Wall Street Journal Blogs:
Marketing to business owners has gotten tricky with credit markets tight and gas and food prices rising.

Marketing adviser Warrillow & Co. recently surveyed 2,036 small businesses with fewer than 100 employees on their expectations and needs during a troubled economy. Nearly 60% say they expect the real volume of goods and/or services sold in the next three to 6 months would be unchanged or lower.

But those woes also present opportunity for marketers. Here are recommendations from Warrillow for reaching and helping small businesses:

1. Target optimistic entrepreneurs: Warrillow’s survey asked businesses that expected higher sales in coming months where they went for news and networking. The top 2 answers in a few categories: industry trade publications and city business journals; Entrepreneur, Inc. and Wired magazines; city newspapers and The Wall Street Journal (publisher of this blog); radio from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. or 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.; msnbc.com and craigslist; ebay and LinkedIn.

2. Position yourself as a sales driver: How can your product or service directly increase sales for a small business? If it can’t, then partner with companies that can.

3. Run ‘likely to leave’ models: On a scale of 1 to 5, (one being ‘do not at all agree’ and five being ‘completely agree’) small businesses weighed in at 3.2 when asked if they’d consider switching vendors. Warrillow suggests analyzing customer behavior to identify those who are most likely to leave and then target retention activities toward those likely defectors.

4. Offer self service: Business owners indicated they wanted more control. Warrillow cites United’s PassPlus travel program as an example of a self-serve model that lets small businesses avoid using costly travel-management services.

5. Intercept businesses before they make their next move: Try free trials and discounts. Change advertising messages from awareness-raising to ‘targeted, engagement-based’ messages.

More ways here.

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By MrMoney on June 11th, 2008
In: Tips / Dicas, Posts In English, Small Business  | 

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