Entrepreneur and outdoor photography adventurer Caroline Melberg is the co-founder and President of Small Business Mavericks, a division of Melberg Marketing, Inc., a full-service virtual marketing communications agency based in Minnesota.

Her passion is helping small business owners find new customers and increase their sales by successfully marketing their businesses locally on the Internet.

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 – particularly within their local communities.

She dreamed of creating a resource that would show them how to
affordably leverage the power of the Internet to market their business locally online, and uncover creative strategies for finding new customers and increasing sales.

Small Business Mavericks is the realization of that dream.

From Blue Chip Business to Blazing Her Own Trail

For over 20 years, Caroline has had the great pleasure of creating
marketing communications materials for some of the largest and most successful companies in the world, Including: IBM, AT&T, AT&T Wireless, McCaw Communications, Motorola, McDonald’s and Cingular.

She’s managed hundreds of millions of marketing dollars for the companies she’s worked for and hundreds of thousands of partnership and affiliate marketing dollars as well. She’s been honored with 5 Individual Awards of Excellence and 2 Team Awards for Excellence throughout her career.

She is the author of numerous books on Local Small Business Internet Marketing including:

• Local Small Business Internet Marketing Secrets
• Maverick e-Mail Marketing Tips: Find New Customers and Increase Your Sales!

Her columns are syndicated online, and she publishes the popular e-zines, “Blue Chip Tips: The Secrets of Blue Chip Marketing… Revealed!” and “Small Business Maverick Secrets.”

What is a Small Business Maverick?

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 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,” says Melberg. “Someone who knows that the ‘tried-and-true’ methods that all of their competitors are using are worn out and tired and just don’t work any more. 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.”

If you’re ready to market like you mean it – and to watch your sales soar as a result, you’re ready to be a Maverick!

Small Business Mavericks provides small 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

An Engaging and Informative Speaker

As a speaker, Caroline’s 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.

She resides in Wayzata, Minnesota with her husband and business partner, Steve, her dad, Jerome, and their puppy – aptly named Maverick. Born and raised in Minnesota, she loves the change of seasons and says that “January in Minnesota just makes you appreciate July all that much more.”

She can be reached by e-mail
at: Caroline@SmallBusinessMavericks.com