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The Five Minute Marketing Plan: Do It Now!
Those Guerrilla Marketing folks are back: this time with a new book for first-time marketers. However, their advice also works for existing entrepreneurs.
What I like about this book is its simplicity. Planning isn’t hard, and market planning isn’t rocket-science, despite what some consultants would have you believe.
The problem is that most entrepreneurs don’t take the time to do it. Yet without a plan you are like a soldier without at battle plan, or a sailboat without a rudder.
I also like the authors’ emphasis on focus and trusting your gut. After all, isn’t intuition the entrepreneur’s major marketing weapon?
The secret to keeping your focus and trusting your intuition is to write your plan quickly—in five minutes. Yes, five minutes!
Just write one sentence (only one!) that describes the following:
n Describe the purpose of your marketing;
n State the competitive advantage you'll emphasize;
n Explain who your target audience is;
n List the marketing weapons you'll be using;
n Explain your niche in the marketplace;
n Set forth your identity (or brand);
n State your marketing budget (expressed as a percentage of your projected gross sales—anywhere from 3 to 10% is a rule of thumb).
But before you start, be sure and read the article in Entrepreneur Magazine( http: //www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/
entrepreneur/2008/february/188842.html) for more tips.
Better yet, read the book it is excerpted from, The Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing: A Simple Battle Plan for First-Time Marketers, (Entrepreneur Press),written by Jay Conrad Levinson and Jeannie Levinson.
I am a strong advocate of planning even though Andrew Grow, Chairman and CEO of Intel, has noted that “Columbus did not have a plan when he discovered America." However, Columbus was looking for India, not America.
If you operate your business by the seat of your pants, chances are you will find failure, not a new continent! ©Charlotte Taylor, February, 2008.
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