Your source for unconventional small business marketing.
As a small business owner, you’ve got a ton on your mind. The stress of everyday life can take a toll on your brain’s fitness and agility. Good thinking, marketing, and creativity starts with a healthy brain.
Keep your brain sharp with these brain fitness exercises and articles.
Green has been the color of choice over the last couple of years. It seems everybody wants to be a champion of environmental causes. The standard approach is to tout one’s greenness, be it a new product or service. This is great, and I think that new innovations in environmentally friendly offerings is a good first step.
However, I think many marketers and companies are missing a huge point. To make the biggest impact with your greenness, your offering must help change a customer’s behavior, not just their market basket. It’s not enough to tweak a few ingredients and call it a day.
For example, Toyota’s Prius includes gauges that give you feedback on your driving habit’s impact on fuel efficiency. Due to this feedback, you will begin altering your driving behavior to improve your efficiency. This is an excellent example of a green product doing it’s job.
Real green change will only happen once consumers begin altering their behavior. This occurs through education, feedback, and providing incentives toward greenness.
This is from the "About" page, and really gets to the core of what Small Ninja is all about.
Small Ninja’s cornerstones are very simple and effective:
1. Marketing efforts must produce measurable results. Make your marketing dollars accountable!
2. Green marketing is another word for marketing, not a fad.
3. Direct and simple beats clever and cutesy. The customer needs information to make a decision, not another cute, meaningless advertisement.
4. Your organization must be marketing-driven. Marketing should be the center of your organization’s DNA.
I’m sure this will evolve over time, but this represents the aim of Small Ninja. If you want stodgy, traditional advice, then go elsewhere. Otherwise, please read and enjoy 
There is a huge "Buy Local" movement in Salt Lake City. Over 1,400 small businesses participate in "Buy Local First Utah", a non-profit organization that rallies the public to support local businesses. The movement is a huge success, with a growing roster of businesses and a supportive community. From what I understand, many local businesses have seen increased revenue due to the "Buy Local" efforts.
Your small business is likely a local entity. If your city or state has a similar organization, you should definitely register. In Utah, it only takes a few minutes to fill out an online registration form. Once the form is complete, you should receive some window stickers (if you’ve got a physical location), and a listing in their business directory. There should be no cost to sign up. Just do a search for "buy local, (Your city or state)", and get involved today!
Your business has a physical presence somewhere, regardless if that’s where you do your business. For example, an online store may be run out of your home, or a small office. Do you know that you can build a local presence for your products or services by listing your business with Google’s Local Business Center? This is a great way to boost incremental walk-in sales, as well as establish a rapport with local people. If it is appropriate to sell your product or service to walk-in customers, sign up. It only takes a few minutes and it’s free.
Go to Google. Then, go to to "My Account" on the top right screen, then click "Local Business Center". Fill out the registration forms and your business is listed in Google’s small business directory. Prospects will be able to find you when they perform a local search for keywords related to your product or service. You can even create online coupons (for free) that local customers can redeem at your place of business. This free solution is awesome, and will help boost your visibility and profits.
Yesterday’s frightening global stock market roller coaster showed the volatility the economy currently faces. Up…then down…up…then down. A lot of money was lost, and there’s no short-term end in sight. However, these oscillations tend to work themselves out over the long-term (5 years or longer).
The most successful investor, Warren Buffett, holds his investments for the extreme long term. His secret to success? Buy the fundamentally best companies possible and hold on, through thick and thin. As long as the companies continue to have excellent fundamentals, there is no reason to sell. Mr. Buffett makes money when he invests – he buys value. The market will eventually help these investments grow…and grow…and grow.
Marketing should be a similarly long-term investment. After all, marketing generates your sales, which keeps you in business. Your marketing methods will sometimes look like a bad roller coaster ride. Inquiries will disappear, sales will drop, and you will wonder if it’s time to pull out. Therefore, you must analyze and invest in marketing methods that will survive the long-term, BEFORE you invest money. Then, you will know with certainty that your marketing methods have excellent fundamentals and will ultimately be profitable.
Use proven and tested marketing methods such as direct response, long copy, direct email, or anything else that is measurable and accountable. Map out your goals, and determine which marketing tactics are most appropriate. Every dollar must work for you. If you invest in fundamentally good marketing methods, you can ride through the occasionally scares you will inevitably experience.
By April 22, Whole Foods will eliminate the use of disposable plastic bags in all 270 stores. This will save 100 million bags from entering landfills in 2008 alone. Such a bold move shows that Whole Foods cares about their environmental mission, both in practice and perception. Some may call it a partial marketing move…so be it.
What bold moves are you taking to show your company’s leadership, environmental or otherwise? In order to connect with your customers for the long-term, you must take the initiative to make a real impact. You can also eliminate plastic bags, or do other things like a trail cleanup, switch to alternative energy, or a multitude of other honest actions. Your customers will notice these honest actions, and you will benefit in more ways than a growing bottom line. Talk is cheap, and action is hot.
by Brad Gibala
Small business internet marketing is when you promote and try to sell your product or service on the internet. Small business internet marketing is very simple, but there are a variety of tasks involved in developing a successful internet marketing strategy. It’s not about putting up banner ads and graphics. Small business internet marketing is about presenting good, quality information. When done right, your small business will flourish and you can have an enjoyable career. There are a variety of ways to market your small business on the internet. We will go over four marketing strategies, Pay Per Click (PPC), Press Release/Ezine Marketing, Comment Marketing, and Social Website Marketing.
Pay Per Click Advertising
PPC is the process of signing up with large traffic sites and putting an advertisement on their site. You get charged a set amount each time a visitor to the site clicks on your ad. You will compete against other advertisers for a particular phrase or keyword. This strategy is guaranteed traffic. People want to come to your site or they would not have clicked on the ad. PPC is great at obtaining feedback for your business. PPC is a professional tool that tracks each ad and how well it is working. PPC is simple, its quick and cheap. PPC is a great tool for small business owners regardless if you are a web based businesses or a brick and mortar store. Don’t forget to sign up with your local phone company. Local customers will find you online now because its faster then pulling out the huge phone book they send to your front door. PPC is attracting new businesses everyday. PPC is not going anywhere any time soon. With the way it is going right now, PPC advertising will one day be the majority of listings on all sites. PPC is flexible as it allows for guaranteed placement of your ads without requiring any web site changes. PPC is an easy way for a small business to generate lots of traffic, promotion of your small business, and potential business.
Press Release/Article Marketing
Press releases and article marketing are similar in some ways. They both promote your small business and its products. Essentially you write an article/press release about your product or service and submit it to article or press release sites that send your information across the internet. For the most part you can get this done for free. There are a lot of sites that can be easily found with a quick search. Sending releases and articles frequently works effectively as a marketing tool. You can use this internet marketing strategy again and again to build your small business. It is a quick and easy way to get your small business noticed.
Comment Marketing
Comment marketing is a little known tool that when used properly can promote a website all over the internet for free. This is one small business internet marketing strategy that needs to be enforced. Pretty much how this marketing strategy works is you find sites over the internet that are like yours and you leave a comment about something they wrote and put a link back to your site in the comment section. If the site you are leaving a comment on get’s a lot of traffic your site will be get a link from the search engines. You also have the opportunity to have that sites visitors click on your link too. If you are a small business owner you should get in the habit of doing this every time you are on a site you read for pleasure or business.
Social Website Marketing
Social website marketing is becoming very popular. This is the practice of making a account with a social website such as Myspace or Facebook and making a page about your small business. Some sites will not allow you to do this, but there are ways around it. Make your own personal page and put links to your small business website from it. Get your friends to put links to your small business or start a group that is all about your product. Its very simple to do. Make sure you stay within the sites guidelines. A lot of larger companies are asking their employees to put links to the companies website on their personal site. It helps with free traffic and the search engines like links. Make this apart of your small business internet marketing strategy and you will see results in traffic and sales.
The four internet marketing strategies are unique in their own way. PPC is the only one that costs any money, and the best part is that you pay as you go. Article Marketing/Press Releases, Comment Marketing, and Social Website Marketing are cheap and effective ways to get your small business noticed. Small business owners should include all of these internet marketing strategies to get their business up and running.
Brad writes about small business topics. Find more marketing ideas at SmallBusinessStartupIdea.com.
What is small?
Small business means small resources. The name of the game is allocating very finite resources (money and time) to keep your business afloat. But you don’t want to simply stay afloat – you want to grow and thrive. In order to take your business to the next level, it is critical to effectively and intelligently market your products and services. While this should seem obvious, it amazes me how few businesses are serious about marketing. One thing is certain – if you are not serious about marketing, your business will be seriously dead in a seriously short amount of time.
According the the US Census Bureau, 82% of US businesses have 9 or fewer employees (2004 Census). Most of these businesses are single owner firms. Of those firms with employees, 65% have revenues less than $499,000 (2002 Census). These are the small businesses in America – over 21 million and likely a good deal larger since these censuses were conducted.
The definition of a small business is incredibly vague. For the sake of this discussion, I will define a small business as a firm with 9 or fewer employees and revenue under $499,000. These are the types of businesses that typically do not have marketing departments or multi-million dollar (or multi-thousand) marketing budgets.
So what makes small business marketing different?
There are many marketing resources available. Unfortunately, many of these resources are priced out of the range or are unsuitable for most small businesses.
How is marketing different for a small business versus a big business?
- No advertising or marketing agency. You must do all of the work and generate ideas.
- Manpower. You or your small team must do all of the work.
- Money. You are accountable to maximize your marketing ROI. Every penny counts and must work in your favor.
Before I go on a bunch of hyperbole about David vs. Goliath, you should know that you CAN use your limited resources very effectively. I believe that marketing is the most powerful tool for building your business.
I will spend quite a bit of time in future blog posts covering the various ways a small business can intelligently market their products and services. And yes, you can succeed on a super tight budget.
This isn’t directly related to marketing, but I would like to recommend something that you may love. If you are on a tight budget or have the desire to switch from MS Office, you should check out Open Office. It’s been around for a few years, and is always improving.
Benefits:
- You can open and save files in MS Office and other popular formats (including PDF!)
- Includes every application available in MS Office (document, spreadsheet, database, presentation, etc)
- Works on Mac and PC
- Open source
- FREE!
I run a MacBook Pro, and grew tired of MS Office constantly crashing and malfunctioning. Then I tried Open Office. I dare say it is better than MS Office, which for all of it’s bugs was still a kick ass program. Yes, Open Office is better!
If you’re like most small businesses, you’re likely on a very tight budget. Paying software license fees (assuming you do…) eats into your budget. Why not try the superior free solution?
