Avoid Being Left Behind

Trends, Tools & Thought Leaders for Small Business Marketing

Evolution of Marketing

B.C. – 1950 1950 - 2000 2000 - present

1:1 1: many Many: many

Sources of Consumer Trust

Source: Forrester Research, All Rights Reserved.

Consumers trust friends, family, & personal experience more than ads or strangers

Trust is required to acquire buyers

Trust is built through engagement

5 Trends You May Have Missed

You don’t find buyers, they find you

Buying cycles have replaced Selling cycles

Customer dialogue has replaced monolog

Content is the new currency for building trust

The purchase funnel is no longer a funnel1

1http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/spContent/charts/code09/CDJ-Base.swf

A Resulting Paradigm Shift

Old Communications Model: one-way messages, brand dictates topics, infrequent distribution, no feedback, brand finds the audience (push)

New Communications Model: two-way dialogue, buyers dictate the topics, frequent distribution, continual feedback, audience finds the brand (pull)

Implications for Marketers

Marketers are now facilitators of conversations

Marketers must “put a face on their brand” and learn to be personable/engaging

Marketers need to build their own platform to deliver relevant content to attract/build loyal followers instead of paying someone else to interrupt their audience with ads (thus, marketers must now think like a publisher)

Digital media is about “who” -- not “how many”

Thought Leaders Worth Following

Marketing trends – Seth Godin http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Tim Ash http://sitetuners.wordpress.com/

PR – David Meerman Scott, Brian Solis http://www.webinknow.com/ http://www.briansolis.com/

Online Marketing – Lee Odden www.toprankblog.com

Must Read Books

Resources: Low Cost/Big Result• Graphic design marketplace

– www.99designs.com– www.crowdspring.com

• Web/ecommerce developer marketplace– www.elance.com

• “Best practice” marketing articles, webinars, blogs, conferences, etc.– www.marketingprofs.com

• Internet/social media monitoring tools– www.google.com/alerts– www.hootsuite.com

• Survey/research tools– www.surveymonkey.com (executing surveys)– http://www.hardwickresearch.com/sample_size.html (calculating sample size)

• Customer Lifetime Value calculator– http://hbsp.harvard.edu/multimedia/flashtools/cltv/index.html

Contact

Steve Patti (210) 201-3246

Email: spatti@social-exposure.com

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stevepatti

Twitter: @socialexposure6