I’m reading this book (UnMarketing) for the second time now and am excited to be going to see Scott Stratten tomorrow in Toronto.
This book is by far one of my favorite books on marketing. Here’s why:
1. It’s super funny, which made it extremely easy and enjoyable to read.
2. Scott is super smart. Well I don’t think he’s a rocket scientist or anything, but he really understands how to market in today’s economy and with the shifts the Internet has created.
A Shift In Thinking
I’ve been studying online marketing for years now and thought I had a pretty good grasp on how to do things. Create a free compelling offer, build a mailing list, build a relationship with the list (using automation…which is a bit of an quirk), make some products or services, sell to your list, use some copywriting techniques, have nice graphics, keep it simple and keep your prospects attention focused. I could go on and on.
But this book is different. It’s more about relationship marketing and how to really engage, respect and get to know your audience. After reading this book I made some changes to some of my sites that I realized were a bit “over the top” and am continuing to tweak it.
How To Win A Copy Of UnMarketing
Simple. Tell me either a horror story or a success story of your online marketing activities. That’s it…simple huh?
Just put your story below in the comments. My decision is subjective – yes!
But you can’t win if you don’t comment.
My Horror Story
When I first started using Twitter I thought I needed to get as many followers as I could as quickly as I could so I used one of those “friend adder” things.
BIG MISTAKE!
Now I have a bunch of spammers following me and I’m following them. So my feed is filled with 90% garbage…Something I’m working on correcting.
Word of advice: Don’t do this!
My Success Story
I consider this a success story even thought many may disagree.
Three months ago I had a mailing list of nearly 6,000 people. I decided to switch to a new provider, one that I felt would be give me a more accurate view of my list and provide some additional functionality. After moving my list over and sending out my first email using that new service my email list was reduced to just over 4,000 names.
As I continued to use the new software, my list continued to dwindle to around 3,000. Half my list was gone. What happened?
Well, besides using a program that worked better and removed dead email addresses, I was also realizing that many of the people on my list weren’t getting the emails previously and now they were and many of them started to unsubscribe. Which is fine. Actually I am happy when someone unsubscribes because that means that my list and I are getting closer. Ah …how sweet.
I’d rather have 3,000 people that like me and want to hear from me, then to have 6,000 who don’t. Anyways…my success is that in my mind I’m now OK with a smaller list because it’s not about the numbers, it’s about the quality of the relationship.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Probably would consider this a horror story. A couple years back, I decided to try selling “drop ship” products on ebay. The drop ship company seemed OK and I did a kitchenware store. All was well till the dust settled and I realised I had actually netted minus after all the fees were factored in. I actually did a return on one item that when I sold it, I sold it at a pretty good price, it was a gift for an elderly couple who just didn’t want it and when I tried to resell it later on the price had been dropped by the manufacturer to less than my wholesale cost was.
Moral, build your own site, have a consumable product or digital product and drive your own traffic to support it all.
Mike G recently posted..Sausage and Apple Turkey Stuffing
Sounds like a horror story to me Mike. I agree consumables and digital are great products to sell..that’s why we do what we do
Tracy
My story is a success story and a horror story all at once.
I am just starting to work on SEO training and decided that one of my focus projects will be my semi neglected blog. Here is the amazing thing. I am generating 400+ hits a month, I have built 120 backlinks, and I am currently at a pagerank of 1 without any focused effort. (If you pop over to the blog, you will notice that my blog posting haven’t exactly been on target either). So doing a few accidental right things has helped my blog along and I have been contacted by some companies to do giveaways as well.
Here is the horror story. I bought fortysomethingbride.com AND fourtysomethingbride.com (just in case people misspelled forty like I tend to do) and I set up the domain in the opposite way that I should have. So those backlinks…yeah…they all point to fourtysomethingbride.com. Woops.
Working on fixing that this week, and then building out my site correctly.
Then on to my other two (revenue generating) projects.
I want to prove to myself that I can do it first, before I start pouring effort into my revenue sites.
Thanks for a great newsletter, by the way, I do enjoy reading them!
Awesome Colleen. I do the same…stumble along until I see something that works.
Keep it up.. 
Tracy
Hi Tracy!
Sounds like my kind of book. I am forever marketing my business everyway that I can. On Facebook,Twitter,blog,etc. It has definitely brought more traffic to my site so that is good. But I can sure use more help on marketing. I have been published in mags and even a book. Not sure if I have a horror story to share..lol Sorry
Have a fantastic day,
xxoo
Janet
Janet..it is a great book. Keep up the traffic generating activities. Do you have a funnel in place to capture your traffic? I couldn’t see one on your site. Tracy
I worked for months last year and at the beginning of this year to build a website to launch my new product, a new laptop stand that actually solves all of the problems that a laptop stand is supposed to solve.
Being in marketing as an art director and graphic designer for years and delving into online marketing intensely for 18 months or so now, I thought I had done a good job and created a site that would sell. Well online marketing can be a bit confusing, even though it’s actually no that complex. And compounded with my old school thinking on internet marketing where I produced pretty sites for companies, that did nothing for them in acquiring new business, I had a lot of habits that were not addressing the realities of the internet, and so I spent months building a site that was redundant, too complicated, was missing the primary element in selling a physical product online, and was not streamlined for e-commerce, just to name a few of the errors. I didn’t even have a video demonstration on any of the pages, a very basic mistake in online selling.
So, the site is being re-designed, from the ground up just 6 months after first launching, and in the very near future when it goes live, I will be able to optimize it in order to get traffic that won’t be driven away when they arrive on my landing pages, or frustrated when they try to make a purchase.
It hasn’t really been a bad thing. Learning never is. It’s just another hurdle in getting where I would like my online presence to be. And it serves to prove that internet marketing is a relatively new discipline that is changing every year or even more frequently, and is very different from what us in strategic marketing have been practicing for years, and that it pays to seek out and listen to those who have experienced success at it, and are connected to others at the forefront of the latest information.
Scott Petrie.
Wow…Scott.. you almost wrote a book there…Everything worth doing always has hurdles…Tracy
This seems like a great book.
it’s an awesome book. Tracy
For the UA School of Dance I started an e-newsletter to keep in touch with friends and donors. People love getting the photos and news about our dance students and faculty.
The challenge has been that the traditional way to market dance has been through postcards, posters and brochures. Working at a large institution, shifting our marketing to more electronic sources has had some challenges. Our successful strategy for adding new names to the e-news list is to call our season ticket subscribers, thank them for buying tickets and tell them about the e-newsletter. 98% ask to be added to the list. So although our list is small, currently under 700 all of the people have asked to be on the list. We are still collecting names and e-mail addresses at concerts through paper sign-up forms. We need to develop an online way for people to sign-up when they are viewing our website.
The e-news keeps our donors informed and we can contact them very quickly when something special comes up like a visiting artist or master class. It has helped us have better ongoing communication – we just need to grow the list.
Hi Laura, Yes growing the list is so key. Keep up the great work. Tracy
I’m in the process of creating a Success Story. I have a new blog. I’ve never had a blog before. It’s all about Art and Artists. I am getting some fantastic responses from ‘real’ people who are really interested.
The Horror Story is that I didn’t expect to receive an equal amount of spam comments. I think they just want to get quick and easy links as opposed to going the proper route and requesting a link or link swap. Thankfully, I do have to approve which comments will appear first. And I was wondering what the point of that was!!! LOL
Now I’m searching out something for Wordpress that will help me more efficiently deal with that so I can focus on my content, partnerships with artists and building the site.
Hi Linda, The best thing to use is Askimet. That stops all blog spam …or at least most of it.
So who won the book?
Laura Donnelly from Arizona.