Marketing Guru Jay Levinson to Kick Off ABA's BEA Education Program

Bestselling author Jay Conrad Levinson

Bestselling author and "father of guerrilla marketing" Jay Conrad Levinson will share some of his innovative marketing strategies at a session kicking off ABA's All-Day Education Program at this year's BookExpo America in Chicago. On Thursday, June 3, from 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m., at the "Marketing Plenary" session, Levinson will share some of the keys to maximizing a business' success with low-cost, high-impact strategies, which he termed "guerrilla marketing." These concepts have revolutionized small business marketing and become so influential that books in his bestselling series, Guerrilla Marketing, are required reading in many MBA programs.

"Guerrilla Marketing provides [businesses with] 100 different marketing weapons, and at BEA, I'm going to go through each of those weapons," Levinson told BTW. "It's going to be good stuff … and will, in the spirit of guerrillas, show unconventional means of achieving conventional goals."

Levinson noted that there are 20 ways in which guerrilla marketing differs from traditional marketing. For one, it is aimed at small businesses, such as independent booksellers. A guerrilla marketing campaign, he continued, is not about investing money; it's about investing "time, energy, imagination, and knowledge."

Moreover, guerrilla marketing is about growing "geometrically," he said. "That means enlarging the size of each transaction; increasing transactions per year; and [harnessing the] referral power of customers," he said, and added that follow up is a key to the success of small businesses. "The sale is the beginning. It is the follow-up that brings profits."

In short, "the basic tenets of guerrilla marketing embrace relationships, competitive advantages, proper targeting … rendering impeccable service, and being a tiger when it comes to follow-up and gaining referrals," he explained.

As a bonus, bestselling author Seth Godin will join Levinson at the "Marketing Plenary" seminar. Godin's books Permission Marketing, Unleashing the Ideavirus and Purple Cow have been among the bestselling marketing books of the last decade. Godin and Levinson collaborated on three of the guerrilla marketing books. [To read a previous article on Godin, click here.]

Both seminars are part of a full day of panels and seminars designed specifically for independent booksellers. ABA's Thursday education program runs from 9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. at the McCormick Place Convention Center and is free to all ABA member bookstores and their employees who register for BEA. (Booksellers must indicate on the BEA registration form that they are ABA members, and they must register for the all-day program. For more about the new BEA Super Pass, click here.) --David Grogan