Practically free marketing tactics your small business should start doing, like now. Hey, sit back down, you haven’t read any of the tips yet. These are the quickest, dirtiest, most dangerous and downright cheapest marketing tactics money can (or can’t, depending on how you look at it) buy. You must read this unabridged version of the Internet ( click here) to completely comprehend the tips I explain below. It’s requisite. Or you can know nothing about marketing at all and do just fine. Read at your own risk. Enjoy at your anxiousness. But really, the concepts outlined here take little more than an investment of your own time. Can’t beat that. - Permission Marketing (E-mail): Ask each customer for his or her e-mail to build a list for an e-mail marketing campaign. Do not to sell the list to Nigerian spammers. Send a periodic newsletter with offers, coupons, news or helpful hints, but try to be more educational than anything. Newsletters could also just include a recycled blog post from the week. If you keep track of your customers with a simple database (Excel is excellent for this), detailing what services they utilize, frequency of use, what purchases they’ve made, or models they own, et cetera, then it’s possible to cater certain messages and offers to a specific segments of customers.
There are six more small business marketing tactics we are going to share in the series . This is just number one. Stay tuned.
 Does this look like your marketing? No, not the string theory from particle physics, I'm talking about the one from economics and how it relates to new age marketing. Here's the idea; if you place a piece of string on a table and attempt to push it across the table, from one end to the other, it gets bunched up and messy almost immediately. What do you think happens when you attempt to pull the string instead? Yeah, much more fluid and smooth process, right? Pulling leaves a rather straight string, while pushing creates a snarled mess. The quickest way from point A to point B is a straight line. Why force that string to follow that path when you could practically invite it to do the same thing?
The same goes for Old, Traditional Marketing vs. New Marketing. Traditional marketing being; TV commercials and radio and print advertisements and so on and so forth, that by and large interrupt and push a message out. On one end of the string are people (consumers) and the other end is your business. Traditionally, marketing was behind the people, pushing them to the business’ product/service. In this mass marketing push, there is much noise and clutter to compete with in getting peoples’ attention; hence the jumbled string. Now, new marketing tactics are on the other end of the string, permitting clear channel of entry. When was the last time you got in your car and navigated to the nearest highway in search of billboards to shop, help make informed purchases, or otherwise? You won’t do that, I’m sorry if you do, but you will navigate the information superhighway to do this. Meaningful information is delivered to you because you ordered it, not a crapshoot of information and advertising that may or may not have any relevancy to you.
Search results and ads are displayed because they are highly relevant and appropriate to what you searched for. Do you see how this is essentially pulling a string and not pushing the string? All those links you click on, you’re willingly clicking. You ordered them to be delivered to you, instantly. Even with the AdWords, those ads show up at your convenience. That’s crazy!
New Marketing pulls, while Old Marketing pushes. One is forceful and creates clutter, while the other performs the same process with an almost effortless ease. Figure out who is looking for you (your business, products, services) and make it easy for them to find you.
A web site’s existence doesn't equal effectiveness, such as traffic, interest, awareness, or lead conversion. Most online tactics, whether it’s Facebook or a blog, take tender loving care to raise and grow. In fact, it’s pretty much like having a pet. When was the last time you didn’t feed, walk, or pay any attention to your dog for a week, let alone a single day? Just like your Doberman, your Facebook page needs nurturing. A fleshed out web site is nothing more than a shell, or as commonly referred to in the world of new marketing, an online brochure. A Facebook page updated about as frequently as you get your oil changed is not so much a point of attraction as it is a rotting piece road kill. A stagnant social media presence in particular is more of a detriment than an advantage.
An anesthetized Facebook page or Twitter feed isn’t attracting anyone. It also offers apprehension from a consumer perspective. The last thing you want is someone to question your credibility, capabilities, or even existence as an organization. Create, aggregate/share, and inform your customers with information relevant to them. Ask yourself how can you help. Is there is advice or technical information that can be offered? How can you entertain your followers? Making a short, fun video (quality, or even rapidity, of the content often trumps overproduced, stale videos). Even a quick 30-second snippet from an event you hosted is well worth sharing. Upload photos, and then upload more! Tell the story of your business. Short on ideas? Ask your followers, post a query on Facebook or Twitter.
Lastly, cultivate interaction: two-way communication. Don’t talk “at” people (that’s the old way of doing things) talk to them, and engage. Respond to comments and questions; initiate the conversation. You must stay determined in taking care of your online presence. Feeding your dog when it’s most convenient is most careless.
Don’t worry if you’re unsure about what exactly to share at first or are intimidated by the tech talk. Most people who call themselves “social media experts” are experts at pretending to be an expert and much of the technical lexicon is gobbledygook. There is no more powerful tool available in the marketing arsenal, no bigger bang for your buck, than a compelling web presence.
In the world of consumer behavior there are two types of exposure to information, and they provide practical elucidation for inbound marketing. First, there’s intentional exposure, which is goal directed search behavior; and next, accidental exposure, where there’s an unintended exposure, such as an ad in a magazine, a commercial or walking billboard. Which one of these sounds more like inbound marketing? Accidental exposure is basically interruptive marketing, the traditional outbound techniques that devour marketing budgets and that business schools love to teach. Intentional exposure is all but a definition for inbound marketing; there is an active (deliberate) search to make sense of something. In that goal directed search online, relevant sites and information are presented. The sites with valuable content are utilized more often. Amazon.com just isn’t the online equivalent of Wal-Mart, it’s a hub for user-generated content (UGC): product reviews and ratings. That’s valuable content when making a purchase. More importantly, in the decision making process this is considered intentional exposure, because people actively seek out Amazon product reviews before buying a product. Further, web page ads are being ignored, ignored in the same fashion that you would flip past an advertisement in a magazine; they can even be outright blocked online. That’s like buying a magazine with all the ads and inserts torn out. Think like a publisher and generate some content, like Crutchfield.com does, or facilitate UGC like Amazon and overlook the accidental, interruptive, exposure, the same way you and everyone else disregards advertisements.
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