Your Marketing Sucks » (Reprint)

Mark Stevens, president of MSCO, is one of the nation’s leading experts in ROI-based marketing and the creator of the Extreme Marketing process. He is an entrepreneur, advisor, business builder, and author of such prominent books as The Big Eight, Sudden Death: The Rise and Fall of E. F. Hutton, and Extreme Management.

"Your marketing sucks . . ."

What in the world does Mark Stevens mean?

For starters, let's take spending camouflaged as marketing. Everyone sees all those expensive, slick, pointless campaigns day after day. Just turn on your TV set and there are all the look-alike ads from Ford, GM, and Chrysler with look-alike cars going down . . .

Publishers Weekly

Most companies don't have a clue about good marketing, argues entrepreneur Stevens (Extreme Management) in his slender but vociferous book. What they need are the principles of "extreme marketing," in which every dollar "is set in a strategic context," is part of an integrated plan and brings in more than a dollar in return-strategies Stevens lays out in his readable, thought-provoking and sometimes outrageous book. He bashes marketers' "conventional wisdom" with an almost immoderate glee, and proposes big changes too: stop all marketing if you can't prove it works; don't use your competitors' marketing as a benchmark; don't depend on the results of focus groups; fire sellers that don't sell; cross-sell to consumers; and try direct mailings are just a few of his ideas. With charges like "Be persistent, relentless, inventive, counterintuitive, challenging, combative, strategic and tactical," readers may be tempted to think: easy for you to say. But this gem of a book is brimming with anecdotal evidence of advertising strategies gone awry, and full of examples of better plans. Diversification of programs is key, as are market testing and tracking. And if Stevens's examples aren't enough to convince (though they should be), his passion for his subject may carry the day. At the book's conclusion, Stevens instructs readers to not return to the office until they have figured out how to implement his advice. This is as different from more traditional and staid marketing how-tos as its title suggests. (July) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.