Small business author Michael Gerber will be my guest for a live Q and A telesession Thursday, December 6th at Noon CST. You can join the call by visiting the Coaching Excellence Series page sponsored by the Duct Tape Marketing Coach Network. (You can also read about future guests Ivan Misner, Tim Ferriss and David Allen.)

The video below gives you a taste of the passion that Michael brings to the subject of imagination started in his E-myth series of books and now refined and extended in entirely new ways in the soon to be released Awakening the Entrepreneur Within - How Ordinary People Create Extraordinary Companies Without Any Experience to Guide Them.

2:00:13 AM    

 I have long advocated the use of flexible, education based marketing materials and even devoted chapter five in Duct Tape Marketing to the description of something I call a “marketing kit.”

The idea behind a marketing kit is to produce lots of information rich individual pages such as case studies, your story, your difference, testimonials, FAQs, product and service pages, media mentions, founder bios and customer lists. This approach, as opposed to the big glossy brochure, allows you to add, update, change and configure your kit in a manner tailored to individual prospects. Going to call on a doctor just add the doctor case studies and services.

One of the keys to making this tool work for most small businesses in the ability to print professional looking pages in house and as needed. Inkjet printers are cheap and allow you to do a reasonable job, but the recent price drops in color laser printers has made professional looking document creation very affordable.

I picked up an HP LaserJet 1600 Color Printer recently at my neighborhood Staples store for $249 (with a coupon.) The quality that this printer produces is pretty fabulous for that price. Now I wouldn’t print thousands of pages on this puppy and there are certainly times when offset printing from a print shop makes sense, but when your needs call for something personalized, flexible and now - in house and on demand is fine way to go.

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2:00:12 AM    

I am in the process of doing a complete renovation of the Duct Tape Marketing site.

We are be adding a small business community called the WorkBench that will allow you to build a profile, network with other small businesses, add and rate video and audio and host a blog right here at Duct Tape Marketing. - Much more on this to come.

I’m pretty sure that you will find the entire site and blog more usable. One of the things about constantly creating content over about a five year period is it gets a bit cluttered. Sorry for that, but improvement is on the way.

But enough about me, I want to talk about something for you now!

I am also adding a job board - a place where my readers can advertise job openings and jobs wanted to the marketing and small business world. Like a lot of things it’s a bit of a cart and horse situation though. I know the community is hungry for and will find enough value to support this kind of information, but until there are some listings there won’t be traffic.

The cost to list a job on the board is $99 for 30 days. But, to seed the beta version I am going to give the first 20 folks that want to create a complete job listing a free post. You can view the rather lonely looking board in it’s pre-launch state here: Duct Tape Marketing Job Board Be kind as the paint isn’t dry. If you see the potential in the traffic that will surround my new community effort send me an email and I will give you a coupon code to list your job as a beta user for free.

2:00:11 AM    

Many an industry has been rocked or merely put away by the big box stores. Some of the businesses that go by the wayside when a large competitor moves to town really had no business hanging around anyway. As soon as a choice of any kind came around, they were doomed.

But what about the small businesses, mostly retailers, that seem to thrive in the shadow of deeply discounted goods. What do they have in common, what do they do that works?

I will tell you that it’s pretty simple to recognize, not so simple to pull off, but you know a successful smallmart when you see one.

There are three such stores in the neighborhood where I live in Kansas City. They each sell pretty attainable stuff such as children’s books, candles, gifts and accessories. All things that stores like Wal-Mart and Target carry. I mean, really, can you imagine a small store that sells nothing but relatively inexpensive candles surviving? What about kids books, Newberry Award winners are sold by Amazon below cost.

So what’s the secret? (Above and beyond great products)

Here are the characteristics that I believe make a small store work and are a must if you want to survive, let alone thrive.

• The owners are very outgoing networkers - they like people and they are connected to things and the community - they blog!
• They exude authenticity - you go to each knowing that they have found what you are looking for and they know what it is - they are in it for the long haul
• Their stores are about the experience - events, parties, tastings, Diva days, advice, classes and wine are all served routinely - you go to the destination and you buy something accidentally.

Bottom line - they don’t compete on price, they can’t, they compete on something much less tangible - emotion.

Have a look and learn:

• Reading Reptile
• Stuff
• 5B&Co. Candlemakers

Think local and tell me about your local smallmart!

2:00:10 AM    

Buying links as an SEO tactic aimed at getting high ranking links back to your site has never been a good idea. Again, simply remember this - create lots of great content and work hard at networking to natually acquire links back to your content and you will be just fine.

Google hinted in this post that they are going to start weeding out links that are unnatural with penalties for both buyers and sellers.

“If, however, a webmaster chooses to buy or sell links for the purpose of manipulating search engine rankings, we reserve the right to protect the quality of our index.”

2:00:09 AM    

Google announced a new mapping/mobile feature called My Location. My Location allow you turn your phone, using a browser and Google Maps, into a GPS device - even if it doesn’t have a GPS function.

Not too many phones supported yet, including the iPhone, but this is another big leap for mobile advertising as, if you can just pull your phone out of your pocket and it knows where you are, it can deliver the nearby pizza ad without you doing much of anything. Of course directions, menu, specials and even a personal coupon could all be part of the deal.

The remaining challenge is numbers. How do you get the numbers of users in general locations tied to the ads to make the financial model makes sense for service provider and advertiser alike.

The service uses cell tower signals to approximate your location if you don’t have a GPS enabled phone.

2:00:07 AM    

It’s become essential marketing messaging for big companies to address the needs of small business, to present the good face, to talk the talk in the most empathetic manner possible. We feel you and all. The problem is it’s really tough for most big companies to pull this off with much authenticity. Fact is they don’t really feel you, they can’t, it’s just a matter of physics.

But, small business is hot. Small business represents almost all of the potential growth for most big companies. Smart organizations, including banks, manufactures and even credit card companies have found that they can gain access to small businesses by partnering with smaller, established brands that already serve this market. Conversely, small companies are finding this trend a great boost to their bottom line. Partnering is potentially a big win for all involved.

If you’re a small company considering partnering with a much larger provider of goods and services you may be able to strike up a relationship that can add a tremendous amount of credibility to your brand, a flood of new opportunities and increased revenues and profits. This prospect can be pretty exciting for your little venture, but move forward with care and understand fully these two dynamics:

1) BigCo probably needs you more than you need them

Now on the surface I don’t really mean that they need you, you, but if BigCo wants to move into your market then they need the trust you’ve developed with your market, your brand. They may need lots of companies like yours, but in the end, what they need to succeed is to borrow your authenticity because, even if they had it once, they probably lost it from years of being BigCo. And that leads me to the next dynamic

2) You probably have much more to lose than they do

In many cases BigCo wields the upper hand in negotiating a deal, because you want the promise of what their name can bring, but if they get the first point then in reality you have lots offer. You must understand this and be willing to walk away from a partnership based on you adhering to their rules of engagement if it requires you to risk the authenticity and trust that got you to this point. If the deal goes south, BigCo moves on in a flurry of memos and you’ll be left to try to rebuild your brand, feed your family and send your kids to college.

I can tell you from some experience, when you partner with an organization that understand the above dynamics, gets the true value that your company brings and treats your brand with the respect it deserves, you’ve found a match made in heaven.

Be true to your school is your theme song when considering partnering. If it’s good for your customers, readers, prospects, employees, vision then move forward, if not, stay the course.

I would love to hear your stories or anecdotes on the subject. BigCos and SmallCos welcome to share

2:00:06 AM    

In a rather obvious nod to the great book, Waiting For Your Cat to Bark by the brothers Eisenberg, I would like to suggest that their advice, figuring out what works and doing it better rather than expecting results from something that isn’t natural for people to do, is dead on. But, sometimes you’ve got to have some side bets placed on long shots too.

Here’s what I mean. There are three services that you may or may not have heard of that, on the surface, don’t seem to offer the typical small business owner much in the way of marketing use. And yet, there are elements of each that contain the spark of some very useful DNA. I’m not suggesting that you should throw your energy into every new new thing on the web. You’ll drive yourself crazy do that. I am suggesting that you figure out what works, measure it, improve it and do more of it - all the while keeping some side bets going on up and coming tools that might just be a dog in cat’s clothing.

And now, three for you to play with:
• Stumbleupon and a Guide to getting traffic with Stumble Upon
• MyBlogLog and a guide to building blog traffic wih mybloglog
• Twitter and a guide to using Twitter as a marketing and PR tool

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2:00:04 AM