New Business Book Summary Available for The Ways to New

In today’s complex and competitive business environment, the importance of marketing has declined. As a result, many companies are struggling to find the inspiration needed to drive growth. In The Ways to New, Jean-Marie Dru explains how marketing executives can use the three-phase Disruption methodology to close the gap between marketing and innovation. By referencing case studies from major companies around the world, he describes how marketing executives can change the way they think about their markets, customers, and companies. Dru’s advice can guide marketing executives as they overcome debilitating stagnation, generate innovative ideas, build stronger brands, and drive continuous growth at all levels of their organizations.

New Business Book Summary Available for Disruptive Marketing

In Disruptive Marketing, Geoffrey Colon claims that the world marketers face today is one where binary and linear decision making no longer works. This is because consumers now control brands, not the other way around. The new power of consumers is a byproduct of the digital revolution: Consumers have more agency thanks to the web and advances in mobile technology. To combat this, marketers must think creatively about problem solving and become disruptive instead of relying on traditional, non-human-centric methods.

New Business Book Summary Available for Madison Avenue Manslaughter

The advertising industry is often portrayed as exciting, creative, and profitable. However, factors such as the change in pay structure, rise of holding companies, profit-hungry shareholders, and increased workload resulting from the digital revolution is draining agencies' resources and squeezing their profits. Agencies seem unable or unwilling to adjust to the changing world around them. In Madison Avenue Manslaughter, Michael Farmer chronicles the rise and fall of the advertising agency, and presents some uncomfortable truths that must be faced if agencies want to stop their decline and rebuild their organizations and relationships with clients.

New Business Book Summary Available for Content Inc.

Traditionally, entrepreneurs have launched products or services in order to start businesses. Today's world is different--successful businesses can be based on creating and distributing information that audiences love. In Content Inc., Joe Pulizzi presents a new business model that is focused on building loyal audiences through valuable content.

New Business Book Summary Available for Does It Work?

In Does It Work?, Shane Atchison and Jason Burby tap into their own experiences as digital marketers of the POSSIBLE creative agency to provide the tools and processes necessary for creating effective marketing plans. A guidebook to delivering business value, Does It Work? demonstrates that by setting goals, employing metrics, and fueling creativity with data, digital marketers can build more effective brands. To this end, Atchison and Burby offer 10 marketing principles that all brands must follow to achieve success in today’s digital world.

New Business Book Summary Available for Marketing with Social Media

Social media is no longer just a fad, it is the new norm. If businesses want sales results, they will need to know how to utilize social media and connect with all their clients and customers. The good news is that, unlike other marketing tools, the only cost of social media is time, and it can be used anywhere, anytime. In Marketing with Social Media, Linda Coles explains the various social media platforms and suggests how they can best be used for marketing.

New summary available for Mastering the World of Marketing

Marketing is changing, and many marketers feel overwhelmed with questions about how to respond to that change. At the same time, more information is available today about marketing than ever before. In Mastering the World of Marketing, Eric Taylor and David Riklan offer readers 50 individual articles on topics from social media to psychological triggers to networking. Each article is written by a different author who is an expert in a particular marketing topic or practice. The book’s purpose is to give readers ideas for marketing initiatives and act as a resource guide for marketers.

New Summary Available for The Brain Sell

In the last 50 years, neuroscience has made tremendous strides in understanding the brain, even developing techniques to measure people’s thoughts and emotions in real time. For advertisers and marketers, brain research is enormously beneficial for improving market research findings and designing more enticing retail experiences. In The Brain Sell, Dr. David Lewis draws from his own experiences as a neuroscience researcher to relate how neuroscience, behavioral economics, and consumer psychology have led to the development of increasingly more effective methods of advertising and retailing. Dr. Lewis also explores the fields of data collection and analysis, and discusses concerns consumers have about how their personal data is being collected and studied.

What You Need to Know About Marketing

Marketing has a somewhat negative reputation in modern society—it is often thought of as an attempt to get people to buy things they neither need nor want. This, however, is based upon a misconception that marketing and sales are synonyms. Not only are the two concepts not the same thing, they are actually in many ways the opposite of one another. As Simon Middleton explains in What You Need to Know About Marketing, sales begins when a company has a product it needs to sell to a customer, while marketing begins when a company attempts to understand what the customer wants or needs to buy. It is a matter of learning what those wants and needs are and how they can best be satisfied. Therefore, the customer’s satisfaction lies at the very heart of marketing.

It's Not the Size of the Data

It’s Not the Size of the Data: It’s How You Use It combines rigorous research, numerous case studies, and step-by-step instructions on how to design and implement a marketing analytics dashboard. Koen Pauwels teaches managers to stop getting lost in data and bring clarity to every short-term and long-term marketing decision. Through the use of dashboards and analytics, businesses learn how to integrate data with marketing strategies to increase company success.

HBR’s 10 Must Reads On Strategic Marketing

Thanks to changing customers and a changing business environment, marketing techniques also need to change in order to be successful. Although it is no longer at the front end of the sales funnel, marketing is increasingly becoming a strategic partner in driving improved business results. In turn, these results are becoming more and more dependent on understanding and serving customers in innovative and thoughtful ways. HBR’s 10 Must Reads On Strategic Marketing provides valuable insights into the changing landscape of the marketing function, as well as practical steps for reinventing their marketing processes to better serve customers and drive profitable growth.

Winning the Story Wars

Throughout the ages, stories have brought societies together and helped their members create a shared sense of the world. In fact, storytelling strategist and creative expert Jonah Sachs believes that stories have become the only means of communication with the power to build enduring connections between consumers and brands—connections that inspire people to reach higher, live better, and dream bigger than ever before. In Winning the Story Wars, Sachs pinpoints the roots of this power and how companies can tap into it. He also exposes the weakness of conventional marketing messages focused on human inadequacy and deficiency, explaining why modern consumers are hungry for value-based stories that help them see the potential in humankind and in themselves.

In The Face-to-Face Book, Ed Keller and Brad Fay seek to expand the definition of “social marketing” to include websites like Facebook and Twitter along with face-to-face conversations and other forms of word-of-mouth communication. They review topics such as new research and understanding of how social influence helps determine consumers’ responses to advertisements, how to make a brand more “talkworthy,” and how engaging “influencers” can benefit a brand. They also discuss the often under-recognized role that social influence plays in determining the success of marketing and advertising of brands, products, services, and companies.

Social Machines

According to Peter Semmelhack, by 2020, at least 50 billion products will be sharing information over the Internet. In Social Machines, he argues that the traditional business model of creating a product that does not use digital technology is obsolete, and companies that cling to this business model are doomed to fail. He explains the significance and benefits of designing and building social machines and presents several examples of companies that have already made the leap to integrating technology to improve the social presence of their products. He also provides practical advice for understanding the design requirements for building social machines and implementing digital technology in almost any industry.

Baked In

In Baked In, Alex Bogusky and John Winsor apply their expertise as marketing and advertising veterans who are able to feel the pulse of the changing 21st-century business world. They guide the reader in understanding the most intuitive, efficient, and modern methods of marketing, which is to “bake it in,” or to design products and services that market themselves.

In Go Mobile, Jeanne Hopkins and Jamie Turner offer insights into the relatively new world of mobile marketing. While it can seem daunting to learn about apps, 2D codes, and location-based marketing, these mobile terms are actually not difficult to understand and can be easily implemented in most businesses’ marketing plans. The authors break down the technology associated with mobile marketing and give step-by-step plans that any marketing team or small business can quickly implement.

The Power of Search Engines, Contextual Advertising, and Online Communities

Given the advent of the Internet, transforming customer relationships into an online community is more important than ever before. Digital tools are enabling businesses and individuals to develop powerful brands.

When a person uses an online search engine, the results are a mélange of corporate content, blog postings, and customer reviews. All the results appear to have equal weight and importance, creating a level playing field for content creators.

In this environment, traditional mass media advertising and communications become ineffective. This is fundamentally changing business, how people communicate, and how people buy.

By using digital tools, companies can build awareness and beat the competition. One of the goals is to help businesses produce valuable online content and become their own media channels.

One way to begin is through contextual advertising: an organization buys a targeted keyword from an Internet search engine and when a user searches with that keyword, the company's ad appears in the results.

The power of contextual advertising is twofold:
1) it appears when a prospect is in search mode and
2) the company only pays for the advertisement if the user clicks on it.

Most companies do not have a strong enough presence in search engines, leaving opportunities behind for competitors. Every business and entrepreneur should have their own unique digital footprint, defined by the first page of search results that appear in a search engine.

This article is based on the book "Six Pixels of Separation." The book summary is available online at Business Book Summaries.

It's the Sale, Stupid.

Salesmanship should be the first, not the last, step in the marketing process. Marketing should lead to sales.

Otherwise, it's just a waste of time and money.

Sales should not be removed from the marketing process, as it is in many companies. Certain steps should be taken so that a company or a person becomes a customer or a client.

These include:

Developing a strategy for winning new business based on value proposition. You have to know that one reason why people should do business with you, and not with your competition.

Let your market know. So you have determined your value proposition. Now let them know every way you can.

Let them love you. Court your market. Let them fall in love with you. Overcome barriers to sales by lowering prices, offering additional services, extending warranties, or giving trial period.

Moreover, don't put the burden of a sale on a prospective client. That's your job.

Ignore the competition and start from scratch.

Never start the marketing process by what the competition does. That limits creativity.

Rather, like Albert Einstein, "think outside the box." Use your imagination to achieve results.

Step beyond existing models and be creative.

This article was based on the book "Your Marketing Sucks" by Mark Stevens. The book summary is available online at Business Book Summaries.

Tools to Keep Tabs on Competitors

On the flip side, it is easier than ever to track how your competition is doing on the Web if you know what you are doing. Here are seven different ways you can track yourself relative to your competitors:

1. Website Grade – Go to WebsiteGrader.com and run your website alongside your competitors’ web sites to see how well you do. Pay special attention to upstart competitors who might be more focused on leveraging the Web than some of the more traditional players.

2. Delicious – Delicious.com is an online version of someone’s browser bookmarks, so if many people have your site bookmarked, it means you have remarkable content. If your competitors’ bookmarks grow rapidly, it means the marketplace is starting to respond to something they are saying or doing.

3. Inbound Links – An increase in the number of links to a site can indicate that a competitor is getting more traction with its products.

4. TwitterGrade – Go to Twitter.Grader.com and run your company’s Twitter profile through and compare it to each competitor. You should track this metric over time.

5. Facebook Fans – Go to Facebook.com and see the number of fans your company’s web site has relative to your competitor’s web site. You will have to search around to find the company page in facebook. This number is worth tracking over time – if your competitor starts to gain a lot of fans, then it means their customer loyalty is increasing.

6. Compete – Go to Compete.com and compare their estimate of the traffic your site is getting versus your competitors.

7. Buzz – Go to Google and do a search on “your brand” and look at the number of results in the upper right hand corner. Do the same for each of your competitors. The number of results shows the number of pages on the Web where the brand is mentioned. This metric is worth tracking over time as it will let you know how your “buzz” is relative to your competitors’. You can do the same thing in blogsearch.google to see how your buzz is going relative to your competitors in the blogosphere.

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