The New Rules of Marketing & PR

The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott, Edition 4 ---> just released, is my bible.  You can't seriously be communicating to the public and not read this book.

Why did the women of Cleveland, who were captive for a decade use social media to communicate their story? Control? Coaching? Maybe? Maybe not?

David Meerman Scott (DMS) would say that they understand their audience and they are marketing to them. Or their handlers understand their audience and are marketing to them.

Mr. Scott has just published his fourth edition of his amazing book: "The New Rules of Marketing & PR," which will be one of those text books that becomes a classic — if it already isn't.  He has added some great content and thought to this version, and social media has much to do with. If you haven't read this or bought this before, you need to buy it — the "Marketing Strategy Planning Template," is by itself, worth the price of admission.

Scott constantly states that his way of thinking about "...the new rules..." is not going to be popular with your company's regular marketing force.  And when I've been out trying to sell my services, it has not gone over big. Telling people that your target audience is more important than your product or service is not de rigueur! Yep!

Do you know who your "buyer  persona" is?  Do you know what all of the categories of those persona's are?  Are you marketing to them, one by one? What are there goals and aspirations? What are their problems? What media do they rely on? How can we reach them? Do you know the things that are important to them? What words and phrases do they use with respect to your products or services? What do they read?

How many buyer personas do you need? Because of interactive marketing, the one-to-one marketing plan is here to stay.

I guess you could say that there's much "ego" in DMS's logic; by that I mean most companies are very invested in their products or their services, their audiences are secondary to their product marketing. And I'd imagine that marketing people's egos are very invested in their work. But DMS makes the stance that to know your buyer persona — deeply, intimately — means that you know how to satisfy their needs, and hopefully that satisfying their needs means buying your product or service.

Wow! That's a thoughtful! 

You have the same product (or service) as you did before, but now your understanding of why your buyer persona's buy makes that product seem different.

In another of his books (World Wide Rave) he goes on with his theory by saying the following:

1. No one cares about your product but you
2. No coercion is required — give things away for free, don't require your users to give you anything for what you have to offer
3. Lose control —keep your content open and totally free, i.e. blogs, e-books, documents, downloads, templates, etc....
4. Put down roots — if you want to spread your ideas become involved in online communities to make sure that they can find you
5. Create triggers that encourage people to share — is your content or service valuable, interesting or fun? Read my blog on "Tribes"
6. Through all of the above — point the world to your doorstop

Reading either of these DMS books is well worth your effort. I love this stuff so much that I've outlined it.