"This book is a real eye-opener and I would recommend it for any manager at any stage in their career."—Professional Manager MagazinePhilip Graves reveals the myriad tricks and psychological games retailers play on consumers, the ways in which we are manipulated into buying things we don't want, and the cutting edge science being used to change our habits to ever more significant degrees.

    Richard Rumelt shows that there has been a growing and unfortunate tendency to equate Mom-and-apple-pie values, fluffy packages of buzzwords, motivational slogans, and financial goals with “strategy.” He debunks these elements of “bad strategy” and awakens an understanding of the power of a “good strategy.” A good strategy is a specific and coherent response to—and approach for overcoming—the obstacles to progress. A good strategy works by harnessing and applying power where it will have the greatest effect in challenges as varied as putting a man on the moon, fighting a war, launching a new product, responding to changing market dynamics, starting a charter school, or setting up a government program. Rumelt’snine sources of power—ranging from using leverage to effectively focusing on growth—are eye-opening yet pragmatic tools that can be put to work on Monday morning.Surprisingly, a good strategy is often unexpected because most organizations don’t have one. Instead, they have “visions,” mistake financial goals for strategy,and pursue a “dog’s dinner” of conflicting policies and actions.Rumelt argues that the heart of a good strategy is insight—into the true nature of the situation, into the hidden power in a situation, and into an appropriate response. He shows you how insight can be cultivated with a wide variety of tools for guiding yourown thinking.Good Strategy/Bad Strategy uses fascinating examples from business, nonprofit, and military affairs to bring its original and pragmatic ideas to life. The detailed examples range from Apple to General Motors, from the two Iraq wars to Afghanistan, from a small local market to Wal-Mart, from Nvidia to Silicon Graphics, from the Getty Trust to the Los Angeles Unified School District, from Cisco Systems to Paccar, and from Global Crossing to the 2007–08 financial crisis.Reflecting an astonishing grasp and integration of economics, finance, technology, history, and the brilliance and foibles of the human character, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy stems from Rumelt’s decades of digging beyond the superficial to address hard questions with honesty and integrity.From the Hardcover edition.

    How well do you know your customers What Customers Crave examines how the hyper-connected economy is radically changing consumer expectations, and reveals what companies need to do to stay on top. The solution rests on two simple questions: What do your customers love? What do they hate? Find the answers, and you’re well on your way to success.Jam-packed with tools and examples, What Customers Crave helps you reinvent how you engage with customers (both digitally and non-digitally) and:● Gain invaluable insights into who they are and what they care about● Use listening posts and Contact Point Innovation to refine customer types● Engineer experiences for each micromarket that are not only exceptional, but insanely relevant● Connect across the five most important touchpoints● Co-create with your customers● And much moreWhen you learn to provide your customers with exactly what they want, they not only buy—they come back again and again…and bring their friends.

    Yet, it’s also a challenging time, with much work to do and an ever-changing array of platforms, features, and networks to master—all on a tighter budget than before.Don’t get discouraged, get scrappy! Shattering the myth that only big brands can do big things, Get Scrappy will help you: Demystify digital marketing in a way that makes sense for your business Do more with less Build a strong brand with something to say Find inspiration in unexpected places Create relevant and engaging content and promote it via Twitter, Facebook, and other channels Integrate strategy and message across touchpoints for a unified brand experience—both online and off Spark dialogue with your community of customers Measure what matters The result is a reliable, repeatable system for reinventing your marketing as marketing reinvents itself. Featuring frameworks, hacks, tips, idea starters, and more, Get Scrappy is the map you need to take your marketing from good to great.

    If you work in an advertising or marketing agency, then this book is indispensable.Distilling decades of experience, advertising executive Robert Solomon has compiled the definitive resource for advertising and marketing account executives: a fast-reading, pocket-size, actionable checklist of 58 essential ideas to help client service professionals improve their account management strategy and skills. Now fully updated and revised, The Art of Client Service is geared to the entire account team -- copy writers, art directors, and planners, researchers, media executives, support staff -- anyone who works with clients. With brevity, levity, and clarity, Solomon recounts both successes and failures, and uses them to formulate fast-reading, actionable tips, including:Know when to look it up; know when to make it up. (#7)What happens when I screw up? (#51)Respect what it takes to do great creative. (#19)In a high-tech world, be low-tech (#46)Be brief, be bright, be gone. (#31)How to write a letter of proposal (#44)The Zen of PowerPoint. (#45)You'll also find new chapters on technology in advertising, the changing role of client service in an increasingly high-tech era, and an updated bibliography of essential reading.

    The real transformation--and the real opportunity--is just beginning.Subscription companies are growing nine times faster than the S&P 500. Why? Because unlike product companies, subscription companies know their customers. A happy subscriber base is the ultimate economic moat. Today's consumers prefer the advantages of access over the hassles of maintenance, from transportation (Uber, Surf Air), to clothing (Stitch Fix, Eleven James), to razor blades and makeup (Dollar Shave Club, Birchbox). Companies are similarly demanding easier, long-term solutions, trading their server rooms for cloud storage solutions like Box. Simply put, the world is shifting from products to services.But how do you turn customers into subscribers? As the CEO of the world's largest subscription management platform, Tien Tzuo has helped hundreds of companies transition from relying on individual sales to building customer-centric, recurring-revenue businesses. His core message in Subscribed is simple: Ready or not, excited or terrified, you need to adapt to the Subscription Economy -- or risk being left behind.Tzuo shows how to use subscriptions to build lucrative, ongoing one-on-one relationships with your customers. This may require reinventing substantial parts of your company, from your accounting practices to your entire IT architecture, but the payoff can be enormous. Just look at the case studies:  *   Adobe transitions from selling enterprise software licenses to offering cloud-based solutions for a flat monthly fee, and quadruples its valuation.  *   Fender evolves from selling guitars one at a time to creating lifelong musicians by teaching beginners to play, and keeping them inspired for life.  *   Caterpillar uses subscriptions to help solve problems -- it's not about how many tractors you can rent, but how much dirt you need to move. In Subscribed, you'll learn how these companies made the shift, and how you can transform your own product into a valuable service with a practical, step-by-step framework. Find out how how you can prepare and prosper now, rather than trying to catch up later.

    You put in the hours. Yet you feel like you are constantly treading water with "Good Work" that keeps you going but never quite moves you ahead. Or worse, you are mired in "Bad Work"—endless meetings and energy-draining bureaucratic traps.Do More Great Work gets to the heart of the problem: Even the best performers are spending less than a fraction of their time doing "Great Work"—the kind of innovative work that pushes us forward, stretches our creativity, and truly satisfies us. Michael Bungay Stanier, Canadian Coach of the Year in 2006, is a business consultant who’s found a way to move us away from bad work (and even good work), and toward more time spent doing great work.When you’re up to your eyeballs answering e-mail, returning phone calls, attending meetings and scrambling to get that project done, you can turn to this inspirational, motivating, and at times playful book for invaluable guidance. In fifteen exercises, Do More Great Work shows how you can finally do more of the work that engages and challenges you, that has a real impact, that plays to your strengths—and that matters.The exercises are "maps"—brilliantly simple visual tools that help you find, start and sustain Great Work, revealing how to:Find clues to your own Great Work—they’re all around youLocate the sweet spot between what you want to do and what your organization wants you to doGenerate new ideas and possibilities quicklyBest manage your overwhelming workloadDouble the likelihood that you’ll do what you want to doAll it takes is ten minutes a day, a pencil and a willingness to change. Do More Great Work will not only help you identify what the Great Work of your life is, it will tell you how to do it.

     This book provides that system — a step-by-step process that can be executed in any business to generate qualified leads and more conversions with content marketing. In Content That Converts, you'll learn: - How to get clear on your audience, offers and messaging (and why those three elements are so important) - How to develop a recurring content system, and how to create long-form content assets (such as books and courses) that establish you as an industry leader - How to distribute your content effectively with email and SEO, to expand your reach and create conversion opportunities that translate to sales - How to hone your conversion potential over time with the principles of influence and market sophistication, and how to write powerful sales copy as a result “Laura is a content machine that pumps out excellence onto paper.” Jeff Root, SellTermLife and #1 Amazon Bestseller “Using your strategies, we’re getting more sales and people are much more engaged. Good work!” Scott Desgrosseilliers, Wicked Reports "Laura has a great ability to draw out the nuances of how things are done in any business. Her writing is fantastic and the delivery is spot on." Tristan King, owner of Blackbelt Commerce, top-rated Shopify agency in the world

    It's more persuasive than marketing, advertising, or any other form of communication. And it all starts with seven universal triggers: lust, mystique, alarm, prestige, power, vice, and trust.Fascination plays a role in every type of decision making, from the brands you choose to the songs you remember, from the person you marry to the employees you hire. And by activating the right triggers, you can make anything become fascinating.To explore and explain fascination's irresistible influence, Sally Hogshead looks beyond marketing, delving into behavioral and social studies, historical precedents, neurobiology and evolutionary anthropology, as well as conducting in-depth interviews and a national study of a thousand consumers, to emerge with deeply rooted patterns for why, and how, we become captivated.Hogshead reveals why the Salem witch trials began with the same fixations as those in "Sex and the City." How Olympic athletes are subject to obsessions similar to those of fetishists. How a 1636 frenzy over Dutch tulip bulbs perfectly mirrors the 2006 real estate bubble. And why a billion-dollar "Just Say No" program actually increased drug use among teens, by activating the same "forbidden fruit" syndrome as a Victoria's Secret catalog.Whether you realize it or not, you're already using the seven triggers. The question is, are you using the right triggers, in the right way, to get your desired result? This book will show you.

    Do You?FACT! Sixty percent of people read only headlines. Your headline must stop them or your advertising will likely fail.FACT! Captions under photos get 200 percent greater readership than non-headline copy.FACT! Ads with sale prices draw 20 percent more attention.FACT! Half-page ads pull about 70 percent of full-page ads; quarter-page ads pull about 50 percent of full-page ads.FACT! Four-color ads are up to 45 percent more effective than black and white.New York's biggest ad agencies use dozens of these little-known secrets every day to influence people to buy. And now--thanks to Cashvertising--you can, too. And it won't matter one bit whether you're a corporate giant or a mom-and-pop pizza shop. These techniques are based on human psychology. They work no matter where you're located, no matter what kind of product or service you sell, and no matter where you advertise. In fact, most don't cost a penny to use.Like a wild roller-coaster ride through the streets of Madison Avenue, Cashvertising teaches you the tips, tricks, and strategies that New York's top gun copywriters and designers use to persuade people to buy like crazy. No matter what you sell--or how you sell it, this practical, fast-paced book will teach you:How to create powerful ads, brochures, sales letters, Websites, and moreHow to make people believe what you say"Sneaky" ways to persuade people to respondEffective tricks for writing "magnetic" headlinesWhat mistakes to avoid...at all costs!What you should always/never do in your adsExpert formulas, guidance, tips and strategies

    Do the WorkOur enemy is not lack of preparation; it's not the difficulty of the project, or the state of the marketplace or the emptiness of our bank account.The enemy is resistance.The enemy is our chattering brain, which, if we give it so much as a nanosecond, will start producing excuses, alibis, transparent self-justifications and a million reasons why he can't/shouldn't/won't do what we know we need to do.Start before you're ready.

    But what stories do you need to tell and how do you tell them?Stories That Stick provides a clear framework of ideals and a concise set of actions for you to take complete control of your own story, utilizing the principles behind the world’s most effective business storytelling strategies.Professional storyteller and nationally-known speaker Kindra Hall reveals the four unique stories you can use to differentiate, captivate, and elevate:the Value Story, to convince customers they need what you provide;the Founder Story, to persuade investors and customers your organization is worth the investment;the Purpose Story, to align and inspire your employees and internal customers; and the Customer Story, to allow those who use your product or service to share their authentic experiences with others.Telling these stories well is a simple, accessible skill anyone can develop. With case studies, company profiles, and anecdotes backed with original research, Hall presents storytelling as the underutilized talent that separates the good from the best in business.Stories That Stick offers specific, actionable steps readers can take to find, craft, and leverage the stories they already have and simply aren’t telling. Every person, every organization has at least four stories at their disposal. Will you tell yours?

    It was also a weapon.Simplicity isn’t just a design principle at Apple—it’s a value that permeates every level of the organization. The obsession with Simplicity is what separates Apple from other technology companies. It’s what helped Apple recover from near death in 1997 to become the most valuable company on Earth in 2011.Thanks to Steve Jobs’s uncompromising ways, you can see Simplicity in everything Apple does: the way it’s structured, the way it innovates, and the way it speaks to its customers.It’s by crushing the forces of Complexity that the company remains on its stellar trajectory.As ad agency creative director, Ken Segall played a key role in Apple’s resurrection, helping to create such critical marketing campaigns as Think different. By naming the iMac, he also laid the foundation for naming waves of i-products to come.Segall has a unique perspective, given his years of experience creating campaigns for other iconic tech companies, including IBM, Intel, and Dell. It was the stark contrast of Apple’s ways that made Segall appreciate the power of Simplicity—and inspired him to help others benefit from it.In Insanely Simple, you’ll be a fly on the wall inside a conference room with Steve Jobs, and on the receiving end of his midnight phone calls. You’ll understand how his obsession with Simplicity helped Apple perform better and faster, sometimes saving millions in the process. You’ll also learn, for example, how to:• Think Minimal: Distilling choices to a minimum brings clarity to a company and its customers—as Jobs proved when he replaced over twenty product models with a lineup of four.• Think Small: Swearing allegiance to the concept of “small groups of smart people” raises both morale and productivity.• Think Motion: Keeping project teams in constant motion focuses creative thinking on well-defined goals and minimizes distractions.• Think Iconic: Using a simple, powerful image to symbolize the benefit of a product or idea creates a deeper impression in the minds of customers.• Think War: Giving yourself an unfair advantage—using every weapon at your disposal—is the best way to ensure that your ideas survive unscathed.Segall brings Apple’s quest for Simplicity to life using fascinating (and previously untold) stories from behind the scenes. Through his insight and wit, you’ll discover how companies that leverage this power can stand out from competitors—and individuals who master it can become critical assets to their organizations.

    How do these individuals make the split-second decisions that save lives? Most studies of decision making, based on artificial tasks assigned in laboratory settings, view people as biased and unskilled. Gary Klein is one of the developers of the naturalistic decision making approach, which views people as inherently skilled and experienced. It documents human strengths and capabilities that so far have been downplayed or ignored.Since 1985, Klein has conducted fieldwork to find out how people tackle challenges in difficult, nonroutine situations. Sources of Power is based on observations of humans acting under such real-life constraints as time pressure, high stakes, personal responsibility, and shifting conditions. The professionals studied include firefighters, critical care nurses, pilots, nuclear power plant operators, battle planners, and chess masters. Each chapter builds on key incidents and examples to make the description of the methodology and phenomena more vivid. In addition to providing information that can be used by professionals in management, psychology, engineering, and other fields, the book presents an overview of the research approach of naturalistic decision making and expands our knowledge of the strengths people bring to difficult tasks.

    "Web Analytics 2.0" presents a new framework that will permanently change how you think about analytics. It provides specific recommendations for creating an actionable strategy, applying analytical techniques correctly, solving challenges such as measuring social media and multichannel campaigns, achieving optimal success by leveraging experimentation, and employing tactics for truly listening to your customers. The book will help your organization become more data driven while you become a super analysis ninja Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.