Tag archives for Marketing - Page 2
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Book Review – Marketing Essentials by Sally Dibb & Lyndon Simkin
Marketing Essentials by Sally Dibb My rating: 1 of 5 stars This was the main course book for the marketing component of an undergraduate business module (B203). As a course book this was functionally useless. For example the introduction of the extended marketing mix on pg319 is simply a bulleted list. The very next section, where normally one would expect referenced explanation of the concept is about Service Quality. This is somewhat a non-sequitor. This made it very trying to engage with the course material. There are nuggets of useful information in there, and an interesting section on how public and charitable organisations differ from for profit companies. However it is very badly structured, not everything is properly explained or referenced. If the author had written this as an undergrad assignment then they would have failed. What it needs is…
A/B Testing Amazon book sales
A/B Testing is when you try two almost identical approaches out with real people to see which option gets the best response. The only difference between A & B is the thing that you are trying to test. In my trial I had the same science fiction novella available through two Amazon ASIN. Both were enrolled in KDP (there's nothing forbidding this but I'm sure Amazon don't encourage that behaviour). Crisis Point (UK - 2 reviews) Crisis Point (UK - 0 reviews) What was different between these two was that one of the versions has two reviews, both five stars. There are also changes to the wording in the blurb. The test So this wasn't quite true A/B Testing as I didn't perform the free days simultaneously, one was over the Christmas period and the other was last weekend. However…
Six Steps to Blog Posts People Read
One of my oldest friends asked me for some advice on writing a blog and attracting a following. He asked me because I've been blogging for decades and have written hundreds of posts, the most popular of which get thousands of hits. It made me think, here's how I think you should write a blog that people will want to read. NB lots of people bang on about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) but if you write good content in a readable way then it ought to hit the search engines fine. Well written and thought provoking content presented well will beat keyword stuffing any day of the week. 1. Pick a subject and be insightful By this I mean write about something you really know and care about. A topic you think about and can make insightful or thought provoking commentary…
Safestyle Scamming
This afternoon, while I was making lunch for Lucy, the phone rang. Now we only have a phone because you need a BT line to get broadband, so the handset is pretty cheap and we tend not to give the number out. Only three people ever phone me on the phone, apart from the telephone scammers. I answered the phone but didn't immediately speak. A male native english speaker asked to speak to Mr or Mrs Kemp. I asked him who was calling. "Mr Kemp, I'm just calling from the local office of Safestyle to follow up a request for a quote." he claimed. I hadn't said who I was, my policy is to neither confirm nor deny anything to people on the phone until I've worked out who they are. "Oh, really?" I commented. "Mrs Kemp requested a quote…
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Marketing the Story – free promo
I was unexpectedly unwell at the same time that the two days of free promo kicked in, so I didn't get to push it, nor to ask those getting a free copy to give me feedback, so I'll just need to hope that some people do. Certainly, if I get a book for free I'll write a review, as I did for Farewell Horizontal (although I quite often write reviews anyway). Anyway, the result was that for the 48 hours that Exodus: Mike's Thread was free, 6 Brits and 127 Americans (or at least people living in those areas) downloaded it. So that means that, I hope, 133 people have read my story. That's a good start and probably more than I hoped without having pushed it much. The next step is to finish off my Maths TMA and when I've made…