Article first published as Book Review: ‘Feed a Starving Crowd by Robert Coorey on Blogcritics.
February 2, 2014
Feed a Starving Crowd:
More than 200 hot and fresh marketing strategies to find hungry customers
Robert Coorey, M.B.A.
Aviva Publishing (2014)
ISBN: 9781940984018
New Marketing Book Focuses on How to Find Customers and Get Them to Buy
Robert Coorey is obsessive about creating incredible marketing results and helping people succeed at entrepreneurship. Besides currently being the Director of Global Business at E-Web Marketing, Australia’s top online marketing agency, he’s also the author of Email Marketing that Sells, and now he continues to share his enthusiasm and knowledge in his new book Feed a Starving Crowd.
What does starvation have to do with marketing? The title refers to people out there who are hungry for certain products and services. You, as the entrepreneur, need to find out what they are hungry for, how to make or keep them hungry, and then provide a means to satisfy their hunger, as well as make them aware that you have what they are craving.
How do you accomplish this? Coorey walks the reader through all the steps, and I was personally blown away by how clever and transparent he is in his strategies. He has done extensive research, applied these concepts himself, and he even has interviewed several successful marketers and entrepreneurs to share their knowledge with his readers. Here is just one of the brilliant pieces of advice he offered about creating sales copy for your products:
“And everyone is alone when he or she is reading your sales copy. You’re not talking to an audience of 1,000 people. You’re having a personal conversation with one person. What does this mean? It means you can get emotional, and it means you should write your copy with the frame of mind you would have in writing a personal letter to a friend.”
Among the advice Coorey shares from other successful entrepreneurs is the following advice from Alexi Neocleous, one of Australia’s leading direct response copywriters. To market to people, Alexi tells us we need to understand what drives human nature:
“really understand what drives human nature. Like the seven deadly sins. If you look at human history over hundreds, and even thousands of years, you’re going to see the seven deadly sins pop up time and time again, in gluttony, lust, and other ways. That usually is what drives human nature. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—again, there’s a lot of good stuff that’s applicable to human nature.”
Besides teaching us the psychological or emotional ways to reach and connect with our target audience or market, Coorey also tells us where to find that market. He discusses the wide range of social media sites, including some I didn’t even know existed. He gives us the details of how these sites work, which ones are effective for which types of businesses, stories of success using these sites, and the dos and don’ts for using them so we can achieve marketing success. I found this entire social media discussion very revealing and inspiring and a definite step above any I’ve read or heard in the past.
Coorey also gives a great deal of information about how to write sales copy, including examples from Gary Halbert, the world’s best copywriter. There are samples of effective emails to send to customers and potential affiliates. There are details about how to write copy to go with videos and even how to create Video Sales Letters. There are even examples of how to build your website to streamline the checkout process so your customers won’t abandon their shopping carts before they finish shopping.
I could not believe all the information in this book, and beyond that, the many great visual examples Coorey includes. In addition, there’s a book resources page you can access online once you buy the book; it contains numerous items to download as free extra bonuses for buying the book.
Finally, as an American myself, I really appreciated that Coorey is Australian because he had what for me were fresh examples of Australian businesses and markets. But yes, he did have American examples too. He even had examples from Sweden.
Needless to say, Feed a Starving Crowd is one of the most impressive marketing books I have ever read. I’ve read plenty that seem to rehash the same things, but this one is full of new information, information readers can actually use, and most of the strategies Coorey recommends are very affordable as his subtitle proclaims. I’m sure many of Coorey’s readers will be blown away by what is inside this book and immediately want to implement his strategies.
So, what are you waiting for? You have a starving crowd hungry for your product. Buy this book and you’ll have the recipe so you can feed them.
For more information about Robert Coorey and Feed a Starving Crowd, visit www.feedastarvingcrowd.com.
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. and award-winning author of Narrow Lives and The Best Place
