Mauricio's Marketing Blog

We have reached the peak of the mountain but there are still lessons to learn while moving forward. First, remember to celebrate small victories. They give you something to look forward to and make your journey more enjoyable. Second, remember that ascending your start-up is not about the status you gain, the money, or the title. instead, it is about the people you inspire on your journey. Keep in mind that it is not about who gets to the peak first but who gets to peak in good shape. For it, we have trained, prepared, acclimated, etc. We want to achieve a long-lasting goal and it takes time and effort. Continue learning and learn from more experienced people. When you fail, keep in mind that it is just part of your learning process. There is always another peak to scale and any prior knowledge will make you more experienced in the field. Also, never forget all the people who accompanied you on this journey and the ones who made it possible: your satisfied customers. Lastly, stay speci...

This week, the lesson is how to keep you motivated and your journey sustainable by continuously and incessantly adapting and adopting. Do not assume that the original process of adapting and adopting is enough. In this fast-changing environment of AI, things can change really quick. So it is a good idea to take an AI class and/or read more books either physically, electronically or the way it works for you. The objective is you become more adept.  Some of the suggested titles by Todd Kelsey are the following: To start, Rise of the Robots, 2nd Machine Age, and/or Machine Platform Crowd are good to understand the importance and the impact of AI. To move forward and become more adept, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Master Algorithm. Some of the information in these books may not be understood first so easily so read them over and over as you take more classes on AI.  Also, consider obtaining education and/or certificates. They can be obtained in traditional classes or onlin...

You have seen all these weeks the tactics and tools that we use to implement guerilla marketing. Now, you will work on obtaining crucial information. For example, some of the things you will want to know are: whether you want to market your goods, your services, or both; whether your strategy will feature some sort of price advantage; whether you should focus on your own company or consider the actions of your competitors; know who your competitors are; what motivates your clients to buy; whether my clients have children; the socio-economic status of my clients and how it relates to my product or service; what my clients like the most about my company; etc.  Keep in mind that any piece of information is relevant but not all the information has the same degree of importance. Similarly, no question is irrelevant per se. If knowing certain information, like the sports team of your clients, gives you an advantage, you want to know it. So, you must find out what questions you want to ha...

It is been a long journey in the process of ascending your start-up. You have achieved a big objective but now you need to go even higher to the next peak. Consider developing a rewarding business culture that drives sustainable growth. To do this, think of how you will do to inspire cultural collaboration. It is important to know that cultural collaboration is not just created. It is the product of a process where you begin with making your people feel comfortable, having those who are underrepresented have a voice, and championing people who are underrepresented.  To strengthen your company, you must know your choices if you face adversity. Make sure you know it takes determination to overcome challenges, prepare and stay the course, encourage your team and celebrate small achievements, and inspire believers and work together. Also, prepare yourself to handle the burden of being the person in lead. You must know it may feel like a lonely position sometimes, so you must find ways ...

Now you may feel comfortable with AI - at least not as confused as at the beginning of this journey. You may feel comfortable in AI waters and, if you practice the recommendations in Kelsey's book: adapt, adopt, and become adept, you will certainly be able to surf the tsunami. As you gain more knowledge, the AI tsunami will seem like regular waves that you can surf easily. But, to make sure you go in the right direction, it is also a good idea to have mentors or know whose steps you should follow. In Kelsey's book, there are six experts that give us more insights. I encourage you to read their comments. You can access the book in the references.  To me, the most significant insight from the comments of the experts come from Geoffrey Hinton, psychologist and computer scientist, who stated that he wanted to learn artificial intelligente because he wanted to gain a deep understanding on how the brain works. The best way to undertand the brain is building one. This is what artifici...

Choosing the most lethal weapon for your campaign is a fundamental part of guerilla marketing (which we reviewed last week,) and saving marketing money too. In guerilla warfare, minimum resources are maximized to cause the greatest impact possible. In guerilla marketing, the impact of our resources is maximized to cause the greatest impact as well. But, do not only think of the impact of your resources spent on marketing as an equation where you would expect that the more money spent, the greater impact, therefore the more revenues. Conversely, in guerilla marketing, we focus on the idea that you do not need to spend more than needed. Once your weapons are selected and you have a powerful marketing campaign, do not change it. Stick with it until it loses its pulling power.  Sometimes you may want to obtain quick results and jump to a more expensive marketing plan that seems to provide results faster. However, you must remember that impatience is a deterrent to good and inexpensive ...

So far, we have gone through a lot with developing our start-up. We have set a competitive and strategic plan and have adapted to the voice of our customers. Now, we have to pay close attention to how our process is going and what our metrics tell us. We have to align our strategy with them. A great tool that can help you capture information for your metrics is Google Ads. I have used it for the last two weeks and it showed me not only how often my ads were seen/displayed on Google searches but also how attractive it was in terms of clicks to open my ad and phone calls received. Every company has strengths and weaknesses but not all are powerful. We have to use the superpower that comes from applying your strengths to your weaknesses and leveraging your strength to capture the mindset of your customers. To fully capture the mindset of your customers, you need to find the best way to measure your start-up as a customer-centric company. Note that customer-centricity does not start with y...

The next step to embracing the big changes that are part of our society and will continue changing how things are done (this means to surf the AI tsunami before it smashes you,) is to become adept in AI, which means to "get directly involved with developing AI, by learning coding and how to work with related data"  Kelsey, 2018, p. 118). It is very important that you still continue learning to adapt to and adopt AI, even if you have already done it in the past, You must have the habit to make it part of your life. That is becoming adept in AI. Fortunately for us, there are plenty of videos and other sources of knowledge on the internet. Some of them are free and some others need you to pay; however, whatever option you pick is worth it if you learn from it. Just make sure you pick the challenging ones too, not only the easy ones. In the book, Surfing the Tsunami, various options are offered. The ones I find more interesting are the games for learning coding and Khan Academy. ...

This week we will see the most lethal marketing method for your campaign. Of course, there is no one secret method that only certain successful companies use. The idea of having "the secret" is unreal; however, there is something you must do to meet your goals: use various methods and try every method from newspaper to phone calls and the internet. The goal is to maximize your utilization and mastery of each.  When you learn the advantages and disadvantages of each method and the value it adds to your product or service, you are applying effective guerilla marketing. Of course, there are some MUST DOs. For example, even if you have to try the various methods available, you must select those that relate to your audience and evaluate if you can apply the method properly and whether you can afford it or not (In the image below, you do not want to take the banana.) Consider also that you want to share a message - transmit that message. You cannot just say everything to everybody....

Now, so far we have been following steps as if ascending your start-up was a linear process - like when you write a story; however, it is not this way. At this point, you need to explore your brand through the lens of your customer. This process will make you take steps backward and forward so that you learn from your customers. See this as a sort of acclimation - you need to adapt to a new temperature, altitude, climate, environment, or situation. To do this, listen to your customers, especially those who know your product well and have invested in your product (Yu, 2021, p. 93).  A common mistake that many companies commit when they grow, is to consider expansion more important than their base customers (the ones who invested in you, your product, and your company). Consider having close contact with them and LISTEN, or have someone do it for you, like a customer success team. It is essential to address your customers' concerns in a timely manner and understand the root cause of ...

Last week, you learned the importance of learning and paying attention to how things are changing and in what direction in the field of AI. This first step is called "adapt." Once you have adapted to the AI environment by consistently researching various sources, you need to "adopt" your knowledge in AI and make it yours in your daily life - this is the second step. Using the traditional techniques of doing things is unsustainable for most people. People who have adopted AI in their lives are much more productive than people who have not because the shift to AI is inevitable.  Image an assembly line of a company where routine work is done every day. That was the norm in the past, even if many companies still rely on routine work. However, things are done much faster because of automation. Automation made things easier and faster for everybody. Now think of automation of automation: a computer system that can read how many resources are left and order more if needed,...

To develop truly creative marketing, consider one thing: if it generates profits for your business, it is creative. Your marketing campaign must sell the offering. For it, establish your own positioning -not just imitate other marketing campaigns- by practicing writing creative strategies for current advertisers and your competitors. Then, follow a seven-step process to make it successful: (1) Find the inherent "drama" within your offering and what makes your product interesting. (2) Convert one or two of your product's most interesting features into a meaningful benefit. For example, do not just sell garden flowers, sell a positive, emotional, and brighter garden. (3) Choose carefully the words you use so that the message is believable. The public is most likely to believe in your product's features if you are honest but also use the right words.  (4) Create appealing advertising that gets people's attention to your product, not only to your advertising. (5) Tell...