Marketing Strategies: Lessons from Starbucks and AT&T

If you’re looking for creative small business marketing ideas to boost your bottom line and stay ahead of your competition, you’ve certainly come to the right place. Whether it’s taking note of what large companies do — and then showing how you can adapt those strategies to fit your business — or finding cool Web tools that make you more efficient and productive, Andrew Lock shares his marketing expertise with plenty of humor and lots of fun. Click on the Help! My Business Sucks logo below, and watch the latest episode.

Did you see the world cup final? I was in New York while it was going on, and there were little huddles of people grouped around portable TV’s on the streets, it was amusing to watch. See if you agree with the observations from John Cleese (Monty Python) about football / soccer, whatever you want to call it.

Starbucks recently changed its Wi-Fi policy in stores. It used to cost, but now it’s free, in line with many other popular food/drink destinations not least of which is McDonalds. There’s a downside though — seems like business people are virtually living in Starbucks and using it as their office! Apparently in some locations it’s becoming tough to find a place to sit down and drink a cup of coffee.

Google FastFlip is in “labs” mode as of this writing, but it’s a great resource that I highly recommend. See what it does in this episode.

Finally, a big marketing lesson from cellphone giant AT&T. As you may know, in the U.S. AT&T have had the iPhone exclusively for the last few years. Seems like that’s coming to an end, and they’ve done something clever to maximize their reach for as long as possible. I’ll reveal the details in this show.

As usual, let me know your opinion about the topics covered in the show this week — leave your comment below, it’s really easy to do.

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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 marketing tips, advice and resources to help small businesses “get more done and have more fun.”