This week alone, I’ve spoken to a half-dozen small business owners about their marketing plans and budgets. We talked about their 2010 budget and how they planned to adjust for the remainder of the year based on the results to date. Not surprisingly, few had the internal systems in place to provide hard-data on their results (human resources and/or budgets for real-time tracking, etc.). However, this is not uncommon. And, for good reason.
Growing small business owners rarely have the staff in-house do it all, all of the time. One way to set the odds in your favor is to use similar marketing tactics that the high-paid marketing pros use. When you pick up a cork-screw you don’t first ask how many bottles it opened – you know it works. Many marketing tactics in today’s high-tech world are similar.
I read a lot of email newsletters focused on website marketing. Although many are not necessarily geared toward small business, the tactics used can often be scaled and implemented within the limits of a small business budget. Here are a few interesting links and marketing articles for your perusal. They just might spur a few ideas that you can use within the limits of your small business marketing budget:
Ad AgeDIGITAL – NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The 186 responses that Old Spice pitchman Isaiah Mustafa recorded for fans of his beauty, intelligence and outstanding physique took just a week to eclipse the original TV ads themselves in total views, according to new numbers from Visible Measures (full article here at AdAge.com).
Youth, Business, and Podcasting – SitePoint talks with a couple of veteran podcasters about the medium and have an interesting discussion about youth and entrepreneurship. This is the SitePoint Podcast #70: Youth, Business, and Podcasting with Dave Moyer and Jeff Chandler. (SitePoint Podcast here).
Flipboard for iPad – Designed from the ground up for iPad, Flipboard creates a magazine out of a user’s social content. Launch Flipboard and “flip” open the cover – readers can view their sections and personalize the magazine. (Flipboard Press Release here).
“With over 1 billion messages posted every day, social networks are quickly becoming the primary way people discover and share content on the Web. The result is a huge influx of incoming messages and links people must sort through across multiple web sites just to stay up to date,” said Mike McCue, Flipboard?s CEO. “We believe the timeless principles of print can make social media less noisy, more visually compelling and ultimately more mainstream.”
Let us know what works for you – drop us a comment below. Thanks.
– Greg Magnus
Thank you for this post! These projections for small businesses appeared to be true for 2010. Now, since 2011 has begun, even more efforts have been directed towards social media and internet marketing. Especially since the release of YoHolla, people have been even more excited about social networking.