ROC Weekly Marketing Minute

The Top Three Must-Read Marketing Books to Inspire You When Running Your Rehab Center

Here is a list of three must-read marketing books to help you run your business:

The Ultimate Marketing Plan: Find Your Hook. Communicate Your Message. Make Your Mark

by Dan S. Kennedy

This book focuses on how to create effective massaging to promote your business, position your brand, build excitement, and increase your profits. It addresses social media marketing, networking, and strategic memberships.

Your marketing strategy should have three main components: knowing how to create a proper image, finding the best media vehicle, and targeting and reaching your audience. Your marketing message should be centered on your USP to help differentiate you from the competitors. It is the reason potential clients choose you over other businesses. Your USP should be visible to potential clients and easy to understand.

Marketing messages are most effective when they are clear and shared at the right time in the right place.

Three key lessons from The Ultimate Marketing Plan

Here is a list of the three key lessons from this book:

1. Target practice: Your offering will not appeal the same way to everyone. The most effective way to connect with your audience is to separate them into groups that you can target individually.

2. Your company’s persona: Your marketing messages and business actions should all convey that you have a stable and reliable business.

3. Useful approaches in a customer service program: Treat every person like they are valuable. Know every detail about your business and offer to always provide accurate and complete information. Anticipate issues and have a plan to overcome them.

Purple Cow

by Seth Godin

Purple Cow makes the argument that the old way of building a business and promoting it no longer works. To be successful in today’s marketplace, you need a “purple cow”- a remarkable and unique product or service that stands out in the market. When people see a purple cow, they tell people about it. This is incredibly important, as an overwhelming amount of marketing messages bombard the public every day.

Marketing success no longer relies on having the largest marketing budget or creating the most advertisements, it is about having a product or service with the most influence.

Focus on the early adopters of your business and offering. By targeting your marketing messages to them and a small niche, you can help build excitement among the people who are already invested in your brand. They, in turn, will promote it via word of mouth. This message spreading is what will reach the rest of your larger audience, and will be more effective than trying to reach them via traditional mass marketing campaigns.

Success doesn’t come from pleasing everybody. In order to stand out, you are going to upset people and that is ok. Don’t be scared to create and promote your purple cow. The purpose of Purple Cow is to show that risk-taking is safer than playing it safe. It is imperative to create things worth talking about. 

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

by Robert B. Cialdini

This book explores why people agree to things and outlines that isolated information can lead us to make mistakes.

Six key principles of persuasion

Principles of persuasion are mental shortcuts used to help navigate the world and make decisions, including:

• Reciprocation- People often feel compelled to repay a favor. Therefore, if you do something for someone, it is less likely that they will say no if you ask something of them.

• Commitment & Consistency- Once we have made a decision or have taken an action, we are likely to maintain it to appear consistent and committed and to justify our actions. If you can convince someone to take a small initial action, you have a higher chance of convincing them to take another action in the future.

• Social Proof- This can be likened to peer pressure or herd behavior. It is the idea that we perceive something as right or wrong depending on the number of people that are already doing it. With the opinions of others as a guide, we can make decisions even when we are unsure of ourselves. 

• Authority- People are more likely to believe and be persuaded by people of authority. This stems from lessons of obedience from childhood.

• Liking- People are more likely to agree to something if they know the person making the request and genuinely like them. There are two factors that typically influence whether we like someone in this context: physical appearance and similarity.

• Scarcity- People are more likely to consider something to be of higher value if there seems to be a limited supply of it. The fear of loss can be stronger than the desire for gain.

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