Book Review
If you want to know the secret to taking your business from mediocre to meaningfully different, then author Kate Colbert has the answer in her new book Think Like a Marketer. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a management consultant or the owner of a small retail business, the ability to think like a marketer will give you a competitive edge.
Thinking like a marketer. It’s also the secret to moving your business from status quo to success story, and from busy to profitable. In an easy-to-read, practical new guidebook, acclaimed marketing expert Kate Colbert offers fresh insights into the actions and attitudes that can accelerate your business success, sharpen your daily work, and balance your efforts to create value for customers while capturing value for the bottom line. For non-marketers and marketers alike, truly thinking like a marketer requires the right framework, and this book is everything you need to make the mindset shift that can change everything for your business.
Business owners are invariably stuck in the frenzied current moment - chasing the next piece of revenue, getting through the next project, putting out the next proverbial fire, or surviving the next people-problem that’s bound to come up. Think Like a Marketer offers a fresh new approach to a more powerful and lasting way to do business that involves a sometimes-subtle but always-impactful shift in mindset. It’s time to think like a marketer.
Thinking like a marketer requires that you:
Communicate for connection and meaning, not just to transact sales
Live and die by your customer insights
Market in a way that’s strategy-religious and tactic-agnostic
Create cultures and processes that align with your brand
Do everything in service of maintaining a virtuous cycle of creating value for the customer while capturing value for you.
The 5 Think Like a Marketer Principles are the framework for Colbert’s valuable insights and practical tips about:
Brand storytelling
Sampling strategies
Smart monetization
Testing new marketing tactics
Conducting critical market research
The perils of do-it-yourself marketing
Building and maintaining lists and pipelines
Innovating product and service deliverables
Being known, being seen and networking in new ways
Delivering customer service, even when the going gets tough
Innovations in distribution and packaging
Creating meaningful connections with your customers
Thinking like a marketer allows decision-makers - at every level, in any kind of organization and with backgrounds in any area of functional expertise - to accomplish more while spending less time and money. A marketing mindset can be the key to sustained profitable growth and meaningful connections with loyal customers. Far from a simple “Marketing 101” for non-marketers, this book is a topical smorgasbord designed to feed the curiosities and satisfy the business needs that all business professionals (including marketers) ultimately crave.
Author quotes
Thinking like a marketer will help you say “no” to low-value projects, activities and expenses, and say “yes” to initiatives that serve your long-term business and career strategies.
Applying the “think like a marketer” filter to your decisions will help you create value and capture value, every day, for as long as you choose to do the amazing work that drives you.
Relationships, even in business as transient as consumer retail begin with ‘hello’ and how you say it matters.
It’s time to think like a marketer. This book offers a fresh new approach to a more powerful, and lasting, way of doing business that involves a sometimes subtle, but always impactful, shift in mindset.
About the Author
Kate Colbert is an accomplished marketer, speaker and communications consultant who has led marketing initiatives for brands big and small, global and domestic. She is regarded as an eminent strategic storyteller with the ability to connect business and academic brands with enthusiastic and loyal customers to generate sustained, profitable growth. Kate founded Silver Tree Communications, a full-service brand marketing consultancy, in 2002, and its sister company, Silver Tree Publishing, in 2015. She has expertise in leading the marketing efforts of brands in higher education, healthcare, professional services, consumer retail, and other industries. She is best known for her groundbreaking work in market research and brand story development, her award-winning work in turning corporate data into actionable reports for high-stakes industries, her collaborative spirit in publishing impactful and inspiring books for new and established authors, and her leadership in working with employee groups (from scientists to technologists, C-suite executives to sales professionals) who seek to be more effective communicators. Kate is also a sought-after media spokesperson and crisis communications consultant, and a dynamic speaker who delivers presentations on communications and marketing topics. Kate lives in Kenosha, WI, with her husband Robert and a pack of dogs she absolutely adores. When she’s not working, she loves to travel, to volunteer for local charities and to read. Think Like a Marketer is her first non-fiction business book.
Why LoA loves it….
Every entrepreneur knows how important marketing is to their businesses, after all, if you are not making connections with customers, getting those sales and bringing revenue into the business, then you don’t have a viable business. What is powerful about this book is that author Kate Colbert primarily starts with helping you to change your mindset about marketing. It is not a simple ‘how-to’ book, but instead an insight into how to change the way you think in order to get closer to your customers, make the right decisions for your business, and ultimately help you to take that business to the next level. Definitely a great read if you and your business need a marketing mindset change. — Melanie Hawken, founder & ceo of Lionesses of Africa