I loved this book!

Jeff Dobkin has done a fantastic job of providing a vast resource of marketing ideas for those who don't have a marketing budget.

Not having a lot of money for marketing doesn't mean you can't be wildly successful. And if your pockets are bare, you can't live without this book.

I've got so much out of this book. In fact, my copy looks like it's been through World War 3! It's been highlighted, corners bent, notes all over the place! It's great!

This is another book by Dobkin covering his multiple exposure marketing methods. There's over 350 pages of checklists, resources, and great ideas. Here's a synopsis of the contents:

I - Big Results from Free Press (publicity) - 30 sections outlining how to create a PR campaign that gets published. This was very well done, and I wish he would come out with a book on this topic exclusively.

II - Direct Mail - 46 sections outlining how to create a direct mail campaign. These 46 are organized into 3 main sub-sections:

a - In Direct Mail Your Success May Be Just 32 Cents Away,

b -Other Elements of a Direct Mail Package

c - Lists: the Most Important Element in Any Mailing.

III - Marketing Through Magazines. This is broken into 4 sub-sections totalling 32 different topics:

a - Overview (how to integrate with PR releases, etc.),

b - Research Tools of the Trade Made Easy,

c - The One Evening Marketing Plan,

d - Marketing Through Magazines with Paid Advertising.

IV - Ads. This is broken down into 4 sub-sections containing 30 different topics. The sub-sections are:

a - Overview (writing your ads to an objective... a favorite of his, you'll also see it in his other book on Uncommon Marketing),

b - Types of Headlines

c - Business to Business Inquiry Generating Ads

d - Ad Design and Procurement

V - The $500 Campaign. Here he has 11 sections put together a complete campaign. * - He even includes a few pages in the back of the book for the "A Technique for Delaying Brain Death in Heart Attack Victims" as a public service. At first I looked at this and said "Huh?", then after I read it I was amazed at Dobkins concern for others. He really describes a zero cost way even a child could use on an adult having a heart attack.

What I liked about this book:

+ Lots of practical advice,

+ He organizes the material to help your marketing campaigns,

+ He covers PR as an important element, as well as direct marketing,

+ He pushes multiple-exposure marketing (which I agree is very powerful - as I've used in on software letters and tracked the results),

+ He gives copywriting advice for your letters and ads,

+ Very good coverage of "the offer". I particularly liked his concept of "complementing the offer" (adding on guarantees, etc.). He gives lots of examples here.

+ He describes a marketing cost model that you can use.

+ How to buy and position magazine ads,

+ Use of low cost techniques (inquiry generating ads, postcards)

+ Lots of reproduced examples (letters, mag ads, postcards, classifieds)

+ Long list of resources.

I liked this book very much. After I bought it, several years later he came out with the Uncommon Marketing book. I bought that one also. Although there is a certain amount of overlap, I'm happy I bought both. They are both rated an "A +" read, and make great reference books to keep on your shelf forever.

You can also see my my review of his other book at Amazon. I believe this book lives up to the claim in the title: you can market a product for as little as $500, or at least get it rolling.

John Dunbar

An extremely informative and fun book to read Jeffrey Dobkin is incredible. Not only did he personally respond to my phone call to him after I read his incredible book, but he dropped a note in the mail to thank me for reading his book and used some of his personal contacts to help me market my disc jockey training materials. I was able to generate a 73% response rate on a lead generating direct mail letter that I crafted straight from the step by step easy to understand directions in this brilliant printed marketing seminar. This letter was to potential wedding clients for my companies' DJ services.

We booked 5 sales from it which resulted in $2,000 in deposits and $4,975 in gross income. Not a bad time investment.

I definitely consider myself knowledgeable in the copyrwiting area, but I became extremely knowledgeable after reading Mr. Dobkin's book.

The reason that I'm writing this review is because I am preparing to read the book again. I'm sure that I will pick up many more new ideas that will help me market even more effectively.

If Jeffrey Dobkin writes another book (it could be on harvesting avecodos) I'll be in front of you in line to get it. Though I would like it autographed Mr. Dobkin!

Finally, instead of speculating about the effects of media on teenage girls, someone asked the girls themselves! This book examines the features, advertising, and "advertorials" of magazines aimed at teenage girls AND interviews teenage girls (both magazine readers and non-magazine readers). So, in addition to anazlying content (something that is important and interesting but has been done), Currie speaks to girls to find out how they read the magazines, why they read the magazines, and what they get out of them. The results are surprising. In addition to the interviews and content analysis, Currie also provides information about social research methods that I, someone outside of the sociology field, found very interesting. One complaint about the book is that she used several of the same quotes in more than one section of the book. This repetition made me wonder if the author actually intended for someone to sit down and read the book cover to cover.