Small business owners face enormous challenges marketing against larger competitors but leveraging the power of the Internet to market locally offers them flexibility, creativity and growth that bigger organizations struggle to match.

If you run a small business, you are a vital part of our national economy. Twenty four million small businesses in the United States create two out of three new jobs, account for almost 40 percent of the U.S. gross national product, and produce two and one half times as many innovations per employee as do larger firms.

In fact, small firms:

• Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms
• Employ half of all private sector employees
• Pay 45 percent of total U.S. private payroll
• Have generated 60 to 80 percent of net new jobs annually over the last decade
• Are employers of 41 percent of high tech workers (such as scientists, engineers, and computer workers), and
• Are 53 percent home-based and 3 percent franchises

It's no wonder so many people start small businesses. Running your own business allows flexibility and inventiveness hard to come by in larger organizations. Creating your own success story has long been part of the American Dream. But beyond the dreams of freedom and success most small business owners hope for, the numbers tell a different story: both government data and research from Dun and Bradstreet shows that some nine of 10 new small businesses fail within the first few years.

Why is it so hard for small businesses to make it?

In a recent survey, Dun and Bradstreet found that 90% of small business failures were due to a lack of knowledge and skill on the part of the owner. SCORE reports that in 70% of all small business failures, a key factor was the owner not recognizing a weakness and then not seeking expert assistance.

Another reason small businesses struggle is that they are often outspent in marketing by larger competitors, and lose by trying to compete head on. Many companies typically spend 30 percent or more of their budgets on marketing. For a small business owner looking at the size of his competition, the math can be overwhelming.

It's no longer true, if it ever was, that if you build a better mouse trap the world will beat a path to your door. Small business owners need to find creative new ways to tell people about their mousetraps, and get them talking and excited to buy.

Although it's easy for owners to be overwhelmed by the challenges they face, small businesses are a fascinating story to cover. It helps to keep in mind that very few of today's largest and most powerful corporations even existed a few decades ago.

Google didn't even exist 10 years ago, and today it's threatening Microsoft. Microsoft itself didn't exist 30 years ago, and it laid siege to IBM. Apple Computer was founded in 1976, CNN and Whole Foods in 1980, AOL in 1985, and YouTube in 2005. They all started out as small businesses.

A key component in each organization's success was powerful, creative marketing, starting with only limited resources, but based on great ideas, combined with an entrepreneurial, “maverick” approach.

Small Has Unique Advantages

There are a number of advantages inherent to smaller companies that can be the basis of a strong brand. Small businesses often find that choosing what to market and develop about their brand can be the key to success.

Some common advantages might include:

• Superior Customer Service.
How often have you heard people complain about poor customer service from large companies with weakly-trained customer service departments, strange policies, and difficult-to-navigate bureaucracies?

• Quicker Rollouts.
When planning new products or developing new processes, small business owners living on the front lines move faster.

• Pricing Power.
Owners who don't have to pay rent in a big-city high-rise, manage big travel bills, or lose employee productivity to long commutes can create great products cheaper. This is how companies such as Dell got started.

• Unique Craftsmanship.
Smallness can have cachet in itself: a limited-edition product created with careful craftsmanship commands high prices.

Small Business Mavericks

Caroline Melberg founded Small Business Mavericks to help small businesses find creative new ways to attract new customers and increase their sales. With more than 20 years of experience working with some of the largest and most successful companies in the world, including IBM, McCaw Communications, AT&T Wireless, Cingular, McDonald's, Amazon.com and Motorola, she has spent the last few years turning her attention to helping small businesses succeed and prosper.

Caroline realized that small businesses have a fundamental need for marketing knowledge - particularly knowledge about marketing their brick and mortar businesses online - and that without this knowledge, many businesses will fail. She also knew that because of tight budgets many small business owners find that hiring outside marketing help often isn't an option.

By working with small business owners in her consulting practice, she learned that while many small businesses have websites, they are not taking advantage of the hundreds of opportunities they have to use their online presence to attract new customers to their businesses. What small business owners needed, she determined, was a resource that showed them how to affordably leverage the power of the Internet to market their business locally online, and uncover creative strategies for increasing sales.

“My realization was an evolving process,” says Caroline. “Having spent over 20 years working with large corporations, I learned that while they may be large national companies, their customers don't think about them that way.”

Business is Done Locally

What do customers care about? Caroline explains: “When a customer visits their local Cingular store to buy a cell phone, they aren't thinking about how great it is that they are this large, national company - they want to know if the phone is going to work where they work and where they live and drive everyday. The same is true with every size business, but small businesses owners particularly are not leveraging the unique power they have to market locally using the Internet, and they are missing out on tons of new customers and sales because of it. Small Business Mavericks was created to change that. We are experts at helping small business owners market to their local audience on the Internet. It is a great time to be a small business owner today -with the power of the Web, to quote Seth Godin, Small really IS the new Big.”

Resources Small Businesses Need to Prosper Online

Caroline's mission today is to empower small business owners willing to offset lack of money with innovation, and overcome lack of knowledge by learning the skills they need to dominate in their local market and increase their sales. This is a type she calls a “Small Business Maverick.” A Maverick is a business owner or manager who is fiercely independent. Who doesn't go along with the crowd. Someone who knows that in order to succeed today, you've got to be ready to think differently about how you obtain and keep your best customers.

Small Business Mavericks provides business owners with a number of ways to:

• Leverage the local power of the Web to attract new customers
• Increase sales with a limited budget
• Design campaigns that attract attention and get results
• Create communities that encourage loyalty and referrals

. . . and much more. Her Small Business Mavericks website offers small business owners a variety of resources to help them succeed including Caroline's free weekly eZine, Small Business Maverick Secrets: How to Market Your Local Small Biz Online (and Off!), her Small Business Mavericks blog, free articles on tips for successfully marketing your small business locally on the Internet, and her Small Business Mavericks Members Only Forum where small business owners can post questions and get answers on anything related to marketing their small business online.

She also offers an e-Book entitled Local Small Business Internet Marketing Secrets: Maverick Tactics You Can Use to Market Your Local Small Biz Online! free to visitors who subscribe to her eZine.

Comment on Small Business Trends, Change

Caroline can provide your news outlet with insightful and witty commentary on the marketing challenges facing small business owners, strategies small business owners can use to leverage the power of the Internet to market their businesses locally and increase sales, and how they can explore creative new ways to attract and keep their customers.

Locally, she can also help assess the impact of current and pending legislation on small business owners in your region, and help develop and fill out a story on virtually any industry, geographical region, or personality.

Engaging and Informative Speaker

As a speaker, her audiences find her engaging, down-to-earth and entertaining. Her presentation, David, Goliath and the Long Tail for Your Small Business highlights the fact that the principles of the “Long Tail” that Chris Anderson evangelizes in his trendsetting book of that name are all about small business. She teaches how even the largest corporations today are seeking ways to 'nichefy' themselves to compete with smaller, more nimble competitors-and how small businesses can capitalize on this trend. Small business audiences will be educated and inspired about the power of Maverick Internet marketing for their own small business.

For more information:

• Visit www.SmallBusinessMavericks.com
• Call 952-473-1007
• Write caroline@SmallBusinessMavericks.com

Testimonials:

“Caroline's marketing strategies are cutting-edge, and thus, far from ordinary. Her background and knowledge are particularly effective for small to mid-size businesses looking to find creative ways to attract new customers and grow sales.”
- Terry Gruggen, President, Gruggen Buckley

“Caroline has collected an enormously useful set of tools and resources gathered over years of expereince that present instructive tales about how small businesses can succeed online. This is a tool small business owners shouldn't miss!”
- Harry Hutson, Executive Coach and Business Consultant

“As a small business, we basically do it all on our own - marketing, operations, pricing, promotions, etc. Your materials are filled with practical, easy-to-understand advice that has made a huge difference in our business, and helped us know that we aren't "going it alone"! Thanks for the great advice!”
- Heidi Hurt, Owner, Kafe Beans, LLC

Small Business Mavericks is a company that specializes in helping small business owners and managers successfully market their businesses locally on the Internet .

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