Customer Reviews

Breakthrough Marketing Plans: How to Stop Wasting Time and Start Driving Growth

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an excellent guide for developing marketing plans! We have all read the typical marketing or business paperback that makes one good point and then reapeats the same thing over and over with numerous "examples". This book is the complete opposite. It is so full of useful information that you will find yourself going back to it time and again to use as a resource. Best of all the author provides a good general template to follow that is useful for small or very large businesses and everything in between. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

This straight-forward, well written and practical book is a must read for executives looking to focus their marketing initiatives and improve results. I was skeptical when I received the book based on its relatively short length, but the size of the book is a perfect analogue for Dr. Calkins' approach to the topic: keep it focused to maximize effectiveness. I highly recommend this book as your first read on marketing. If you have already invested countless hours in other marketing books, this one stands in contrast for its approach and the results it yields. If you have clients, you should read this book.

I think this is the best marketing book published this year. Tim Calkins presents an incredibly practical and profound review of how to get great impact out of marketing plans. The best news is, this book will save marketers hundreds of hours by helping focus on what's critical. Calkins' approach will also help marketing executives relate better to the C-Suite by bringing them what they need to hear. Highly recommended for marketers, CEOs and consultants alike. I've put these ideas to work with many clients with great results. Calkins also edited Kellogg on Branding, another must read.

Roland Jacobs, CEO, AspireUp and former Chief Marketing Officer, Orbitz

There are many books on marketing theory but book is about marketing practice

This is the black belt guide to practical and impactful marketing plans

This is about connecting sales and marketing & being credible with finance with the ROI

This book was great! It has useful information, is relevant, and easy to read. Great tips, and practical, helpful guidance on writing a Marketing Plan that is actually worth spending the time to write. I will reference this book again and again.

"Breakthrough Marketing Plans" is a short read that provides a lot of insight on the step-by-step process of creating a marketing plan. Tim Calkins (2008) is a professor of Marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, and has an extensive amount of experience creating successful marketing plans. This book breaks down why some marketing plans fail, and gives pointers on how to make them succeed. After reading this book, he should have named it "Marketing Plans for Dummies." This is a great read for someone who is a beginner in the field of Marketing, or for the experienced marketer that has had a plan fail.

This book is a short, quick read that I highly recommend for anyone involved in marketing planning. Calkins starts by clearly and succinctly stating what the objective of your marketing plans should be: to "set the course for a business" and to "spell out the goals for the business over a certain period and what precisely should be done to achieve the goals". With that as the foundation, he explains why the clarity in purpose is important, goes into the top problems that marketing plans can face, and provides a framework for really strong, actionable marketing plans that can deliver real results for an organization. Calkins does an excellent job delivering his message in a way that is both easy to understand and that you can bring back to your own marketing planning process and action against. There were three points that he made that resonated strongest with me. First, he discusses how many plans are too focused on data, with page after page of information but no clear strategy. A plan that is 100+ pages might show all you know and all the work you've done, but a short, concise plan is much more effective and impactful. Second, he emphasizes the importance of goals that are used to prioritize strategies, tactics, and resources. This is as opposed to vague goals where it is not clear what you are actually trying to accomplish or too many goals that really capture anything and everything. Finally, he discusses the importance of a cross-functional team and how the business should ultimately own the marketing plan. The marketing team clearly has a very important role to play in both the creation and execution of the marketing plan, but the business leaders are the ones that will ultimately be held accountable for the goals they need to achieve and how they are going to achieve them.

Breakthrough Marketing Plans provides an exceptionally clear framework for creating focused strategies and high impact plans. I find myself consistently referring back to the book as I set business plans and evaluate in-market performance. Whether you're an experienced marketer or just getting started, work on an established business or a start-up, Breakthrough Marketing Plans is a must have to guide your thinking and actions.

Chuck Raup, Senior Category Business Director, Kraft Foods

If you have anything to do with marketing plans, this is a totally useful book. It is clear, concise and full of sensible advice - it truly is a road map to constructing a practical, effective marketing plan. The author gets right to the point on things and doesn't bother adding padding or filler like so many books do - the book is short, easy to read, organized and, well, like I said - totally useful. It lays out all of the components needed for a winning plan and explains why these components are important and why the ones he says to leave out aren't. I really enjoyed reading this book because of its brevity and knowledge - every page is worthwhile.

This is a very good book. It describes how to write an effective marketing plan tied to business metrics and how to avoid writing a long marketing plan that no one reads. After reading this book, my first reaction was to look for other books by Tim Calkins. If you want to learn about writing effective and useful marketing plans, buy this book. You won't be disappointed.