Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Open from AMEX sponsors this blog in part and gives me the opportunity to attend their very popular Open Forum events, which I did a week or so ago. (You can check out the archived webinar if you like.)
I had the chance to interview Mario Batali, one of New York City’s hottest restaurant owners and [...]

MasterCard’s Head of Global Small Business, Bruno Perreault dropped by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast to talk about small business and credit.
Credit is a necessary tool for many small businesses and it’s important to understand how to find it, access it, and use it wisely. (MasterCard offer more small business products than I knew existed.)
The [...]

Snap.com, a fairly new and interesting looking search engine, is offering web site and blog owners a handy little device. (Thanks to John Battelle at Searchblog for pointing this out.)
The tool is called Snap Preview Anywhere and allows a surfer to hover over any link that has been enabled by this service and see a [...]

Many companies define there target market and then go about creating marketing material and sales processes aimed at demonstrating just why they have the answer to this market’s prayers.
The problem in some markets though is that the person being sold isn’t the person who actually makes the decision to buy.
For example, a home remodeler may [...]

I don’t often wander into personal territory on this blog, but today I do. (How’s that for a warning.)
A few of my favorite things.

Giggles – the kind that only children and grandpas can produce
Books – Bird by Bird: Anne Lamott – just go buy a copy
ESP – I love that my college sweetheart (and wife [...]

The local independent bookstore is one retail channel severely impacted by the rise in chains and online book shopping. A book of the same title is the same book, right? Price then, is the measurement. Here’s a nice piece from Slate.com titled: The Death of the Independent Bookstore.
Okay, so why are some independent bookstores doing [...]

Be easy to do business with. That’s a mantra every small business marketer should adopt.
One of the way you accomplish this is to provide your prospects with many different ways to contact you and buy. Some people are more comfortable with the phone, others with email. Make sure that offer all.
Google and Windows Live recently [...]

Sometimes with all this digital reading you long for the feel of a print publication. (Particularly on long airline flights)
I have been offering free magazine subscriptions on my site to readers for some time now but I thought it was worth a mention again.
You can go to the Magazine Section and pick from a list [...]