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Margie ClaymanMargie Clayman

Marietta, OH

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Why Marketers Need to Read Marketing in the Round

May 14, 2012 by Margie Clayman 11 Comments

I’ve encountered a rather unexpected problem during my time in the online world. As I’ve made it a habit to review books as honestly as I possibly can, I have also, in parallel, gotten to know and really like people who have written books that I read. This can be nerve-wracking. I really want to like whatever my friends produce, but I don’t write reviews here so you can find out how awesome I think people are (well, not most of the time). I write book reviews to let you know if I think you should read this or that book.

Luckily, in the case of Marketing in the Round, by Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston, I can simultaneously preserve my friendship with both authors while remaining 100% honest about how important I think it is that you read their book.

Not your uncle’s social media book

Even though Geoff and Gini are both really well known in the online/social media world, this book is not a “social media book.” Rather, it’s a marketing book, and even beyond that, it’s a silo busting book.

Marketing in the Round begins with a definition of what a company silo is. “What is meant to produce power and control really creates animosity and suspicion.”

Geoff and Gini argue that after 9/11, as jobs were cut and people became much more worried about their jobs, these silos came back faster than mushrooms after a warm summer rain. People thought that by controlling their departments and the associated information, they could really get a leg up. Instead, this silo infusion actually broke the back of a lot of businesses. The scary thing is that a lot of companies might have a broken back today and yet be totally unaware of it. Marketing in the Round takes a chiropractor’s approach to this broken back problem. It snaps you back into place.

After establishing the four parts of the marketing round’s foundation – key performance indicators, marketing objectives, stakeholders (who they are and how to communicate with them), and the capacity to market (time, human resources), the book begins to give you an increasingly detailed, increasingly in-depth analysis of how the marketing round can work and what it can accomplish. As you read you travel through the following:

1. The different kinds of media (earned, paid, owned) and the steps needed to advance from crawling to walking to flying

2. Your relationship with your stakeholders – how to listen, SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats), and the importance of testing the waters

3. Marketing strategy – Direct, Groundswell, Top Down, Flank – This is perhaps the greatest strength of the book, as each type of marketing strategy is analyzed in tremendous detail, complete with pros and cons. For example, direct marketing is broken out into advertising, event marketing, email marketing, and social media with hefty analysis of each segment. This is continued for the other three approaches.

4. Measurement, Refinement, Improvement – Gini and Geoff provide a lot of detail about what to measure, how to measure, how to set objectives, and how to be willing to change your approach. They delve into more detail, again, than I have seen in other marketing books, down to how to create a dashboard using Excel.

Ultimately, Marketing in the Round is a story about integration. It’s about how you need to integrate your departments so that everyone knows what everyone else is doing. It’s about integrating your objectives with the corporate objectives. It’s about integrating data so that everyone can work from the same information. And it’s about working with your external partners as seamlessly as possible.

To put it another way, if you are in a business that needs to market a product or service, this book is a must read.

Steps to success

Marketing in the Round touches on so many things you may find that you want to dig even deeper into one aspect before jumping into the next chapter. This is the kind of book that encourages you to work, not just read, so I would recommend the following if you really want to jumpstart your business.

After you read the first part, give a gander to The Now Revolution by Jay Baer and Amber Naslund. They concentrate on the types of culture shifts that Geoff and Gini touch on – that whole, “Do you need to stimulate a crisis to create change” conundrum.

As you read about the different marketing approaches, follow Geoff and Gini’s suggestion and check out Content Rules by CC Chapman and Ann Handley, particularly if you are new to creating content. That would be a great partner for a lot of the creative and copywriting information Marketing in the Round provides.

As you read the final part treating measurement and management, check out Olivier Blanchard’s Social Media ROI, which touches on a lot of the integration issues Geoff and Gini talks about but also, per the name, delves more into measurement and what to do with the information you gather.

As you read all of these books together, you’ll end up where Geoff and Gini take you at the end of their book – an understanding of how your entire marketing plan can be approved by your marketing round, integrated from types of marketing approach to specific details, and honed to meet your customers and prospects right where they are. And you’ll even be able to report to the c-suite on how all of this is going.

Buy the book. Right here. And this is not an affiliate link. Then let me know what you think about it.

Image via SpinSucks.com

Filed Under: Book Reviews

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. JosephGier says

    May 14, 2012 at 10:18 am

    I will pick it u. it might be awhile before I can get to it..there are so many other things to do with so little time to do it. I will move that to the top of the reading list. I agree with you Blanchard’s ( @thebrandbuilder )book was a good read.

    Reply
  2. JosephGier says

    May 14, 2012 at 10:19 am

    I will pick it up. it might be awhile before I can get to it..there are so many other things to do with so little time to do it. I will move that to the top of the reading list. I agree with you Blanchard’s ( @thebrandbuilder )book was a good read. Well done,MC!
     

    Reply
    • margieclayman says

      May 14, 2012 at 10:28 pm

       @JosephGier  Thanks Joseph. Appreciate it! You should move this one to the front burner 🙂 

      Reply
  3. ginidietrich says

    May 14, 2012 at 12:33 pm

    First of all, knowing how little time you had to read this, I am really impressed. Secondly, I’m glad you could preserve our friendship, too. BUT…even if you hated the book, we would need to hear that and we’d still be friends.
     
    I love what you took away from reading it and I love that you included the other books we suggested. Thanks so much, my friend!

    Reply
    • margieclayman says

      May 14, 2012 at 10:29 pm

       @ginidietrich Well, I’ll be honest. i tried really hard to find something to complain about because I didn’t want my review to be too sappy, but I couldn’t find anything. Foiled, foiled again. 🙂 

      Reply
  4. JoelFortner says

    May 14, 2012 at 1:16 pm

    Well I bought it before reading your review so I guess it’s good you liked it. =) 

    Reply
    • margieclayman says

      May 14, 2012 at 10:29 pm

       @JoelFortner I’ll be curious to hear YOUR review, Mr. Man! 

      Reply
  5. geoffliving says

    May 15, 2012 at 7:28 am

    Thank you for your time and opinion, Margie! Your view of the sector is valued and needed! Fantastic!

    Reply
  6. allenmireles says

    May 15, 2012 at 10:22 am

     @margieclayman I stayed up late (too late) reading “Marketing in the Round” last night and would concur with your review. Not finished yet but definitely enjoying the read and recommending it to my networks. Nice job.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. #HecklersHangout 11 – @GiniDietrich! Plus some news! | Brian Vickery – Social Media Sport Analogies says:
    November 12, 2012 at 8:00 am

    […] earlier this year. I wrote a pretty detailed review after I read the book that you can catch here, but to summarize, the book is an excellent, up-to-date look at why it’s essential that […]

    Reply
  2. #HecklersHangout 11 – @GiniDietrich and The Puppy | Brian Vickery – Social Media Sport Analogies says:
    November 16, 2012 at 11:36 am

    […] about marketing! You can catch Margie Clayman’s book review of Marketing in the Round here. Share this:TwitterFacebookGoogle […]

    Reply

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