I’ve been looking through my journals from 30 years ago and realizing something:
These are the good old days.
Right now.
Back then, we had all kinds of guerrilla marketing playbooks.
Little business cards scattered around town.
Yellow flyers on supermarket bulletin boards.
Tear-off tabs at libraries and coffee shops.
Recorded telephone messages people could call to hear more.
The tools were primitive, but the objective was exactly the same as it is today:
Get the right person’s attention.
Deliver a compelling message.
Invite them to take the next step.
That will never go out of style.
What’s amazing is that the tools we have today make that old-school playbook easier, more precise and less expensive than it has ever been.
You don’t need a television budget.
You don’t need a complicated funnel.
You don’t even need a video.
You can create one simple static ad for Meta or Instagram.
One image.
One headline.
One invitation.
Lovely homes. Zero down payment.
I buy your jewelry.
Stop your divorce.
If you can find the three or four words that make the right person stop and think, Wait…tell me more, you’re in business.
Then you can show that message to thousands of exactly the right people in your town for a few dollars a day.
That’s why I think this may be the greatest time ever to be an old-school marketer.
The technology isn’t replacing the fundamentals.
It’s amplifying them.
The marketers who understand people…who know how to choose a market, craft a message and make one clear offer…have access to a delivery system we could only have dreamed about 30 years ago.
So don’t let the technology make marketing seem more complicated.
Start with the same question we asked when all we had was a little yellow card:
What could I put in front of the right person today that would make them want to know more?