Adobe PDF eBook Add to eBookBag Available copies:   4 Library copies:   4 File size:   2846 KB Digital ISBN:   1413301843 Release date:   Jul 01, 2005

Make your business stand out without the cost of advertising! The best marketing you can do for your business is to concentrate on creating a high-quality operation that customers, employees and other businesspeople will trust, respect and recommend. Marketing Without Advertising teaches small business owners practical strategies to: encourage customers to spread the good word about your business attract new customers and gain their trust turn dissatisfied customers into loyal supporters list your products or services widely and inexpensively plan marketing events that will keep customers involved encourage the media to comment positively on your business The 5th edition is completely updated, providing real world examples and resources throughout. It also discusses the latest marketing trends, such as international Internet marketing and blogs.

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"Really high spending on advertising sales is an admission of failure. I'd much prefer to see investments in loyalty leading to better repeat purchases than millions spent for a Super Bowl ad." -- Ward Hanson, author of Principles of Internet Marketing. From The Industry Standard, 4/10/2000. Marketing means running a first-rate business and letting people know about it. Every action your company takes sends a marketing message. Building a business image is not something invented by a P.R. firm; it's a reflection of what you do and how you do it. A clever ad is what pops into most people's minds when they think about getting the word out about their business. The fact is, most of us know little about advertising and a whole lot about marketing. We are really the marketing experts for our business because we know it better than anyone else. It may surprise you to know how many established small businesses have discovered that they do not need to advertise to prosper. A large majority -- more than two-thirds in the U.S., certainly -- of profitable small businesses operate successfully without advertising. In this book we make a distinction between "advertising," which is broadcasting your message to many uninterested members of the public, and "listing," which is directing your message to specific people interested in the product or service, such as in the Yellow Pages. Here's where the figure about small business and advertising comes from: There are about 20 million nonfarm businesses in the United States. Of these, about two million are involved in construction; another five million deal in wholesaling, manufacturing, trucking, or mining. A small minority (30% of the total) generate customers by advertising. The rest rely on personally knowing their customers, on their reputations, and sometimes on salespeople or commissioned representatives. Of the remaining 13 million businesses, 70% are run by one person. It's very rare for the self-employed to find advertising useful; the single-person business, whether that of a lawyer, doctor, or computer consultant, relies almost exclusively on personal recommendations. That leaves the percentage of businesses who might even consider advertising useful at less than 19%. We think most of them don't need it, either. There are four main reasons why advertising is inappropriate for most businesses: Advertising is simply not cost-effective. Claims that it produces even marginal financial returns are usually fallacious. Customers lured by ads tend to be disloyal. In other words, advertising does not provide a solid customer base for future business. Dependence on advertising makes a business more vulnerable to changes in volatile consumer taste and thus more likely to fail. Because a significant percentage of advertising is deceptive, advertisers are increasingly seen by the public (both consciously and unconsciously) as dishonest and manipulative. Businesses that advertise heavily are often suspected of offering poor quality goods and services. Let's now look at these reasons in more detail. A. The Myth of Advertising's Effectiveness The argument made by the proponents of advertising is almost pathetically simple-minded: If you can measure the benefits of advertising on your business, advertising works; if you can't measure the beneficial effects, then your measurements aren't good enough. Or you need more ads. .....more

 

1. Advertising: The Last Choice in Marketing 2. Personal Recommendations: The First Choice in Marketing 3. The Physical Appearance of Your Business 4. Pricing 5. How You Treat the People Around You 6. Openness: The Basis of Trust 7. Deciding How to Educate Potential Customers 8. How to Let Customers Know Your Business Is Excellent 9. Helping Customers Find You 10. Customer Recourse 11. Marketing on the Internet 12. Dynamic Interactive Marketing 13. Designing and Implementing Your Marketing Plan 14. Creating a Calendar of Events Appendix Index

"If you've got something to sell, this book is a valuable reference, and is one of the few marketing books I would recommend to salespeople."

 

"Straightforward advice on how to create a marketing plan that will encourage enthusiastic recommendations about your business from satisfied customers..."

 

"What a charming, graceful book! Anyone who wants to make the most effective use of customers for word-of-mouth marketing needs to read what Rasberry and Phillips have to say. I've been doing this stuff for years, and still want to give a copy to all my marketing folks."

 

 

Marketing Without Advertising by Michael Phillips
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