Before I started building this site I originally planned on writing a book on marketing.
Back in the 90s I was a bit of a local expert in improv comedy – specifically how to coach improv comedy to high school students. A friend and I travelled across Southern Ontario teaching teachers how to teach improv. One day we looked at each other and said, “We keep telling people the same things. Maybe we should just write it down so we can give them a book and save our vocal cords.”
We did.
We spent a summer putting all of our techniques into a word document that we printed off on 8½”x11” paper and bound at a local Kinkos. We sold the spiral notebooks for $20 a piece (on about a $12 printing cost) when we did our tours. A few years later I submitted the “book” to two professional publishing companies that had histories of publishing improv books. One decided to publish our book professionally. The only change they required was the title. We had called it “Why Practice?”, after a question we were always asked, “If it’s improvised, why do you need to practice?”. They thought the name was too un-obvious and had us change the title to “The Ultimate Improv Book”, which likely doubled (or more) the eventual sales on Amazon.
Now I’m in the same boat again. I likely have a call every other week with a CMO who is having trouble with search engine marketing or with a VC who is looking to invest in a loyalty-based company. I end up telling the same story over and over again. It was the same pattern as 1997 only with a new topic. So I’m going back to the same solution, only this time with new technology.
I’ve laid out a structure of content I’d like to share, in a relatively specific order: Call that the “Book”. I will try to stay on task and create one section of the book every week or two working through the structure (that may end up changing as I go along). I would love your feedback on the book as it progresses.
In addition I will have other thoughts on Marketing to share that don’t fit into the book structure. Those thoughts and ideas I will share on the traditional “newest post first” blog format. I will also post a short blog post whenever I update the book section.
And maybe after this entire thing gets written I will submit it to a professional publisher just like I did with “Why Practice?” a decade ago. Hopefully I’ve learned enough about brands in the last ten years that they will let me keep the name “Marketing is Easy”.
Where should you go from here?
(1) Start reading the book at the beginning here
(2) Work your way through the random blog posts here
(3) I will post on twitter whenever I have an update on the blog. Follow me on twitter: @ednever. And on facebook: facebook.com/marketingiseasybook
(4) If you want to learn a little more about me, check out the About section
(5) If you are into off-the-beaten-path travel, check out my travel site: stopovertravel.com or its facebook page: facebook.com/travel
(6) Please comment on the posts as you read them. I don’t expect to have a lot of readers initially but it will be very easy to start a discussion with me at least. My only motivation for doing this is to share these ideas with the world, so it will always be nice to know someone is hearing it, even if – especially if – they disagree.