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Blogs: You'll love the marketing potential
By Jim Fisher, President of IdeaStar Inc. The Internet revolution is responsible for two of the dumbest names in business. The first is the "Web." Try telling your grandmother what you do for a living with that name. The next is the "blog." Most...
Get Business Now: Play by the Marketing Rules
Marketing a business is like any game. If you know the rules you are much more likely to win. All to often small businesses spend their limited time and money on advertising, networking, making calls, mailings, meeting with prospects, yet only...
How to Use Marketing to Add Value to Your Company
Windows of opportunity are fleeting. Once-in-a-lifetime
opportunities are even more elusive. When InSoft challenged AT&T
for a bite of the desktop video conferencing market, effective
marketing had not only positioned InSoft products as...
Internet Marketing Strategies - Prospective Customers
More and more people are realizing that the Internet offers great potential to set up a healthy business for pennies on the dollar. This is good news for internet marketers - but it also means that they need to lift their game.
Why? Because the...
Read This, Sell More: Direct Mail Marketing Is About Benefits, Not Features
Your customer wants a cleaner kitchen, not a kitchen cleaner.
Your customers are interested in benefits, not features. So sell benefits in your sales letters.
The difference between a feature and a benefit comes down to this: A feature is what...
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Small Business Marketing, According to Seinfeld
What could Seinfeld possibly have to do with marketing a small business? As it turns out, all small business owners could take a few lessons from the show that brought us such popular phrases as “Man Hands” and “master of your domain”.
The Coffee Shop – Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine spent countless hours in the coffee shop, talking about “nothing.” You should spend some time there as well, but instead of talking about your parents or your date last night, get together with other small business owners and talk about your respective business and marketing activities. Many of you already participate in local business clubs and organizations, but the feedback and shared ideas that are generated in an informal business chat over a coffee are often the most valuable. My “coffee shop group” consists of 3 small businesses owners from different industries. Between us, we generate great marketing ideas for each other or in my case, new topics for small business articles. You can easily gather a few small business owners together for this type of meeting. Just be sure they are not competitors!
The Short-Term Relationship – It seemed that every Thursday, Jerry was dating a different woman. In fact, outside of Elaine he rarely dated a woman for any length of time. Jerry understood that sometimes, you don’t want to be tied down to a long-term relationship. The same rule applies to your small business marketing activities. Too many small businesses get drawn in to long-term advertising relationships by committing to a certain amount of advertising in exchange for a discount. Those who sell advertising try to convince business owners that you can’t evaluate a particular form of advertising based on just a small sampling period, and thus a longer contract is required. This is simply not true. In the small business world, ads must at least pay for themselves before you agree to investigate any long-term advertising commitment. You’re not building the next mega conglomerate (not yet, anyway), so ad money that doesn’t
produce a positive ROI is wasted money. Jerry understood that if the early part of the relationship wasn’t perfect, the rest was bound to go downhill. Apply that rule to your marketing and advertising purchases and you’ll maximize the effectiveness of your advertising. If it works on a sample basis, consider a long term plan. If it doesn’t work in the short term, give them the “it’s not you, it’s me” routine and move on.
The Superman Effect – Did you know that Superman appears or is mentioned in every Seinfeld episode? It’s true, largely because Jerry kept a Superman figurine in his apartment that popped up in the background numerous times during each episode. For small business marketers, Jerry’s Superman equates to your core business. With so many marketing opportunities to consider, it’s easy to lose sight of your primary business in pursuit of new revenue streams. Unfortunately, this can often leads to the collapse of your business. Take a page out of Jerry’s book, and be sure to keep your core business (your “Superman”) a part of everything you do, even if it is only in the background. Every opportunity and every possible marketing strategy that you consider must relate back to your core product/service offering to ensure the continuity of your business. Don’t allow yourself to become so sidetracked that you end up chasing marketing opportunities that detract from your current strengths. When evaluating a new business opportunity, ask yourself “How will this new marketing or business idea impact on my core business?” before you begin a new marketing venture.
The next time you are watching a Seinfeld Rerun, be sure to look for the hidden small business tips in each episode. You might find that it wasn’t a show about nothing after all.
About the Author
Will Dylan is the Author of Small Business Big Marketing and owner of www.marketingyoursmallbusiness.com . Will also offers article and news release writing services through his website. You can contact Will at askwill@marketingyoursmallbusiness.com
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KnowThis: For Marketing, Market Research, Internet Marketing ... |
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Find the latest Advertising, Marketing, Media and PR news from Brand Republic, the online resource for up to the minute advertising and marketing news and ... |
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Marketing Magazine - Marketing News - Brand Republic |
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Promote your business with today's most effective online advertising technology, contextual advertising at a cost effective metric of CPC, PPC, CPM or CPV. |
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Sales Jobs / Marketing Jobs / Advertising Jobs - MarketingJobs.com |
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Marketing knowhow from professionals. Newsletter, articles and how-to's. |
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Adapted from Field Guide to Nonprofit Program Design, Marketing and Evaluation ... Inbound Marketing Includes Market Research to Find Out: ... |
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Pages tagged with "marketing" on del.icio.us |
USA Network Announces a NASHVILLE STAR Marketing Partnership With ... - Yahoo! ... Direct Marketing Association: Telephone, Mail & Internet Marketing ... |
del.icio.us |
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ClickZ Internet Marketing Solutions for Marketers |
Includes columns with commentary and analysis on a wide variety of internet marketing subjects ranging from B2B marketing to search engine marketing. |
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Direct Marketing Association: Telephone, Mail & Internet Marketing |
Trade association for users and suppliers in the direct, database and interactive marketing fields, offering seminars and resources, and lobbying for ... |
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