Here are some books about marketing that I have come across in recent times:

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout
Getting Real by 37signals

I have also been reading books by Seth Godin.

And, as always, some of the advice that these books give are contradictory. Ries and Trout talk about the importance of being the first in the market place. They warn us against getting obsessed about being the best, especially at the cost of being the first. The authors put out a lot of examples that supposedly back their claims. They tell us to concentrate on getting the messages of new products out rather than on building brands. They also say that if a company cannot be the first in a certain marketplace, it much change the way the game is played and invent a new market so it could be the first in there. The examples given date from the pre-Internet era.

But Seth Godin says that trying to invent a new market would lead to a lot of cash-bleed – to try to convince people to spend on products or services they are not accustomed to would take a lot of money, time and effort. He says that companies need to exploit markets already created through the conditioning that people have been subjected to by companies that have walked the path before, and develop products that better existing ones, causing shifts in consumer loyalty. Seth’s ideas are in tune with the Internet era.

So, which strategy should a company adopt?

Ries and Trout also state a company needs to drill ideas into as many people as possible to cause the marketplace thus created to identify best with that company.

But Seth says that in the Internet era, such “interruption” marketing would not be useful. He says that one needs to build a “Tribe” around one’s ideas – that is, to get a few people excited about an idea who in-turn would talk to people they know (people usually network with like-minded people), making the idea spread organically. The impact of brands builds with the size of the Tribe. He tells us to target only those who would be interested in the products or services offered, hoping they would  do the marketing for the company through the power of social networking. These days, people are more connected to others than ever.

So, which strategy should a company adopt?

I sometimes like the strategy that Picture Window Pro adopts. No big ads, no loud promises, no sleek website. Only great, fast photo-editing software written by one of the world’s best programmers that’s available at a reasonable price. Lots of substance. Very little style. I love to stumble upon steals like these. They got a character that the mass marketed products just do not have. I got to know about the software while searching the web for information on color-correction that I could use while processing wedding photographs last November. I landed in Norman Koren’s site, read his glowing accounts about PWP, downloaded the software and fell in love with it. I have been using it ever since.

PWP had three things going for it that made be buy it after the evaluation period had expired: strong recommendations by well-known photographers, a well-known name behind PWP and the affordable price tag. The first two gave me the required credibility to test and use the software, and the last made it too good to miss. That’s Seth’s idea in action.

I did not even know that PWP was out with a new version of the software until I landed at their page one day. Talk about being different from those in-your-face marketeers.

So, which strategy should a company adopt?