Think Like a Marketer: How a Shift in Mindset Can Change Everything for Your Business

The Secret to Taking Your Business from Mediocre to Meaningfully Different?

Thinking like a marketer. It’s also the secret to moving your organization from status quo to success story, and from busy to profitable. In an easy-to-read, practical new guidebook, acclaimed marketing expert Kate Colbert offers fresh insights into the actions and attitudes that can accelerate your business success, sharpen your daily work, and balance your efforts to create value for customers while capturing value for the bottom line. For non-marketers and marketers alike, truly thinking like a marketer requires the right framework, and this book is everything you need to make the mindset shift that can change everything for your business.

“An MBA in a book? That’s exactly what I consider this to be! ... Trust me -- this book can help you to grow your business!”
-- Lois Creamer, Author of Book More Business: Make Money Speaking

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a management consultant or the owner of a diner that serves the best biscuits and gravy in town, the ability to think like a marketer will give you a competitive edge.

Business owners and leaders are invariably stuck in the frenzied current moment -- chasing the next piece of revenue, getting through the next project, putting out the next proverbial fire, or surviving the next people-problem that’s bound to come up. Think Like a Marketer offers a fresh new approach to a more powerful and lasting way to do business that involves a sometimes-subtle but always-impactful shift in mindset. It’s time to think like a marketer.

Thinking like a marketer requires that you:

1. Communicate for connection and meaning, not just to transact sales
2. Live and die by your customer insights
3. Market in a way that’s strategy-religious and tactic-agnostic
4. Create cultures and processes that align with your brand
5. Do everything in service of maintaining a virtuous cycle of creating value for the customer while capturing value for you.

The 5 Think Like a Marketer Principles are the framework for Colbert’s valuable insights and practical tips about:

• Brand storytelling
• Sampling strategies
• Smart monetization
• Testing new marketing tactics
• Conducting critical market research
• The perils of do-it-yourself marketing
• Building and maintaining lists and pipelines
• Innovating product and service deliverables
• Being known, being seen and networking in new ways
• Delivering customer service, even when the going gets tough
• Innovations in distribution and packaging
• Creating meaningful connections with your customers

Read this book if you are a:

• Business owner without a background in marketing
• Business professional in a small- to mid-sized company or a Fortune 1000 company
• Professional speaker, blogger or thought leader
• Non-profit professional
• Marketer

Thinking like a marketer allows decision-makers -- at every level, in any kind of organization and with backgrounds in any area of functional expertise -- to accomplish more while spending less time and money. A marketing mindset can be the key to sustained profitable growth and meaningful connections with loyal customers.

Far from a simple “Marketing 101” for non-marketers, this book is a topical smorgasbord designed to feed the curiosities and satisfy the business needs that all business professionals (including marketers) ultimately crave.

Kate Colbert is an accomplished marketer, speaker and communications consultant who has led marketing initiatives for brands big and small, global and domestic. She is regarded as an eminent strategic storyteller with the ability to connect business and academic brands with enthusiastic and loyal customers to generate sustained, profitable growth.

Kate founded Silver Tree Communications, a full-service brand marketing consultancy, in 2002, and its sister company, Silver Tree Publishing, in 2015. She has expertise in leading the marketing efforts of brands in higher education, healthcare, professional services, consumer retail, and other industries. She is best known for her groundbreaking work in market research and brand story development, her award-winning work in turning corporate data into actionable reports for high-stakes industries, her collaborative spirit in publishing impactful and inspiring books for new and established authors, and her leadership in working with employee groups (from scientists to technologists, C-suite executives to sales professionals) who seek to be more effective communicators. Kate is also a sought-after media spokesperson and crisis communications consultant, and a dynamic speaker who delivers presentations on communications and marketing topics.

Kate lives in Kenosha, WI, with her husband Robert and a pack of dogs she absolutely adores. When she's not working, she loves to travel, to volunteer for local charities and to read. Think Like a Marketer is her first non-fiction business book.