Small Business Marketing Advice – Gold Or Garbage?

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There is no shortage of people who are churning out advice on how to do small business marketing or which small business marketing ideas will improve your business. Before you begin to utilize or implement any of their marketing tips or suggestions you need to ask yourself some important questions. You will want to use the tried and true who, where, when, why, what and how.

Who is giving you this advice? Have they ever owned a small business and did they succeed with the same small business marketing strategies? Where have they applied it? Did they use their ideas or strategies for online marketing or offline marketing? When did they use use these marketing strategies? Why do they know or think that these specific marketing strategies or ideas will pay off? Why are they sharing these ideas with you? What do they have to gain from sharing or from you using their ideas on marketing?

Do not take me wrong. A great deal of the marketing advice being shared on the internet is of value. It is and always be your responsibility to test and see if it viable for your small business. Recently I received a series of emails from a self-proclaimed small business marketing expert. In my opinion there were a couple of definite problems with his approach. First problem with his marketing advice is that it was a carbon copy of emails I had received earlier in the day. I can appreciate someone wanting to learn from the masters in the industry but this is not how you do it. Second problem was that he was duplicating some very dubious advice.

Now I will admit I could be wrong on this small business marketing expert's advice but for me it runs contrary to common sense. One of the subject lines was simply, "ignore me". I did as I was told and ignored the email for as long as it took to delete it. I did however open up a later email from the series. All the way through the email I was told why I would not want to take action with the offer. It was one of the clumsiest attempts at reverse psychology I had ever seen. Whatever marketing advice finds its way to you, do yourself a favor and put it to a credibility test with the six questions; who, where, when, why, and how.