Creative Marketing Tips for Small Business

This week, we dive into the Help! My Business Sucks archives for more great small business marketing advice from our favorite entrepreneur, Andrew Lock. Enjoy the video, and be sure to leave your comments below…we’d love to hear your best marketing tips, too.


Have you ever bought a magazine from the newstand that is sealed in plastic? When you open it, a bunch of stuff always falls out onto your lap. I usually throw those inserts away immediately, don’t you? You know they’re adverts, right?

Well, I recently bought a techie magazine that included a different kind of insert – a mini magazine. It was positioned as bonus content, and the content was pretty good, but it was sponsored by a chain of electronics stores in the UK called Dixons. Every page featured products that you could buy online. It’s a different way of getting marketing messages through to the consumer – I thought it was nicely done. It’s a big improvement over a pile of leaflets that falls into your lap.

This week’s viewer question comes from Rob of VancouverHobbies.com. Rob asks about what he should put on the side of his shipping boxes to attract attention and to get more business. Rob is smart to have thought of using that space wisely. Watch the show to see the logical suggestions I provide, and remember how few people actually do that!

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This episode’s big marketing lesson is from VistaPrint, the online printing company. They are very smart marketers, and in this episode I reveal a simple strategy that has got them millions of new customers! Sounds hard to believe, doesn’t it? Well, the strategy also cost them nothing! I’ll tell you exactly how they did it.




You’ll find lots more small business marketing tips and resources from Andrew Lock in our Small Business In-Depth series, Lock in Your Marketing Resources.

Andrew Lock is a self-described maverick marketer and the creator and host of Help! My Business Sucks, a free, weekly Web TV show full of practical small business marketing tips, advice and resources to help small businesses “get more done and have more fun.”

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