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

Brands often feel like that best friend you had in kindergarten that you kept in touch with through college and beyond… you’ve grown up with them… remember the awesome adventures you had together, trouble you got in together… and those things they did that you thought you’d never forgive. Even if it was something as silly as taking the last red lollipop, knowing it was your favorite. But you made it through… until they made friends with your mortal enemy… but sure, after a week of not talking, somehow you worked things out and are friends again.

Silly isn’t it? But i often see brands and my relationships with them like friendships or acquaintances. Each one has a personality of it own… is constantly evolving… and sometimes totally rubs me the wrong way. But the most important thing is ~ there is no real constant. If the brand is too stagnant, i may outgrow it or get bored and move in. If it moves to fast, i may hate it for one phase, but love it again as it comes closer to my tastes.

• READ MORE

Half of all new product revenues come from the introduction and early stages of a product’s life cycle.   But what about brands?  Can you create a whole new life cycle by re-launching your brand online?

Sure you can.  In fact, brand managers have been working overtime on finding the best ways to keep their brands at your fingertips .  Here are some of the best online brand building tools and how you can use them to build a powerful brand presence online. As a small business, you have a lot of the same online marketing tools available to you as the big companies.

• READ MORE

I know, I know, you’re all saying: “Print? Print? Battelle, in your last post, you implored us to get with the social times, start a blog, start Twittering, figure out Yelp. You even wrote that most small business websites were “static brochures, devoid of personality and life.’”

And now you want us to…print a brochure!!!

Yep. This my fantasy brochure of sorts, a slim piece of cardstock I wish every small business I worked with would hand me on the way in or out the door.

But before you can print this brochure, before it can deliver on its promise, you have to first go back and read that post of mine, the one about Cultivating Your Online Garden, and you have to actually go DO what I suggest you do.

Go ahead, DO it!

OK, now you’re ready to create the best brochure you’ve ever printed. Because this brochure isn’t a sales pitch, it’s an invitation to join a conversation that will last for a long, long time.

• READ MORE

Even during the best of times, it’s far more costly to acquire a new customer than it is to keep an existing one. But during a recession? The disparity can become monumental as cash-strapped potential buyers hold their wallets close in their efforts to save money.

Each lost customer, meanwhile, is a step closer to disaster for small businesses. So it’s more important than ever to do everything you can to hang onto the customers who have already chosen to buy from you before. It’s time to count your blessings, in other words, and do what you can to keep them. And that, in turn, is where direct marketing can help.

• READ MORE

On May 6th at 9 a.m. PDT, I will be joined by Guy Kawasaki, author of Art of the Start, Chris Brogan of ChrisBrogan.com and David Meerman Scott, author of World Wide Rave, to discuss taking your brand online. This is the fourth in a series of five webinars brought to you by HP, creators of MarketSplash and the Creative Studio –- online tools to make your marketing simple, professional and affordable

I’ll be asking this all-star panel to cover many of the strategies and tactics that small business owners need to consider and tap on the way to creating a total web presence.

In today’s rapidly evolving world of marketing, few things are more important than being found online when and where your prospects are looking

For most small businesses, a website is an acknowledged part of being in business, but it’s not enough.

In this session we will dive into

• Ways to create and spread content that gets read and found,
• How to take advantage of local and social search
• How to make online PR work for your business
• Optimizing online brand assets such as social profiles
• Social networks and other online marketing outposts
• Monitoring and measuring your brand online

This is a rare opportunity to hear from some of best and brightest online. We’ll keep it fast moving, cover lots of practical tips, and reveal all of our favorite online tools- come ready to take a ton of notes. We’ll be taking questions live too, so start thinking about what you might like to ask Chris, David, Guy and me.

Register for event here and receive reminders as well as a link to the recorded archive.

• READ MORE