What a Certain Celebrity Can Teach Small Businesses About Marketing

This is what we small business marketers can learn from this recent (and seemingly unending) wave of publicity.

1. Promote your company. If you are invisible, you might as well give up your business. But you don’t need a multimillion dollar advertising budget or an expensive publicist. Small businesses just need to be creative when funds are limited. One good example is Foiled Cupcakes. Mari Luangrath started the online cupcake business in 2009 but got no orders because her website didn’t work. So she went to Twitter and started chatting. In less than six weeks, she had 2,200 follower, attracted national press and beat sales targets by 600 percent.

2. Consider publicity stunts. You don’t have to be featured in a documentary about your business and have cameras follow you around all day because there are many other events and options to make people aware of your products and services. Did you know that the Hollywood sign was originally built as a billboard for a housing development called Hollywoodland in 1923? Rather than advertise in print, radio or motion pictures, the developer created the 50-foot sign on the hills behind his homes. Today, it is one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world but it was established because the movies didn’t do a good job of generating publicity! Check out these outrageous publicity stunts by small businesses.