Great Marketing Ideas for 2009

I've been getting a little R&R on the beach in Mexico over the last few days and on my way down I picked up a book in the airport. The book is the New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott.  This book has been a real eye opening experience for me in that I thought I was somewhat tech savvy when it comes to marketing but as I found reading David's book I'm just scratching the surface of what I should be doing to market my business, let alone help my clients market their businesses.  David does a fantastic job of laying out the new rules of marketing and how marketing firms, ad agencies and PR firms have done this in the past and how the world of the web, online marketing, blogs, news releases, podcasting and an assortment of other methods have made the old world of marketing and PR obsolete. I generally don't do book reviews in this blog however I have been so impacted by this book I believe I need to let everyone know that reads my blog that they should be incorporating the ideas in this book into their marketing plans. I spend a lot of time in marketing with my clients however I don't consider myself a marketing consultant rather I work with them to create the plans for their marketing that will help them achieve their business goals.  And one thing that became very evident in reading David's book is that I need to focus more on internet based marketing as I work with clients to help them create their plans. 

Internet marketing has come a long ways since it's early days and with all the tools available our there today if you are not taking advantage of some of these things you are completely missing the boat on opportunities to let people know about who you are and what you do. Any business plan should incorporate many of the tools that David discusses in order to get maximum exposure in the marketplace. The best part of this is it is relatively inexpensive and you don't need webmasters and programmers to do it. In my book "Ultimate Breakthrough Planning" I have an entire chapter on looking at your marketing systems and building a business funnel for them.  By taking some of David's ideas and putting them into your funnel you will improve your marketing dramatically.  The best part is that many of the tools David mentions we have typically thought of for large corporations, yet he gives some great examples such as an auto repairman on how they grew their businesses through some of these tools.  

In building your business funnel you should very definitely read David's book as well as visit his blog.  By the way David's not paying me anything for this in fact I don't know David and he doesn't know me however I believe his ideas should be used by every business to make their marketing efforts more targeted and more effective.