BOOK REVIEW
The Boomerang Effect – Why Being Helpful In Your Marketing Returns More Customers And Makes You More Money
By Tim Reid

Most business owners I meet measure the success of their marketing spend by one main metric – new customers or number of fresh leads. But what if the true measure of success — and the path to profits — actually lies with your existing customers? What if there was a way to effortlessly ensure more customers returned to your business and spent more money?

That’s the premise of Tim Reid’s book, The Boomerang Effect. It’s a new twist on the old adage that it costs 5-10 times more to sell to a new customer than an existing customer. Leveraging your knowledge through ‘helpful marketing’ Tim argues, is the key to marketing success.

As the host of Australia’s number one marketing podcast Small Business Big Marketing, Tim has interviewed hundreds of successful marketers and as a result, has the inside scoop on what’s working and how to drive your marketing dollar further.

Helpful marketing is a blindingly simple premise; by sharing the intimate knowledge you have about your industry, your products and your services openly and freely, you make your brand a customer magnet. Helpful marketing is the antidote to pushy marketing and as Tim argues, helps you build a tribe of loyal customers and a bulletproof brand.

Helpful marketing is a strategy that works just like a boomerang. The more you throw it out there, the more it will come back to you. Stop ‘pushing your message’ and being ‘salesy’ and focus on how to help your customers and add value. Then sit back and watch your customers return to your business like bees to honey.

The Boomerang Effect, once it convinces you that Helpful Marketing is the best way to approach marketing your small business, outlines exactly how to go about it.

It’s light on theory and packed with case studies of business owners that have adopted helpful marketing and the wild success they’ve achieved as a result. It tells you exactly what to do, from a standing start, to get your marketing cranking.

It challenges you to consider what business you’re really in and how to package, promote and position your business in the hearts and minds of your target audience and turn your customer base into a connected community.

The Boomerang Effect doesn’t bombard you with marketing theory, nor does it overcomplicate things. It’s a roll-the-sleeves-up’ guide to creating serious marketing momentum, quickly. It’s packed with tips, tricks and tactics that you can implement immediately.

Helpful marketing is about sharing your expertise and your knowledge. There are many ways to do that and The Boomerang Effect gives you an array of digital and analogue strategies.

It’s all about content creation. Whether you choose to launch a podcast, a video series, a webinar, a seminar or an online forum, Tim argues that we all have more content than we realise.

Implementing a helpful marketing strategy may require a huge mindset shift. It requires a willingness to openly share and give away your knowledge, experience and skill, package it up and give it away. That concept may challenge your thinking and the natural tendency to safeguard our business secrets. But once you understand that being helpful and giving your knowledge freely comes back to you exponentially, you will adopt an abundance mentality and feel free from the exhaustion of push marketing.

If you’re not using video content as part of your marketing strategy, you’re missing out on a potent opportunity to improve your google rankings and connect with more customers. And according to Tim, there’s no excuses for not producing regular video content.

Not sure what to make a video about? Tim outlines five video content ideas to get you started:

The ultimate positioning piece is a book. And as Tim points out, it’s never been easier to self publish a book. And the best way to write a book? Start. Just write.

The Boomerang Effect is an easy read but it’s far from light on. It’s a highly engaging and conversational guide to dominating your industry by making your business a marketing magnet. As you’d expect, the book itself is incredibly helpful, with page after page of clever ideas and simple strategies that you can put in place straight away, all backed by case studies and anecdotes of other business owners and how they’ve achieved success. In fact, The Boomerang Effect is almost like a ‘to-do’ list to really get your marketing flourishing and your brand booming.

Get the book, listen to the podcast and follow Tim’s advice. Just get ready for the avalanche of business that follows.

You can buy a copy of The Boomerang Effect here.