Jay Conrad Levinson is the most successful business author in history, thanks to his best-selling Guerrilla Marketing series which has sold 20 million copies, been translated into 56 languages and is now required reading on MBA programmes.

SuccessTrack: What are three things that a business owner can do in the next month to improve their marketing?

Jay Conrad Levinson: ‘I love this question because I know it is so important. The first thing is to start with a seven-sentence plan. The Guerrilla Marketing Strategy is only seven sentences long. If you don’t start with a plan it’s like entering a battle and the commander saying, “Ready, fire… aim!” I’ll tell you what the ‘seven-sentence’ Guerrilla Marketing plan is… if you write a Guerrilla Marketing plan it should never, never take longer than five minutes because you’ve got to trust your instinct when you write these short seven sentences.

The first one tells the purpose of your marketing: what do you want people to do physically? Do you want them to click to your website, make a phone call, or visit your store?

The second sentence is the competitive advantage that you’ll stress to achieve that purpose. Everyone has benefits but you probably offer competitive advantages that your competition does not offer.

The third sentence is your target audience. Remember, you may have more than one target audience.

The fourth sentence – the only long one – details the marketing weapons that you’ll use.’

SuccessTrack: What do you mean by ‘marketing weapons’?

Jay Conrad Levinson: ‘It could be speaking at a club or writing an article for a newspaper, offering free consultations, giving free seminars, using classified ads, getting better search engine placement online. It means being able to operate on the Internet inexpensively and effectively. It could be writing good subject lines for your emails.

‘We have identified 200 marketing weapons and of those, over 100 are free. They are on our website (www.gmarketing.com).

‘Once you’ve selected those weapons, you move to the fifth sentence which describes your niche in the marketplace. What do you stand for? Is it quality, economy, value, convenience, speed, or innovation?

‘The sixth sentence tells your identity not your image because image is a lie, defined in the dictionary as “a façade”. You ought to describe your identity in your marketing plan.

‘The seventh sentence tells you your marketing budget and it should be expressed as a percentage of your projected gross sales. In 2007, the average American and European business invested 4% of their gross sales in marketing.

‘That plan should only take you five minutes to write because you’re going to trust your instincts and they’re all short sentences.

‘The second thing you’ve got to do to really make marketing succeed for you is to commit to that plan. That’s very hard. Most marketing lies in graveyards because it was abandoned too soon. Most people in business don’t have a clue how fast marketing works – it does not work fast. It works eventually. If you do it right, it works all the time. If you try to get it to work fast, it will die on the vine before it even had a chance to reach fruition. You have to hang in there and commit for a long time – three months, six months, or a year. I don’t like admitting this but mediocre marketing with commitment works better than great marketing without commitment.

‘And the third thing is achieving balance in your life. I now work a three-day week.’