Book review: No Time Marketing
Have you ever tried making a marketing plan, without much success?
Maybe you’ve checked out some of the planning tools around?
These range from simple templates in Word to massive spreadsheets and questionnaires. But who has time?
Now there’s a great little guide that makes planning your marketing quick and painless… even if you’ve never done it before.
No Time Marketing: small business-sized steps in 30 minutes or less came out some years ago.
But I still love it for its simplicity and conciseness. Not to mention the price: Today a used print copy is available for only $1.50 from Amazon.
I think it’s worth 100 times that much, easy.
With the paperback version, you can easily photocopy the forms and checklists from the physical book.
Cutting through the clutter
Author Alyssa Dver has many years of experience as a product manager, entrepreneur, and consultant.
“The over-abundance of information from our hyper-connected world… is numbing to most busy people,” she says.
With so many marketing channels to consider, it’s tough to know where to focus.
“I hope this book cuts through some of the clutter and helps you understand essential marketing concepts that you can apply to your business—immediately and effectively.”
It certainly does.
Her book boils down a mass of marketing ideas into an easy read of just over 100 pages. If you can only read one book on marketing in your entire career, this would be a good one to pick.
I like her pragmatic focus: “Marketing dollars spent must generate clear sales results.”
I like her down-to-earth tips: “The best way to understand your customers and prospects is to… talk to a few of them.”
Forget the formulas they teach in college
In terms of leads, says Dver, quality is more important than quantity.
There’s no point getting leads you can’t deal with, she says.
In a startup or smaller firm, the right number of leads may be how many you can properly handle… and no more.
I like her step-by-step process:
- Take stock of what you know and what you don’t.
- Talk to some customers to fill in the gaps.
- Next, work out your one-sentence positioning.
- Then set your pricing.
- Finally, decide how you’re going to find and nurture leads.
Your goal is not some big written report to put on a shelf. It’s a brief presentation you give to your colleagues to get their feedback.
Ten slides: that’s it, that’s all.
To help implement this advice, the book provides fill-in-the blank forms that each take 30 minutes or less to use. These forms help transform doing a marketing plan from an overwhelming chore to an achievable exercise.
When you need to plan or redo your marketing for a small to medium-sized firm or a startup, there’s no better way to do it than with this practical little book.
Copyright © Computing Technology Industry Association, Inc. Reprinted with permission.
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