UnMarketing by Scott Stratten

After seeing Scott Stratten (aka @unmarketing on Twitter) present at Blogworld this year I decided to pick up his new book, Unmarketing. The tagline of the book is “Stop Marketing. Start Engaging.” In this age of “transparency,” “authenticity,” and other touchy-feely words that make traditional marketers blush and/or roll their eyes, this book gives you a road map on how to market your business in today’s environment.

Overall the book is a good read with takeaways for people at all levels of marketing and social media marketing. Unmarketing is filled with plenty of real world examples which help anchor some of the ideas Scott puts forth. The book opens with a story about the “marketing” at the Wynn in Las Vegas, which was really just a friendly greeting. The pieces on the Dark Horse Café and Tim Hortons show how companies of all sizes can fail. Scott has strong opinions on just about everything, and if you don’t like his take on things you might be frustrated by the book. (If you’ve found success with cold calling and spamming, you’ll outright hate his book.) Also, if you don’t like footnotes you might find fault with the proliferation of them throughout the book. Scott never met a footnote he didn’t like.¹

A lot of the philosophy of the book can be summed like this: don’t be a jerk. Don’t be slimy, disingenuous, or anything less than being a human being.² Sadly, a lot of people–especially in marketing–especially in Internet marketing–need to be reminded of this. The book takes a long term view of marketing, and is sound advice for any business that’s in it for the “long haul.”

There is a lot of good information as well for people who are fairly new to social media tools, especially Twitter and Facebook. There’s also some great advice on building lists, building fans and building followers. Scott gives lots of examples of how he and other people have succeeded, and lots of examples of companies that failed, including himself. (He’s not above making fun of himself.)

For me, the book really picked up steam in the last third. I found myself dog-earing more pages and underlining more and more important ideas.

For more seasoned marketers, the chapter on Viral Marketing is especially good. In fact, I’ve gone back and read that chapter–one of the longest in the book–a couple of times. Lots of good material, and gave me some thoughts on how to develop marketing campaigns that may attract a following.

A lot of what the book professes are things that I’ve seen proved time and time again: an effective strategy is to establish yourself as an expert and build a list through that expertise. That’s not a complaint; rather, it’s nice to see confirmation for our beliefs. From TV repair men people to dog trainers to web designers, putting out quality content and making it findable (via the search engines) and shareable (via social media) works.

There’s a nice bit on creating great content with the three P’s:

• Point (as in, what’s your?)
• Prove it (as in show it)
• Perform it (get your readers to put it into action.)

Again, UnMarketing is a good book for anyone who is in marketing, runs their own business or non-profit, or has been tasked with social media as part of their job responsibilities.

Rich Brooks
Unblogging

¹ And who can blame him? Who still uses endnotes now that footnotes are on the scene? It’s like filming a 3D movie and not making it a “talkie.”

² In other words, don’t be “that guy.”