The Marketing Starter's Guide for New Business Owners

The Marketing Starter’s Guide For New Business Owners

A quick marketing guide for non-marketing folk.

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.”

- Peter F. Drucker

Justin J. Dean Founder of A Couple of Monkeys

The Marketing Starter’s Guide | Justin J. Dean 2

So you’re starting a business. You are likely reading this guide because you’ve decided to start a business or some other venture that requires attracting an audience or customers. It could be an Etsy shop, an eBay business or even a new blog. It could be a new start-up company, or a new book you’ve written. It could be a small business that you’ve acquired, or a struggling business you’d like to resurrect. Either way, you are here because you’re passionate about your business, but you don’t know much about how to market it or where to even start. The purpose of this guide is not to give you all the marketing secrets you’ll need to successfully run your new business, as you’ll likely need help from professional marketers if you’re serious about your venture (and there are plenty of great marketing books out there that are more comprehensive). Rather this guide was written to get you started… started thinking about marketing and the importance it should have in your business plan. It can be frustrating having a great idea, concept, or talent – something that others need or want, and are willing to pay for - but not having the skills or experience to be able to tell them about it in a way that will generate the results you are hoping for. My hope is that this guide will give you some quick pointers on where to get started with marketing, in order to relieve the anxiety that comes with launching a new business. Then you can focus on what you do best – the idea, the business, your product. Where you decide to go from there is up to you. My suggestion would be finding a marketing-minded partner or consultant who can manage marketing tasks for you, because ignoring them or giving marketing a low priority could be the biggest mistake you can make when starting a new business.

“Marketing isn't magic. There is a science to it.” - Dan Zarrella, Social Media Scientist


Contents

1. Your Website

2. Social Media

3. Branding

4. Email Marketing

5. Online Advertising

6. Outsourcing

About the Author

© 2011 Copyright Justin J. Dean


Your Website

“In today's information age of marketing and Web 2.0, a company's website is the key to their entire business.”

- Marcus Sheridan, Author & Speaker I’m starting with your website, because it’s likely going to be the most important part of your business. Whether your business is online-based or not, a functional and focused website is going to be the backbone of any marketing strategy. Whether you already have a website, or you’ve never owned one in your life, here are some basics on how they work and how you can get started building your own: Domain name or URL This is the name or address of your website. It’s what visitors type into their browser to get to your website, or what others use to link to your website. Examples are google.com, stacysheadbands.com, or yourbusiness.com. Coming up with a clever domain name for your company can be difficult. In 1989 it was easier, but today just about every website that makes sense is taken (and even the ones that don’t make sense). The name of your company followed by .com is likely not going to be available but it’s definitely where you should start.

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Domains can be purchased from a Domain Registrar. Some of the big one’s are godaddy.com, register.com and 1and1.com. These are companies that sell and register domain names. You can search for domain names using these companies before you buy them so you know if the name you want is available. Just because you type the domain you want into your browser and nothing comes up, doesn’t mean someone doesn’t already own that name. After searching one of the registrars, if the name you want is not already taken, you can purchase it for as little as a few bucks a year – usually between $5 and $10 per year. You have to re-register your domain name every year or you could lose it to someone else. Most domain registrars will give you a discount if you register several years at once. Personally I use GoDaddy.com to register domains. They are reliable, and you can usually search the Internet for coupon codes and get domains pretty cheap. However, I hate their website, the company philosophies in general, and don’t really recommend that beginners use them. You’ll likely get suckered into buying things you don’t need, and can easily get confused by their intentionally cluttered website. I would suggest register.com or 1and1.com for beginners, even if it means paying an extra dollar or two for the domain. If the name of your company isn’t available, you might have to get creative with your domain name. Try other extensions besides .com, such as .net or .org. You can even use .ly, or .tv or a number of other extensions.


Dot coms (.com) are obviously the most recognized and desirable, but you have to remember that most people who visit your site aren’t going to type it in directly – they are going to get there from a search engine like Google, a link on another site, or they are going to click on an ad if you advertise. So don’t beat yourself up if your domain name isn’t perfect. People are understanding and forgiving when a company’s domain name is a little off.

Some examples successful companies who got creative with domain names:

Bit.ly MTV.tv Last.fm Del.icio.us Ma.tt Chi.mp Insure.me Will.i.am Blo.gs

Also, using tools like Domai.nr and PickyDomains.com can help you get creative and find a name that works well for your business. Web Host Simply owning a domain name does not mean you have a website. All websites need to be hosted on a server somewhere. Large companies host their own websites by setting up servers in a room, connected to ultra high speed Internet connections and hiring a guy or a team to run them. Luckily, you don’t have to do that.


There are hundreds of Web Hosting companies that will host your website for you. Usually the same domain registrar who sold you the domain can host the site for you as well. Often times they’ll even have specials where you can register the domain for free if you host it with them, or at least get a discount. Web Design Once you have a domain name and a host for your site, you then need to actually build the website. There are a number of ways to do this:

Hire a web designer Ideally you’d hire a professional web designer who knows HTML and other scripting languages and they would build you an awesome site that is beautiful, search engine friendly and optimized for your company’s needs and audience. That can mean spending anywhere from $200 to $10,000, but it’s the way to go if you have the budget that can handle it. Do-‐it-‐yourself design software Another option is to use web design tools that are geared towards beginners. Your hosting company may even provide a cheap service or free tool to use. Often times these tools will result in quick, easy to setup websites but they won’t be compelling or optimized for your business. They’ll be simple, may be even bland or cheap looking. If all else fails and you have no budget then this may be the only option you have though – at least to get you started. However, I don’t condone throwing up a crappy looking site, as that can actually harm your


image and potential for sales. If the tool you use doesn’t result in a decent looking website, then maybe just put together a simple site that has your logo and contact information only. Or just wait until you have the money to invest in a real website or the time to learn more. Learn how to design yourself HTML and CSS are not that hard to learn if you are already technically inclined. The best web design software is Adobe Dreamweaver and I’d guess that more than 75% of websites are designed using it. It’s not for beginners, but with patience and motivation you can learn it. Years ago I taught myself how to use Dreamweaver by watching online tutorials and videos, as well as finding websites I liked and spending time studying their code. Let me be clear on this though: don’t think you can just step up and teach yourself web design unless you are serious about taking the time to learn by yourself. If you are not already technical, computer savvy and artistic then it’s better to just let someone else do it for you. Your community college may also offer affordable classes. Use a CMS System My absolute preference for designing and managing websites is WordPress. WordPress is a Content Management System that allows designing and updating of your website to be easy, even for beginners, while at the same time gives you full functionality to create a website that is as dynamic and complex as you want it to be. In fact a study was just released that estimated more than 20% of the websites active today are built on WordPress - major sites


from major companies that you use every day. The WordPress platform is best known as a blogging platform, but that is just one aspect of what it does – its perfect for designing fully functional business websites, online stores or any kind of site, regardless of whether you want a blog or not.

Using WordPress Designing with WordPress will take a moment to research and learn, but it will be much easier to learn than HTML or Dreamweaver. You don’t have to know code at all.

There are two ways to use WordPress to build your site: The first is to go to wordpress.com and pay a monthly fee for them to host your site and use the WordPress software. I recommend this option for beginners or those who are scared of all this geeky technical stuff. Since they host the site for you, you don’t have to pay a website host at all (so the cost is about the same). You’ll get a website address like this: yourwebsite.wordpress.com, which is OK for a blog, but not ideal for a business. You’ll want to pay extra for the feature that lets you use your own domain name, so that yourbusiness.com will take your visitors to your wordpress.com site without them ever knowing it’s a wordpress.com site. Once you sign-up on their website, following the instructions to setup your site is pretty self explanatory and they have many resources to get you started.


The second option is wordpress.org where you can download a free copy of the WordPress software. This option is for the more advanced user, and requires that you have a separate website host like we talked about above. You’ll need to upload the software to your website and install it. It’s not as complicated as you think, but it does require a little bit of knowledge about hosting and website databases. The wordpress.org version of WordPress has more functionality and controls than the paid version at wordpress.com. If you want full control of your website then this is the way to go. If the installation is scaring you, it might be a good idea to hire a consultant to install it for you, then once it’s up you can log in and take over the design. Most web consultants will simply install WordPress for as cheap as $20. Again, if you are a beginner or just scared, wordpress.com is a great option.

Using Templates The cool thing about WordPress, whether you host it yourself or pay them to host it, is that you can start designing your website using a template. Some will argue that a template is not ideal, because theoretically another company could use the same template and it may make you look sloppy or unprofessional. In my opinion, unless your business is a web design company, using a template is perfectly acceptable and is a very affordable way to get a professional web designer quality site up and running with very little effort.


The chances of one of your competitors using the same template you used, and also using WordPress to build their site, is pretty minimal. Worse case you switch templates if that happens. Now, there are a ton of crappy templates out there – so don’t use them. Invest in a good template. ThemeForest.net is a great marketplace to buy quality templates, often for as little as $12 to $30. Within WordPress there are a lot of free templates as well. All you do is download the template, upload it to WordPress, and start adding your content, images, logo, change colors, etc. Everything about a template is fully customizable, so you can make it your own. Some things may be more complicated than others, but it’s up to you what you want to change. You can also hire a web designer to setup the template or add your content, and they will usually charge you a lot less than what they would charge for a website from scratch. If you go the WordPress.com route, they make it easy to select and install templates right from the website.

Shopping Carts If your business requires selling things online, then you have several different options for setting up an online shopping cart as well. Accepting credit card payments online is also easier than you think. WordPress has plugins that help you extend the functionality of your site, and there


are many shopping cart plugins that are free or very cheap. The most popular is called eShop and you can also find templates that integrate the plugin in their design. However, you may want to ditch WordPress all together, and use a shopping cart/website service like Shopify.com. They provide the shopping cart functionality, payment processing and web design – all for a low monthly fee. Again, they host your site so you don’t have to pay a hosting company as well. If your business relies on Etsy or eBay for sales, then you’ll want to setup your shop on their sites directly, and you won’t necessarily have to worry about having your own website.

SEO I don’t want to spend a lot of time on SEO, because it can get a lot more complicated and exhaustive than I want this guide to be. However, its worth noting because SEO, or search engine optimization, does play a significant part in promoting your website and keeping it competitive. SEO is basically the practice of designing and managing your site so that it naturally gets picked up and ranked well with search engines like Google. This way, when someone searches online for products or companies like yours, your website will show up in the results. Without proper SEO your site might get buried deep in the results and never found by searchers.


There are varying techniques and strategies to SEO, and because of this I highly recommend getting a professional to help ensure your site is properly optimized. Making a bad SEO mistake could get you delisted from Google all together, or at least penalized so you don’t rank as high. This could cost you lots of visitors and sales and is hard to reverse. At the same time, you have to be very careful whom you hire to help you with SEO. There are many companies who guarantee you the first page of Google results – I would stay away from any company who guarantees that. 99% of the time that means they are going to deploy strategies that are against Google policies. It might get you the top result for the search terms you want to target, but it will only last as long as the company takes to cash your check. It can also diminish your brand and you’ll lose the trust of your customers. If you’re serious about your website and want to ensure you are maximizing its potential, then I suggest you get serious about its design and SEO. If you’re going to hire help, here are some tips to help choose a good SEO professional:

Content is king. Good content and offering what people want is what gets you ranked high on search engines – not a page full of keywords, filler crap, and duplicate content.

A guarantee to focus on your customer or audience, not a guarantee for first placement. SEO is an on-going effort not a one-time adjustment. They should understand that search

trends change frequently and so should your website and SEO efforts. They should do research on your company as well as what people are already searching to find

companies and products like yours. This includes an in-depth look at your competitors as well.


Social Media

“Focus on how to be social, not on how to do social.” - Jay Baer, Convince & Convert

When it comes to marketing your website, business, or products you want a strategic mix of mediums to get your message out there. Depending on your audience, and where they live, work and play, your strategy may be narrowly focused on certain mediums, or it may be wide open dabbling in many different mediums. One of those mediums is social media, and it will likely be the most important medium of your marketing strategy. The term “Social Media” is used to describe all of the web apps, websites, mobile apps and technologies that allow users and brands to communicate and dialogue with each other, as well as share content and media. It’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIN, Flickr, Last.fm, MySpace, Digg, blogs, and the like.

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As a business, social media can be used for two main purposes:

Social Media for Brand Promotion One aspect of social media is certainly to promote your brand and products. Many companies use Twitter to update the world when they have a new product, a press release, or something to say about the company. Collecting Twitter followers who pay attention to your updates creates loyalty, and return visits and sales. A Facebook business page do the same, and allows you to easily share photos, videos, or even sell your products directly from your Facebook page. With Facebook it’s easier for friends of your fans to see your brand, as your messages and activity will show up on your customer’s friends news feeds as well. It’s also easier to have a conversation with customers since Facebook has a commenting system. Anytime you launch a new product, post a new blog post, make a change to your website, or have anything meaningful to share, it’s a great idea to blast that out to Facebook, Twitter and any social network you are active on. Make a few YouTube videos explaining your products or demo it in action, then blast the videos out on all the networks so you can reach the most people. I believe its important to active on all of these sites, especially the main ones like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but be sure that you are actually active on each one or you may hurt your image rather than enhance it. You have to remember that the users of social media sites are there to engage with their friends and share


content, they aren’t specifically looking to be sold something. So don’t get into the habit of treating it as a one way street - promoting your business without engaging with the readers. The really cool part about social media is that, if done right, your customers can join in the promotion as well. Encourage your customers to post their own photos and videos using your products, or even just a quick status update on how they are using it or like it. Their friends are more likely to join the conversation or try your product for themselves if their friend is the one promoting it, and not you.

Social Media for Customer Service The heart of social media is engagement with your customers, not promotion of your brand. Whether you like it or not, your customers (and your enemies) are going to talk about your business on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and more. You can’t control their actions, but you can join the conversation. If your customers are on Twitter, then you should be on Twitter. If they are on Facebook, you should be on Facebook.

“Businesses used to have a small suggestion box near the door that mostly housed dust bunnies and an occasional piece of gum.

Rarely would someone get back to you. But people can now make a post from an iPhone or a BlackBerry while they’re sitting in your restaurant.”

– Charles Nelson, President of Sprinkles Cupcakes


Promoting your brand using these services is great, as I mentioned above, but that is only going to entice your customers and the public to dialogue about your company more. You are going to see good and bad discussions, it’s up to you how you manage it and respond to it. Using social media you can respond to your customer’s complaints, as well as encourage them to share something positive about your company. Staying out of it all together is not something I advise. Even if your Facebook page and Twitter account are hounded with negativity, your presence and responses will reveal to your customers and potential customers what you truly care about and believe in – which is hopefully quality products and great customer service.

“Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.”

– Seth Godin, Seth’s Blog

Social Media is still evolving. Every day someone comes up with a fresh idea for promoting their brand and engaging with their customers through social networks. Staying ahead of the game means getting creative with sharing your message. Part of getting creative may mean hiring someone to design a compelling Facebook page for your business, or even hiring someone who can manage all of your networks and communications for you. There are also many tools out there that allow you to run creative promotions yourself, such as woobox.com, which creates contests and custom Facebook tabs.


Branding

"Long-term brand equity and growth depends on our ability to successfully integrate and implement all elements of a comprehensive marketing program."

- Timm F Crull, Chairman & CEO of Nestle

Running a business is more than just selling products; it’s selling an image and a lifestyle. It’s selling a feeling, or an emotion. It’s selling trust. Two companies can sell the exact same product, but the one with the better message, the prettier packaging, and the awesome website is going to sell more than their competitor who may not have a website, and whose product is packaged poorly. Your image needs to be consistent and compelling with every interaction the customer has with you, your company and your product. This means you need to pay attention to the design detail and consistency of your message in the following areas:

Logos Email messages Social Media Website Design Business Cards Advertisements Product Packaging Stationary & Letterhead Phone Etiquette Customer Service Uniforms Invoicing

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If you can control your image in all of these areas, and if your image is professional and consistent and in line with your product and the type of audience you want to attract, then your customers will trust you. It will be more about the relationship they have with you, and less about the product you want them to buy. That gives you the opportunity to hit a home run by providing them with a quality product that they’ll actually love. Once you have a solid brand idea and a plan for consistency, use your brand as your foundation. Let it be integrated into every business practice. Your brand should be embraced by your business leaders, and engrained in your employees. It should guide your every decision. When it comes to printing your materials, don’t run to Kinko’s to get business cards. And for the love of God don’t print them yourself at home. Create a good design, and use a quality printer to print them for you. GotPrint.net or UPrinting.com are two of my preferred vendors for printing, and both are extremely affordable.

"Well-managed brands live on – only bad brand managers die."

- George Bull


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Online Advertising

'Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell

of a new car. It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you're doing is OK. You are OK.'

- Don Draper, Mad Men

Possibly the first thing you think of when you hear ‘marketing’ is advertising. It’s certainly a very large piece of the mix. Like everything else we’ve talked about, it’s relatively easy to get started, however if you don’t take the time to learn what you are doing it could be a waste of money. For the purpose of this guide, I’m going to share some tips on how to advertise online. Traditional advertising (newspapers, billboards, TV, radio, etc.) is still a very effective way to advertise, but for the small business owner or entrepreneur just starting to grow his business, you are likely going to get better results by putting your money online. Online advertising is an extremely cost effective way of generating highly qualified sales leads and targeted visitors to your website. One of the main benefits that it has over more traditional forms of advertising is that the results are easily measurable. You can track the responses to your ads all the way through to the sale. This is why


online advertising is so attractive, as you can easily measure how well your campaigns are doing and where your money is going. There are several affordable and effective options for advertising online:

Facebook Social Ads

As I said above, if your customers or potential customers are on Facebook (and with more than 750 million users they probably are) then you should be there as well. However, users aren’t always going to search out your business so you have to go to them.

Promoting your business using paid Facebook ads is a great way to get in front of them, and Facebook is one of the only websites to allow such specific targeting and options. It’s also very affordable and can work with any budget from $5 to $50k plus. Unlike Google, which allows you to advertise where your customers are searching, Facebook allows you to target the customers themselves, on a very specific level. For example: “engaged women age 18-34 who live in Seattle and have children and like David Bowie.” That way your ad isn’t wasted on people who won’t like your product.


It’s true that most ads go ignored, but ads that are designed well and targeted well usually get better results. With Facebook you can also elect to only pay when an ad is clicked, so you are only spending money on the ad if it brought someone to your site. If your business has a physical location you can also add Facebook Deals, which are like coupons that you can offer to people who check into your location on Facebook. Benefits of Facebook Ads:

- Promote your Facebook Page or website - Use the "Like" button to increase your ad's influence - Build a community around your business - Connect with more than 750 million potential customers - Add a Facebook Deal and offer a coupon - Choose your audience by location, age, workplace, interests & more.

To get started advertising on Facebook, just follow the instructions at facebook.com/ads

Google AdWords While Facebook has more targeting options, Google can often yield better results and value. Choosing where you spend your ad budget really depends on your audience and who are trying to target. If you have the money to spend, I usually recommend a balance of Facebook and Google ads.


Google Adwords are the ads or “sponsored results” that show up when you perform a search at Google.com. The results appear in the yellow box at the top of the results page, as well as along the right side of the page. Your ads can also appear on websites that have Google ads embedded on their website, or within Google apps like Gmail. Searching on sites like Google and Yahoo is still the number one way people find websites, even websites they visit often. Advertising on Google is all based on keywords. Keywords are the words and phrases you use to perform a search. If you are a tshirt business you might want to target keywords like “men’s tshirts” or “t-shirts”. When someone searches for those terms, your ads will appear on the page. You can get more specific in order to hone in on your audience so your ads will get more clicks. Setting up your advertising campaigns on Google Adwords can be a lot trickier than Facebook ads. A certified Adwords professional or consulting company is probably worth the money, as they’ll save you the hassle of wasting money trying to write the best ads and target the best keywords. It can take a lot of research to find the perfect keywords to target for your specific business. To get started with Adwords, just got to adwords.com


LinkedIN Ads Another great website for advertising, that is easy to setup and cost effective, is LinkedIN. You’ll want to use this site if your audience is older working professionals, HR employees or job seekers. Just like Facebook you can get very specific with the targeting of your audience on LinkedIN, including:

- By job title and function - By industry and company size - By seniority and age, gender & location - By LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIN is a social network of working professionals and job seekers. People use the site to promote their work experience, network with other professionals, as well as to find jobs and hire employees. Keep this audience profile in mind when deciding whether or not to advertise on LinkedIN or not, as it might not be the right fit for you. To get started with LinkedIN ads just go to linkedin.com/ads

Banner Ads In addition to Facebook, Google and LinkedIN you should target specific websites and blogs that offer advertising and inquire about purchasing banner ads on their sites directly. Rates will vary depending on the site, but they can be very effective.


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Email Marketing

“A spam campaign feels like a smart idea, but over time, the more you use it, the less your brand is worth. A permission campaign,

on the other hand, only grows in value, until it gets big enough that you can build an entire business around it.”

- Seth Godin, Permission Marketing

One of my favorite ways to promote a business is email marketing. It’s fast, cheap and easy. And if done properly it’s relatively effective. Think of email marketing like receiving an advertisement in the mail. Except it’s done electronically through email, and it’s more direct because it lands in a customer’s personal inbox. To be clear, we’re not talking about spam. If anything, receiving coupons in the mailbox at home is spam – you never asked for them, yet it’s your responsibility to throw them away if you don’t use them. Email marketing is specifically the process of sending email messages to users who asked to receive them. In fact, email spam is illegal and sending messages to your customers when they didn’t sign up for them can get you in a lot of trouble. This can look like a monthly newsletter that you send to clients informing them about your company’s progress, new products and other valuable information. It can be


quick blasts about specific products, a new discount or promotion, or even surveys to solicit feedback from your customers. Getting your customer’s permission to send them messages is easy. Just ask for it. Whether that be in person, or with their order, or as a sign-up form on your website (or all of the above). Keeping them interested in your messages is the tricky part. You want your messages to be something that they want to read. Otherwise they’ll treat it like spam and unsubscribe or just delete the email. You want your emails to be frequent enough that they don’t forget about you and they keep coming back to your site to buy your products. But you don’t want them frequent enough that they get annoyed with you. You also want your emails to look beautiful as well as have a call to action for your customers, whether that be replying to the email or clicking a link to visit your website. When creating your emails you don’t want to use Gmail or Outlook – you’ll need an email marketing platform. There are many platforms to choose from, but the only one I’m going to mention is MailChimp – and that’s because it’s the best. I’ve used it for years, and it’s simple and easy to learn. What’s also great about MailChimp is that it’s free up to 12,000 emails per month. For most small businesses, especially in the beginning, that’s going to be plenty. As far as I know, no other email


marketing platform offers that price, as well as the ease of use and tools that MailChimp provides. Email Marketing Platforms, like MailChimp, perform many different functions:

1. They store all of your email addresses, and maintain your lists for you. Every email you send includes a link to unsubscribe from the email list (required by law) and if a customer clicks on the link MailChimp takes them off of your list for you. That way, next time you go to send an email they aren’t included.

2. MailChimp also allows you to deliver beautiful emails with HTML and graphics without having to know code. Using their simple editors you can create great looking emails that will entice your customers to read and click.

3. Once you send your emails, MailChimp will provide you with detailed reports

showing who opened the email, who clicked on what, who forwarded the email to their friends, and more. This is very helpful information that you can use for future mailings. For instance, if the reports tell you that most people read your emails at 8am, and hardly anyone reads them at 3pm – you may want to continue sending them early in the morning.

Email marketing is a numbers game. You want to send out emails to as many people as you can at once, and you can expect about 2% to 3% of your recipients to actually open it and read it. If you send an email to 100 people, that’s only 2 or 3 of them that


will engage with your message. Whereas, if you send it to 2000 email addresses, that’s more like 40 to 60 people who may read it. These are just general averages. If you have a customer base that loves your products and respects your brand, you could see a lot better engagement than this. Beloved brands like Apple see response rates as high as 20% to 30%, and services like GroupOn see rates upwards of 50%. A clever mix of branding, your message, your design, and your timing will gain you the best results – and sometimes that means sending several emails and testing out what works best with your audience.


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Outsourcing

“As technology makes it easier for a business to find and collaborate with outsource expertise,

a huge and competitive market for consultants will arise.” - Bill Gates, The Road Ahead

When it comes down to it, running a successful business – not a hobby, but a business – takes a lot of hard work, determination, and strategic partnerships that sometimes cost money. All of the work I describe above can be outsourced to other companies and consultants who are experts with marketing and design. Someone once said “It takes money to make money,” and they were absolutely right. If you aren’t willing to spend a little money to make your business grow, then you may want to rethink whether now is the time to start your business. I’m not saying it can’t be done without spending money, but it takes a special person who is willing to work extra hard to learn this stuff on their own. There’s nothing wrong with focusing your time and efforts on running your business, and letting a professional take care of marketing. After all, it’s selling your product or service that is most important to you, right? You call a plumber when your pipes are clogged, and an electrician to fix your wiring. You call a lawyer to represent you in court, and a doctor to perform your surgeries. Hiring a marketing consultant, web designer or freelancer may be the best business decision you ever make.


About the Author Justin J. Dean is a marketing and web geek, entrepreneur, blogger, and technology enthusiast. He has over 12 years of experience leading advertising, technology and design teams for some of the most innovative digital media start-ups, as well as some of the most creative Fortune 500 companies. Through his consulting group A Couple of Monkeys he has provided marketing

assistance to small businesses worldwide since 2004. He is also a founding blogger for the tech blog, Mac & Andy (www.macandandy.com). Justin currently resides in Seattle, Washington with his wife and two kids. You can learn more about him at www.jdean.me.

Copyright Information © 2011 Copyright Justin J. Dean and A Couple of Monkeys

Please visit www.acoupleofmonkeys.com for more information.

This work by Justin J. Dean is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

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The Marketing Starter's Guide for New Business Owners

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