I love this article, helping small retail businesses think strategically this holiday season.

Some marketing ideas can aid your retail sales efforts.

• Emphasize Uniqueness

According to the Business Know-How website, a key to marketing success is to determine what sets your store apart from your competitors and make this feature the focus of your marketing efforts. This unique feature will differentiate your business from all the others and help you carve out a niche in the market. For example, if you operate a health club, perhaps your unique feature is that yours is the only club in town that offers martial arts training.

• Use Contact Information

Make a point to obtain your customers’ contact information, especially their email address, whenever you conduct a transaction. This allows you to send them information about special promotions that will keep them coming back to your store. You can also send an email newsletter with timely industry or product information that will help position you as an expert.

• Offer Value

As a small retailer, you may have difficulty competing on price with the larger chain stores. A way to get around the price issue is to offer something of value and make this a part of your marketing strategy. For instance, you can offer free delivery or an extended warranty as a way to promote the value of doing business at your store.

• Prize Drawings

Prize drawings are an effective way to develop a buzz about your store and to encourage repeat business. Each time a customer makes a purchase, allow her to fill out an entry blank that is entered into the drawing. The more times she comes to your store, the more times she can enter. The winner can receive a cash prize of perhaps a high-end item that you sell.

• Direct Mail

Direct mail allows you to send a personalized marketing offer to a select group of people. You can target your prospects by categories, such as where they live, how much they earn or their line of work. Your offer should include a special promotion that will entice them to come to your store. According to the AllBusiness website, using a professional direct mail company can be more effective than if you tried to do the mailing yourself

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Alison Elliott is a Marketing Expert and founder of Corner Your Market Global Marketing.  She helps small businesses market themselves online by setting up social media and optimized blogs for small business owners and solopreneurs.  She then trains small business owners to use their blogs and social media to drive traffic and increase interest in their business. 

To get these tips along with tips on SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing for Small Business, Marketing Ideas for Small Business ,  Help Creating Online Marketing Plans for Small Businesses, and Businesses and Software to help Market your Small Business online , you can sign up to our small business marketing e-guide here.

Here are some bookmarking sites, in case you want to go bookmarking crazy with your small business marketing:

• Digg.com
• Propeller.com
• StumbleUpon
• Reddit.com
• Del.icio.us
• Newsvine.com
• Fark.com
• Blinklist.com
• Clipmarks.com
• Shoutwire.com

Alison Elliott is a Marketing Expert and founder of Corner Your Market Global Marketing.  She helps small businesses market themselves online by setting up social media and optimized blogs for small business owners and solopreneurs.  She then trains small business owners to use their blogs and social media to drive traffic and increase interest in their business. 

To get these tips along with tips on SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing for Small Business, Marketing Ideas for Small Business ,  Help Creating Online Marketing Plans for Small Businesses, and Businesses and Software to help Market your Small Business online , you can sign up to our small business marketing e-guide here.

I recently went on a tour at Zappos and it was a blast.  The whole experience was literally out of this world – a completely different company culture and work environment to any I have experienced thus far!   My perception of the whole experience was this:  the environment would not be for everyone.  I could name many people, including some of my dearest friends and my step dad in that category, but the freedom of expression and the ability to let the employees establish the culture was great.  The idea that each business can build a comfortable environment for the ideal worker of that business was refreshing.

My point is that when you can identify you ideal client and your ideal worker profile (in the type of worker that would be comfortable in your business environment and type means what a person likes, not who they are, what they believe or where they come from), your business will build a strong business, both internally and externally.

You can get a free culture book by Zappos here.  Zappos Insights also offers help with building the right culture and here is a link to get started.

When your insides are right, your outsides can grow and expand too!

Alison Elliott is a Marketing Expert and founder of Corner Your Market Global Marketing.  She helps small businesses market themselves online by setting up social media and optimized blogs for small business owners and solopreneurs.  She then trains small business owners to use their blogs and social media to drive traffic and increase interest in their business. 

To get these tips along with tips on SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing for Small Business, Marketing Ideas for Small Business ,  Help Creating Online Marketing Plans for Small Businesses, and Businesses and Software to help Market your Small Business online , you can sign up to our small business marketing e-guide here.

Marketing Your Business Negatively, Be Very Careful

I have had several experiences lately with people being very aggressive or negative by email and email newsletters.  By aggressive, I mean downright rude and not necessarily directly to me, but the effect on their business (negatively) can be astounding.  Here is where I come down on this issue:

E-Mail Aggression

I recently had an e-mail aggressor. Someone, who I know personally and professionally, decided that she wanted something she wasn’t getting and she wanted it for free.  Now, it could be that she was told she deserved it or it could be that she needed it and money is tight (knowing the situation, I vote for the latter) but a really rude email came to me demanding services for free on something she thought she deserved and wasn’t included in her contract.  What was most interesting about this is that I offered it more than once and even suggested she take the offer for this particular item, but she didn’t want to pay for it and declined the product multiple times (all by email, of which I have record). 

The point isn’t about the situation, but more the aggressive and rude tone of the initial email.  To everyone out there, let me remind you of a few things to consider before sending an email:

1.  Would you say what you just wrote in your email in person?  Or would you tone it down and sugar coat it a little?  Because, relationships are an art and even if you are mad, you kill more flies with honey than with vinegar.

2.  What are your chances of getting what you want based on the tone and words in your email?  If you like to vent by email, kind of like drunk dialing, maybe you should call the person on the phone so that you can control your urge to say things you shouldn’t.

3.  Are you burning your bridges with this email?  Are you making the person angry?  Will you need this person in the future?  Does this person control something important to you?  Do you know this person or is this person in your circle of influence?

If you are mad or angry … write the email, read it and delete it.  Then wait a day and call the person or start your email again.  It will save you a lot of heartache later – especially in business.

E-Newsletters As A Way To Dis

I have stopped reading an e-newsletter recently.   This is something I receive every few weeks (along with other business colleagues) and find the newsletter in bad taste.  The person who writes the newsletter disses on people, talks down, makes fun of others and makes totally unnecessary comments.  I have come to realize that this is the person’s life.  It is how this person lives his life.  It is how he does business and the people attracted to him accept and tolerate but I do not … I don’t see any reason to look for the bad in people, in fact I do the opposite.

I look for the best of someone and I really don’t appreciate all the negativity, so I stopped reading it, plain and simple. 

But that isn’t the story … I was talking to a business colleague and we were talking about something unrelated.  Suddenly the conversation turned and he expressed shock at the overall rudeness of this particular newsletter and it got me to thinking.

Maybe this person thinks he is being funny, smart, witty and possibly using the newsletter to elevate herself … but what he is doing is hurting his business – plain and simple.  Be very careful when you decide it is appropriate to throw rocks. Especially in the glass house of the internet.

I found this great information on the Internet about marketing your business with article marketing.  Here is the information I took from the article:

Article Marketing Secrets: 1. Article marketing is a long-term online marketing strategy.

If you want a significant ROI from article marketing as a traffic creation strategy, then you must write and submit articles on a monthly basis. Every article published on the Web is an agent selling for you 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Therefore you want to increase the number of agents selling and promoting your books, products and services online.

The more publicity and exposure you have online, the more money you will make.

2. Choose ONLY the best websites, ezines and article directories that accept article submissions

Why waste your time submitting articles to websites with:

• Little website traffic
• Little credibility
• No reader interest in what you have to offer

By carefully selecting ONLY the best websites, ezines and article directories we helped:

• Internet Marketing Extraordinaire Yanik Silver reach over 300,000 targeted prospects in just 1 week
• Lesley Mattos, Founder of Adesso Albums, triple her website traffic
• Dr. Karen Sherman and Dr. Vicki Rackner gain worldwide exposure and build a publishing platform for their books.
• Promote Dr. Mark Hyman’s book to the top of the New York Times Best-Sellers List

3. Do NOT use article submission software

Here’s what we discovered:

• The software was not automatic in any way, shape or form. You still have to go to each site, register for each site and confirm your registration.  Then after confirming your registration, you have to go back to the website and put in your username and password.
• Each site has different requirements. There’s no way software can automatically take care of each site’s different requirements.
• The article submission software kept freezing my computer. So, I had to take extra time to shut down and reboot my computer. It took me longer to submit articles using the software than when I submit articles myself without the article submission software.
• Most importantly, article submission software doesn’t allow you to submit articles to the top websites like About.com. You could only submit articles to article directories, which will only get you links. But, you will NOT get more publicity, more prospects and more profits this way!

I hope this was helpful in marketing your business online. 

Alison Elliott is a Marketing Expert and founder of Corner Your Market Global Marketing.  To get these tips along with tips on SEO for Small Business, Social Media Marketing for Small Business, Unique, Interesting and Great Marketing Ideas for Small Business ,  Help Creating Online Marketing Plans for Small Businesses, and Businesses and Software to help Market your Small Business online , you can sign up to our small business marketing e-guide here.