Customer Reviews

Marketing Without Advertising: Inspire Customers to Rave about Your Business & Create Lasting Success

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Having been involved with many small businesses for many years I picked up this book with some skepticism. Then I turned to the first chapter. It's called Advertising: The Last Choice in Marketing. And it was dead on right -- To be sure there is a place for advertising, Pepsi up against Coke has no choice (which isn't to say that they do it well). They have no choice because they can't do the kinds of things this book talks about. They can't produce a new product -- Remember New Coke?

In any case, this book isn't about Coke, it's about marketing a small business or service. That means you need to market locally. Effectively you can't advertise. I was recently involved in promoting a play for a local community theater. We had posters all over town, both supermarkets, half the business windows on main street, three articles in our local paper plus announcements every issue in their Community Calendar, there was a twenty minute interview program on the local radio station -- all the kinds of things this book talks about. The play was a great success, both performances sold out, standing ovations for the performers. Afterwards a great number of people came up and said, "I heard you put on a play, I didn't know anything about it, tell me about it when you do another." What possible good would advertising do?

If I had run a few thousand dollars of advertising do you think any of these people would have noticed? If they didn't read the articles, see the calendar or tune in the radio. What else could I have done?

Marketing now is a different matter. We marketed, it worked. We paid very little money out. Did we do everything the book said? No. We didn't do internet for instance. This was a local play to a local audience in the back room of a local restaurant. The book talks about the internet. And yes, I have to agree the internet is excellent for some kinds of marketing, not for every situation. A small business with a specialty product for which you couldn't possibly find enough customers in a local community couldn't do better than the net. Example -- crystal radio kit. You might could sell one in our little town. You could make a business of selling them world wide.

Great book. If you're just starting out or need to improve marketing the ideas expressed here can be agreat help.

I ordered a book I saw on Amazaon and the vendor handled my order promptly and the book arrived quicker than I expected. Very good service.

This a great book - recommended to us by Gary Fong.

No new edition yet, but this one covers topics that are valid in 2009 for virtually any business.

I think that this is a complete guideline of non-traditional approaches to moving any company or product into more of a felt part of the community, rather than an ideal merely thrust into the memory. Good POV.