Review of 49 ways to Quickly Market your Business for Free: an instant guide to marketing success by

Review by Isabel Robson, consultant for Two Bee Business Solutions Consultancy.

I was impressed by the initial concept of a this book, offering a dip-in marketing guide that is available electronically makes perfect sense for your readers. However, the ebook’s layout, with blank pages after each marketing point, felt like an attempt at aiding and took away from the immediacy of the suggestions. This is a publishing touch that would work better in print media, where readers could be encouraged to use the blank sheets for notes.

This is not a book that would be suitable for anyone just starting out in marketing, as it assumes a relatively high level of knowledge on the part of its readers (such as understanding search engine optimisation or site traffic, and it could benefit from a glossary to make it more accessible. Similarly, sone of the suggestions could be improved with a little more explanation, particularly more technical aspects such as link baiting and the benefits of FourSquare. The ‘squashed kitties’ reference for social newsrooms was also a miss for me, as it would not be understandable to the average reader.

However, the book contains some excellent starter suggestions to get any business started on a marketing strategy. My personal Favourites were suggestions on building your brand through writing white papers (a link to a template would be useful), tips on using existing tools like Technorati, and making your site smarter to search using site maps.

Overall this is worth a read and most businesses could benefit from trying to implement one suggestion a week. The book could facilitate this by subdividing suggestions by the time they take to complete (eg 10 minutes, 1 hour).