Home   Business Building Blog   Introduction   Seven Habits   Business Improvement   Book Reviews   Need Help?   Links

If you accept "common wisdom," the "old rules" don't apply for marketing on the internet. This "wisdom" is promoted by the service providers, who benefit when businesspeople spend money on advertising on their sites and don't hold it accountable for results.

Direct marketing guru Dan Kennedy's response to this assertion is the same as for most "image" advertising - "B.S.!"

According to Kennedy and his co-author, Kim Walsh-Phillips, any promotion you spend money on for a business must generate results (meaning sales), or you're flushing your money down the toilet. You can't eat "likes"! Using direct marketing procedures, you can measure the monetary results of your efforts.

These are the same direct marketing procedures that have been used successfully for decades in direct mail and mail order advertising.

Kim Walsh-Phillips has used these procedures to generate sales for GKIC, which markets Dan Kennedy's information products and seminars, and many other customers. Kim says she has found Facebook the most productive social medium. Facebook offers a wealth of tools for targeting your messages and measuring what happens when someone sees your message.

Although Dan Kennedy portrays the image of a Luddite who refuses to go online himself, he regularly writes marketing messages for clients to use on social media and web sites. (He has his client or his assistant print web pages for study.)

The basic message of this book is social media ads should be attractive messages (lead generation ads) to entice prospective customers to leave the social media site and engage with the business for sequenced nurturing follow up messages. The attractive message usually involves offering valuable free information, such as a video, free report or white paper. Kim says you should "Keep content 85% PBS and 15% QVC;" and "Social media is a cocktail party, not a shopping mall." In exchange, the prospective customer gives his contact information (starting with his email address), which is used for follow-up communications.

The book is packed with examples and additional material is offered online.

In addition to lead generation strategies, examples of nurturing campaigns are explained and illustrated, and case studies (success stories), Fitness Revolution and Surface Creek Veterinary Center are presented.

We can't kid ourselves. Making a consistent effort for promoting a business is a lot of work and requires a considerable investment of time and money. By applying the ideas presented in this book, your investment will be far more productive than if you didn't.

Small business owners who want to understand how to use social media effectively should read and apply the ideas from No B.S. Social Media Marketing.

Buy it on Amazon: No B.S. Guide to Direct Response Social Media Marketing: The Ultimate No Holds Barred Guide to Producing Measurable, Monetizable Results with Social Media Marketing .

For our new reviews of business and self-improvement books, subscribe to our newsletter, Michael Gray, CPA's Tax & Business Insight!

Home   Business Building Blog   Introduction   Seven Habits   Business Improvement   Book Reviews   Need Help?   Links

Subscribe to Michael Gray, CPA's Tax & Business Insight Name: Email: We respect your email privacy Powered by AWeber Email Marketing