Dynamic Digital Marketing by Dawn McGruer is more like a text book than a business book. It explores Digital Marketing from the view of a person who is a key influencer in Digital marketing. She also runs the Business Consort a digital & social academy which offers training and consultancy around digital marketing.
For entrepreneurs interested in investing time into the world of digital or marketeers who want to try and understand how it fits into their marketing strategy this is a good place to start. The books seems to focus on consumer based companies, but there are lessons here for B2B companies too.
The structure
The book is divided into an introduction and two main parts. As a whole it provides the basis of a 90 day plan that readers can execute on. The first ten chapters “Getting Started” cover the fist 30 days and set down the groundwork for the actual digital marketing plan.
The Structure
The approach is simple and quickly goes through what most marketers should already be doing. It covers the basics of understanding your customer, identifying which digital channels you want to work with and what the objectives are. The section provides some solid suggestions and tips and is of use to anyone looking to engage in digital marketing. Though some of the information is obvious, it is always worth repeating. One of the best tips is around picking a single social media channel to work with and spending ten minutes a day engaging with it on a personal level. The chapter on time management is another good read. It is all too easy to spend a whole day wasting time on social media looking at cat memes!
The second part explains the Dynamic Digital Marketing Model which is the award winning Framework that the author teaches about. This is the meat of the book as it walks the reader through in bite size chunks the whole framework. It is easy to read and covers a vast amount of ground.
The Dynamic Digital Marketing Model
It explains to the reader what to do and then provides a template form for them to fill out the information about their initiatives. Each chapter not only contains instructions, it also has links to a wealth of other material that the reader can use. This is a good approach but only explains the what to do, in some cases it falls short of how to do it. However, if the author had included the how it would have been far too long. Either the reader will work out the how or they could sign up for one of the courses or membership schemes at the business consort.
The book would have been strengthened if a single case study had been used through the entire book. This would have given practical examples of how the lessons are applied. There is a case study at the end but expanded a little and weaved through the book would have given a far bigger benefit to the reader.
One of the challenges with writing this kind of book in an ever evolving world is that it becomes dated. In the last few months companies have realised the poser of podcasts. There is little in the book about them. It demonstrates the world of social media does change as tastes and social media platforms come and go. Whether McGruer will update the book is probably determined by the books sales. However, even with that one omission this was an interesting read which gave a lot of information.
Conclusion
At around 400 pages this is a solid piece of work to get through. It is a relatively easy read or the reader can dip in and out of different sections. The reader can read the book as a guide through the various planing stages of their digital marketing strategy. Alternatively, read it and draw inspiration and ideas to modify ones own approach to digital marketing to suit the circumstance. The book is especially useful to small business owners who want to drive more business through digital channels. However, even for those working in larger organisations there are insights and ideas that will strengthen marketing plans. In summary, Dynamic Digital Marketing by Dawn McGruer guides the reader on how to set up a digital marketing strategy and digital marketing plans with concise instructions within a tried and tested framework.
Disclaimer: Enterprise Times was sent a review copy of the book.
It is available on Amazon UK and Amazon US in Kindle and Hardback format.
