#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.

#66/111: Advanced Google AdWords

What is it about?

This year online advertising expenses overtook traditional marketing expenses. A lot of this money is invested into Search Engine Marketing. Brad Geddes explains how to market your product/service with Google AdWords.

What can I learn?

Be user-friendly: This mantra applies to SEO as well to Google AdWords. Write relevant ads and landing pages. If someone searches for buy ipod nano, you should display an ad about buying an iPod nano, not about buying an iPod or buying a MP3-Player. Why should you do this? Firstly, it increases your conversion rate because people actually find what they are looking. Secondly, you position gets better if your maximum CPC remains constant.

Use thank you pages: After subscribing to a newsletter or buying a item, you often get these thank you pages. Don’t miss this opportunity to strengthen your relationship with your customer. You can provide white papers, offer them subscription to special deals or recommend other products.

Test everything: Everything. Test your headlines, your ad copy, your landing page and different keywords. Google AdWords offers you tools for testing your ads. So how do you test? A simple method is to write three headlines and three ad copies and combine each with another. Therefore, you got nine different ads. If you got enough conversions on the ads. Go with the winner and look for an other keyword to optimize.

Conclusion

Advanced Google AdWords is such a great book. It covers nearly everything you want to know about Google AdWords and SEM. There is so much to learn about in only about 500 pages. There are even plans for starting and running your AdWords campaign. Great book. If you want to learn about Google Adwords, buy this book!

#39/111: Think Outside the Inbox

What is it about?

David Cummings and Adam Blitzer explain how to automate your sales process and how marketing automation can save you time and increase your customer count.

Key points?

Segment your customers: It’s nothing new to segment your customers into age, location or job occupation. But you could also segment your customers into their willingness to buy. They propose to add scores for each customer on which they get treated differently. For example, you could give someone +10 points, if he enters his email address or +25 if he downloads the trial. This allows you to tailor individual action to each willingness segment.

Join your customer informations: Most companies got a CRM, website analytics, bid on Adwords and maybe work with salesforce.com. It’s important to collect all data and make it more useful. If you connect your CRM and website analytics, you can ask people why they don’t use your website anymore or offer upgrades for power users. But beware, it shouldn’t be too creepy.

Drip marketing: In Referral Engine I presented this concept at first. It’s about staying in touch with your customers and prospects. You can send them useful information, offer specials or invite them to webinars. It becomes especially powerful if you use it with customer segmentation. You could take people with low willingness scores into a nurture program where you offer them useful information and slowly build a relationship.

Conclusion

There are some really cool ideas which only a few companies use today. I think these tools are extremely powerful and you should really consider starting to employ them. Think Outside the Inbox is not really a how to guide but maybe there is one. If you know one, please comment on this post. Thanks!

#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.