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I would recommend you have a good foundation of marketing knowledge before you begin your business. Reading a copy of Guerilla Marketing for the 90’s will give you the proper foundation you need to plan your marketing strategy effectively. You don’t need the newest edition. Buy it if you want, but you will pay several times the price. Good entrepreneurs get the most for their money and the important concepts talked about in the book have not changed much since the 90’s.

In this article I will talk about what my marketing strategy was when I was starting out, how it changed over the year, what worked for me and what did not and the marketing lessons I learned from my experiences.
My very first form of marketing was flyering mailboxes around my neighborhood in early 2003, back when I was doing computer support only part time. At the time I had never picked up a marketing book and I knew absolutely nothing about the subject. I only knew that people needed to know what I was offering. This method was mostly effective in my own condo complex because on each flyer I wrote ” **the name of my complex** resident offering computer support for **name of my complex**. In this way I think the flyer did not seem like such an intrusion, as each resident was getting the flyer from one of their own neighbors, not just some everyday solicitor. I flyered other complexes but never matched the success I got in my own.

Soon after flyering some calls started coming in. I would go do a job for one household which would often lead to referrals and those referrals to referrals. In one case I got a total of about 6 new customers from just one referral. Eventually I grew tired of flyering and stopped it altogether. I always felt very shady while I was doing it. Later I found out I was right to feel uncomfortable as a search on the Internet informed me it is illegal to put anything in a mailbox that does not have postage.

During the two years that I was doing computer work part time I got all my business from flyering and word of mouth. It was not a lot of business because computer support was just a side gig and I didn’t have the time devote a lot of resources to getting more business.

When I went completely on my own in January of 2005 I was still not very knowledgeable in marketing and did not have any kind of formal plan or strategy, nor did I know what my target market was. Starting off I figured every sector and category was a potential customer. It didn’t matter if it was a fortune 500 company, a 4 family house, a 15 employee office or a car dealership. As for services, I thought I would simply offer anything and everything - from installation of DSL Internet in an apartment to setting up an entire IT infrastructure for a 20 person office and everything in between. If someone asked for it and I didn’t know how to do it, I would simply learn how to do it or gather a team to get it done. I attended seminars on how to win government contracts and made appointments to meet with certain government officials that might help me make the right government contacts, not realizing I did not have the resources to take 3 and 4 days to write detailed 10-20 page proposals nor the proper business history to win these contracts. From a marketing standpoint I was clearly a ship without a sail.

My first method of marketing was to simply tell everyone I knew what I was doing. I utilized my parents by getting good leads from them or having them call their friends who were business owners to tell them about me. This worked out well, landing me my first quality business client; a small office of about 6 employees. This client was a good source of revenue for me in the early days.

Next I took a stab at what I would soon find out is the toughest form of marketing out there - cold calling. I now have respect for anyone able to do this for 8 hours a day and be successful at it. I simply do not have the patience or the tough skin for it nor do I take the constant rejection well. Most of the businesses I called did not have a need for me for one reason or another - they were a franchise and got their IT support from the franchisor, they got their support from their corporate parent, they had a support agreement with Dell and called them for all their needs. Maybe I would have found more success with this method had I stuck with it longer, but I did not have the patience to put a lot of effort into to it. The funny thing is, on my very first cold call I was able to schedule a meeting with a small business located right across the street from where I lived. We had the meeting and to this day that client is my best business customer. Since I landed a great client on my very first cold call I started wondering what everyone was complaining about with cold calling. Turns out my next one hundred or so calls landed me nothing and I quickly gave it up.

I had some business customers but was not having the success I wanted to have in this sector. I was growing tired of writing a lot of lengthy proposals for projects just to be turned down. Looking back one of the problems was that I was only one person. I didn’t have the resources to hire a full time staff that could back me on projects. Instead I was trying to rely on hiring associates on a contract basis who were already working full time. I didn’t feel completely confident going into meetings to sell large projects or contracts because I didn’t have a full time staff behind me, and that lack of confidence probably showed through in my presentation.

I began to realize I was having much more success in the residential and work from home markets. Since each job was smaller, I didn’t have to spend hours or days writing a proposal for each job. I felt more confident because I could easily handle all the work by myself. I slowly began to market less to businesses and more to the residential area. Today I don’t market to the business sector at all, though I still work for my business customers that I originally had.

After narrowing my focus to only concentrate on the residential sector I began experimenting with various marketing methods to effectively reach this sector. My initial objective was simple. I needed to inform as many residents as I could that I was here. A friend told me about a local newspaper that runs once a week and is specific to his community of Dunwoody, Georgia. I picked up a copy of the paper and skimmed through it. The first thing I noticed was that the classifieds section was clear and easy to read. The headings and sub headings were clearly defined. I could easily open up the classifieds section and quickly locate the category I was looking for. I looked at the computer section and saw that there was about 3 or four people advertising there already. I sent an email to one of the businesses advertising in the computer section asking them how they liked their results - I did not mention what business I was in. I got a response back from the person saying they got more new customers from that paper than from any other. He also asked me what business I was in so I told him. I also told him I was grateful for the info he had given me and that I would be happy to share with him what was working and not working in my own marketing efforts but I never heard back from the guy. Probably he was miffed that he had helped out a competitor. I don’t really understand this kind of attitude. I think that - to a certain degree - if businesses help each other out everyone wins out in the end. But that’s a subject for another post.

I paid about $60 per month to have a 5 or 6 line ad in this paper. I made sure the text in my ad was different from the others. The ads already running were all offering a very braod range of services; business support as well as home support. I wrote my ad so that it was more specific - my ad stressed home technology support , not home and business. I also made sure my website URL was in the ad.

During the first few months that the ad I ran I was very pleased with the results. My phone was ringing and I was getting some good business. One thing I noticed during this time was that my ad appeared first among the 3 or 4 ads in the computer section. Also the first line in my ad, my business name High Tech Homes, was in bold lettering. After a few months the response started leveling off and then diminished altogether. When the responses stopped coming I picked up a copy of the paper to see what might be wrong. It quickly became clear. I was no longer the first computer business in the section. Also for some reason the name of my business was no longer in bold lettering. Without the bold face my ad was more difficult to pick out. By this time however I was getting enough residual business that I did not need to advertise in that paper any more.
Anytime I met with a customer I would try to gain an insight into their consumer behavior by asking my them why they chose my ad and not the others. If my ad was not the first on the list the response I usually got was that they simply called the first add on the list and got no answer, at which point they moved onto the second ad which was mine. From this I learned two things. It helps to be the first ad in your category, and the importance of never missing a business phone call.

I’ve learned some important marketing lessons in the time I’ve been in business.

* Try to focus on a niche market

Once I abandoned the business sector things got much easier for me. I was able to focus my marketing efforts more effectively.

* When advertising in classified sections, I’ve found the most success with papers that have clear and concise classifieds.

The papers that did the worst for me were ones where the classifieds section was messy and the major headings and categories were not well defined.

* Differentiate yourself in your advertising

If your ad is going to stand out from all the other ads it is going to have to be different. When forming my strategy for some phone book advertising I opened up a copy of the phonebook I had and thumbed over to the computer section. I was surprised to see that almost all the ads looked the same. All the businesses were offering the exact same thing - upgrades, virus help, system crashes, networking, high speed internet. Ad after ad, all with the same services listed in bullet point, all blended together with the occasional picture of the computer monitor with a frowny face or a guy standing over his computer looking frustrated. I fired up Adobe Photoshop and came up with an ad that is completely different, offering a totally different set of services along with a couple of the usual ones just so the viewers know that I can do all the usual stuff as well.

* Be creative in your advertising

Going back to my previous example, nothing that I saw in the phone book was very creative. The ad I made up is very attention grabbing. As I write this the ad will be coming out this very week. While I can’t say for sure exactly how well it will do, I have a very good feeling about it.

If you are starting out I hope that what I’ve written here will help you to improve your own marketing strategy. If you have already been in the game for awhile you may be able to concur with some of the things I’ve said based on your own experience. If you have anything to add I would like to hear it, either in a comment posted here or in an email sent to me. Happy entrepreneuring.

Carlos Cabezas writes about entrepreneurship and solopreneurship on his web site, http://entrepreneurblogger.com. He runs solo computer business called High Tech Homes and an online training and tutoring business called MyOnlineTutor.net.

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So you’ve tried direct mail, advertising, you’ve got a web site, maybe you’ve even tried networking as a marketing strategy. These and many other marketing strategies are all good and if performed properly will most likely bring you favorable results. A word to the wise here though, some of them can run you a fortune in marketing costs. And in my experience, cost has a lot less bearing on effectiveness than one would like to believe. Now being a fan of Jay Conrad Levinson and his concept of “Guerrilla Marketing”, I am always on the lookout for innovative and inexpensive ways to market. And what I have for you here certainly fits that bill.

I believe Napoleon Hill in his 1930’s classic book “Think and Grow Rich” was the first person to coin the phrase “Master Mind” and he defined it as: “Coordination of knowledge and effort, in a spirit of harmony, between two or more people, for the attainment of a definite purpose.”

Hmmm So basically it’s building a team that leverages their collective brains and brawn to help one another get what they want.

So let’s not beat around the bush here. Are you ready for the secret marketing strategy? Well here goes It’s quite simple really there is strength in numbers. Two minds are exponentially more capable than one mind alone. In this equation, one plus one does not equal two, it more closely resembles eleven. We’re talking about leverage here. The secret is simply to gain leverage by creating your own mastermind. Not just any mastermind though; One that specifically focuses on marketing - a “Marketing Mastermind” so to speak.

So my proposal to you is to take that exact concept of a mastermind as Napoleon Hill defined it, and niche it to focus primarily on marketing.

So real quick what should this mastermind look like? My suggestion would be 4 to 8 members from different, non-competing industries, meeting weekly to discuss how they can help each other market their respective businesses - Plain and simple.

Now it’s not my intention here to educate you in any detail on how to set up and effectively participate in a mastermind group, as there are plenty of resources out there already that can do that for you, it is simply to share with you what’s possible by leveraging this concept to support your marketing efforts.

Personally, I see this strategy as a phenomenal way for organizations, especially smaller ones with little spending money for marketing, to use the power of leverage to broaden their capability and effectiveness.

While the benefits of doing this could be endless, let me just share with you five of my favorites:
1. Plain and simple, it keeps you in the conversation of marketing.
2. It can provide you with unbiased feedback, brainstorming, and marketing advice based on experiences of what has worked, or hasn’t worked for your mastermind teammates.
3. You will significantly expand your reach and go beyond who you know and tap into who your teammates know. Now depending on what the group agrees to, you may gain access to the client list and/or mailing list of the other members. Additionally, you can explore the possibilities of joint marketing initiatives and joint venture arrangements where multiple parties share in the results.
4. You’ll be held accountable to get done what you say you will get done. This alone inspires people into action and action ultimately leads to results.
5. The list can go on and on and on however, best of all, masterminding is free!

So need I say more? I sincerely hope you’ll take this strategy on and try it on for a while. What do you got to lose? - It’s free. Remember, there’s power in numbers so build your “Marketing Mastermind” and reap the rewards today!

© 2006 Online Marketing Muscle — All Rights Reserved.

Online entrepreneur Dean Mercado, “The Motivational Marketer,” is creator of the acclaimed ‘Pumped Up Networking’ system geared to explode your business through professional relationships. To learn more about it and to sign up for his FREE eZine the ‘Marketing Minute’ - a weekly multimedia eZine designed to give you a jolt of marketing wisdom in less than 5 minutes, visit http://www.OnlineMarketingMuscle.com.

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The small business marketing strategy you can’t afford to miss
Everyone loves a story. Even if you don’t particularly like reading them chances are you love watching them, either on TV or at the movies. Imagine if your marketing literature was like a great story: people would read it from beginning to end for one thing (as opposed to just throwing it straight into the bin), and they’d be more likely to tell their friends about it, too. Your small business marketing could be famous! Well, maybe

Ok, so “famous” may be stretching it a little. By telling an interesting story, though, your marketing can at least make your small business well know in your local area or industry. But how do you do it?

Small business marketing through stories

In the same way that everyone loves to hear a story, most people have one to tell. You may not think it, but it’s true. Your story may never make it onto the bestseller lists, but it can certainly help jazz up your marketing. Think about it. Just what was it that made you decide to start up your own small business in the first place? Whether it was a terrible boss, a personal crisis, or just the perfect eureka moment, I bet your story is one that you love to tell. It’s probably a lot more interesting than most of the “corporate speak” sales pitches most people use in their small business marketing, too.

Using your personal story as part of your small business marketing
No matter what your story is, you can use it to great effect in your small business marketing by including it in your email newsletter, on your website, in your blog, or as part of your sales letters. This does two things:

1. Your story helps “personalize” you. Next time your customer sees your name on an invoice or at the bottom of a sales letter, they’ll remember your story. You’re no longer part of a faceless business venture: you’re a real person, with a real story. This not only helps your stand out from your competitors, it also makes you easier to trust.

2. Your story makes you memorable. Say your small business start-up story involves you being laid-off from your job in a factory, only to start up a similar business on your own. Next time your customers are watching the news and hear something about lay-offs (or even factories, for that mater!), they’ll remember you and your small business. In this way, your marketing is working for you all the time - even when you don’t expect it to.

Finding your small business marketing story

Of course, actually finding your story is the hard part. If you’re having trouble, try brainstorming. Pick up a piece of paper and a pen and write down everything you can think of that relates to you and your business, however tenuously. If you’ve set up a business with your spouse, for example, tell the story of how you met, and tie it up with the line “who would have thought we’d end up running our own business together?” The great thing about using your personal story as part of your marketing strategy is that your story doesn’t even have to be about your small business at all; it can just be about you.

What’s your story?

Amber McNaught is co-owner of Hot Igloo Productions Ltd. - the small business specialists. Hot Igloo offer a range of services to businesses, including website design, public relations, internet marketing, copywriting and more. Visit their website at: http://www.hotigloo.co.uk

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