The CEO's Guide to Marketing

The Book Every Marketer Should Read Before Their Boss Does

Lonny Kocina

As the CEO of your organization, this should worry you. Your marketing team knows a lot less about marketing than they let on, and you can prove it in an instant. Ask them to explain the difference between the marketing mix and the promotional mix. It’s a basic question but surprisingly most marketers don’t know the answer.

Imagine asking your accounting staff the difference between a balance sheet and an income statement, and finding out you stumped them.

Now consider this. You can maybe ring another 20% in sales out of your current customers, but that’s offset by the hole in your customer bucket. Real growth comes from new business development and you’ve entrusted a good share of that to a marketing team that can't define a basic marketing term. Not good.

Someone in your company should know about marketing. I suggest you buy a copy of this book for yourself first. I'll show you what I call the 6 steps of Strategically Aimed Marketing or The SAM 6 Process for short. It will get you up to speed quickly so you can’t be bamboozled. Then buy copies for your staff and make them study it until they can teach it.

Now in his 60s, Lonny Kocina has spent a lifetime in marketing.

In 1987, Lonny founded Media Relations Agency, which has served several hundred clients. Media Relations Agency’s nationally trademarked Pay Per Interview Publicity® business model, which enables clients to purchase publicity by the story, is well known throughout the industry.

When the internet was in its infancy, Lonny had the business foresight to reserve available portal web addresses such as publicity.com, mediarelations.com and checkerboard.com, and advised hundreds of clients to do the same.

In the 30 years since launching Media Relations Agency, Lonny’s greatest joy still comes from thinking about, talking about and writing about marketing.