It’s important to remember the point of Thanksgiving, but it’s also important to use the holiday to help grow your business. While your competitors are busy buying turkeys and making pies, you should be busy courting new prospects. After all, business is still taking place, there are just fewer pilgrims harvesting the same crops.

Drive Sales with a Holiday Promotion

Everyone loves a great deal, and it’s even more credible when there’s a valid reason behind it. Thanksgiving is a great time to offer special promotions for any customers, but it works even better for your existing customers. Think of it as a way to say “thank you” to your valued customers.

Share Your Good Fortune

No matter how tough the economy may have been on your business lately, you’re still better off than a lot of people. You could invest some of your time and money to organize a food drive to help the less fortunate while building good publicity at the same time.

Offer a Prize to Your Customers

One lucky customer could win a complete Thanksgiving meal (uncooked, of course). You could hand out a raffle ticket with each purchase, and then announce the winner a few days before Thanksgiving.

Create a Thanksgiving Themed Widget

Let’s face it, as a nation with hundreds of years of Thanksgivings under our belts, most of us still have no idea what the hell we’re doing. That’s why widgets like the Thanksgiving turkey calculator are so popular.

Send out a Thanksgiving cards

Business is really all about relationships, and if your customers matter to you, you need to let them know. A Thanksgiving card with a short personalized note that says what you appreciate about them will go a long way in doing that.

The first thing that you need is a goal that you are 100% passionate about. Most guerrillas are fighting someone or something that they consider an oppressor that is detrimental to the future of their people. That means that they will do anything that enables them to achieve their goal. You need to conduct business the same way. If you want your company to be the best pizzeria in town, then you know that you need to use the best ingredients every single time. If you’re having a slow month and money is tight, you can’t buy the bargain brand cheese or you’ll sacrifice the quality of your pizza. Instead, you’ll have to cut corners elsewhere, which might mean paying yourself less that month. That’s what absolute commitment is about, and when you see what kind of results it produces, you’ll never go back to your old ways.

No man is an island, and when you’re up against a major competitor, you’ll need all the help you can get. Guerrillas win the support of the people by helping and supporting them. Companies win the support of other companies (or consumers) by helping and supporting them. The customer service at Zappos is one example of winning the support of consumers, many of whom have told others about via word of mouth, email and blogs. There’s a good chance that there are a number of local companies that are related but not in direct competition with you, and if you help them achieve their goals, they will often help you achieve yours. This could come in the form of referrals, links or other exposure. You should also utilize networking and leads groups. You want to build up as much support from as many sources as possible so that your company is the only logical choice.

No matter how determined you may be, going head on against a giant competitor is just stupid. Successful guerrillas find their enemy’s weaknesses and use them for leverage. You should be doing the same against your competitors. Effective guerrillas don’t typically have tons of cash sitting around so they arm and equip their forces with their enemy’s resources. This produces two main benefits. First, it gives you access to resources that you wouldn’t otherwise have, and second, it reduces the resources that your competitors can effectively utilize. You can’t exactly walk into your competitor’s office and take their furniture and printers, but you can use a similar approach. For example, we had a client a few years ago that was competing with some of the top bed manufacturers in the US. They had four major competitors who were each investing several million dollars each month in their own advertising and marketing, and our client couldn’t come anywhere near that level. We took a different approach by optimizing their website to outrank their competitors for their own brand names, which meant that every dollar that their competitors invested in marketing generated direct exposure for our client. As a direct result, our client had landed a 54 million dollar contract with a major luxury hotel chain.

Look at what really matters in your business and what doesn’t. Guerrillas often don’t wear uniforms. They wear whatever allows them to blend into their environment. They don’t put on big showy parades like a traditional military. Instead, they focus on exactly what they need to do so they can achieve their goal, and you should be doing the same thing. Attending prominent trade shows may make you look like an industry big-shot, but that doesn’t mean anything to your customers. Neither does sponsoring irrelevant events or advertising just for the sake of advertising. You should increase your advertising if possible, but more importantly, you should determine which channels are actually producing the results and drop any that aren’t. If you have a sales staff on salary, put them on commission with the opportunity to earn far more than they do now as long as they produce results. Instead of spending lots of money on fancy desks, buy folding tables – they do the same thing. Instead of trying to be cheap, buy quality chairs and set up dual monitors – productivity and revenue will increase.

For the record, guerrillas typically live in the jungles and go days or weeks between baths. You should avoid this or people won’t want to do business with you. They probably won’t even want to get within a few feet of you. It’s just something I thought you might want to think about before you take the concept too far.

When used properly and ethically, just about any form of technology can be used to increase the exposure you are able to generate for your company in a positive manner however it’s the few people who refuse to maintain any sense of decency that ruin it for the rest of us. These are the people that create dozens if not hundreds or thousands of fake profiles on various social network sites and then bombard you with useless bulletins, private messages and invites to push their products or services. Chances are that these also happen to be the same people that think SPAM email is perfectly acceptable as long as it makes them a few dollars.

Don’t let this scare you away from utilizing social networking in your marketing plan though. As long as you follow a few basic guidelines (mostly common sense) you can develop a new and useful marketing channel that requires no investment other than your own time.

1. Create an informative and honest profile that tells people what you do or what your company is about. You don’t need to replicate your entire company web site on your profile though. Just stick to the basics. You don’t have to use a photo, but under no circumstances should you use someone else’s picture ? even if it’s a stock photo that you’ve legally purchased. Keep in mind though, if you are in a relationship-based business such as real estate, investing or something of that nature, using a professional photo of yourself is a good idea.
2. Add other members to your network based on their relevance ? not a sexy photo. Simply having a large network will do little for your business if they have nothing to do with your industry. Like any other form of marketing, focus on quality over quantity. In most social networking web sites you can search for other members based on their interests or their industries. Develop a group of like minded people and you’ll all get a lot more out of the relationship.
3. Provide value. Are you one of the countless others that just created a profile and then adds everyone you find while providing little or no benefit to them? Don’t be. You could create an added value by offering the members of your network a promotional code that gives them a discount, give them early access to new products or even give them free information that would be useful to their business.
4. Don’t be annoying. If you have something to say, say it, but there is no need to post a bulletin or send a message every day. If you start down that path, not only will people start to ignore what you say, but they’ll likely remove you from their network. Think of it as a classic case of “less is more.”

1. Prizes must be clear and specific. If entrants don’t know what they may win then they probably won’t bother to enter your contest. More importantly, if they think they will win one thing and end up getting something completely different, chances are that it will generate negative publicity for your company. A perfect example of this was a contest held by a bay area Hooters restaurant for it’s employees in which the prize was allegedly a Toyota car. At the end of the contest, the winning employee received a toy Yoda ? an action figure from the Star Wars movie. Needless to say, the local media had a field day with that.

2. Ensure that your prizes are worthwhile. If it’s easier for an entrant to simply buy the prize instead of entering your contest you can be sure that is what they will do.

3. Eligibility must be clear. In order to be a contestant in your contest, does an entrant have to meet a certain set of criteria? Make that known right up front. It will save your potential entrants a lot of frustration.

4. Set a time frame. Whether the winners will be chosen the next week, the next month or the next vernal equinox after the third full moon of the year, you need to let the entrants know. If you are offering a free cruise in July, chances are that a winner will not reschedule his triple by-pass heart surgery upon winning – instead he will be frustrated that he can’t enjoy his prize.

When these criteria are met and your contest is properly marketed you can generally expect to see a good amount of exposure for your company. You should also ensure that you collect information from each entrant so that you can market to them again in the future.

Handwriting adds a personal touch that can’t be achieved with any graphic design technique or font. It’s that personal touch causes response rates to increase dramatically when it’s used in direct mail. Obviously you can hand-write names and addresses on envelopes but it doesn’t have to stop there. Handwritten sales or thank you letters can have a tremendous impact and you can even add handwriting to any of your printed marketing materials.

Effective guerilla marketing comes from a combination of a strong understanding of traditional marketing and the application of unconventional thinking. There is a lot more to it than simply pulling an outrageous stunt. In depth research on your target market and your competition must be conducted followed by detailed planning. Keep in mind that guerilla marketing can often take longer than other methods of marketing to generate initial results but will usually deliver larger rewards in the long run.

Now Ford is trying to use Flash mobs to promote the Ford Fusion. The problem here is that Ford is attempting to use something that has no relevance to their product and is of little to no interest to their target market. There are situations (such as pushing a particular political or social agenda) where a Flash mob could be a viable marketing tool, but this is not one of them.

If you plan to use an edgy guerilla marketing technique to promote your product or service you need to make sure that the technique is somehow relevant to your offering and that it will be accepted by your target market. Do your homework – otherwise you risk executing a marketing campaign that delivers little to no results, or even worse, one that alienates your consumers.