Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Referrals happen, thank goodness, but for too many, they happen randomly, almost accidentally.
One of the keys to tapping the systematic generation of referrals is to identify and address the customer touch points that add up to lead a customer to the logical and emotional decision that your organization is referable.
I say this often, but it’s [...]

Tim Ferriss, author of the wildly popular 4-Hour Workweek stopped by the Duct Tape Marketing Coaching Excellence Series to share a thought or two.
Tim and I agree, I think, that he’s not really talking about work quantity as he is about work and life quality – see me 4 daughter workweek post.
Listen to Tim [...]

HP ran a little blog contest on its SMB Community Wiki and let readers pick the top their favorite blog posts arranged in the categories of marketing, entrepreneurship, innovation and management, and productivity.
After the votes were tallied the top three posts were chosen and presented as an ebook on the site. You can download all [...]

When asked to list the most important factors for considering a job number one and two was having the right tools and the information to do the job well. Income was down the list a bit. The best selling book – First Break All the Rules – does a great job highlighting this reality.
Knowing your [...]

I was able to sit down with Eric Stockton, President of Marketing Sherpa for an in the field Duct Tape Marketing podcast while attending the Email Summit in Miami.
Marketing Sherpa has done well by building practical know-how and combining it with a passionate membership community.
Here is Eric’s take on Marketing Sherpa’s mission and future.

Major ISPs like AOL and Yahoo are doing what they can to make sure that their users don’t get spam. Of course they block a lot of legitimate email as well.
One solution that is growing in popularity is the idea of email certification. In other words, a system that could verify that you, the sender, [...]

I am attending the Marketing Sherpa Email Summit in Miami today and will be making frequent mobile posts from the sessions.
Stephan Tornquist from Marketing Sherpa opened the conference with some research findings.

Email marketing’s picture in general is fading because getting through to swamped email boxes has gotten much harder, open rates at 25%
Users of full [...]

I’m not referring to plumbing or digestion although that might make a more interesting post.
I’m talking about good old practical, common sense, you know you should do it, but may not know how, backing up your blog posts, members, comments and trackbacks. It’s all the stuff that actually makes a blog a blog.
Backing up important [...]