Thursday, June 5, 2014

eBook review - Shift

Shift is a 59 page eBook produced by 60 Second Marketer in the PDF format.  Their web address is www.60secondmarketer.com and the author Jamie Turner is available on LinkedIn. Jamie Turner and I have corresponded about marketing, particularly about this blog and the comment is that neither of us know why it's not getting more readers than it is. The articles are good. Readers just are not coming. With this in mind, the book may be reviewed through slightly cynical eyes.
The book starts off with a simple questionnaire to get readers in the mood. It seems to be styled after a PowerPoint presentation which is probably what the book was before it became a PDF. There's a reference to the 60 Second Marketer Pandora channel which didn't perform on the PDF nor would it be reasonable to expect that it would. The questionnaire was entertaining though the actual answer cited in the book was a grey elephant and Denmark. Grey was the color I was thinking of but it was actually a Gekko and England. It'd be interesting to know what other people come up with.

Developing into the book (this takes a few pages) it identifies correctly that everybody in marketing and sales is looking for a silver bullet. Email marketing and Social Media were quoted as silver bullets then mobile before the author acknowledges there's no such thing as a silver bullet. This is in fact my own experience. Email marketing gets filtered as spam. Social Media gets no attention as people are there to socialise rather than to go shopping. Mobile adverts have become so annoying that as much as I loved Words With Friends, I deleted it because of the intrusive advertising. So far so good. At this point the author looks to be right on the ball.

The next few pages talk about a wheel of marketing and how horizontal was better than vertical. It looked interesting but lacked sufficient explanation to understand what the author was getting to. Without understanding this at this point I feared the rest of the book might rely heavily upon a point that shot past my head.

About three or four pages is devoted to innovation being better than copying. This is absolutely true. There are so many copycats in the world all trying for a piece of somebody else's action. Which bread is better - Walmart's or BiLo's? Somebody came out with bread and everybody and their dog copied it. Only one thing is certain about bread - the cheapest bread from any shop tastes like soggy cardboard.

After this there seems to be somewhat of a commercial break where the author tries to plug a 5 week course in marketing. The whole book is thus actually more of an infomercial but what it does try to say makes a lot of sense.

There's a section immediately after this that really grabbed my attention. It was on triggers - what causes people to make a purchase decision. After that was a page on putting the triggers to use. That was very interesting and well worth reading.

Following that was an even more interesting section on what businesses sell versus what people think they sell. Think about the shopping experience in your local grocery store - there's music playing. Music relaxes people and makes them more liable to buy things. People enjoy music. Happy people buy more products and buy more expensive products. I've used this myself in sales - making the customer laugh eases the way to an upsell. The point is also well made that the business is the customer and not the product.

The final section was all about how to grow a business and the three ways of doing it. It all makes a load of sense. Sadly, there was nothing on how to get those very important first customers. That was where my only business venture fell flat on its back. I'd been advised to set up a photography business and despite advertising in various ways for a couple of years, never could get those first customers so in the end, I concluded there was no business to be had and surrendered the business license. Was I right or wrong? The figures I see and the answers I hear tell me I was right not to pursue that business further yet there are those that claim otherwise.

Despite initial reservations due to the lack of explanation on the wheel of marketing and the heavy marketing plug in the book, this was an informative book that makes one think more about the components of business. I'll recommend this book. It can be obtained from www.60secondmarketer.com and the price $0.00

Disclaimer: This book was read on June 5th 2014 from a downloaded copy of two weeks prior. Content might have changed since downloading or review.

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