Get It Right Now by Reading "Do It Wrong Quickly"

Mike Moran’s Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules (ISBN-13: 9780132255967) recently published by IBM Press is a must read for search marketers wanting to play larger more challenging roles in the organizations they work with or in. This book would also make a nice holiday gift to give clients suffering from “analysis paralysis” or “acute planning disorder,” for reading it may help relieve these two common marketing maladies.

This volume goes beyond search marketing and addresses the broader realm of the changed world of online marketing. Grounded in search with lots of search examples, it provides a clear roadmap for navigating in the new marketing paradigm where marketing is a conversation with the customer, and where we as marketers must learn to listen, interpret the data and make rapid course corrections.

Now is not the time for marketers to dither around waiting to get the plan just right. Mike puts that notion to rest rapidly. Now is the time for joining the conversation and learning from the experience.

Readers familiar with Moran’s previous book, Search Engine Marketing, Inc Driving Search Traffic to Your Company’s Web Site (ISBN -13: 9780131852921), published in July 2005, will find this new volume just as easy to read and comprehend. As I was told many years ago by a very wise professor, don’t equate easy-to-read with lack of insight. This book has both.

Do It Wrong Quickly, just like Search Engine Marketing, Inc is packed with practical advice illustrated with numerous examples delivered with a generous dollop of humor. For example, in describing speeding up the process of getting it right through rapid testing, Mike suggests: “So how do you find your prince faster? By finding more frogs and kissing them faster and faster.” He then goes on to offer suggestions for how to find more frogs and improve, well you can guess the rest.

For those who want the details, the book is in three parts with nine discrete chapters, each with a nice summary so that if you put the book down to go back to doing it quickly, you can easily find your place and context. Here is an outline of what is between the covers.

Part 1: That Newfangled Marketing
Chapter 1: They’re Doing Wonderful Things with Computers
Chapter 2: New Wine in Old Bottles
Chapter 3: Marketing Is a Conversation

Part 2: That Newfangled Direct Marketing
Chapter 4: Going Over to the Dark Side
Chapter 5: The New Customer Relations
Chapter 6: Customers Vote with Their Mice

Part 3: That Newfangled You
Chapter 7: This Doesn’t Work for Me
Chapter 8: This Won’t Work Where I Work
Chapter 9: This Stuff Changes Too Fast

If you want to hear Mike speak about this new book, he will be on tour doing a number of speaking engagements across the country. He has posted his schedule on booktour.com.

For most authors the completion of a single book is a personal tour de force. Completing two comprehensive books in two years is positively Herculean. Bravo!