We regularily publish white papers, tip books, interviews with small business experts and research on industry-relevant topics and issues you may find useful for your business.

Be sure to visit our Small Business resource document library and download the various documents you’re interested in.

It’s not about one marketing piece, it’s about the whole thing. To be effective, your business needs a presence both offline and online. It needs to use print and digital marketing tools. It needs both advertising (paid) and publicity (free). It’s the marketing mix that gets and keeps your company message “out there” in front of your target audience.

Here are five marketing mix tips to seriously consider and implement:

1. Brochures & Business Cards
Print marketing items are not dead yet. Sometimes our technology doesn’t work like it should, and having that business card and brochure as a backup could save your marketing opportunity. Besides, there are a lot of people who just need to have something in their hands in order to remember you, so give it to them. Have your calling card ready.

2. LinkedIn
Use this business social network as an extended business card. As people hear your name around the Web and at conferences, there is a good chance that they will check you out on LinkedIn So fill out that profile and link it back to your website.

3. Website & Blog
Your website is your digital home, so make it count. Let them know who you are, what you do, and how it could benefit them. And then solve a problem for free by answering a question that your target audience would care about. You could turn that answer into a little ebook or white paper for download, or make it a blog post. Just make sure it’s something that truly helps, because you’re building a relationship, and “fluff and foolishness” is not good for business.

4. Press Releases
Use press releases to let the local media know about your business and upcoming campaigns. Your company probably has some awesome events, but nobody cares if they don’t have a chance to know about it.

5. Email
It’s about the relationship, and email is one of the most enduring ways to build that relationship, so take the time to grow your list. For a beginner most of the initial work is in getting the code and placing it on your Web pages. But the email service that you use should have a guide or “how to” page showing you what to do. Once the code for your email subscription form is in place on your site, then you can begin to focus on what to send your subscribers each week or month. Remember, it’s disciplined and consistent marketing and marketing messages that makes the difference.

Just remember, it’s about consistency and the total marketing package. It’s up to you to believe in your business—and to get the message out.

Entrepreneurs have to wear many hats when a business is just starting. Many things need to be delegated to others in order for the business to run smoothly and there are a few things that you must do yourself. If you can create a habit of performing these 5 things every day, some for just a few minutes, then you will see your business grow right alongside your dreams:

1. Plan for the future a few minutes each day. Assume that your product has stopped selling all of a sudden. What direction will you take your company next? What new income stream can you add? This is a time for day dreaming and recording notes in preparation for the future. You don’t necessarily have to take action on these items, but you need to think about them daily in order to bring out the golden ideas.

2.  Develop or strengthen your business network. You need to join or create a business network where you can help others and they can help you back. This is a great place to get free customers through referrals and an excellent mentoring opportunity using the mastermind principle.

3. Work on closing a sale every single day. Whether you are doing this on-line, on the phone, through the mail, or face-to-face you need to be selling every day. Without the close of a sale there is no business. This is not something that you can delegate all the way. Even if you have a sales force you need to be out there looking for deals.

4. Work on your marketing in some aspect every day to get new customers. If your prospective customers don’t know about you they won’t buy from you. Work on getting your message out every day even if it is just for a few minutes.

5. Contact your current customers. Don’t ever forget about the people that have already purchased from you. These are your best customers. They already like what you have to sell and they don’t cost anything to acquire. Contact your current customers frequently, even if you are just saying hello. They need to know what you have to offer and they need to know you are still breathing. They won’t seek you out. You must go to them.

We’re in the home stretch now just before the holidays, but it’s not too late to get an extra push out of your marketing. Those final few emails can make or break your holiday sales, so don’t overlook opportunities to grab the attention of last-minute shoppers.

The beauty of email is that you can quickly create and distribute virtually any kind of message — be it promotions, customer service information, big news, useful insight, account reminders or a quick holiday message — and send it directly to your most valuable customers.

Email marketing offers a variety of specialized uses that can be tailored to both your business and your customers. Here are five ways that email can help you boost your online marketing for the holidays:

Keep the Momentum Going!

Like its Black Friday and Cyber Monday predecessors, Small Business Saturday is the kickoff to the holiday shopping season. As you prepare for Small Business Saturday, keep in mind this is just the beginning. Create a plan to keep the momentum going all year long. Here are some things to consider:

• Capture email addresses for your customers and prospects so that you can begin an ongoing dialogue with them. Create a special Small Business Saturday offer to get them to register with you and provide their email addresses.
• If you don’t already have one, create a newsletter that you email to your customers to keep them involved in what’s going on in your business. Ask for recommendations on content so the newsletter is as valuable as it can be to your readers.
• Use social media as part of your Small Business Saturday campaign to build a base of followers and fans. Then continue to engage with them throughout the year in the social channels.
• Create a loyalty program. Small Business Saturday is about building loyalty to local small businesses. Be sure to give your best customers something in return and make them feel special.
• Plan ongoing events and campaigns to reward your customers throughout the year. Include your refer-a-friend messaging in these communications with your customers.
• Find prospects who look like your best customers – click here to learn more about how to clone your customers, and continually reach out to new segments of your market to grow your business.

Don’t let Small Business Saturday be a one-time event. Use our tips to create a plan now on how you will continue to build relationships with these new customers throughout the year.

Build a Small Business Saturday campaign.

Make the most of Small Business Saturday by creating a multichannel marketing campaign plan now. Here are some things to consider as you build out your own Small Business Saturday campaign:

Create a complete campaign that leverages different ways to communicate with your customers and extend your reach to new prospects. Sequencing your outreach is critical. You want to be relevant, not annoying. Calendar out all the activities so you can see how many contacts you will be making with your customers.

• Create a unique message for your business that ties into the Small Business Saturday theme but highlights the value you deliver to your customers.
• Don’t miss out on the future relationship-building opportunity this campaign creates. Capture contact information from your customers and prospects so you can continue to communicate with them.

 Here are some tactical things to consider within your marketing campaign:

 Website customization

-          Add a banner to your Website in support of Small Business Saturday.

-          Add a landing page to your Website where you can feature your special campaign offer. Using coupons is a great way to give value to your Website visitors. Twenty-two percent of U.S. adults say their household uses digital coupons from email or the Internet. Allow your customers to redeem the coupon either in-store or online on Small Business Saturday.

• Direct-marketing campaigns

-          Create a series of emails to your current customers that tie into Small Business Saturday with special offers and coupons. Send two to three emails regarding the promotion, and if you have a retail location and are looking to generate in-store sales, make sure the last email is sent the day before your event as a reminder.

-          Always include links to your social sites as well as refer-a-friend options in your customer emails.

Use direct mail to target prospects and attract new customers to your business. Direct mail recipients buy 25 percent more items and spend more than non-direct-mail recipients, according to recent data published in a study by the U.S. Postal and Deliver Magazine, “How Direct Mail Strengthens Online Sales.” Direct mail is a great way to reach out to prospects and encourage them to begin a dialog with you via future email campaigns. Ensure that you are targeting the right customers with your direct-mail offers. Services like Experian’s Clone My Customer can help with refining your target audience for your direct-mail campaign.

-          Create a personalized URL (pURL), or landing page, for your direct-mail campaign where you can capture email addresses of new prospects. Use a special offer on the landing page to encourage consumers to give you their email addresses.

 Social marketing

-          Add new content to your blog that features the value of shopping local. Tie into the Small Business Saturday national advertising theme to make the most of blog postings.

-          Use Twitter and Facebook to promote your Small Business Saturday event. Link your tweets back to your landing page and your special offer. Facebook is a great way to not only get your message out and dialog with your customers, but also give special offers to your fans.

 Event marketing

-          Don’t forget to plan out the day of the event. Include messaging on your Website or in your business location that promotes your support of Small Business Saturday.

Capture email addresses from your customers. The best way to capture email is to offer a value, such as a free gift, a special discount or a newsletter subscription. These are all ways to encourage your new customers to give you their contact information.

Click here to download our entire ebooklet of tips to get your business prepared and ready for Saturday, November 26th.

Engage Your Existing Customers With The Ease Of Email

Differentiate your marketing for Small Business Saturday and the upcoming holiday season. Understand that as the holiday shopping season goes full throttle, so do the marketing messages that prospects receive. Make your message clear and concise. That means shorter emails, fewer emails and emails that are more effective.

As with direct-mail coupons, you can use email coupons to drive traffic in on Small Business Saturday. Consider sending a series of emails with your coupon offer to create urgency. For example, try designing a promotional email offering a “Five-Day Sale” that expires on Small Business Saturday. Follow up on Wednesday with a “Three Days Left” email message and then a “Don’t Miss Out! Final Sale Day!” email on Saturday. Announce the remaining number of days for the sale in your subject line, and include calls to action throughout your email.

You also can send your existing customers a special “customer appreciation” email in advance of Small Business Saturday letting them in on even more exclusive deals that the general public wouldn’t be privy to. This strategy will help to build on your customer loyalty now and during the rest of the year.

Remember, email marketing is often a catalyst for Web users to purchase offline. More than half of users in one survey had made a purchase offline after receiving an email promotion. Make it easy for customers to find your business by including your address, phone and hours of business in every email you send during this holiday season.

Try our email campaign builder for a FREE 60-day trial, and start sending your emails today.  And don’t forget to download our ebooklet of tips to help you drive in traffic during Small Business Saturday and the rest of this holiday season.

It’s easy to get into a marketing rut from time to time. You keep sending the same types of emails to the same list, and you keep getting the same result: lackluster sales. What gives?

It’s time to overhaul your marketing. Don’t get overwhelmed by the process. Just start small with the three ideas below, and your marketing will likely improve almost immediately.

Limited-Time Offers

“For a limited time, take 20 percent off your order.” Words like those get customers to stand up and take notice!

By implying that there is an end date to your promotion, you will get customers to respond more quickly. They can’t wait to take advantage of your offer, because if they do, it will be gone.

So instead of ignoring your email or direct mail, they will hop online and shop your Website. The constraint of a limited-time offer could be the extra push your customers need to take action, before it’s too late.

Solving a Problem

Present your customers with a dilemma and your implied solution. For example, an online baby blanket retailer could send an email stating, “Help your baby sleep better than ever with our lavender-infused blankets.”

Be sure your copy makes it clear that your products are better than the competition’s. You don’t need to name names or badmouth anyone. Simply state ways that your product solves a problem your competitors can’t solve. Maybe you have better service, better quality or better prices for the value.

Solving a problem sets your business apart as a company that customers want to buy from. Your audience will be more likely to become loyal customers if you show what makes you different and better than any other company like yours.

Get a Good List

The people receiving your email and direct mail must be good potential customers for your business. Your list should include prospects who are your ideal buyers in terms of demographics, psychographics and buying behaviors.

Basically, you want a list of prospects who are like your best customers. If you’re sending to the wrong people, they are not likely to read your messages — whereas with the right list, you increase your chances of building a loyal customer base. Experian’s customer cloning services are a great place to start building a list that will get results.

Simple yet effective, these three tips will help you get your marketing on the right track and increase your ROI on all your marketing campaigns.

With the holidays approaching, there’s no time like the present to think about how to market your business to new and existing customers. Ready to ramp up your sales? Try these five quick tips for making a lasting impression this holiday season:

1. Beef up your customer service. There’s no quicker way to turn away customers than with poor or nonexistent customer service. Include contact phone numbers and email addresses on your Website that make it easy for customers to get in touch with you regarding ordering questions and other needs. Even if your customer service department is just you, answer phone calls and emails like a big business — professionally and courteously, with a goal of solving the customer’s problem and ensuring they come back for repeat business.
2. Let them know you care. Customer appreciation emails that include a promotional offer “just for VIPs” make customers feel special. Send a few of them throughout the holiday season — say, offer $25 toward a future purchase with any purchase of $100 or more. Make sure they are limited-time offers that take place during the holiday season so customers sense the urgency in taking advantage of the deal.
3. Use social media. Use Facebook, Twitter and other social networks to announce special promotions and capture new email addresses. Start conversations that spark interest among your audience and get your customers talking about your brand.
4. Reach out to inactive customers. Do you have some customers who haven’t bought from you in a while? Tell them you miss them with a special email offer during the holidays. If the deal is good enough, they might come back and become active customers again.
5. Cross-promote. Work with another local business to cross-promote offers in your newsletters or in-store locations. A bakery could team up with a coffee shop, for example, so the businesses can offer a special discount to one another’s customers.

Simple yet effective, these five tips will give you the extra push you need to increase your sales during the holidays and beyond.

Thinking of including unusual discounts in emails? It might be best to keep it simple

If you’ve been keeping a close eye on email offer and subject line trends over the last year, you may have noticed that ‘odd’ or unusual offers, such as 14 percent or 56 percent off, have started to appear more. The offers, such as ‘14% Off Limited Time Only!’, ‘Our weekly deal 71% off of today’s item‘, ’56% off Membership‘, and ’Famous February Artists + 22% off‘, are just a few of the examples we noticed at Experian CheetahMail.