Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

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As you may know I have partnered with Palo Alto Software to produce a marketing planning software based on my Duct Tape Marketing System and book. The software is very practical and functions more like an action planning tool than a document creation tool. It is called Marketing Plan Pro powered by Duct Tape Marketing and early reviews have all been very positive.

I’m also a fan of ACT CRM software from Sage. There are lots of choices in this category these days but ACT!2009 is still one of my favorites for small businesses.

So, have I got a deal for you! Palo Alto has bundled these two great titles and is offering the bundle at $150 off the price to acquire the two separately.

Sorry for the overtly commercial message here, but I just had to share this with you.

Buy Marketing Plan Pro and ACT!2009 for $150 off

Posted by: John Jantsch on Nov 18, 08 | 9:09 am
Category: CRM, Duct Tape Marketing, Marketing Plan Pro, Marketing Plans | Tags: , ACT, Marketing Plan Pro, palo alto software, Sage Software

Guy Kawasaki stopped by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast to discuss his newest book Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition.

Reality Check is a compilation of some of Guy’s greatest hits, posts and articles, but it is not simply a rehashing. This format brings his down to earth style into much greater overall context. When you read one of Guy’s blog posts you get his thoughts at that moment, but a collection of his posts framed in a category, makes for a much more strategic read.

The thing I love the most about his book is that you can plop it open to any page and just start reading. You don’t have to read it cover to cover, every single page seems to hold a nugget of great, or at least amusing, advice.

Some of Guy’s gems include the 10,20,30 rule of presentations - no more than 10 slides, delivered in 20 minutes, no type smaller than 30 point. Or, sales fixing everything - get selling and worry about creating the sock puppets when you have cash flow. Go check it out!

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is brought to you by att.com/onwardsmallbiz. Resources for the small business owner.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Nov 18, 08 | 6:06 am
Category: Business Books | Tags: , Guy Kawasaki, Reality Check

You know I’m a big fan of the use of social media for marketing a small business. Having said that, I’m really a fan of social media done right for small business. That means that some of the tools won’t be right for you, the ways others use some of the tools won’t be right for you, but the power contained in the new way people expect to communicate - and therefor you must learn to communicate - is something that every small business must come to understand.

Standing out and marketing a business takes work, but many of the social media tools make that work much easier and, for the small business that gets that, creates a tremendous competitive advantage. In my ongoing effort to help small businesses understand, prioritize and use social media tools, I teamed with Microsoft Office Live Small Business on a new very practical e-book called Let’s Talk: Social Media for Small Businesses. It is available for download for FREE.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Nov 13, 08 | 8:08 am
Category: Social Media | Tags: , ms office live

Free online phone, chat and now video chat is a tremendous business and personal tool.

Skype pioneered the platform, but Google just launched it’s own version of voice and video chat that connects directly into Gmail. You can download the Gmail voice plug-in here.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never really worked Skype into my routine, even though many swear by it. I’ve already got so many Google services integrated into my day to day activities, that I’m guessing this will be a natural add-on.

Once you download the plug-in and log into Gmail you will be asked to verify your audio and video settings. Obviously you need a camera attached to your computer and those you want to chat with will need to set-up Video chat as well.

If you already use Google Talkr, you may have a head start on access to your connection.

Here’s a screenshot from Google Blog

Posted by: John Jantsch on Nov 12, 08 | 7:07 am
Category: Google | Tags: , google video chat

Join Guy Kawasaki, author of Reality Check and Penelope Trunk, Boston Globe columnist and author of Brazen Careerist as we talk about whatever comes out Guy’s mouth!

Seriously, you need to read Reality Check and get in the right frame of mind and maybe some tough love in order to grow and business.

Sign-up here - and join us at 3pm EST today.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Nov 11, 08 | 11:11 am
Category: Duct Tape Marketing | Tags: , Guy Kawasaki

So I come back from my chilly morning run and am greeted by the site of one lone red leaf popping out of a sea of green ivy and decaying brown leaves - and I can’t help but take notice.

Stand out - can’t help but take notice - of course, I immediately think marketing strategy.

Small businesses must be the red leaf. The market needs a way to differentiate all the green and brown leaves from one another so it uses price. Smart small business marketers, ones that can become the red leaf and place themselves squarely among the rest, stand out and compete on value.

Now, having said that, standing out is not simply about making more noise of being different for difference sake, standing out is understanding an innovation that a market needs and values and creating a brand that represents that message of innovation in every possible way.

Their are three kinds of research you should do right now if you aim to discover the best way for you to be the red leaf.

1) Study your competition - likely this will verify that everyone is saying the same thing and the opportunity exists for you to say something different.
2) Study difference makers in other industries - what do small business brands that you may already admire do that you don’t? Hire a coach who works with a different industry.
3) Talk to your customers - ask you ideal customers what you do that they value. Chances are it’s not what you think and greater chances are it’s what you need to tap as your essential difference.

Let me see if I can say this in dramatic enough fashion - you absolutely must tap or create a valuable point of differentiation and then build your marketing strategy around communicating that difference or your business will struggle to rise above the competitive noise.

Differences are everywhere waiting for you to claim them. They exist in the way you market, your products and services, in packaging of those products and services, in the delivery of those products and services, in narrow market niches, in your processes, and in your people.

When you find your red leaf and can honestly say you have no direct competition to speak of, you’re probably on your way.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Nov 11, 08 | 5:05 am
Category: Marketing Strategy | Tags: , differentiation, Positioning

The mobile marketing frontier is moving ever closer to a marketing reality for even the smallest of businesses.

Marketing via text (SMS), location aware marketing, and getting your website in shape for mobile viewers are no longer areas to be ignored for a future day.

I visited with Kim Dushinski, author of The Mobile Marketing Handbook and MobileMarketingProfits.com to discuss what small business owners need to know now about mobile marketing on a recent episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast.

Text Message Campaigns - We focused on effective ways to create text message campaigns, the services you need to make your campaigns work.

Web friendly websites - Making your site more mobile user friendly is a big part of the mobile marketing strategy and tools exist that make it very easy to create simple, mobile browser versions of blogs and websites.

Location awareness - The fact that the phones are shipping with GPS capabilities makes it more important than ever that your business is listed and featured in the local search directories, such as Google Maps.

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is brought to you by att.com/onwardsmallbiz. Resources for the small business owner.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Nov 10, 08 | 1:01 pm
Category: Referral Marketing | Tags:

A reader asked me how to get Google Alerts to post to Twitter automatically so I thought maybe others would like to know as well.

Google Alerts allows you set-up a custom alert notification anytime Google picks up whatever you track - name, product, company, industry, etc. Initially you could only get email alerts but now these alerts can come via RSS.

So, getting your Google Alerts to post to Twitter is pretty easy now. To get them to post to Twitter you need a go between like Twitterfeed.

1) Set up your alert and choose the “feed” option for deliver to - right click the feed link and copy the URL for the feed, it will look something like this
http://www.google.com/alerts/feeds/17750747914485789296/10802436034005942849

2) Then go to your twitterfeed account and link that URL to your Twitter account and you should be done. The posts will go to Twitter at whatever frequency you set up in your Google Alerts - daily or as they happen. This works equally well if you want to post your blog feed, or any RSS for that matter, to Twitter.

I don’t know that this is a great, primary strategy for Twitter use, but it can be a way to mix in some tweets, but beware, whatever Google Alerts catches will post to your Twitter stream unfiltered.

Posted by: John Jantsch on Nov 07, 08 | 1:01 pm
Category: Social Media | Tags: , google alerts, twitter, twitterfeed