#24/111: microMARKETING

What is it about?

Greg Verding talks about micro branding, viral marketing and social media. He works with a lot of case studies and recommends to view them.

Key points?

look for a niche: It’s better to get 10% of 1000 than 1% of 5000. Try to define and reach a small demographic and widen it over time.

build a relationship: Try to interact with your customers and prospects. If they feel loved, they probably will love you.

try to get people talk about you: Basically the good ol’ Word of mouth marketing.

Conclusion

After reading two books (Inbound Marketing and The New Rules of Marketing & PR) on this topic, I’m not so impressed by this one. Maybe it’s just the problem that at the moment people try to explain events in the past without checking if they will work in the future. I.e., actions in business should bring repeatable success. However, this book is more realistic than the other two. It don’t present social media marketing as an holy grail. Greg Verding shows the strengths and weaknesses of social media marketing and emphasizes that there is luck involved.

#23/111: Grinding It Out

What is it about?

I have always believed that each man makes his own happiness and is responsible for his own problems. That’s the first sentence in this book and Ray Kroc meant it. He describes his pursuit of happiness from a piano player to the chairman of McDonald’s.

Key points?

You are responsible for your own life: In the early years a franchisee opened a McDonald’s restaurant nearly to some other burger restaurant. The other restaurant offered burgers for 10 cents each (15 cents at McDonald’s) but people got their fries and milk shakes at McDonald’s. After a while the other restaurant lowered all prices to 10 cents. The manager of McDonald’s called Ray Kroc and asked if he should inform the Center for Combating Unfair Competition. Ray Kroc said: “No, make burger which are worth 15 cents.”

Stay Green: Basically you should try to get not too conservative or too comfortable. “When you’re green, you’re growing. When you’re ripe, you rot.” Try new things, be open and don’t afraid of failure. At McDonald’s they introduce a lot of new meals, some fail, some prosper (e.g. the BigMac).

QSC and V: Quality, Service, Cleanness and Value these are the main values of McDonald’s. They are easily portable to other businesses.

Conclusion

What a great book! I love how Ray Kroc impersonates the American Dream. He worked hard, he took responsibility for himself and he helped other people to reach their dreams. Definitely a recommendation!

#22/111: Eyeballs Out

What is it about?

What is life about on an aircraft carrier? And how can it be applied to business? Donna Sturgess experienced this for her own for two days and wrote about her discoveries she made.

Key points?

Create thrill: Often big organizations lack of risk-taking people. If you want to turn risk-averse people into risk-taking people you should try to create thrill. Introduce new concepts, let people take risks for themselves. This action can revitalize your company.

Immerse yourself: One key point of IDEO’s success is observing the consumer. Mrs Sturgess recommends a similar concept. You should immerse yourself into a new setting (e.g. NASCAR racing, glassblowing). This allows you to get a new vantage point which probably results into new ideas.

Use games: I really like this point. Use games – built a game-like environment. That is, you can use badges for achievements, e.g. first 100 sales, first product shipped or first marketing campaign launched. Furthermore, she proposes to use more interactive strategy games for business (maybe realtime?). It’s an vague idea but somehow really cool and exciting.

Empower young employees: Empowerment isn’t new to business but this approach is. On the USS Stennis (the aircraft carrier) the average sailor is 20 years old and they got a lot of responsibility. In companies, the average age is usually much higher. But if you don’t allow young people to learn and take responsibility, you don’t empower them.

Conclusion

This book is pretty short but got some really great ideas. I can’t really estimate the impact because it was published this year though I think that it can improve the business world. In conclusion, read it for yourself and decide if it is worth or not.

#21/111: Guerrilla Marketing

What is it about?

Guerrilla Marketing introduces you to marketing basics and a lot of different forms of marketing (e.g. newspapers, billboards, fliers). It focuses on small businesses and tries to show how to use your dollars more effectively.

Key points?

Focus: At first you should find out who your prospects are. What do they like? What are their hobbies? Where do they live? This allows you to spend your money better than trying to convince everybody that they need your product/service.

Be persistent: If you start your marketing champaign you should be able to run it regularly. Furthermore, it is important to stick with your campaign even if it doesn’t deliver immediate success. Marlboro stuck with their cowboy campaign for 30 years although it haven’t worked in the first year.

Market to your customers: It is about six times more expensive to market to prospects than to your customers. Therefore, try to sell more to your existing customers who already build confidence and trust with your company.

Test, Test, Test: If you’re not testing, you’re guessing. Test as much as you can and discard your losers and put this money in your winners.

Conclusion

The first part, which is about 80 pages long, was really useful and great. Sadly, this don’t apply to the rest of the book. A lot is just too shallow to be useful and other parts consist mostly of repetitions. You can see that this book is revised but not in-depth. There are statements which are certainly 30 years old and should be deleted by now.