Cross-promote brands to be more effective
Don't limit your marketing merely to the media you're using. Market it all over the place. Anything worth promoting is worth cross-promoting. Guerrillas know that all the media work better if they're supported by the other media. Put your website onto your TV commercial. Mention your advertising in your direct mail. Refer to your direct mail in your telemarketing. Plants the seeds of your offering with some kinds of marketing and fertilise them with other kinds.
You're not really promoting unless you're cross-promoting. Your trade show booth will be far more valuable to you if you promote it in trade magazines and with fliers put under the doors of hotels near the trade show. Guerrillas try to market their marketing. Your prospects, being humans, are eclectic people. They pay attention to a lot of media so you can't depend on a mere one medium to motivate a purchase. You're got to introduce a notion, remind people of it, say it again, then repeat it in different words somewhere else. That share of mind for which guerrilla strive? They get it with they combine several media. They say in their ads: "Call or write for our free brochure".
They say in their yellow pages ad: "Get even more details at our website." They enclose a copy of their magazine ad in their mailing. They blow up a copy to use as a sign. Their website features their print ads.
Guerrillas are quick to mention their use of one medium while using another because they realise that people equate broadscale marketing with quality and success. They know that people trust names they have heard of much more than strange and new names; and guerrillas are realistic enough to know that people miss most marketing messages – often intentionally. The remote control is not only a way to save their steps but also a method of eliminating marketing messages.
No matter how glorious their newspaper campaign may be, guerrillas realise that not all of their prospects read the paper so they've got to get to these people in another way. No matter how dazzling their website, it's like a grain of sand in a desert if it is not pointed out to an unknowing and basically uncaring public.
Cross-promoting in the media is another way to accomplish the all-important task of repetition. One way to repeat yourself and implant your message is to say it over and over again. Another way is to say it in several different places. Guerrillas try to do both. Nothing is left to chance. If you saw a yellow pages ad that made you an offer from a company you have never heard of and another with the same offer except that the ad said, "As advertised on television", you'd probably opt for the second because of that added smidgen of credibility. I rest my case.
The psychology of marketing requires basic knowledge of human behaviour. Human beings do not like making decisions in a hurry and are not quick to develop relationships. They certainly do want relationships, but they've been stung in the past and they don't want to be stung again.
They have learned well to distrust much marketing because of its proclivity to exaggeration. All too many times they've read of sales at stores and learned that only a tiny selection of items were on sale. They've been bamboozled more times than you'd think by the notorious fine print on contracts. And they've been high pressured by more than one salesperson. That's why they process your marketing communications in their unconscious minds, eventually arriving at their decisions because of an emotional reason even though they may say they are deciding based on logic.
The consistent communicating of your benefits, your message and your name has penetrated their sacred unconscious mind. They've come to feel that they can trust you and so they decide to buy. Any pothole in their road to purchasing at this point might dissuade them. You've got to realise that the weakest point in your marketing can derail all the strong points. Excellence through and through, start to finish, is what people have come to expect from businesses, and these days, they won't settle for less. The insight you must have is that marketing is a 360 degree process and you've got to do it right from all angles at all times. When it comes to marketing, people have built-in alarm systems, and any shady behavior on your part sets the bells to clanging, the sirens screaming.
- Jay Conrad Levinson is the Father of Guerrilla Marketing and author of Guerrilla Marketing series of books (www.gmarketing.com)