I can imagine Deadheads being angry at this book before even opening it. And I hear you. Grateful Dead and Inbound Marketing Lessons? Talk about your weird analogies.
But fear not Deadheads, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from The Most Iconic Band in History (that’s one long title) is attempting to bring marketing closer to what the Grateful Dead truly represented. And despite the fact that it was written back in 2010, it is still as relevant, if not more relevant, today. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend you do so.
A book for Modern Marketers
Written by David Meerman Scott (bestselling author of New Rules of Marketing & PR) and HubSpot’s Brian Halligan (author of Inbound Marketing), Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead is both an eye-catching story of and a case for the Grateful Dead’s unconscious Inbound Marketing lessons. It seeks to convince the reader, the modern marketer, to let go of preconceived notions of what should and shouldn’t be done and advocates instead for a more daring and exciting method.
For that was what the Grateful Dead were: poland whatsapp number data 5 million daring and exciting. They broke almost every rule that the music industry foolishly tried to impose on them; they gave away “freemium” content; they turned their business model based on live concerts, rather than album sales; they encouraged their fans to record shows and to trade tapes; they built a mailing list and sold concert tickets directly to fans.
Imagine a band that not only produced amazing music, but that would do something like this:
Who are you? Where are you? How are you?
Send us your name and address and we’ll keep expenses for your own agency you informed.
Deadheads, P.O. Box 1065, San Rafael, California 94901.
Yes, the Grateful Dead is asking their fans to no longer germany cell number be strangers. The best equivalent method we can use is some form of personalized emails today, but personally sending out updates to all of your fans’ addresses? Damn.
In this book, Meerman Scott and Halligan make a case for applying the Grateful Dead’s counter-intuitive methods as business practices. Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead provides a fresh perspective filled with not only great content but accompanied with visuals, and “Rock On” subsections providing all the information needed for you to summarize what you just learned.
The Example of Amazon
Perhaps one of the most notable examples given in the book is that of Amazon.com. Indeed, the company that would become one of the most popular websites – and its affiliate, Amazon Associates, to be the most popular web affiliate program in the world – used a Grateful Dead-like strategy and the greatest of all Inbound Marketing lessons. Amazon.com partners with affiliates who want to sell merchandise via their e-commerce platform by embedding product links and the likes, at complete odds with what was expected at the time. For example, a book review website that is an Amazon Affiliate would include links to buy each book reviewed. And when someone buys via the link, the affiliate receives a percentage of revenue.
