I realise it’s a bit weird for me to be reviewing a marketing book, given my self-proclaimed aversion to marketing and sales. A while back I wrote a review for Tim Ferris’ book Tribe of Mentors on this blog, and for some reason someone decided to contact me citing this review and asked if I would review this other book and they would give me a complimentary copy. This was something new to me, so I thought I’d try it out! (I guess this a thing I do know. Feel free to send me books on random topics to review!)
Anyway, on to the book: It’s relatively short, it only took me a while to get through it because of general busy-ness. Coming from someone who doesn’t have much experience in marketing and sales, I think the book gives a decent overview of this space. I have some prior informal knowledge of many of these concepts, but it’s nice to have a more structured idea of how the general flow of marketing works.
I find a lot of modern marketing techniques distasteful. I’m not especially fond of people aggressively push-marketing to me via cold calls or pushing flyers in my face. To the book’s credit, it points out that such blind-shotgun techniques are wildly ineffective. And while it doesn’t go into too much detail about each particular area, I think having a more solid understanding of modern marketing techniques and mentalities will help me “understand the enemy” better, so to speak.
As to the 1-page marketing plan itself: I don’t have enough marketing knowledge to say whether it’s really an innovation in implementation as the author claims, but it seems like a reasonable checklist for a business to consider when planning out their marketing activities. If I ever manage to talk myself into starting a business, the overview given by this book would certainly be useful. The book itself isn’t very expensive, so I think it’s a reasonable buy for someone new to the marketing space.
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