Learn more about creating smart marketing plays for your small business with this free article from SMBmarketer.com

1. The Smart Marketing Playbook Article Series:
Ten Marketing Basics for Your Small Business
Featured Article by Susan K. Watkins, Founder, SMBmarketer.com, February 2010
Most small businesses are created to solve a specific customer problem, fill a gap in the marketplace, or
to turn a passionate hobby into a commercial business. Entrepreneurs, while skilled at providing a
specific product or service, often lack experience in the marketing fundamentals necessary to grow their
businesses. After exhausting their rolodex of contacts for sales leads, these “do-it-yourselfers” turn to
the web for help. While the Internet provides access to a wealth of information, most marketing
websites are designed for marketing professionals in active practice in corporate or agency
environments. As a result, small business owners struggle to sort through these online resources for
some easy ways to get started.
The discipline of marketing spans a wide list of strategies, tactics and skill sets; rather than becoming
overwhelmed by the depth of the profession, small businesses should focus on executing a few smart
marketing plays. If you look at the world of sports, it’s easy to understand the concept of a team
playbook. Playbooks consist of basic “plays” that a team must perform in order to have any chance of
winning the game. These are easy to grasp, actionable strategies that, when executed well, produce
results.
Small businesses can develop their own marketing strategy by following a “smart marketing playbook”
philosophy. Summarized below are ten ‘basic marketing plays’ that small- to medium-sized
organizations can use to effectively grow their business:
Play #1 – Develop Your Marketing Message
Before executing any marketing campaign, it’s critical to develop your company’s marketing message.
This important step helps you answer critical questions that your customers will ask of you, and lay the
foundation for the content needed for your other plays. Who are you, and what do you do? What value
or benefit do you provide, and for whom? How will your customers’ lives improve or get better by using
your product or service? Why should customers buy from you, versus from a competitor? Why should
they use your product or service, instead of an alternative solution? Smart marketers will develop a
“boilerplate” marketing message that talks to all these points. Your message should hold up to the
three C’s, by being: clear, compelling, and consistent across all your marketing programs. Small
businesses that don’t master this play wind up re-creating a new message each time they send out an
email, run an advertisement, or talk to a customer -- ultimately confusing the marketplace and
generating poor campaign results.
Play #2 – Use Press Releases to Build Awareness
Creating press releases on a regular basis keeps your company top of mind with prospects and
customers. The press release has evolved from a simple news announcement sent only to journalists

2. and media outlets, into a powerful marketing tool. With the advent of social media, readers of your
press releases can now take multiple actions after viewing your announcement. Press releases can be
indexed by Yahoo! and Google and shown in search engine results. Press releases can be posted to your
company website and optimized for search engines, improving your rankings. Readers can ‘tweet’ your
news to followers on Twitter that share the same interests. Press releases can be used by your sales
teams as conversation starters on cold calls. Your press releases can be pushed out to mobile phones,
through RSS feeds, and redistributed through news syndication and aggregator sites. Writing and
distributing press releases is a ‘smart marketing play’ that gets your company known!
Play #3 – Implement an Email Marketing Program
Technology has enabled small businesses to engage in affordable, measurable and effective direct
marketing programs. If you build it, customers won’t necessarily come walking to your door (unless you
have an awesome viral marketing program, but we’ll save that topic for another day). It’s simply not
enough to get your product ‘production-ready’ for shipping, and ‘sales-ready’ for customers. You must
generate demand for your offerings with your target customer. Email marketing provides a cost-
effective approach to targeting your markets, either by industry, organization type, specific user profile,
or by geography. Additionally, email marketing is extremely measurable, allowing you to course-correct
if you are not getting the results you want, as well as test out new product ideas, marketing messages,
and promotional offers before you unleash them on your entire marketplace. Developing a program that
incorporates email best practices and effective messaging concepts is critical to your small business
success.
Play #4 – Invest in a Prospect Database
One of the most strategic marketing assets that your business can create is a prospect database. This is
a collection of contact records for prospective customers, or folks that look like and act like your target
customers, but have yet to become buyers. Your prospect database can also include other types of
contacts such as industry influencers, analysts, corporate friends or followers, and local community
members. Anybody that you wish to stay in contact with, that might refer you, or eventually have a
need for what you do at some point in the future, should be added to your prospect database. There
are multiple ways to build up a database, including purchasing lists from appropriate industry groups or
trade publications, holding free trainings or webinars that drive attendee registrations, or collecting
leads from tradeshows and conferences. Using opt-in list building programs is also a great way to build
targeted, quality prospect lists. For example, smart marketers will offer up some compelling content
(such as a free whitepaper, customer case study, or research report) on their website. Visitors can
download this content, by opting-in, or by agreeing to provide their contact information in exchange for
this valuable information.
Play #5 – Market Your Thought leadership Through Content
Offering valuable content to your target customers is a smart marketing play that supports both your
email marketing and prospect database development plays. While larger enterprises often invest in
developing high-end research reports and high quality brochures that they can offer up to prospects,
small businesses can rarely afford such marketing luxuries! However, writing about your own industry

3. insights, sharing best practices or business tips, and promoting your experience helping customers, are
all great ways to create thought leadership content to feature in your campaigns. Smart marketing
organizations look at how they can take their everyday skills and business experiences, and turn them
into a steady stream of marketing content that can be featured in email campaigns, press releases, blog
entries, and customer case studies.
Play #6 – Build Relationships with Prospective Customers
Smart marketing isn’t about executing one-time campaigns with potential customers; it’s about having
an ongoing conversation. If your small business follows up only once to sales leads that come your way,
you are leaving a lot of money on the table, and driving up your cost per lead. Smart marketers will
distinguish between 1) prospects that simply don’t fit their buyer profile and should not be pursued, and
2) prospects that look like their existing customers, but are not yet ready to buy. These leads need to be
nurtured over time. Smart marketers will build relationships with prospects through multiple touches,
such as regular sales outreach, automated email drip campaigns, or industry newsletter programs.
Seeing your brand in multiple places, and hearing your message multiple times keeps your brand top of
mind with your prospects. Sending out a regular series of relevant communications will pay long-term
dividends, because companies in active purchase cycles are more likely to engage with vendors they are
already familiar with.
Play #7 – Stay in Touch With Your Customers
Smart marketers continue their marketing even after the customer purchase is complete. Customers
can go through an emotional and complex process before making a purchase selection, and will
continue to look for validation that they did indeed make the right choice. Another smart marketing
play is to help your customers to become loyal fans of your company long after their first transaction.
Generating repeat sales, as well as referral business, from satisfied customers is critical to any size
organization, particularly small businesses. Marketing programs such as new user trainings, lunch and
learn customer events, special promotional offers, sneak-peaks at new products, and publishing a
customer newsletter can go a long way towards building customer loyalty. As you win additional sales
from industry-leading companies, be sure to share this news with your installed customer base, as it
creates loyalty knowing they are in good company.
Play #8 – Create a Marketing Blueprint
Effective marketing programs require time to be created, time to prepare your sales and operational
teams to support them, and most importantly, time to be executed out in the marketplace, so that you
can actually see some results. Creating a marketing blueprint allows you to identify which key programs
you will put in place, and to create a campaign schedule that will help keep your efforts on track. Smart
marketers also use a blueprint to build support for their marketing plans across sales, customer service
and operations teams. Marketing activities should not be a sporadic, infrequent occurrence. Effective
marketing requires regular investments, at regular intervals throughout the year. Developing a
marketing blueprint early on will help you to prioritize activities and better forecast what type of
resources will be required, from both a dollars and people perspective.

4. Play #9 – Measure Your Performance
It’s important to measure the impact of your marketing programs on your business, so you can show
value and continue to justify the investment. A common mistake that new marketers make is to expect
sales orders from campaigns that are not designed to drive this type of result. Be sure to identify
realistic and appropriate metrics for each campaign. For example, email campaigns are designed to
build awareness by getting your message out to your target market. Look at measuring your reach (how
many contacts I am reaching through email; how big are my lists), and your open and click through rates
(how many on my list actually opened my email, and even clicked through on a particular link). You
want to know whether your message is resonating, and whether your list is performing. You will want
to measure press releases by volume (how much news are you generating on a regular basis), and
readership (where did my press release show up, and did it drive referral traffic back to my website).
Rather than comparing campaign metrics to industry averages that don’t necessarily have much
meaning, smart marketers will benchmark themselves against their own past performance. There are so
many variables that can influence results that it’s more important to see whether your metrics are
improving over time.
Play #10 – Regroup and Plan Next Steps
After executing some programs and evaluating your program results, regroup on what do to next. Go
back to the business objectives you were trying to achieve, and the blueprint that you created. Did
campaigns go according to plan? What was the feedback from your sales and services teams? Be sure
to update your blueprint on a quarterly or annual basis, depending on how quickly your business is
changing.
By implementing these smart marketing plays, you can achieve early marketing success, and prove the
value of marketing to your organization. For more information on easy to use, actionable marketing
resources for small to medium businesses, check out the marketing tools and templates available on
www.SMBmarketer.com.
About SMBmarketer.com
As a small business owner, getting started marketing your business can be perceived as overwhelming, confusing
and costly. SMBmarketer.com is a website specializing in smart marketing templates and advice for small to
medium businesses. Rather than experimenting with “trial and error” marketing tactics, SMBmarketer.com
enables entrepreneurs and business owners to start marketing their businesses fast, without investing a lot of time
and money up front. Since launching in February 2010, SMBmarketer.com offers downloadable marketing
templates and advice from its website and blog, including the Press Release Tutor™, an interactive template that
takes answers to basic questions about your business, and turns it into a well-written press release, instantly! To
learn more, please visit: www.smbmarketer.com.