Hot Ideas & Hot Air

TornadoMktg.com’s B2B Small Business Marketing Strategies

Tornado Marketing Blog

Thanks for stopping by to share your hot ideas (and hot air) about how small businesses can create affordable, effective marketing systems.

Archive for August, 2008

Many of my clients have been in business for YEARS - some as many as 20 years - and before they hired me, they’ve never put together a marketing plan.  I know why they didn’t have a marketing plan.  Here’s what I’ve seen:
1.  Small Business Marketing Plans can seem like an academic exercise.  They just take too [...]

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Are you a Microsoft Dynamics Partner?  Are you going to The Partner Event?  If you are unfamiliar with the event, it is a mixture of the old Great Plains Stampede and BBC, and takes place from September 14-16th in Great Plains’ old stomping grounds - Fargo, North Dakota.
I’m going.  In fact, I’m giving a presentation [...]

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Marketing to attract the ideal client

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

At my Mission Viejo Toastmasters Club meeting recently, a group of us were discussing how to attract more members.  Attendance has been really low over the summer, and the group would be more fun with more people.  The ironic thing is that our group actually has about 25 members - a very decent sized group!  [...]

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Do we need the marketing hype?

Monday, August 18th, 2008

Marketing hype drives me crazy.  I understand the need to be compelling, persuasive, and time-critical, but do marketers really have to underline and highlight every third word?  When I respond to an interesting marketing offer, and find a landing page filled with marketing hype, I just want to abandon the page.  Personally I’m turned off by 2000-word pages, [...]

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Try before you buy

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know I’m a big fan of social media for small business marketing – but I haven’t always been. While I don’t have a Twitter following like some people and I’m not a big believer in “promiscuous linking” on LinkedIn, I believe that social media is [...]

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For some of us, social media is like breathing.  We check Twitter every day (ok, 10-15 times a day).  We blog every day (or at least try).  We have a group of friends on Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, plurk and all of the other creatively named social sites. But for others, like Landon Ray, the CEO of Office [...]

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Writing when there is nothing to write about

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

Most people start blogs about a topic they are passionate or knowledgeable about. They think that because they love a topic or know a lot about it - it will be easy to maintain daily posts. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. Despite your passion or knowledge, you don’t always have a brilliant idea on [...]

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Twitter Guide - Business use explained

Monday, August 4th, 2008

THANK YOU JOHN JANTSCH!
Recently I spent some time trying to explain Twitter for business to a client. After the conversation, I kept thinking ’someone should write a guide’ but just didn’t have the time. Well thankfully I wasn’t the only one in need, and John Jantsch has answered my request. If you are wondering about [...]

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