The Business of Getting Business

The Business of Getting Business, The Digital Marketing Guide for Small Businesses, by Joe Manausa, LID Publishing 2020

The subtitle, The Digital Marketing Guide for Small Businesses is what sells this book.  Digital upgrades and big moves can kill a business, but we know that the guys who have figured out their digital strategy and execution to the point of fewer than five glitches every six months are on their way to brand and market dominance.  That's why the details of digital marketing, branding, customer contact are food for small and medium sized businesses, the ones that at least pre-pandemic accounted for most of the US' GDP.  The big guys think they have it all figured out.

Assume that pre-pandemic Amazon figured out digital marketing and now, in the midst of the pandemic other digital strategies have evolved to the point that they have effectively replaced retail and are working with some success in other sectors - automotive and real estate as perfect on-line examples.  The idea is to establish the company as an online destination.  Although Manausa originally aimed this book at companies doing less than $10M per year, we now know that all commerce needs to be safely positioned on the net.  

The author covers in detail the two key success factors for digital marketing:

1.  content creation

Users have many "packaging" choices for their message, and each method will impact how a message is perceived.  It's important to pick the right ones out of the many choices:

*  social media marketing

*  content marketing

*  search engine optimization (SEO)

*  pay per click advertising

*  remarketing

*  affiliate marketing

*  e-newsletters

*  email campaigns

*  eblasts

2. delivery

Here Manausa offers a formula which he calls HPITA for preparing or forming your message : - 

Headline - its the grabber

Problem - immediately communicate the problem the reader is facing - compel that reader to read further

Irritate - make that problem so big, so important, that the reader MUST pursue it!

Takeaway - "And here's the solution to your big, terrible problem...."

Action - Click here!  Dial this number!  Send me a text!  Meet us next week for a neighborhood confab."  Your reader if properly zoned into the problem, will be expecting solutions!

Sounds simple, doesn't it?  But, using real case stories as examples, Manausa offers more detail about the sometimes complex execution of these very clear steps.  Chapter 4 specifies infrastructure required to support digital marketing and Chapter 9 contains specific details on how to take a company digital.  These two chapters are so mission-critical, would recommend expansion.  

Patricia E. Moody

FORTUNE magazine  "Pioneering Woman in Mfg" 

IndustryWeek IdeaXchange Xpert

A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal, on-line resource for business thought-leaders and decision-makers, pemoody@aol.com, patriciaemoody@gmail.com, tricia@patriciaemoody.com,