Customer Reviews

Marketing Outrageously: How to Increase Your Revenue by Staggering Amounts!

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The author, Jon Spoelstra, is a hired gun marketing consultant who goes in and turns around companies with severe lack of revenues. Most of them are sports teams. So, we could think of him as a serial-turnaround artist. For this reason, you should read the book to see his techniques in action.

This is his second book. The other is "Ice To The Eskimos". This book is very similar to the first book. I consider this second book an update to the previous one. Both are highly recommended. In some ways I thought the first book had more meat. This second book is easier to read.

The author has about 20 major points that he makes in both books. One such point is to think outrageously when working on your marketing ideas and programs. He gives lots of stories and anecdotes to help you in this regard.

Another point by the author is the use of direct marketing over indirect marketing. He recommends that you let the customer tell you when to stop running the ad based on the returns that it generates. He gives lots of examples. His recommendations regarding TV ads follows the recommendations of Roy Williams, who wrote "Wizard of Ads" by the same publisher. In TV he recommends that you dominate a niche, or segment.

On one hand he believes in accepting the product as a given. Many sales and marketing people blame poor sales results on the product, just as a failed warrior is quick to blame his weapons. He believes most of the problems are caused by lack of creativity and action. But on the other hand, the author guides you on how to change your product offering. One technique is to understand what business you are really in. He gives you some checklists and examples on how to do this.

The author is totally revenue focused. He foresakes short term profitability to build revenues so he can pick up profitablity on subsequent purchases.

The hallmark of this second book is a call to action to write two important questions on a 3x5 card... and carry it around with you. To find out those questions you'll need to buy and read the book.

After reading this book you should have several important things to change for your business. So it is highly recommended. I would have given this book a "4" but because he made the case so convincingly that the CEO and chief marketing guy should make frequent sales calls... that I had to bump the score up to a "5". Read the book to find out why.

I think there are better 5's out there, but this one will pay you dividends if you apply some of his recommendations. He is a player with real experience.

John Dunbar

Loved reading MARKETING OUTRAGEOUSLY by Joe Spoelstra, one of America's top sports marketers . . . he uses many real--and often funny--examples to show how it is possible to get a company known without going into bankruptcy.

Even if you're not a sports fan, there is much here that
can be applied to almost any marketing situation.

What I so much liked about this book is that Spoelstra
has been involved in what he writes about . . . he has
consulted with major sports organizations including baseball,
hockey, soccer, and basketball in the United States, Spain
and Japan.

Also, he was general manager of the Portland Trail Blazers for
11 years, during which time he was the focus of what was perhaps the strangest trade in sports history. Portland was in need of a guard to fill a hole created by injury. The guard the Blazers wanted was the starting point guard for Indiana Pacers. A deal was struck; the compensation to the Pacers wasn't a player, but one week of Spoelstra's time. He then played a key role in the restructuring of the Pacers' front office.

Later, as president of the New Jersey Nets for three years, he
increased that team's revenue by almost 500 percent.

There were several memorable passages; among them:
* Learn to ask this question: "What's it going to take?"

Most business people are thinking, "How can we
make our budget numbers?" or "How can we
improve our profit over last year?" They are
asking the wrong question.

What if you asked the following question at
your company: "What's it going to take to be
the best company in our industry this year?"

You don't have to be CEO or a business
owner to ask this kind of question. You could
ask, "What's it going to take to become
the best marketing department in the industry
this year?" or "What's it going to take to be
the best department in our company this year?"

I know how difficult it is to answer that question.
I've asked it many times. Sometimes I've just
asked myself, because it can seem too outrageous
to ask anyone else. Sometimes I've asked others,
even though if they'd been carrying guns I'd
probably to dead. But you have to ask it, because
that's the only way to come up with truly outrageous
marketing ideas.

* I've got a warped perspective on advertising: I think
advertising should get results you can feel. Don't
hive me any of that image or identity stuff; I want
revenue that I can track to the ad. Anything less is,
to me, like throwing my money into a tornado and
hoping for the best.

You might ask me: "How much revenue would
make you happy?" Well, I've got a simple little
formula for that: $4-to-$1. I call it The Ratio.
For every dollar I spend on an ad, I want to see
four dollars in revenue as a direct result.

* At the beginning of this chapter, I asked you to
take out of your pocket the piece of paper on which
you had written, "What's it gonna take . . .?" because
I was going to ask you to write something on the
back of it. Here's what I want you to write. It's another
question:

What did I do today to make money for my company?

Go ahead, write that down on the other side of the paper.
I'll wait.

That piece of paper is going to become an important
tool for you. Just two simple questions. They could
have a lot of different answers. But to really get into
Marketing Outrageously, you've got to ask yourself
those two questions--every day.

The book is fun to read. No question. The stories are great, especially if you like basketball and sports. Jon Spoelstra certainly came up with some outrageous ideas, and my oh my, didn't they all work great! Isn't he a genius? This book certainly made me think that Jon Spoelstra thinks a lot of himself.

Unless you're running a sports franchise, I'm not sure there's actually much useful information to glean from the book, and that's the reason you buy business books, isn't it. For all it's quizzes, which are really "precious" (in the worst sense of the word), the only real idea from the book is "go crazy...risk something." That's great if you've got deep pockets. People will do a lot of crazy things to link themselves with major sporting teams (sponsorships, wacky promotions, giveaways, etc.). But what if you own a plumbing supply store? A shoe repair store? A used CD shop? Yes, you too can do crazy, wacky things, but if you do the wrong crazy thing, just because Spoelstra thinks you should, will you have the cash flow left to try another one? Unless you've got a big organization and deep pockets (or access to deep financing) his urging to be outrageous seems a bit pat and obvious.

Yes, be outrageous, sure. But how do you temper it? How do you give yourself an "escape route" if things go wrong? How do you pay for it?

So, I finished the book very entertained by the anecdotes, and impressed at the contributions the author has made to the ways in which we all enjoy professional sports events and team. But I had not one truly practical, useful, actionable idea to put to work.

Fooled into actually learning something? Inspired?

Then pick up Marketing Outrageously now.

I had the good fortune of being assigned Jon Spoelstra's Ice to the Eskimos three years ago in college and have been waiting for the following up ever since. As a student being bombarded with assignments, I plowed through Ice in a day, actually disappointed when it ended. Outrageously is even better.

The best part of the book is the insider stories. (Elvis, Area 51 and Pat Riley are all subjects.) There is at least one anecdote related to each chapter. Besides being highly entertaining, they are a way to remember an idea Spoelstra is looking to hit home.

Spoelstra is not only a marketing genius, but also a wonderful author. He knows his books don't just need to be informational, but engaging as well. Above all, he prompts you to act. If you read this book, you'll laugh, you'll think in a new way and oh yeah, make some extra money for your company along the way.

I bought the book based on the writer's own recommendation on Amazon. What I expected was some funky ideas about sales strategies, but what I was amazed to find were actual tools, not just concepts, that can be used TODAY to bring in gobs of cash. We have a small company, so we can move quickly, and our first attempt at implementing one of these ideas brought in 7 times the cost of the project within a couple of days!

I did find the funky ideas I was looking for, but I was really impressed with the ease of implementation many of them allowed. Not only does it provide a framework for an overall marketing strategy, but it also provides insight into the day to day thinking required to really increase sales.

The book has been a great confidence builder during a sour economic period. Our company is getting spanked pretty hard by local layoffs and bankruptcies but after reading this book we still expect to show a significant increase in sales for 2002.

It's hard to believe anyone wrote this book, Marketing Outrageously. To me, it felt as if me and Jon Spoelstra sat in a room and talked about crazy ideas. Jon tells you to take a quiz at the end of EVERY chapter. He even tells you to write notes to yourself and carry them around with you. This book is more interactive than the Internet. But don't take it from me, read the book. And read it twice. Four days after I received it, I finished it. You won't want to put this book down. Too bad Amazon's rating system doesn't go beyond 5 stars.

I'm not a big book reader - usually only if I'm stuck on a flight from NY to SF (which I was)

This thing is a page turner. I could not put it down and read the entire 250+ page book on the flight. I could not wait to read the next page and blew through this thing like it was a comic book - it was that easy.

If you have ANY influence in your company, you need to buy this book, read it, then pass it on to your boss (or if you are the boss, buy one for every VP of your company)

Excellent book. It's a different type of marketing book that is a great read to change the pace from other books I've read. Spoelstra's thinking does wonders for companies trying to market with smaller budgets. It's a fast read because it really captivates your imagination and makes you want to learn more.

There are many great marketing ideas in this book. Even more valuable is the conditioning to think differently or even outrageously.

Here are just a couple thing I'm taking with me:

Write on a card "what will it take for me to________________?" Fill in the blank with your really big goal. Carry that card with you always and often think about the question and possible answers.

On the other side of that same card write "what did I do today to make money for my company?" Think about that question continually until you get in the habit of creating revenue daily. Spoelstra's suggestion is to make at least one sales call every day. Whether or not you are in sales, this will help the company, help you, and teach valuable lessons.

Personally, I'm sick to death of reading sales and marketing advice from authors whose only experience in actually getting customers to buy things is in their imagination. This book is crammed full of real world advice from someone whose experience in the real world is obvious on every page. If you're looking for something that's trendy and slickly written, you should look elsewhere. (Actually, this book would have benefited from just a bit of judicious editing.) But, let's face it: Slickly written is not why you ought to buy a book about marketing. The standard for a great marketing book is simply this: Is it going to help you drive sales and make money. By that standard, this book is an absolute winner. I cannot recommend it highly enough, particularly if you've already tried the trendy stuff and it hasn't worked.