The Real Estate Investors Guide To Guerrilla Marketing
Scott Jelinek
Copyright © 2012 Scott Jelinek
To the best of my ability I have made certain that all of the techniques in this book abide by all local and state laws. However, Please verify that any of the strategies that you choose to use are legal in your area.
This book has been edited by Kevin Gilbert
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior consent of the publisher.
The Publisher makes no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any commercial damages.
2012-01-20
What is Marketing?
Often people confuse marketing with selling. It is completely natural. After all, How many times do you come across the term ‘sales and marketing’. So, before proceeding any further, lets sort out the confusion. Marketing is NOT sales. Marketing and sales are two very different aspects of any business. For the purposes of this book, only the marketing side of the equation will be discussed. It is a process for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers. Use it for creating and managing customer relationships.
The definition of the word marketing is the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods or services from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling.
Why is marketing important to an entrepreneur? Marketing is everything done to place a product or service in the hands of potential customers. Marketing is all about interacting with potential customers. Understanding as well as finding ways and means to meet their needs. It is all about getting the brand known. Finding ways to get the phone to ring. Marketing is used to identify the customer, satisfy the customer, and keep the customer.
S.H. Simmons, author and humorist, relates this anecdote.
”If a young man tells his date she’s intelligent, looks lovely, and is a great conversationalist, he’s saying the right things to the right person and that’s marketing. If the young man tells his date how handsome, smart and successful he is — that’s advertising. If someone else tells the young woman how handsome, smart and successful her date is — that’s public relations.”
Think of sales as the study of people and money and the art of persuading one to part from the other. Marketing is all about finding the right people to persuade in the first place! Marketing is the strategy for allocating resources (time and money) in order to achieve objectives (a profit for supplying a product or service).
The most brilliant strategy won’t earn a profit if it isn’t built around potential customers. A strategy that isn’t based on customers is rather similar to a man that knows a thousand ways to make love to a woman, but doesn’t know any women! Great in theory, useless in practice.
The next logical question is how to go about marketing. Most people in business do not even stop to think about it but are marketing all day, every day. For better or worse, from the clothes worn to the car driven. Everybody is marketing different brands. This kind of marketing has had a plenty of thought and resources dedicated to accomplish it by the companies that produce the goods branded. Now, it is time to figure out how to make the same strategies work for personal success!
Traditional approaches to marketing consist of everything from television, radio, newspaper, magazines to billboards. They all produce astronomical results. That is why they have stood the test of time and will continue to be used by big business for years to come. It is no a suprise large corporations spend millions of dollars on these marketing techniques every year.
Now, how to accomplish this without the budget of a large corporation? How do real estate investors acquire leads without spending all of the cashflow a business can generate on marketing?
The problem with these marketing techniques is that they are very expensive. All of these techniques work and are easy to do for large corporations. Cost effective on a massive scale! The problem for an individual lies in the fact that they are prohibitively expensive. The results wanted end up costing the majority of the profits made! Feeding the beast that is the marketing machine.
At times during my nearly twenty years of investing experience, I have spent upwards of twenty thousand dollars a month on marketing. I was able to obtain impressive results from the massive amount of leads that created, but was also seeing the majority of my profits go right back out the door to generate more leads for the next month! Now, I spend a fraction of that amount each month and get similar if not superior results from utilizing guerrilla marketing techniques. You can start with little or no budget and begin building your real estate business immediately.
In the real estate investing business, the person that learns of an opportunity first stands the best chance of getting the property. There are a finite amount of potential profitable homes available every month in any local market. Make sure as many people as possible know you are interested in buying. The way to do that is to have the best marketing possible!
People develop unique perceptions of the world based on their belief system or personal values. Innovative ideas or greatest products succeed when marketed within the context of people’s perceptions. People don’t just “buy” a product, they look at what that product will do for them. Overweight people join a franchise weight loss clinic because they are sold on the concept of a new, thinner, happier version of themself. They aren’t sold on eatting pre-packaged meals.
A good marketing plan can help you focus your energy and resources. It is the most important part of the business. At times in this business, it can feel like nothing more than a marketing company. Market for deals, meet with the owners and get the property under contract, and then sell to investors. Investors acquired from years of relationship building and marketing to get on the buyer list. Embrace the idea of marketing, it is the key to making everything happen in business.
The answer is really quite simple. Utilize the ‘Guerrilla Marketing Techniques’ found in this book. Techniques that have been perfected by serious investors over the years. The following chapters will show you how. First, let’s look at what Guerrilla Marketing is all about.
What is Guerrilla Marketing?
The term Guerrilla Marketing was first used in 1984, by Jay Conrad Levinson. He is known as the father of Guerrilla Marketing. Guerrilla Marketing is about using unconventional marketing to maximize results from minimal resources. To put it simply, Guerrilla Marketing is all about matching wits instead of matching budgets.
Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy in which low-cost unconventional means are utilized, often in a localized fashion to promote a product. The term guerrilla marketing is easily traced to guerrilla warfare. Utilizing atypical tactics to achieve a goal in a competitive and unforgiving environment.
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