My Favorite Marketing “Tweets” for Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners
It is not hard to argue the importance of marketing to the success of any business. For entrepreneurs and small business marketers, the challenge seems to lie in simply getting started. The discipline of marketing is vast, encompassing many practice areas where most marketing professionals focus on mastering only a few specific skill areas.
After spending 20+ years in the marketing arena, my experience has shown that startups and small businesses need actionable, easy ways to get started marketing, and they need to do it fast. They can’t usually afford in the beginning to invest in a lot of staff, agencies or consultants, and so having some easy templates and strategies to get them going is key. If the initial steps seem too complicated, they simply won’t do it. Think easy, actionable tips – or in this case, tweetable tips!
If you subscribe to my blog, Smart Marketing Basics, or follow me on Twitter @SMB_marketer, you can see that I write on this topic often. Below I feature some of my favorite ‘tweets’ that highlight two “must do” marketing tips for small businesses simply trying to get started with marketing:
1) Use PR to promote Your Business
This is easier than most people think, and is a low cost of entry investment. Even if you are not doing a big PR blitz around a new product launch, creating press releases give you a sales tool for cold calling, helps with drive better search results to your website, and gives you content you can email to prospect lists. You should regularly write press releases on what your business is up to. One idea is to seek out local business and industry events where you can speak on a topic related to your business. Here are some of my favorite tweets on this topic:
Small Business Marketing Should Include Speaking at Events: http://t.co/rGtjxjJ
Tips for small business on how to write winning press releases: http://t.co/3bsxyoj
2) Good Marketing Starts with a Solid Message
Most small companies don’t invest in this activity, and so initial marketing results meet with poor performance because their messages are not clear, concise and compelling to readers. There are cheap, easy templates available from many sites to help get you started (including ours, www.SMBmarketer.com). Here is a favorite tweet on this topic:
Smart Marketing Starts with a Solid Message: http://t.co/ZpyamxZ
I hope these tweeted tips give you the marketing inspiration you need to get going! Don’t get overwhelmed by all the marketing possibilities out there. Rather, focus on doing a couple of things first, and then build from there. Once you are ready to add more to your marketing mix, check out our free article, Ten Marketing Basics for Your Small Business on our website.
Article: Ten Marketing Basics for your Small Business
Email Marketing Best Practices for Your Small Business
As a 20+ year marketing veteran, and founder of the website SMBmarketer.com, (templates and tips to get small businesses marketing fast), I often get requests for email marketing tips on how small businesses owners and marketers can avoid their outbound emails being considered as “spam” by propsects they reach out to.
The two main things I ask them to focus on are: 1) developing and managing a quality list, and 2) creating compelling messages and content that resonates with their list recipients.
List development
It is important to seek out list sources that let you filter against a variety of demographics and job titles, so you can reach someone who is as close to your target customer as possible. Generic lists to an untargeted mass audience will lead to a high number of spam blocking and unsubscribe requests. The more targeted you get, and the better your open rates and click through metrics will be.
Focus on quality contacts, versus quantity. A bigger list isn’t always better. Requiring your targets to “opt-in” to your list, versus you spamming them without permission, will lead to a better email responses. For example, having a form on your website, or including an offer in your outbound emails, that ask them to sign up to receive your content, leads to a better quality list. Additionally, asking your list contacts to re-opt in on a regular basis, say annually, guarantees that you keep your list clean and healthy.
Lastly, be sure to use a legitimate email service provider, whether its Constant Contact, MyEmma, or proven marketing automation vendor, that can provide you with master unsubscribe capabilities – this is a must-do to keeping your email reputation clean!
Content and Message
Another key factor to avoiding high levels of unsubscribes, is to be sure you provide relevant and compelling content to your email recipients. This does not have to be an expensive or daunting undertaking. At SMBmarketer.com, we advocate marketing your thought leadership by developing case studies, customer win announcements, and providing other business insights, such as a top ten list of tips around a certain topic (these could focus on the basic services that your company offers).
For example, if you are a small business providing accounting services, you could create a “top ten list for year-end tax planning” email message and provide relevant action items, and a call-to-action to get more insight through a free consultation.
Content development seems to be a big obstacle for small businesses to undertaking, but it can easily be done (we offer templates to help with this). All a small business has to do is look at their daily business activities for ideas.
Hope this helps, and I would welcome your comments and insights. For more help on creating compelling messages for email marketing, check out our low cost templates available for download by going to:
Smart Marketing Basics 