Killing Marketing How Innovative Businesses Are Turning Marketing Cost Into Profit

Killing your current marketing structure may be the only way to save it! Two of the world’s top marketing experts reveal the next level of breakthrough success—transforming your marketing strategy into a standalone profit center. What if everything we currently know about marketing is what is holding us back? Over the last two decades, we’ve watched the entire world change the way it buys and stays loyal to brands. But, marketing departments are still operating in the same, campaign-centric, product-led operation that they have been following for 75 years. The most innovative companies around the world have achieved remarkable marketing results by fundamentally changing their approach. By creating value for customers through the use of owned media and the savvy use of content, these businesses have dramatically increased customer loyalty and revenue. Some of them have even taken it to the next step and developed a marketing function that actually pays for itself. Killing Marketing explores how these companies are ending the marketing as we know it—in favor of this new, exciting model. Killing Marketing provides the insight, approaches, and examples you need to understand these disruptive forces in ways that turn your marketing from cost center to revenue creator. This book builds the case for, literally, transforming the purpose of marketing within your organization. Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose of the Content Marketing Institute show how leading companies are able sell the very content that propels their marketing strategy. You’ll learn how to: * Transform all or part of your marketing operation into a media company * Integrate this new operation into traditional marketing efforts * Develop best practices for attracting and retaining audiences * Build a strategy for competing against traditional media companies * Create a paid/earned media strategy fueled by an owned media strategy Red Bull, Johnson & Johnson, Disney and Arrow Electronics have succeeded in what ten years ago would have been deemed impossible. They continue to market their products as they always have, and, through their content-driven and audience-building initiatives, they drive value outside the day-to-day products they sell—and monetize it directly. Killing Marketing rewrites the rules of marketing—enabling you to make the kind of transition that turns average companies into industry legends.

* Our summary is short, simple and pragmatic. It allows you to have the essential ideas of a big book in less than 30 minutes. By reading this summary, you will discover a whole new marketing model: content marketing. You will also discover that : despite advances in technology, marketing today is out of breath; companies have had great success in creating their own media to talk to their audience; content marketing requires a new model that can bring its own profitability; the content created must provide value that is independent of the products, and that builds user loyalty and a true relationship with the user. The marketing industry faces many challenges: established practices are increasingly struggling to deliver results. At the same time, some companies are implementing new strategies. To address their customers, they create their own media and distribute a wide variety of content, offering real value. These independent activities nourish their brand image and reputation while generating revenue. Despite the skepticism of many professionals, the future will surely involve such a rethink of established practices. *Buy now the summary of this book for the modest price of a cup of coffee!

In this seminal article, innovation experts Clayton Christensen, Stephen P. Kaufman, and Willy C. Shih explore the key reasons why companies struggle to innovate. The authors uncover common mistakes companies make—from focusing on the wrong customers to choosing the wrong products to develop—that can derail innovation efforts, and offer a better way forward for management teams who want to avoid these obstacles and get innovation right. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.

Businesses can plateau, stall, OR stagnatewithout the owners or key executives even realizing it. A business might be achieving incremental year-on-year growth and yet still be in a situation of stagnation or stall. Why? Because entrepreneurs and ...

If you want your company to thrive, you need to break one of the oldest unwritten rules of leadership. Leaders in nearly every industry have learned to keep a professional "distance" between themselves and the people who report to them—to avoid getting too close or too personal. This unwritten rule of leadership is pervasive and quietly destructive, and, little by little, keeping ourselves at arm's length destroys trust, collaboration, and the very fabric of organizations. When Tom Gartland became president of Avis Budget Group, North America, he wanted the corporate culture to become more "open and connected"—so he started with himself. His message was "business is personal—very personal." As he grew closer and connected more with those he was leading, he became a more effective leader, and those around him were inspired to create unprecedented results. Tom found that when we truly open up and care about the people we work with, we can transform organizations into sanctuaries where people feel a deep connection to one another, a profound sense of being part of an important mission, and extraordinary engagement in their work. The result? Employees who feel valued generate exceptional profits. After applying this business philosophy at Avis, not only did Tom see an increase in employee morale, he also saw a significant increase in the company's bottom line. In Lead with Heart, Tom provides an unconventional approach to business leadership, including advice and strategies on how to open yourself up as a leader, recognize potential in your employees, and increase employees' trust in you and the company. Lead with Heart is the revolutionary leadership book that will help managers and employees at all levels grow their businesses by connecting, honestly and meaningfully, with the people they lead.

Reach more customers than ever with TARGETED CONTENT Epic Content Marketing helps you develop strategies that seize the competitive edge by creating messages and “stories” tailored for instant, widespread distribution on social media, Google, and the mainstream press. It provides a step-by-step plan for developing powerful content that resonates with customers and describes best practices for social media sharing and search engine discoverability. Joe Pulizzi is a content marketing strategist, speaker and founder of the Content Marketing Institute, which runs the largest physical content marketing event in North America, Content Marketing World.

In Smart Pricing: How Google, Priceline and Leading Businesses Use Pricing Innovation for Profitability, Wharton professors and renowned pricing experts Jagmohan Raju and Z. John Zhang draw on examples from high tech to low tech, from consumer markets to business markets, and from U.S. to abroad, to tell the stories of how innovative pricing strategies can help companies create and capture value as well as customers. They teach the pricing principles behind those innovative ideas and practices. Smart Pricing introduces many innovative approaches to pricing, as well as the research and insights that went into their creation. Filled with illustrative examples from the business world, readers will learn about restaurants where customers set the price, how Google and other high-tech firms have used pricing to remake whole industries, how executives in China successfully start and fight price wars to conquer new markets. Smart Pricing goes well beyond familiar approaches like cost-plus, buyer-based pricing, or competition-based pricing, and puts a wide variety of pricing mechanisms at your disposal. This book helps you understand them, choose them, and use them to win.

"A real world tool for helping develop effective marketing strategies and plans." -- Dennis Dunlap, Chief Executive Officer, American Marketing Association "For beginners and professionals in search of answers." -- Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, President Emeritus and University Professor of Public Service, The George Washington University "A 'must read' for every business major and corporate executive." -- Clarence Brown, former Acting Secretary, U.S. Department of Commerce The Biggest Companies. The Boldest Campaigns. THE BEST INSIDER'S GUIDE ON THE MARKET. The most comprehensive book of its kind, The Big Book of Marketing is the definitive resource for marketing your business in the twenty-first century. Each chapter covers a fundamental aspect of the marketing process, broken down and analyzed by the greatest minds in marketing today. For the first time ever, 110 experts from the world's most successful companies reveal their step-by-step strategies, proven marketing tools, and tricks of the trade—fascinating, exclusive, real-world case studies from an all-star roster of companies, including: ACNielsen * Alcoa * American Express * Amtrak * Antimicrobial * Technologies Group * APL Logistics * Arnold * AT&T * Atlas Air * Bloomingdale's * BNSF * Boeing * Bristol-Myers Squibb * Burson-Marsteller * BzzAgent * Caraustar * Cargill * Carnival * Coldwell Banker * Colgate-Palmolive * Colonial Pipeline * Con-way * Costco * Dean Foods * Discovery Communications * Draftfcb * DSC Logistics * DuPont * Edelman * ExxonMobil * Fabri-Kal * FedEx Trade Networks * Fleishman-Hillard * Ford * Frito-Lay * GE * Greyhound * Hair Cuttery * Hilton * HOLT CAT * IBM * Ingram Barge * Ingram Micro * International Paper * John Deere * Kimberly-Clark * Kodak * Kraft * L.L.Bean * Landor * Long Island Rail Road * Lulu.com * Mars * MCC * McCann * McDonald's * McKesson * Nationals * NCR * New York Times * Nordstrom * Ogilvy Action * OHL * 1-800Flowers.com * Overseas Shipholding Group * Owens Illinois * P & G * Papa John's * Paramount Pictures * Patagonia * PepsiCo * Pfizer * Porter Novelli * RAPP * Ritz-Carlton * Safeway * Saks Fifth Avenue * Sara Lee * SC Johnson * Sealed Air * Sears * Silgan * Skyhook * Snap-on Tools * Southwest * Sports and Leisure * ResearchGroup * Staples * Stoner * Supervalu * Synovate * Tanimura & Antle * TBWA * Tenet Healthcare * Texas Instruments * 3M * ToysRUs * Trader Joe's * Tupperware * Under Armour * United Airlines * United Stationers * Verizon * VISA * Weyerhaeuser * Wilson Sporting Goods * Wunderman * Xerox * Y&R * Zappos.com No matter what business you're in--from retail and manufacturing to service and nonprofit--The Big Book of Marketing offers the most practical, hands-on advice you’ll ever find . . . from the best in the business. Anthony G. Bennett taught marketing at Georgetown University. With three decades of experience in the field, he has held a variety of key marketing positions at Fortune 500 companies, including AT&T and others. He resides in McLean, Virginia.