Something I’ll be doing as I get this blog going is point out those resources that I have found most useful in understanding and practising online marketing. And at the very top of my useful list goes this book: David Meerman Scott and The New Rules of Marketing & PR.
I also recommend his blog WebInkNow as a great read. It also happens to be an excellent example of content marketing in practice.
One of David’s primary insights is that new media is enabling a direct conversation with buyers. If you want to talk to buyers through print or broadcast media, you need to address the needs of journalists and editors. But publish yourself on the web and you can talk directly to buyers. The implications of this change are profound. A blog is in no small way one of the channels for communicating directly with buyers (although you may choose not to try to sell them directly).
With a full title of The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How To Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing & Online Media To Reach Buyers Directly, you can expect to get a thorough run down on a wide range of new media. And you won’t be disappointed, or receive a trivial treatment.
David discusses in some detail the value of content rich sites (David’s earlier book Cashing In With Content is also in my list of top resources, and I will post about separately).
Unlike many books that can rapidly start to lose precision, The New Rules and Marketing & PR gets involved in:
- the crucial relationship between online marketing and copywriting
- practical approaches to thought leadership to build trust
- building a marketing and PR plan
Aside from the very specific guidance provided in relation to how PR and marketing operate online, David makes a very interesting point about the convergence of marketing and PR. I’ve definitely noticed this. When we launched PublicityShip, we were focussing on publicity. As The New Rules of Marketing & PR was being written, we were busy adding online marketing services to our offering. As it stands, we’ve decided to create two distinct points of presence for these services. One for Publicity and Public Relations (PublicityShip) and another for Online Marketing (OM4). There are advantages in this (well, I think so anyway, our clients will prove this one way or the other). However there is no doubt in my mind that we are more useful to our clients by having both capabilities. Crossovers between the two offerings are happening all the time – the convergence of PR and marketing is very real from where we stand.
For me the standout element of The New Rules of Marketing & PR is David’s explanation of how to use Buyer Personas. It is concise, to the point, and really useful in developing a content strategy. It gets a whole session dedicated to it at Blog School. To learn more you can also read Adele Revella’s Buyer Personas blog.
In summary, buy this book. You’ll enjoy reading it, and won’t be able to avoid scrawling notes on it. Reading it is like a mini online marketing strategy workshop. Shortly after we received our copy, I asked Jane to read it in detail, and she came back with about 25 separate marketing initiatives to discuss.
It sparks ideas.