Ekben Blog

We never want to recommend you limit yourself as a small business owner or marketer to reading just one book on small business marketing. Why straightjacket your mind? No single author, no matter how great, can cover everything. There are just too many good ideas out roaming the planet.

But, if you are ever forced to grab one small business marketing book before you bail out of a plane we recommend you latch onto one of Jay Conrad Levinsons Guerilla Marketing books. He is a fantastic authority when it comes to marketing ideas for small business chief marketers and small business owners.

Guerilla Marketing: Secrets for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business
is another of those books that we first read over ten years ago; although the first edition of Guerilla Marketing has been out for more than twenty. Clearly, Levinsons ideas have staying power among small businesses.

OK, there are so many Guerilla books out there by Jay Conrad Levinson that we cant cover them all. Lets just state this fact: the Guerilla tactics outlined by Levinson are among the best on earth for small business marketing. Levinson is one of the first professional marketers to really focus on small business. Levinson isnt writing these books for ad agencies or Fortune 500 in-house marketers; he is writing for you, as small business owner.

Time and again Levinson emphasizes brain-power over money-power in small business marketing. Of all the lessons in the book, this is our favoritesmall business marketers can outsmart the competition; hence, the title, of guerilla marketing. Guerillas are typically outnumbered and outgunned, and so their tactics must be different than the conventional warriors.

Guerilla Marketing contains chapters on virtually every marketing channel: radio, PR, newspapers, television, etc. Need a quick refresher to make sure your radio spend is as efficient as it could be? This is a great resource to use to just pick up and review to see if you are leaving anything out in your current tactics when you are using this channel.

We also find chapter 5–Secrets of Developing a Creative Marketing Program–a good intro course for anybody beginning a new marketing strategy. Here Levinson outlines Seven steps to creative marketing–a worthwhile checklist for any small business marketer to use. Again, this is a great tool to use to review any campaigns you are launching or already have in the works.

Especially helpful is Chapter 29–How Guerillas Win Battles. Levinson offers timely suggestions on how to sustain your marketing once it works. He actually warns of what to do when you encounter success by using the guerilla methods. For those of you familiar with Michael Porters works, youll know the vital importance of sustainability in any competitive business.

Guerilla Marketing: Secrets for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business is definitely a worthwhile read.

Remember: Brand (who you are) + Package (your Face to the Customer) + People (customers and employees) = Marketing Success.

2006 Marketing Hawks

Author: Craig Lutz-Priefert
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Mobile device news

January 4th, 2010 | Category: Business Tips | Leave a comment

Running a small business isn’t easy, actually running any type of business isn’t easy. If you have to start one from scratch, there’s a lot you need to know. If you don’t have the experience, education, or knowledge on how to start a business, but you’d still like to participate in the American dream of owning a company, then I’d like to recommend a very good book to you, one, which will give you some background and information to help you decide if this is the right move for you. The name of the book is;

“How to Run a Small Business” by JK Lasser Tax Institute, 1955.

Although this book was written well over five decades ago, I’d like to point out that it is fundamentally sound even today with high-speed Internet, mobile communication, and all the other wonderful technologies that small businesses have. The reality is that running a business hasn’t changed that much in all those years. Plus, I’d like to point out that this book does not have all the hype that is in all the books explaining how to run a business today; if you ever go to the local bookstore or go onto Amazon online and purchase such a modern business book, you’ll know what I mean.

This 1955 book by JK Lasser Tax Institute starts out recommending that you seek professional consulting and watch out for unavoidable failures. There is also a chapter on buying an existing business, rather than trying to start one from yourself. The first section of the book is broken into a couple sections with chapters on starting your own business, and another one on potentially buying a franchise. When buying a franchise the authors recommend to consider various types of financing, and I have to say their advice is right on the money, seeing as before I retired I was in the franchising sector.

The authors suggest when you are starting a business to consider if there is room in the market place for an additional competitor, and choosing between a retail business, manufacturing business, or a service business. They suggest you need to determine if you’re going to need a location or if this will be a very small business you can run out of your home.

There are chapters on; legal form of business, tax decisions, efficiency of the office, insurance, planning, facilities and equipment, management, extending credit to customers, dealing with fraud and theft, profiting as a wholesaler, selling and marketing your products, pricing, and dealing with over regulation in our government. There is also a very interesting chapter on test marketing your products and services. Interestingly enough, this is a huge book, but one I recommend to you as a reference for your business library, all the advice in this book is great, and I didn’t see anything that I didn’t agree with. Please consider all this.

Author: Lance Winslow
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Netbook, Tablets and Mobile Computing

January 3rd, 2010 | Category: Business Tips | Leave a comment