Good marketers know that customer-centered marketing is mandatory. However, we are not the customer. What the customer perceives as relevant is the thing successful marketers must anticipate, plan, and deliver on. Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing offers Persuasion Architecture, a proven Persona-based methodology. Persuasion Architecture enables marketers to anticipate different angles from which customers frame their questions and then coordinate messaging across multiple channels so that marketers can create predictive models of customer behavior. Don't miss out on learning about this six-sigma marketing approach that can skyrocket the effectiveness of your interactive marketing.

"There's some big thinking going on here-thinking you will need if you want to take your work to the next level. 'Typical, not average' is just one of the ideas inside that will change the way you think about marketing."-Seth Godin, Author, All Marketers Are Liars

"Are your clients coming to you armed with more product information than you or your sales team know? You need to read Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? to learn how people are buying in the post-Internet age so you can learn how to sell to them."-Tom Hopkins, Master Sales Trainer and Author, How to Master the Art of Selling

"These guys really 'get it.' In a world of know-it-all marketing hypesters, these guys realize that it takes work to persuade people who aren't listening. They've connected a lot of the pieces that we all already know-plus a lot that we don't. It's a rare approach that recognizes that the customer is in charge and must be encouraged and engaged on his/her own terms, not the sellers. Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? takes apart the persuasion process, breaks down the steps and gives practical ways to tailor your approaches to your varying real customers in the real world. This book is at a high level that marketers better hope their competitors will be too lazy to implement."-George Silverman, Author, The Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing: How to Trigger Exponential Sales Through Runaway Word of Mouth

"We often hear that the current marketing model is broken-meaning the changes in customers, media, distribution, and even the flatness of the world make current practices no longer relevant. Yet few have offered a solution. This book recognizes the new reality in which we operate and provides a path for moving forward. The authors do an outstanding job of using metaphors to help make Persuasion Architecture clear and real-life examples to make it come alive. Finally, someone has offered direction for how to market in this new era where the customer is in control."-David J. Reibstein, William Stewart Woodside Professor, Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania and former Executive Director, Marketing Science Institute

"If you want to learn persistence, get a cat. If you want to learn marketing, get this book. It's purrfect."-Jeffrey Gitomer, Author, The Little Red Book of Selling

"In 1999, the Wachowski brothers revolutionized moviemaking with stunning new angles and special effects revealed in The Matrix. Now the 'Eisenbrothers' have done the same for business in Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? Stunning new angles! Techniques that will be copied for decades. Cat is sure to be remembered as the genesis of an important new direction in marketing."-Roy H. Williams, New York Times Best-Selling Author, The Wizard of Ads Trilogy

"The Web is a democratizing force as the world's largest global brain. It educates everyone

I've been a fan of the Eisenbergs for about eight or ten years, ever since Jeffrey started posting to the ISales Discussion List (now gone, unfortunately). All of their books are worthwhile. My spouse, Dina Friedman, uses "Persuasive Online Copywriting" to teach her business students at UMass. I've recommended "Call to Action" to quite a few folks. Their latest, with long-time collaborator Lisa T. Davis, has the intriguing title, "Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?"

While their previous work has focused especially on online persuasion, this book includes food for thought in both the virtual and physical marketing processes. Among my favorite points:
* Demographics are not nearly enough. They describe two women who live in the same New York apartment building, are within a few months in age, work in similar jobs--but have completely different motivations, and therefore need to approached very differently to engage in a buying pattern.
* When presenting a marketing message to people that you don't know and who don't know you, you need to reach them where they are in the buying process: the triggers that will draw a positive response from someone just beginning to gather information will be very different from the triggers for someone who has done extensive research, selected a brand and model, and wants to move forward. You want to "be there" for both of these folks, as well as everyone on the continuum between them.
* But it's not only demographics--it's also personality type: Approach a Methodical the same way you'd approach a Spontaneous, and you're almost guaranteed to fall flat on your face. But what's exciting for us marketing junkies is that it's not all that hard to craft selling copy that has trigger points for all four major personality types (the other two are Humanistic and Competitive).
* Companies as well as individuals have a psychographic profile, and even a relevant finding using the Myers-Briggs assessment tool (you probably took it in college).

Shel Horowitz's award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, demonstrates how to build a business around ethics, environmental sustainability, and cooperative practices--and how to develop marketing that highlights those advantages.

I'm going to be brief...this book is not worth your time UNTIL you've read everything else on the market.

There is so much 'blah blah' filler in this book it is aggravating. Not only is that wasting my time but it detracts from the main point. Towards the end (ie last 20 pages) they start to get into the meat which is decent, but by no means worth the praise these other 'reviews' have here.

I added quotes to the reviews term because by now you should surely know over half of these reviews are fake...friends of the author, publisher, etc. Do yourself a favor and look at a reviewers other reviews to verify they aren't some "in the pocket" reviewer.

That being said the most annoying thing about this book IS IT IS JUST A FANCY BROCHURE for their FutureNow inc company. Every other page they seem to talk about how great they are what they've created. Let's just say these guys have no problem blowing their horn and if you want to pay to listen to it...be my guest.

Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing

The creative and intriguing title first garnered my attention. Once I got into the book, I began to realize that this book is essential reading for any person handling marketing duties for any business enterprise. The lessons taught about the power of the Internet to make or break a product, business or service are indispensable. I can't say enough about the intricate manner of delivering the message that these authors have crafted.

William C. Head

[...]

Dogs are easily motivated to respond to stimuli. Cats aren't so cooperative. Potential buyers used to behave pretty much like dogs--responding to advertising by running out to buy a product. Even in the B2B world, a sales rep or an ad campaign could move prospects easily toward a purchase. Today, buyers prefer to make their own informed brand choices. They are as difficult to herd as, well, cats. The solution: The authors have invented a `persuasion architecture' that enables sellers to provide an information experience that's individually meaningful to buyers. It marries the two-sided buying/selling process with the marketing communications flow. "Its focus, always, is persuading the customer to take action." To keep buyers moving toward a positive decision, sellers must ask again and again:

* Who are we trying to persuade to take the action?
* What is the action we want someone to take?
* What does the person need in order to feel confident taking that action?

Successful marketers guide prospects toward informed decisions through touch points, such as the web, print or television ads, and in-person contacts. The buyer's voluntary participation is required, because "you are always the equivalent of `one click' away from goodbye." Pervasive Internet usage for pre-purchase research creates marketing opportunity. For example, the shift to flat screen TVs enables savvy sellers to become your new best friend. Buying a TV with a tube was easy. Who understands flat screens? If you can guide us gently toward a positive decision, you win. Implementing persuasion architecture will help position your organization as the provider of choice for:

* Relevant, reliable information
* An enjoyable buying experience
* Products and services that precisely meet client needs

In fact, persuasion architecture as a core component of content marketing may be just the competitive advantage you need to succeed with those hard to herd clients.

I thought this book was one of the most inspiring books I read in 2006. It doesn't present any groundbreaking news, but it does make you eager to get out there and improve your marketing. I put up quotes and drawings based on the book by my workplace -- to get the inspiration from the book to last longer.