Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

The latest release of ACT! CRM software (2010) includes a feature that I’ve been pushing for and am starting to see as standard fare in CRM – the inclusion of a contact’s social media activity stream. Now, from inside a contact record you can view that contact’s activity on Facebook, LinkedIn, or twitter. Subscribe to [...]

Many marketers have been taught the concept of the marketing funnel. The idea being that you bring leads into the top of the large opening in a funnel and push the ones that become customers through the small end. The problem I’ve always had with that is all the focus is on the chase. I [...]

I’ve added a weekend post routine that I hope you enjoy. Each weekend I write a post that features 3-4 things I read during the week that I found interesting. Generally speaking it won’t involve much analysis and may range widely in topic. (Flickr image included here is also fav image of the week)
Enjoy!
Good stuff [...]

Google seems to constantly add little tweaks to all of its various products. The Google Maps search product is inching more and more towards the turf currently occupied by the likes of Yelp and CitySearch. Not content to be a directions engine Google has added a feature that’s being dubbed Place Pages. Now when someone [...]

I have to admit that part of the motivation for the title of this post is to excite the sales oriented folks out there, but no question, the Internet has forever changed the practice of sales.
Today’s salesperson is often greeted by a sales lead that knows more about the technical or historical aspects of a [...]

First off, what is twistory? Twistory is a twitter mashup that gives you a view of the backlog of your tweets, but with a twist. Your tweet history can be added to most online and desktop calendars. Setting up an ical or Google calendar is as simple as clicking on a button. On top of [...]

Was a time a few years back when I would tell audiences of small business owners that “if they did not have a website, they weren’t really in business.”
Fortunately, small business owners have taken heed and now most concede they must indeed embrace the Internet – of course, now that’s really not enough is [...]

Many times business owners and marketers look for ways to create innovations and points of differentiation through elaborate technical add-ons or by attempting to create entirely new product or service categories.
From my experience, one of the best way to create an innovation or differentiation for your business is to take something people already understand they [...]