When I put out my first book “How to Survive and Prosper in a Recession,” I did a lot of things RIGHT:
- I interviewed 20 top business, sales, and marketing experts (You can see who I interviewed here.)
- I got really great testimonials about the book (You can see those here.)
- I even purchased a really good URL for the book RecessionSolution.com. (which I still use for my content marketing related work).
My BIGGEST Mistake
After doing all of those things right, I made a major mistake.
I didn’t market it well.
I marketed it to the “make money online people,” instead of to business owners who would have really WANTED and NEEDED the book.
And for that reason, the sales for that book were not as great as I hoped they would’ve been – or that they should have been.
Why Having a Great Product, Book, or Service Doesn’t Matter
The strange truth is this: having a great product, book, or service doesn’t matter… if people don’t know about it!
In RARE cases a product, book, or service will do well without marketing. But that happens less often than you think.
And the accidental success of your product, book, or service is NOT something you want to rely on.
The Truth I’ve Come to Realize More and More
The truth I’ve come to realize more and more is that marketing matters.
- How you think about marketing
- Who you market to
- Where you market
- And HOW you market
…all make a HUGE difference in how well your product, book, or service does or doesn’t do.
A New Way to Think About Marketing
I know that a lot of people have negative opinions about marketing.
Some think it’s annoying. Some think it’s too pushy. And some think it’s manipulative.
But marketing doesn’t have to be any of those things in order to be effective.
I spent the first couple month of this year thinking about marketing, really thinking about it.
I asked myself over and over: “What IS marketing really?”
I thought over and over about how I, after 18 years of being involved in marketing in one way or the other, would define it.
And the definition I’ve come up with is one I don’t think you’ve ever heard of before.
It’s a way to think about marketing that will help you to market no matter the form (direct mail, email marketing, etc.) or the channel (social media, blogs, etc.)
I am going to be teaching this new way to think about marketing starting tomorrow evening at the UC Berkeley Extension Facility in Belmont, CA.
I’ll be teaching:
- My definition of marketing
- The difference between marketing, advertising, sales, etc.
- Six things all effective marketing needs
- And how to apply this understanding of marketing in offline marketing and/or online marketing
- I’ll be bringing three guest lecturers: a direct marketing expert, a SEO expert, and an expert in C-Executive Business Marketing and Strategic Leadership
- I’ll also be bringing in four local business owners to present their business to my class so that the students can create marketing plans for actual, real-life businesses (if the students don’t have their own company they work for and want to create a marketing plan for)
- And more
If you’re local and would like to learn a way to think about marketing and do marketing that will help you to get the results for your product, book, or service — that you know it deserves, then I’d love to have you join us
But you MUST sign-up today, by 5 pm if you’re interested. (That’s not long from now!)
Click here to sign-up! Then Click the “+” next to “BUS ADM X460.1 – 076” to sign up for my class!
P.S. I am doing a marketing experiment with this post by breaking a rule that I never usually break. I am posting this same post on my site BayBusinessHelp.com.
I’m a business strategist, consultant, content creation specialist, and speaker. I’ve been studying effective marketing and business methods (both online and offline) since 1999.
===> If you would like to see ways that we could work together, then please click here to learn more.
