The CEO’s Digital Marketing Playbook: The Definitive Crash Course and Battle Plan for B2B and High Value B2C Customer Generation In The CEO’s Digital Marketing Playbook, Thomas J. Donohue offers a highly informative, step-by-step guide to his preferred methods of leveraging social media and online marketing and advertising tools.
Donohoe employs the clear, confident, conversational voice of a keynote speaker to offer “best practices for CEO’s and CMO’s,” and dispel prevalent and costly myths and misunderstandings about digital marketing so readers can acquire new customers in an efficient, profitable way.
His book targets leaders of B2B or High Value B2C companies where products or services cost at least a few hundred dollars. While brand marketing still works for their counterparts in lower price point B2C industries where products or services are mass marketed to millions, if their marketing teams focus on achieving “impressions, clicks and ‘likes’ on Facebook, then [they] are setting money on fire,” Donohoe declares. They need to focus on Return on Advertising spending or intelligent Key Performance Indicators like Cost Per Qualified Lead, he advises.
Donohoe includes several detailed glossaries defining and redefining relevant concepts, both traditional and online. For instance, he definitively explains Search Engine Optimization (placing content on the Internet that tries to “convince” search engines to rank a company’s name higher) and Search Engine Marketing (paying for ads on Google, Yahoo and other search engines) and how they are often confused and thus deployed incorrectly.
“[SEM] is a legitimate, scalable, awesome and data-driven tactic that is the cornerstone to 21st Century Marketing in ninety-nine out of 100 industries and products,” Donohoe writes.
He also offers insightful predictions of future social media and marketing possibilities, including “up-funneling” tactics that will allow businesses to reach prospective customers before they even type an entry into the search field.
Fittingly, the Mad Men character of Don Draper – who Donohoe mentions several times – haunts this book as the Ghost of Advertising Past. While Draper never practiced the author’s tenets, he certainly would insist his staff read this valuable book in today’s digital world.
Also available in hardcover and ebook.
