If you’re running a micro business i.e. one man band or just a handful of people, and thinking about setting up a website, you should read Seth Godin’s excellent post about blogging instead.
You can do everything he says and more for next to nothing. A great way to get noticed.
If you want a standard website instead, you could try one of the off the shelf sites at Mr Site for just £34.99. You can get an awful lot done here without any technical expertise and without paying through the nose for a web designer. Don’t expect too many fancy whistles and bells though.
I’ve taken both these routes and it’s really hard to say which is easier. However, if you want to get website traffic quickly then I suggest the blogging route is the way forward. Although in my opinion Wordpress is a better option than Typepad.
If you’re a UK startup and want some ideas, advice, inspiration, networking and more, check out the startup live shows running throughout the UK.
I picked up a few good contacts from one of these shows last year and certainly some ideas of what not to do in my sales pitch. There were plenty of exhibitors with poorly planned exhibition stands and a lack of good salesmanship. Many companies did not even bother to follow-up after the show!
What I found extremely useful was meeting a host of competitors, helping me to set my prices and to learn how others are selling the service. Not the kind of info you come across easily.
I’ll leave you all to make up your own mind of the value of this show. The dates and locations it’s running are:
* Monday 21st May, North London
* Thursday 24th May, Birmingham
* Tuesday 5th June, Bristol
* Monday 11th June, Manchester
* Wednesday 13th June, South London
I particularly recommend checking out the presentations from successful entrepreneurs such as Rachel Elnaugh (Red Letter Days, Dragons Den), Sahar Hashemi (Coffee Republic) and others.
It’s free, so if you can spare the time then pop along for an afternoon. Please come back and let me know if you found these events useful.
I was presented with a very powerful marketing concept for small companies the other day. It’s not a new fangled phenomenon, or something that will cost you a lot of money, or even a tactic that requires anything more than common sense. I want to term this concept “attitudinal marketing” but I suspect this already refers to some form of market segmentation, f*ck it, I’m calling it attitudinal marketing anyway.
So first of all let me set the scene. Some friends and I were eating out a great restaurant in East London called Kaya House (check out a review here), enjoying the food and the hospitality the host and his wife offered.
After dinner we started to chat with the restaurant owner, a great guy called Ambrose, who was really interested to get to know us as new customers. It seems from the countless reviews I’ve since read about this place that he remembers all of his customers by name - quite a feat - and he gets to know their favourite dishes, what they do for a living and probably much much more.
Interestingly he started to tell us about some of the businesses his customers were running. Everything from limo hire to travel agents and hotel owners in Malaysia. Not a hard sell, just introducing us to them as part of our conversation.
It turned really interesting when our friend mentioned she was running a cake business. Ambrose took an immediate interest and started to take down her details to pass on to his clients. The cost of this, nothing, Ambrose’s sterling attitude was that if he could help out another small business that was enough for him. Of course he’s hoping that what goes around comes around as the old saying goes.
It’s Ambrose’s attitude that I just have to admire. He works hard to make his business successful and at the same time pass on some of that success to other small businesses. So this is what I want to call “Attitudinal Marketing” - the deliberate act of spreading business opportunities purely with the interest of furthering the success of other businesses”. Or perhaps I should call it Ambrose Marketing?
So with this in mind and without further ado, here’s a short plug for my mates cake making business. If you are in the UK, more specifically the South East and need a cake for a special occasion, perhaps a wedding, then check out Sam Morris Cakes. Sam’s cakes are a delight and she is absolutely lovely to boot!!
OK with the free plug out of the way. Have a think about whether you could engage in some attitudinal marketing. Ambrose has a notebook to store information and he displays adverts for free in his restaurant window. What could you do? If you make a plan to help just one small business each month, imagine the impact you could have.
Ever since I learned about the Thresher viral in the UK which generated over £40 million in sales, I’ve been looking for other great examples of viral marketing campaigns. I couldn’t believe it when I came across Will It Blend - an phenomenal viral by Blendtec, a US food blender manufacturer.
The idea is simple, the president of Blendtec Tom Dickson appears in a series of short videos in which he simply blends everything from an iPod, to a golf ball, some glow sticks and my favourite, a video camera. They’re fantastically entertaining and have taken off, especially on the social video sharing sites like YouTube.
There’s a quote from Blendtec on Wikipedia and Squid News that would suggest it’s been of tremendously valuable:
“The videos were placed on the internet in early November. Within just a few short days, we had millions of views. The campaign took off almost instantly. We have definitely felt an impact in sales. Will it Blend has had an amazing impact to our commercial and our retail products.
The campaign is all about brand awareness. Helping us to build top-of-mind awareness and establish Blendtec as the premier blender manufacturer.”
So are there opportunities for other small businesses to use social video sites for viral marketing? Of course, but there are potential banana skins to consider also.
There’s a good post on the Protocol in Practice blog that warns of potential problems with copyright. The post also links to a great summary by LA based Feed Company which does these things for a living. Check them both out here and here respectively.
To give you something to think about. Consider how many people use the social video sites like YouTube and then think how much it would cost to reach that many people by traditional advertising tactics. According to the Feed Company, YouTube had 29,6000,000 viewers in December alone.
So how do you produce a good viral? Get creative and think about Feed Company President Josh Warner’s questions:
“Is the content Controversial, compelling, Outrageous, Hilarious, or Sexy. Will it start a conversation?”
Posted April 30, 2007 
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