A Lean, Mean Marketing Machine
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Doing more with less is the premise of bootstrap marketing, which could not only save marketing dollars, but shape your business into a leaner, more efficient operation.Bootstrap marketing replaces money with ingenuity. Its cousin, guerrilla marketing, is a shadier version of bootstrapping and involves skirting the rules of decorum or even the law, according to Bruce Firestone, a professor at Carleton University's School of Business. For example, Firestone says, suppose a firm can't afford an ad in The Wall Street Journal. To reach the same local readership of that publication, guerrilla marketers could print 10,000 fliers, pop $1 in newspaper-vending boxes, and slip their flier in the folds of every WSJ stocked within. Legal? Not exactly. Although the results of guerrilla-marketing campaigns might not be easily measured, bootstrap efforts should be. Bootstrapping finds a clever, cost-efficient means of increasing revenues — and its strategies become more relevant during an economic downturn. "We're just coming out of a period where mass marketing was common," says Peter Zandan, a venture capitalist who sold his marketing firm, Intelliquest, two years ago. "That's coming to an end, and we'll return to thinking of marketing as a strategic investment, not a black hole in which to pour money." Bootstrap marketers follow four steps:
- Identify the key target audience.
- Focus on the decision makers of that audience.
- Present them with concise messages that will make them not only take notice, but take action.
- Measure the results to quantify effectiveness.
- Book early for the best choice of corner booths.
- Choose a booth along a primary circulation artery.
- Prioritize prospects.
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