Customer Reviews

Marketing That Works: How Entrepreneurial Marketing Can Add Sustainable Value to Any Sized Company

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I must confess that I have historically had a low opinion of the marketing people that I have firsthand knowledge of. They always seemed to be overstating glad-handers, over-promising to land potential customers and not really interested in learning how difficult it is to implement their promises. When I was writing code full-time, we referred to it as the "couldn't you just" condition. As in "couldn't you just put in this feature" and ignoring any rational response explaining that while the feature appears simple, it could take weeks to add it to the software. I was personally the recipient of a marketing person telling everyone how I was negatively cynical and not a team player when I strongly voiced my objections to an absurd promise that the marketer had made to a potential customer.
Therefore, it was with a great deal of skepticism that I opened this book and began reading. It did not take long before I was sold on the ideas of the authors. They reject the over-promising and blast the world nonsense that so many marketers consider the way to sell their products. Their approach is that of the entrepreneur that lacks a great deal of money for marketing, and that you must avoid an overstatement at all costs. It is better to understate and be proven wrong than overstate and be considered (or proven to be) an unreliable fool. They consider marketing to be a way to add sustainable value to the company, much like the delivery of a quality product.
If I am ever again in the situation where I am confronting a marketing person who values unjustified hype over honest accuracy, I will give them a copy of this book, ask that they read it and then offer to discuss it with them.

I think that this book is a terrific resource for an entrepreneur who is working on the marketing aspects of his business. One of the common misunderstandings of those not formally trained in business is confusing marketing with advertising or that part of the sales process that directly connects with the customer. While advertising and selling are a portion of the subject in marketing, in reality it is much more than this.

What I appreciate most about this book is that it is a resource of great information, ideas, and practical illustrations from real world business experience. It is not a method that the authors want you to accept whole. Very few methods actually work for people fighting for business in the real world because each businessperson has to find a solution to the problem they are facing in a constantly changing business environment. As businesses compete they are actually changing the environment in which they compete and this is often lost on those who espouse very specific "dance steps" for businesses to follow rather than providing principles. This book is about ideas that have proven themselves and can be adapted or applied to your situation as you see fit.

Most entrepreneurs have to manage every aspect of their small and growing company. Very few are expert in every field and marketing is such a broad and vital topic that it would benefit almost everyone to study the breadth of the topic to learn what it is they should study more deeply. This book has fourteen chapters covering the necessity of multiple marketing strategies (and why), how to generate ideas and screen the good ones from those that might be land mines, pricing, distribution and channel decisions (a very good chapter), launching products to maximize long term profitability, advertising (another fine chapter), public relations, adding value through sales management, marketing-enabled sales (quite interesting), entrepreneurial promotion, resource deployment and allocation (a topic that trips up many young businesses), marketing for financing activities, and building strong brands & strong companies.

The chapters are written in a very organized and concise way that lay out the authors' ideas, back it up with stories of real businesses, usually some graphs and charts, a list of principles or a checklist to use, and a conclusion. This organization and concise writing is helpful because most entrepreneurs are very practical people and have a lot to do every day. The very idea of sitting down to read long chapters of theory and abstract prose would be not only distasteful for such practical people, but impossible from a time management perspective. This book is written with these realities in mind.

As an entrepreneur, I found the book quite helpful. As a person who has studied business as the graduate level, I found the information sound. Recommended.

"Marketing that Works" is a quick read that provides very valuable insight into how to properly position your company, product, services, etc... The examples that are used are both personal triumphs (and failures) of the authors as well as companies that you've probably heard of (or should have, had the companies heeded the advice in this book).

If you are thinking big, then even one small kernel of guidance from this book will pay you back in spades and more than cover the cost of the book. I am already applying some of the wisdom the book imparts to my current entrepreneurial enterprise and can see a significant difference in how I will successfully sell my product. And when I do, I expect my company to be mentioned in the Second Printing of this book.

The tangible value of marketing is well illustrated for both the aspiring and established entrepreneur in this perceptive, well-organized textbook by Len Lodish, a Wharton marketing professor; Howard Morgan, former vice chairman of leading internet incubator Idealab, and Shellye Archambeau, chief executive of MetricStream, a company focused on compliance and governance solutions. The co-authors succinctly show how the days of marketing as a discretionary expense are obsolete, that it is as much a business driver as operational efficiency and innovative product development. Moreover, they bring to light how marketing can shape the success of not only actual products but also a company's stock and corporate image.

The book revolves around a straightforward, cross-selling matrix, which shows that every venture has three key things to sell - products/services, shares and image - to five different constituents. These constituents include customers, the one who give money in exchange for something they want, but there are separate targets identified as users who may or may not pay, investors, employees and others such as suppliers and strategic partners. Only when there is a conscious effort to address every type of constituent across the three dimensions does a company have a probable chance toward sustaining success. More often, companies focus so much on marketing the product that little effort is made in marketing, for example, the stock to the investor. Toward that end, the co-authors delve into critical questions regarding pricing and the importance of knowing why customers will pay you for a product.

They point to smart marketers like Victoria's Secret, who investigate and experiment, learning not only what competitors charge but also precisely why customers value a particular product or service. When possible, these companies try different prices and strive to charge more if their offerings have distinctive qualities valued by customers. That's how Victoria's Secret took a simple product and repositioned it as desirable, naughty female apparel and elevated the brand into a $3.2 billion-a-year business. Through adaptive experimentation, the company has significantly changed the perception people have of an already established commodity into a relatively inexpensive way for women to feel good about themselves. Looking at price by itself, according to the co-authors, is a precarious exercise, especially when the price point is well known by the public.

The natural urge to match a competitor's price has to be counterbalanced by a heightened attention to the brand and measuring its value within a marketplace that could be changing in value itself. A company that epitomizes this broader approach is Apple, which under Steve Jobs' leadership, has figured out how to build products that transcend their functionality into a direct tie-in to people's enjoyment and sense of empowerment. Renowned examples like Victoria's Secret and Apple bring home the co-authors' points about maintaining differentiation in an evolving marketplace that encompasses globalization, corporate mergers, stricter government regulations, increasing interests for "green" issues, sensitivity around privacy and security. Lodish, Morgan and Archambeau have put together a helpful marketing primer for the future.

Marketing "works" if it creates or increases demand for whatever is offered for sale, be it a product, a service, or both. Hence the importance of Peter Drucker's widely quoted observation, "If you don't have a customer, you don't have a business." In fact, you don't have (or won't have for long) a business if you don't have enough customers who purchase enough of what you offer, for a sufficient profit. In this volume, the co-authors (Leonard M. Lodish, Howard L. Morgan, and Shellye Archambeau) explain how entrepreneurial marketing can add sustainable value to any sized company. The term "entrepreneurial" refers to a mindset that stresses speed, agility, resilience, independence, unorthodox, etc. In other words, what Jay Conrad Levinson characterizes as "guerilla marketing."

The authors carefully organize and then present their material within 14 chapters whose subjects range from "Marketing-Driven Strategy to Make Extraordinary Money" to "Building Strong Brands and Strong Companies." Along the way, they help their reader to answer questions such as these:

1. Does the market segment want the perceived value that my positioning is trying to deliver more than other segments?

2. How can the segment be reached? And how quickly?

3. How big is the segment?

4. What are likely impacts of changes in relevant environmental conditions (e.g. economic conditions, lifestyle, legal regulations) on the potential response of the target segment?

5. What are current and likely competitive activities directed at the segment?

I agree with the authors that each marketing venture must answer the "what am I selling to whom, and why will they buy?" question before it can create a successful marketing strategy and plan. With regard to the term "customer-oriented marketing," the stakeholders may also include investors, supply chain/channel partners, and employees. "Each stakeholder needs a relevant value proposition on why to stay engaged with the firm. So the same concepts of segmentation and positioning apply to them."

In Chapter 9, Lodish, Morgan, and Archambeau shift their attention to an important but often neglected element of sales: marketing initiatives that help to shorten the sales cycle, increase win rates, and protect margins. Salespeople are not marketing people. They need marketing tools to support the process of selling. For example, lead generation, target customer description, product collateral (i.e. datasheets and brochures), customized presentation materials, product demonstrations, and competitive intelligence data. Lodish, Morgan, and Archambeau offer a number of practical, cost-efffective suggestions insofar as marketing tools to support the sales process are concerned.

When concluding this valuable chapter, they observe that marketing plays a crucial, but often overlooked, role in properly enabling sales success. "From identifying prospective customers through lead generation, to providing sales tools to the sales force to handle prospect objections and close deals, marketing needs to be in lock-step with sales. Marketing needs to understand the sales process to close as well as sales does. Ensuring that the right tools are created to assist sales at each step is a critical responsibility of marketing." I could not agree more.

Presumably Lodish, Morgan, and Archambeau would be among the first to agree that it would be a fool's errand to attempt to execute all of the strategies and tactics examined in their book. It remains for each reader to absorb and digest the material with meticulous care, then select those concepts that are most appropriate to the needs and objectives of her or his own organization. When completing that selection process, I consider it imperative to keep in mind that the sales mindset and the marketing mindset are quite different, and those differences must be fully understood and (yes) respected. That said, it is also imperative that - as the authors correctly insist - "marketing needs to be in lock-step with sales" to sustain effective and productive communication, cooperation, and most important of all, collaboration if both marketing and sales are to be successful.

A book that is extensive in its scope - much like a course textbook, only neither cryptic, technical nor dry as textbooks tend to be. Full of practical, real-life examples that illustrate and expand on the topics being presented. A valuable read for anyone with an interest in starting or growing a business by applying the sound principles of entrepreneurial marketing. A book I highly recommend and highly regard.

I needed books for college and did not have very long to wait. I received my books ordered in a timely manner. I had never ordered anything online and was not sure about how secure this would be but it was totally worth. After I had compared prices with other ways to purchase I realized I found the best deal. I would not hesitate to order books or products this way again if I need anything.

This isn't a comment on the content of the book, but a note on the publication date, which was shown as 2009. The copy listed on this site (isbn 978013702133) is a paperback reprint of the first edition, 2007. There was no information about this in publication details so it gave the wrong impression of it as being new this year.

The quality of the actual print on the page is rather poor - the images and text are not clear and sharp but still readable - perhaps a result of being printed digitally on demand as indicated on the verso.

This book gives quality advice to those who are starting up (be that as an entrepreneur or a new project in big company).

Wel reaserched and topics well covered with lots of examples.

The authors have put a lot of material together to support the main message that entrepreneurs like myself seem to overlook - it's all about messaging your brand and core values to not just one audience (customers), but to many audiences (investors, operators, suppliers).

For my startup Pay Parade ([...]), this book takes the cake for wringing the most intelligence out of pricing sensitivity testing.

Keep it up and keep on turning us serial entrepreneurs into better marketers!