Your mailing list (or e-mail list) is everything! I know this sounds like an overstatement, but consider this.

Your list is your customer database. The names on this list are the record, so to speak, of your business. They are certainly the most valuable asset of your business. “But,” you may argue, “I have all this expensive equipment to produce my products.” I would say your products are worthless unless there is someone to buy them.

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For the small business owner or manager, there are few resources or principles as valuable as those of Guerrilla Marketing. It is foundational marketing . . . especially for the small business!

The ideas to which Jay Conrad Levinson introduced us all in the 1980s are even more pertinent today. Marketing is now more sophisticated demanding closer attention to the craft and a more skillful deployment with less margin for error. Certainly the principles have undergone some modifications due to technological advances, but their wisdom and utility remain unscathed.

Small businesses are better suited to the Guerrilla Marketing methods since they are more agile, have closer contact with their customers, and lack the inertia of “committees” and “Marketing Departments.”

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How will you know what works?

You must test everything! Really successful marketers live and die by their test results. There has really only been one very successful type of marketing–scientific marketing.

Unfortunately, some people in their marketing simply stumble around until they acheive some success. Then they pat themselves on their backs and pronounce themselves “good marketers.” My response is, “Good compared to what?” to which they too often reply, “Good, compared to what I used to be.” What you “used to be?” Indeed!

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