• Marketing is more than just advertising

I’m not sure where the defining boundaries of marketing are anymore if any still exist. Marketing communications and tactics permeate sales processes, operational standards, and yes… even are a key influence on software development strategies.

• PR is for more than just a mainstream media audience.

I’ve always seen PR as a specialized subset of marketing. Just like contemporary marketing endeavors, PR can require the use of ‘viral’ communication tactics and the use of new media to help build The Brand.

• You are what you publish

Just as in the old ‘.com’ days of the late 1990s, a company’s corporate website was said to BE its brand. A company’s messaging, products and services, and customer/audience experience is inseparable from how your company is perceived in the marketplace.

• People want authenticity, not spin.

The average consumer has been absolutely saturated with advertising. From newspaper and magazine ads to television and internet, the number of ads an average individual is exposed to is thousands a day. If an ad seems the slightest bit pretentious, a savvy consumer will blot it out of their perception. I think in B@B marketplaces this is especially true.

• People want participation, not propaganda

The days of ‘magic bullet’ media models and grandiose propaganda are long over. The power of today’s social and interactive media creates multi-layered user experiences. When a user can be stimulated simultaneously on multiple cognitive and visceral levels… much more depth of knowledge and understanding can be gained.

• Instead of causing one-way interruption, marketing is about delivering content at just the precise moment your audience needs it.

You’ve heard the old saying that ‘timing is everything’ in business or otherwise… and it is mostly true. If you can reach the right audience at the right time your message can have a contextual impact which will really resonate.

I am hoping I can take away from this book how to take what I already know about socal media and implement that in my professional life. As his last point said, “On the Web, the lines between maketing and PR have blurred” I absolutely agree.

I am sitting in the Marketing department with a PR title, because for us PR is a tactic used under Marketing. I haven’t written a press release yet, but instead I have used ways online (like Facebook, Twitter and Sphinn) to communicate directly with prospects,customers and the public.

Consider the Volkswagen TV ads from a decade ago. When the Touareg was first released, it was touted as having a higher ground clearance than a Jetta. That’s right, a Jetta, manufactured and sold by the very same company. It would’ve been easy enough to compare the Touareg to any number of cars made by competitors, but VW stuck to their own line. I found myself more trusting of them, simply because they presented their own vehicles as having unique strengths that would appeal differently to different customers.

The point is, you have to establish yourself as an educator to your customers by the way you market to them. If you come across as a biased source of information, customers will hesitate to trust you. If, however, you provide a learning arena where your customers can peruse and exchange information freely, you may cease being a vendor and become a partner to your customers.

Most marketers are familiar with the quote from the man who brought us the department store, John Wanamaker. It goes: “I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted … I just don’t know which half.”

Those of us who have been around the horn a time or two remember – sadly – that Mr. Wanamaker’s lament was not only true, but for far too many years it was considered acceptable. If 1-2% response rates were considered successful, then like the local weather man it seemed not to matter that we were wrong 98% of the time.

Take another look at Leigh Anne’s outline comparing characteristics of old and new school rules from the perspective of it being a trust building process – which is really what marketing is. The internet has not only advanced how we find the right audience, but also how we engage with highly credible, transparent and meaningful dialog that produce measureable results.

I hate to steal a FOX News mantra, but it seems one of the biggest improvements the new rules offer is that THE SPIN STOPS here.