BlogTalkRadio Podcast – Small Businesses, Marketing 2.0 and Social Media Stats

Earlier this month, I had an opportunity to be a guest at Caleb Barlow‘s Small Business Podcast over at the BlogTalkRadio.com. As some of you know, I’ve had the pleasure to work with Caleb for past couple of years and I’ve always been inspired and impressed by not only his energy but insights on the challenges faced by the average small business.

As you know, he is the master mind behind IBM’s play in the real small business market and hosts a non-biased regular LIVE podcast on small business related topics. This recent podcast, specifically, was around Social Media, Social Networking and Web Marketing for Small businesses. I was also joined by the CEO of BlogTalkRadio, Alan Levy on this podcast. BlogTalkRadio is a special podcast platform which allows listeners to engage live with the podcaster during the show. Finally podcasting meets Web 2.0.

We went through the latest social media trends, studies and tips on how to market efficiently on limited budgets.

Many IT resellers got their start in the late 90′s helping businesses build their first web presence. More than a decade later and a similar opportunity is emerging with social networking and social media. As effective marketing plans are becoming more and more digital the need for social content and a social presence is becoming increasingly important but it is not easy for a small business to get started. In this podcast Caleb is joined by Bilal Jaffery, IBM Worldwide Social Media and Competitive Marketing Leader and Alan Levy the CEO of BlogTalkRadio, the social media platform we are utilizing for this podcast. Caleb, Alan and Bilal will discuss the opportunity along with tools for a reseller to get started with social media.

Have a listen at BlogTalkRadio.com: http://goo.gl/8S3l

Small business approach to marketing

This afternoon, I came across Jim Connolly’s post about the common approaches that a typical small business owner takes with his or her marketing campaigns.

While working with business partners, I routinely notice that we often use a blanket approach to reach our target market. However, on the other hand, one of the most successful business partner that I know routinely uses a more focused and personalized approach to reach his market. This helps him in establishing a strong relationship with the client. It also helps gain them higher margin as the focus shifts from hardware to a ‘quality service’.

In a personal conversation, he was very happy and proud to mention that he gets around 40% of his business through referrals now. For a guy who has only been in this business for 2 years, this is a heck of an accomplishment.

Check out the following post by Jim, a SMB marketer.

It’s all about focus

Whenever you write any form of marketing material, it’s extremely important that your message is focussed 100% on your core prospective client base.

Many small businesses use a scatter-gun approach to their marketing messages and as a result, they write copy, which is vaguely relevant to everyone who reads it but directly relevant to no one!

By diluting your marketing message, you always reduce it’s effectiveness.

For example, let’s imagine that Bob provides a ‘Virtual Assistant’ service.  He is particularly keen to work with  web designers, software developers and SEO experts.  Bob will get a far, far better response from his marketing if he writes a tailored marketing letter/email for each individual group – rather than a vague, generic one, which is aimed at trying to be relevant to all three industry types.

Bottom line

Vague marketing messages will not motivate people to respond to you!  However, a marketing message that clearly shows how your service will solve the readers problem, is extremely attractive and will inspire far more people to respond to you!

I highly recommend checking out Jim’s 10 marketing tips for a small business owner.