Risk & Business Magazine McFarlan Rowlands Fall 2016 | Page 18

FEATURE STORY
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case-by-case basis and decide whether
to work outside the “official” warranty
duration. Are there areas that your
competitors are ignoring that, by
being more entrepreneurial, you can
capitalize on?

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Be smarter: This sounds too simple
and is almost too embarrassing to
say. Since we are smaller, we can look
more carefully at the business we do
and make sure it makes good business
sense. We don’t pick up another
product just to increase the size of our
line card. That’s doesn’t make good
business sense for us. That’s the way
we have to think—and so should you.

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Be personal: One thing a smaller
company can do is be more personal.
People buy from people. You can foster
relationships that will help you sell.
Part of the way we are personal is by
showing our customers what markets
and products are profitable. There
is nothing that cements a customer
relationship better than making them
money, because you’ll be making
money for them and for you!

THE BIGGEST
CHALLENGE FOR
THE MARKETER
IS TO GET
PROSPECTS TO
ACTUALLY PAY
ATTENTION
AND READ
WHAT YOU ARE
SENDING THEM.

oster staff loyalty: One major
F
advantage guerillas have over gorillas
is the ability to attract, motivate, and
keep good people. Primarily, this is
because guerillas can be more flexible,
easier to work for, and give people
a greater sense of accomplishment
because what they do contributes
more directly to the company’s
bottom line. I have always found great
power in being a smaller company
and treating my people with respect
and not just as numbers. At Danby
Appliances, everyone is on a first-name
basis, which is good for business and
company spirit. Gorillas can try to do
this, but it is tough for them to copy
you in this area.

Be opportunistic: To sum up guerilla
strategy is simply to be opportunistic.
Take advantage of opportunities that
the gorillas cannot. There are many
companies that remain profitable by
being opportunistic.

WHEN YOU SIT DOWN AND LOOK AT
MARKETING STRATEGIES, HOW DO
YOU APPROACH REACHING YOUR
TARGET AUDIENCE?

FALL 2016

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Grab their attention: Customers need
to be woken up and shaken in order
to even look at your marketing. This
is why unique, outrageous, and highly
creative ideas can break through. If
you look at Danby Appliances’ latest
marketing video, “Flipping Your
Fridge,” customer attention is grabbed
immediately when the viewer sees
someone throwing a fridge in the air
and flipping it.

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Keep it short: I have noticed an
interesting screening mechanism that
people use—the length of the message.
If the message is short, they read it. If
it is long, they do not. Look at business
books. Their length has dropped to
about two hundred fifty pages in order
to be marketable. People no longer
think they get more value if a book is
one thousand pages long.
Instant messaging is a hot
phenomenon, especially with younger
people who have grown up in the age
of Uber technology and information
overload. And Twitter’s success is
remarkable when you consider it
limits its users to one hundred forty
characters of text. We can all learn
from Twitter; it can teach us to keep it
short. I advocate that every marketer
should sign up for Twitter and try
sending twenty to thirty tweets. It is
good training on how to get a message
across in fewer words. Cut the message
length and increase the impact. Less
is more.

I never cease to be amazed by the
people who use the standard LinkedIn
introduction, “I’d like to add you to my
professional network on LinkedIn,”
with no additional comment. Adding a
simple, personal message like “Jim, we
met at such-and-such show…” would
go a long way in making me click the
“Connect” button.
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The new world demands simplicity,
brevity, and ease of use. Marketers have the
challenge of getting through to these newworld customers. Live by these rules:

It does not matter if you have over
one hundred thousand Twitter
followers or over ten thousand
email subscribers if no one reads
what you send. The easiest (well, not
really easy) way to get people to read
something is to make it personal.

Be a gorilla: We like to enter market
areas that we can dominate and
specialize in. We may not be the
biggest, but in certain specific niches,
we dominate. As long as we are the
biggest in an area, we can act the part.
We can underprice and overservice
the competition forever. Anyone who
enters our markets learns that it is
expensive—and often impossible—to
unseat us.

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The first rule of marketing is to know
your customers. Customers have changed
over the past ten, twenty, and thirty years,
partly as a result of technology and partly
as a result of economic pressures and the
need for efficiency. Customers lose focus
very quickly. They have limited attention
spans. Good marketers know this and cater
to this. We cannot change the customer;
however, we can change the message.

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Allow prospects to take action quickly:
Have an obvious “Order now” button
on your website. Make your phone
numbers easy to find. And don’t forget
the good old-fashioned call to action—