Small Business Marketing Guide - DIY (do-it-yourself) BRAND MARKETING STRATEGIES to HELP YOU GROW YOUR BUSINESS

You might think that when you move your business brand online, you’ll lose much of the personal interaction enjoyed at a physical store or office. With a vibrant online community, however, not only will you interact with your customers and client base, but you’ll do so in a manner that’s far more efficient than any face-to-face conversation or phone call. These tips below will help you build and promote your online brand.

1. Lay the foundation. Think of the online arm of your business as the digital version of a physical store. You’d want to keep your storefront neat, clean and organized.

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I was shocked the other day to read that only 44% of small businesses have a website. This amazing statistic came from a WebVisible / Nielsen Online study released last month (February 2009).

The study also reported that when looking for local (yes, local) products or services, buyers go first to internet search engines.

That means if you don’t have an effective internet presence you are, plain and simple, losing sales.

Here are a few more reasons to take your brand online:

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Springwise writes about new businesses, most of which are spotted by our network of 8,000+ Springspotters, who submit concepts they think are smart and innovative. Since those businesses can be anywhere in the world, our first point of entry is usually a website. Which means we look at hundreds of small business sites every week. Some of them tick all the right boxes: easy-to-find information, appealing design and an engaging tone of voice, all working together to showcase a product or service and brand.

Others… Well, they seem to have missed a few fundamentals. So before you dive into online branding and join the social web, make sure you’ve covered the basics:

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Last week we conducted a live web panel discussion here – Taking Your Brand Online – with Chris Brogan,[http://www.chrisbrogan.com] Guy Kawasaki [www.alltop.com], David Meerman Scott[www.davidmeermanscott.com] and me as part four of a five part series aimed at helping small business owners get up and running and successfully marketing on and offline.

We always receive way more questions than we can answer during the call so I thought I would grab a few that we did not have a chance to get to and post those answers here.

1) Q: What’s the one advice, one thing you think a small company starting up with social media should do?

A: There really are so many ways to utilize the various social media tools available to the small business, such as blogs, twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr, and many people want to jump in and test the waters on all.

However, the first thing you should is listen and watch.

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A funny thing happened on the way to social media tools like Twitter becoming so popular. More and more consumers started to find that one of the best ways to get help about how to use the products and services they had purchased was to ask other users who happened to be online.  (People have done this for some time in forums, but social networks have a more open and public feel.)

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