Small Business Marketing
Social Media Revolution – Its Affect On Small Businesses
Erik Qualman, author of the book Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business, created a video called the Social Media Revolution in August 2009. He updated the video less than a year later to demonstrate how quickly the social media landscape moves. Some of the statistics are definitely eye-opening as well as exciting for small business owners. You can read the entire list and credits on Erik’s post Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh).
“Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.”
What does this mean?
Social media is not a trend and its use is growing exponentially. The tools will evolve and may in fact change, but the need for businesses to incorporate the Internet in general, and social media specifically, into their overall marketing strategy in order to achieve their goals is not going away. Social media will continue to change the way businesses market their brand, products and services because a savvy business is able to be proactive with its consumers, listening to what they want and need and responding to those needs quickly.
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Tags: social media growth, social media revolution, social media statistics
Marketing is About Education, Not Sales
I started my career educating customers on technology products for a major computer manufacturer. My pathway into marketing - from educator to technical marketing to product manager to marketing director and now small business marketing coach and mentor – was a natural progression for someone with an educational background. I have always believed that marketing was a multi-faceted education for your prospects:
- How do they go about finding the right solution to their particular need.
- What do they need to know to get the best solution.
- Who should they be working with to get to where they want to go.
- Why there is value in doing business with you.
Whether I was marketing software products, business to business services or consumer services, marketing is more successful when you focus on educating your prospect rather than selling them your products or services. Read more on Marketing is About Education, Not Sales…
Marketing Action Plan
The final post in the year end marketing review series to help small business owners get their plan ready to kick off a successful year.
So far in this series we have:
- Identified whether our ideal client has changed over the last year;
- Set our goals for our business;
- Tweaked our product and service offerings to align with our ideal client;
- Determined our differentiator and reviewed our messages to ensure we are communicating it effectively;
- Reviewed our marketing content for consistency and accuracy;
- Evaluated our marketing results to determine what’s worked and what hasn’t;
- Assessed our online reputation to see what is really out there.
Armed with this information, we can now put a marketing action plan in place that will grow your business and achieve the goals that you set for yourself. I want to emphasize the word action because a marketing plan that sits in a drawer will not help grow your business. The marketing action plan sets priorities and dates on all your marketing activities to ensure they get done. Read more on Marketing Action Plan…
Tags: marketing action plan, marketing activities, marketing plan template, marketing review
Marketing Activities – What Worked?
Whoo-hoo! Seven down and two to go in our year end marketing review so we’re ready to hit the ground running! Hope you’ve found these useful so far!
Do you regularly review the results of your marketing efforts? Is your marketing plan a living document that ebbs and flows with what is happening in your business? As a small business owner, you should try to stay aware of how your marketing is working throughout the year so you can make adjustments as the need requires.
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Tags: marketing results, marketing review, marketing tactics
Marketing Content Review
This is post six in the year end marketing review series to help small business owners get ready for a wonderful new year.
Most small businesses have a Web site and some marketing materials that most likely were written a few months ago but maybe longer. Keeping your content fresh, whether it is on your Web site pages, blog or printed materials is important to establishing your credibility and a consistent brand.
Read more on Marketing Content Review…
Tags: brand identity, content review, marketing review
Strengthen Your Marketing Messages
This is post five in the year end marketing review series to help you get ready for the new year.
If you have followed the previous posts in this series, you should know if and how your ideal client profiles have changed, what makes you different and why you delight that ideal client. Now we need to look at our core marketing message that should be woven throughout all of your marketing materials. Is your marketing message the right one for your market, aligning with your ideal client’s needs and telling them why they should do business with you loud and clear?
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Tags: marketing message, marketing review
What Makes You Different?
This is post four in the year end marketing review series to help you get ready for the new year.
Whether you discovered that your ideal client has changed or not, reviewing what makes you different is something you should be doing on a regular basis because you need to be sure that what you think makes you different continues to be true as new competitors enter the market. With so many people offering the same products and services, you must create a long term competitive advantage that keeps you ahead of your competition. Being different gets you noticed, creates value and is easily remembered.
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Tags: differentiation, marketing review
Defining Your Products and Services
This is post three in a series that discusses your year end marketing review to help you get ready for the new year.
In part 1, we reviewed whether we were now focusing on a new and most likely, better ideal client. Next, we reviewed our goals to be sure they aligned with your business vision. Given this information, we will evaluate all of our marketing activities to make sure everything we do will help us reach this ideal client.
Read more on Defining Your Products and Services…
Tags: marketing review, packaging, pricing
Reviewing Your Goals
This is the second post in a series that discusses your year end marketing review to help you get ready for the new year.
Your goals can deal with many different elements of your business. You can have goals to drive more business from information products, generate better quality inbound leads, increase the awareness of your brand, drive more visitors to your web site or get more repeat clients. The primary purpose for setting goals is to guide your efforts and measure their success.
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Tags: business vision, marketing goals, marketing review
Small Business Marketing Review
This post is the first in a series that will discuss your year end marketing review to help you get ready for the new year. By the end of the series, you should have the information you need to create a basic marketing plan.
Read more on Small Business Marketing Review…
Tags: business evolution, ideal client, marketing review, target market
