clipped from www.examiner.com

It doesn’t matter the type of business you have, if you are a restaurant located in Manhattan, make sure you have a page on www.menupages.com, accept reservations through www.opentable.com, and are listed under local listings such as Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, and Yahoo Local and Google Local searches because you want your business to come up as a top local listing when someone searches for whatever kind of cuisine you serve in the local market. Viral marketing is a great way to enhance search engine rankings. www.Youtube.com is the second largest search engine. Post viral videos and increase traffic back to your site.

Press release distribution centers and article content directories help with generating more traffic back to your website. Both portals allow publishers to publish a signature file, with your name, contact information, and link to website (which also helps with search engine rankings).

Speedy KAVAINT.COM W3C Software Directory COUNTERDEAL.COM

By: Twitter Buttons

Jay Conrad Levinson, brilliant author of the Guerrilla Marketing book series imparted many words of wisdom at the one day Infusionsoft conference in Orlando last week.  Rather than gloss over his tips, it makes sense to focus on a couple at a time.

The last post focused on making business commitments (particularly to marketing).  This one is going to focus on some key differences that make guerrilla marketing distinct from traditional marketing approaches.

First of all, Mr. Levinson points out that traditional marketing is geared toward the needs and budgets of big business.  This doesn’t meet the needs of small businesses today (which represent the majority of businesses in the U.S. today). Guerrilla marketing fits the special needs of small business because it implements low cost or no cost marketing methods, is based on growing and getting better at what you are doing, and is based on building relationships and using cusomer follow up.  The traditional marketing models that are used by big business typically seek to obliterate the competition.  Guerrilla marketing looks to form strategic alliances.

Strategic alliances are a natural outcome of relationship building.  It is a product of truly listening to your prospects, customers and the businesses that  network with you.  It comes out of recognizing the strengths that these individuals have and finding ways to complement and augment each others’ strengths.  The goal is to create a win/win for all parties involved.  Not a bad idea!

The best part of relationship building and strategic alliances is that it  creates a strong foundation for ever growing your business while giving it the flexibility and innovation to grow in ways that you had never even considered before.  It will ultimately make your business more resilient during tough times and overall more leading edge.  This is a winning combination in a global economy that is ever changing at a very rapid rate.

Well, I am off to hear Jay Conrad Levinson speak tomorrow in Orlando.  Should be interesting.  I will be listening for small business tips to write on when I get back.

Well, supposedly we all know what doing more of the same brings… more of the same…and that is a formula for insanity!

So, if we all know this then why are so many small business owners refusing to take a good look at themselves and try to evaluate what is going on?

It must be that fear has gotten a grip on them.

Fear makes people “hunker down” and then do more of the same.  It even makes them ignore information, events and people that are in a position to help them implement the changes that they need to grow even during these frightening times.

The reality is all business is not going to die or go away. This period of time is really a shake up and the ones who are going to shaked out are the ones who are not figuring out more competitive ways to do business.  It is that simple.

Businesses who seek to pare down and do more of the same will not thrive.  Most likely they will be one of the casualties.  The ones who are willing to take the risk of trying something different will distinguish themselves in the market place and consequently take on more market share.

Small businesses need to stop being peddlers who get more and more shrill as their fear levels increase.  They need to take a deep breath and understand that in this day and age consumers still want and seek added value.  They will pay for the experience (the classic example is the Starbucks coffee).

Businesses that commoditize their products or services will find it harder to recover even if they make it through the recession.

You need to focus on increasing value for all your customers.  It is simply not enough to just communicate your value.  It is no longer about telling.  It is about conversing with the customer.  You need to focus on telling what you do, how you do it and why  it matters.

When you are conversing with your customers, you will understand their behaviors and be able to align your marketing  with it.  You will become highly relevant this way and way ahead of your competition because of this Marketing 2.0 savvy.