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By Mark Smiciklas

This small business marketing cycle graphic was inspired by Seth Godin’s Top 10 Secrets of the Marketing Process.

1. Learn - Knowledge is a competitive advantage.

Allocate a set amount of time each day to learn about marketing your small business:

• Online: Read a blog, e-book, whitepaper, newsletter, case study or listen to a podcast
• Offline: Read a business book, magazine article or newspaper article

Here are some links to get you inspired:

• Marketing Sherpa - Practical marketing cases studies and know how
• eMarketer - Analysis of internet marketing trends
• Duct Tape Marketing - Small business marketing
• Neuromarketing - Where brain science and marketing meet
• Web Ink Now - Viral marketing strategies using news releases, blogs and social media
• Seth Godin - Marketing thought leadership
• Chris Brogan - Community and social media
• Brand Autopsy - Marketing and branding ideas from John Moore

2. Plan - A road map will help you stay focused.

A marketing plan doesn’t have to be rooted in theory and 100 pages long to be effective. The most important thing is to take the time to pull yourself away from the day-to-day management of your small business and think strategically - what are your marketing objectives and what tactics can you use to help reach your goals?

Resource: Simple Marketing Plan Template

3. Fear - Embrace it.

Q: How do you know an idea is innovative?
A: When it scares the hell out of everybody (Marty Neumeier - The Brand Gap)

4. Implement - Execute the plan.

Implementation is often referred to as the hardest part of any plan - a great idea is wasted if it isn’t executed. “Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.” (Yoda - Star Wars)

5. Test - Analytics are important.

Test each marketing tactic, idea or campaign to gauge effectiveness. Adjust what’s not working and keep using and improving on the things that show results.

6. Whoops - Learn from your mistakes and those of others.

Accept the fact that you will miscalculate, misjudge and simply make the wrong decision occasionally - learn something from every error and apply that knowledge to your next project, idea or plan.

Continue learning (see step 1) - read about what other small business owners have done and learn from their successes and mistakes.

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It’s the dawn of a new year and I’ve been thinking about some of the goals I would like to achieve in 2009. I’ve set objectives before, bet never in a public forum…I wonder if publishing my targets online will help me focus more and improve my odds of success?

Most of my strategies for 2009 revolve around building my personal/small business brand through New Marketing and social media. Here is my list (in no particular order):

• Present my ideas and build brand awareness through public speaking. This will involve the following:
  • Develop one or two presentation topics
  • Blog about my presentation ideas and get feedback from my social network
  • Build a PowerPoint presentation and post it to SlideShare
  • Book at least two speaking engagements (paid or unpaid)
• Write and self publish a small business book. If your thinking about writing a book you need to check out Seth’s advice for authors
• Start using FaceBook. I’ve been really committed to LinkedIn and just started feeling my way through Twitter…I don’t want to do this half-assed so it’s a big step for me from a time perspective.
• Publish 75 blog posts. My goal when starting the blog was 1 post per week - that’s been manageable for me a good fit with my publishing objectives. This year I want to challenge myself to write more.
• Publish 100 comments on other people’s blogs. I read about 50 blogs, so 2 meaningful comments per week should be a reasonable goal.
• Publish 4 YouTube videos. I have  a couple of ideas, but this will definitely be a challenge!
• Schedule a minimum of 6 networking meetings. I really enjoy the process of building relationships - making a commitment to find the time to get tuned in with stakeholders will be a priority.

I’d love to get inspired by your list - If you feel like sharing, please post a comment. Thanks, and all the best for 2009!

Photo Credit: randihausken

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GM recently took out an ad in the Automotive News apologizing to the public and admitting to a series of strategic errors that have led to their current state of affairs. What are some of the lessons small business could learn from GM?

1. Quality

GM slogans rang hollow as they continued to allow their product quality to dip below industry standards. Quality is the common denominator - if you are in business, quality is not an option…you always need to deliver on that inherent promise to your customers.

Maintaining diligent standards is hard work, but you can’t build trust otherwise. Avoid the temptation to cut corners - you may get away with it in the short term, but eventually is will catch up with you, severely damaging your small business brand in the process.

2. Focus on Your Business

GM was a powerhouse in the 70’s and may have lost focus when agreeing to expensive union contracts in an attempt to bury their competitors.

It’s always good to understand your competition, the products they sell, their strengths and weaknesses, etc. But don’t become so focused on your competitors that you lose sight of your own small businesses vision, strategies and objectives.

3. Understand Your Market

GM lost touch with the market and continued to build more and more gas guzzling SUVs while consumers began to embrace fuel efficiency and started looking to more compact vehicles.

As a small business owner, it’s critical to learn about (and stay connected with) your target market:

• Use the internet i.e. blogs; social networks, etc. to stay up to date on trends in your industry
• Get out of the office and connect with customers and prospects in your market
• Invite clients into your feedback loop by forming “user groups”

4. Flexible Culture

A former executive suggested that “handling multiple problems simultaneously was foreign to the culture” at General Motors. One of the many benefits of being a small business is the ability to make decisions and react to situations quickly. As your organization grows, it’s important to retain your flexibility by developing a mechanism to recognize and address challenges.

One effective way to build a flexible, responsive culture is to give your employees a voice i.e. promoting open discussion, the questioning of convention, etc. and the power to make certain types of decisions. A culture that facilitates independent thought and empowerment can help build grassroots problem solving.

Example: By encouraging a customer service representative to recognize and solve problems during micro-interactions, your business simultaneously engages staff; builds brand equity; quells issues at their root; creates brand stories, etc.

Image: Thanks to Cameron Cardow for use of his editorial cartoon

Additional Resources:

Reuters Article

Globe and Mail Article

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David Armano doesn’t see himself as an expert - do you?

To me, experts are the modern day oracles. Authoritative figures that feed traditional and social media with quotes and sound bites that form the structure and framework supporting “news”. Sounds sort of cool, the public hanging off your every word - very Rock Star. Where’s the risk in that?

The danger of becoming an expert doesn’t lie in the label or how freely others bestow it upon you. “Expert” becomes a risk to your small business when you buy into the hype that you’ve reached the pinnacle of knowledge and it’s okay to stop thinking, learning and embracing new ideas.

Some of the Risks

• Tunnel Vision - perceived “expert” knowledge breeds laziness and the 360 degree view begins to seem like hard work. It becomes easy to know what you know and lose focus on all that’s new around you.
• Competitive Disadvantage - your competition will not stop learning new ways to engage customers, enhance products and services, increase market share, etc.
• Poor Decision Making - without new ideas, information and technology owners manage their small business in a vacuum and start basing decisions on static data.
• False Sense of Security - believing you have attained all the answers creates an arrogant business environment that can lead to a sense of entitlement and blind spots.

I think it’s fine to be called an expert, or to aspire to it’s PR trappings - But once “Expert” becomes a learning destination and not a continual starting point, you and you’re small business are at risk of becoming obsolete.

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By Mark Smiciklas

A recent news story about iPod Loyalists places the iconic Apple brand in the middle of a discussion about the spread of “iCrime”. What happens to a brand when its influence is so great that it becomes the central focus of negative societal behaviour? Do companies have a social responsibility to try to mitigate some of the negative behavior that may be associated with their brands? Can negative brand evangelism result in long term damage to a brand or do passionate consumers simply ignore negative brand stories?

Brand Evangelism

Brand Evangelism is deemed the top rung of the brand loyalty ladder - it occurs when passionate consumers of products or services become so enthralled with a brand that they willingly engage in word of mouth marketing on behalf of an organization. These consumers have such a core belief in the brand and what it stands for that they try to convince their network to embrace its purchase or use.

In my opinion, Negative Brand Evangelism occurs when a brand becomes such a status symbol that it inadvertently promotes negative social behavior.

Social Brand Responsibility

Do companies have a responsibility to try to mitigate some of the negative behavior associated with their brands? In the case of the iPod, Apple surely can’t take responsibility for the actions of every criminal that targets their consumers - but they could try to reduce the their consumers’ exposure to risk by embedding some features into iPods that might make them less attractive to steal and re-sell. Wouldn’t this add even more value to the brand?

Tony Barr, Marketing Strategist and Founder of Brand Reasonality, believes that there are brand benefits to addressing user risk:

“As a parent of two teenagers who own iPods, I find your question particularly thought-provoking. The brewing industry’s advocacy of “responsible consumption” may be useful analog. Certainly, in some circumstances, companies have a legal duty to warn against certain types of conduct - known or potential - associated with their products or services. I suppose that one might posit, as a general principle, that companies who claim social responsibility as one of their brand pillars have an implicit duty to act reasonably against legitimate risk to their brand audience - and, derivatively, against risks to their brand value. In the case of the iPod, in particular, we would do well to remember that parents - while they might not be brand adopters per se - play an important gate-keeping role in purchase and usage behaviors. I suspect, again, as a parent myself, that reaction of the gatekeeper class to such social responsibility would be generally favourable. Moreover, I suspect - or, minimally, hope - that the reaction of the brand adopters would be similarly favourable.”

Peter Mojica, VP of Product Strategy at AXS-One Inc in Charlotte North Carolina, feels that “corporate brands have a responsibility to build products that meet consumer demand, and can be sold at a profit and build shareholder value.” During this business process, he feels that companies should act responsibly but cannot be expected to “take responsibility for miscreant’s societal ills.”

Peter goes on to draw parallels between Apple and Nike:

“I can recall a lot of news stories around Nike and the desire for Air Jordan sneakers which led to many a crime wave. It’s hard to peg Nike for some diabolical plan to create a product that would generate a desire for one fellow to knock another fellow senseless and take his sneakers off his feet! Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Nike and the Jordan brand gave away millions to charitable foundations.”

Public Relations in the Face of Negative Brand Evangelism

What should companies do when faced with negative brand evangelism? In the case of “iCrimes”, there has been some press (associated with police agencies) suggesting that consumers should swap out the traditional white iPod ear buds less obvious black ones…but I’m not sure if there has ever been a formal statement regarding this issue from Apple.

Nathan King, Art Director at Austin and Williams in New York City, suggests that the lack of any “very public announcements from Apple” is an indication that they are not concerned about iCrimes having a negative effect on the brand. “They didn’t try to change their product to react to the negative behavior. The masses of people wearing the white ear buds is a constant, visual reminder that people are using iPods - why would a company want to get rid of that?”

Brent Skinner, President & CEO at STETrevisions and a Web 2.0 public relations and marketing expert, suggests there really only two ways for companies to address Negative Brand Evangelism:

1. Ignore it completely - the goal being to starve any attention negative brand evangelism might create
2. Face it head on with the logic that open communication breeds truth - If the brand is undeserving of negative press, the issue will burn out more quickly with a formal series of rebuttals

Brent goes on to say:

“I know folks in communications positions at very large, high-profile companies who take option one as a matter of course and I know others who embrace item two as dogma. However, in my opinion, the approach partially depends on the strength of your brand in the first place, and your assessment of your own brand’s strength had better be accurate. For instance, GM seems to have largely ignored the groundswell of viral anti-GM sentiment that followed the release “Who Killed the Electric Car?” I think the company overestimated its brand’s strength, and now may be paying the ultimate price.”

Andrea Hill, Director of Social Media and Interactive Technology at Worldways Social Marketing in Denver, feels that it’s important to understand how your brand is perceived and to be active in managing your brand reputation. “I believe it’s far better to recognize a problem than to ignore it, and appear obtuse and out-of-touch.”

In the end, I think if a product or service has enough brand evangeslists it can likely avoid any long term erosion due to negative behaviour association. Mark Sofman, an experienced business communicator and manager of outreach, advocacy and issues management programs in Washington DC, feels that brand evangelists help protect a brand value in face of negative evangelism. He thinks that passionate consumers can be “harnessed to good purpose…not just to studiously ignore bad news, but to be motivated to critique negative stories.”

Long Term Brand Damage?

Can negative brand evangelism cause long term damage or do passionate consumers simply ignore negative brand stories? Logic might suggest that negative evangelism should erode brand value to some degree. However, using iPod as an example, I really wonder whether the brand will suffer when I read stories about kids risking getting stabbed rather than giving up their iPods…that kind of loyalty is scary!

Peter Mojica believes in the unfortunate truth that any kind of attention is better than no attention at all and feels that negative brand evangelism may actually fuel sales increases in certain situations. In the case of iPod, he doesn’t see a huge impact on the brand because the negative incidents taking place likely represent a very small percentage of the overall brand experience, which is overwhelmingly positive.

Brandon Mendelson, Editor in Chief at GSO Press in Albany New York, doesn’t think strong brands suffer long term damage:

“Look at the WWE, it took a real hard hit after the Chris Benoit incident, but over the long term their stock went up and the audience came back to watching their programming. The passionate consumers will look at the negative stories, but (after a short period of time) it won’t weigh too much into the purchasing process.”

Walter Jones, Director of Morris News Service in Atlanta GA, feels that most media is fair is dishing out brand criticism and that consumers are smart enough to recognize whether or not brands are victims of circumstance. He feels that the level of brand damage has a lot to do with how companies market their products:

“If a company deliberately sought a gangster image, say, then a news story about crime associated with the product would inevitably mention the possiblity that the company’s marketing may have set the tone for those crimes and the company would be fair game for criticism in such a case. On the other hand, I think reporters can recognize when a company is a kind of secondary victim. For example, when gangs adopted the jerseys of professional sports teams because of their colors or no-nonsense mascots rather than their success on the playing field, no one accused those teams of encouraging gang activity.”

I find this issue very interesting and been having trouble establishing a firm opinion:

• As an “iPod Parent” I don’t expect Apple to help mitigate my kids risk…I see this as my responsibility as a parent. But the issue is real - kids are getting rolled over for their iPods. Luckily, my son has taken matters into his own hands and has established his own policy of not taking his iPod to school and has traded in his white ear buds for innocuous black ones.
• As a socially responsible citizen, I have to say that I am troubled by what I perceive to be indifference on the part of Apple. A trial that began recently crystallizes the point for me - A youth is charged in the stabbing death of 22-year-old Michael Oatway, an Ottawa man allegedly killed for his girlfriend’s iPod on a city bus. It’s ridiculous to even suggest that Apple has any control over this type of behaviour or is culpable in any way, but, as an iconic brand, wouldn’t these type of stories prompt some sort or response? The kid died because he was wearing an iPod…Is Apple not disturbed by this?
• As a marketer and business person, I appreciate and understand the stance that a company’s main (and some would say only) goal is to make a profit - and it can’t be held accountable for negative brand evangelism, particularly if their product or service is safe to use and does not pose a direct risk to consumers.

What do you think? Please submit a comment

(To enter comments from the main blog page, please click the article title and scroll down to the bottom of the post)

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In times of economic uncertainty are internet users less likely to trade a permission asset i.e. name. phone number, email address, etc. for content?

In a recent study conducted by Marketing Sherpa, 64% of paid content web publishers were either experiencing or expecting to feel the effects of the recent downturn in the economy.

Trends and user attitudes affecting paid content may also be applicable to gated content. I think we all know that cash flow starts to tighten in a negative
economy, but how about information flow?

When the economy is slumping and people are less interested in being “sold to”, will users presented with gated content
be even more reluctant to give up their permission asset? Will more and more organizations adopt The New Rules of Marketing and PR as best practices and start offering free content?

What do you think?

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Growth presents a real challenge for many small businesses. As your organization grows, how do you avoid compromising the personality and characteristics that helped build your business in the first place?

Act Small, Think Big

In his manifesto for small business in the new economy, Seth Godin has redefined small and big:

• “Small” is a mindset, a way of acting, as opposed to a physical state - Small is not the the size of your bank account, your asset base or the number of employees you have, etc.
• Thinking “Big” is thinking smart. Big ideas don’t have to equate to big budgets and expenses - Big ideas are new ideas.

The secret to managing the growth of your small business lies in understanding/balancing thinking big and acting small. Here are some ideas (please feel free to add to the list by posting a comment):

Acting Small

• Reach out and stay engaged with your customers (on a regular basis)
• Live your service promise
• Answer the phone (with a live person not an auto-attendant)
• Respond to website inquiries as fast as possible
• Return emails
• Listen
• Stay flexible
• Make decisions (the quicker the better)
• Avoid unnecessary meetings
• Communicate openly and honestly
• If you don’t know the answer, don’t fake it
• Ask for feedback - Survey your clients
• Use common sense (particularly when spending)

Thinking Big

• Focus on what your good at and farm out the rest
• Become your own publisher - share your ideas through a blog, e-book or whitepaper
• Give away content hat helps solve problems (for free)
• Embrace technology - use tools and applications to work smarter
• Learn how to use social media
• Always be trying something new - change is a stimulant
• Understand your clients and be the best at solving their problems

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Sales are important to every business because revenue is the fuel that drives growth. But in the case of small businesses, there seems to be a greater sense of urgency when it comes to converting every individual sales opportunity. Due to the real or perceived pressure of closing a sale, small businesses sometimes fail to recognize when the grip of inertia has taken hold of a prospect. What is inertia and how does it affect your small business? Are there any strategies to deal with “Prospect Inertia”?

Prospect Inertia

Inertia is defined as “a feeling of unwillingness to do anything.” Blinded by the need to make the sale, small businesses often mistake inertia for a prospect needing more time, information, etc. to make a decision. In a recent blog post, Seth Godin discusses indecision and inertia from a marketing perspective:

“We think that people are undecided because they don’t know enough
about our features or our competitors, or because they don’t have
enough money or they are waiting to hear from their friends. In fact,
most of the time, they’re undecided because they are afraid of
deciding. No is scary and yes is scary. The reason that so many people don’t vote is the same as the reason
that so many people walk past your store every day or click past your
site every day. Because inertia is compelling. Inertia absolves them of
responsibility.”

The Effects of Inertia

Prospect Inertia can affect your small business in two ways:

• Inertia wastes one of your most important assets - time. Time spent on Inertia Type Prospects takes away from precious moments you could spend engaging your interested target audience; helping move Action Type Prospects towards a decision; etc.
• Inertia limits productive feedback. Salespeople don’t understand where they are in the sales process; inertia prospects starve your small business of information that can help improve your product/service, help you gauge where your pricing is in the marketplace, help you build your brand, etc. “A no is better than a maybe, any day” says Seth Godin. “At least you can learn from a no.”

Inertia Strategies

It is impossible to prevent inertia from taking hold of some of the prospects in your pipeline - but there are a few strategies that may assist in breaking down barriers and helping some of your target audience reach a decision. These strategies include:

1. Published pricing. In my opinion, dealing with pricing during the early stages of the sales process is a great filter. The earlier your prospects understand pricing the earlier they will decide whether it fits their budget - they will either move on (which is good because it doesn’t waste your time) or the will continue along in the sales process (which is also good because now you’ve eliminated a major objection).
2. Make it easy to test your product or service. The easier it is for prospects to try your product or service the quicker they can decide whether it solves their problem. It’s great if you can offer things like free trials, have online demos available, etc.
3. Make it easy for prospects to get a number of their questions answered (before they have to call you). Whatever business you are in, take a look at the problems that plague your target audience and take the time to publish how your product/service solves those problems. One example could be a great features/benefits or FAQ section on your website.

When inertia takes grip of your small business prospects, it’s probably best to make the difficult decision to move on. Focusing your energy on the share of your target audience that is willing to make a decision (yes or no) will always prove to be a better investment of your time than working with prospects that will never decide.

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Understanding the website development process is important for small business owners - a well designed and programmed website will add value to your bottom line by engaging your target audience and generating leads. In this edition of the small business interview series, I speak with Jordan Klassen, Vancouver Web Designer, about website design and strategy.

Things to Think About

What are some of the things small business need to consider before they start development of a new website?

“You need to determine what the goals are for the site:

• Who will use it - customers, investors, recruits, current staff, and/or vendors?
• What information, features or tools will help you and these parties interact more efficiently and profitably?  How will you measure this?

Second, you’ll need to think about how they will be led to your website (direct marketing, emailing, search engines, advertising, PR, etc).  How you plan to drive traffic to the site has an affect on how the site is designed, and is important to consider, so you don’t build an amazing site with no budget to bring people to it.

You may feel pressure to have a website because everyone else has one or your competitors do.  Often a placeholder website, where you purchase a domain name and post a one-page website with the basics of what you do and how people can reach you, can be enough to buy you the time to think about the long-term vision for the site before you begin development.”

Website Components

In your opinion, what are the most important components of a successful website?

“A small business website needs to either drive business or improve the efficiency of your organization.  For some businesses “driving business” can be as simple as having a website that looks professional so you don’t lose business because people think you are “behind the times”.  It might mean making sure you can be easily found if someone Googles your company name looking for contact information, or it can mean receiving more leads, directly selling more through the web, reaching new markets, lowering your cost of sales, or saving your employees time.

A few specifically helpful tools include:

• newsletter tool
• statistical package
• content management system.

Newsletters are great for staying on customers minds, keeping them up to date and are the most effective tool at bringing users (back) to your website.  A website is one of the best places to get users to sign up for your email newsletter.

You’ll want a stats tool to find out how often people are visiting your site, how long they are staying, what pages they are viewing, where in the world they are from and how they found their way to your website.  This is invaluable in tracking and improving the performance of your online marketing.

A content management system will help non-technical persons in your organization keep your website up to date.  This keeps your website current, helpful, and credible, while saving time and money not having to contact your website designer for every little change.  You don’t necessarily need to be able to update all the content on your website, sometimes just a news section or your product catalogue can be enough.

Search Engine Optimization

There seems to a lot of confusion surrounding the topic of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In a nut shell, what is SEO and why is important?

“Search engine optimization encompasses all the activities you undergo to drive visitors to your website from organic search engine results (as opposed to visitors from paying search engines or other sites directly).  The primary misconception is that you can pay search engines to be placed near the top of the main search results.  You can’t.  These results are search engines best attempt at finding the most relevant sites for what the user has searched for and search engines don’t give away the exact details of how they work.  Still provide enough hints to allow you to optimize your website for better results.

SEO activities generally fall into two categories and both are required:

1. SEO involves choosing a few keywords or phrases to target and incorporating them into your website in a variety of ways.
2. It involves getting other high ranking websites for the keywords you are targeting, to link to your website, ideally using those same keywords in the link to your website.

Doing these two things well, can generate a long term, ongoing stream of visitors to your website that are actively looking for the products and services you provide, at no incremental cost to you.  Still, most search terms are competitive so it can take a lot of effort and a long time to move up the rankings, and it’s important to target the right phrases.  A good way to reduce your competition is to target geographic search phrases, since there are far less websites targeting “vancouver law firms” than simply “law firms” and still enough searches for the former to keep even the largest firms busy.”

Website Myths

What are some of the myths and misconceptions about developing a website?

“These are the biggest myths I’ve come across over 10 years of web design with dozens of clients:

• If you build it, they will come. You need to have a plan for how people will find out about the site and be enticed to visit.
• Ranking near top of search engines is easy.
• You can just ask for a website and it will get built.  A lot of back and forth is required for even the best designers to get it right.
• Once it’s built, that’s it.  Even the smallest sites will need updates over time and large online applications often require continuous tweaks and improvements for how people end up actually using the website.”

Hiring a Website Developer

Do you have any advice regarding what a small business owner should look for when selecting a website developer?

“I would look for the following:

• Experience in web design.  Lots of stuff can come up from a technical perspective and lots of small stuff can cause users problems and even cause them to fail at the simplest tasks.  I’m still learning techniques and solving fresh problems after 10 years.
• A strong portfolio that shows either a variety of styles or the exact style you are looking for.
• Good communication skills.  The designer needs to understand your business, what you are looking for and be able to explain your options and the pros and cons.
• Be wary of flash.  A really impressive looking website with animation, sounds, and video, is not necessarily an effective website.  Your web designer needs to balance ease of use for your target demographic with aesthetic appeal, and often search engine friendliness.”

Planning for Continuity

Do you have any final thoughts you feel are important to share with small business owners when it comes managing their websites?

“It’s important to plan for continuity.  With that in mind, two things are important:

1. When signing an agreement with a web designer make sure that you will receive copies of the source files and code and have the right to continue using, modifying and building upon them in the future, even if you need to use a different designer.
2. Make sure you have a back-up copy of your website and that a regular back-up system is in place to cover updates to the content or data used or created on the website.”

About Jordan Klassen

Jordan Klassen is a Vancouver based web designer and developer. Jordan has over 10 years of experience and offers clients practical, goal driven advice in the areas of web design, web development, web based applications, user interface design, usability consulting and e-commerce.

Check out his portfolio here.

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I took some time recently to listen to a great social media marketing podcast by David Meerman Scott, Paul Gillin and Mike Lewis. The idea that I found really intriguing, particularly from a small business marketing perspective, was “brand journalism”.

Brand Journalism and The Dynamics of New Marketing

Before the web, companies had to either buy advertising or convince journalists to write about their products or services (many organizations still use this approach). One component of New Marketing focuses on brand journalism - the idea that creating great content will help your small business publish it’s way to brand awareness.

The dynamics of New Marketing are based on web search and social networks. The argument for creating great content is based on the fact that the first place most people turn to solve a problem is the search engine community i.e. Google, Yahoo!, etc. Paul Gillin discusses an informal poll taken during one of his speaking events - the results highlight the importance of search in solving consumers’ problems:

The approximate number of people that use the following forms of marketing to help research or solve a problem they have:

• Direct Mail (find a solution by reading a flyer or postcard) - 10%
• Mainstream Media (find a solution via a TV, Radio, Print ad) - 20%
• Tradeshows (going to a tradeshow to solve a specific problem) - 5%
• Google (use Google to research a solution to a problem) - 100%

Companies Turning into Publishers

Scott and Gillin talk about the fact that your target market doesn’t analyze the source of content - as long as your organization has the right content to solve your audience’s problem, they won’t distinguish the difference between you and any other major media outlet. The ability for an individual or any sized organization to develop and distribute great content online has virtually eliminated the distinction between your small business and major information sources such as the Globe and Mail or The Wall Street Journal.

Social Networks

The other key ingredient in the New Marketing are social networks - Meerman Scott states the fact that “people love to share cool FREE stuff”. His latest free e-book has been downloaded over 300,000 times and he has repeatedly shared the amazing story of how Cindy Gordon, VP of New Media and Marketing Partnerships at Universal Orlando Resort, spread the news of the “Wizarding World of Harry Potter” theme park to over 350 million people (virtually for free) by telling 7 bloggers!

On a (MUCH) smaller scale, I can also attest to the power of how free content can spread over social networks. Using a group discussion thread on LinkedIn, I recently posted a request asking for feedback and reviews on my new e-book…over the next two days my website experienced a 400% increase in traffic!

The New Marketing works…take some some time to think about what kind of free content your small business could create to solve your target audience’s problems (e-book, white paper, research metrics, etc.) and start spreading the word. It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, if your content can help solve a problem, your customers and prospects will use it and talk about it. As Paul Gillin says…”There are very few industries where word of mouth doesn’t work”.