Business Marketing: What You Need to Know

Any new business needs marketing.  Before I get started on telling you how to market your business and giving you some ideas as to what you can do, I want to refer you to this article at entrepreneur.com, that tells you what marketing is not.  Please make sure your pop-up blockers are disabled so that you can open a new window, read that, and come back to this in just a few minutes…

Now, the rest of this blog will assume that you have followed instructions and read that article.  If you haven’t, do it.  If you are not going to, then forget it.  :)  I’ll be addressing what marketing is not in a few weeks, anyway.

As I promised above, I am going to show you some things you can do to market your small business.  What I didn’t tell you is that these are going to be low cost marketing ideas, sure to fit nearly any small business marketing budget.

Podcasts
What’s a podcast?  It’s a recording of information that can be downloaded to MP3 players, so that people like you can take information like this, with them on the go.  It also helps with people who do not want to read, but like to listen.

How do you make a podcast?  Easy!  Grab a mic, and a simple program that will record and edit your sounds, (something like Audacity) and talk away!  Then, you upload the file to your website. Viewers can easily download the podcast and listen at their convenience.

For more information on podcasts, check out these sites: Podcast Alley, Podcasts, and CNN: Podcasting

Blogs
Not much needs to be said here. You are reading a blog! Blogs are a great way to give information, and to keep your site updated with current information for the search engine spiders. You can add a blog to your existing web site, or you can create a blog on its own domain, like this one.

Direct Marketing
This can be done with post cards to addresses that fit your target consumer demographic, or through presentations set up at your business. There are several different avenues you can take with this one, too.

Online Advertising
This is a no brainer. There are several different online avenues you can take to advertise your business. This website/blog, for instance has advertising spots open for a nominal fee! If you are interested, let us know.

Of course these are not the only things you can do to market your business.  As the blog progresses, I will touch on different business marketing techniques you can use both online and off line in the real world to help your business grow.   Do me a favor, and subscribe to this blog, to help the Blog Island Network business!

Share your thoughts on these and other marketing techniques below.  Also, let me know if you have subscribed to my RSS feed.  I’ll be sure to visit your site and do the same! Networking (which will be discussed later on, as well) is what is all about!