Learning Objectives

On completion of this chapter, you will be able to

1. Describe the principles of building a guerrilla market
ing plan and explain the benefits of preparing one.
2. Describe the role of market research in building a g
uerrilla marketing plan and outline market research
process.
3. Describe how a small business can build a competit
ive edge in the marketplace using guerrilla marketin
g strategies: customer focus, quality, innovation, ser
vice and speed.
Building a
Guerrilla Marketing Plan
 Marketing
The process of creating and delivering desir
ed goods and services to customers.
Involves all of the activities associated with
winning and retaining loyal customers.
 A solid business plan needs to contain b
oth a financial plan and a marketing plan
.
Building a
Guerrilla Marketing Plan
Guerrilla marketing strategies:
►Are unconventional, low-cost, and cre
ative marketing techniques that allow a
small company to realize a greater ret
urn from its marketing investment than
do larger rivals.
►Do not require large amounts of mone
y to be effective – just creativity.
A Guerrilla Marketing Pla
n
1. Pinpoints the specific target markets the
company will serve.
2. Determines customer needs and wants
through market research.
3. Analyzes a firm’s competitive advantag
es and creates a marketing strategy to
build a competitive edge.
4. Helps to create a marketing mix that me
ets customer needs and wants.
A Guerrilla Marketing Plan( cont’s
)
 An effective marketing campaign does not requ
ire an entrepreneur to spend large amount of
many, but it does demand creativity and unders
tanding of customers buying habits. Guerrilla m
arketing expert J. Conrad Levinson estimates t
hat guerrilla marketers spend between 4 perce
nt and 8 percent of sales on marketing, but the
y put their money into clever, creative marketin
g efforts that reach their target customers and r
aise the profile of their products, services and c
ompanies.
A seven sentence guerrilla marketing
strategy
Building a successful marketing plan does not to be complex. A guer
rilla marketing expert J. Levinson says that entrepreneurs can cre
ate a guerrilla marketing plan by answering just seven sentences.
1. What is purpose of your marketing?
2. What primary benefit can you offer customers?
3. What is your target market?
4. Which marketing tools will you use to reach your market audienc
es?
5. What’s you company’s niche in the marketplace?
6. What’s your company’s identity in the marketplace?
7. How much money will you spend on your marketing; in other wo
rds, what is your marketing budged?
Guerrilla Marketing Princ
iples
• Find a niche and fill it.
• Use the power of publicity
• Don’t just sell; entertain!
– “Entertailing”
• Strive to be unique.
Guerrilla Marketing Princ
iples (continued)

• Connect with customers on an emotional

level.
– Build trust
– Define a unique selling proposition (USP)
 Unique Selling Propositio
n S P
U
• A key customer benefit of a product or
service that sets it apart from its
competition.
• Answers key customer question: “What’s in
it for me?”
• Consider intangible or psychological
benefits as well as tangible ones.
• Communicate your USP to your
customers often.
The Relationship Marketing Process
If you have done everything
else correctly, this step is
relatively easy. Superb
Analyze
customer service is the
best way to retain Sell,
your most valuable customers.
Service, Conduct detailed customer intelligence to
& Satisfy pinpoint most valuable customers and to learn all
you can about them, including their lifetime value
(LTV) to the company.

Build
Connect
Relationships
&
Collect
Based on what you have
learned, contact customers with
Make contact with most valuable customers and
an offer designed for them.
Make customers feel special and
Learn begin building a customer database using data
valued. mining and data warehousing techniques.

Learn from your customers by encouraging feedback

from them; develop a thorough customer profile and
constantly refine it.
Who employs diversity market
ing?
 Currently, diversity marketing is employed by any business seeking to
reach new customers in different racial, ethnic, cultural, or social group
s.

 It is particularly important when interacting with the global marketplace

, as audiences in different countries rarely respond to the same messa
ge in the same way.

 Meanwhile, as the domestic market becomes more diverse, more com

panies are adopting diversity marketing tactics—and the question may
soon become, who isn’t engaged in diversity marketing? The following
companies have successfully used diversity marketing to reach into ne
w demographic markets:
 Components of Diversity Marketing

 In-culture: the marketing must relate to the

group’s cultural values, ideals and percepti
ons
 In-language: this involves not merely trans
lation, but also interpretation, and may also
involve change in visual as well as auditory
communication
 In-person: so more to invest in and interac
t socially with customers and their commun
ities
 Important of Diversity marketing

Diversity marketing may be especially important when

a product is available to a multi-national audience. An
understanding of the culture in a different country can
be especially complex, and using the
marketing tactics that applied in the corporation's
home country may result in a failure of the product to
convey its message, or worse, insulting the target
audience.

Careful research must be conducted to gain insight

into different groups and different factions of a
society's culture for diversity marketing to be an
HOW TO CONDUCT

MARKET RESEARCH
 Market research is a technique used both b
y prospective entrepreneurs and establishe
d business people to gather and analyze u
seful information about the market their bu
siness operates in. Market research is use
d for developing effective strategies, deter
mining the future path of the business, and
much more. Keep your business's competit
ive edge sharp with keen market research
skills! See Step 1 below to get started.
 1:Have a goal for your research in mind.
 Market research should be designed to help you and your
business become more competitive and profitable. If your
market research efforts couldn't eventually give your comp
any some benefit, they would be wasted and your time wo
uld have been better spent doing something else. Before y
ou begin, it's important to define exactly what you want to f
igure out through your market research. Your research ma
y lead you in unexpected directions — this is perfectly fine
. However, it's not a good idea to start your market researc
h without at least having one or more concrete goals in mi
nd. Below are just a few of the types of questions you may
want to consider when designing your market research:
 Is there a need in my market that my company can fill? R
esearching the priorities and spending habits of your cust
omers can help you determine whether it's a good idea to
attempt to do business in a certain market in the first plac
e.
 Are my products and services meeting the needs of my c
ustomers? Researching your customers' satisfaction with
your business can help you increase your business's co
mpetitiveness.
 Am I pricing my products and services effectively? Resea
rching your competition's practices and wide-scale marke
t trends can help ensure you're making as much money a
s possible without hurting your business
 2: Develop a plan for gathering information efficiently.
 Just as it's important to know what you want your research to acco
mplish ahead of time, it's also important to have an idea of how you
can realistically reach this goal. Again, plans can and do change as
research progresses. However, setting a goal without having any ide
a of how to achieve it is never a good idea for market research. Bel
ow are questions to consider when making a market research plan:
 Will I need to find extensive market data? Analyzing existing data ca
n help you make decisions about the future of your business, but fin
ding useful, accurate data can be difficult.
 Will I need to do independent research? Creating your own data fro
m surveys, focus groups, interviews, and more can tell you lots abo
ut your company and the market it operates in, but these projects re
quire time and resources that can also be spent on other things.
 3: Be prepared to present your findings and to decide on a co
urse of action.
 The purpose of market research is to have an effect on the actual
decisions of your company. When you do market research, unless
your business is a sole proprietorship, usually, you'll need to share
your findings with other people in the company and have a plan of
action in mind. If you have superiors, they may or may not agree
with your plan of action, but few will disagree with trends displaye
d by your data unless you've made errors in the way you gathered
your data or conducted your research. Ask yourself the following q
uestions:
 What do I predict my research to reveal? Try to have a hypothesis
before you begin your research. Drawing conclusions from your d
ata is easier if you've already considered them rather than if you'r
e reacting to a complete surprise.
 Part 2 getting useful data
 1
 Use government sources of industry data, it's become
easier than ever for business people to access enormous
quantities of data. However, ensuring that the data being
accessed is accurate is another story entirely. To be able
to draw conclusion from your market research that reflect
the actual state of the market, it's crucially important to st
art with reputable data. One safe bet for accurate market
data is the government. Generally speaking, market data
provided by the government is usually accurate, well-revi
ewed, and available for cheap or free, which makes it a g
reat choice for businesses that are just starting out.
 2
 Use data from trade associations. Trade associations are o
rganizations formed from groups of businesses with similar ac
tivities and interests for collaborative purposes. in, trade asso
ciations also often participate in market research. The data fro
m this research is used to increase competitiveness and getti
ng profits for the industry. Some of this data may be freely ava
ilable, while some may be only available to members.
 The Columbus Chamber of Commerce is an example of a loc
al-level trade association that offers market research data. Ye
arly reports detailing market growth and trends in the Columb
us,
 Ohio marketplace are available to anyone with an internet co
nnection.[2]
 3
 Use data from trade publications. Many industrie
s have one or more magazines, journals, or publicat
ions , Many of these publications conduct and publi
sh their own market research for the benefit of the
members of the industry. Raw market research data
may be available to non-industry members to varyin
g degrees. However, nearly all major trade publicati
ons will, at the very least, offer some selection of art
icles online that offer strategy tips or analyze market
trends. These articles often prepare data about mar
ket research.
 4
 Use data from academic institutions. Because the mar
ketplace is so important to global society, it is naturally th
e subject of much study and academic research. Many c
olleges, universities, and other academic institutions (esp
ecially business schools) regularly publish the results of r
esearch that is either based entirely off of market researc
h . This research is available in academic publications or
from the university directly. However
 As an example, Wharton University of Pennsylvania offer
s free access to a variety of market research resources, i
ncluding academic papers and periodic market reviews.[7]
 Part 3 of 4: Performing Your Own Research
 1
 Use available data to determine the supply/d
emand situation in your market. Generally you
r business stands a good chance of being succe
ssful that is, you should aim to
supply products or services that the market has
a demand for
. Economic data from government, academic, an
d industry sources (as detailed in the section ab
ove) can help you identify the presence or absen
ce of such needs.
 2
 Perform surveys. One of the most basic, time-tested ways of d
etermining the attitudes of your business's customers is to simpl
y ask them! Surveys offer market researchers a chance to reach
out to large samples of people to gain data that can be used to
make broad strategy decisions. However, because surveys resu
lt in relatively impersonal data, it's important to ensure that your
survey is designed in a way that allows data to be easily availab
le so that you can derive meaningful trends from it.
 For instance, a survey that simply asks customers to write about
their experience with your business may not be the most effectiv
e choice, as this requires reading and analyzing each response
individually to derive meaningful conclusions. This makes it quic
ker and easier to identify your strengths and weaknesses
 3
 Conduct focus groups. One way to determine how your cust
omers might react to a proposed strategy is to invite them to p
articipate in a focus group. In a focus group, small groups of c
ustomers gather at a neutral location, try a product or service,
and discuss it with a representative. Often, focus sessions are
observed, recorded, and analyzed later.
 In our company example, if we want to consider how the cust
omers evaluate our products as part of our service, we might i
nvite loyal customers to participate in a focus group. At this fo
cus group, we'd have them receive the sales products. Then,
we'd ask them which ones, if any, they would be most likely to
buy. We'd also ask them how the sales made them feel — we
re they friendly or condescending?
 4
 Conduct one-on-one interviews. For the most int
imate and qualitative market research data, one-o
n-one interviews with customers can be useful. Ind
ividual interviews don't provide the broad, quantitat
ive data sets that surveys do, but, on the other han
d, they allow you to dive relatively "deep" in search
of relevant information. Interviews allow you to und
erstand why specific customers like your product o
r service, so they're a great choice for learning how
to most effectively market to your customer base.
 weeds? Let us do the work for you!" (and so on)
.
 5
 Conduct product/service tests. Companies co
nsidering implementing new products or service
s often let potential customers try their product o
r service for free so that they can iron out any pr
oblems before rolling it out. Bringing in a selecti
on of customers for testing can help you determi
ne whether your plans to offer a new product or
service are in need of further review or not.
 Part 4 of 4: Analyzing Your Results
 1
 Answer the original question that led to your research. At the v
ery beginning of the market research process, you set goals for res
earch. These are typically questions relating to your business's stra
tegy that you are attempting to answer — for instance, whether or
not to pursue a certain investment, whether or not a certain marketi
ng decision is a good idea, and so on. The primary goal of your ma
rket research should be to answer this question. Because the goals
of market research projects vary so greatly, the exact information r
equired to give a satisfying answer for each will vary. Typically, yo
u're looking for predicted trends in your data that imply that a certai
n course of action is better than others.
 Let's return to our landscaping company example in which we're try
ing to decide whether it's a good idea to offer a flower-planting
 2
 Perform SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and
Threats. One common use of market resear
ch is to determine these aspects of a busine
ss. the data gained from a market research
project can be used to assess the health of t
he company as a whole by pointing out stre
ngths, weaknesses, and so on that are not n
ecessarily the target of the initial research.
 3
 Find new target markets. In simple terms, a ta
rget market is the group (or groups) of people y
our business promotes, advertises, and ultimat
ely attempts to sell its products or services to.
Data from market research projects that reveal
s that certain types of people react preferentiall
y to your business can be used to focus your b
usiness's limited resources on these specific pe
ople, maximizing competitiveness and profitabil
ity.
 4
 Identify further topics of research. Market res
earch often begets more market research. Once
you've answered one pressing question, new qu
estions can arise or old questions can remain u
nanswered. These can require further research
or different methodological approaches to be sa
tisfactorily answered. If the results of your initial
market research are promising, you may be abl
e to receive permission for further projects after
presenting your findings.
Plotting a Guerrilla Marketing Str
ategy
(Building Competitive edge)
 A competitive edge is critical for success
Lower price?
 Relationship Marketing (CRM)
Involves developing and maintaining long-te
rm relationships with customers so that they
will keep coming back to make repeat purch
ases.
Pinpointing the Target Ma
rket
 One of the first steps in building a guerrilla
marketing plan is to identify a small compan
y’s target market –the specific group of cust
omers at whom the company aims its goods
or services. The more a business knows ab
out its local markets and its customers and t
heir buying habits and preferences, the mor
e precisely it can focus its marketing efforts
on the group(s) of customers who are most
likely to buy its products or services.
Determining Customer Need
s and Wants through Marke
t Research
 Market Research.. the vehicle for gatheri
ng the information that serves in the fou
ndation for the marketing plan, it involve
s systematically collecting, analyzing an
d interpreting data pertaining to a compa
ny’s market, customers, and competitors
.
What is marketing mix?
 The marketing mix is a business tool u
sed in marketing.
 The marketing mix is often crucial w
hen producing a product or marketing
it.
 and is often associated with the four
P's: price, product, promotion, and pla
ce.
To create the right marketing mix, busines
ses have to meet the following conditions:
 The product has to have the right features
- for example, it must look good and wor
k well.
 The price must be right. Consumer will n
eed to buy in large numbers to produce a
healthy profit.
 The goods must be in the right place at t
he right time.
The four P’s (marketing mix)

 Produce the right product

 Sold at the right price
 In the right place
 Using the most suitable promotion.
1-Product

 Its the goods and services that your busin

ess provides for sale to your target marke
t. When developing a product you should
consider quality, design, features, packag
ing...... etc
Product continue

There are two main points you have to thin

k about your product:
 Feauters
 Benifits
2-Price

concerns the amount of money that cust

omers must pay in order to purchase y
our products.
There are a number of considerations i
n relation to price including price settin
g, discounting, credit and cash purcha
ses as well as credit collection.
3- Place

Its the location and methods of getting t

he product to the customer. This inclu
des the location of your business, sh
op front, distributors, logistics and the
potential use of the internet to sell pr
oducts directly to consumers.
4-Promotion

refers to the act of communicating the be

nefits and value of your product to con
sumers.
It then involves persuading general cons
umers to become customers of your bu
siness using methods such as advertisi
ng, direct marketing, personal selling a
nd sales promotion