Small Business Marketing Ideas from the Big Brands

• Weave personality into everything. Take a look at your logo and your tagline. Carefully read through your website copy. Listen to how customer service answers the phone. Packaging is also important. The way your customers see products in person, in photos or on websites can make a major difference and advance your image.
• Show up. Whatever you do, commit to it. Consistency is important. If you publish blog posts three times a week and then drop off to once a month, you fail to meet the expectations you set among your readers.
• Always be closing. Sales and marketing drive business. That does not mean you have to be as aggressive as Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross, but you should be listening and moving your prospects toward buying in a professional way.
• Produce solid content. Larger companies have the money to hire people but you have the latitude for creativity with your materials.
• Be interesting. Even if you think your business is boring, there are ways to sound intriguing. Interview your customers and find out what they think is special or even exciting about you. Then highlight these features. What is essential here is to be specific to your customer and stay focused, rather than try to be relevant to everyone or attempt to go viral.
• Evoke emotion. I really love the new Duracell commercial featuring the Seahawks’ Derrick Coleman but I know that my services are not going to bring a tear to the eye of clients (unless, we’re late delivering a design and clients shed tears of anger!). But there are a range of emotions such as fear of failure, aspirations of success, sense of security and more that you can trigger when you fully understand your customers.

Here are some other tactics to employ in 2014.