Who's behind this Small Business Big Marketing anyway?

Who’s Tim? And who says he knows what he’s talking about?

Fair questions indeed.

Well, I guess the answer to the latter will lie in the quality of the ideas you’ll find in this book. However, to remove all risk on your behalf, my products (and services) come with a 100%, no questions asked money back guarantee. And there’s no small print. No ifs, no buts.

To put your mind further at rest, I have over 20-years of extensive and diverse experience in Marketing Communications for businesses of all sizes. Such experience has taught me the following truths that are the inspiration for my own businesses.

• INNOVATION BEATS ADVERTISING. Decades ago you could build a business on the back of a great ad campaign. No longer. Consumers are smarter. Advertising is horrendously expensive. And alternatives abound. As someone insightful soul once said, “The best advertisement is a great product (or service).”
• CREATE DON’T COMPETE. Too many businesses try to keep up with their competition. This results in a whole lot of ‘me too’ businesses that find themselves competing on price and constantly increasing their marketing spend. Now that’s a tough way to make a buck. Successful companies tell their own story and create their own opportunities.
• CHALLENGE YOUR CATEGORY. Spending time looking around and seeing what other companies are doing in completely unrelated fields can reveal hidden marketing treasures.
• THAT ELUSIVE KILLER IDEA MAY BE RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR NOSE. The day-to-day mayhem of business often means that opportunities are missed. When was the last time you asked an employee or colleague what changes they would make if they were running the show? Try it…you’d be amazed at the answers.

There’s plenty more truths where they came from, however, those four should give you a clear idea of where I’m coming from.

Finally I can tell you that my working life has seen me work in the following businesses:

Clemenger BBDO – A multinational advertising agency at which I spent ten years managing the advertising needs of companies including Uncle Tobys, Gillette, Yellow Pages, Knight Frank, Dulux, Alta Vista Search Engine and AXA.

Flight Centre – Australia’s largest retail travel agency at which I held the position of State Marketing Manager. A major part of this role was to work with over 200 retail stores helping with creating and implementing local store marketing campaigns.

Reach – A not-for-profit organization that works with young people at risk. I actually left advertising to go and work at Reach as a bit of a cleansing of the soul experience where I assisted them in the areas of fundraising, sponsorship and event management.

Smorgon Steel – Australia’s second largest steel company. I had the responsibility of launching their Corporate Social Responsibility division with the implementation of a national campaign that is still in place today – You can view it at www.scrap.org Smorgon Steel continue to be a major client of my business.

For the last five years I’ve run and operated a number of small businesses including The Ideas Guy (my own marketing consultancy), We Are Property (a small property development company) and Small Business Big Marketing (an online marketing portal that does exactly what the name suggests).

Tim is available for speaking engagements.

So, that’s a bit about me – if you’d like to know more, please feel free to contact me at tim@smallbusinessbigmarketing.com

Who’s Luke? And who says he knows what he’s talking about?

For the past 11 years I’ve been helping small and medium businesses with their online marketing, 7 of these years were in my own web development business. By my calculations, I’ve discussed online marketing with around 1500 businesses and helped build around 200 websites.

Now-a-days I maintain several of my own website properties including BoatsPlus – a boat classifieds and outboard motors lead generation website and Guestr a guest post exchange marketplace. I also manage the web sales team at one of Australia’s top 20 online software retail businesses.

Having spent time with so many small business owners, and being one myself, I’ve come to realise there are many qualities we all have in common.  Most of us are passionate, motivated and entrepreneurial. All are time poor and often lack a support network of other business owners to bounce ideas off.  That’s where Small Business Big Marketing comes in.

Small Business Big Marketing is our way of helping small business people generate fresh and affordable marketing ideas. We do this via our free marketing podcast, tips and observations in the Blog, and helpful marketing products and training.

If you’d like to learn more, check out my Linked In profile, drop me an email at luke@smallbusinessbigmarketing.com, or connect with me on Twitter.