A New Way to Look at Direct Marketing
John began with asking what we thought about the definition of marketing. It’s always evolving and people have their own different interpretation. According to John, the most succinct way you can think about marketing as “getting someone with a need to know, like and trust you”. By keeping this in mind, it will help you really think about your marketing strategy before implementing your tactics. Do you have your own definition of marketing that differs from John’s?

How to Differentiate and Dominate
Another standout point that John brought up was how small business strive to differentiate and dominate but are often doing it in the wrong way. As John says, most business pride themselves in offering “good service”. What marketer wouldn’t? John also mentions that a lot of people and businesses are sometimes afraid of being different. The key is to highlight a unique selling point that will create value for your customers. Entrepeneur has a few tips on differentiating your business that is worth a quick read.

The Marketing Hourglass vs the Marketing Funnel
Traditional explanations use a funnel to describe the marketing process. John has a better idea and presented us with the idea of a marketing hourglass. The difference is that whereas a funnel utilizes a blast method in an attempt to capture as many customers as possible, the hourglass takes into consideration your pursuit of the “ideal” customer. Yup, that’s a lot to digest in one hour but very informative in the end!

Get Educated
Sometimes, a little education can go a long way when you’re trying to engage your audience. There are free webinars and seminars every day, so find a topic that interests you. PRWeb often sponsors webinars that are beneficial for small business owners, bloggers, and more. You can do some live blogging, or participate in real-time discussion via hash tags on Twitter. Search Engine Watch always features interesting topics with great speakers.

Staying in the Loop
Webinars are a good way to get your social media news, but it also helps to stay more current. Like any other news room, it can be too cluttered to really stay focused. This is where newsletters and weekly wrap-ups can come in handy. Marketing Profs has a free daily newsletter which will help you stay in the loop and stay inspired. Remember, it’s easy to get distracted, but stay on the watch for credible sources for your social media news.

Chris went over some history about how some of the biggest companies started and flourished by promoting free stuff. Did you know that Gillette promoted free products to create a need for their disposable razors? And Jell-O began by giving out free recipe books with their main product as the key ingredient? Even in early 1900’s, marketers were looking for ways to appeal to consumer wants of “free” stuff. Nowadays, this idea can still be applied to digital goods and services.

This led to another topic that I found interesting – freemium. This refers to web services that are free for the general public, while the upgraded services come at a cost. Great idea, isn’t it? Take a look at Flickr and the New York Times. These sites are free to use but if you really want the good stuff, it will cost you. Free is not just a marketing gimmick, but a viable source that some companies thrive off of.

When it comes to your business or small businesses in general, how do you foresee the use of “free”?

How exactly does this work? If you have good content that your audience can relate to, you can use social media to bring them in the spotlight again. This can happen via Digg, Reddit and even email. After going through your own articles and stories that best resonate with your audience, take the time to make them relevant again. Carol tells us that most of her clients have had success with content that was written months to even one year ago!

Come up with a realistic content plan. Recognize relevant keywords and track their position as you release content that should bring more traffic. Although content marketing is a slow and steady process, it has very real results. Get ready to focus on your content plan today. There are many free research tools that you can use to get started you keyword research that will strengthen your content efforts: Word Vision, SpyFu, Compete, Quantcast, MajesticSEO, SEOToolSet, LinkVendor, Marketleap and PageGrader.

Just attended an interesting webinar, “7 Strategies to Convert Friends, Fans, and Followers into Paying Customers”, with Matthew Arndt. He went over some noteworthy things, like the three main problems that people have with social media. Those problems would be how to:

1) Build quality relationships over social networks
2) Effectively communicate with friends, fans, and followers
3) Turn your network into potential leads

There’s No Single Solution

There is no real single solution to these problems. Although you can scour the internet for tips from self-proclaimed experts, you should try your hand at it. There’s no real way to learn and improve your social media strategy without getting involved. It takes time and you may have to change your plan, but the results are worth it. After all, you don’t have to go it alone. There are helpful tools for your profiles. Some being WeFollow, Mr. Tweet, and Facebook Page Insights. Take the time to integrate these resources as you also come up with blogs, PDFs, and even free contests to involve your customers!

You can’t just accumulate friends and expect business to come flooding in. With spammers and robots on Twitter, quantity doesn’t mean as much as quantity. When coming up with a social media plan, you need knowledge and expertise. While it helps to stay up to date with current information, you’ll also need a team to help you implement a comprehensive strategy.