• Relationship Marketing- From Jackie Huba, Church of the Customer: Attracting is the new selling. It is the least visible and least-examined principle behind most companies today that are growing quickly by word of mouth.
From MarketingYourSmallBiz.com (that’s us!): Give without expecting something back in return. Help people solve problems. Build value and trust. Find out what your customers want and give it to them.
• Marketing Strategy- From Ivana Taylor, strategystew.com: Don’t work with jerks or people you don’t like. There are enough customers out there for everyone. The ones that love you and value what you do will see that working with you is literally priceless.
From startupramp.com: People don’t buy products. They buy the value of the product. Don’t sell features, sell the value of the features.
• Communicating and Messaging- From Brian Moran, Publisher of Small Business Edge: Less is more. You must be able to deliver your message in 25 words or less. Include your main feature and your main benefit in the message.
From Brian Clark, Copyblogger: The more you can teach people about the subject area surrounding your product or service, the more of a market you open up in those prospective and existing customers.
• Online Marketing- From Matt McGee, Small Business SEM: in the “real world,” you want to create a great product and get people talking about it. Online, you want to create great content and get people linking to it. Engage with customers offline; engage in social communities online.
• Social Media- From Mack Collier, The Viral Garden: Many companies approach blogging as a way to sell products to customers. But blogs don’t work well as a direct-selling channel. If a company tries to directly promote themselves, readers will see no value in this and the blog will die. Instead, provide a benefit to readers by creating content and a community.
