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[This is a continuation of our Marketing 101 series]   Email marketing is one of the most effective ways you as a small business owner can keep in touch with your customers. It’s relatively easy, it can be very cost-effective, and if you do it right it can help you increase loyalty and even grow your audience. In addition to email campaigns, social media is the other low-cost marketing channel available to your small business. But how do you get started with these platforms — and how useful are they?   There are a lot of strong options out there for small business owners looking to start basic email marketing, or manage a newsletter. Some of the more popular ones include: CakeMail MailChimp Constant Contact Mad Mimi AWeber GetResponse I recommend you spend some time doing your own research to figure out which tool best fits your need, and also ask … Read More

[This is a continuation of our Marketing 101 series]   Let’s start with the basics. Every marketing program contains four components: Your Product Or Service: This includes everything from your unique product, to the line of products you sell, to the services you offer. Promotion: Keep in mind that promotions aren’t limited to advertising. They include direct customer interactions too. Honest and friendly salesmanship is essential for a small business like yours, especially if you don’t have a big marketing budget. It can make or break a customer’s experience, and turn a potential evangelist into a fired-up Yelp critic. Price: Higher prices often mean lower volume. However, what’s unique about small businesses is that they can often leverage higher prices because of their craft offering or local services, or because their core customers are willing to pay more for a better product. Distribution: Working through an established distributor is generally … Read More

Most people tend to think that marketing equals promotion: an ad on television; a poster on the subway a promoted post on Facebook. By definition, “marketing” is the action or business of promoting and selling products or services. But in practice, it’s a much larger and broader discipline. As a small business owner, marketing is integral to your success, but if you don’t have a background or past experience in it — where do you start? If you look past the viral marketing fads, guerrilla gimmicks, and multi-million dollar ad campaigns from the Fortune 500 world, you’ll start to see that marketing is both a science, and an actual art. Marketing is the entirety of how you present yourself and your business to the world. From how you identify your customers, to understanding your competitors and your advantages over them, to social media and ads in the newspaper. It’s the … Read More