The document discusses strategies that small businesses can use to "punch above their weight" in marketing by leveraging online tools. It profiles several case studies of small businesses that have successfully used techniques like blogging, social media networking, and search engine optimization to generate new leads and boost their marketing effectiveness with limited budgets and staff. Key recommendations include developing an online personal brand, engaging customers through online conversations, and outsourcing non-core functions like writing and content generation.

1. Punch Above Your Weight v 3.0 Dr Alan Rae, Managing Partner www.howtodobusiness.com Dr Lisa Harris, University of Southampton

2. Why 3.0 Web 1.0 - Find Me Web 2.0 - Join Me Web 3.0 - Follow Me Thomas Power – Chairman of Ecademy

3. Who we are Dr Lisa Harris is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Southampton University School of Management. She is a Chartered Marketer and a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing International Board of Trustees. Dr Alan Rae is Managing Partner of AI Consultants which researches how small companies use IT and develops training programmes for small companies themselves or those who need to work with or sell to them. He is a Fellow of the CIM and sits on its membership and research advisory groups.

4. The ‘Punch Above Your Weight’ Research Project We are studying how small firms are maximising their marketing effectiveness with Web 2.0 tools Funded by West Focus Builds upon the 2006 ‘Abandoned Heroes’ project involving 400 SMEs in London and South East 30 follow up F2F interviews in took place in 2007 Project output to date is 3 academic papers, a CPD training course and e-book Our current phase of the project is examining 12 detailed case studies of SME “collaborative gangs” Online and offline networking styles in SMEs

5. “ Change we can believe in” $28m average raised per month in online donations 92m views of display ads per month 2.2m site visitors per month 9.8m video views on YouTube 1,997,530 supporters of the Obama Facebook Group 91,367 followers on Twitter

6. Small Company Marketing – the reality It’s about generating leads You need a strong story that connects you to your customers You have only so much time available for sales and marketing – 12 hours on average But it can’t be dear and it can’t eat your time You need to use the internet to prospect for you – to generate warm leads. If you’re clever you can get a 40% boost

7. How you do it Turn your story into keywords Test them using Google ad-words When you’ve got them put them into anchor text Small Business Marketing course sits over www.1manbrand.co.uk Headlines, page title, keywords metatags Tags for any online materials you create Create additional places you can link from Blogs, Social network sites, other people’s sites

8. This is how it fits together

9. What can you practically do? For services it’s like a play – The action is networking and sales The scenery is the online activity It projects your personal brand based on How well you know your subject How well you perform with your clients How easy to work with you are How memorable you are

10. The CIM’s view of Brand

11. When you start in business You work out a story that connects you to your customers And tell it in as many places as you can Face to Face Online In Writing

12. As you get more established Other people tell your story for you Partners Advocates Existing Customers Your way of doing business becomes as important as the products to the customer Reputation Look and feel Company personality

13. Eventually it takes on a life of it own It becomes a brand It attracts business over and above your direct marketing efforts It becomes the company’s personality It can be used to endorse new products to give them a leg-up And it has a value – called brand equity It needs protecting It adds value to the company In today’s corporate businesses intangible value represents up to 85% of the share price

14. For Customers It reduces risk – Accreditations Soil Association KiteMark Trade Association membership

15. Values of some Brands Coca Cola $69 Billion Microsoft $64 Billion IBM $51 Billion GE $41 Billion Intel $31 Billion Nokia $30 Billion Disney $29 Billion McDonald’s $26 Billion Marlboro $24 Billion Mercedes £21 Billion

16. You can’t start too early to construct a brand It’s like quick drying cement But it has to be congruent It has to represent where you are now… …………… and where you are going to be And it has to be realistic – tangible - attractive

17. Early history is defining First Product First channel of distribution First positioning First campaign First events First CEO Corporate Visions and values These produce a brand prototype which eventually leads to a brand identity

18. It has to position you - at a glance This depends on your place in the market and the values of the people at that point in the market It depends on what you want from the business and how you do business And it depends on whether you are selling goods or services.

19. So your narrative must capture Your emotional values Your customer’s personality and values Your relative positions in the business landscape Both sets of needs and wants

20. And it needs symbolising The brand expresses this relationship In words In visuals In sound In experience

21. Brands reduce risk for some customers It suggests that those are the people who are most influenced It helps them decide quicker – on automatic pilot – to buy your product Early adopters / those buying on technical merit seem to trust themselves more

22. It’s about what phrase you want to own In the customer’s mind? In Google’s mind? It needs to capture what’s memorable about you your way of doing things your products your values.

23. Your task is to build a brand that attracts business to you over and above what you can do by selling and networking

24. You have limited time Median marketing activity is 12 hours a week Our current research tells us that 25% do more than 8 hours a week on line In that time you can write one blog article and keep a presence on one and a half social networks. The front runner for business seems to be Linked-in then Ecademy which combines on line and offline Conventional face to face activity with a bit of PR and adwords spend seems to be what people actually do. But here are some examples of what some more adventurous souls have done

25. Our “Gifted Amateurs ” Most interesting are those running “ordinary” companies: Ellis Pratt (Cherry Leaf Technical Authors) “Conversation, Aggregation, Collaboration” Mike Southon, the “Beermat Entrepreneur” Andrew Woolley (Lawyer ) outsources lead generation, talks, good online material, Ecademy Martin Bamford – IFA. Ecademy, books, Squidoo. And we’ve included one who’s really different – Gary Vaynerchuk – Viddler, Blogs etc

26. Ellis Pratt – CherryLeaf Technical communication company based in Brighton, Heathrow and Thame Expertise in single sourcing (reusing content) and online Help. www.cherryleaf.com/blog.htm www.twitter.com/ellispratt (150 followers) Over 500 connections on LinkedIn

28. Twitter Microblogging Can be fed via twitterfeed From Ecademy From the Blog Via utilities like Twhirl People follow you – you combine interesting snippets with a modest amount of promotional activity

29. Twitter Twitter users are early adopters of web technologies They are well educated, influential and earn high salaries They are receptive to advertising and are likely to talk about products to ‘spread the word’

31. Personal Branding with Twitter Provide feedback . Become known as a reliable and informative source of help to your network Get Feedback . Ask for advice and you’ll receive ‘collective intelligence’ from your network Hire People . Send out a message to your followers asking for recommendations. Direct traffic . Include links in a tweet to direct traffic to your blog or to the recommended posts of others. Read News . subscribe to feeds for specific websites/conferences, or from content providers such as the BBC. Make New Friends . Twitter allows you to befriend and track the messages of other users. Network for benefits . Interact with other like-minded people, or experts in your field. Develop relationships for future mutual benefits such as testimonials or peer recommendations. Business Management . Twitter can be used as a company intranet that connects employees to one another, for example when working remotely or on collaborative projects Notify or Support Your Customers . Advise your customers of new products, or address their technical queries/complaints. Find Prospects. Twitter can be used as a means to find potential customers or clients online. Do a search for keywords related to your product on Twitter Search and then follow users. Provide Live coverage . For example to provide real time coverage of conference keynotes Set Up Meetings . An informal and casual way of arranging adhoc meetings.

32. Practical examples http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o (Twitter in Plain English) Suggested examples to follow: www.twitter.com/delloutlet www.twitter.com/gmblogs www.twitter.com/barackobama www.twitter.com/gartner_inc www.twitter.com/davechaffey www.twitter.com/bbcnews www.twitter.com/johncleese www.twitter.com/tubeupdates www.twitter.com/lisaharris

33. Mike Southon Beermat Entrepreneur Mike is a “Star” – he earns his living by talking Every minute he’s not talking – he’s losing money His approach is “outsource everything” He found a really good author – Chris West – to work with

34. History He wrote the Beermat Entrepreneur – based on his experiences as the sales cornerstone of a Unix Training company He acquired the DTI’s “Beyond Bricks” network which became a trusted network on Ecademy He ran “Beermat Monday” for a few years He created Sales on a Beermat and Marketing on a beermat He got some third parties – Louise Third – to be precise to write PR on a Beermat. He offers training programmes in these spaces Podcasts, books, courses And does keynote speeches – he’s good – we’ve worked with him a couple of times

35. He does write some stuff himself Columns for Business Clubs Monthly e-zine And he interviews people for his pod-casts

36. Monthly E-zine

37. Beermat.Biz

38. Sales Page

39. Mike is his own product

40. Andrew Woolley Is a lawyer specialising in divorce He has been an IT early adopter – we first met him in 2003 when we were doing some broadband promotions for the DTI He has been on Ecademy for a long time – a real early adopter.

41. Here he is in 2003

42. We interviewed him last year He was moving from business law to divorce at that time He was the one person we talked to who really seemed to “get” the sales pyramid He knew what his ratios were – and managed accordingly

43. Blogs on Ecademy Andrew is ranked 59 th – 19 blogs in 3 months

44. His Ecademy Profile

45. His Web Site

46. His Newsletter

47. Tags and Keywords he’s actually used someone who knows what they’re doing! <title>Divorce and Family solicitors: solicitor UK: divorce lawfirm</title> <meta http-equiv=&quot;Content-Type&quot; content=&quot;text/html; charset=windows-1252&quot;> <meta name=&quot;keywords&quot; content=&quot;divorce advice, divorce solicitors, divorce England, UK family solicitor, matrimonial law, family law, family advice, family solicitors&quot; /> <meta name=&quot;description&quot; content=&quot;UK family and divorce solicitors providing advice on divorce and family law – call 0800 3212832&quot; /> <meta name=&quot;author&quot; content=&quot;Website designed and developed by Zarr - http://www.zarr.com&quot; /> <link type=&quot;text/css&quot; href=&quot;/styles.css&quot; rel=&quot;stylesheet&quot; media=&quot;screen&quot; /> <link type=&quot;text/css&quot; href=&quot;/print.css&quot; rel=&quot;stylesheet&quot; media=&quot;print&quot; />

48. So here is Andrew’s Autosignature when he blogs on Ecademy Each phrase is a key word that is the anchor text For a specific page on his site

49. This Builds your Brand in Google’s mind

50. What does this say about Andrew’s brand? Up to date Efficient Easy to deal with Complete range of services Sensible blend of online / off line activity A problem fixed

51. Gary Vaynerchuk http://garyvaynerchuk.com/2008/07/01/the-personal-brand-gold-rush-is-going-on-where-are-you/ Gary’s Internet celebrity can be attributed to his pioneering, multi-faceted approach to personal branding and business building. Over 6 years, Gary and his father Sasha rebranded the family business as Wine Library and transformed it from a local store doing $4 million in annual sales to a $50 million national industry leader. In 2006, Gary launched Wine Library TV (WLTV), a free daily video blog in which Gary tastes and reviews wines in a creative way. In 2008, Gary became increasingly known throughout the Web 2.0 community through F2F conference speeches and his hyperactive online networking. Gary’s rationale is that with the proper utilisation of social media, brand building is simply a matter of passion, effort, and time.

52. Gary in Action

53. Wine Library TV

54. http://personalbrandingblog.wordpress.com

55. Where is personal branding going Advocacy Authority Face to face + Online balance Virality