marketing a small businessThe Biggest Mistake in Marketing a Small Business

I often call this one, the Field of Dreams approach to marketing a small business online. You remember the highly popular movie with Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones (where we got our first look at Ray Liotta as Shoeless Joe Jackson)? No?

Well let me give you the tag line: If you build it, they will come.

Not just No, but Hell No!

This is exactly the wrong tactic when it comes to marketing a small business.

With all due respect to Hollywood, hearing voices in a cornfield isn’t a good way to make decisions about life or marketing for small business.

The Field of Dreams approach to marketing a small business simply doesn’t work.

Here’s where the lemonade stand analogy comes into the picture. I’m certain everyone can relate to the lemonade stand. Whether you’ve had one, helped your child or grandchild with one or become a patron of one, we all recognize the lemonade stand as one of the first entrepreneurial forays every child makes into marketing a small business.

It doesn’t really matter if that lemonade is the most delicious, sweetest, coldest, wettest or cheapest lemonade on the face of the earth. If that fabulous little lemonade stand isn’t on a street with traffic..no one will ever KNOW it.

Operating under the misconception that building a website is enough is a HUGE mistake. Marketing a small business online requires more than simply building a website. If you build it, they WON’T come unless they know it’s there.

This isn’t Hollywood. The reality is, that merely having a website isn’t enough anymore.

Marketing a small business is more complex today than ever before.

For my opinions on some of what makes a full and robust online presence for any small business, download my free PDF at ikalynn, The 5 Secrets of a Social Media Ninja. It’s free and details much more than one scrawny blog post is capable of.

And when it comes to marketing a small business, if you begin hearing voices in a corn field, don’t blindly trust them; call me for a second opinion.