedia has recently introduced Contribute 2. Contribute 2 permits users to create Flash Paper files of formatted documents like newsletters and press releases.

These communicate at a glance. Instead of requiring web site visitors to download an Adobe Acrobat file, they can immediate read, view, and print a newsletter, press release, or training document from a web page.

Respect your client's color printing budget

Use color with restraint in e-books and web site incentives, like White Papers, training materials, or spececial reports.

Last night, I downloaded a Quick Start for a new software program and immediately printed it on my color ink jet printer. Halfway through, I noticed that two of the pages had text reversed out of a solid blue background.

Not only did this slow down printing, but I estimate printing the pages cost me about two dollars in ink cartridge costs--not a good start for a new relationship with the company!

Start countdown timers before call begins

It's 15 minutes before you begin a one-hour teleconference. You stare at your timer, and remind yourself to start it when you began the call.

But, unfortunately, you often forget to start your time in the stress of beginning a call.

The solution is to start the countdown time before the call begins. Say you're going to begin recording a 60 minute call in 15 minutes. Simple: start a 75 minute countdown (60 plus 15) right now. This ensures that your timer will warn you when you near the end of your time.

(Thanks to Betsy Parker for this tip.)

Marketing is absolutely every bit of contact any part of your business has with any segment of the public. Guerrillas view marketing as a circle that begins with your ideas for generating revenue and continues on with the goal of amassing a large number of repeat and referral customers.

Building a relationship with specific editors and writers is vital to your success with the media. Offer your services as an expert spokesperson in your respective field, even if the editor or reviewer you contact cannot respond to your press release right away. An editor or writer will return to you when they need information from you, as long as you leave them with a good impression and genuinely offer your assistance in developing or rounding out a news or feature story.

So what's a good marketing vehicle? One of Jay's favorite tricks is an envelope with lots of stamps on it. Most people will toss a direct mail piece that is metered or has a single stamp, but "if a person gets a letter with 11 stamps on it, they're going to notice it and open it," he says.

The purpose of guerrilla marketing is to basically take on a competitive brand in terms of upsetting a competitors promotions. With intentions of having `out of the box' solutions.