The Invisible Touch: The Four Keys to Modern Marketing

Aptly named, "The Invisible Touch" presents brilliant insight into selling and positioning the intangible; services both online and off.Beckwith argues convincingly that successful service offerings depend not so much on the actual services, but on the consumers' perception of the company offering the services and the consumers' perception of themselves as the decision is made to purchase them. The successful service provider communicates in crystal clear fashion the benefits of said services and charges based on the value delivered. (It's not what you pay; it's what you get!)Perceived value is affected by numerous factors including environment and price. Can you increase the perceived value of your product or service by simply increasing the price? Beckwith discusses several cases in which this is clearly the case. Can a restaurant improve the taste of its' food by improving the decor? Arguably, yes.When discussing State Farm, Beckwith states, "It is not slickness, polish, uniqueness, or cleverness that makes a brand a brand. It is truth."This strategy has worked well for State Farm. Due to the abundance of information available on the web this may become a required strategy for any company.

There are a lot of important lessons about marketing that many people never master. Even with a marketing course, you will miss many of these basic points. Work in marketing long enough and you will, and these essential perspectives will become ingrained. Although there is no substitute for experience, The Invisible Touch is a good compendium of many of those important lessons.The first chapter is on the limits of research. Most people in marketing know almost nothing about research, and as a result assign it a value that is inappropriate. For example, when you measure something you change it. The author describes having been part of a Nielsen panel while young, and how the family's television viewing habits changed as a result. Essentially, he wants you to understand that most of what you want to learn to make great marketing strides cannot easily be obtained from standard research methods. He proposes some useful alternatives, such as depth interviews (where a longer conversation is held and the interviewee determine most of the direction).I also greatly enjoyed his section on the fallacies of marketing. These should be posted on the wall of most offices. His perspective on services is quite good. Most business is lost by poor service, not pricing or product defects. Yet improving service is often the lowest priority in an organization. His four key points relate to pricing (higher prices add to the perception of quality), branding (the clarity of your message and identity is of more value than your actual quality), packaging (people prefer what is beautiful and value it more highly -- they uniformly are subject to the Ugly Duckling stall), and relationships (making clients and customers feel important is job one, with lots of advice for how to do that).I especially enjoyed his use of continuing examples. One was of attending a Laura Nyro concert, and being disappointed because she did not connect emotionally with the audience. Services are experienced and personal. "We give concerts . . . how much better can we give them?" The other one was the famous Folger's crystals advertisement for instant coffee served in the Blue Fox restaurant in San Francisco. People said the coffee was the best they ever tasted. Clearly, the ambience, reputation, and circumstances of being at the Blue Fox all had a lot to do with that perception of the coffee. The limitations of the book are several. First, it is not a general theory of how people decide to buy. For that, I suggest you read Robert Cialdini's book, Influence. Second, the conclusions you will want to draw for your own business may not always follow this advice. There is no clear pathway to decide what is best for you. For example, if you are exceptionally efficient and value is part of your brand, your prices had better reflect that and may be lower than the competition's (such as Wal-Mart, which is cited in the book, and Southwest Airline

Since I enjoyed the author's first book, I have decided to read the Invisible Touch as well. I started reading it and could not put it down until I finished the whole book. The book does not intend to cover all of marketing. The coverage is more towards brand management. The book is made up of many small sections and is very easy to read. At each section, he sites a real life observation and based on that observation generalizes and sets forth a marketing rule. Since it deals with human traits, it is a touching book at times and makes you fall in love with marketing. I recommend it even to professional marketeers.

This book was written by a marketing/sales expert who has his finger on the pulse of 21st century marketing. "The Invisible Touch" is also a quick-read that does not waste a busy marketing executive's time. I especially liked the sprinkling of real-world case studies and "lessons learned" throughout the book, along with the street-smart confidence behind Harry Beckwith's "keys to marketing success." Finally, this was a fun read!

Beckwith's second book is just as good or better than the first. I'ts fun to read. Every principle is highlighted with examples everyone can relate to and each section is short and pithy. Don't be fooled that there's little substance here because each section is such a quick read. Just the opposite. There's a lot to mull about on every single page. Worth reading, re-reading, taking notes and working at implementing these ideas into your business - no matter what kind of business you have.