UnMarketing. Stop marketing. Start engaging. Scott Stratten. 2010. ISBN 9780470617878.  This  is a very useful book for anyone looking to pump up their business though using the social networks.  Stratten is one of those folks who has done the work and made a conscious effort to help others to really “get it”  His short chapter on how to create, organize and publish content is far and away the easiest and most direct writing we have seen to date.  He also covers the whole gamut of  marketing from trade shows to telesummits.  His website http://www.un-marketing.com/blog/ contains much of the content of the book.  His format of many (over 50) short chapters really suits the ADD generation of readers.  The best thing – Stratten speaks the truth and puts it out there. (Of course – he’s Canadian!)

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speak human.  Outmarket the big guys by getting personal. Eric Karlaluoto. 2010. ISBN 9780981348209.  A Vancouver marketing firm SmashLAB was started by Eric and his partner Eric Shelkie.  This book is a compendium of lessons learned  (perhaps ordeals by fire) working  in the industry. What results is a very human book that contains his unique views on the communication business. His comments resonate well with what Rocket Builders has found over the years, as we seem to share a common world view with the author.  Good phrases that stuck with me (likely I have mashed them together  in my memory) :

• positioning means…to get known for one thing
• selling is all about numbers and sincerity
• social networks give you access to a broader set of great individuals with different and unique skill sets
• marketing is a long haul endeavor

Unlike many younger authors, Eric creates a very good set a of chapter notes  that provides good “proof” to what he is saying.  It speaks to a thoughtful work that is worth you taking the time to read it.

What Women Want. The global market turns female friendly. Paco Underhill. A new good book from the author of Why We Buy.  This is further  insight into the changing of consumers worldwide by an expert who knows how to write.  Every chapter will have you nodding your head with another few insights into the  opportunities missed to really direct your marketing to the segments that control the bulk of the money on our world.  Who? The over 50 market.  This may about what women want,  but any guy will find himself in these pages.   Very worthwhile marketing book, up to date and immediately applicable.  Good 4 hour plane ride book, it will keep your interest and get you thinking.

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. How to instantly engage your market, connect with customers, and create products that grow your business now. David Meerman Scott. 2011. ISBN 9780470645956.  This book is really on top of the real time marketplace, by the author  right on top of this as well..  The premise was first, find put how the top 100 US companies are doing in the real time digital /social media space. So he sent out a request shaped around that he was writing a book on how companies are responding  to this change in the marketplace. What a hoot – it was incredible the number of companies that he could not contact, or who did not respond. As well the ones who did respond were quite interesting, who,  how soon ( minutes to hours to days)  and the way they did  (Personal, web form, take a survey, take a number and wait and so on).  Meerman Scott then build a compelling up to date case on what to do, how to do it, tools to use and where the rubber meets the road on sales results.    This gets my vote as the marketing PR book of the year. Its current, well researched and very well written. Every C-Suite dweller needs to read this one.

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How to Create an Unstoppable Marketing & Sales machine. An introduction to Fusion Marketing.  Christopher Ryan. 2010. ISBN 9780982539729.  Sub  head:.  This book promises lots and delivers much more. I have followed Chris Ryan’s blog for quite some time and it always very usable advice. This book is one of the few that addresses the need to align sales and marketing from the get go.  He also like ourselves stresses the need for a framework to get the most out of sales and marketing. As well he tells exactly why,  how to and what to do to “get” marketing , regardless of budget.  His chapter on rescuing a failing marketing org is worth the price of the book alone. The chapter on producing big results with a small budget is jammed full of great ideas.  A must buy for the C-Suite and all sales and marketers out there. He does not miss much in a well written, easy to read and understand instant classic.

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Company culture works to resist raising prices. Pricing part 4.

Your company culture and how you have trained your customers work the most against raising prices and thus increasing profits.  Culture in action time. Look at two sales people, Tom and Sam at the end of the year bonus time.   Tom blows through his volume targets and makes 150% of quota , but he had to reduce prices, so that his net profit margin dropped 25% .  Sam exactly made  110% of quota plus she got a 10% premium for the product.  The CFO knows that Sam dropped much more dollar profit to the bottom line than Tom. So why does Tom get the Porche and Sam the steak knives?   It was true in Glengarry Glen Ross and still true now, volume trumps profit.   Until the company culture understands that value selling is the only route to long term growth and profitability, the best intentioned sale force will be rewarded for exactly the wrong behavior. Since if sell on value, you can afford lots of drop in volume before you get a drop in profits. Yet in the market today, value selling results in growth of revenues ( profit and volume).

The other piece of culture that just is wrong on every level is not setting out the discount policy well  before the big bids come in. Instead the table talk is what price will we have to go with to win this one?  What number will get us through the door?  This speaks to lazy management practices and people who are unwilling or unaware of the work that needs to be done to set out pricing policies ahead of time. Perhaps we could call this “just in time” management.You know that if this is a common mispractise, there are other things that are also eroding the profit margins.

This is very fixable and perhaps the company is unaware that there is a better way. McKinsey tells us that a raise of the selling price  of 1% can immediately drop over 10% to the bottom line.   We see this result and more  all the time and it is pretty exciting stuff.

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The Experience Effect. Engage your customers with a consistent and memorable brand experience. Jim Joseph. 2010. ISBN 9780814415542. This is a very practical book.  It contains terrific real examples of recognizable brands as well as lots of useful tools for the marketers tool belt. You will glean things that you can use for your entire career, some everyday and some whenever. Marketing’s role is to create a clear and consistent brand experience from the MOT and ever more.  Rocket Builders certainly agree with his point of view. To paraphrase, any sales person and marketer should do what clients do in their day to experience what their life is like, to wrap their heads around the real persona they deal with.  Although his experience is B2C  I gleaned lots out of this book for our B2B practise.  perhaps I would have enjoyed a different structure to the book as well as a few more bullets and lists, but the style is conversational, not theoretical by any means.  A recommendation to the marketers among you. Check out JimJoseph.com

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The New Launch Plan. 152 tips, tactics and trends from the most memorable new products. Joan Schneider & Julie Hall.2010. ISBN 0615326781.  This book is chock full of very good information. It is a bible for best practices for product launches.  The authors ran annual surveys n the most memorable product launches . Results are listed on http://mmnpl.wordpress.com/.  For our practice in B2B in the high tech world the bulk of the examples were in the retail sector, but there was a great discussion about Tweetdeck. Any marketer worth their PR ribbons must read this book.  I found the chapters on success and metrics to be of great value.  Some useful quotes:

• The First Moment of Truth has moved from the retail shelves to the Internet/Facebook and blogs.
• Supply shock is creating a product that is required by customers, not a choice (ie flu vaccine)
• If you create key messages without a framework you wil be mired in wordsmithing before you know it.
• Media members are short staffed, covering multiple beats – it behooves you to help them as much as possible
• Social media is another form of online customer service – do it well or do not do it

Well written and easy to get through. Good one for a 3 hr plane ride.

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The Hyper-Social Organization. Eclipse your competition by leveraging social media. Francois Gossieaux & Ed Moran. 2010. ISBN 9780071714020. Based on a Tribalization of Business Study (http://www.tribalizationofbusiness.com/category/tribalization/) , the authors have the data and experience to prove out their point. I just wish they had got to the meat a lot sooner. I took lots of notes all the way through but the real value starts at Chapter 14. Some juicy quotes I picked up:

Companies usually have a mix of two communities, defenders of the faith and seekers of the truth. You certainly do not look for innovation from defenders.

Peter Drucker, ” Because the purpose of a company is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two – and only two – basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.  Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business. ( Sound like any place you worked? “

A hypersocial enterprise will require – new salespeople. new sales metrics, better integration of all customer touching areas (and their data), seeing fewer one to one sales  but more one to tribe sales, salespeople with new skills,

Bill Joy says that their are always more smart people outside your company than within it. (So the tribes can conttibute a a big part of product dev and innovation)   Dev can not ignore the reaching out of marketing to the tribes.

Breakthrough products will not come out of committee. Henry Ford always said if he gave people what they wanted he woudl have produced a faster horse.

HR must change and in a big way with HyperSocial.

Owners of big communities/tribes will monetize through becoming “brokers” e.g. facebook.

A valuable but not an easy read. Could have used an aggressive editor, but leaders need to read this stuff. I am better for reading it. Great examples.

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Engage! The complete guide for brands and businesses to build, cultivate and measure success in the new web.  Brian Solis . 2010. ISBN 9780470619704.  If you struggle in a company that has dinosaurs for marketing heads, who just do not get the impact of social media, this is your new bible.  Solis starts with a very comprehensive lay of the land, filled with big name company successes. From that he provides a foundational approach to why this works. But his big addition to this field is how he takes a deep dive into traditional marketing “theology” and shows through example and metaphor how social media does and must fit into every marketing departments POV and plans.  Along the way you will learn so much more than you ever suspected was working with social media. (E.g. even his title is designed to garner lots of SEO and tagging points)  Ever the pragmatist, Solis points out all the short cuts and programs available to those with the big budgets, but he never loses sight of the reason for business- to make a customer.

Thanks to Troy Agrignon who “donated” the download to force me to add it into the Kindel. New for me, a total digital read. Can not decide if I like it a whole lot. I read, not browse books and attempt to make them part of who I am. Seeing I have a terrible memory, I flip back and forth in a book to reread sections to refresh the ideas. That’s tough digitally, plus I have a litany of methods to increase my comprehension of a book. which are hard to do on a digital machine. But you have to love the form factor, so I will need to develop speed reading methods for the digital world.

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