Email me, Matt Turner @ Kurb for small business marketing services and online strategies.
kurbpromo@gmail.com or call 64 27 684 8250 I do the lot! At one low price - in New Zealand dollars of all things!

Strategies for growing your small business with marketing and promotion are straight up and down.

Identify your optimum products and services for margins and demand, target your niches for this product or service, and then engage with them.

Often strategies to grow your small business come to you when you most desperately need them but are less than ideally placed for execution, but when you’re on the front foot, it’s a perfect time to develop a new highly targeted campaign.

One strategy I now call the “Yellow Pages” technique.  This is aggressive targeting when pay per click and adwords isn’t enough.

This is more hefty less sophisticated targeting, but I will go out into the hall, grab the yellow pages and get ideas about creating valuable services and products for specific niche markets.

Now this is old school, there’s no doubt about it. And I’m no old school marketer, I’m lucky enough with web 2.0 that I’ve never had to hustle. But if you are serious and determined about marketing your business, and I certainly am, then you’re going to take solid, logical steps to target potentially high volume clients.

High volume is good. I’ve recognised again, I’m “leveling up” seeing higher volume jobs come through, I’ve had 4 x 4 figure jobs come through in the last month and dealing with less customers means less customer service hassle.

Now with the yellow pages you can’t use a passive online approach. If I want to approach professional wedding planners to talk to them about how cheaply I can produce cds and dvds in volumes of 50-200+ I cant set up www.dvdsforweddings.co.nz and do a little marketing along the way and lie in wait.

I’ve got to hustle business directly by contacting each and every one.

If you’re good on the phone, this is something you should be leveraging to grow your business. I’m not so flash on the phone but look forward to having some poor office muppet who I subject to cold calling sessions that go on for hours.

Me, I’d go with emails. Whether you raid local service directories online or just check sites listed in the yellow pages, you can collect emails. Write them up a nice letter, and hey, you’re a spammer!

I’m not here to argue the finer technical points of the various legalities of solicitation by email.

But I’m sure, and this is something I’ve learned about the nature of what constitutes spam, is that when you use technology or whatever means you have to ensure that the messages you send are sensitive to the target as well as relevant and containing value.

My unique selling point is I’m pretty sure I do the cheapest cd and dvd duplication in New Zealand and I also offer a lot of complimentary service such as graphic design tweaks, free set up and flexible delivery so that’s where I’m looking to provide enough value to make the interruptive marketing not too disruptive.

But that’s business for you. You should already have identified gives your business the competitive advantage and be accentuating that through your branding and marketing effort, so that they convey the true value of what you do.

Speaking of conveying true value - up next: Growth and Marketing with Video!