Content Based Marketing Trend

Anita Campbell writes a popular blog (also called Selling To Small Business). In a recent post she discussed the trend towards content based marketing.

What is it?

The idea behind content based marketing is to use content you've written to attract attention, provide valuable information and create awareness. The assumption is that instead of just pushing advertising and marketing information on business owners, companies should be providing information to help entrepreneurs solve their problems. Helping SMBs solve their problems with the right information leads to establishing yourself as a trusted business advisor which leads to the creation of a loyal customer base.

Some of Anita's suggestions for creating a content based marketing plan are:

White papers - Today's white papers are more than advertorials. They are often how-tos - specific documents well worth saving and going back to. A good white paper can establish your credibility and goes a long way toward establishing you or the even the company as an expert on the topic. If you can get other sites to distribute it as a free download, you extend your reach even further. And a white paper with an excellent descriptive title can be a carrot to generate leads, if you have the reader fill out a contact form in order to receive the white paper.

Press releases - Press releases today are written for search engines and for end customers, more so than for the press. Today's press releases should be distributed online, and if done properly can get picked up by online news outlets such as Google News, where customers and prospects find them and read about your company, your product, your service. Indirectly, the media sees them, too, in the same online venues the rest of us frequent. So it can have benefit for generating press, but what you really are getting is online visibility. When a press release is treated like any other online content and is properly optimized with keyword-rich text and links back to a website, it brings lasting search engine value. It adds to your own personal Google number (number of citations in Google for your name) or that of your business.

Articles in publications - Look around you. Many media companies are cutting back. People are reading more online, and they expect content to be free. What that means is that media companies are looking for articles submitted by professionals and experts in a particular topic. It's a lower cost way for them to generate content. This translates into a great opportunity for you. Write articles and submit them to publications. You get to display your expertise and impress prospects and potential clients. It's prestigious because you appear in a media publication. And it helps your online branding and search engine visibility. Insist on a byline and a short "About the Author" block at the end, with a link back to your website - most media publications readily agree. Writing articles can be used to get visibility in trade publications, business magazines, technology publications, Chamber of Commerce newsletters and various online publications.

Self-published articles - Blogs are being talked about everywhere, and it's for a reason. An excellent, fast and low-cost way to bring attention for your business is to publish your expertise yourself by writing on a blog. Others will find the posts and link to them. Eventually your blog posts get picked up in the search engines, and the indexed posts may send traffic your way for years afterwards. Also, a blog is a backdoor to media coverage. It's well known that journalists monitor blogs for experts to interview and quote for articles. You can even repurpose blog postings for your email newsletter and reach out to a wider audience. Finally, blogs have the advantage of RSS feeds. The search engines are indexing feeds quickly and giving them special treatment, and more and more people are signing up to get RSS updates on mainstream sites such as your personalized Google homepage or at My Yahoo. When you publish your message yourself, you can control your own destiny and not be at the mercy of the press or have to engage in an expensive advertising war.

Small Businesses Of The Future

Intuit just released a report on where they see small businesses going and what they will look like in 2017. Studying small business trends and staying on top of where entrepreneurs are going are important keys to successfully selling into the entrepreneurial market.

The top 5 findings from the report are:

• Entrepreneurs will no longer come predominantly from the middle of the age spectrum, but instead from the edges. People nearing retirement and their children just entering the job market will set the bar as the most entrepreneurial generation ever.
  
  
• American entrepreneurship will reflect a huge upswing in the number of women. The glass ceiling that has limited women's growth in traditional corporate career paths will send a rich talent pool to the small business sector.
  
  
• Immigrant entrepreneurs will drive a new wave of globalization. U.S. immigration policy and the outcome of the current immigration debates will affect how this segment performs over the next decade.
  
  
• Contract workers, accidental and social entrepreneurs will fuel a proliferation of personal businesses. Economic, social and technological change - and an increased interest in flexible work schedules - will produce a more independent workforce seeking a better work-life balance.
  
  
• Entrepreneurship will be a widely adopted curriculum at educational, trade and vocational institutions. As a result, artists, musicians and others not traditionally exposed to business education will learn not just their trade but small-business management skills as well

Top 3 Small Business Trends

I just issued a press release that discussed the top 3 small business trends for 2007. I've included it below:

What's Hot, What's Not
Top Three Trends for Small Business in 2007

A new year is upon us and with that comes new opportunities for small business owners everywhere. What new technologies will your business embrace this year? What new partnerships will you form? How will you take advantage of the changing marketplace?

In answering these questions, entrepreneurship expert Evan Carmichael suggests the importance of examining the rising trends that are promising to impact small business in the coming year. "The beginning of a new year is a good opportunity for entrepreneurs to revive their drive for success and give their business a fresh start," says Carmichael, "but in order to move forward, they need to look ahead at what is to come."

Top on Carmichael's list of small business trends for 2007 is the continued rise in importance of being able to do anything and everything online. "Small businesses today can't just have a one-page website," he says. "The division between IT and business is shrinking. From e-marketing to selling products online to offering podcasts, small business owners need to embrace everything the Internet has to offer."

A glimpse at the number of users on FeedBurner's website - an online news feed management provider - is evidence of Carmichael's point. Today, FeedBurner tracks over 1.6 million podcast subscribers, a figure that has doubled in the past six months alone. Similarly, a 2006 PEW Internet Project report states that 12 percent of Internet users have downloaded a podcast. "This year," says Carmichael, "small business owners need to seriously explore these various types of online tools as means of better reaching their customers."

A second trend that will affect small business this year, says Carmichael, is the focus on everything ‘green'. "Consumers are starting to demand more from those they do business with," he says. "Whether it's behaving in a more sustainable way, supporting environmental causes, or offering green products, small business owners can take advantage of this growing concern."

Venture capitalists are beginning to pick up on this trend, where in the U.S. they invested over $150 million in green-focused startups in 2005, double the amount of the previous year. A study by the Organic Trade Association shows similar growth: in 2005, consumer sales of nonfood organic products in the U.S. totaled $744 million. "Instead of being encouraged by their customers to become more environmentally-friendly," says Carmichael, "small business owners can take the lead and inspire their consumers."

Finally, Carmichael points to the rising trend of entrepreneurs that come from all walks of life to try their hand in business. "Whether they're students trying to pay their way through college, or seniors who are bored with retirement, more and more people are realizing that it's never too early or too late to start a business," says Carmichael. "A single mother who has her own company, for example, is no longer the anomaly it once was."

A recent study by the U.S. Center for Women's Business confirms Carmichael's point. The research found that one in eleven adult women is an entrepreneur, the majority of who are mothers. Similarly, 30 percent of the entrepreneurs who use the services of the Center for Women & Enterprise are single mothers.

"The new year has just begun," says Carmichael. "Now is the time to plan for the next big thing. Pay attention to the trends and ensure your small business doesn't get left behind."

2007 Small Business Trends

Steve Strauss writes a small business column for USA Today. His most recent contribution highlighted the top 10 small business trends for 2007. They include:

No. 10: Web 2.0:

We are now seeing the emergence of what has been called Web 2.0, and it is great news for the small business person. The novelty and nervousness of buying online is now gone and e-commerce has exploded. One example: According to the Internet retailers' industry group IMRG, Christmas sales this year were up 50% over last year.

No. 9: E-marketing Trumps Traditional Marketing:

Online marketing is booming. Small business advertising is the backbone of the Google empire, and a main reason small business people like it is that they pay only for qualified leads (or clicks as the case may be.) Google didn't become Google by accident. Savvy entrepreneurs are moving a significant portion of their marketing online.

No. 8: Little is the New Big:

The latest statistics show that there are now at least 20 million microbusinesses in this country, and by some estimates, the number is much higher. These businesses are fed by the ever-increasing, powerful, technological tools being made available to small business, as well as the growth of microbusinesses worldwide.

No. 7: Say Hello to the New Consumer:

The Boomers are starting to enter, if not old age, then late-middle age, as the first wave begins to turn 60. That's a market. Gen Y, comprised of the Boomers' children, is a sophisticated, computer-savvy, independent-minded bunch. Another potentially lucrative market. The final piece of this new market puzzle is the growth of the Hispanic market.

No. 6: Fragmentation is Changing Everything:

There are hundreds of television stations available to you right this very minute, hundreds of regular and satellite radio stations, as well as a multitude of Podcasts, downloads, uplinks, and billions of websites. The television networks are losing power and market share because information is now readily available 24/7 in a variety of formats. Information is fragmenting, as is business: Millions of small businesses around the globe have become international business thanks to the Internet.

His top 5 trends will be released next week.

Read the full article here.