Small Business Marketing Series: Thriving In Tough Economic Conditions

Eight Ways to Weather the Storm

We constantly hear from companies of all sizes just how bad the current economy is, and seeking advice for how best to weather the storm.  There are, of course, many ways to answer this question.  And I won’t try to tackle all of them in this blog post.  But in an effort to be helpful, I offer eight strategies you can use to emerge from the economic downturn a better, stronger and more competitive company.

1. Turn Lemons into Lemonade. Times are tough–all over the world.  And almost no one is immune.  So what’s a business to do?  Use this period of slower activity to refine your business strategy and to find ways to serve your customers that meets them where they’re at today.  I recently heard a report on National Public…

Small Business Marketing Series: Basic Twitter Etiquette

Tips and Tricks for Top-Notch Tweeting

Set Up Your Account On Twitter Wisely. When you first set up your account, be sure to pick a user name that is easily / readily associated with your business.  At Yield Software we use “YieldSW” on Twitter and everywhere else.  If your business is named Kathy’s Kupcakes, choose “kathyskupcakes” as your user name.  (Hopefully that’s not a real business! If it is, I swear that was a random choice.)

Remember this formula: Followers = Social Capital; Social Capital = Success. You can begin to build followers by first uploading your address book to Twitter to discover who is already on Twitter.  Follow all those people.  They will get an email saying you’re now following them and will be given the opportunity to follow you in return.  Put a “follow me on Twitter”…

Small Business Marketing Series: To Tweet or Not to Tweet, Or Six Reasons Why Twitter is Good for Business

The Business Benefits of Twitter

On first blush, Twitter can look and feel like a complete waste of time.  Essentially you get 140 characters to say something to all the people who follow you.  And any cursory review of these updates – called tweets – will reveal many, many people who “lifecast”; that is, people use their 140 characters to give an update on what they’re doing or thinking or seeing in any given moment in time such as eating lunch or getting ready to board a plane.

So why would you want your business on a service that has a whole lot of people tweeting about the joys of a grilled cheese sandwich?  Because a deeper view into Twitter will reveal that the number of people using their 140 characters for more serious and helpful purposes are…

Crossing the Chasm 2.0

L-R: Rob Grady, Brian Goler, Todd Irwin, Michael Litchfield, and Derek Gordon

Five Tips for Product Marketing in the Digital Age

This week, I was happy to participate in a panel at the just concluded Ad:Tech San Francisco 2009 conference at Moscone West. The panel, “Crossing the Chasm 2.0: Product Marketing in the Digital Age“, was part of the Entrepreneur’s Track, which is new to Ad:Tech and was really popular. Our panel focused on the lessons from the classic book “Crossing the Chasm” by Geoffrey A. Moore, which was published in 1991 before the Internet technology boom began in earnest.  The essential question we were tasked with addressing was: do the rules of  “Chasm” still apply and, if so, which of the rules may have changed given contemporary contexts.

My fellow panelists are accomplished, smart and super nice. Our…

Small Business Marketing Series: 10 Tips, Tricks and Strategies for Effective Marketing Communications

Actively Engage Your Customers

Building a sustainable program of communications with your customers and your prospects is an important strategy for continually driving traffic, leads and / or sales. But I often hear from small business owners they just don’t have the time to do the necessary legwork to foster a multidimensional program.

The good news is technology and web-based services are changing so rapidly, there are lots of great ways to create multiple outbound communications that get the results you’re looking for without a huge investment of time or money.

What follows are ten tips, tricks and strategies for effectively communicating with your prospects and customers.

#1: Produce Once, Reuse Many. Many small business owners fall into the trap of believing every form of outbound communication must be wholly unique. While it may be important to adapt headlines and…

And It Begins….

We officially launched our product at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco at Moscone West. While we were excited, we hardly knew what to expect. We exhibited in the Long Tail Pavilion which is where the new, upcoming companies are typically congregated.

When the show opened, we experienced some nerve-racking minutes where no attendees were in sight–not at our booth nor any of the long tail booths. Wait, wait, wait. How long would it take to get past the lead sponsor booths who had secured the best real estate?

Finally, they start to trickle in. Demo after demo after demo. It was great. Derek and I were working the booth together and were talking non-stop until the exhibit floor closed. No lunches, no breaks. I was blown away by the level of interest in our product and…

Writing Good Copy: Ten Timeless Techniques

Being Persuasive with Your Pen

MarketingProfs is always a great resource for information, education and networking.  I also subscribe to their email newsletters, which are uniformly terrific.  In this morning’s email marketing newsletter, they point to a blog post in CopyBlogger by Brian Clark called “Ten Timeless Persuasive Writing Techniques” that I thought would be helpful to Web marketers everywhere.

He points out that all marketers — from novices to pros — are interested in attracting the attention of their target audiences, drawing them in and convincing them to buy a product or service.  There are a number of ways to do this, of course, including strong graphics, use of video and the like, but compelling copy is almost always at the core of any good marketing strategy.  Check out Brian’s blog post for his detailed advice, but here are…

Cool and Hip at SFNewTech

Tacos are good PR

What an interesting night we had at the Mighty Nightclub last night. It all started several weeks ago when Derek approached me to sponsor a taco truck. I was skeptical. How were tacos going to help us connect with the tens of thousands of web marketers who would like to try out the Yield Web Marketing Suite?

Then, he introduced me to Myles Weissleder. Myles is awesome. He’s a one man show and the best way to describe him is that he’s everyone’s best friend. He runs this event called SFNewTech where he gets some of the best, brightest and most connected crowd in the valley to network, socialize and watch product demos of hot, new companies.

Photo by Kenneth Yeung – www.thelettertwo.com

So, this time it was held at the Mighty Nightclub. We sponsored the taco…

Small Business Marketing Series: Effective, Effortless Websites

Improve Your Page Rank on Search Engines

Maintaining and updating a small business website can often become a huge headache for business owners. Many small business owners start by outsourcing the creation of a website, which is then hosted on a service that may or may not be the host for the e-commerce site.

After the site is live and inevitable changes are required, making those changes typically involves re-engaging the contractor to do the updates. Because small business owners often defer updates to their sites in order to bundle as many changes as possible into a single work order, websites can quickly get out of date and begin to fall down in the rankings of natural (or organic) search engine results.  And keeping your website as high as possible in natural search results — called search…