Are marketers talking too much?

Many of you have enjoyed Tom Asacker's little book, A Clear Eye for Branding, in which he and a seat companion on a flight have an extended conversation about what branding is and how marketers need to rethink their approaches to branding.

Asacker has been working on a new book called A Little Less Conversation. It will serve as a great companion to A Clear Eye. In it, he commiserates with an executive he meets in an airport after both their flights have been cancelled. Almost any business traveler can relate to that.

But over lunch they have an engaging conversation about why the hard-sell approach to marketing no longer works and why marketers need to forget about their products and establish an emotional connection with their customers, talking to them less and listening to them more.

Several PMP titles have expanded on this theme recently. Dan Herman's book Outsmart the MBA Clones isn't really a slam against MBAs. It is simply a challenge to think outside the box, to consider fresh approaches to bringing the consumer inside the marketing circle instead of leaving him out in the cold and assuming that if you sell features and benefits hard enough your product or service will flourish.

Outsmart the MBA Clones is already available and you'll be hearing more about Tom Asacker's book in the near future as we prepare it for the printer. If you want to make sure you are among the first to have it, sign up on www.paramountbooks.com for the bi-weekly email announcements of new books and special offers called What's New in Marketing?

How to Avoid the Seven Common Mistakes of Marketers

Every day, without knowing it, marketers of all kinds make the same common mistakes – and end up destroying their brands. So says the author of a forthcoming book, Brand Busters: Seven Common Mistakes Marketers Make. In it, Chris Wirthwein, CEO of 5MetaCom shares keys to identifying and avoiding these seven basic errors, commonly made when marketing technical and scientific products:

1. Taking “needs” instead of wants
2. Falling in love with your product, instead of your customer
3. Believing that marketing is a Science or an Art
4. Trying to please everyone
5. Forgetting that people forget
6. Believing your price is too high – without proof
7. Believing you must sell your product on an economic basis

Brand Busters helps readers learn from the slip-ups of others and instructs them on how to avoid mistakes and get on with efficient marketing. A quick and easy read, the book provides sound, yet surprisingly simple to apply advice. No matter what kind of product or service they offer, marketers will discover in Brand Busters new ideas for making marketing more efficient and effective.

Just how important is avoiding pitfalls? The author explains: “In the best case, mistakes go unnoticed,” says Wirthwein. “The marketing fails to connect, so the audience ignores you and moves on. But in the worst case,” he adds, “a mistake can destroy a product or financially ruin an entire industry for decades to come.” Wirthwein says readers will discover a true-life example of just this type of marketing disaster in chapter six.

With wit and wisdom – plus dozens of pertinent examples – Wirthwein shares insights based on his 20+ years of experience running an ad agency that specializes in technical and scientific products. In that time, he has advised some of the world’s best known, most successful brands on how to market their innovations in the U.S. and across the globe. “To be truthful, it’s stuff that’s really hard to market,” says the author. “And the secrets of how to do it have never been written…until now.”