How to Market Your Business like the Big Boys

Sometimes looking at a big company and their marketing strategy can teach us a lot about marketing our small business.

Apple Co. is no doubt a big company. They are known for their innovation and ‘cool’ gadgets. Every launch of a new product involves a presentation by Steve Jobs. Their products are sold in the millions in the first few days (iPhone 4 sold 1.7 million in 3 days) because they create such an anticipation and smart marketing campaign. What do they do that makes them so successful?

Looking at their last few launches a pattern emerges. Not only does Steve Jobs do all the presentations, not only he wears the same clothes no matter what weight he’s in, there are some things we can all learn from the big boys, with their cool innovations, the advertising budget and the PR firm. We can do it too, on a smaller scale.

When Steve Jobs does his presentation he is concise, to the point and entertaining. He does not concentrate on the technical aspect of the new product. He doesn’t talk shop – how fast it is, how the components became smaller. What he does talks about is what their new product will do for you, the customer. How will it improve the way you communicate or do business. If a customer wants to know the specifications of their new gadget he can go to their web site and get that information. Steve jobs is talking to the average customer to show him how cool is the new product and how fun it is to use.

When thinking about marketing and advertising, think about your customers first – how will they benefit from it, what needs your product comes to satisfy.

• Create a buzz. That is what Apple does best. Months before the product launch they drop a few words here and there. Obviously not every company is as highly regarded as Apple, and not every launch is a topic of conversation on the big news networks. Creating a buzz before the launch is very important. Every company that is serious about their marketing can do it through websites, social media and bookmarking sites. Don’t wait until the product is completely finished. When you create a buzz you can get feedback about what people want and think your product will be. Monitor those conversations, see what customers really want.
• Create a product customers will be happy to show off. When you look at Apple’s products, not only the components are important the packaging is important as well. It is always slick and new (think iPhone, iPad, iPod.) Apple always innovates, jumps ahead in leaps and bounds, not only evolves from model to model. What can you do to your product to make it as sleek as possible, something others will be proud to share? How do you show it on your website?
• Get expert advice and recommendations ahead of time. Show your product to the titans of your niche and have them write a few words about it. Put it on your website and tweet about it.
• Take pre-orders. This is a must and a base to build on. Even if you are not sure yet about the final price, you can create a following you can e mail to and update on pricing and new features. A business woman I know created a buzz by tweeting about her product when it was still in the building stage. She got 150 preorders just in the first few days. The product is not finished yet.
• Make a big deal out of your launch – as big as your budget allows. If not a presentation in a big ball room, you can create a launch on the web. Make sure your speech is short and entertaining. Leave the technology to the experts.

The bottom line – when you are about to launch a new product, plan the launch months before the actual date. Think what information you want to release and when, think how you can maximize your exposure and don’t hesitate to turn to experts in the field to help you plan it correctly.

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The Niche You Need To Target To Promote Your Small Business

You have your products ready, and your services are in place. Your brand image is ready and your marketing collateral is all written, designed and printed out. You now need to target your preferred demographic, your target audience and the niche your small business will occupy.

Nearly every product or service is aimed at a specific demographic group that will be interested buy it. As a small business, you need to do some market research to determine your sales demographics and establish a target audience.

If your product is something that a wide range of customers will use, you will need to create various marketing campaigns to reach different segments of this broad market. Then there are products and services which have a fairly specific target audience which need to be zeroed in using a more specific manner. This is called niche marketing and if done properly, can be very beneficial and cost-effective.

How do you determine your market niche? Ask yourself the following questions:

• What should be the age of your potential customer?
• Who would be more interested in your product, a man or a woman?
• If your product is pricey, what income level should your potential customers belong to, preferably?
• If your product requires it to be used in a certain way, what is the education level of your potential customers?
• Is your product something that will be used by a family or an individual?

• What will your customers appreciate the most about your product? Its price, easy availability, or ease of use? What do they like or dislike about the product or service in general?
• Where does your audience research for products? Do they use the Internet, newspapers, books, or television?

Based on the results of your marketing research, you should be able to determine the focus of your advertising and marketing efforts. If you happen to find that your potential clients spend are frequent users of the internet, likely that your best marketing lever would be a Web page or an e-newsletter. Again, if you find that your potential customers are interested in listening to talk radio, you would do well to develop promotional strategies that revolve around radios.

Your audience might change too, depending on various factors. It’s always important to keep on top of who your target audience is. Do this, and you will maintain a steady flow and easy returns. Another great visibility technique.

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Many sites are actively advertising in search engines for the most valuable search queries. This high level of competition tends to result in high advertising costs which make it difficult to find attractive advertising opportunities. Resource sharing provides new ways of organizing and sharing information on the web and provides advertisers with another way for Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

BibSonomy is a social bookmarking system that allows users to bookmark and share their favorite sites and publication in a collaborative manner.

The bookmarking is easy, just as it is done on the regular browser, but it saves all the bookmarks to the BibSonomy site, which enables accessed from any computer. Users tag their ‘finds’ and can look at what others have tagged and viewed, in a social networking manner.

The uniqueness of BibSonomy is that it goes further than just being a social bookmarking system. It allows for publication sharing. It is what they call ”A team oriented publication management”.

It offers users the ability to store and organize their publications and supports exchange and integration of different people by offering a social platform for literature exchange.

Both bookmarks and publication can be tagged to help find information. A description can be freely chosen. The assignment of tags from different users creates a new vocabulary called ‘folksonomy’. It evolves from the participants of research groups, individual users and learning communities organizing their information needs. Folksonomies became popular on the web in 2004 as part of social software applications. The word is a mix of the words “taxonomy” and “folk” and allows an intuitive structure for navigating the data.

Developed by a team of students and scientists at the “Institute of Knowledge and Data Engineering” and is hosted by the University of Kassel in Germany.

While about 55% of visitors to the site come from India, it is also popular in the Philippines. The use of this site in the United States is at about 8% only, but is growing rapidly.

Another great visibility tool.

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How to get Your Small Business on the Virtual Map

The world is divided into two equally powerful entities today; one is the real world that we live in, and the other is the virtual world, or the world of the internet. Getting your business known and noticed in the virtual world can boost your brand identity recognition and your sales to unforeseen heights, depending on your marketing strategies. So how to put your small business on the virtual map?

The first thing to do is to set up your professional corporate website and incorporating e-commerce to increase the value of your business. However, this alone will not result in an implicit increase in the enterprise value of your business.

What you will need to do is leverage the Internet to increase your sales and profitability, thereby increasing the value of your business. With over a 1000 million people online in the world today, and trillions of dollars transacted over the internet, you can sense the presence of a staggering opportunity.

When you put yourself on the virtual map, you are in effect completely eliminating geographic barriers. With one step, you reach a wider, more diverse audience. A properly marketed Web site can be a very effective means of reaching new and existing customers and expanding your geographic presence. Here are a few tips:

• Get a smart, professionally designed website designed for your company.
• Place your logo prominently on all pages.
• Place brief but informative and useful brochure ware of your company so that your potential customers, vendors and partners get an idea of who you are.
• Use search engine optimization tools to ensure that your Web site appears at the top of search lists when someone looks for a product or service similar to what you offer.
• Make sure your site prompts visitors to input comments and feedback. This way, you can capture the information of existing and potential customers to support the efforts of your sales team.
• Ensure that your website allows a safe and secure online purchasing experience. Use the best payment gateways and incorporate every possible security signatures that you can afford. When you allow customers to purchase your products or services online, you can more than quadruple your sales output.

By allowing people to shop online at your Web site, you can reduce your sales staff and other overheads. Imagine what this can do to your business’s bottom-line.  Putting up your brochure content on your site can eliminate the need to print expensive brochures and other collateral materials.

Retain your customers and build customer loyalty by offering customer contact and support online. When your customers’ requests are attended to via real time chat, or email follow up, there’s greater satisfaction and trust in your company.

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Back to Basics: New Business Owner

Are you a small business owner wanting to market your products or services without breaking the bank? If you are, you must read this article.

Customers are attracted to businesses that have a polished, professional image. They often make snap decisions about who to do business with based solely on their image and presentation.

So what does a smart image do to your business? Firstly, it gets you noticed; specific image aspects such as a well designed logo have excellent recall value. So a smart image gets you remembered. That’s two shots in one – a great impression and excellent recall value.

Investing in great corporate brand identity image helps you in two ways; it makes your small business look larger than it is and also sets you apart from the competition. What looks to be fairly simple such as unique logo, an attractive website or appealing business cards will help to establish your business’ brand identity and define its role and services in the marketplace.

So what does a smart image consist of? A well-designed, colorful and yet to-the-point logo that represents your company’s products, services and business ideals is a start. This should be followed by smartly designed business cards with the same logo prominently printed on them.

A smart business card:  You can design and print very professional-looking business cards for a low price in order to attract new customers and ensuring that your existing customers know how to get in touch with you.

A smart corporate logo: This is an absolute must if you want to be noticed and remembered. Remember, a picture is better than a thousand words.

A well-designed website:  You might wonder exactly why you need this. The world is becoming very web-centric, with more and more shoppers researching products and shopping online. When you have a smart website in place, you will instill confidence in potential customers. Your website must have a consistent look and feel and must contain your contact information, along with your business hours. It would be great to also have the names of the people who can be contacted for specific services. You can use your website to sell your products online; if you do this, ensure a safe secure shopping experience for your customers.

Hand out freebies: Everyone loves it when they get something free. How about gifting your customers small things such as pens, key chains, and mobile phone pouches and so on branded with your corporate logo?

If you don’t have a dedicated art department or marketing team to create your brand identity, here’s some good news. You can easily develop professional-looking logos and business cards using fairly cheap online services.

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Social Bookmarking Sites – Blinklist

Using the big search engines; Google, Yahoo, and Bing has become a way of life for us. Google became a verb in the English language. The problem with the search engines is the amount of information they present. If you want something specific it is sometimes like searching for a needle in a hay stack.

The main reason, apart from the wealth of information, is the indexing system which is done by machines. What will happen if all those pages were vetted by humans, not machines?

Social Bookmarking provides that vetting.

Social bookmarking sites allow the users to choose the website they like, bookmark them, tag them, categorize them and share them with others. Other users can pass them on to their groups of friends, and the word spreads. It is a way for like-minded users to rank and store websites, articles, blogs and videos.

Blinklist is one of those sites that proved to be very affective.

With an extremely simple and free registration, Blinklist installs a button on your toolbar. In a few quick steps you export all your existing bookmarks to their site.

You have entered a world of human interaction. You can see what others have bookmarked, you can check what is the most bookmarked page in a certain topic, you can see what your friends found interesting and you can rate their finds.

And by going to their site, you can access your bookmarks from any computer. That is a great feature when you want to show your friends, your coworkers or your boss something interesting you have found.

Blinklist enables you to save a copy of the web page on your computer. If the website disappears or is blocked you still have a copy. You can bookmark articles you are interested in reading later, a copy is saved on your computer and you can read it even when you are offline.

Social Bookmarking has become a great way to increase the visibility of your website, articles, blogs or product and is increasingly incorporated in an effective marketing campaign. It provides an instant statistics tool that enables you to measure, assess and learn what is working and what does not.

To use social bookmarking to your advantage you need to know which sites cater to your target audience, especially if you are dealing with affiliate marketing programs, or specific blogs. Birds of feather flock together, they say, and so do internet users.

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Pubit! A New Self-Publishing Platform

The writing is on the wall; we are moving from reading books printed on paper to eBooks read electronically. That has become the reality for publishing companies and book sellers. Following the example of the music industry, you either adjust or you become obsolete. What the iPod and iTunes did to music distribution, smart book sellers are doing with the written word. Amazon came out with the Kindle, Sony with its E Reader, Apple with the iPad and Barnes and Noble with their Nook.

On October 4, 2010, Barnes and Noble launched its new service, Pubit! that takes care of the other side of this issue – publishing content electronically.

Pubit! allows authors to upload their work to the site and have access to millions of readers. Authors can self-publish books they have written, short eBooks, articles, short story collections or poems and make them available for sale through Barnes and Noble e-book store.

With a free and simple set up and registration process, books can be uploaded, including the cover and artwork and be available for download for less than $10.

When registering for their service the author enters into a partnership with Barnes and Noble. Every work is prices from $1.99 to $199.99, and every sale proceeding is split between the author and the publisher following a clearly spelled formula:  B&N gets 40% -65% of the proceedings, depending on the length of the publication and its popularity. There are no hidden fees, and no upfront costs. The author is able to track sales and payments through their site.

This is a very important partnership since Barnes and Noble has over one million titles in their online e bookstore, and millions of visitors.

Unpublished writers can now get published, E-books have another venue, poets and artists can be discovered by popular demand rather by the tastes of the publisher’s team.

What makes Pubit! even more exiting is the fact that Barnes and Noble went a step further than having it ready to be read on their Nook. They are offering a free e-reading application that enables readers to download and read books on other platforms as well; PCs, iPhone, iPad and Android smartphones. They are making the content readily available, accessed from different platforms, without cost to the authors.

In the same way YouTube provided a platform for people to display their video work and get noticed, Pubit! Is attempting to change the publishing world and allow people from all walks of life, that have been writing ‘to the drawer’, to get published, noticed and become successful by popular demand.

This opportunity also opens the door for hundreds of consultants and coaches allowing them to stretch the hand of social media from helpful advice to expert publications.

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Business Owner, Entrepreneur, Dishwasher?

While it is often exciting to be an entrepreneur, we sometimes forget to be successful in any business; we must be prepared to wash the dishes. I found myself in the unique position several times of reviewing business opportunities with both young and seasoned entrepreneurs. These are people that have exciting ideas in exciting times and carry with them a great deal of energy that can translate into success.

One of the first things that I offer as advice to any entrepreneur or business owner, is to take the time to think about how it is that they would feel about being a dishwasher.

My father once explained to me that the most successful restaurant owners and successful managers of restaurants have often spent time in the kitchen, on the line themselves preparing food cooking and even washing the dishes.

In considering this advice, I offer you the following thoughts. When you think of creating a successful business, the first thing you’ll need to consider is the actual infrastructure of the business,  how will this business operate, what role and how well will that be defined. This is what often leads me to think of the dishwasher.  Take the most successful restaurant anywhere in the world and that restaurant will be traditionally be defined by the number of seats, the quality of food and level of service.   Although, if the restaurant only has 60 seats and 80 dishes on any given busy night, they would be lost without the dishwasher.

The Smart business owner or entrepreneur quickly realizes that it is important to understand his/her business and every aspect of the business. To have respect for every role and function that that business or service has. This is why I mention the dishwasher. When you think of a business, in this case a restaurant, we often overlook the importance of others or in this case the dishwasher. When a consumer walks through a restaurant door it has always been emphasized how important it is to have the first experience with the restaurant be its finest,  it is often overlooked that all of this is made possible by the “dishwasher”.   Imagine how a restaurant would function if it had no dishes.  If everyone in the business thought that they were better than being the dishwasher.  If they thought that the dishwasher was insignificant and unimportant to the success of the business. In such a case,  the business would fail. Surely the chef could not cook the steak, prepare the chicken Cordon Bleu or serve his famous French onion soup without dishes. One could even argue that he would not even be able to cook if someone did not clean and prepare the utensils.

So it is my advice to any small business owner or would-be entrepreneur that you consider the importance of the dishwasher not just in the structure of your business but in how it is that you may be called upon to serve that function to develop the success of your business. No business owner or entrepreneur, at least not the successful ones, develops a business based on great ideas and money alone. The true success of every entrepreneur and small business owner is the sweat, tears and hard work that they are willing to put into their own business. At this very moment there is an extremely successful business owner somewhere in the world scrubbing the toilet because there is no one else to scrub the toilet, and while you may believe your above scrubbing toilets, that business owner who provides for his family, sends his child to Harvard, or uses that first business and that first toilet to build the next multimillion dollar business.  Their success began with the concept that a great idea and funding will not be enough to be successful.

So a word of caution to all you would-be business owners, entrepreneurs, inventors and silver tongues. When someone talks about America being based on the hard work of its citizens, they are talking about an economy built, sustained and developed by small business owners. This is a experience, endeavor and honor that is not always white sandy beaches, luxurious vacations, or penthouse apartments. It is a rite of passage, a part of the American dream, that if you are willing to work hard, invest yourself, your time, your pride, you may be rewarded with all that you put in.  America will always need its “dishwashers”.

If you’re not ready to be the dishwasher, I urge you to reconsider starting or running a business, organization or campaign.

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Stroome me? Redefining video opportunity…

It used to be that making videos was the territory of the few. You needed a high quality and expensive camera, you needed editing capabilities and you needed the knowhow in editing. Of course you needed a platform to display your videos.

With the advances in electronics and miniaturizing, cameras have become better, lighter and cheaper. Not the property of the rich and professionals anymore. First problem solved, sort of, because what you are left with is raw footage.

Editing software appeared on the market as well. What used to be programs for professionals only which were rented out, not sold like Avid and Final Cut became affordable the Adobe premiere, Final cut or Avid for home use. Those still are expensive and need a learning period to make them work properly.

With experience comes improvement. Editing the videos you have shot still takes a long time, even after you’ve learned the programs. Here art comes into the equation.

The platform became available with YouTube. Millions all over the world shot what they thought was funny, interesting or smart and hurried to share it with the world. Careers have been made out of home postings, rarely but it did happen (Justin Beiber is a very good example).

But sharing those videos with specific people was still a problem. The video files are heavy and can’t be sent via e mail. They had to be uploaded on a server and could be accessed by people who had the password to that account.

The new trend in marketing is videos. It appears people would rather hear and see instead of read. We have all become film-makers.

Enter Stroome, a site that facilitates making interesting videos and sharing them with friends. Unlike Youtube where you just post the video to the world and let your friends know that you have posted it there, Stroome enables you to post your videos on the site, edit it and share it with others. Marketing Visibility at it’s finest with video content.

Stroome allows uploading of raw footage and mixing it with pictures, other videos and music. The editing program (based on the same principals as iMovie) is simple and easy to learn. The result can be shared with you partners and have them write up notes on what needs to change or they can go into the file and make changes you can view immediately. After the work is finished, you can share that video with a larger group of people via a form of social network.

Stroome, coming from USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, was launched in a public beta in April 2010 and is based on the Kaltura video editing suite but goes further by adding to the editing suite community tools. It facilitates journalism, they say, by letting a few people collaborate on a story immediately without relying on other sources to move the video file around. In Stroome the file does not leave the site, so there are no problems of loading time, downloading time and things lost in the transfer.

Using their site, a group can work on a school project together, friends can share their latest videos, journalist can communicate and work cheaply and efficiently and every small business owner can become a film-maker.

Their ambition is to turn Stroome into a verb; in the same way Google has evolved to become part of the American language. They want people to say “Stroome me and see…”

But please bear in mind – the content is still the king.

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Beyond Google: The truth about growing a business online

In the Internet marketing arms race, companies are coming up short on google… here is why.

• Google Only (100% effective) = 71% Market Opportunity
• Mixed Search Engines Practices (80% effective) = 76% Market Opportunity

Google, Bing and Yahoo are the largest search engines in the United States, after that no one really comes close. In fact, small and inexperienced advertising and marketing companies would have you believe that google has such an advantage it is the only way to go. In fact, SEO companies promise you first page listings on google as the way to grow and build your Internet exposure, however, the math doesn’t add up.

Case Study:

• Google is responsible for *71.79% of search traffic.
• Yahoo & Bing are responsible for  *23.93% of search traffic.

        *Source: http://www.hitwise.com/us/datacenter/main/dashboard-10133.html

Traditional SEO and Internet Marketing Companies push just google, and on occasion some have started to push Facebook ads. Now let’s review the two major flaws in their logic.

1. First page on Google is a clear way to success – False, Just because you’re the first place they stop doesn’t convert it into a lead or sale, what are you selling? How does the website sell it? Where is the call to action, user friendly environment?
2. Google is the best way to generate leads from Search Engines – False, Yahoo & AOL communities are the oldest form of Social Media.  As such, they have an amazing and loyal following. In fact, a Yahoo user is far more likely to make a purchase from findings on Yahoo then they are on google.
3. Google, Yahoo & Bing are the three major search engines – False, Google may own You Tube, but it doesn’t mean that Google and You Tube are in sync with search results. In fact, You Tube is the second largest search engine in the United States. So if you’re not leveraging Video content, you just missed an entire market. If your product has overseas opportunities, then you better learn about other search engines like Yandex (a Russian search engine).
4. Statistically Google is a better source for SEO or SEPR success – False, Compare two strategies – Google vs. Mixed approach. Others say tailoring to anyone but google results in a lower google score or rank, so why do it?

A look at the real statistics:

If you are 100% effective with Google then you can capture about 71% of the market, but if you are conservative and only 80% effective across the three search engines then you can capture 76% of the market. If you did well and can become 90% effective across all three Search Engines, then you walk away with the opportunity to capture up to 87% of the market.

If you go one step further to realize that Yahoo attracts higher conversion rates, then the scales really start to tip. Now add some video content distributed throughout the web (i.e. You Tube) and now you starting to achieve real market visibility.

Google is an amazing company and an even better visibility tool, providing resources, information and solutions to the largest population searching the internet. That said, you know not to put all your investments in one place in any aspect of life, why would you do the same with your Internet visibility?

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