How Much for Just the Spider?

Bobette Kyle's exhaustively researched book, How Much for Just the Spider? Strategic Web Site Marketing for Small-Budget Businesses is not for dabblers. It's for people who mean serious marketing business. Reading this book, one feels as if one has been placed in the hands of an expert supreme. One actually trembles at the wealth of information.

The strategies are many but they share a common denominator: they are marketing strategies that use the old tried and true marketing knowledge for the cyber-age. Arranged in self-contained information-packed chapters, these strategies show the reader the important aspects of websites, how to develop and implement them, how to deal with customer and company data, promotion and targeting, advertisements, search engines and newsletters. She even writes about offline tactics.

Each chapter is further divided into categories and sub-categories, and each chapter has a list of resources and websites -- arranged by cost -- that correspond to the strategy discussed in that chapter. For instance, the Public Relations chapter has the following categories: Message Boards, Press Releases, Leveraging Expertise. And these categories are also helpfully divided. Message Boards is further divided into rules for message boards. One of the sub-categories of Press Releases shows the reader how to make a press release.

How Much for Just the Spider? Strategic Web Site Marketing for Small-Budget Businesses is a whopping 232 pages tour-de-force. The strategies inside it will turn a non-performing website into a true marketing tool. Kyle is not a motivator; she does not attempt to prove the importance of web-advertising. Nor is this book like those humor-filled "Dummies" books. Kyle means business and her marketing insights will enlighten readers who know little about either marketing or websites. Small business who cannot afford expensive internet consultants would do well to buy this book. And certainly, the average consultant doesn't know or wouldn't share-- half of what Kyle does in this excellent business aid.

Strategic marketing books are often challenging. The reader can commit to all the knowledge printed before them. Or they can pick and choose and work on different aspects of the strategy. The website designer and small business company would do well to follow the guidance Kyle pours forth. This author has done her homework -and everyone else's. But the picker and chooser will also find the book useful. This excellent book, which also comes in PDF Ebook format, is highly recommended. One of the year's best business books.