We have interviewed nonprofit leaders in preparation for the book and found some communication people who say they don’t use Guerrilla Marketing. Knowing what we know about the benefits of going Guerrilla, it’s hard to understand why anyone would resist the secrets that have helped so many. Apparently, some nonprofits fear they will lose some credibility if they use Guerrilla Marketing. The folks who feel this way tend to have a cartoon image of what Guerrilla Marketing is all about. Guerrilla Marketing isn’t all about in-your-face media tactics. It is more about having an acute focus on excellence, rather than on flashy gimmicks. You may already have in mind what you think Guerrilla Marketing is all about. But take a second look. There’s more to it than a few attention-getting promotional tactics. Guerrillas don’t find a single marketing tactic and use it rudely to grab people’s attention unexpectedly. It’s about marketing combinations that work together for greater results.

Some objections you might hear about Guerrilla Marketing are:

• “The tactics are too aggressive.” Guerrilla marketing is not about aggression, but consistent action
• “There is too much time or energy wasted.” When you don’t have a lot of money, what you have left at your disposal are time, energy, information, and imagination
• “We can’t afford to spend money on marketing.” There are 200 marketing tools in the Guerrilla Marketing arsenal; many of them are free.
• “Segments people into stereotypes.” Guerrillas are sensitive to the real lifestyles of the people they want to reach
• “Gets people to buy things they don’t need.” Guerrillas link their message to the real solutions people need, meeting their real needs
• “Intrudes into people’s lives.” Guerrillas use permission marketing
• “Adds to the clutter of advertising out in the marketplace.” Guerrilla Marketing isn’t just about advertising; it’s a mindset that leads to the results they need
• “Manipulates people into doing things they don’t want to do.” Guerrillas meet people’s needs so well, they willingly give them referrals and tell their friends about them

Guerrilla Marketing books have helped people all over the world turn their time, energy and imagination into profitable results. With more than 60 titles and 20 million books sold in 63 languages, we know a thing or two about getting marketing results. In our book we want to help put the power of Guerrilla Marketing into the hands of you, the nonprofit leader.  Guerrilla Marketing isn’t designed for people who want to know everything about marketing. It is designed for people who want to grow their organization and get results. Though organizations of all sizes can benefit from Guerrilla Marketing, it is designed with the smaller nonprofit in mind.

You are learning about Guerrilla Marketing, but you may find you are too busy, or not in the right place in your role to lead the marketing attack for your organization. Your nonprofit can still benefit from Guerrilla Marketing principles by finding someone in your own ranks who can get excited about the thought of aggressive, proactive marketing.

You will need someone with the staying power and courage to make it their responsibility. A good Guerrilla will have the personality traits of:

• Imagination: Someone who’s not trying to be the most creative, but wants to be the most strategic.
• Patience: Someone who wont give up, but is willing to wait for results.
• Active: Someone who will keep up the pace, not doing marketing in a start-and-stop fashion.
• Sensitive: Someone with their pulse on the community that is aware about how your organization’s marketing is perceived.
• Confident: Someone who cant be talked into changing just to try something new. They are confident their strategies will work because they are based on facts, not hunches.

We list all twelve traits of a Guerrilla marketers personality in our book. Dont worry if you dont fit the description entirely, you can grow into a Guerrilla if you put your heart into it!

“Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits” with Jay Conrad Levinson Chris Forbes, & Frank Adkins. Pre-order now on Amazon: in stores July 2nd

Marketing is not something you do when all else fails. It’s what you do all the time if you want to be effective. Marketing is a never-ending circle of activity that starts with your ideas about making the world a better place and ends with the sustainable change that fulfills your mission.

To be effective you can’t treat marketing like a program your organization uses when it runs low on funds or can’t find enough volunteers. Marketing isn’t a weapon you use to instantly convince people to access your products, programs, and services–it’s how you learn to make the products, programs, and services people want in a way that will be the most effective toward achieving your mission.

People give, volunteer, and access your nonprofit because they want to. Marketing is about understanding people and meeting them at the point of their needs.

Still nonprofit leaders treat marketing as the last resort for their organization. Marketing is the last thing on their minds as they plan and program, when it should be central to everything they do.

Marketing is not like the “Death Blossom” in the movie The Last Starfighter. In this scene from the movie we see how many nonprofit leaders think about marketing.

Scene: Alex and Grig attack the Ko-Dan mother-ship, crippling its communications system; catching the Ko-Dan fighter wings off-guard. The battle reaches a fevered pitch; Alex keeps the upper hand, using the “lone fighter-against-hordes” tactics he mastered by playing the coin-operated video game. Soon, however, his weapons are depleted. Desperately, he activates a secret weapon installed in the Gunstar: “Death Blossom”, which destroys all the remaining Ko-Dan fighters. Lord Kril (Dan Mason), captain of the Ko-Dan mothership, blames Xur for this turn of events. After relieving Xur of command, Kril orders him executed. Instead, Xur takes advantage of Alex’s attack and kills the sentries escorting him from the bridge. He then flees the mother-ship just before Alex destroys the ship (via Wikipedia)

Many nonprofits miss opportunities to improve their marketing simply because they don’t put their plans into a calendar. Month-by-month they let events, promotions, and outreach go by and don’t realize their greatest opportunities for increased effectiveness are parading right in front of them, on their calendar. If you practice the simple discipline of keeping a calendar, it will help keep your marketing mindset active all year long and can make it easier next year too!

To make a marketing calendar just create a 12 month summary of all your Guerrilla marketing activities by creating a list with 52 lines, one for every week in the year. In five columns across the list aspects of your Guerrilla marketing activity,

1. Number of the week. You can use a spreadsheet to create your calendar to make it easy to format and share with your team.

2. In the second column put down the Thrust or emphasis in your marketing plan for that week. Are you promoting and event? Emphasizing a core message? Doing some Fundraising? Keep track of your messages in your calendar to make sure you are balancing your outreach and using your core messages and benefits effectively.

3. In the third column list the Marketing weapons used that week. There are 200 Guerrilla marketing weapons. Many of them are free. We will be talking about each one on this blog. Each one is also discussed in our book. Use more than one weapon each week. Guerrillas think in terms of combinations of marketing weapons.

4. Column Four: Budget for the week. You don’t have to spend a lot of money as a Guerrilla, but you will need to spend some. Keeping track of the money invested in your marketing makes it easier to evaluate your outreach and makes budgeting easier at the end of the year.

5. Five: Record your results at the end of the week. Keep track of your results: What were the number of responses, How many dollars were raised? Create a personalized rating scale designed for your organizations objectives. Guerrillas keep track of their marketing so they can evaluate what is effective and what is not.

If you keep good records and use your calendar regularly, at the end of the year, your annual marketing report will be easy to prepare and will reveal your stunning results.

“Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits” with Jay Conrad Levinson Chris Forbes, & Frank Adkins. Pre-order now on Amazon: http://ow.ly/MFT7 in stores July 2nd.

Just confirmed that I will be speaking as the final keynote for the 2010 AMA Nonprofit Marketing Conference in Chicago this October 11-13th.  This is going to be a great conference with a lot of practical advice to give your nonprofit a survivor’s edge in this tight economy. I hope you will make plans to come! Here is a little from the AMA site about the conference with more information to come:

_______

Market or Die: Achieving Success in Unprecedented Times

It’s a new era for nonprofits in 2010, quite literally an era of “do or die.” According to The Nonprofit Times, “60% of nonprofits have three months or less of cash in the bank. Half of those have only one month.” Nonprofits that seek growth and sustainability have no other choice but to reinvent their organizations. And we, as nonprofit marketers, must lead this transformation. We must market or die!

The 2010 AMA/AMAF Nonprofit Marketing Conference will gather nonprofit marketers from across the country to dive deep into the marketing strategies, tools and techniques needed to successfully reinvent their organizations. Unique insights, proven cases and in-depth, solutions-oriented sessions will provide the framework for an unparallel conference program.  Whether you’re local or national, an association or a charity, the 2010 NPMC will help you gain the skills and ideas you need to ensure that your organization not only survives, but thrives.

Click Here for 2010 NPMC Committee

Many organizations have no idea what marketing is. Some even resist marketing as contradicting their values. You can speed past these organizations by availing yourself of an education in marketing. Its easy to do with the many seminars, workshops, the internet, and the numerous volumes of marketing books published each year. Insights may come slowly, but rest assured, your real world experience and insatiable interest in marketing will yield practical applications that benefit your organization.

“Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits” with Jay Conrad Levinson, Frank Adkins, & Chris Forbes. Pre-order now on Amazon:  in stores July 2nd.

Just because something looks good or is entertaining, doesn’t mean it is effective for your nonprofit’s marketing. Too often nonprofit leaders buy into the notion that what is holding back their organization is the quality of their artwork. The new communication director who joins a nonprofit’s staff and announces they are going to change the logo and rebrand their organization is a cliche. Contrary to popular belief a brand new design for all your organization’s marketing collateral is not the cure all for what may be troubling your organization’s marketing. Usually nonprofits don’t need a new artistic schtick, they need new marketing mindset.

Nonguerrillas believe they can inspire people and move them to act with the quality of their art work and the cleverness of their copy. But true Guerrillas know better than to chase after the attention of people with art, because art is often poor at motivating people to act. Guerrillas are usually more skilled at moving people to act using creativity than even master artists who are very skilled at art. Why? Because most artists can’t sell! For example, master artist Vincent Van Gogh was an inspiring artist but he was notoriously lousy at selling his work. Van Gogh’s art might move you, but he had problems moving people to buy his art. Even now people often don’t buy into the ideas of the artist; they buy the idea of buying the art. They don’t often buy into the artists values, as much as they invest in the market value of the artist’s work.

Your organization doesn’t have the luxury of being a starving artist at the same time you are a hungry nonprofit. So don’t become a slave to creative artistry that can’t yield a response from the people you want to reach. Get a marketing mindset and strategy first before you adopt a new look for your brand.

Chris Forbes, Co-author, Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits

Hear Chris Forbes co-author of “Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits” (in stores July 2nd from Entrepreneur Press)  in this free one hour webinar sponsored by MinistryCOM.org Though the upcoming workshop is tailored with many of the needs of faith-based marketers in mind, the webinar will present general guerrilla marketing principles that apply to any nonprofit organization. Presenter Chris Forbes (Edmond, OK) is a certified GM coach specializing in nonprofit marketing. He frequently consults within the Southern Baptist Convention with 16 million + members

Pre-order “Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits” by Jay Conrad Levinson, Chris Forbes, and Frank Adkins

Here are the details from MinistryCOM.org Read More→