Video Review of Greg Verdino's Book "MicroMarketing"

In keeping with my 2011 New Year's resolution of doing more video work, I recently filmed a review of Greg Verdino's book MicroMarketing: Get Big Results by Thinking and Acting Small.

This review was the brainchild of Glenn Schmelzle, an Ottawa-based marketing consultant to high-tech firms and principal of Marketing What's New.  I'd also like to thank my friend Robert Decher of RDV Productions, for his video production and editing skills.



microMarketing - A book review from RDVProductions on Vimeo.

Here's a really quick summary of MicroMarketing:  The world is no longer one massive market that you can approach effectively using mass-marketing techniques.  Greg takes three main shifts we are seeing in the world (mass markets to micro markets, mass media to micro media, mass content  to micro content) and expands them into seven shifts your company needs to be aware of in order to market in today's marketing space.

As I point out towards the end of the review, there is a great interview with Greg about this book on the Marketing Over Coffee website.  Marketing Over Coffee is a marketing podcast that both Glenn and I love.  

B2B MicroMarketing

Image by gregverdino via Flickr

Glenn looks at the content of MicroMarketing through the eyes of a B2B marketer and  outlines some of the challenges in applying the book's concepts.  Glenn points out that the B2B marketer needs to think about generating unique content on a more frequent basis but that you need to keep an eye on sales cycles and how those will impact your marketing messaging.

B2C MicroMarketing

I take a look at the book's content from the point of view of a B2C marketer.  While there are lots of great insight (like thinking about real-time marketing), I point out that Greg does a great job of expanding on the concept of paid media versus earned media.  We hear about this frequently and Greg takes the concept of earned media one step further and cautions marketers to remember that earned media is not free, there is a cost associated with it and that earned media must really lead to earning attention. 

Glenn and I really enjoyed the book and it contains lots of case studies and examples, including links to lots of enhanced content which you can see on the MicroMarketing website.

Feedback?

This was our first attempt at a video book review.  Both Glenn and I would be delighted to hear any feedback you have in the comments on this post.   

Related articles

• Five Reasons You Need to Focus on Earned Media (adage.com)
• The Emerging Impotency of Mass Marketing (thepomoblog.com)

Book Review: The Sales Bible by Jeffery Gitomer

For the past few months, I have been looking for a good book on sales.  After listening to a podcast recently that had Jeffrey Gitomer on it, I realized that he had written what I believed would be the perfect book for me - The Sales Bible.

Sales is as much about personal motivation as it is about tactical sales knowledge and this book does a great job of helping you understand this and, more importantly, assessing whether or not you should even be in sales in the first place.

It's obvious from the first page that this book is written by a true salesman.  It reads "I just made a sale!".

Gitomer writes using highly impactful (sales-y) language and doesn't go on and on about particular ideal.  He tells you why it is important, shares some stories then lists some steps or ideas that you can use.  Topics range from motivation to techniques.  You learn how to meet people and generate leads and then how to turn those leads into sales.  Cold calling is covered in great detail, as is the sales presentation.

In the end, I think this book really has a broader audience than just salespeople... I think it is a book for EVERYONE.  I believe this because at some point, everyone will have to sell the most important thing in the world.. themselves.  So there are many applications for the material in the book and I highly recommend you pick it up ASAP.

What "Made To Stick" taught me about speaking to high school students...

A few months ago, I volunteered to speak at my former high school, Ashbury College, about e-marketing and e-business.

It was a career day activity that involved grade 10 students where they signed up for sessions to hear about careers they might be interested in.  I was paired with Omar Sheikh, the CEO of eBargainBuddies.  We were told that we'd have 30 minutes total with three separate groups of students.  Omar and I spoke on the phone in advance and planned out our presentation.  We made a PowerPoint slide deck and decided that he's start the presentation with a top 5 reasons why you should get into e-marketing and e-business, tell them about himself and then he's throw to me and I would introduce myself and give a breakdown of e-marketing.  Omar would then finish up with 5 minutes on social media, eBargainBuddies and some advice and we'd come in at 20 minutes with 10 mins left for questions.

I have to say that I think Omar and I did a really good job of preparing.  We made an interesting deck, switched up who was talking and did our best to make our presentation as lively and interesting as possible.  We recommended they do something they are passionate about, get started as soon as they want and try to have as much fun as possible doing it.  I used Perez Hilton as an example in some of the things that I was talking about in an attempt to make it more relevant to them.  In the end, I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

A short while after the presentation, I started reading Chip and Dan Heath's "Made To Stick" and I kept thinking back to the presentation and how I could have applied what I was reading to that presentation.

I won't go into detail, because I think everyone should read the book, but it says that ideas stick when they display any number of the following characteristics:

• Simplicity
• Unexpectedness
• Concreteness
• Credibility
• Emotional
• Stories

As I read the book I kept thinking back to the presentation and wondering what I might have done differently.

Here's a few:

Unexpectedness - Although we did a top 5 reasons to get into emarketing/ebusiness slide at the start, I would have done something much more unexpected and shared a piece of trivia that asked them to answer a question or something fun where the answer was completely unexpected.  I could have been something interesting about Facebook or something else that might have grabbed a bit harder at the start of the presentation.

Concreteness: Here I should have used the story of Perez Hilton to illustrate what and how somebody could go about getting to emarketing and ebusiness instead of just using it as an example in a few places.  I think that the Perez Hilton story really interesting and I think it shows how an average person can transform a simple blog into a multi-million dollar business.  Actually, emarketing/ebusiness is loaded with stories just like that of Perez and I could have picked any number of stories to use this idea of concreteness.  

Credibility: I believe that this is an important concept for any idea but when dealing with teenagers, I think credibility is key.  I learned this from many years of coaching tennis/skiing but I also learned it the say of the presentation when I told them I was their gym teacher's brother in law (instant credibility).  In this area, I could have shared some quotes from prominent figures about ebusiness/emarketing that might have helped them understand the ideas and concepts we were talking about (making more concrete) were in fact real and achievable by almost anyone with a little hard work.