Excellent Marketing Insight from "The E-Myth Revisited"

A week or so ago I finished reading Michael Gerber's excellent book, The E-Myth Revisited. This book is a must-read for small business owners who are ready to take their business to the next level.

Here are a few key insights from the book:

- The entire process by which a business does business should be a marketing tool, a mechanism for finding and keeping customers. Each and every component of the business system is a means through which the franchisor can differentiate his business from all other businesses in the mind of the customer (Chapter 10).

- When it comes to marketing, what you want is unimportant. It's what your customer wants that matters. And what your customer wants is probably significantly different from what you think he wants (Chapter 17).

- If mature businesses, such as IBM, McDonald's, Federal Express and Disney, take such things (the minute details of a marketing system) seriously, then how can you not do the same? Your business is far more fragile than a big business. So, if anything, you must take marketing more seriously than a big business does (Chapter 17).