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Guerilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson, a Book Review

Let’s Look at Guerilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson.Guerilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson is the concept of succeeding in a small business by essentially paying attention to details and doing many things yourself. Simple ideas, perhaps, but people often seem to miss them.

Some of this may be self-evident.

After all, a small business, almost by definition, does not have a lot of capital just lying around. Often everything gets done by an impressively small cadre of workers.

Yet we also live in a society where it seems more people than ever before just want to pay someone to take care of whatever is necessary. Yet that is a mistake.

Guerilla Marketing: The Details

Levinson’s mantra is that it’s not necessary to invest a lot of money. That is, if you’re willing to instead invest time, energy, imagination and information. And, I might add, patience and attention. For a small business owner, this means having a passion about what you do.

All too often, it seems, entrepreneurs get into a particular field because they cannot find a more traditional means of employment. After all, the economy has been rather sour for the past few years. Or they chucked a traditional job but without a vision or a plan. Neither method will work for long because the entrepreneur’s heart is not in it.

What the entrepreneur needs – beyond the details of how to work a crowd or give a talk – is enthusiasm and passion about what he or she is doing or selling. Going through the motions is simply not going to cut it. Since the entrepreneur is one of the only faces of the company (and, perhaps, its only face), the entrepreneur must be jazzed.

This is for everything – presenting, talking, handing out business cards, performing demonstrations, writing copy, etc.

Upshot

If the entrepreneur is excited, the prospects can be as well. All in all, an interesting read, and good for the detailed tips, but a more current version would have been a better choice.

And rereading this review, over seven years later, only emphasizes the point. Writing about advertising, marketing, content, and social media these days means what you write can get stale very, very quickly.

Rating

Review: 1/5 stars.

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