Marketing in the Round by Gini Dietrich & Geoff Livingston - Book review

Marketing in the Round: How to Develop an Integrated Marketing Campaign in the Digital Era

By: Gini Dietrich, Geoff Livingston

Published: April 23, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 224 pages
ISBN-10: 0789749173
ISBN-13: 978-0789749178
Publisher: Que Publishing












"Companies and agencies have struggled to integrate traditional and social media and to measure results beyond increased awareness and positive sentiment", write marketing and public relations consultant, and founder and CEO of Arment Dietrich, Gini Dietrich; and marketing and social media strategist, and bestselling author, Geoff Livingston, in their comprehensive and groundbreaking book Marketing in the Round: How to Develop an Integrated Marketing Campaign in the Digital Era. The authors describe the concept of developing and implementing a fully integrated marketing strategy that combines traditional marketing tactics with the effective deployment of social media campaigns.

Gini Dietrich (photo left) and Geoff Livingston recognize that a marketing strategy based on the exclusion of either traditional marketing tactics or the use of social media is an incomplete approach. The authors break down the silos that exist for brands and for customers alike that artificially separate social media from traditional media channels.

The authors provide an overarching strategic approach to marketing that transcends both organizational silos and the false divide between traditional and new media marketing. The book offers a complete and fully integrated approach for providing a unified and consistent marketing and brand message to customers. At the same time, the authors break down the message to targeted audiences to fit the needs of those customers; and how to measure the results and effectiveness of the strategy in meaningful terms.

Geoff Livingston (photo left) and Gini Dietrich understand that the choice of media channels, whether traditional or social media, is not the real issue. The real challenge is to achieve positive and profitable results for the brand. To meet this challenge, the authors propose the concept of an integrated marketing strategy that forgets the misleading premise of either one channel or the other. As a more effective alternative, the authors recommend an all channel approach to marketing, where the audience receives the message in different formats of their choice. The breaking down of silos and myths surrounding the various marketing format is the first step, and with that barricade broken through, real connection with the customer can begin in earnest.

The authors divide the book into three overall sections, with each subsection devoted to real world focused tactics and techniques. The three basic parts of the book are as follows:

* Understand the marketing round and develop your strategy
* Four marketing round approaches
* Measurement, refinement, and improvement

For me, the power of the book is how Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston combine a strong theoretical framework for developing an integrated marketing strategy, with the practical and hands on tactics for making that overall strategy an effective reality. The authors dispense with the usual defenses of either social media on the one hand, and traditional marketing on the other, and combine them into an integrated and holistic marketing message. What is intriguing is why this silo and separation of marketing strategies ever developed in the first place, and the authors do a fine job of ending that false dichotomy.

The authors wisely create a series of four different approaches to the tactics utilized by a brand for marketing and connecting with customers. This useful concept offers the marketer flexibility that is not always seen in books of this type. The authors recognize as well that marketing through any media channels is more than simply awareness or a feel good result. Instead, the authors recommend a complete measurement and evaluation program for the brand to determine real effectiveness in bottom line terms.

I highly recommend the insightful and very results oriented book Marketing in the Round: How to Develop an Integrated Marketing Campaign in the Digital Era by Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston to any business leaders, entrepreneurs, marketers and branders who are seeking an integrated and holistic approach to developing a comprehensive marketing strategy. This book is a manifesto to tear down those silo walls and bring an overall and complete marketing strategy into effect for your brands.