Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing podcast with Joanna Van Vleck (Click to listen, right click and Save As to download – subscribe now via iTunes

I’ve said on numerous occasions that technology and social media pay the largest dividends for small business when employed to co-create value for all involved. In other words, an innovative use of technology that increases the value for both the business and its customers – Even better if it increases human engagement too!

I recently had the opportunity to visit with personal image consultant Joanna Van Vleck and I think she has created a pretty fine example of just such an innovation.

Van Vleck consults with men on their wardrobes, hair and overall style. She found that while her clients loved working with her, they hated being dragged into stores to try on clothes – keep in mind these are all men. On one occasion a client suggested using a web cam instead. He would buy the stuff on his own and consult with her about what worked with what didn’t via video conference. At first Van Vleck found the idea a bit odd, but somewhere along the way she discovered a brilliant innovation.

Today the Trunk Club, a business she founded to take advantage of the video consulting technology, helps men around the globe not have to do something they hate – go shopping. (By the way, that’s the surest way to create a meaningful innovation) The Trunk Club concept is pretty simple – When you need something to wear you get in touch with your Trunk Club Expert, they pick out clothes based on style, need and budget and send them to your home or office. You try them on and get advice via video conference and pay for and keep only what you want. By the way, during our interview she shared that her little idea is poised to do around $3mil in its first year.

Van Vleck is a wonderful example of what a successful entrepreneur looks and acts like – enjoy her advice and her energy.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Oct 15, 09 | 7:07 am
Category: Marketing Strategy, Podcast, Social Media, Web Marketing | Tags: , Joanna Van Vleck, Trunk Club

A new online survey of more than 2,000 US small business by Internet2Go, an Opus Research advisory service, and MerchantCircle, suggests that a growing segment of small business owners are using social media to promote their businesses. The survey, conducted September 8-18, 2009, found that roughly 45 percent of respondents have a presence or profiles on Facebook and Twitter to promote their businesses.

Although the survey focused on Merchant Circle’s most active publishers, a group predisposed to me more online, it certainly suggests that small business owners are coming to understand the power of social media and the relative low cost vs. high return opportunity. However, the survey further suggests, to me at least, that while it’s easy to get on Facebook and twitter, there’s still a gap in understanding how to make them pay. The danger in jumping into social media networks, with no barrier to entry, without a strong “hub” foundation of a blog or content portal is that it’s difficult to convert someone from the awareness that might be gained through Facebook to the trust needed to make a sale. (See the final point below)

Other survey findings include the following:

• 79% of respondents report annual marketing budgets of less than $5,000 per year with the 44% spending “less than $1,000” annually on advertising and marketing
• 80% of respondents have four or fewer employees
• Asked about their “biggest complaint” regarding online marketing the top two were “too costly” (26%) and “there’s not enough time to do it well and still run a business” (15.9%)
• 75% said they monitor online reviews of their business. The most common method was by visiting specific review websites (47%) and by searching on their business name (44%)
• Despite its popularity social media showed the biggest gap between SMB adoption and perceived effectiveness as a marketing platform.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Oct 15, 09 | 5:05 am
Category: Social Media | Tags: , merchant circle

I’ve had the distinct pleasure of working with my friends at Palo Alto Software to play a part in creating a unique bit of software called Start, Run, and Grow Your Business. This low-cost tool is full of advice, tutorials and free stuff for every phase of getting your business going.

The software is available here and in Target Stores in the U.S and runs on the Adobe Air platform so it’s both PC and Mac compatible and can be seamlessly updated as more tools are added.

I’m giving five copies away to first five that leave comments to this post suggesting why they might need a tool like this – leave your mailing address and we’ll send it out, but I really want some feedback on how this tool helped you (if, of course it did.)

I created a series of marketing fundamental videos and a tool that walks you through creating and formatting a press release, but you also get things like:

• Company logo – Business cards and letterhead
• Website domain ($35 value!)
• Legal forms and guides
• Sample business plans
• Subscription to Inc. magazine
• Bookkeeping software
• Business calculators
• Time-tracking software
• Email marketing solutions
• Sales contact database
• Project management software

Posted by: John Jantsch on Oct 14, 09 | 7:07 am
Category: Duct Tape Marketing, Marketing Strategy | Tags: , palo alto software, Start Run Grow

Word of mouth marketing is considered by many to be the most desired form of marketing. The trust, referrals, and overall brand building buzz that’s garnered by customers spreading the good word to prospects is worth its weight in gold. Some products, services, and experiences naturally produce chatter, but there are certainly things that any company can do to stimulate word of mouth and cash in on the buzz.

Here are five way to get your customers talking about you and your organization:

1) Ask them – the best word of mouth starts with “word of listen.” Call your customers up and ask them why they buy, why they stick around, and why they tell their friends about you. You might be a bit surprised by their answers. Hint: it’s usually not the stuff you have in your new marketing brochure. You stand a far greater chance of attracting the right customers and the right buzz if you really understand what your current customers value about doing business with you. This goes for online and social media listening as well – what are they saying in chat rooms, blog comments and on twitter?

2) Teach them – sometimes great word of mouth just happens, but sometime you’ve got to help it along. One way to do this is to make sure you are teaching your customers how to spot an ideal client, what a prospect in need might say when looking for your products, and how to properly and concisely describe how your company in different. Of course, in today’s hyper social media world you should also be teaching your happiest customers how to write reviews on Yelp, Insider Pages and CitySearch type rating sites.

3) Include them – People like to be asked what they think, it’s just human nature, but it’s also a great way to get some sound advice. Create a round table discussion group made up of select customers and charge them with advising you once a quarter or so on new marketing and business initiatives. (Reward them for this in some way as well.) This can include advising on everything from a product extension to the look and feel of your web site redesign. Members of your marketing round table will become natural ambassadors for the brand. (You can do this with simple video chat meetings – tinychat)

4) Star them – Letting a customer testimonial or success story go uncaptured or untold is downright criminal in WOM circles. Go out and get a TouchMic MityMic to record customer testimonials to your iPod or get a Flip video camera and start doing video interviews with customers to record their success stories. These “real life” bits of content are gold and turn your featured customers into talking referral billboards for your brand. Want to take this idea up a notch? Hold a customer party and film a dozen or so at one time in a great atmosphere – this alone will get your customers talking.

5) Surprise them - I like to think I saved the best for last – few things get people talking faster than surprising them. This can include doing something that was out of the blue and much appreciated to just giving them more than they bargained for. I remember a PR firm that was pitching me some business and the account rep showed up to meet with an apple pie (I’m still talking about it.) I once worked with a financial planner that hired a mobile auto detail firm to detail his customer’s cars during their annual review – that created some buzz.

Bottom line of course is that you’ve got to do good work, do something that somebody appreciates, and create an experience worth talking about, but then, prime the pump and leverage all that greatness.

Image credit: rego

Posted by: John Jantsch on Oct 13, 09 | 5:05 am
Category: Duct Tape Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Referral Marketing | Tags: , Citysearch, flip, insider pages, ipod, marketing board, mitymic, Yelp

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 I ran across this week

• oneforty – the twitter app store. Find all the new twitter apps and see what people have to say about them.
• Tube Mogul - upload your video to one site and have it submitted and tracked on many
• Refugium Jacket – lightweight jacket with battery powered heating core that warms you and charges your phone – how cool is that?

Image credit: kona99

Posted by: John Jantsch on Oct 12, 09 | 7:07 am
Category: DTM Favs | Tags: , Mountain Hardware, oneforty, tube mogul

The content below is brought to you by a sponsor of this blog. From time to time I will feature content of this paid nature, but you can rest assured it will be infrequent, editorially relevant and representative of my mission to serve and support small business – Thanks

Posted by: John Jantsch on Oct 12, 09 | 5:05 am
Category: Duct Tape Marketing | Tags: , Amercian Express

If you are looking for a quick overview of blogging for small business, thinking about starting a blog, or already have a blog and need some tips for getting more from it, you might enjoy the following presentation I did as part of a series of webinars with email marketing service provider Vertical Response.

In this session I cover:
• Getting started
• Design resources
• Best practices
• Plugins and addons
• Promoting and amplifying

Hope it gives you some new ideas. (FYI you can click on the little TV like icon to view in full screen.)

Lots of disclosure here too: Vertical Response is a partner of the Duct Tape Marketing Coach Network and the young lady conducting the interview is none other than my daughter Jenna Jantsch!

Posted by: John Jantsch on Oct 09, 09 | 6:06 am
Category: Blogging, Duct Tape Marketing, Social Media | Tags: , Blogging, Vertical Response, WordPress

This week, one of my favorite content sharing sites introduced a new way to generate leads.

I’ve long been a fan of the social media sharing site Slideshare. Slideshare allows you to upload presentations, much like YouTube videos, and then have them converted to flash movies that can be viewed on line and embedded into web and blog pages.

The site has grown significantly over the last few years and is also a great place to get some really good and really bad examples of PowerPoint use. Presentation owners can enable all manner of viewing, sharing, and downloading or choose to keep the files for private viewing only.

Slideshare has added a new feature, called LeadShare, that looks very worthy of some testing. Now when you upload your slides you can set-up a LeadShare campaign that allows you to embed a form in your presentations and capture leads of viewers. These LeadShare campaigns can be embedded on other sites too. You have a lot of control over the form and even when in your presentation your prospective lead sees the form.

The “white paper as lead” approach that employs a similar capture method has been around for a long time and companies that engage white paper lead generation organizations can pay as much as $100 per lead. The LeadShare system, giving you access to over 2 million visitors a day, can generate leads for as little as $1 a lead.

The jury is still out as to whether this format will prove effective at generating leads, but I think it’s something you could test very easily.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Oct 08, 09 | 3:03 am
Category: Lead Generation, Social Media | Tags: , leadshare, SlideShare