CHAPTER 5

COMMENCE BATTLE PLAN

Before a battle commences, guerrillas must first plan for one.

Guerrillas believe in having a battle plan. Having a plan simplifies your marketing campaign. It makes things easier. It helps you get from Point A to Point B. It puts what you need to do into perspective, and highlights what you need to focus on. It helps eliminate emergencies and non-important activities, so that you can reap maximum gain from minimum stress while you are at it.

Seven Elements for a Seven-Sentence Guerrilla marketing plan

Guerrilla Marketing is not something that happens overnight, but the decision to become a Guerrilla Marketer can be done in an instant. And once that decision is made, the next step is to put that decision into words: a plan. For guerrillas, a marketing plan has seven elements:

 

 

Seven elements for a Seven-Sentence Guerrilla Marketing Plan:

(1) Purpose

(2) Benefits

(3) Target market

(4) Weapons

(5) Niche

(6) Identity

(7) Projected budget

The first sentence focuses on the purpose of your Facebook marketing campaign. What do you want to achieve from your Facebook marketing campaign? What action do you want your customer to take? Do you want them to visit or re-visit your Facebook Page? Do you want them to become a fan of your Page? Do you want them to connect with you on your Page? Do you want them to participate in your events and polls? The purpose of your campaign needs to be measurable. For example, if you want to increase your fan base, what is that number you are looking at? 100 fans per week? 1,000 fans per week?

The second statement focuses on the benefits you want to stress to your Facebook audience to achieve your purpose set out in the first sentence. You want to be talking about them, not you, your business or your special offers. People want to talk about themselves – that is why they log on to Facebook. When you know what your fans want, you would be able to define what you have to offer them. When you can achieve this, your fans won’t see you as selling them something they don’t want – they will see you as someone who is helping them. That’s how you build relationships with your customers. Guerrillas also know that less is more: focus on primary benefits: stressing one or two relevant benefits is more powerful than listing 50 benefits that don’t mean much to your fans.

The third statement focuses on your target market. It is easy to market once you know exactly who to market to. Targeting involves determining who, when, where and why customers buy your product or service. Guerrillas believe in serving only what they serve best to those who want it. To do this, analyse the profiles of your existing fans, or existing followers of your blogs or websites. What are they like? Where are they from? When do they visit your blog or website? Guerrillas also like flexibility: they choose to have different target markets, and make different plans accordingly, depending on the needs of the target market.

The fourth statement focuses on what weapons you are going to use. A good Guerrilla Marketing Plan will almost always choose a combination of marketing weapons and ammo for maximum effect. And why not, since most of the weapons identified won’t cause a dent in your marketing budget, but rather your imagination, time and energy. Going back to the exercise at the end of Chapter 4, and re-use the exercise sheet to identify specific weapons you want to use for each new marketing campaign you plan for.

The fifth statement focuses on your niche in Facebook. Your niche refers to your positioning in the marketplace – what your brand stands for. Some marketing experts refer to this as your unique selling point. When people come across your brand on Facebook, what is the first thing that pops into their head about your brand? What is the one thing you want visitors to your Page and fans to remember about your Page? With all the noise going on in Facebook, you really need to stand out. Your Page is not the only show in town.

The sixth statement is about your identity - who you are. This is not the public’s image or perception of you – this is who you really are. Guerrillas don’t believe in propagating perceived public images. Instead, they focus on being honest and direct about their identities. On Facebook, honesty really matters. Honesty is about being consistent. If you intend to connect with your fans on Facebook via ongoing authentic conversations, who you are will eventually show in the long run. Your fans will know what’s real and what is not.

The seventh statement is putting money into your marketing budget to walk the talk when the need arises. Your marketing budget is expressed as a percentage of your gross sales, before deductibles.

Guerrillas aim to create a marketing plan that is brief, to the point, and written in simple, easy to understand language. Ideally, the length of the marketing plan should not exceed one page, and the plan, once completed, should be visible for all stakeholders to see and make reference to.

Now turn over to the next page to write out your Seven-Sentence Guerrilla Facebook Marketing Plan now.

Action is the purpose of planning

It might take less than half an hour to write out a marketing plan, but writing is just the easy part.

The purpose of planning is action.

Even with the best of plans, guerrillas know that they can lose their way. They could start out inspired with the best of intentions, and raring to go, but lose steam along the way when things don’t always go the way they planned it to. Or, when something unexpected crops up and cause the campaign to derail, they stop, turn back, or give up.

Without a certain level of conscious effort to be committed to any plan of action, it is almost impossible for any plan to be implemented successfully over a period of time. This is the reality of undertaking any new project. Guerrillas know that they have to work doubly hard to implement the plan, especially so when the initial results look dismal and disappointing. They know that if they commit to their well-conceived plan, they will see results.

This is why guerrillas recognize the need to review their marketing plans on a regular basis. To review means to take stock of what has happened since the implementation. Guerrillas will want to know what is working and what is not, and the earlier they know this, the better. A brief review could be carried out once every four to six weeks, followed by a more thorough review, say once every six to 12 months.

A battle plan should not change course once it is set in motion. Guerrillas will try to stick to their marketing plan for at least six months to a year without having to make major changes to their plans. For instance, the purpose, the primary benefits, and the identity of a plan are elements that should not be changed easily. However, there are times when change is necessary. For instance, the choice of weapons could change. A guerrilla might choose to drop from twenty weapons to just focus on five weapons that have consistently produced results, or the marketing budget could be adjusted as sale volumes increased.

Guerrillas don’t change their plans just because they have changed their minds. Instead, they change their plans because they are compelled to do so. For instance, a new product that makes their product obsolete has been launched into the market. That kind of circumstance calls for drastic action.

How do you know if you have the perfect plan that is working best for you?

You will know it. You will know it because you are no longer making changes to your plan. You are simply doing what you have set out to do. And the more you do it, the better you become. And you enjoy it. When this happens, positive results always follow.

All guerrillas implement a marketing plan together with a marketing calendar.

Guerrilla Marketing Calendar

When it comes to calendars and the concept of time, guerrillas observe two rules:

1. If guerrillas don’t make the time for it, they won’t have time for it.

2. If guerrillas don’t take control of their time, someone – or something – will fill up their calendar for them.

A marketing calendar goes hand-in-hand with a marketing plan. While a plan simplifies your marketing campaign, a calendar chronologizes your plan, literally, putting a time to each action you set out to do in your plan. Guerrillas love calendars. It breaks down the seemingly impossible into simple, bite-size portions by providing a sequence to guide you into taking on one task at a time. It also helps you keep an eye on all the other ongoing efforts and activities – it makes coordination easier. Finally, calendars establish a structured routine for guerrillas. When things start to fall apart, discipline steps in to take over, helping guerrillas stay on course.

Every guerrilla’s calendar will look different. Hour-to-hour calendar formats are ideal for campaigns with very tight deadlines, while day-to-day calendar formats are useful for campaigns that need to be monitored on a daily basis. A week-by-week calendar format that drills down to daily tasks provides more flexibility than day-to-day or hour-to-hour formats. This format is useful when you are juggling a number of daily campaigns and tasks at the same time but also want control over your weekly schedule. A month-by-month calendar format is best reserved for on-going campaigns that have proven successful and require less review and supervision.

How do you get started? We first start by identifying the key events in your industry that could have an impact on your campaign. Think of events that gather together large groups of prospects or similar businesses. For example: trade shows, annual sales periods, competitions or awards, industry-wide seminars or conferences. When identifying these events, guerrillas would also think about how these events could be possible publicity opportunities for their marketing campaign as well.

Next, we list down the key dates that are specific to your business. For example, business opening anniversaries, new product season launches, dates for new store openings, annual sale periods, etc. This helps you plan ahead to avoid crowding of activities. For instance, you might want to re-think postponing the new product launch if it coincides with the day you are relocating. It also helps you fill in activities such that there are no excessive “lull” periods. You want to keep a moderate but comfortable pace, and not be on sprint or dragging feet mode the entire period.

The next task is to estimate how much time is needed to complete each initiative or action listed in the plan. This could be expressed in hours, days, weeks or even months. It is not an easy task to estimate how much time is needed. It requires a lot of understanding of the process behind the task in order to be able to set realistic expectations. Guerrillas know that having “realistic” expectations is not the same as having “low” or “mediocre” expectations. Having realistic expectations is merely showing respect for the time it takes for something to blossom. Patience is a time-honored guerrilla attitude, as highlighted in Chapter 1 of this book.

To do this estimation systematically, our advice is to go back to the Priority Exercise on Selecting Your Guerrilla Weapons in Chapter 4. By this time, we have assumed that you have already chosen the weapons you want to use for this particular marketing campaign you have planned for. Refer to that same list to estimate how much time you will need per weapon that is to be implemented straightaway, and when you would want to implement it. For example, to conduct a poll on your Facebook Page once a month, you will need to set aside two hours of preparation time for it.

Next, include in your calendar, the review dates of your marketing plan. Highlight these dates. These are like your checkpoints - this is the time you get a report card for the work you have done.

Now you are almost there. Wait – we meant now you have finished reading this Chapter. Here’s what you need to do now. On the following page, we have designed a simple form for you to fill up all those little details that we talked about. Once you have finished that, take out your favorite calendar format, and start filling in your calendar today.

 

 

Ten-Hut! Calendar Tip:

The reason why we don’t have a calendar for you is because there are many beautifully designed calendar templates available today - and many are for free!

Word processing programs usually have a template for calendars, but don’t limit yourself to that. If you intend to share this calendar with your staff, there are calendar programs that permit date or calendar sharing, or permit multi-format use - from emails to mobile phones to different web-based programs.

Find a pretty one that works best for you. If we had to look at something all the time, it might as well be pretty to look at, don’t you agree?

 

Our Guerrilla Facebook Marketing Calendar

Campaign Date: from __________ to __________

1. Key industry events that will occur during the period of your campaign

2. Key dates for your business

3. Review dates