Description
MARKETING BOOKS FOR SMALL BUSINESS: The Marketing Book 2020
Digital marketing made easy by Jason McDonald of Stanford Continuing Studies
- This book explains how to BUILD YOUR BRAND and SELL MORE STUFF via the THINK / DO / LEARN methodology!
Available in print, Kindle, and as an Audible marketing audiobook, TMB brings a sense of humor and a strong dose of practicality to business promotion. It’s a book that’s as practical as the competitive Marketing for Dummies 2019 but more fun to read, with not just to-dos but a conceptual framework as what will no doubt be one of the best marketing books of 2020 and no doubt one of the bestselling marketing books of 2020. Bound to be a “marketing books bestsellers,” to bend the language in a digital way.
Christina Escamilla –
I’ve worked in marketing for over 10 years now and I can honestly say McDonald’s book is an invaluable tool. I found it a good refresher for me personally, but I definitely think a business just starting off will find it akin to the Holy Grail of marketing. It’s really good! Not only is the author personable and the writing easy-to-understand, but he draws from several real-world examples to show you the ins and outs of marketing. You will learn how to understand your clients as people and gauge their needs. For instance, there are specific reasons why a customer might feel it is their last resort to post a negative review on Yelp. You’ll also learn how essential it is to build out your brand rather than just hope that your customers will find you. What tools are you using? What tools can you use? You’ll learn all of that – and more importantly he’ll emphasize how important it is to RESEARCH! I was so pleased to see this in the book because as a marketing coordinator, I find it’s one area that often gets overlooked. You need to look at those analytics, you need to have an open dialogue about why something is working or why something needs to be repeated to replicate the results. This was a fantastic book and it’s one that has a great deal of merit.
Janelle Fila –
As an aspiring entrepreneur with a number of failed business attempts to my credit, I was really excited to read The Marketing Book by Jason McDonald. Marketing is one of the most important key elements to being successful in business, and yet seems to be one of the hardest parts. So any time you can get good information from a Ph.D., you should take it.
I specifically liked the bold headings within each chapter. It broke the chapters up and made them easy to read. There were quite a lot of calls to action and real action steps, which I found interesting and engaging. In fact, one of McDonald’s core concepts is the merger of theory and practice, literally putting into action the thoughts and concepts that are sitting in your head. I could really respect that. I think many business people get too caught up in perfecting their marketing plan and trying to make everything perfect. But they never actually take any action.
Although there was a lot of good information, I did wish some of it was slightly more specific or maybe dumbed down a little for those of us that are newbies or not quite so marketing and technology savvy. For example, one piece of advice in finding social media influencers is “setting up special email newsletters or Snapchat/Instagram story feeds for superfans or other actions to get your superfans and influencers to ‘self-identify’.” That’s great advice in theory, but I would have loved a better step by step breakdown on how to do that. There’s so much information in this book that might be impossible, but there were times that I wanted a little bit more.
Sophie James –
I will start by saying that I am an Illustration student currently studying degree at University, so I know very little about marketing or business, despite how crucial it might be for my future career. As an artist I will soon have to find ways to sell my own work, and in this age the best way to do that is through online clientele in the form of auctions and custom work. I know nothing about this, which has been a big source of worry for me recently, because I don’t know the first thing about marketing or any kind of business. I completely failed a Business course in high school and have been avoiding the subject since !
The Marketing Book by Jason McDonald has completely changed that for me. This book proved to be an amazing introduction into the world of marketing – one that I could actually understand. It felt worlds away from my old business classes because the content was written and presented in such an engaging, clear way. Business is an essential subject for so many career paths, but so much of the ‘beginner’ information out there is full of complicated terms or seemingly abstract business concepts. I am happy to say that this book was truly the ‘made easy’ it claimed to be, and provided me with a clear vision of what path and steps I need to take to market my work going forwards.
McDonalds skill as a writer and the clear, easy to follow layout he used (splitting the different sections into chapters was so so helpful!) made it super easy to absorb the information presented to me. McDonald’s tone was also conversational and light-hearted throughout the book, so I didn’t get bored or distracted at all. I am usually a fiction reader so this was a big surprise to me, as I was expecting to get bored or have to force myself to read on – this is all due to McDonald’s writing style and presentation choices.
I think the reason The Marketing Book is so helpful is because it offers actual, tangible strategies that are easy for a nobody like me to implement in real world practise. The most immediately useful of those for me was the idea building up business oriented social media accounts through which I could market. In my five years of illustration I’d somehow never thought of doing that, so I’ve now created an Instagram account dedicated to my artwork.
The one downside was that I did struggle with a few links in the book not working but that was a pretty minor issue, as the rest of the book was invaluable to me in terms of the information it provided and the effect it will have on my career. I finally feel as though I’ve properly stepped into the world of marketing !
Overall I highly recommend buying The Marketing Book (: I can see a bright future ahead for me in terms of business, when before the idea of marketing my own artwork was a scary unknown and a big source of stress.
Tarun Rathee –
Well, i always considered myself as a noob when it comes to digital marketing, but after going through this book, made me confident enough to incorporate some of the marketing techniques mentioned in the book into my business.
Jason Mcdonald seems a very wise man. He started the book on a very basic note, explaining BVP and USVP, which is basically knowing about customer requirement and what unique thing you are offering to them and jason insisted to make it short and specific.Then he went on to explaining never ending market research and our role as an observer. Clear distinction about B2C and B2B was elaborated in the book, like, how one runs majorly on emotions and other on reasoning. Author explained the importance of finding a niche, knowing, how broad and competitive the market is and most importantly, ‘the five discovery paths’ which explained very explicitly and detailed.
There is a whole chapter on online reviews and he explained how, being having a blog , a good looking website and a informative YouTube channel , plays major role as trust indicator. This seems totally true , knowing, most customers focus majorly on online reviews and social media presence, nowadays. He gave reasonable tips on search engine optimisation and , how startling a blog and regular posts with right keywords could make our business fall top in the search results. I get to know the difference between remarketing and retargeting, finally.
Later in the book, he went on mentioning the benefits of mixing up traditional and digital marketing, which seemed quite thoughtful.
I liked various illustration with catchy phrases like calling a webinar or ebook as a “lead magnet” and why peanut butter is near jellies in a super market, stuck in my mind totally, although, it seems to be a bit faded and less charming in the middle as it gets boring and , somehow, starts to feel like a classroom book, which is , obviously, less compelling and majorly , the relentless use of cat emporium example really pisses you off. Apart from that, reading this book is a total value addition and I would recommend this to anyone who want to improve his marketing skills or keen to learn basics of marketing in digital media.
Jennifer –
I read this book because my son came to me with an idea he wants me to invest in. He already has a product that is doing well with a small group of people, but wants financial help to expand, and has some unique ideas for expansion. I have read a few marketing books in my lifetime, but that was back in college long ago and I would currently consider myself a novice in that area. I was reading with a purpose and originally went right to the section on The Five Discovery Paths, which was enough to jump-start my brainstorm session about his product. The author gave “old school” and modern examples, which I very much appreciated. I was particularly interested in how to influence so consumers can find this product. As you can imagine, the Internet has changed everything about that concept since my college class in the 90s. The sections and information on the material that was new for me made this a worthwhile purchase (especially concepts about influencers and social media) There are times when the author asks you to stop and think about a concept or return to a list you previously made. Because of this, I decided to start from the beginning and complete all of the mental exercises, links, and lists the author refers the reader to throughout the book. I’m very glad I did. Not only did I review some concepts that I had forgotten about from 25+ years ago, I learned so much more. When to transition to the Unique Selling Proposition from the Business Value Proposal, tips on flexibility, making the BVP a living document, and the “B2B,” “B2G,” and “B2C” were all helpful thinking points that led to more brainstorm sessions with my son. Overall, this book helped encourage me to take action with a solid marketing plan, and I felt comfortable having educated conversations with my son after reading it and following the suggestions.
Mark Graham –
The Marketing Book’ written by Jason McDonald is a great book for a professional development course for anyone who has a product or service to offer the society at large. This is a reference textbook that reads as an infomercial selling its’ service or product. Jason covers the basics of marketing as well as sales. Jason demonstrates through using various websites to show readers how to define, build your product or service through writing content in various forms that are available today as well as the past that still works today. The magic word that he uses is ‘TWAGGLE’ and he describes how sellers can think of a product or service and then think and create a plan to sell it to whomever. It is all about how specific the positioning describing what your product or service is all about and who wants it. ‘The Marketing Book’ is a way to make a persona of the seller and to see where their ideas fit in society. It is a book that reminds the reader to keep doing your research on the whole process of doing marketing and sales. Just keep thinking about how to make your product and/or services better so it has sustainability now an in the future.