ARCHIVE 2009: Spare Change Marketing

NOTE: This is an article form the Running A Dojo blog, 2009 about the online marketing of your Dojo. How much of this is true today? 

Have you ever struggled with marketing your studio without any money? If you’re reading this, then I’m sure you’ve at some point tried to get your head around how you’ll market appropriately and stay in budget. Or do you even maintain a ‘budget’?

The old way of looking at this question is pretty stoic,

“Why did you start business without enough marketing capital to begin with?”

Justifiable question, but shit happens. The speed of smart business today is as fast as a click making brick and mortar rapidly becoming more ethereal as each day passes. Every small business is now global and crowd influenced. Fork tongued sales tactics inside brick and mortar are losing their bite.

We’re in a place now where your ability to market your product or service has very little to do with how much you pay an artist to mock up some shiny full page ad to make people think you’re the best. While coupon books and local periodicals may still have some visibility in mail boxes in your neighborhood, nobody, yourself included, likes getting that clutter. So you want to attach your business to something that most people in your market place consider a nuisance?

If you’re paying a graphic artist tons of cash to create a new ad for you each month, while struggling with your monthly Yellow Pages fee, stop now. There is a much better way. In the following articles on spare change marketing, I am going to cover some super simple steps for gaining market traction without buying into the old 30% of your gross should be spent on marketing myth. We’re far beyond that.

Spend some time reading through my steps on building a web marketing cannon to support your target market. Once you’ve built out a smooth running marketing machine, that will cost you a fraction of the conventional methods, you can then gauge better what you should be paying out to old skool print.

• Website  Set up your website correctly… stop bragging about how awesome you are, it’s ok … no, recommended that you promote yourself as the top expert advisor in your market, but if your site is broken and crappy looking you’re sending an extremely mixed message.
• Blog  Start blogging, get indexed dude.
• Testimonials  Get testimonials from everyone who has ever stepped into your business.
• Video  1 in 3 articles make on video, it’s easier and more real. Get it on your YouTube account.
• Network  Network with savvy business owners to share content. LinkedIn now if you’re B2B. In fact, go find me and let’s connect.
• Google Local  Set up your Google account and get to work… like now!
• Social Dominance  Content, Triangulate, Funnel your sites… read reclaim your social space on my blog.
• CMS   Set up your email service provider account… mailchimp.com is free to start.
• SM Community  Join Facebook Township Pages and start engaging.

OK, first steps done. Now it’s time to get serious. If you are a small business owner that’s locally market driven and you have a low class website, you are low class in the eyes of your target audience regardless of what kind of espresso you serve every person or how good your Amazon Local deal might be. Today’s consumer looks at a site with broken links, outdated content or poor imagery and subconsciously determines your capacity to serve them based on how you serve yourself. In other words, if you don’t care about yourself, how will you care about me. In service related businesses, especially if you’re working with parents of children, this is hugely important.

So let’s dig in. It’s time to turn up the heat, blow past your competitors and just about every small business in your community by getting noticed. Before I start though, if you don’t want to work at it, you might as well stop reading. Seriously. While my points won’t cost you much at all, you will need to burn the mid night oil from time to time. Do not, I repeat… Do not… go any further unless your site basics are all set up and your running a synergized and solid web and social presence.

Site’s done, content is optimized and you own your social space… Let’s get to the next level.

• Ebook   Write your first eBook now… Super easy, super profitable.
• Auto Response Campaigns   Build auto response campaign funnel #1 for your business with CMS.
• Auto Review Management   Get serious about your online reputation.
• Newsletter   Build your monthly newsletter template, repurpose blog content.
• Press Releases   Start posting your content in HelpAReporterOut.com, get your account now.
• Guest Expert   Start Guest blogging.

Above is the model I’ll be building a series of articles from for you. By the time we’re done, your marketing efforts will be light years beyond whatever your Coupon Book ROI is.

Let me know if you need some help as we begin moving into this! – Adam

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