New Book, The KI of Marketing, Helps Small Businesses Grow Without Trying to Outspend Bigger Competitors
illi News/10342025

RALEIGH, N.C. - illiNews -- Martin Brossman draws on more than two decades working with small and micro businesses to offer a practical, relationship-driven approach to marketing

Small and micro business owners are often given marketing advice designed for companies with larger budgets, staffs, and resources they do not have. Martin Brossman's new book takes a different approach.

The KI of Marketing: Go Where Your Competition Does Not Expect You and Where Your Customers Want You Most, by Martin Brossman with Dr. Justin Rose, is now available on Amazon. The book grew from a question Brossman encountered while working with small businesses across North Carolina: What actually works in marketing when you have little or no marketing budget?

"I want small-business owners to make more money without assuming the answer is spending more money," Brossman says. "I want them to recognize the competitive advantage they may already be standing on."

Inspired by Brossman's years studying Aikido, the book uses KI, pronounced "key," as a metaphor for working with energy and momentum already present. Rather than meeting force with force, small businesses can build on customer relationships, reputation, local knowledge, referrals, and trust.

The book challenges owners to get clear about what makes them different, who they serve best and who they do not, what customers are really buying, and what they can offer that larger competitors cannot easily copy. It also argues that websites, AI, social media, and digital tools work best when they amplify human relationships instead of replacing them.

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That message is relevant in small towns and local business communities. Businesses can recommend one another, exchange referrals, support community events, and help tell why their town is worth visiting and doing business in.

"Eventually you are not just marketing individual businesses," Brossman writes. "You are helping a community tell its own story."

Brossman emphasizes the cumulative power of local businesses supporting one another with real examples in the book. When businesses contribute, collaborate, and refer customers to each other, those individual actions can build stronger relationships, greater profitability, more community visibility, and more reasons for customers to stay local.

Pat Howlett, Brossman's longtime colleague and co-author of Relationship Marketing³, called it Brossman's "best book" in this space during the book launch. He also pointed to something Brossman considers essential: the book sounds like the person who lived the stories, taught the classes, and developed the ideas over decades. Preserving that voice matters because the book is built on real experience, not generic marketing theory. The language, perspective, humor, judgment, and way the ideas are explained is recognizably Brossman's engaging style.

Dr. Justin Rose, who contributed to the book and wrote its foreword, describes the ideas as tested in real classrooms and businesses before appearing in print, offering readers "no hype, no shortcuts, just a proven path built on trust."

The KI of Marketing is designed to be used, not simply read. Through real small-business stories, it asks owners to examine their best customers, where they create unusual value, how referrals can become part of the business from the beginning, and where competitors have left opportunities open.

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For chambers of commerce, Small Business Centers, libraries, downtown organizations, business associations, and economic-development groups, the book can provide a common language for helping local businesses work together.

Learn More

Buy The KI of Marketing on Amazon:
https://a.co/d/09G5HuPt

Available in paperback, hardcover, Kindle, and audiobook.

Watch the official book launch:
https://youtu.be/AfAUd_7Dz8M?si=yzeahdOkZi8y7Jgz



Read Martin Brossman's LinkedIn article:
The Book I Had Been Writing for Twenty Years Without Knowing It - The KI of Marketing
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/book-i-had-been-writing-twenty-years-without-knowing-brossman-zwnce/

Follow Martin Brossman online:
https://linktr.ee/martinbrossman

About Martin Brossman

Martin Brossman has spent more than two decades helping small and micro business owners grow through relationships, referrals, practical digital marketing, and a deeper understanding of the customers they serve best. Since 2006, he has trained thousands of business owners across North Carolina and beyond, including extensive work with the North Carolina Small Business Center Network.

His work focuses especially on entrepreneurs, Main Street businesses, skilled trades, and micro businesses that cannot simply outspend larger competitors.

Media, speaking, training, guest appearances on podcasts, and bulk-order inquiries: contact us.