 Building a business from the ground up can be hard. Sustaining the popularity and profitability of that business can be even harder.
Kevin A. Epstein’s Marketing Made Easy offers step-by-step instructions along with creative tips and tricks for those looking to put together their first marketing strategy as well as for others who might need help with their company’s existing marketing plan.
This book begins by de-bunking the common myths surrounding the successful corporate marketer and acknowledges that the days of pushy, over-bearing and greedy marketing have fallen by the wayside. In the preface Epstein writes, “If you believe marketing is about fooling or misleading people, tricking them into buying things, stop reading here and go return this book—or risk learning something in the next pages.”
In Marketing Made Easy, Epstein explains how successful marketing boils down to effective planning, understanding one’s customers as well as getting the right balance of media exposure. He maintains it’s a combination of these and other strategies that can transform your business from “back-room” to “board-room” by taking your marketing campaigns to the next level.
Taking care of business
Unlike other more anecdotal and informal business books, Marketing Made Easy is instead structured like university textbook, making it geared towards the serious reader. Epstein frequently uses graphs, charts and plots as sample methods of organizing marketing data.
There are also references to marketing-related mathematical equations and some brief corporate history from certain well-known companies that enhance the text. Chapters follow a similar bullet-point layout and at the end of the book there are two concise appendixes brimming with additional information.
To balance out the diagrams Epstein also begins each chapter with relevant quotes. The often-comical nature of these sayings and the other humorous situations given in this book appeal to first-time marketers who might not yet be fully interested in some of Epstein’s technical jargon.
Getting to know your options
We are living in a world where media plays a key role. This is because it not only affects how we interact within our communities but because it also influences the decisions we make when we look at buying certain goods and services.
In my opinion, one of the most useful and informative sections of this novel is Chapter 3, in which Epstein tackles the best ways to create brand awareness in our very media-oriented society. Here he writes, “This chapter and the next will show you how to use existing social phenomena and technology to reach more prospective customers than a Superbowl ad reaches, faster and for a fraction of the cost.”
Family, friends, viral marketing, newspaper ads, website banners, radio and television commercials, blogvertising, discussion groups, telemarketing and community associations are all marketing outlets that Epstein explores in depth so the reader can choose the ones that are most suited to the needs of his or her business.
Epstein is a firm believer that generating large sales for your business is relatively simple, assuming you keep in mind common sense, careful planning, responsible money management and the various suggestions he provides in Marketing Made Easy. After all, whether you’re climbing the corporate ladder or trying to keep your balance at the top, the idea of a stronger and more dynamic business is always a good sell.
About the Author
Kevin Epstein is a Silicon Valley marketing executive with founding experience at three successful small-business retail ventures. He has more than 15 years of marketing experience at such software industry high-flyers as Netscape, RealNetworks, Inktomi and VMware.
Author: Kevin A. Epstein
Number of pages: 202
Publisher: Entrepreneur Press
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