Books

Notes form books I’ve read

The Ultimate Marketing Plan Chapters 1 – 3

Posted on Aug 31, 2011 in Books, The ultimate marketing plan | 9 comments

I have been looking for a general marketing book for a while… countless trips to Barnes & Noble and finally I found The Ultimate Marketing Plan by Dan S. Kennedy.  Simple, to the point encompassing print and digital media while providing plenty of real life examples and case studies.
Preface

  • Marketing is getting the right message to the right people via the right media and methods – effectively, efficiently, and profitably. 
Chapter 1
  • Don’t be in too much of a hurry to promote, until you get good.  Otherwise you just speed up the rate at which the world finds out you’re not so good.
  • Before you begin a marketing campaign take a survey of all you are up against.  You need to develop a message that somehow trumps all the others and places you in a category of one, for the times you do butt heads.
  • TIP – Before a campaign, write down each promise, feature, benefit, and statement in the first advertiser’s ad.  When you find one of these same statements in the next advertiser’s ad, just put a mark next to it, and keep stick-counting the number of times the same basic statement appears in all the ads.  If you find a new or different statement in any of the ads, add it to your list, then stick count the number of times it reoccurs in other ads. Your list will usually reveal that everybody is saying the same unfocused message.
  •   Create a message that differentiates you from all your competitors in a positive, appealing, preferably compelling way.  This is called a unique selling proposition.
  • A USP is also a way of summarizing and telegraphing one of the chief benefits of the business, product or service being marketed.    Your USP may express the theme of your business, product or service.
  • The “Hey, that’s for ME!” reaction to a marketing message moves the person toward purchase quickly and decisively, and has the added virtue of making price elastic.
Chapter 2
  • There are three experiences in which the marketing message are at work: before the sale/purchase, during the sale/purchase itself, and after the sale/purchase.
  • The customer has to be led up to five steps to a buying or action decision: Awareness of need and/or desire, picking the “thing” that fulfills the need/desire, picking the source for the thing, accepting the sources price/value argument, finding the reasons to act now.
  • If at all possible, you should find ways to add drama to your presentations.
  • The difference between being a professional salesperson and a professional visitor is asking for the order.
  • QUOTE – “Timid salespeople have skinny kids” – Zig?
  • Book Recommendation - Outrageous advertising that’s outrageously successful – Bill Glazer
  • The right presentation of the right  marketing message touches every base, every time.  It assumes nothing.  It takes nothing for granted.
Chapter 3
  • No matter how well equipped you are you still won’t do very well aiming at the wrong targets.
  • Find a starving crowd  - a group of people that is highly motivated and highly responsive for you products and services.
  • Every product, every service, every business either appeals or has the potential to appeal much more strongly to a certain definable group of people than it appeals to all people.
  • QUOTE – “You can’t see who’s naked until the tide goes out” – Warren Buffet
  • The first and most commonly used target marketing is geographic targeting.
  • Your net profits from marketing will be determined more by your diligence with this discriminatory selection of prospects than by anything else.
  • Once you find a geographic target marketing that works for you, work it to death.
  • Demographics are the statistical and behavioral things given groups of people have in common.
  • List research is best conducted yourself, painstakingly, at www.srds.com.  www.InfoUSA.com is another resource.
  • Don’t rule out direct mail even if you’re trying to do business online and be an e-commerce merchant.
  • In every business there are must-buy-now buyers.  Idiotically, most business owners make no special attempts to identify them.
  • Seek to find your must-buy-now buyer.
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4 Hour Work Week – Chapters 1-5

Posted on Aug 31, 2011 in 4 Hour work week, Books | 17 comments

I am Re-Reading 4 Hour work week… Great book… Even if you aren’t looking to reduce your work week to four hours it has great information on Time Management, Goal setting and basic business practices for a successful online business.

Introduction

  • Be a D.E.A.L. Maker – Define your goals, Eliminate the unnecessary, Automate and Liberate
  • An Entrepreneur is a person who shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher yield.
  • Find a market before designing a product is smarter than the reverse
Chapter 1
  •  Prevent Work for work’s sake, and do the minimum necessary for maximum effect.
  • Create a life with purpose, contributing to this world, not just shuffling papers, banging on a keyboard and coming home to a drunken existence.
  • Cash flow first, big payday second.
Chapter 2
  • The timing is never right – “Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.
  • Ask for forgiveness, not Permission. It is better to take initiative than to hold off because of moderate reversible consequences.
  • The point is to “Do what you want as opposed to what you feel obligated to do.”
  • Eustress – Stress th at is healthful and the stimulus for growth.
Chapter 3
  • Question – Why was Tim Ferris unable to sell BrainQuicken? On page 41 he states that “Critical mistakes in its infancy would never let me sell it.”
  • Quote – “Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with course and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: “is this the condition that I feared.”" – Seneca
  • What are you putting off out of fear? What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.  A persons’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.
Chapter 4
  • Doing the Unrealistic is easier than doing the realistic – There is less competition for bigger goals.
  • Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. Ask yourself, What do I want? What are my goals? What would excite me?
  • QUTOE  - “Ever tried. Ever Failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” – Samuel Beckett
Chapter 5
  • Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions.
  • What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it.
  • Being busy is a form of laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.
  • Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.
  • Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important tasks. Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.
  • Ask yourself three times per day – “Am I being productive or just active?” or “Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important?”
  • Limit yourself to two primary goals or tasks per day
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