Читать книгу Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing - Jay Levinson Conrad - Страница 12

By ego strength, we don’t mean having the ego to stand up to those who don’t love you. It’s just the opposite, it means having the ego to stand up to those who love you the most—but give you the worst marketing advice.

Ego strength means having the ego to stand up to those who love you the most—but give you the worst marketing advice.

You craft a powerful marketing strategy, embark upon a boundfor-glory campaign, and see that all your plans are falling right into place, just as you wanted them to, and who are the first people to tire of your marketing and counsel you to change it? Usually, first it’s your co-workers and then your employees, followed closely by your family, and then your best friends. “Hey, you’ve been doing that marketing for a long time now. I, personally, am getting pretty bored with it. Don’t you think it’s time to change it?” Your job: Summon up the ego to give these people a nice, warm hug, then send them on their way, knowing they know beans about your marketing.

Those people who have had their minds penetrated by your marketing three times, they’re not getting bored with it. They’re just learning of your existence. Those folks who have had their minds penetrated five times, the marketing momentum is just beginning with them. They last thing they want is for you to fade from view. Your current customers, they feel wonderful whenever they’re exposed to your marketing because it proves that they’ve hitched their wagons to a winner—the kind of company that has the confidence to continue to market.

But your co-workers, family, and friends, having concentrated on your marketing from the onset, are tired of it, know it backwards and forwards, and wonder when you’re going to change it. Again, they not-so-gently hint to you that perhaps you ought to drop it and move on to something else, which is another way of suggesting that you move away from your investment, move away from profitability, and move away from the momentum you’ve established. It takes a strong ego to look these people in the eye, give their arms a comforting squeeze, then stay with what you started. A lesser person than you, with a weaker ego, might cave in to their pressure, take their wellintended put poorly reasoned advice, and throw a marketing investment to the winds where, alas, many marketing investments end up.

If you ever thought that guerrilla marketing, especially at the beginning, is a cup of tea, this is the point where you learn that it’s not for amateurs, not for insecure babies, and more like a cup of nitroglycerine that can blow up in your face if you make a crucial mistake. Lacking the ego to stand up to misinformed well-wishers is that mistake. If you’re a guerrilla, you won’t make it. For if you do, you’re destined to repeat it each time you’re at the helm of a failing business.