For your convenience, we have converted our recent article about unusual holiday marketing tips for small businesses into a one page tip sheet.  That way, you can easily print it out for future reference. 

You can grab the shorter one page Tip Sheet as a Word document here.

I’ve also embedded it in a Slideshare viewer (after the jump below). In the viewer it is 2 pages for some reason, but only one page when you download it. And if you use Slideshare to manage documents, you can also favorite it and save it there. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not a big fan of Christmas and Year-end Holiday cards. They are not only expensive, but boring and predictable.

Every year I look for creative marketing ideas that won’t break the bank, but will break through the clutter that my poor clients are dealing with.

This year, I thought it would be fun to share some of the creative ideas I’ve found along the way.

1. Dress up your website or blog logo like Google.  Do it not just for the Year-end Holiday season – but for EVERY holiday that comes a long. This idea is not only easy, but fun and will bring a smile to your web and blog visitors’ faces. If you don’t have a designer of your own - use go here and have them do a series of logos with fun holiday flair. Do you use Twitter.com, the social media site? Then take it one step further, and decorate your Twitter background, too. Go to TwitterBacks, download the specs or existing backgrounds, customize one with your own design. Then submit it to the TwitterBacks gallery of Twitter backgrounds, giving you a little extra marketing visibility.

2. Try Personalizing or Customizing. These days there are so many fun and interesting ways to personalize just about anything.

• How about personalizing postage stamps with your logo or a personal picture? Take idea #1 (a holiday version of your logo) and put that on a stamp. If you do decide to send holiday cards (OK, we understand), use your personalized stamps. Don’t stop there — use the personalized stamps for sending out invoices and other customer communications during the season.
• Get a necktie or scarf with your logo image all over it, and wear that same tie or scarf to every holiday event. You can become a walking brand at holiday parties. Read the rest of this entry »

You may remember that a few months ago I wrote a detailed review of an HP LP7780 Printer and all-in-one machine. We’ve been using it here at the Small Business Trends offices and really have come to rely on it.

It’s intelligent — telling you, for instance, which color ink you’re low on so that you don’t needlessly change an ink cartridge and waste money. And I’ve printed some beautiful marketing materials — with sharp vibrant colors.

But I’ve since been experimenting with another feature that I didn’t initially use — the ability to print wirelessly. And I’m really enjoying the benefits of wireless printing.

For a while we had a wireless network in our offices. But because Read the rest of this entry »

Wouldn’t you love to be known as the go-to person or business in your area of expertise?

You hear a lot about branding in business, establishing yourself as the must-have solution, idea, product or service in a particular field. Associating your company or product with a specific problem, emotion, sensation or solution.

Large companies spend millions every year in advertising and PR to brand themselves.

Viewing it as a gargantuan, costly effort, though, most small businesses largely give up on the notion of branding. Well, here’s some good news, if you’re willing to strap on your innovation hat, there may be ways to not only brand your business without paying a dime…

You may be able to get people to pay you to brand your business.

Here are a few ideas and examples to get you started:

• Label Your Takeaway products – One of the fastest easiest ways to get people to literally pay to help brand you is to add labels, logos and brand ID to items they already buy. So, for example, if you have a restaurant and people take out food, add large brand IDs, logos ad contact information on the packaging for their food. If you sell drinks or water bottles, add a logo to the cups or consider having private label water (FYI — private label water can end up being less expensive than buying bottled water from vendors). How much branding do you think the world’s water companies get from the labels on water bottles that people carry around all day? Read the rest of this entry »

Small businesses are a big deal to some very large companies. Case in point: Hewlett Packard or HP.

This week I am in San Diego attending HP’s Annual Imaging and Printing Conference. The conference is an opportunity for analysts and the press to hear the company’s plans for the upcoming year, conduct one-on-one interviews with executives, and see new products. Typically at these kinds of events new products are announced. And there have been some pretty interesting announcements of products for the small business market.

For today the new product I’d like to focus on is the HP Creative Studio.

The HP Creative Studio is a new website where business people like you can easily locate resources to help you create marketing materials. You will find templates and other design materials you can customize yourself and resources such as software you can download. You can even get access to designers who will create custom designs for you.   Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a small business owner without a killer marketing kit — shame on you!

Vow, this very moment, that you will carve out an hour to explore the sites we are going to go over today and get professional looking documents, forms and marketing materials — without busting your budget to shreds. With what I’m going to show you here today, there is absolutely no excuse not to look and present your best.

Recently we conducted a survey here at Small Business Trends and asked where you go to find templates to create marketing materials and business documents.  In this article we’ll reveal the sources and what each source is best at. Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve heard of Google’s search engine.  You’ve heard of Google AdWords (pay-per-click ads).  You’ve heard of GMail.

But have you explored Google’s technology playground, called Google Labs? “Technology playground” is the term that Google uses to describe Labs.  Labs showcases new applications that Google is playing around with.  One of those is Google Trends.

Using Google Trends in Marketing

Google Trends shows trends in searches.  For instance, it will show whether a particular search term is becoming more or less popular over time.

Over at The App Gap I recently wrote about using Google Trends to test the growth in the phrase “cloud computing.“  Here is what I discovered.  The term seemingly came out of nowhere in late 2007.  Growth exploded from there, as this chart shows:

 Growth in searches for “cloud computing” since October 2007

So, you might wonder, how exactly would you use Read the rest of this entry »