A Marketing Must Have

The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly – David Meerman Scott (Wiley – Fourth Edition)

When David Meerman Scott originally released The New Rules of Marketing & PR six years ago, it was at the time a groundbreaking, direct to consumers approach that was a twist to traditional marketing. While the book may not have spawned a revolution, it certainly was one of the early roadmaps to the evolution of how to communicate and market directly to consumers.

In the completely revised and updated fourth edition of The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly, Scott goes beyond just strategies and delves directly into tactics that not just marketers, but business owners can put into practice today to improve their results.

 

Rather than taking the often expensive route of trying to reach consumers through traditional mediums, utilizing repetition of messages to hopefully reach consumers, Scott offers up techniques to open up a treasure trove of information about your products and services and open the door to them becoming your customer. This is steps ahead of tried and true calls to action, making the approach more about the consumer than it is about you and your business.

Some may be quick to claim that this is a death knell for traditional marketers, allowing business owners to start a DIY marketing storm, but the reality is that nimble practitioners will simply showcase their value by deliver focused content that will allow business to stand out in the storm. If this book isn’t already in your business toolbox, it should be.

Why An Educated Consumer is Your Best Customer

Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help Not Hype – Jay Baer (Portfolio Publishing)

Back in the early 1980s clothing merchant Sy Syms coined the phrase, “an educated consumer is our best customer” as a way to attract clientele to his men’s clothing outlets. He reasoned that if customers knew that they would get a good deal on a nice suit every time they shopped at his stores, then would keep coming back for more. It was an interesting concept, meant to be helpful rather than hype-ful and it was about 30 years before it’s time.

While things didn’t work out in the end for Sy Syms with his stores closing in bankruptcy a few years back, the concept of the educated consumer has become a whole new way for smart marketers to attract new customers. That concept is at the center of Jay Baer’s new book, Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help Not Hype. The online world has created a seismic shift in consumer’s favor when it comes to the purchase process. The abundance of information that is available to consumers about the products and services that the purchase everyday is truly staggering.

 

By the same token the information available to those consumers about your business is equally abundant. Baer makes the case that marketing battleground has shifted from winning the consumer’s hearts to winning the consumer’s minds. I have always made the argument that the best person to tell your businesses story is you and Baer illustrates that concept with examples of real companies succeeding by offering help rather than hype.

As a healthcare marketer it would be easy for me to think that sites like WEB MD would lead patients to try to treat themselves and avoid coming to a doctor’s office for help. The reality is that while WEB MD does offer treatment suggestions, in the end they help doctor’s to treat patients because the patient is better educated about potential illnesses or injuries; they can communicate more clearly, ask better questions and assist physicians in finding the best treatment options. So why would I want to shift marketing focus away from physician credentials and cool new equipment, to patient focused information to help them make better healthcare choices?

It may not be an easy transition for veteran marketers to make from talking at consumers to engaging consumers and drawing them in and allowing them to take the lead. A quick scan of how many companies use tweets, likes and blogs to continue to jam branding statements down consumer’s throats will tell you it’s not an easy jump. Baer makes the process easier with a series of blueprints to guide you through the process. I might suggest delving into the blueprints then going back to the real business examples of how companies “youtilize” themselves.

Inside Insights On Egos

Icons and Idiots: Straight Talk on Leadership – Bob Lutz (Portfolio Books)

If you pick up Icons and Idiots: Straight Talk on Leadership expecting to pick up some insights on what separates great leaders from the not so great, I am afraid you will sorely disappointed. Bob Lutz, the octogenarian, automotive executive who held a plethora of high powered roles with GM, Ford, Chrysler, BMW and Exide offers some entertaining opinions on his fellow automotive executives that he witnessed in action, often up close and personal.

Lutz makes a few things abundantly clear; he was (and is) a mover and shaker in the automotive industry, he has a VERY high opinion of himself, and he is certainly not shy about expressing his thoughts about his colleagues and the leaders he has interacted with during his career.

The most telling and entertaining profiles are of automotive industry colleagues who’s leadership and personalities Lutz dissects and more often than not flays with a rapier wit and the light touch of a verbal bludgeon.  Clearly Lutz is beyond worrying about winning friends and influencing people, which in the end makes the book so entertaining.

While you can glean that Lutz played a masters hand in the politics of middle to senior to C-suite management, always properly positioning himself for next steps and willing to make the beneficial compromise; I’m not certain that you will gain much in the way of useful leadership strategy here. Bottom line; Icons and Idiots, does live up to its promise of doling out straight talk.

 

The Five Levels of Leadership Revisited

John C. Maxwell – How Successful People Lead (Center Street)

With more than 21 million books sold and 6 million participants in his leadership training programs in 177 countries around the globe, John C. Maxwell is arguably one of the world’s leading experts on what makes leaders and what makes them tick.

Along the way, Maxwell has identified the traits, tendencies, actions and levels of leadership. His bestselling 2011 book The Five Levels of Leadership set forth a yardstick by which leaders can measure where they are on the evolutionary scale of leadership.

The 5 Levels of Leadership are:
1. Position - People follow because they have to.
2. Permission - People follow because they want to.
3. Production - People follow because of what you have done for the organization.
4. People Development - People follow because of what you have done for them personally.
5. Pinnacle - People follow because of who you are and what you represent.

 

In his new book, How Successful People Lead, Maxwell revisits the five levels and makes the case that leadership is truly a life long journey were true leaders “learn, earn and return.” As always, Maxwell makes the case that true leaders are always seeking to develop, train and grow the next generation of leaders.

Maxwell is exactly on point with this thought process. It echoes one of my all-time favorite leadership quotes, from the equally legendary leadership guru, Tom Peters who said, “leaders don’t create followers, they create new leaders.” The five levels should be viewed by true leaders as a road map for that leadership journey. That journey never truly reaches a conclusion; leaders at the pinnacle are always up to the challenge of developing the next generation of leaders.  

Idris Mootee – 60 Minute Brand Strategist (Wiley Publishing)

How do you want your business to be known?

A seemingly simple question…that has caused business nightmares and cost them millions of dollars in the pursuit of a legitimate answer. With his self-described “essential brand book for marketing professionals” 60 Minute Brand Strategist Idris Mootee, chief executive officer of Idea Couture, seeks a simple answer to answer the question. He even goes so far as claiming that this 60 minute read should help marketers answer the question for their companies/clients.

I’m not certain Mootee lays claim to doing what so many have who have laid claim to in the past; to have the magic plan or strategy to deliver the branding goods. The simple fact is; there is a reason why so much has been written and claimed about this process, everyone thinks they have the answer or the perfect plan, when in reality, there is no perfect plan that fits every business. What I think Mootee does successfully is offer up a comprehensive breakdown of what successful brands have done well in an effort to road map methods of brand development.

Having been through the dynamic process of mission-ing and vision-ing strategy sessions that for a variety of businesses, the section on the strategic branding process was of particular interest.  The role of brand identity, brand personality and how it plays into the customer experience are key steps that many businesses forget or forgo in the branding process. Mootee boils the process down to ten step steps to pull together a disparate array of strategic and business information.

While 60 Minute Brand Strategist makes for a good refresher course for marketers, it may prove to be a useful tool to encourage buy in from C-Suite and other players in the business development and branding process.

Focus On the One Thing

The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results– Gary Keller & Jay Papasan (Bard Press)

A few years back California passed Proposition 227 which mandated an English immersion approach to teaching kids whose primary language wasn’t English. Teachers union-types and so-called education “experts” decried the policy as unfair and harmful to the students. After a year of focusing on teaching the students in one language rather than using the prior method of bilingual education, the results demonstrated that the students were actually performing at a higher level.

This shocked and dismayed the “experts” but, was actually a very predictable result. By focusing the efforts, 100% of the time on one thing, students learned English faster and improved the results across the board. If you did anything with a 100% focus rather than splitting your focus in half or quarters or eights, what do you think the results would be?

While multi-tasking has been the rallying cry for business for years, yet study after study as shown that outcomes aren’t great for those who practice it. Gary Keller and Jay Papasan are offering up a contrarian view to multi-tasking in the new book The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results which makes the case not only for singular focus, but also for a process of determining what your priority should be.

They make the case that with laser focus being brought to your “one thing” it can start a series of dominos tumbling that lead to extraordinary results. The process that leads to those results starts with the work of trying to identify your one thing. Keller and Papasan detail the plan for “time blocking” a daily, four-hour, appointment with yourself used to focus on your one thing. They also spell out the three commitments you must make to make that block as productive as possible.

They cite the effectiveness of the practice of the One Thing; the challenge for rank and file workers is the inherent expectations of the work place. Like many business planning programs, The One Thing may be easier for those entrepreneurs and solo practitioners who can guide their own fates.  

A Look Back…to the Future?

Flashback to September 26, 1960, 70 million Americans witnessed a first in U.S. political history when the Presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon aired on broadcast television. Prior to that point, the candidates for President had debated only on radio and political observers of that era spoke about JFK appearing calm, cool and collected and Nixon profusely sweating and looking generally uncomfortable. JFK was proclaimed the clear winner, yet those who chose to listen, rather than watch the debate said on content alone, Nixon was the clear victor.

Television had changed the face of politics seemingly forever. Flash forward to today and we see the face of not only politics, but of many layers of our society being forever altered by the internet and the way public perceptions are shaped and changed.

Enter self-described futurist Nicco Melle and his new book, The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath (St. Martin’s Press.) Mele posits that this new found “radical connectivity” has impacted business, politics, the media, education and many other facets of our life. For a futurist, Mele seems to spend an awful lot of time and ink looking in the rear view mirror.

Mele’s credits as webmaster for the ill-fated Howard Dean presidential campaign, working with the Clinton Global Initiative, and being on faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government coupled with a blurb from Howard “The Screamer” Dean had my antennae up looking for political bias. Mele tries to draw some interesting political parallels; including one between the so-called Arab Spring and the Tea Party movement. Mele praises the radical connectivity of the Arab spring movement, yet for the Tea Party…not so much. Certainly the Arab Spring has radically altered the landscape of the Middle East; whether or not it’s for the better, the jury is still out. Radical connectivity likely hasn’t quite figured out how to deal with radical extremists.

Malcolm Gladwell has created a wildly successful cottage industry out of using anecdotal evidence to make his case about what he think causes movements and business to reach the proverbial tipping point. I’m not quite sure that Mele’s anecdotal examples of the radical connectivity concept as a game changer is quite ready to leave the starting gate.