Archive for July, 2007

If you’ve never heard of guerilla marketing, the term might sound a little extreme. Perhaps it brings to mind images of camouflage-clad rebels forcing unsuspecting consumers to buy products at gunpoint.

Fortunately, guerilla marketing is not as threatening as it sounds. In fact, when used properly, this tactic is one of the most effective methods available to today’s entrepreneur to cultivate a business and increase sales.

Guerilla Marketing: Any unconventional marketing technique that is designed to produce maximum results using minimal resources (money and materials).

there are a few aspects that remain common to all guerilla tactics:

” They are inexpensive, and sometimes free, to implement.

” They involve a commitment of time and effort in place of money and resources.

” They are unexpected, and sometimes shocking, to the consumer.

” They concentrate on cooperation and relationship-building, rather than competition and strong-arm sales tactics.

” They promote brand awareness and customer loyalty.

The best approach to creating an effective guerilla marketing campaign is to determine where your target customers are, and find a unique way to reach them. This book will help you accomplish that goal.

Now This is not the kind of marketing you see on TV. Advertising agencies call it “Brand Advertising” but I’s say it’s “Blackhole Advertising”. Just because you cannot track what your results were from your advertising campaign.

If you have a small business, I highly recommend you to Learn more about Guerilla Marketing. In fact my blog is all about Guerilla marketing. This is not about decieving or manipulation of your customers. It’s about working with them to create a business.

One famous example of this occurred in 2002, when Sony Ericsson hired 60 actors to carry their new picture phones in major cities and accost strangers, asking them to take a picture. The actors would then extol the virtues of the phone, in an attempt to subconsciously plant the idea that the phone was “cool”. When consumers discovered the ploy, Sony was met with disdain.

We’ll go into the nitty-gritty of this kind of marketing some other time…

In my first article in this category. I’d say You can implement almost all the tips from my other article Freelancing – Your First Few Steps. The mistakes are the same, the lessons are the same.

If you are starting a small business here are other lessons from my life you might find useful.

1. Grunt Work : When you are starting out, you might have to call lots of people, go for lots of appointment, burn gallons of fuel. The thing is you need first few clients to get your business going. If you are going to sit there and wait, no body will come. Trust me I was expert in this strategy for 3 months. I didn’t get any appointment in that time.

2. Don’t be Needy : Don’t, act needy. I know you want that guy’s business fast otherwise you’ll starve. But if you come off as needy, you’ll have NO chances of getting business. In fact when you’ll get desperate, your clients will push you into corner, demand low prices, unreasonable deadlines and might not even pay you.

3. Improve yourself selling skills with every communication : Now this might seems like “Well duh!”, but lots of people forget this. What I want you to do is improve your communication and selling skills. If you lost a client. Don’t slap yourself silly. Think what might have triggered the downfall?

Here are few things for you to check every time.

Did I come off too needy?
Did I asked him for his business (this is contradiction to the first one but unless you ask, nobody will give you their business)?
Was the client motivated to business with me?
Did I qualified him properly before closing the sale?
Was I thinking of “How I can benefit my client with my services?”

These 5 questions will improve your selling exponentially. No doubt about it.

9 years ago, I decided I would rather struggle and starve than find a normal 9-5 hr (is there such this as 9-5? I wonder) JOB. I was just a greenhorn right out of high school at ripe age of 17. I had my shares of ups and downs. And boy, do I have few horror stories to share?

Today after putting together a successful business, I often wonder if I’d do things differently if I have to start again. Of course there are tons of things but I am going to highlight most important ones here. I know these are going to help you a lot.

I don’t know why you are starting out? may be you don’t like your boss or may be you think it’s better to work yourself and make all the money. Regardless of your reasons, you’ll find this list help.

1. Have More confidence in Your Skill : No matter who you meet, be it an expert businessman or an authority figure in your niche. Have more confidence. I cannot stress this enough. If you have worked hard to learn a skill then I can bet, there are only a few people better than you.

I was a programmer and I understood this unknowingly to the extent I was arrogant about it. I have met many highly paid programmers and knew their skills weren’t at my level. If I start again, I’d not mind crossing the arrogance line once again.

Why? If you are confident in your skill, that’ll come across in your communication and will help you land a client or two regardless of your experience. I had more than few HR managers of big firms looking to hire me.

2. No More Free Work : I’d do no work which doesn’t get me paid right now. Nope, never. I did this mistake to “build my portfolio”. And trust me not many people trust your skills if you are working for free.

If you like doing charity work, then I can show you tons of guys who’ll squeeze every drop of blood out of you before you say “Hi”.

3. Give discounts or Free for promise of more work: Now my first client was like “If you work for me, I’ll get you this guy, that guy and that guy’s account and more over you guys aren’t even experienced, nobody will pay you a single dime”.

If that happens to you. Find a better client. Trust me… This client was big pain in the arse. I had a bad hunch, but my partner told me to go ahead. He’d change his requirements of this project every day and then later cut down the deadline from 90 days to 50 days.

If you have been in programming, then you know it’s not easy at all. From coding, to testing and debugging. We worked our asses off for this… and what we got? Nothing, Nada, zippo.

Well the only good thing we got out of this client was understanding how to deal with people like him. That’s it. Never got paid for this project. My finger tips still hurt after working for him day in day out. I might talk more about dealing with guys like him in another post.

4. Learn to Sell Yourself: if you are anything of geek like I was 9 years ago. selling, negotiating and marketing might sound like an alien words. But trust me, if you learn how to sell yourself, you’ll make 10 times of money you are making right now… Again, I can’t give justice to a topic like this in small list so I’ll write another post on it.

So far Here’s my advice to you. Go to google and search for “Scientific advertising” by Claude Hopkins. Download this book(it’s free) and read it from cover to cover at least 10 times. It’s an old book, but it’s philosophy still applies.

5. Network with like minded people: I so regret not trying networking when I was starting out. Find people who are freelancers in your niche. Get to know them and ask them if you could help them.

There’s good chance of someone giving you small projects from their own.

6 No Work is Small: Don’t mind doing small work like “assembling someone’s computer or speeding up computers performances”. Its better than sitting and doing nothing.

7. Think Obvious: Now too many people try to think out of the box. Trying to think different. Its not bad thinking different. But also think about the obvious. Lets say you are a computer geek and want some work.. What’s the most obvious thing to do?

You know what? Find people who have computer and solve their problems.

What’s the next obvious thing to do? Find people who own a small business running on computers and solve their computer problems.

If you don’t get people like these what’s the next obvious thing to do? Well, leave your card with all the people you found above & giving them assurance of fixing their computer even if its 2 am.

Are you still trying to be different? You better not.

7. Be frugal : If you are just starting out as a freelancer. The only money you need to spend is on your business card. Everything else like office space, fax, copier etc etc are just expense you don’t need right now.

Don’t make the same mistakes I did. If you don’t mind doing some grunt work, you might see yourself working on good projects in no time. Now print this list out and paste with your mirror. So that you slam these points in your mind.

Varun Pratap

When I was thinking about this blog, this was the first thing that came to me.

You see, people in tend to think “outside the box”, they forget what was inside it. Its about the obviousness of something. People are so much stressed out that they can’t see the obvious. I’ll share some of my “Well Duh!” moments and talk about the obviousness of things.

Till then

Varun Pratap