Big Marketing for Your Small Business
Posted by Rebecca Blackwell on Oct 5, 2008
Read a good article this morning by Steve Mulder titled “5 Marketing Tips for Tackling Twitter”.
This article, written in September of this year, outlines 5 ways that marketers can use twitter to listen, communicate to, and better connect with, their customers and potential customers, and lays out great examples of large companies that are using twitter to facilitate this kind of intimate connection with their customers.
This spotlights an interesting (though not very new) trend, also discussed in a 2005 article by John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing.
Small is the new big.
In that article, John wrote that, “Large organizations are beginning to wrestle with the reality that their markets want something more personal, more honest and real, from the companies they buy products and services from. It’s obvious that small businesses possess natural advantages in this arena, so the rush is on to think small. Acting like a small business, it seams, is the latest killer innovation.”
This was true in 2005 and is even more true today. What’s more, new social networking tools, like twitter, have provided an extremely effective and efficient platform for large companies to act small.
The interesting thing is - these same platforms have also provided ways for small busineses to act large. Social networking platforms (like twitter) have leveled the playing field for both large and small businesses.
Large businesses can act small (connecting with customers, projecting a personality, reacting quickly, etc.) and small businesses can act large (reaching large numbers of people quickly, driving customer opinion, generating buzz, etc.).
If you are in business today, large or small, chances are your best advantage lies in implementing the same strategy. And that is new. Years ago I stated an opinion that consumers were tiring of the very large, impersonal type of business that have the distinct advantage of being able to offer a wide selection at low prices, but also have the distinct disadvantage of not really being able to connect with their customers and build the type of loyalty that only comes from personal relationship. Well, it seams that very large companies are finding the resources they need to retain the above mentioned advantages, while mitigating their impersonal nature.
At the same time, small businesses, which have the distinct advantages of being closer to their customers, creating strong customer loyalty, and can shape and adjust quickly, can now use social networking tools to reach ever increasingly larger audiences on the cheep.
So, what does this mean if you are trying to build a successful small business today? Simply that if you aren’t currently using the many social networking resources available to you now, you are missing out on an advantage that you can’t afford to miss out on. In the world today, it doesn’t matter if you are large or small, you have the ability to stay “small” and act big.
If you need a jumping off point for social media, check out this blog: http://pistachioconsulting.com/. If you need to figure out how to better incorporate social marketing into your existing marketing strategy, or if you simply need to construct a solid marketing strategy, better contact the team at Your Marketing Lab, Inc.
Follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/YML
