All Marketers Are Liars and Freakonomics Two Must Read Marketing Books

This note will be very quick. I just finished reading two great books that I thought you should know about because they'll radically impact your business and profitability.

The first is by well known marketing author Seth Godin and is
called All Marketers Are Liars http://tinyurl.com/dqvw2 . This book is probably one of the best overviews of how to create stories that sell I've read, the case studies and examples are very powerful. What I liked most was that you can apply the principles to any size business.

The second book is Freakonomics http://tinyurl.com/b3k5y . This book is simply one of the best I've ever read about cause and effect of economic issues, but what I really like about it is how easy and fun it is to read. I mean really, who would have ever thought that there was a correlation between the Ku Klux Klan and Real Estate Agents, or the real reason crime dropped in the United States. There are some great insights to how to create a long term shift in consumer behavior here.

Both of these books have impacted my business greatly in one way or the other and I thought you might like to know about them so you can check them out yourself.

If you've already read them or when you do, I'd love to hear what you learned from them and how it will impact your business!

Comments

[johnmoore (from brandautopsy)]

Dave ... there were four marketing lessons I learned from FREAKONOMICS ...

Marketing lesson learned #1 | What really matters for a marketing campaign is not how much you spend on tactics. What matters most is what your product/service can do.
(FREAKONOMICS link | demystifying the assumption the amount of money spent by political candidates matter greatly in an election.)

Marketing lesson learned #2 | Don’t think a customer loyalty program which doles out monetary incentives will alter consumer behavior for the better. Instead, find ways to base so-called customer loyalty programs on social currencies like recognition and admiration.
(FREAKONOMICS link | demystifying how monetary incentives (and disincentives) results in changing one’s behavior in an unintended manner.)

Marketing lesson learned #3 | The abundance and availability of information today makes storytelling more important than ever for marketers. Storytelling, not information, is the new leverage-able asset in business.
(FREAKONOMICS link | how the diffusion of information eradicates the power of knowledge being a leverageable asset in business.)

Marketing lesson learned #4 | Don’t try to change one’s conventional wisdom by marketing how your product/service upends one’s thinking -- it’ll take too much money and time. Instead, success will come truer if you focus on telling your product’s story to people who are more inclined to believe your story from the get-go.
(FREAKONOMICS link | how conventional wisdom is a powerful story most people want to believe even when shown sound analysis to the contrary.)