Out Foxing the Competition With Marketing 101

Author Jeffrey J. Fox

Jeffrey J. Fox, author of How to Make Big Money in Your Own Small Business: Unexpected Rules Every Small Business Owner Needs to Know (Hyperion), will present "Marketing 101: Creating a Marketing Plan" as part of ABA's daylong bookseller education programming at BookExpo America (BEA) on Thursday, June 3. The session will be held from 10:15 a.m. - noon in Room 402A at Chicago's McCormick Place Convention Center.

Throughout Marketing 101, Fox will provide booksellers from stores of all sizes and specialties with ways to implement marketing techniques that will help them compete in the marketplace and make their businesses thrive. He will challenge some accepted bookselling wisdom with his self-styled "counterintuitive approaches."

Fox, a consultant and small business owner himself, has written six bestselling business books, including How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients and How to Become a Great Boss: The Rules for Getting and Keeping the Best Employees (both from Hyperion). He is the founder of Fox & Company, a marketing consulting firm, and has been named "Outstanding Marketer" by Sales and Marketing Management magazine and by the National Industrial Distributors Association. Fox was also named "Marketer of the Year" by the Connecticut American Marketing Association. He has held senior marketing positions at several international companies and is a popular speaker for senior executives.

Fox told BTW that he anticipates "rattling a few cages" when he presents his marketing ideas to booksellers. "One of my first questions to booksellers is, Why do you own a bookstore?" explained Fox. "When they answer 'because I love books,' I tell them that is the wrong answer. When they ask prospective employees why they want the job -- if their answer is 'because I love books,' [I tell them] don't hire them!

"The right answer will be one of the major themes of Marketing 101."

According to Fox, booksellers can gain important information about doing business by visiting wine stores, hardware stores, and even oil and lube shops. Independent booksellers have a great advantage -- over large chains and Internet sites -- because they can talk directly to their customers. Fox will present ways booksellers can capitalize on that advantage and create more successful businesses.

Since ABA's daylong bookseller education programming debuted at BEA in New York City in 2002, the panels and seminars have been extremely well received. New this year, the All-Day Education Program is free to all ABA member bookstores and their employees who register for BEA. Booksellers must indicate on the BEA registration form that they are ABA members, and they must register for the all-day program. For more about the new BEA Super Pass, click here.

"Marketing 101" will be preceded by a "Marketing Plenary Session" led by the "father" of Guerrilla Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson (for more information, click here). Concurrent with "Marketing 101" will be "Marketing 201," for booksellers with more marketing experience. "Marketing 201: Supercharge Your Current Marketing Efforts" will feature bestselling author, entrepreneur, and "agent of change" Seth Godin (for more information, click here). For more about ABA programming at BEA, click here.

For registration information, go to www.bookexpoamerica.com/.