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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Honestly, just awesome., April 21, 2011
This review is from: Speak Human: Outmarket the Big Guys by Getting Personal (Paperback)
It's going to be hard to do this book justice in a review. It certainly wasn't what I was expecting, which was some chearleading about social media.
Instead, the book is a frequently philosophical tract on the inherent challenges of how the little guy goes about marketing anything well in today's super-noisy marketplace.
What surprised me early on was how adroit Karjaluoto is with language. You can get a taste of it on his blog, but the book is structured in generally longer chapters where he really gets going. Even as a blogger Karjaluoto is given to long-winded screeds, but in this book he really lets loose.
Karjaluoto deconstructs our expectations from page one. Throughout the book he's challenging why we expect blah-blah tactic or approach to work to build our businesses. Fundamentally he's asking why we expect a method of marketing or presenting our businesses to succeed and if the way we are marketing is actually aligned with what we are about. This is an important question and it has been asked before but Karjaluoto gets real specific.
I don't know if the author's full intent was to have a book to present to prospective clients, but this is one helluva calling card. If a prospect doesn't read the book and agree with most of it, that client would be a poor match for Karjaluoto's services (and mine as well I'll add).
The honesty here is brutal and discouraging to those people looking for quick fixes and easy ways to make money on the 'net. Marketing well has costs and usually requires significant analysis of problems and prioritizing before the creative work even starts. If you're a web marketing consultant you know too well how often clients want champagne on a beer budget - it doesn't matter how much you want to help them, you can't pay your bills and deliver the result they want on what they want to spend.
The author sent this book to me as a review copy. I think in a way it covers the same topic as Guy Kawasaki's recent, "Enchantment" (also sent to me as a review copy), but in a substantially deeper, more challenging way. While "Enchantment" is a pleasant airplane read type of thing "Speak Human" is sincere, authentic and challenging.
If the Karjaluoto wants to become a big-shot pop-marketing author/speaker dude, he'd do well to dumb it down... But as written, I'm thankful. The thinking is critical and the way he expresses his doubts and wrestles the issues give real credence to just how hard these real world marketing problems are to solve in a lot of cases.
Honestly, just awesome.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It's time to get back to business on the human level, October 3, 2010
This review is from: Speak Human: Outmarket the Big Guys by Getting Personal (Paperback)
I'm giving Speak Human: Outmarket the Big Guys by Getting Personal five stars because it is a business book every marketer and business owner should read. It's an appeal to getting back to business on the human level where people are treated not only as individuals, but as someone the people running the business truly care about. The book is also a celebration of small business. Being a small business is an advantage in today's impersonal and busy world so, rather than rue the fact that your business is small you should celebrate because you have distinct advantages in the marketplace. Small businesses are more flexible, can focus better on a target niche and get much, much closer to the customer.
Let's sum up the key message of the book - Deal with people on a human level.
The title of the book confused me at first. What exactly was the book about? What did "Speak Human" mean? Was this a book on body language or some esoteric communication method? No, this is a solid book about business and marketing that advocates connecting and communicating with people on a human level. Connecting with people, dealing with them like they matter and using new technologies, like social media to stay connected is what this book will teach you. The whole point of the book is that you need to build and manage your business' relationship with your customers and clients. As the author states on Pg. 147 - "People like to feel special."
Kurjaluoto is clearly a cheerleader for the small business person and beats the drum throughout the book that it is small business that has the advantage when it comes treating people like they matter. Small businesses operate close to the customer and have the knowledge, or the means to acquire the knowledge, to relate to customers on a personal level. Large businesses often are too far removed from the actual customer to deal with people on a individual or "human" basis. The bigger a business gets the more they are forced to deal with a demographic representation of that customer instead of the individual.
We like people that treat us special and, given the choice, prefer to deal with them. Large businesses, along with businesses that are unfocused, dilute their appeal and product offerings in an effort to please the mass of people instead of focusing on a small, clearly defined segment of the market. Let's face it, they have to in order to support their larger staff's. What they end up with are homogenized products and services that are nothing special and that tend to be bland and "simply OK". When there is there is nothing to separate you from competitive "me too" offerings other than price it's easy to fall into "commodity hell", where no business wants to be. How to avoid this? Be different and, as the author explains, your business can be different simply and easily by relating to people on the human level.
The book is chock full of fun, educational stories that drive the authors points home. "Speak Human" reads different than your traditional marketing tome - it is actually engaging and fun to read rather than a boring academic-like text. The tone and language of the book is conversational, which appealed greatly to me. People learn best through stories and Karjauoto (the author) communicated his message well with engaging and entertaining ones.
This book reached out to me on several levels. Personally I love the type of personal interaction recommended in the book when I deal with any business or service. (Come to think of it, we would all benefit greatly if the Government would read and follow this advice. Imagine a Government office that really cared for you as a person instead of merely another number to be serviced as fast and efficiently as possible!) Taking that little extra effort to connect with me on a personal level makes all the difference in the world and is the deciding factor in my decision whether or not to re-patronize an establishment. I am sure others feel the same way.
Following Karjaluoto's advice will position any small business well with their customer base and go a long way towards making your business the preferred customer choice. I highly recommend this book to every marketer,small business person, or the person simply interested in bringing business back to the personal level.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best of 2009: My only marketing book recco, December 21, 2009
This review is from: Speak Human: Outmarket the Big Guys by Getting Personal (Paperback)
The marketing section of the bookstore (online or bricks & mortar) is a usually a painful section to navigate, full of rehashed messages and hire-us pitches. Eric Karjaluoto's, Speak Human is none of that. It is personal, yet practical. Honest but bereft of piousness. Funny and rewarding. There are only a handful of marketing books I would dare recommend to anyone. Speak Human is at the top my list. Really superb.
--Ian
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