Fast Marketing for Fast Growth
Fast Marketing for Fast Growth
Fast Marketing for Fast Growth is the book for anyone who wants their business to grow by adopting the strategies that have made some of the world's biggest brands successful, but without the huge expense.
Through simplifying objectives and thinking before acting, the authors show that successful marketing need not be complicated, overly time consuming nor expensive.
Key points explored on the path to success include:
Fast Marketing for Fast Growth also helps you develop a marketing campaign based on your personality and includes case studies.
Learn the secrets of the big brands and apply them to your own business for fast growth and success!
Jason Eisner, Graeme Gladman and Jonathan Samuel have over 50 years of business and marketing experience between them. They are the founders of BrandQuest and have helped many businesses achieve success through the application of their unique marketing process.
Fast Marketing for Fast Growth
New Holland Australia
Author: Jason Eisner, Graeme Gladman and Jonathan Samuel
Price: $19.95
Interview with Graeme Gladman
Why did you decide to write this book?Graeme Gladman: It's the contention of the 'Fast Marketing for Fast Growth' authors that for too long sophisticated marketing strategies have been the domain of large national and multinational companies.
Companies who could afford both the marketing staff and the necessary outsourced providers (consultancies and advertising agencies) to provide their marketing needs.
However, for growing companies and organizations, the expense and implementation timelines involved in developing the traditional 'marketing model' have proved prohibitive and elusive.
Consequently many smaller businesses and not for profit (NFP) organizations have been denied the opportunity to utilise sophisticated robust marketing as leverage to sales, improved business results, growth and ultimate business success.
But for no longer.
'Fast Marketing for Fast Growth' has been specifically written for the management and owners of growing companies and organizations who want to grow their business through the application and implementation of a relevant, understandable and proven, actionable and fast to implement marketing plan.
These so-called 'small medium enterprises' (SME - up to 100 employees) actually account for 80% of Australia's business market!
In a recent quantified research study (n = 591) of the Australian SME market (up to 50 employees with turnover up to $5,000.000) an average of 14 key business issues were identified.
The top five prioritized issues that were most common across most business types ie: retail, services, manufacturing etc. were:
1. Profitability
2. Growing your business,
3. Effective advertising and promotions,
4. Managing Cashflow, and
5. Developing a Marketing Strategy
Marketing related issues were prioritised 2, 3 & 5 respectively.
Furthermore, the same survey identified that 'of all seminars attended in the previous 12 months', the top three selected topics were:
1. Marketing strategy
2. Growing your business
3. Advertising and promotions
Further anecdotal evidence of the needs of the management of growth companies and organizations is based around the fact that availability of TIME and RESOURCES is a key on-going challenge for them.
The BrandQuest Program as outlined in 'Fast Marketing for Fast Growth' has 'fast to market' implicit within its disciplines, and delivers to this emotional business need.
Therefore, any positive initiative that 'values management's time' and rewards them for their time is further connecting with their business needs.
There appears little doubt that in a highly competitive - and increasingly less differentiated commercial marketplace - that 'marketing' per se is being seen by more and more growth-driven SME's and NFP's (such as Associations and Organisations) as the way to discover and develop their competitive advantage in order to help achieve their business goals.
Many of these company owners and managers of course seek marketing business books for guidance, only to discover that generally these books fall into two categories: either too practical and highly philosophical or irrelevant (many of which contain no direct context or application for the Australian market).
Other companies seek the assistance of marketing consultants and consultancies.
Sadly for the Australian SME/NFP market, the offering is highly polarized with expensive and time consuming marketing consultancies aligning themselves at the very top end of the market (national and multi-national client companies), whilst a plethora of smaller consultants deliver a myriad of unsophisticated, non-robust, non business-changing marketing tactics at the other end.
'Fast Marketing for Fast Growth' delivers to this market need with a marketing book that reveals and details a proven marketing strategy program that meets the business needs of the market and is: Highly relevant (including local business success case studies), understandable and proven, actionable and fast to implement.
The book synthesizes and distils the most sophisticated marketing theories and propositions and reveals them in an easy to read and understand, easy to implement manner, along the way dispelling many of the myths associated with marketing and explaining that, irrespective of the size or age of your company or organization, you can achieve the growth and competitive advantage you seek through the development of the BrandQuest marketing strategy.
What is one of the myths you 'bust' in Fast Marketing for Fast Growth?
Graeme Gladman: Marketing is not purely the domain of 'creative types'. In fact, the best marketing directors are very process driven people. Developing a marketing strategy is all about creating process and discipline to guide the creative. It is about removing a lot of the subjectivity around marketing decisions and creating accountability and measures to all your tactics and every dollar invested.
Why have we been lead to believe that marketing is expensive?
Graeme Gladman: There are possibly two reasons for this. The first is that often people think of marketing as synonymous with advertising, which can be expensive. Advertising is an outcome of marketing. It's simply one way to express and communicate the marketing strategy to current and identified target customers. And while advertising often has the highest profile, and in many cases is the most expensive form of marketing, it is by no means the be all and end all of marketing. Marketing includes advertising, market research, brand positioning, database communication, media planning, public relations, product pricing, product distribution, promotions, customer retention and acquisition, brand awareness and community involvement - just to name a few. Some of these will be inexpensive or even free.
Most importantly marketing also informs the message your 'people' - staff, employees, sales people give out which is arguably one of your most important marketing activity.
The second, is that we often look at marketing as a cost centre because it is not treated with the same disciplines as other areas of a business. We would never consider paying a sales person $200k as expensive if they brought in millions of dollars of revenue, but often there is not that same level of accountability with marketing, and we don't measure results to the same degree, so it becomes this large and expensive bucket. If we are very clear about our strategy behind the marketing decisions we make, we would be able to measure the outcomes and therefore assess whether the investment we are making is delivering the desired returns. If your marketing is generating leads that are worth well in excess of the investment you are making - would you consider it expensive?
Are marketing techniques different depending on the size of your business?
Graeme Gladman: Size of business should not impact how you approach marketing. All marketing should be driven by a considered strategy that will inform all your communications and marketing tactics. If you have correctly answered your 4 Brand Questions, then tactics you employ will become easier to define.
In fact, size of business is not even the primary factor with regard to decisions on what type of tactics. Two equal size companies, in the same industry may make completely different marketing decisions based on the answer to their Brand Questions.
Do you believe every business needs a social media profile? What advice would you give to a small business in regards to social media techniques?
Graeme Gladman: Social media needs to be approached like every other marketing tactic. You need to have the answers to your 4 Brand Questions. Particularly, with regards to social media, you need to have a really clear understanding of your target market.
The first thing to consider is the nature of the relationship you have with your customers. Either through account managers, or direct relationships, most B2Bs will have a closer relationship with their customers, and can and should be engaging in these conversations already. Social media has given B2Cs the ability to have these conversations with their customers - something they may not have been able to do previously.
The next point to consider is whether your customers are engaging in social media. You need to go to where your customers already are and not just adopting new technology for the sake of being there first. If the conversation is happening, you may want to consider joining, but much of the conversation is still focused on the consumer market.
Lastly, social media strategies, like most business strategies, need to be implemented correctly. This will often be time consuming and require a financial consideration. Doing this wrong or half heartedly, may result in a complete waste of precious time, or worse, alienating the people who you are trying to communicate with.
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