Certain subjects I keep coming back to. One is the contrast between marketing for small businesses versus large corporations.
Most of the important books on marketing were written with large corporations in mind.
The small businessman is prey to every marketing shark that comes along, peddling smoke-and-mirrors. That’s not just some new Internet marketing scheme. Look at the local commercials coming over cable TV. Most of them are blatantly terrible. They were produced by the cable companies or TV stations as part of some deal that sounded great, only $3000 a month for a year. The advertisers might as well have tied that $36,000 to a brick and tossed it in the Gulf.
You don’t have to become a marketing expert yourself. But the average small businessman really does need to know more about the subject.
Al Ries, marketing god that he is, virtually all of his writing is addressed to how the world looks from where the large corporation CEO sits. You need to understand branding and positioning, and there’s no better starting point than straight from the horse’s mouth. But you have to understand how to apply it in your situation! It’s not going to be the same.
The Guerilla Marketing books are terrific. If you haven’t read any of Jay Levinson’s books, they can be a real eye opener on how to market without a big budget.
And of course, read this blog.
The small businessman doesn’t have to be a marketing sucker or a marketing failure.