Tips For Small Business Networking and Marketing

Why should you care? Small business drives the economy: they hire employees (two out of every three people hired are by a small business), they purchase goods and really care about growing their business. These entities are very special, but finding them requires a very tailored approach.

The ‘one size fits all’ method doesn’t work when it comes to connecting with small business owners.

Areas on which to focus that help small business owners notice you have to do with:

1) How your service helps the business owner stand out, in other words promotion.

2) How your service helps the business owner find new customers

As you think about how to apply this message to these business owners, don’t use generic “large company” titles such as “marketing director” or “purchasing agent.” Employees of small businesses wear many hats and have many generalists working at them – everyone needing to pitch in to cover the tasks at hand in order to grow their business.

Speak to how your product or service will help them “be found” or drive more revenue – near and dear to all of us, but especially to the small business person.

Understanding that 50 percent of small businesses with less than five employees don’t have a website, you have to think about how to best reach these business owners as well. While they may not have a website, they do subscribe to industry trade journals, meet with peers and use online services to stay competitive. Even though they might not be on the bleeding edge of technology adoption, as they are busy running their company, small businesses definitely look to find new ways of reaching customers.

Introducing your products and services through targeted ad placement is one approach for connecting with this group, another is providing useful information that helps a small business owner stay competitive. Become a champion of this group – provide resources and participate in the conversation where small business owners are.

So what can you quickly do to connect to the SMB audience? I’d suggest participating in these sites where small businesses are actively present:

1.) Manta (www.manta.com)- allows for specialized/targeted advertising to small businesses and decision makers by revenue, employee size, industry, etc...

2.) LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) – allows for finding business professionals by industry

3.) Present.ly (www.presently.com) – allows individuals within a company to post short, frequent updates that are tracked or "followed" by others. Unlike Twitter, it provides a secure and private way to share updates among members of a company, without them being visible to the general public

3.) TalkBizNow (www.talkbiznow.com) – allows networking while visualizing the small-world phenomenon by displaying how each member is connected to any other member.

For more information on marketing your business, please give Montari Brooklyn Marketing and Advertising Agency a call at 1-855-We-Sale-U or visit us on the website at www.MontariBrooklyn.com.