I read a lot of marketing books.
A major reason I started this blog is I couldn’t find a really good general marketing book for the small business owner.
Someone with perhaps 10 or 20 employees, with at most one full-time person in marketing.
Someone who isn’t themselves a marketing professional and doesn’t have time to become one.
Someone who doesn’t have the time to keep up with the unbelievable pace of change especially in the world of online marketing.
Someone who doesn’t know who to trust and has probably been burned over and over again buying marketing services that sure sounded good.
Someone who needs better marketing and so keeps trying.
Someone who could use quick, easy to understand guidance he can trust.
That, by the way, pretty well describes our typical client. It also describes probably 80% of all the businesses out there.
There are tons of marketing books for small businessmen. Most of them are really designed for somewhat larger companies, with maybe 25 to 100 employees. Most are focused on some specific aspect of marketing rather than the subject as a whole, or they have some angle on the subject rather than being a practical tool for the business owner.
The ones that are general books that try and cover the whole subject aren’t really very good.
Guerilla Marketing and Duct Tape Marketing are a couple of examples. Both have a lot of good material. Both also are hard to read, make mistakes and leave out important material.
Hopefully I’m doing better.
I call this blog “Market or Die” first of all because, that’s the truth, and secondly, because I’m trying to serve the small businessman who has that same viewpoint.
And the subtitle should really be “Everything The Small Business Owner Needs to Know to Make Marketing Work, Even Though He Has a Very Limited Budget and No Spare Time.”