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Like me, you’re a small business owner. Maybe you’ve dabbled in marketing completely on your own, using things like business cards, postcards, and brochures, direct mail campaigns, and maybe even cold-calling to reach your customers. Maybe you even hired a marketing/advertising firm or had an intern designer working for you. Either way, if you’re like most small business owners and entrepreneurs, you’ve struggled with bridging the gap from offline marketing messages to online channels.Sure, you know that there are online counterparts to offline, traditional, marketing methods: electronic newsletters as opposed to monthly mail-outs, email campaigns instead of cold-calling campaigns, etc. The list goes on and on, but the one thing that most of my clients don’t understand is the difference between the two marketing methods: trust.

It’s Pull, not Push!

We’re in a world governed by what we want to know. In the good ol’ days, marketing folks sent out direct mail brochures, constructed billboards, and created radio and television advertisements, all with the same goal: get the message out to as many people as possible. This concept, referred to by Seth Godin and other marketing gurus as “Interruption Marketing,” needs to be thrown out the window when we’re looking at marketing options in online channels. The old “push” method of marketing and advertising is replaced online by the “pull” method of “permission marketing.” We are completely capable of finding what we want to know on our own. When we do find what we want and are ready to purchase, then–and only then–is the right time for a company to pitch the sale. Sure, we can try to be everywhere and anywhere and hope that someone in need of our products and services will come along, or we can be where our customers are and connect with them from the beginning.

For a small business with a limited offline or online marketing budget, this is the only way to go. We need to understand that our customers are engaging with each other on social sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and online forums, and we are welcome to the conversation. The key, however, is to not break this initial level of trust by “selling” right away (traditional marketing approach). Instead, we need to engage and help our audience find what they need, answer questions, and guide them into a relationship with our company. It’s called trust, and I have no doubt you understand the concept.

The rule of trust

When someone trusts us–even a little bit–they are much more open to hearing what we have to say, and may even begin to ask questions about our line of work, or our products. The online way of doing this is by seeking out the channels your customers want to connect with you, and entering the conversation, as a human, not a company.

Only after we’ve made a name for ourselves in that particular channel are we allowed to further the conversation into a relationship. Only after we’ve entered into a relationship are we allowed to engage in overt online marketing–or ask for the sale.

“It sounds like it takes time…”

And it does. Sometimes months, sometimes years. The beautiful part about it is that it really works. Companies like Dell, Comcast, and TuneCore have paved the way for two-way B2C and B2B interactions online, and they’ve used marketing online to take it all the way to the bank. Hard work, dedication, true understanding and caring for your customers will pay off.

If you are in the process or have thought about jumping into the conversation online, let me know. I love to talk business, social media, and marketing (online and offline), and I’m pretty good at finding the conversations for my clients.

I’m not selling anything, or asking you to pay me for consulting or building online marketing materials. Sign up for my free weekly newsletter first, and work through some of the troubles you’re having in your online marketing campaigns by following some of the things I write. I promise I won’t ever spam you, sell/give away your information, or take you for granted.

You just want to start a conversation, and I am too!

Subscribe to my newsletter here.

Related posts:

1. Online Marketing for Your Small Business: Networking and Social Media
2. 10 Online Marketing Tips for Offline Businesses
3. How to Use Online Marketing to Make Your Blog Your Business
4. The “Big 3″ of Small Business Marketing: Business Cards, Postcards, & Brochures
5. Online Marketing Basics: 10 Ways to Drive More Traffic to Your Blog

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