Pe­ter D Nep­tune

A prac­ti­cal al­ter­na­tive to ad­ver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing clut­ter on a small busi­ness bud­get, Mar­ket­ing from the Trench­es, by Rudolf Wald­ner, is a must-read for any­one con­sid­er­ing launch­ing or grow­ing their busi­ness in this new and un­chart­ed era of the com­pet­i­tive knowl­edge econ­o­my. Wald­ner, who re­cent­ly vis­it­ed Trinidad on a re­gion­al tour to pro­mote his book in the Amer­i­c­as, said the con­cepts pre­sent­ed in the pub­li­ca­tion are rel­e­vant for any re­tail­er –even for on­line busi­ness­es–and can help en­tre­pre­neurs get the most out of their in­vest­ment in mar­ket­ing and ad­ver­tis­ing. What is al­so in­ter­est­ing is the ap­proach tak­en by the au­thor who cap­tures a read­er's at­ten­tion through­out the book by pro­vid­ing fun­ny, prac­ti­cal and re­al­is­tic ex­am­ples of the con­cepts he wants you to ab­sorb.

The book is clear­ly a teach­ing tool for busi­ness own­ers, but it al­so chron­i­cles the life ex­pe­ri­ences of the au­thor. It ex­press­es, in a very re­fresh­ing way, how he came across the con­cepts he was shar­ing.

The book is well writ­ten and an easy read. It re­al­ly helps you to think about how im­por­tant it is to deal with the de­tails of run­ning and pre­sent­ing a busi­ness that will cre­ate an ex­pe­ri­ence to en­tice cus­tomers to re­turn again and again. Mar­ket­ing from the Trench­es is a hands-on guide for run­ning your busi­ness and the au­thor's fo­cus on the all-im­por­tant three Ps of mar­ket­ing is an eye open­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

It al­most has you think­ing: oh, that's true, why didn't I think of that my­self? The book is packed with many prac­ti­cal ex­am­ples of mar­ket­ing that places you in a po­si­tion to look at your busi­ness in an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent way; from the cus­tomer's per­spec­tive.

Thus, the op­por­tu­ni­ty for knowl­edge trans­fer, to­geth­er with the prac­ti­cal mar­ket­ing and re­search tools, will get you fired up in­to de­vel­op­ing your own mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tions strate­gies. Mar­ket­ing will soon be­come a less stress­ful low-cost ac­tiv­i­ty that brings di­ver­si­ty and suc­cess to your store, busi­ness pre­sen­ta­tion, even your prod­uct range. Wald­ner shows why tra­di­tion­al ad­ver­tis­ing does not work for many busi­ness­es. "If one out of 10 peo­ple even re­mem­ber your ad, the in­dus­try con­sid­ers it to be a suc­cess, but this does not mean that 're­call rate' will nec­es­sar­i­ly be trans­lat­ed in­to sales. "Fur­ther­more, ad­ver­tis­ing rates keep climb­ing and rat­ings keep plum­met­ing. Rat­ings are go­ing down be­cause the TV mar­ket is get­ting frag­ment­ed. Frag­men­ta­tion means more sta­tions and choic­es, there­fore, less view­ers are avail­able per per­son.

Wald­ner out­lined the three Ps for suc­cess as place: that is the at­mos­phere and am­biance of the busi­ness; peo­ple: choos­ing the right peo­ple, and mo­ti­vat­ing them to share your vi­sion and dri­ve for suc­cess; and fi­nal­ly, your busi­ness part­ners: sup­pli­ers and your busi­ness sup­port sys­tem. With re­gard to part­ners, Wald­ner said you should strive to cre­ate and main­tain re­la­tion­ships with oth­er busi­ness that are mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial for all par­ties con­cerned, in­clud­ing the com­pa­ny's cus­tomers. He pro­vid­ed rel­e­vant ex­am­ples of his strate­gies and ex­plains why they work. It is in­tu­itive, has achiev­able goals and is easy enough for any­one look­ing to grow their busi­ness to un­der­stand, ex­pand their mar­ket share and im­prove their cus­tomers' ex­pe­ri­ence.