We all have too many bills to pay. Why not make it a marketing opportunity? Guerrilla Peter Steinmetz turns bill paying days into marketing days!

Peter does computer training and always includes one of HIS OWN brochures or business cards in every local bill he pays. All kinds of suppliers have called him about his training and plenty have become happy customers. Why not send your literature along in the next bills you pay?

Direct mail advice:

Before printing your mailing piece, run it by your staff to pick up any problems. Companies that try this approach, report sales increases of 20%. And sales people sell like crazy because they fell that they are in the loop.

Activity log

It is all too easy to post things in cyberspace and then forget them. But eventually, some of your postings become outdated, and when they do, they become negative advertisements for your business. To counter this, maintain a record that shows the date, purpose and location of all your online activities, including when you posted messages to discussion groups, when you published electronic publications, when you e-mailed a list of prospects, and when you last changed your online storefront. Check your activity log once a month and remove or update information that is no longer timely or accurate.

Did you ever notice how many business post signs on what they WON'T do? No change for parking meters. No change for the pay phone. No checks accepted. The list goes on.

Guerrilla Shawn Bishop suggests that merchants start providing change and other services and even advertise the fact. Shawn also suggests strategic placement of impulse items and staffing with friendly and helpful people.

Quote your competition

It's legal to quote, in your ads and direct mail, in presentations and brochures, things said by competitors, including their prices and benefits. Tell the truth and get 'em.

Don't wait until the last minute to create press releases announcing your new online business. Plan a series of press releases that will generate interest in your business over the first six months or year of business. Make your company newsworthy and tell the media about it. You'll gain free public exposure and the kind of credibility that money can't buy.

If yours is the first online store of its kind, that's news, and most Internet magazines will print it if you send them an announcement. If your store is the first online business in your city or community, that's news, and your local newspaper will print it if you send them an announcement. You may even make it into the technology pages of Newsweek or Time if you send an announcement about a unique Web site or service.

Combine marketing weapons

Direct mail doesn't work on its own. Telemarketing doesn't work on its own. Free seminars to hot prospects don't work. And for certain, advertising doesn't work. None of these marketing weapons work when used all by themselves. Focus your attention on a combination of marketing weapons and you'll find that they all work.

Budgeting your time online

Too bad you can't just open a storefront and then watch the business flow in without ever having to go online again. The truth is that your online visibility comes from continuous effort and participation. You should constantly be planning new ways to make your business visible, whether it's scouting out new advertising sites or directories, adding to your Web site, participating in discussions, or planning an online publication or conference.

If timing is so important to marketing then why are we usually thinking about our timing and not the customers? Guerrilla David Murphy has some classic ways to tap into your customers timing with promotion.

Every event in the customers life and relationship has a promotion at David's company. For 5 years of business they get an extra 5% off for the whole month. A birth brings an offer of 3 for the price of 2. Graduation gets a free upgrade or similar increase. David's examples are many but you will have to adapt them to your own business.

David's result from this approach? Lifetime relationships with customers.

Quick, now: why a marketing plan? (First of four)

A marketing plan provides Guerrillas with a daily calendar of marketing tasks. At a glance, Guerrillas can see what has to be done and why.

By making your marketing tasks visible and tangible, you're taking the first step towards ensuring that marketing becomes a part of your daily marketing activities.

Quick: Another reason to have a marketing plan? (second of four)

Creating a calendar of marketing tasks makes it easy to develop the content you need for your marketing messages.

By noting upcoming deadlines, and frequently reviewing your marketing plan, your subconscious mind will be thinking about upcoming tasks while you drive, read, or sleep.

As a result, a lot of the hard work--the thinking--will already be done when you sit down to create an article, brochure, newsletter, or press release.

Quick, yet another reason to have a marketing plan. (third of four)

Your marketing plan provides a location where you can track the results of your various Guerrilla Marketing weapons.

Simply note the number of responses and the number of sales next to each of your marketing activities. Trends will soon become obvious, permitting you to weed out the slow performers and concentrate on the weapons that deliver the biggest profits.

A final reason to have a marketing plan (fourth of four)

Deadline Madness is never pretty. Deadline madness results in embarrassing mistakes: typographical errors, misspelled names, missing names, incorrect prices, and transposed digits in phone numbers, etc.

No one can do their best work under deadline pressure. And costs rapidly escalate as your project enters its final stages.

A simple error that you could have changed for free early in your brochure production becomes a costly change when it has to be made on the printing press.

Avoid stress. Avoid costly mistakes. Use a marketing plan to work backwards from the "street date" of your promotion, so there will be sufficient time to fine-tune your project.

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.

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.

Updating your own web site (without learning HTML)

The Internet continues to become more and more Guerrilla friendly. The latest advance is a Macromedia program called Contribute 2.

Contribute 2 is not a web authoring program. You'll still use programs like Dreamweaver or Front Page to set up your initial site, and you'll probably want the services of a web designer to set up a pleasing layout and color selection.

But, after that, you can be on your own. Contribute 2 allows you to edit existing web pages and create additional pages to your web site. If you can operate Microsoft Word, you can save money and avoid delays by making your own routine web site updates.

You want more print tips? You've got more print tips:

Long copy works as well as short copy. Vague headlines reduce effectiveness 11% while humor adds 10%. Newness adds an average of 24% and celebrities contribute 25% more, though not guaranteed. Recipes can add 29%, coupons boost persuasion 26%, and using just one frame from your TV commercial increases impact by 42%. See what I mean about integrated communications?

Boosting your search visibility

Ideally, you want your site to be one of the first ones listed when someone uses a Web search engine to locate sites related to your business. Most search engines prioritize a list of pages they find by the exactness of the match for the word being searched, the number of times the word appears on each Web page, and the position of those words on the page (closer to the top is better). With these facts in mind, here are a couple of strategies to make your Web site more visible to search engines.

Use multiple keywords: Think of every possible word that someone might use to describe your business, products, or services, and make sure all of those words appear on your home page. You don't have to include the words as visible text. If you include them as comments to the HTML code that makes up the page, hide them behind graphics, or format them in the same color text as your page's background so that they're invisible, the search engine will find them just as well.

Repeat the most important keywords: Repeat the most likely and descriptive words several times on your page. Rather than listing "business financing" once as part of your home page's visible text, for example, include the words half a dozen times as invisible text near the top of the page.

Leading sales performers have two universal characteristics in common: they operate out of high levels of personal maturity, and they strive to unlock the highest potential of their prospects.

Why postcards?

Postcards have lower postage rates than letters, easy labeling, and lower printing costs. You can create your own four-color designs on your desktop computer and send your artwork on disk to printers.

Electronic storefront strategies

1. Choose the right location: Combine a storefront technology and location that balances the needs of your budget, your desire for the broadest online market access, and the type of product you sell.

2. Make the store attractive, fun and easy to navigate: You have a lot of competition both online and in the real world. Frequently update information, presenting data in small, screen-sized chunks. Use evocative descriptions and offer regular shoppers a special discount for shopping online.

3. Make the store an information source: Provide shoppers with free, useful information about topics related to your products and services, and offer something new regularly.

4. Reassure customers about your permanence: Allay customer's fears about shopping online by also displaying your physical address, offering a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee, explaining your ordering and refund policy clearly, and designing a clear order from with a cancel option. It's also helpful to give people a way to ask questions and get answers promptly.

5. Pay attention: Check your store mailbox, feedback area, or ordering system at least every two hours. Shop the store yourself at different hours to make sure its functioning properly. Ask friends with different types of computer or Net navigation systems to visit the store and report any problems.

6. Tell the world: Use e-mail and discussion group signatures that include your store name and address and participate in related newsgroups and mailing lists. Establish fusion marketing relationships with other storeowners.

7. Follow up: Send thank you notes via e-mail, prepare monthly or quarterly mailings of store news and send them to your customer list. Stay current with Net innovations and add new services.

Ronald's company sells and installs a skylight product for home remodeling. He knows that whenever people start work on their homes they are afraid of what might go wrong, so he let's his current customers put those fears to rest.

They send out a customer satisfaction survey after they finish a job and ask for permission to use comments in their marketing. They also offer a free dinner to anyone who refers a new customer to the company.

Nearly 70% of the surveys are returned and about 90% of those agree to use of their comments in marketing efforts.

Women in America:

30% say they use mail order catalogs more; TV home shopping is growing among the over 35s; more than ever they see time and money spent on their appearance as a luxury; nearly 70% say that balancing family and work is more important than being super successful.

Online news service delivers your message to the media.

Do you have a story to tell? You might be interested in IMEDIAFAX -- Internet to Media Fax on-line custom news distribution service. IMEDIAFAX can deliver news and graphics to print and broadcast media internationally. Users create a proprietary media list from a vast selection of magazines, newspapers, syndicates, and broadcast stations. The URL is http://www.imediafax.com.

Here's how it works:. Make your selection by clicking your mouse on the industry and classification, key editors, states, market area, or circulation. Then enter your news release and click to send. IMEDIAFAX news releases can contain graphics, letterheads, logos or pictures. The cost is 25 cents per faxed page.

In getting appointments, a Guerrilla is more concerned with being genuine than in presenting an overly polished and superficial professional image.

Demolition Marketing is the best term to describe what Greg Madsen employed for his T-shirt shop, South Beach U.S.A., in Miami Beach. When road demolition cut down his traffic, he printed foil labels reading "Authentic Piece of The Original Lincoln Road Mall," affixed them to chunks of road, and gave them away for free, obtaining PR, foot traffic, sales and profits.

Five steps to becoming an internet pro

Before you barge onto mailing lists or into newsgroups asking obvious questions, do a little research so you won't appear to be a "newbie."

1. Do Your Homework

Before you go online, read a good book that will introduce you to the internet. (A great place to start is "Guerrilla Marketing Online, 2nd Edition by Jay Conrad Levinson and Charles Rubin). Check out one of the many magazines that cover internet innovations.

2. Get an internet account.

Sign up for an account with a large ISP. You'll get quick access to the internet and support if you encounter problems.

3. Send some e-mail

Try sending, receiving, reading, forwarding and deleting mail. Begin by exchanging e-mail with friends or send some test messages to yourself. Wait to send marketing messages until you've decided to stay with this particular ISP or change providers.

4. Explore mailing lists and newsgroups

Use the ISP's search facilities to locate mailing lists and newsgroups on subjects related to your business or marketing plans. Start by lurking; reading the postings to get an idea of what is posted and how items are presented.

5. Prowl the Web

Go on the Web and start traveling to different sites as you click on various links. To check out other companies in allied businesses, use the search feature of your Web browser.

Always use real stamps. Your materials are much more likely to get through than with metered mail. Real Guerrillas use several stamps of smaller denominations.

Putting color to work in Mind Maps

As Will Reed, from www.b-smart.com mentioned in a recent e-mail to me, many Mind Mapping software programs assign arbitrary colors as new branches are added.

The result can be a "circus" of colors, decorative, but not informative.

Instead, as Will mentions, change line, background, and text colors to indicate importance, sequence, category or importance.

Offer your web site visitors visuals, instead of words

Visuals communicate at a glance, encouraging more action than words alone. One of the most useful applications of this is clickable maps that visitors can use to locate resources in a desired part of the country or--for retailers--part of the store.

An example of this can be found at . Note how much faster it is to click on the map at the right, instead of the words on the left.