What You Need to Know About Marketing

Marketing is shrouded in arcane mystery and buzzwords. It frightens many and bewilders others. Yet every business, from the hand-car-wash by the side of the road, to the world's most famous brands, engage in marketing every single day. This is an essential, reliable, speedy and up to date guide to the most robust and important concepts in marketing.

This book shows you how to understand and do marketing without having to study a degree or a diploma in it. Along the way it shows you what has been learned about marketing over the centuries, what experts can teach us that we can use ourselves, how marketing has changed in our new ‘digital' world, and how to avoid classic mistakes.

In short, this is all you need to know about marketing.

Introduction - Marketing: the world's second oldest business activity
Chapter 1 - The Product.
Chapter 2 - The Marketing Strategy and the Marketing Plan
Chapter 3 - Your Customers.
Chapter 4 - Pricing and Promotion
Chapter 5 - Placement or Distribution.
Chapter 6 - Customer Engagement
Chapter 7 - Branding
Chapter 8 - Social Media and Digital Marketing

Introduction 1

1 – The Customers 11

2 – The Product 37

3 – The Market 73

4 – Branding 105

5 – Communicating 135

6 – Price and Place 175

7 – Strategy, Planning and Tactics 209

8 – The Third Age of Marketing 233

Conclusion 257

Acknowledgements 259

Index 261

"... an informative guide to marketing that covers a range of issues." (EN Magazine, August 2011)

"An excellent introduction to the key concepts of marketing." (The Market)

Simon Middleton is the author of Build A Brand In 30 Days (Capstone 2010) and founder of specialist consultancy Brand Strategy Guru, Simon has advised some of the best known marketing-led organisations, including: Aviva, Barclays, British Airways, Merial and Pret A Manger.
He is Brand and Marketing Director of lifestyle nutrition company All About Weight and Chief Executive of visionary tourism business Norfolk Leisure.
Simon is a regular commentator in international media, and appears in Virgin 1's series Seaside's Last Resort as expert brand advisor to Duncan Bannatyne.
He is Brand Leadership Fellow at the University of Anglia's prestigious Norwich Business School.