SAMANTHA GROSS

With just minutes to go until deadline, the coders sit furiously typing, putting the finishing touches on their website. Brett Martin turns to his computer – the PowerPoint slides are almost done.

On the couch, a tiny dog buries his head into a blanket and shuts its eyes.

“Spanky’s the only one who got to sleep,” Martin says.

This group of nine entrepreneur hopefuls started less than two days ago with just an idea: an online planning and finance tool for small businesses called ProphetMargin. Now they have the website design, a business plan and a working database. And by the end of the evening, they’ll have a formal mentor and a meeting planned with investors.

Such is the pace of Startup Weekend, one of the final events of New York’s Internet Week, which is ending Monday. Participants in the 48-hour marathon came in alone with an idea and left with like-minded partners and a fledgling business.

“It’s a testament to how much people can get done when they’re working on something they’re really excited about,” Martin said Monday, reflecting on his team’s accomplishments over the weekend. “I met great people and had a great time and hopefully we’ll get some funding.”

ProphetMargin was one of 18 projects pitched Sunday night in the weekend’s final presentations. Other groups offered up plans for an app that would give users information about other people around them in public, a website to connect users with friends who need housesitters, an app allowing people to track the beers they drink, and an Internet platform to help adult entertainers build their brands.

The projects started as 60-second pitches Friday night. The 145 participants evaluated 57 suggestions and formed teams around the best ideas. Then they all got to work.

Usually, “you couldn’t create something like this without spending thousands of dollars,” Rob Steir marveled, looking around at his ProphetMargin teammates as they pushed through the final stretch. “We wouldn’t even know each other – we don’t know each other.”

Most teams gathered together people with varying specialties.

The group creating Data Dough – a service to help people sell their personal information to advertisers – included two software engineers, a graphic-design student, a computer-network manager, a Harvard Law School student, a new-media journalist and one person with a finance background.

In the end, the group’s work won it a prize – a mentorship from Noiz Ivy, an organization that supports entrepreneurs. Score.ly – a platform that would allow users to display verified personal and professional achievements – and ProphetMargin won the same prize. A group creating a platform to help publishers market-test novels won a free month of shared working space.

And a representative from AOL Ventures said the company would meet with three groups and fund one of them. The details of the deal were to be worked out later. The finalists were Score.ly, ProphetMargin and Deal Over Here – an app allowing people to buy unsold tickets just minutes before an event begins.

Even for the participants who leave with no prizes or investment prospects, the weekend can provide an opportunity to jump into a project full-throttle and test out potential partners for future endeavors, said Peter Chislett, a startup veteran who has provided mentoring to previous participants and who now helps run New Work City, a shared Manhattan workspace. Creating a startup can be an intimate experience that it’s better not to attempt with an utter stranger, he said.

“Your partners, they are your most important relationships for as long as you’re together,” he said. “You have to get along and you have to be able to trust them like they’re part of your family – without all that baggage.”

It’s a trial run that’s been shared by more than 500 teams at more than 100 startup weekends around the world over the last three years. Startup Weekend – itself a non-profit startup run by three directors and a handful of volunteer facilitators – has gathered would-be entrepreneurs in cities from Copenhagen to Istanbul. It’s funded by a combination of sponsorships and entry fees. Participants usually pay less than $100 each.

There’s no guaranteeing that any of the projects will live on beyond the weekend.

But Kyle Kelly, a wealth management product manager who joined a team launching a children’s language learning platform, said the experience gave him the opportunity to try on a number of different hats – and collaborate with others.

“The best ideas are generated not just by one person,” he said. “The best companies are formed with a team.”

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Online:

http://www.startupweekend.org

FREE! – Full Marketing Analysis of Your Company, Product or Technology.  Call Our Offices Now at (360) 339-5655

No gimmicks, no catches, no obligation, and no hard sell!  We have put this package together for a couple of reasons:

1. Wasting your money on advertising, or the marketing gimmick of the week is just plain sad.  And we hate seeing small business owners doing this.
2. If we introduce you to strategies with which you can get more leads, more sales, and more business, we “might” have the opportunity to earn your business.

At a very minimum, we’ll get to know each other… and you’ll get a better idea about what your business or product needs.  Now that doesn’t sound bad does it?

DID YOU KNOW?

Many small business owners waste thousands of dollars on marketing & advertising that doesn’t work.  Part of the reason is they have no formal marketing plan or strategy.

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Here’s How It Works in 5 Easy Steps!

1 CALL US – First off, call our marketing offices at (360) 339-5655 for a quick discussion about your company and to receive further instructions.

2 TELL US ABOUT YOU – Login to our marketing analysis worksheet online and tell us about your company.

3 REVIEW – We will then review your worksheet and create a written marketing analysis designed specifically for your company, product, or organization.

4 CONSULTATION – We’ll then meet together in our marketing offices located here in West Olympia to go over your entire analysis.  This meeting will come complete with suggestions & ideas on how to grow your company.

5 FREE CONSULTATION – You’ll receive access to our 25 Years Experience in Branding, Marketing, Internet Tactics, & Graphic Design!  We’ll discuss with you about where your companies strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities lie.  And what you must do in order to grow your company, generate more leads, more sales, and how to harness the power of the internet.

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Heavy Guerrilla? What the heck is a “Heavy Guerrilla? We’re not talking about a large ape here. We are talking about a way to promote a business or product like no other. By definition, Guerrilla marketing is an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy, and imagination rather than a big marketing budget. Typically, guerrilla marketing tactics are unexpected and unconventional; consumers are targeted in unexpected places, which can make the idea more memorable, generate buzz, and even spread virally.

Heavy Guerrilla is a Olympia Washington based marketing consulting and advertising agency that specializes in growing small to medium sized companies through affordable, strategic marketing and sales efforts. We offer affordable, small business marketing strategies, branding, graphic design, web marketing and business consulting to take your business to the next level. Follow our simple system that we will tailor specifically to your company and its needs. We understand that most small to medium sized companies do not have the budget for a dedicated marketing department. That’s where we come in… we are your “Outsourced” marketing department, that will either “Coach” or “Consult” you and your team through our easy system so that you can increase profits and increase sales leads, even in this down economy. And all for a fraction of the cost of an “In-House” marketing staff.

We promote marketing as an integrated system utilizing the “New Method” of marketing strategies and tactics. At the heart of our system is a progression of steps and strategies, in various stages, that any company, despite the size, can utilize to generate dramatic profits from a reliable marketing endeavor. We all understand that the current market conditions are less than favorable. Right? So we challenge you to take another look at you and your company. It’s easy to settle for the status quo and give up. But… even in a down market, you CAN rise above the competition and take your business to new levels. In a down market, you have to work smart. You have to market better than you have in the past. You have to DOMINATE YOUR MARKETPLACE!

That’s where we come in. Results-oriented, in your face, strategic marketing for your small company. A methodical, step-by-step, scientific and innovative approach to making your phone ring.

Overview

Do your clients LOVE YOU?  Love you enough to refer a friend or family?  Referral marketing is a structured and systematic process that maximizes word of mouth potential. Referral marketing does this by encouraging, informing, promoting and rewarding customers and contacts to think and talk as much as possible about their supplier, their company, product and service and the value and benefit the supplier brings to them and people they know.

Referral marketing takes word of mouth from the spontaneous situation to a proactive and highly productive solution, where maximum referrals are generated due to professional customer-focused strategies.

Online referral marketing, using digital marketing as a platform, is the Internet based successor to traditional referral marketing.  Given the advances in tracking customer behavior online through the use of web browser cookies, online referral marketing provides a higher degree of accountability.

To put it in simple terms, referral marketing is a specific set of strategies and tools designed to bring small business new clients, qualified leads, and repeat business without the aid of, or in addition to, other advertising methods such as print, internet, radio or tv.

Many business owners have built great companies entirely upon referrals. Almost all businesses get started this way. The business lands a client, does some good work, and that client tells his/her family and friends. Before you know it, this kind of word-of-mouth marketing creates a steady stream of more customers and prospects.  But what most small business owners don’t understand, is that many of these same companies never understood that they could generate even more business if they actively participated in the generation of referrals.

Some professions, such as lawyers, doctors, and accountants, are very much suited to referral marketing.  Most people simply don’t feel comfortable hiring a doctor based on a doctor’s advertisement in the Yellow Pages. When looking for a professional of this nature, most people will ask someone they trust for a referral, such as a good friend or family member.

As a rule of thumb, the more personal or the more expensive a service is, the more likely it is that a potential client will seek the advice of another. A window washing company, for example, whose crew may spend a great deal of time going from room to room in a client’s house, will benefit greatly from referrals.

Why Referral Marketing Is So Strong

Experience tells us there is typically two things that often hold small business owners back from taking complete advantage of referral marketing:

• No System -They simply don’t have a system for tracking referrals
• Fear – That somehow no one would ever refer a prospect to his or her business

Let’s try to help you get over the fear of making referrals a core part of your marketing.

When we say fear, we mean things like fearing of being rejected, fearing that you will appear to be begging for business or fear that your existing clients don’t really care about helping you build your business.

All we can say to this is – you have got to get past this!  If you provide a product or service that helps people solve problems and meet needs, then you are doing a disservice to your customers and the world in general if you don’t actively seek referrals.

If you think your clients will be put off by your desire to involve them in helping you grow your business, you aren’t thinking about the relationship the way you should.

The entire act of generating a referral comes down to two simple things:

Provide a product or service that people like.

Manage the referral expectation.

Key Points to Remember:

• To get better referrals you need to target your prime referral sources.
• You must educate your referral sources in order to receive qualified leads.
• Make receiving referrals part of your client’s expectation.
• Find strategic partners and create multiple referral sources.
• Follow up with your referral sources.

Get to know the Heavy Guerrilla System.

The Heavy Guerrilla Marketing System – A step-by-step self guided road map for creating the ultimate small business marketing system.  Follow our system and you can create a powerful marketing plan that brings stunning marketing results.

Heavy Guerrilla Marketing Coaching is tailored to meet the needs of any size business or professional services provider. Services include complete one on one, personalized Heavy Guerrilla Marketing Coaching, Heavy Guerrilla Digital Technology Coaching, Heavy Guerrilla Power Marketing Groups, and individual Heavy Guerrilla Distance Coaching.

Heavy Guerrilla Small Business Workshops are available with Jerry Suhrstedt available to present small business marketing workshops, seminars and keynotes to groups and associations. Jerry has over 22 years experience in advanced marketing strategies, and a true sixth sense for what your business needs.

Heavy Guerrilla marketing brings a wealth of expertise with marketing systems for any industry, with in-depth experience in:

• Residential Home Building
• Residential Remodeling
• Sporting Goods
• Apparel & Soft goods
• Inline Skate Market
• Roller Skate Market
• Roller Rink Industry
• Ice Speedskating
• Real Estate
• Automobile Industry
• Manufacturing
• New Product Branding & Launch

Marketing-Plan-Pro

Ask yourself these questions…

Do I have a “Written” marketing plan with associated Strategy?
Do I know what my “Ideal Prospect” looks like.

If you are not sure what the answer is to any one of the questions above, you need help.  The difference between companies that have formal, written marketing plans and ones that don’t are night-and-day!

The business owner that has a written marketing plan and strategy, complete with a tactical time line are the owner’s that are typically  ahead of the pack. They are the ones that customers seem to can’t get enough of. They are the companies that are usually smiling when the economy is down and haven’t laid off any employees.

A simple tool we use with our clients is a software package called Marketing Plan Pro.  Simple, easy, very cost effective and asks the tough questions you need to think about.  While Marketing Plan Pro helps you with your marketing planning, and strategy, there is nothing that replaces experience and the gut instinct to make sure you are on track.  It can cost a business hundreds of thousands of wasted capital if your marketing strategy doesn’t hit the target.

Invest now for the future.