I’m finalizing my speaker panel for our Fall seminar series. This season we are concentrating on marketing and sales. The recession is over, but no one can feel the “recovery.” If you are waiting for things to be busy again, you will be waiting a long time. It’s time to get out and make something happen.
Yesterday I attended a presentation sponsored by the San Antonio Business Journal on marketing with social media. The speaker was Thom Singer, who has authored 9 books on business networking. He told a story that was a terrific illustration of how powerful social media can be.
Like many of us in South Texas, Thom suffers from “cedar fever” in the winter. Last year he tried Zyrtec, with excellent results. Overjoyed with the alleviation of his symptoms, he tweeted about how terrific Zyrtec was.
Within 5 minutes he received an email from the manufacturer containing a coupon for a free supply of Zyrtec. Now that’s focused marketing. Thom was so impressed that he has mentioned it in every presentation (51 so far in 2010) since. Now I am spreading the word even further.
What hit home for me, however, was that this amazing response to a customer wasn’t something that could only be done by a giant pharmaceutical company. It wasn’t a million dollars of television advertising, or full page spreads in national magazines. It was a targeted response, costing pennies, that changed one raving fan into an evangelist.
And it is something that every small business could do, or at least approximate. Internet-based marketing is within the capabilities of any small business owner. It just requires some time and education to make it happen.
I blog, and contribute to business forums on the ‘net. I have Google Alerts that tell me when my name or business are mentioned in Cyberspace. I have over 650 real, live LinkedIn contacts, all of whom I know personally. I post regular updates to LI, and (sometimes) to my Facebook page.
I thought that I was pretty web savvy for a small business owner, but I’m realizing that I’m only scratching the surface.
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