Many of our favorite small businesses will not survive the severe economic downturn precipitated by the coronavirus pandemic. Now is the time to help our friends and neighbors who run small businesses, or we may lose them forever. Here are a few things we can do to help them weather the storm.
Podcast: Marketing Without the Marketing | Michael Boezi
Listen in: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Google Play | Anchor
Marketing doesn't have to be pushy, aggressive, and sales-y. Respectful, ethical marketing strategies are more in line with the expectations of today's consumers anyway. No fluff – just real practitioner strategies from someone who uses these soft-touch marketing techniques every day in serving clients.
If you are new to the show, here's where to start:
- Creativity Is a Business Imperative – the storytellers and artists will win.
- Soft-Touch Marketing Is More Respectful – we can be ethical and effective.
- Why Marketing Without the Marketing? – with a "starter pack" playlist.
How Small Businesses Can Survive the Coronavirus Crisis
The coronavirus outbreak is having a huge impact on small businesses, including my own. Here are a few specific strategies to help you weather a prolonged downturn, and an offer to use what expertise and experience I have to help you directly, one-to-one, for free.
Small Groups vs. Large Followings: Social Strategy 201
In Episode 168, I question the concept of getting a large social media following. Large numbers of “eyeballs” often don’t do us much good compared to the tight connections of smaller groups. A counterintuitive approach involves using a Facebook Group, LinkedIn Group, or the group chat features of messaging apps to cultivate an ardent community of supporters.
Domain Renewal Scams: How to Avoid Them
Domain scammers have upped their game. I encountered a new variant of the Domain Name Expiration Scam recently. Episode 167 is about how to spot this new strategy and what to do if you are targeted.
Measurement and Iteration: Social Strategy 201
By treating our marketing efforts like an experiment, we can set metrics, collect data, analyze the results, and then make the necessary adjustments. Episode 166 is about how to put a simple plan in action to help you get better results from your social campaigns.
Rethinking Our Social Media Interactions: Social Strategy 201
The algorithms are working against us now. Episode 165 offers two strategies to adapt to the new, more restrictive world of social media marketing: How to do an end-run around the algorithms, and three steps to lean into what is still the best part of social.
Social Is Not What It Used to Be: Social Strategy 201
The glory days of social are over. Free organic reach is a thing of the past. What used to work is no longer effective. So how do we respond? Are there still ways for us to use social media to build relationships with an audience without having to pay-to-play? Of course there are.
No One Wants to Read an Email Newsletter
Email marketing is one of the most important tools for any small business. Can we come up with something other than “email newsletter” to call it, though? This has been bugging me for a while, and I haven’t come up with a solution – so I thought I’d ask for your help. Send me a reply once you’ve had a listen!
Your Facebook Page Has Been Hacked
Your business is at risk if you don’t have ownership of one of your most important assets: Your audience. While a Facebook Page is convenient for connecting with customers, what happens when your account gets hacked, deactivated, or deleted? This happened to a client of mine. Episode 162 is her story.
List Hygiene and Maintenance: Email Marketing 201
You can’t do good email marketing without maintaining a clean email list. Good list hygiene not only helps you save money, but it also helps you increase your open rate and click rate. Let’s look at some strategies for proper email list maintenance, including running periodic re-engagement campaigns.
Intermediate Automation: Email Marketing 201
Automation is key to today’s email marketing. In the last episode, I covered some basic automation strategies to get you started. Let’s take a look some more advanced techniques for when you are ready to go beyond a basic email newsletter strategy: RSS-based sequences and nurture sequences.
Basic Automation: Email Marketing 201
Adding a little bit of automation to your email marketing strategy can help nurture “cold” leads without a lot of extra hands-on effort. Building on the last episode about list segmentation, let’s look at the two types of automations that I recommend to clients when they are just getting started: Welcome sequences and follow-up sequences.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 15
- Next Page »