marketing

There are 24 posts tagged marketing (this is page 3 of 6).

#78/111: Smarter, Faster, Cheaper

What is it about?

Smarter, Faster, Cheaper marketing? David Siteman Garland thinks that he found the solution to a lot of problems in marketing for small business/startup founders.

What can I learn?

Relationships can’t be outsourced: There’s a nice analogy in the book. Would you send your intern to a lunch with your customers instead of going for yourself? No? Then don’t outsource your social media present to your intern.

Building authority takes time: It certainly does. Do expect 25,000 hits per day and seven speech invitations in the first month. Let’s take for example 37signals which took about 5 years to become famous. Try to provide information in regular intervals, comment on other blogs and write guest posts and you will see that they will come.

Go offline: This is a refreshing point for a social media book. Online isn’t everything. Invite your customers to a lunch. Send thank you cards. You can be smart, fast and cheap even in offline marketing.

Conclusion

Smarter, Faster, Cheaper is a solid book. I said it a time ago and say it again: There isn’t so much new in the social media sector. I wouldn’t say that you shouldn’t buy this book. A lot of people love it. It’s okay.

#74.0/111: My Life in Advertising

What is it about?

This book is actually two. My Life in Advertising, the autobiography of Claude C. Hopkins and his famous publication Scientific Advertising. In this post I will review My Life in Advertising.

What can I learn?

Fun is subjective: Claude C. Hopkins was raised in a highly religious household. His mother forbid him seeing plays or playing cards, because she believed that these are diabolic activities. Therefore, he looked for other activities and began cleaning at his school and distributing fliers. He said: “The only game I’ve ever learned is business.”. It’s his occupation and recreation.

Simple, natural ads with a coupon: His most successful ads followed this scheme. Firstly, he said that he was raised as a simple man, so he could only sell to other simple man, which were the majority. Secondly, the ads were natural, i.e. no lies, no marketing speech. Often he described how something was created and built a campaign on this obvious fact. For example, he created a campaign for Schlitz Beer in which he described how everything was cleaned twice a day and the bottles were washed four times. This was industry standard but nobody ever used it in an ad before. Thirdly, he inserted coupons for free samples because he wants to decrease the prospects risk and truly convince them that the product is excellent.

His great mistake: There is a chapter called My Great Mistake where he talks about don’t starting a company on his own. Many of his former scholars, i.e. which learned from him how to create great advertising, started their own companies and succeeded. He said that he never had enough self-confidence. After many years working for other people and agencies, he finally decided to start his own businesses which were successful. However, he thinks that this isn’t an advice for the majority. Everyone should decide on his own where he fits and what he wants.

Conclusion

I truly enjoyed My Life in Advertising. This is an other vintage classic from 1927 and most observations are still true today. It’s interesting how he worked his way up from a fruit picker. Then decided to get a degree in accounting. There he realized that accounting is just a overhead and costs will always be minimized. Therefore he started to switch to the money earners, i.e. into advertising. In the last chapter he wrote that he helps juvenile delinquents to love work as he do which is impressive for this time.  All in all a great biography. Recommendation.

#70/111: Commonsense Direct & Digital Marketing

What is it about?

What is direct marketing? A adequate description is salesmanship-in-print. Drayton Bird is one of the best salesman-in-print and he shows you how to find appropriate prospects, how to write your copy and how to test your results.

What can I learn?

Sell your product, not your designing skills: One of the biggest mistakes in direct marketing is trying to show off your design skills. Why? You should ask yourself: What is the purpose of marketing? Your answer should be generating sales. It isn’t about showing off your creativity, it isn’t about being über clever. It’s simply about generating sales. Tests showed that simple and honest ads sold better than clever ones.

Long copy works: Today, we want everything fast, we don’t take the time to read something, etc. However, people still read long copy, if they are interested. Which leads to the question? Should you care about the people who don’t even consider trying your product? Not at the cost of your future customers. Bird says that marketeers often don’t understand that $100 sales and $30 costs are better than $140 sales and $90 costs. If you are interested in a product/service, you want to read about it. You want to know more about it. Long copy supplies exactly that. It helps your prospect to learn more about your product, to face their fears and to build trust.

Test and go with the winner: If you do online marketing, testing is pretty easy and you should use it. A simple change of the headline can increase your profit threefold. A other call to action may increase your conversion rate about 50%. You can’t guess these things, you have to test them. Every situation is different and there is always a way to improve your ad. However, sometimes decision makers think that you can’t use this headline, although it triples your profit. Or that the ad doesn’t look great, although it works better than the alternatives. Don’t be fooled by your world-view. Test everything and go with the winner.

Conclusion

Commonsense Direct & Digital Marketing is massive. It’s about 420 pages long, covers lots of details of great direct marketing and is written by a real leader in this field. I love how clear Drayton Bird explains the fundamentals and empathizes that the key is in testing and understanding the customer and not in being overly creative. If you want to sell your product/service online, by mail or somehow, you should read this book. Recommendation!