SBBM #19 – Guerrilla Marketing, Blogging & Building Credibility

SBBM #19 – Guerrilla Marketing, Blogging & Building Credibility

Ms Evancich:  This is the Small Business Big Marketing show with Tim Reid and Luke Moulton.  This show is lovingly put together for small business owners by small business owners to get practical ideas about attracting more customers more often.  So, if you’re serious about building your business strap in for the ride.  Now, here’s your hosts, Tim and Luke.

Tim:  Lukey, Lukey, Lukey.

Luke:  How are you, Timbo?

Tim:  Mate, isn’t it great to be back?

Luke:  It sure is.  It feels like it’s been a while.

Tim:  It has.  Welcome back, listeners, to Small Business Big Marketing where we simplify marketing, I think, Luke.

Luke:  Yes, we do.

Tim:  We used to say demystify.  I like simplify.

Luke:  Yeah, definitely.

Tim:  Because we’re simple blokes.

Luke:  We are.  Simple blokes, simple needs.

Tim:  One simpler than the other.

Luke:  Let’s not say who.  Timbo, what have you been up to?

Tim:  Mate, lots, lots.  This is a show, listeners, before we get stuck in, today’s show is all about a bit of a rambling between Lukey and myself as opposed to listening to someone who’s actually got something really intelligent to say about small business marketing.

Luke:  Yeah.  We’re not in the studio today but we do have some exciting guests coming up in a couple of weeks’ time.

Tim:  Correct.  Can we say where we are?

Luke:  We can, yeah.  We’re just at my …

Tim:  Luke …

Luke:  My home.

Tim:  Your kitchen.

Luke:  My kitchen, that’s right.

Tim:  Which is kind of cool, you know, because … I mean, we are lucky enough to do this show normally in a studio.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  But I was presenting at a conference yesterday and was talking … telling people about podcasting as a marketing tool and the fact is, you know, like here we are, we are in a kitchen, on the bench, being able to …

Luke:  Got a laptop and a microphone.

Tim:  A lappy and a mic.

Luke:  Yeah.

Tim:  You know, and a stopwatch to stop me from rattling on too much.

Luke:  Yeah.

Tim:  But that’s the thing, you know, like small business owners, listeners around the world, you can do it.

Luke:  That’s right.

Tim:  You can have your own show.

Luke:  It’s all … it’s just all about consistency and getting something out there.

Tim:  Hey, Lukey?

Luke:  Timbo.

Tim:  Went to TED last week.

Luke:  TED in Sydney, how did it go?

Tim:  TEDx they call it.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  Which is not the pornographic version of TED, it’s just the light version of TED.  So for listeners who don’t know what TED is, I think TED stands for, and I’m going to get this wrong, something like Technology, Environment and Design.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  If you haven’t been to ted.com, listeners, go.  It’s just full of great interviews from people around the world.  Their tagline is ideas worth sharing.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  And basically each listener gets 20 minutes on the TED stage, which is apparently an absolute privilege to be on the TED stage.  They only happen in Oxford and Cupertino, or somewhere like that.   They did a live version in Darling Harbour last week.  But you basically hear people talk about an idea.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  And they get you thinking.  It was very good.

Luke:  Favourite speaker?

Tim:  Gee, that’s on the spot.  I like … there’s a guy upfront, can’t remember his name, spoke about creativity …

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  … in business, which I really enjoyed.  It was a real range of speakers from all sorts of stuff.  There was a homeless lady who spoke with nine children.

Luke:  Wow.

Tim:  There was a lady who spoke about … from Red Balloon Days.

Luke:  Yes.

Tim:  About building a business from scratch and about the concept of gifting.

Luke:  Yes, very successful online business.

Tim:  It is, it is.  And Luke Harvey-Palmer.

Luke:  Yes, one of our …

Tim:  Previous guest of ours.

Luke:  One of our guests.

Tim:  Yes.  Maybe it was his interview on here that got him on there.

Luke:  Shot him to stardom.

Tim:  Yeah.

Luke:  I doubt it.

Tim:  Yeah.  But it was good, mate, lots of good stuff there.  And, you know, it was, even just from a networking point of view I’m finding, I’ve been reminded in the last 12 months, Lukey, of how important it is to actually get out there as a small business owner and in my case a one man show.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  To get out there and just do some training.

Luke:  Oh, yeah.  It is so worthwhile because in doing the training you also, yeah, get to network as well which is …

Tim:  Yep.

Luke:  And you develop some pretty valuable relationships.

Tim:  Yeah, just, you know, like when I was in corporate, you know, you get sent to stuff.  You go this, you go here.

Luke:  (3:57).

Tim:  Yeah.  You do this, you do that.  But, you know, like when you are, you know, back to being your own boss, which has so many … so much upside to it, but I personally forgot to go out and train up and kind of … so, yeah, I’ve been doing that a bit lately.  TED was part of that kind of thing.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  You’ve been to something?

Luke:  I went to Social Media Club Melbourne a couple of weeks ago and heard, also one of our ex guests, Scott Kilmartin from Haul …

Tim:  Oh, Scotty.

Luke:  … speak about essentially getting their brand out there with another two speakers.  Sahill and … oh, damn.

Tim:  Who’s Hill?

Luke:  Sahill.

Tim:  Sahill?

Luke:  Yeah, from … oh, geez.

Tim:  You don’t know.

Luke:  I’ve had a complete blank.  Anyway it was …

Tim:  While you’re thinking …

Luke:  Yes.

Tim:  … just so, listeners, who haven’t listened to the Scott Kilmartin interview, worth listening to.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  Scotty does … he recycles billboards out of street posters … out of billboards.

Luke:  Wow.

Tim:  Sorry, start again.  He recycles billboards and turns them into laptop covers.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  You said wow and I got it completely wrong, which clearly means you’re not listening to anything I’m saying.

Luke:  I’ve been trying to think of the other speakers.

Tim:  Yeah.

Luke:  Anyway I actually noticed that I was the only person at this Social Media …

Tim:  This soiree?

Luke:  Yeah.  That was wearing a branded t-shirt.  Now …

Tim:  As in, not like Ralph Lauren branded, as in …

Luke:  No, no.  No, as in it had the business that I worked for on it called …

Tim:  Oh, who’s that, Luke?

Luke:  Flippa, flippa.com.

Tim:  Oh, Flippa, yeah.

Luke:  Anyway I sort of thought about that and thought, you know, people are going along to find out how to market themselves online using these new, you know, fandangled social media, you know, it’s all a buzzword.

Tim:  Yeah, yeah.

Luke:  But sometimes they forget to do the simple things.

Tim:  Yeah, yeah, true.

Luke:  You know, a t-shirt will cost you 20 bucks.

Tim:  Very true.

Luke:  When you start out on Twitter you might have 20, 30, 40 followers in the first month or two, if that.

Tim:  It is, it’s a good tool.  And, you know, the thing is I was talking at this conference yesterday which Bambi Gordon put on and she is @thewoo, thewoo on Twitter, @thewoo.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  And, you know, people were taking photos and they were Twittering all throughout the day.  You know, the conference had a hash tag and everyone was Tweeting and, you know, if you had of had a branded t-shirt on you probably would have found yourself on the Twitter feed …

Luke:  Yeah.

Tim:  … with your logo and your website …

Luke:  Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Tim:  … or whatever it is on.

Luke:  And that sort of takes me across to one of the other things that we were doing to do today, Timbo, a bit of thank you and also another little guerrilla marketing tactic.

Tim:  Ooh, guerrilla marketing.

Luke:  I actually had one of our listeners, Vic from lap-rap.com, lap-rap.com, approach me and ask … first of all thanked me for the show and also told me about his product which is basically a sticker that goes on the front of your laptop.

Tim:  A lap rap.

Luke:  And you can … a lap rap.  So you can actually customise your sticker and stick it on the front of your laptop.  Anyway I was just about to head off to a conference so I thought, wow, what a fantastic opportunity, thanks, Vic, I’ll take you up on the very generous offer and ordered a couple of …

Tim:  Sweet.

Luke:  … of his lap raps.  Anyway at the conference had my laptop in front of me most of the time, had the big Flippa branding on it.

Tim:  Yeah, right.

Luke:  Had at least half a dozen people come up and ask me where I got that from.  So apart from it being a good little bit of marketing it was also good marketing on Vic’s behalf to …

Tim:  And what did was, what do we call that, Luke?

Luke:  We call that seeding.

Tim:  Seeding.  One of our previous guests talked about seeding.

Luke:  Yeah, yeah.

Tim:  But we never got seeded by him.  He’s listening hopefully and will know who we’re talking about.

Luke:  Yeah.

Tim:  We keep checking our mailbox but it doesn’t seem to appear.  But it is, it’s a good strategy, seeding.  So, listeners, the concept behind seeding by way of reminder is that if you think … if you can identify the people in your group that you think can add value by talking about your business then give them something, give them a part of your business.  I don’t mean a share of your business but like give them your product or your service to sample and share with others.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  And that’s …

Luke:  Give them a review copy.

Tim:  A review copy?

Luke:  Yes.

Tim:  What’s that mean?

Luke:  It happens a lot in online marketing, you give someone access to your product, a mover and shaker access to your product, they go and check it out …

Tim:  Right.

Luke:  … for free.

Tim:  Yeah, okay.

Luke:  And then hopefully give you a good testimonial.

Tim:  So someone in the media, like it might be a blogger, a podcaster, someone who’s got a show somewhere …

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  … in the ether, yeah.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  Good idea.  Good idea.

Luke:  Someone who has the top marketing podcast in Australia perhaps.

Tim:  Hey, who would that be?  Stop it.  Stop it.  Come on.  Hey, what about this email I got, Lukey?

Luke:  Yes.

Tim:  This is from, I like this, this is from Jamie Ross who is the general manager and chief blogger at miningman.com.  And he happened to be listening to Hamish and Andy, which for our overseas listeners is one of the more popular radio shows in Australia.

Luke:  Drive time, that’s right.

Tim:  Drive time.  Anyway one of the guys on the show rang … I’m reading the email now, he rang his local takeaway store to try and order takeaway to pick up later.  They told him, “We don’t do phone orders because we’re too busy and the food often sits around waiting too long.  But we can give you the password and if you say that password when you ring us up we’ll take your phone order.”  Creating a bit of scarcity.

Luke:  Yes.

Tim:  “Now, the chances are this is probably true in that there is this kind of password thing happening and they don’t want phone orders.  But could it be possible that they don’t mind taking phone orders at all?  If so, how much more likely are you to ring and order from a place where you are in the secret password club?”

Luke:  Very very clever.

Tim:  It is clever, isn’t it?

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  He goes on to say, “I’m sure many businesses out there could somehow provide the extra benefit to customers of feeling important giving value without cost.”  And then he says he’s a big fan of our show.  But I love that idea.  It’s about scarcity.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  And about making your prospects and customers feel a little bit special.

Luke:  Yeah, you feel like part of the inner circle, part of the club.

Tim:  Yeah, even just calling it a club, you know.

Luke:  Yeah.

Tim:  You know, we’ve talked about packaging before but actually creating something, an offer to customers and then giving it a kind of, an emotional name, kind of works in a way that, you know, just maybe just stating the offer rationally wouldn’t.  Like that.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  Like that.

Luke:  Very good indeed.

Tim:  What else have you got, Lukey?

Luke:  I’ve been doing a bit of blogging, Timbo.

Tim:  You love your blog.

Luke:  Well I never used to.  I always never used to be a fan of writing.  But certainly in my new role at Flippa I blog a lot.  And it’s also led me to blog more for myself.

Tim:  You found your blogging mojo?

Luke:  Yeah.  Yeah, well it’s, you know, I guess things I think of on my long drive during the week.

Tim:  Yeah, yes.

Luke:  My commute.

Tim:  Yes.

Luke:  You know, I just take a quick note and then …

Tim:  Yeah.

Luke:  … of a weekend I’ll at least try and bang out one post a week.

Tim:  It’s one of the ongoing blockages to blogging, I find.  For a lot of small business owners I speak to is, first, what am I going to blog about.  You can quickly overcome that, because I think people underestimate what they can talk about.  But then just doing it day in day out or week in week out.

Luke:  Yeah.

Tim:  And there is … just look up blogging ideas on Google or something like that.  In fact we’ll put a show note if we can find one.  Because there’s lots of kind of whitepapers that people have written on that subject of like little stimulus headlines or subjects.

Luke:  Yep.  See I used to subscribe to the theory of always blog around a brief and always blog around your business.  But, you know, sometimes I think it’s good to step outside of that.

Tim:  Yep.

Luke:  And … because it adds character and people get to know you.  If you’re blogging about how you went on a trip and you had fantastic service.

Tim:  Yep.

Luke:  Well it relates to customer service.

Tim:  Yep, yep.

Luke:  I actually just recently did a quick little blog post on … around the iPad.  Obviously the iPad is very topical at the moment, it’s about to come out in Australia.  It has already come out in the US.  So I did a little blog post around how you would actually get an iPad if you were in another country apart from Australia.

Tim:  And let me guess, it got picked up?

Luke:  Yeah, it got picked up by a couple of …

Tim:  Notables.

Luke:  A couple of notables that have Twitter lists of 20,000 plus.

Tim:  Lukey, if our listeners are going, you know what, I’m going to give blogging a go, what’s the quickest, easiest, free way to do it?

Luke:  Yep.  WordPress.com.

Tim:  You reckon?

Luke:  Yeah.

Tim:  What about Blogger?

Luke:  Yeah, either.

Tim:  Isn’t Blogger a quicker start up?  Isn’t WordPress kind of … it’s better but isn’t there a little bit more involved in getting a WordPress blog up?

Luke:  No.  See Word … you might be thinking of the self install version …

Tim:  Correct.

Luke:  … of  WordPress, Timbo.

Tim:  Correct.

Luke:  There is one that basically is already installed and it’s WordPress.com.  You’ll end up with a domain name that is something like …

Tim:  WordPress.com your business name.

Luke:  Or your business name .WordPress.com.

Tim:  Right.

Luke:  But you’d have the same thing with Blogger.

Tim:  So you could literally have a blog up and running in five minutes, would that be fair?

Luke:  Yeah, definitely, yeah, yeah.

Tim:  Cool.

Luke:  Ten minutes.

Tim:  Ten?

Luke:  Ten.

Tim:  Okay.  Let’s not …

Luke:  Yeah.

Tim:  You know, I mean, five, ten, mate, there’s not a lot in that.  Hey, that’s a good one.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  That’s a good one.  I’d give that a go.  I’d say to any small business owner just give it a go.

Luke:  Yeah.

Tim:  There’s not a lot of downside and, you know, you can always get guest bloggers to come along and contribute content.  You know, you can do interviews with people to create content.  You don’t always have to be thinking up your own stuff so.

Luke:  Indeed.

Tim:  That’s a good one.  Hey, Lukey?

Luke:  Timbo.

Tim:  Back to things that we’ve been doing, I went to a three day seminar, workshop, whatever you want to call it, a couple of weeks ago.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  Joanna Martin shift speaker training.  Freak.  She is a freak.  And I said that to her at the end so, Jo, if you are listening, chances are you’re not, because I think she’s one of the busiest chicks going around in the world of marketing, but the three day workshop I went to was all about selling from stage.  And, you know, without going into a lot of detail because in fact, yeah, no, I won’t because there was just so much to learn.  She spoke from nine in the morning until seven or eight at night for three days.

Luke:  Wow.

Tim:  And she shared the stage only twice …

Luke:  Wow.

Tim:  … in that time.  Not only that, she made, and I won’t put an exact number on it because it would be unfair, I was just counting from the audience, but she made a six figure income from those three days by selling product from stage.

Luke:  Low six figure or medium or high?

Tim:  Oh, Luke, I don’t like to … lots.

Luke:  Yep, okay.

Tim:  Lots.  Hey, you know, three things I got from it, like there was just so much, (a) listeners, write these down because … well at least kind of bookmark them or something.  Speaking is a great form of marketing.  It is cheap and it is effective and it sets you up as an expert.  And Jo talks about this imaginary line which she calls the credibility line which is that line between the end of the stage and the audience.  And once you step over that line onto the stage or, you know, the whatever, it doesn’t have to be a stage but in front of an audience, credibility goes up which is either right or, you know, it just seems to be a perceived credibility line.  It doesn’t necessarily …

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  … mean it’s true every time but it did remind me what a great form of marketing speaking is.  So, listeners, if you can get a speaking gig at your local chamber of commerce, if you can put on an information evening for your prospects, if you can, you know, find someone to talk to and sell to, I mean, it is, it’s really good.  And it’s a great practice.  Yeah, we’re all scared of public speaking but try and get over that.

Luke:  Yeah.

Tim:  Maybe find a shared speaking gig where, you know, like yesterday I spoke at a small business marketing conference, a full day, and there were copywriters, publicists, Internet gurus, all sorts of people, and then me.  But, you know, it’s just sharing the stage so that was great.  Jo talked about a concept around creating a niche.  And that’s a whole conversation in itself not dedicated just to speaking but I do like the way she described finding your niche.  And she talks about getting a niche that is an inch wide and a mile deep.  Right.

Luke:  Nice one.

Tim:  Yeah, it is nice, isn’t it?  So it means like don’t be everything to everyone, just find that one niche that is really really particular to your business and drill down and really offer great value to that audience as opposed to trying to be everything to everyone.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  Third thing, Lukey, don’t talk in front of a group of people without making an offer at the end.  Not because you want to sell, although that is clearly what one of your objectives is, but the other part of that is you cannot expect to give everything you know in a 30 or 60 minute, what she calls a presentation unit, you know, the opportunity to share some information.  At the end, and at the beginning, ask for permission and then at the end say, “Look, I’ve given you as much as I can in this short time.  If you’d like to learn more then,” and it might be that you offer coaching or it might be that you offer a longer course, it might be that you offer your book to buy, whatever it is.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  Great stuff.

Luke:  Fantastic.

Tim:  We’ll put a link.

Luke:  Yeah, good advice.

Tim:  Thank you.  Well it’s Jo’s advice.

Luke:  Yes.

Tim:  So, you know.

Luke:  Yeah.

Tim:  We’ll thank Jo.  So we’ll put a link in our show notes to her … she’s got an online course that you can do.  Well it’s not a course, it’s just an online membership site where she really does offer some great value.  So that was a ripper.

Luke:  And you’ll be able to find the show notes at SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com and it will be Episode 19 this one, folks.

Tim:  Mmm, 19.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  Thank you for that update, Lukey.  What else have you got, mate?

Luke:  That’s about all I’ve got today.

Tim:  Really?

Luke:  Yeah.

Tim:  Can I keep going?

Luke:  Actually, no, no there is one thing I’ve got.

Tim:  You do the dishes and I’ll keep …

Luke:  I’ve actually started doing a little bit of mentoring.

Tim:  Oh, nice.

Luke:  With … with a guy who … well with two blokes who have set up a web development business and it also is an ex-employee of mine, an old employee of mine.  And I guess you never really realise how much you know until you actually impart it to someone who’s …

Tim:  Yep.

Luke:  … been in the … you know, these guys have only been doing it for about a year.  I had my own web development business for seven years.  I’ve been working online for ten.  You sort of don’t realise how much …

Tim:  Very true.

Luke:  … you know until you start …

Tim:  Yep.

Luke:  … imparting that knowledge.  So I’m actually enjoying that a lot.  Getting a lot out of it.

Tim:  Good thing to have.  I would suggest every small business owner, in fact every businessperson really …

Luke:  Yeah.

Tim:  … should have a mentor.  It’s kind of a very very old concept that would probably predate … I can’t say predate man, that wouldn’t make sense.  But, you know, like it’s … surely …

Luke:  It’s good just to have … I think it’s great to have someone who’s objective.

Tim:  Yep.

Luke:  You know, you get caught up in your business and you don’t always …

Tim:  Yep.

Luke:  … think outside the square and think of other opportunities and other things that you can be doing and, you know, hopefully these guys are getting a little bit of value from some outside input.

Tim:  Yeah.  I remember hearing … I was listening to a previous podcast of someone else’s once and he was talking about mentoring and the fact that you really have to wait until someone comes and offers to mentor you.  But I think you might be waiting a long time so you kind of …

Luke:  Yeah, look, I think there’s certainly plenty of opportunities now to find a mentor online.  You might have to pay.  However, those opportunities are certainly available and certainly in the online marketing space there’s always plenty.

Tim:  Yep, no, good one.  Good on you for doing that.  They’re lucky guys.

Luke:  Thank you, Timbo.

Tim:  Lukey, a couple of wonderful products that I’ve come across online …

Luke:  Yes.

Tim:  … that I’d love to share with our listeners.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  One is called Source Bottle.  S-O-U-R-C-E.  Is that right?  S-O-U-R-C-E Bottle.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  Sourcebottle.com.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  Just a bloody ripper tool for small business owners looking for publicity.  Free to register and I think what you do is then indicate your areas of interest and when a journalist is looking for someone to contribute to an article that they may be writing for radio or press or blog or TV or whatever it may be, then they have the opportunity to put that out onto Source Bottle and ask for input.  So you might get an email one day saying looking for, you know, maybe you’re into selling baby clothes and there’s a journo who’s putting out something on Source Bottle saying, “Has anyone got a point of view on baby clothes made of hemp?”  I don’t know why I thought of that but, you know, and so you go, oh, yeah, that’s me.  So you send an email directly to the journo saying, “Yep, I have an interest in that area in fact it’s what my business does,” blah, blah, blah, blah.  And then the journo may contact you for your opinion, maybe write a whole article about you.  Great way to get free publicity.

Luke:  Great service.  And you don’t … it means you’re not basically pounding the pavement looking for PR opportunities, they come to you.

Tim:  Correct, yeah.  So sourcebottle.com, guys, sign up for that one.  Lukey, we have a listener question which you forgot about.

Luke:  Oh, did I?

Tim:  Because you said that was all that you had.

Luke:  Oh.  Yes.

Tim:  So the listener question basically says …

Luke:  Oh, yeah, sorry, yep.

Tim:  Boyley, David Boyle.  I like that, Boyley.  We have a tendency to either shorten or lengthen names, don’t we?  Dave is from Melbourne.  Good on you, Dave.  And Dave has been getting a whole lot of LinkedIn questions … not … what do you call them, LinkedIn invitations.

Luke:  Invitations, yes.

Tim:  You know, oh, link in with me and he’s saying, you know, “Why should I do that, to what benefit?”

Luke:  Now, Timbo, you are a big fan of LinkedIn.

Tim:  I do like LinkedIn.

Luke:  More so than me so probably more a question for you.

Tim:  Okay.  Well I think LinkedIn like all social media channels needs you to provide a bit of love and attention to it.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  It ain’t going to happen itself.  But I’ve found LinkedIn a great way of building your network.  I mean, that’s the whole idea of LinkedIn, it’s to create a network.  They talk about in the profile, in the overview of LinkedIn I think they talk about the six degrees of Kevin Bacon, which is the six degrees of separation.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  But basically says, you know, between you and someone else there can be no more than six people.  And so basically it’s a great way of reconnecting, it’s kind of like a Facebook for business and I think that’s probably been said before but …

Luke:  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim:  It’s a bit like that.

Luke:  Yeah.

Tim:  You put your CV there.  You connect with people, you look for people who, you know, you may have gone to school with or gone … previously worked with or met somewhere, you link in with them.  But then the linking in is just the start.  And, you know, you can then, you know, develop up a bit of a list on LinkedIn.  You can post questions.  You can create events so you can put in … post an event and say, “Hey, I’ve got this kind of talk coming up, feel free to come along.”

Luke:  I’ve got a mate of mine who uses it really effectively for business development.  So he, you know, obviously you connect with someone on LinkedIn but then you can actually connect with the people that they’re connected with if you ask for an introduction.  So if you’re, you know, if you’re trying to get your product into, let’s say, a hardware store, a hardware chain.  Well, you know, with these, you know, two degrees of separation or six degrees of separation …

Tim:  You’ll find someone.

Luke:  … you’ll find someone who is a sales rep …

Tim:  Yep.

Luke:  … that goes around and puts products in a hardware business.

Tim:  Yep, yep.

Luke:  So it’s a great way of finding people in your extended network that can help you out in business.

Tim:  And there’s groups, the LinkedIn groups are fantastic too.  They’re a … it’s a way of, you know, if you have a particular interest, once again, you know, hardware marketers, I bet there’s a group in LinkedIn for hardware marketers.  You know, for everything that you could imagine.  And you join that group, you can ask questions of that group, you can respond to questions of that group.  You can just find out what’s going on in that area.  So, look, Dave, Boyley, it’s free.

Luke:  Yep, we like that.

Tim:  Yeah, we do like that.  Anything free for small business marketing is good.  It’s free, it’s effective.  It means you’re getting a whole lot of information up there.  I use it a lot.  When people enquire about using my services I actually send them a link to my LinkedIn profile which, you know, I send them a link to my website, LinkedIn profile, I send them a link to a number of things now but it’s a great …

Luke:  Great way of gathering testimonials too.

Tim:  Oh, isn’t that a good one?

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  So tell us more.

Luke:  Well so you can actually ask people that you’ve connected with and worked with on LinkedIn to give you a recommendation.

Tim:  Yep.

Luke:  Which … so it’s great if you’re a business owner, you can ask people that you’ve done business with to recommend you.  But even as an employee you can ask, you know …

Tim:  Yep.

Luke:  .. an old boss instead of …

Tim:  Yep.

Luke:  Instead of accumulating, you know, letters of reference or referrals you can ask them to leave something on your LinkedIn as well.

Tim:  And those recommendations are great.  I got a job partly because I’d … I sent my … I got a job, I got an opportunity to do some work for an organisation last week.  I sent them my LinkedIn recommendations, which was great.  So there’s … I think I’ve got about 20, 25 people who have written something about me.  And I’ve reciprocated and done that for them as well.  I also when I was going for this little contract last week I sent them the 50 or so written reviews that we’ve got on iTunes for our … for this show.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  So it all adds up …

Luke:  Fantastic.

Tim:  … to kind of building your credentials, you know.  And kind of, you know, you can, you know, this is … we should do a show on testimonials, in fact we will one day.

Luke:  Yeah, definitely.

Tim:  Because it’s … once again you can talk all you like about how much you know but until you hear … someone hears it from someone else that’s where the power is so …

Luke:  Definitely.

Tim:  Lukey, we’ll do that.

Luke:  And if you want to connect with us on LinkedIn please feel free.

Tim:  Nice work.

Luke:  Go to www.SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com and you’ll see that you can connect to Timbo and I.  You’ll be able to see our LinkedIn profiles.

Tim:  Very nice.

Luke:  There’s a button there for both of us.

Tim:  Okay, done.  Two more things, Lukey.  We have been getting a number of emails lately about do we do speaking engagements.

Luke:  Yes.

Tim:  Yes.  Yes, we do, we love them.  It’s part of what we do and we get … we’re honoured when we do get asked.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  We’re doing them more and more.  So, listeners, once again please feel free to email us at …

Luke:  Questions@SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com.

Tim:  And say, you know what, I wouldn’t mind one of you blokes to come and speak at our annual conference or …

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  … to our sales team or whatever it is.  Bring us in, we would love to do it.  We do charge but we are very fair, Luke.  Is that fair to say?

Luke:  It is indeed, Tim.

Tim:  Yeah, so contact us.  Last one, we ran a competition in our last show.  We interviewed Kody Bateman who was the creator and founder of Send Out Cards.  That competition is still running and still live.  All you need to do is go to iTunes and write a written review.  Write a written review.

Luke:  Yes.

Tim:  And then email us.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  And tell us that that is what you’ve done and you’ll go into the running to win one of five of Kody’s hardcover books called “Promptings”.

Luke:  That’s right.

Tim:  And it’s a ripper book, very inspiring for the small business owner in all of us.  So you just need to do that and that competition will be … the winners of that competition will be announced in the next episode.

Luke:  When we’re back in the studio.

Tim:  Back in the studio.  Hey, we’ll talk about guests.  Let’s do this, we never do this.  How’s this for guests, guys, we have got coming up in the next, well what are we going to say, Lukey, like six weeks?

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  We have got Russell Howcroft from … who’s the head of Australia’s largest advertising agency in George Patterson Young & Rubicum Bates or some very long name.  Russell also happens to be one of the presenters on the ABC on the show The Gruen Transfer.

Luke:  Yes.

Tim:  So we’re talking to Russ about advertising and what a waste of money it is for small businesses.  Or he’ll have another opinion on that.  Russ is a very strongly opinionated fellow and he’s a good bloke.  I went to uni with Russell.

Luke:  Really?

Tim:  Yeah.

Luke:  How many years ago was that?

Tim:  And the next guest is … I can’t remember this, Ying … Ye Ying and she designed all the Twitter branding.

Luke:  Wow.

Tim:  How cool is that.  So we’re going to be talking to her about creativity.

Luke:  Yes.

Tim:  And what it means the power of it in small business.  We’ve got the fellow coming up from Rentoid.

Luke:  Yes, that’s right.

Tim:  Steve.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  That’s going to be a good one.  Rentoid is a wonderful start up business.  We won’t go into any more detail about that.  But how’s that, listeners, we have got some quality stuff coming up.  And if you’re good, Lukey will be there too.

Luke:  Fantastic.  So stay tuned, folks.  Make sure you come back to www.SmallBusinessBigMarketing.com and …

Tim:  And buy the book, buy our book, buy the book Cha-Ching!  That is a good thing to do.  That’s a very cheap thing.  That’s a way of getting a lot of marketing ideas, isn’t it?

Luke:  Yeah, heaps, 50-odd, Timbo.

Tim:  Fifty-odd or more.  Actually I think it’s closer to 70.

Luke:  Yes.

Tim:  So you can do that, visit the website.  Other than that, Lukey, there’s too much goodness coming up so we’d better go for now.

Luke:  Yep.

Tim:  Thank you for the lend of your kitchen.

Luke:  No worries.

Tim:  And goodbye, listeners.

Luke:  We’ll see you next time.

Tim:  Seeya.

Ms Evancich:  You’ve just come that little bit closer to getting your business booming thanks to the Small Business Big Marketing show with Tim Reid and Luke Moulton.  Please keep in mind that the information, opinions and ideas expressed in this show are those of the hosts and interviewees and theirs alone and they don’t necessarily reflect those of their past, current or future employers.

End of Podcast.