“Get Scrappy: Smarter Digital Marketing for Businesses Big & Small” is a provocative title and lured me to have a closer look at this book from author Nick Westergaard.
Learning more about digital marketing is a good investment for decision-makers, and I hoped it would bring something new to the table. However, I found the book disappointing. It deals with digital marketing only minimally; only chapters three and six provide some meat on technology-related marketing information.
Chapter three explains various social media paths and how to use them. Among them are: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, etc. Each has one page devoted to providing information on it, but does not include URLs which would make it more interesting and easier to check each out.
Chapter six focuses on integrating social media with email by explaining the process. This is somewhat interesting and helpful, but the narrative in chapter six is low-tech.
I found myself browsing through the book to look for the substance hoping for some great tips, but I continued to be disappointed. The book is minimally about digital marketing. Instead, it is largely about planning a marketing strategy with a hefty dose of managing the marketing process. It gets tedious and wordy making it a hard read. The lengthy series of testimonials on the inside and outside cover generated yawns and impatience.
The author appears friendly and chatty and the book is dotted with historic anecdotes about planning and change. I can recommend chapters 3 and 6, but the rest of the book is dull. Yet, it may appeal to someone who has the time and interest to engage with the author’s journey through marketing history.
Ironically, the author failed to identify a target market who would find this type of narrative interesting and useful. It has an academic tone, but I would not offer this to my students who expect more substance from their readings.
My recommendation is to throw out 90 percent of the testimonials and 50 percent of the chatty narrative. The book would benefit with some visuals and how-to sections.
Most importantly, the author should fulfill the promise embedded in the title and make it scrappy.
Lucia Worthington teaches business and management at Clark College. To recommend a book for review, email bookreviews@vbjusa.com.