Small Business UnMarketing

Attending Live Events To Attract New Clients And Increase Your Credibility

During the last millenium, business people attended conventions once a year to find out the latest advances in their field, listen to experts give a talk, and to connect with people from around the country who were in the same industry as they were. It was a time to get away from the office and catch up with old acquaintances.

Times have changed and things are very different now. People come from around the world several times each year to meet others who are also connecting with one another - but in a very different way.

Enter new media marketing for small businesses. Whether you have a brick and mortar business or work exclusively online, seminars have replaced conventions as the place to make deals, create joint venture opportunities, and generally increase your visibility and credibility in the marketplace. For people working on the internet, Armand Morin's Big Seminar is considered to be the most important event to attend. Global attendees

Take Your Business To Infinity...And Beyond

I was reading Andy Sernovitz's blog post about the square watermelons and realized that we can do anything we want to grow and develop our businesses - especially online. Andy has passed on a lesson by David Knox on great thinking, and it applies to everything we do as entrepreneurs.

The internet is still in its infancy. All of us making money and doing business on the internet are pioneers, and to be successful we must think like the pioneers of the wild west. They came across the United States plains to make a better life for themselves and their families, and did not let little things like catastrophic weather conditions, illness, or attacks by American Indian tribes set them back for very long.

When something did not work they got creative and tried other ways to accomplish their goals. Inventors such as Thomas Edison have always taken the same approach. If we do the same in our online businesses, we will see great success and financial rewards.

Finding Your 1,000 True Fans

Brian Clark, of Copyblogger, has done it again. He is the author and thought leaders behinds Teaching Sells, and now he has written a post that is a must read for anyone wanting to be successful on the internet. This post, entitled A 20-Step Process For Finding Your 1,000 True Fans, discusses how you can go about the process of finding 1,000 people who are willing to pay you for what you do.

There may be over one billion people on the internet, but you only need 1,000 of them to keep you in business. Read that post and put into practice as many of those 20 steps as you can right away. My business has grown dramatically during the past year; I now have people who trust me and believe in my ability to show them how they can get starte on this road to independence through doing business on the internet. I teach them how to do everything that I know and to avoid the mistakes I have made since beginning this quest.

Marketing Your Online Business Offline

Marketing and your online business can also be done offline. In fact, by increasing your marketing efforts to include both online and off, you will see a significant increase in your business in just a short period of time. Here are some ways that you can promote your business in person, over the phone, and my mail.

• Design a one page poster with some tips and your contact information. You can then print it out and laminate it. Give this poster out to people when you meet them in person. People will keep these min-posters forever and your contact information will always be readily accessible to them.
• Give a short speech or presentation to a group. There are civic organizations, such as the Rotary Club, that are always looking for speakers. You can also speak to chambers of commerce in your city or in neighboring cities. You may want to direct them to a website to sign up for more information or to call you to discuss how your business can help them.
• Make sure your business card is printed on both sides. You can make an offer or direct people to a website or blog to sign up for a free teleseminar or free special report so that you can stay in touch with them.
• Prepare a recording and burn it to CD. This can be a sample of what you do or a special recording to introduce yourself to new clients and prospects. People will listen to your CD in their car and some will call you to learn more about what you do.
• Mail postcards to people who have shown interest in what you do. This can get expensive so make sure you are mailing to people who are more likely to want to do business with you. There are several methods for determining this.
• Hold a teleseminar. This is the very best way to build your business. My entire business changed and began to grow rapidly when I started holding weekly teleseminars. I encourage you to learn how to give teleseminars from someone who is an expert in this field.

These are some strategies for attracting business to you using offline methods. These will work for you if you take the time to implement these ideas for your business.

Spreading the word about your business

Jackie Huba wrote a great post over at Church of the Customer. She discussed the Whole Foods Market business model and what works versus what doesn't.

Whole Foods doesn't allow shoppers to take photographs or video inside of their stores. This means they are missing out on some of the best word of mouth advertising going these days - viral marketing. If you encourage your clients to spread the word about you and your business, in any way that is comfortable for them, they will become raving web 2.0 fans.

Getting Traffic To Your Site With Squidoo

We are always in the process of trying to attract more visitors, or traffic, to our blogs and websites. I like to think of it as attracting visitors, because if you are reading this right now you would rather think of yourself as a welcome visitor than as a vehicle driving by very quickly. I think of you as a visitor with whom I would like to share my knowledge about small business marketing and writing ebooks.

Seth Godin has just written a short eBook on how to attract more traffic to your site using Squidoo lenses. Seth created Squidoo and it is a remarkable way to find people who are interested in what you have to say. The site is also ranked very high so the link juice doesn't hurt either. Download it by going over to Seth's blog.

Using Social Networks To Communicate With Business Contacts

John Jantsch, over at Duct Tape Marketing, has an interesting post about the use of social networks among small businesses. I believe that entrepreneurs and small business owners will move toward social networks as a way to communicate as they learn how effective they can be to communicate more easily than by email.

Facebook and Ning are rising to the forefront as people see how convenient it is to send and receive messages to people who know, like and trust you. It is a sticky way to do business, and sticky is good in this case.

Hollywood Writer's Strike - Is Your Business In Jepoardy?

The writers are on strike for the second week now with no end in sight. Here in Santa Clarita, just north of Los Angeles, many movies and television shows are filmed on a regular basis. This boosts our economy, and now that revenue is gone. There is talk that some of the people living here in Santa Clarita will have to take another job to keep from losing their homes. It isn't just the writers that suffer when there is a strike. Anyone working in a related field in affected as well.

What about your business? Are you dependent upon another industry to keep your business going strong? This might be a good time to take a look at what you can do differently. See what you can do to make yourself and your business more independent.

Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs Are Inluencers

I am here in Las Vegas at the Blog World and New Media Marketing Expo. It is evident in all of the sessions that the corporate world is now paying attention to what small business owners, entrepreneurs, and even bloggers think about how business is done. There has never been a better time to be in business for yourself, and to start, or keep blogging about it.

Make A Fortune With Follow-Up

Most businesses do not follow up with their clients, or even with prospects. As hard as this is to believe, the overwhelming majority of businesses never follow up after the initial work is completed for a customer. So it stands to reason that if you do make more contacts with people after you have dealt with them the first time they will remember you in a positive way.

Think about your own business dealings. When you go for a haircut, for example, does the establishment you go to send you a card, an email, or make a telephone call to thank you? Probably not. Many people do not go in for a haircut until they need it. What if the salon contacted them after two or four weeks and offered them a discount if they made an appointment for the next week? Over the course of a year they would give two or three more cuts and, therefore, make more profit.

What about you business? Do you stay in touch with your clients and recommend more products and services that they would benefit from over a period of time? Or are you leaving money on the table?