Small Biz Marketers Should Read The Marketing Performance Blueprint


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This is an ideal book for anyone who has marketing responsibilities inside an organization. The foundational concepts Roetzer covers are exactly what today’s marketers need.

Marketing Performance Blueprint

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“You’re so creative — it’s no wonder you’re in marketing.” I hear this all the time and I used to believe it twenty years ago.  But today, I think that marketing is about a different kind of creativity; it’s about creating around conversions.  Marketing is measurable.  And if you aren’t measuring the success of your marketing programs, there’s a good chance that you are hemorrhaging cash and wasting your valuable time and money.

Which brings me to The Marketing Performance Blueprint: Strategies and Technologies to Build and Measure Business Success by Paul Roetzer (@paulroetzer).  I received a review copy of this book,, which is best described as the modern marketers guidebook for taking control of your marketing programs and results.

Paul Roetzer Lives on the Bleeding Edge of Hybrid Marketing Agencies

Paul Roetzer is the  founder and CEO of PR20/20, a Cleveland-based inbound marketing agency. His firm was the first firm in HubSpot’s certified agency program, which now includes more than 1,500 agencies worldwide.

Roetzer’s first book, The Marketing Agency Blueprint is a guide for building tech-savvy hybrid marketing agencies.  He has consulted for hundreds of companies from start-up to Fortune 500 and has been recognized by Smart Business as an Innovation in Business Rising Star.

In this book, his focus moves from the agency to the organization and its marketing team.  His primary message to organizations is that marketing has evolved with new technologies and requires a new level of measurement and management.  The Marketing Blueprint serves as the small business owners’ guide to building a marketing organization inside of a company that performs at the highest level.

Marketing Blueprint is Written for Established Companies, but Start-Ups and Solopreneurs will Benefit Too

It’s clear from the start, that Marketing Blueprint is for small businesses with employees and infrastructure and a marketing department.  This book is written for marketing practitioners, professionals, managers, consultants and those who are responsible for marketing results.  But that doesn’t mean that smaller organizations can’t benefit.

Marketing Blueprint is written in four sections:

Section I: The Backstory

Roetzer outlines the glaring gaps in talent, technology, strategy and performance that exist for businesses who have ignored the performance side of marketing.  This section is written as a sort of “whack-on-the-head” for businesses who are still in the marketing stone age; not leveraging technology, ignoring inbound marketing strategies.  He references a 2012 Marketing Skills survey that shows 75% of marketers as saying their lack of skills is impacting revenue.

Section II: Commit to Digital Transformation

Roetzer uses the term “hybrid marketers” to describe those marketers who are “capable of building, managing and executing fully integrated campaigns capable of measuring results.” In this section, he describes how to build a marketing team, develop an ongoing learning program and how to partner with agencies.

Section III: Marketing Technology

This is where Roetzer really digs into the daily tools of the hybrid marketer.  I love that he puts the focus on the purpose of marketing technology and tools as being there to support the customer experience.  Given his earlier mention of how many marketers have a skill gap around integrating and working with today’s technology, I would have liked to see a little more content here.

Section IV: Marketing Strategy

This is an intense section where a lot of non-corporate small business owners can easily get lost.  It covers marketing assessments and performance audits and scorecards.  Corporate marketers like CMOs and marketing managers will find this useful and may only need a few tweaks to integrate inside of their regular areas of responsibilities.  But, I think that businesses with marketing teams that consist of just a few people might get overwhelmed and simply give up.  In Chapter 10, “Strategize a Marketing Game Plan” you’ll find a wonderful step-by-step process that applies to every business, no matter what size.

Loaded With Great Online Resources

Roetzer has put his money where his mouth is and included a lot of additional online content for readers that includes; templates and spreadsheets that he calls a Marketing Performance Pack.  This is a terrific additional resource that all readers will find to be valuable tools in putting the strategies he discusses into practice inside of your organization.

The Marketing Performance Blueprint is an ideal book for everyone who has marketing responsibility inside of their organization.  While some of the content is clearly targeted to larger teams and organizations, the foundational concepts Roetzer covers are exactly what today’s marketers need.

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Ivana Taylor Ivana Taylor is the Book Editor for Small Business Trends. She is responsible for directing the site’s book review program and manages the team of professional book reviewers. She also spearheads the annual Small Business Book Awards. Ivana publishes DIYMarketers, where she shares daily do-it-yourself marketing tips, and is co-author of "Excel for Marketing Managers."

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