MARKETING ABOVE THE NOISE

This is a book from a seasoned professional, who has her own consulting business in Silicon Valley, about how businesses can improve their marketing strategies to stand out from the crowd of people promoting their products. There is so much advertising and marketing coming at us all the time from every different media available, so Linda Popky shows how to cut through this so that products can be sold more effectively.

Marketing today is out of control. With all the new marketing techniques accessible to the masses, it’s becoming harder and harder to stand out from the crowd. The result is more and more messages, hitting us more often in new and more intrusive ways. For customers, it’s a lot of noise.

Through her work with a wide range of organizations from small companies to professional service providers to Fortune 500 companies, Linda Popky has developed Dynamic Market Leverage™, an approach to help cut through the clutter, stand out, and effectively build business.

The book introduces the Dynamic Market Leverage Model, which measures marketing clout by looking at eight core marketing disciplines and five additional Leverage Factors that can help an organization focus on key aspects of their marketing function that will provide the most significant return on their marketing investment.

Today’s businesses need to stop trying to keep pace with the latest and greatest marketing tactics and instead focus on developing those long term strategies that build customer loyalty and convince prospects to buy. Yes, businesses need to be aware of and integrate new media and new approaches, but they need to do it in a way that makes sense for the business. They need to maintain a clear focus above the din of the roaring crowd—above the marketing fray.

Most organizations don’t have the luxury of being able to start from a clean slate to develop new marketing strategies. They have existing customers, existing channels and relationships, existing ways of doing business. With limited resources, they’re not able to integrate every new tactic as it appears and they’re not sure how to prioritize all of these options.

What’s needed is a timeless framework—a way of looking at marketing as tied to both business growth and the building and nurturing of ongoing customer engagement. It’s time to move the focus from social media and evangelists, sales and marketing alignment, and the latest hot cloud-based marketing tools, to what really counts: convincing customers to trust you with their business—not just once, but time and time again.

Linda Popky is the president of Leverage2Market Associates, a Redwood Shores-based strategic marketing company that helps transform organizations through powerful marketing performance. In 2009, Linda was named one of the top women of influence in Silicon Valley and inducted into the Million Dollar Consultant® Hall of Fame. She is the first marketing expert worldwide certified to offer the Private Roster™ Mentoring Program for consultants and entrepreneurs, and the first licensee of Alan Weiss’s workshops and seminars. Linda is the past president of WIC, and she served as VP of marketing for the Northern California chapter of the Business Marketing Association (BMA). She is a member of the Society for the Advancement of Consulting (SAC) and Watermark, the organization for exceptional executive women who have made their mark, where she serves on the Strategic Development Board. Linda has served as program advisor for the Integrated Marketing Program at San Francisco State University’s College of Extended Learning, and she is a member of the Advisory Board of University of California Santa Cruz Extension in Silicon Valley. A classically trained pianist, Linda recently released Night Songs, a CD of classical piano music. She resides in the San Francisco Bay area.