109- Lessons in digital marketing for Entrepreneurs

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In this episode of The Struggling Biz, we discuss the announcement of a resource called “Digital Marketing for Small Business.” This was offered since February, 2021, at the site of Digital Marketing for Small Business from Hubspot. It has a resource called The Complete Guide for Small Business Getting Started with Digital Strategy.

As you will hear in this audio episode, there is a free pdf that is available. This is the result of a joint project which hubspot describes as: “HubSpot came together with MOO, an online print and design company, to give you an actionable guide on building your digital marketing strategy from the ground up.”

Now, this assumes that you have neither a digital marketing strategy, nor have you completed creating a mature one. I was interested to see what types of information and gems could be contained in a free pdf that is being offered.

However, I chose NOT to download the free pdf offered, and that is mainly because I did not agree with all the terms of service that may lead to compromising my identity, my information, my privacy and other security concerns. Note that I have learned from being naive in my earlier years as an entrepreneur, and I have seen the problems with malware, with unwanted offers, with small print subscriptions that are almost impossible to get out of — and other unwanted results.

However, you, as an entrepreneur, may have more lax privacy and information licensing practices — and for you, I would like to share with you what the offer of information is from hubspot.com of the categories of info that this free pdf promises to deliver:

“SEO basics and an audit you can run today
Setting specific marketing goals
A buyer persona template you can use today
A brand health check to audit your brand
Competitive analysis basics
Measuring and reporting on analytics
Paid search ad tactics you’ll be bookmarking
Resources for ad creation best practices
And so much more!”

Now, for beginners, this may be a good resource of reference. However, beware that you may be giving up more than you imagine after perusing the terms and conditions of service, which are required to be allowed with your electronic agreement before the downloading of the pdf can begin.

Now, for this entrepreneur, I have been in the small business environment since 1981. I have seen a lot of come-and-go literature that promises to be all you need to know about marketing — and in this case, the topic is digital marketing. In fact, there are a lot of free tutorials on the web (mainly in YouTube.com) and also a lot of podcasts that deal with not only marketing, but digital marketing. So you may ask yourself, “What is so new about this pdf from hubspot.com?”

Well, I cannot answer that for you, as I refused to agree to the terms of service agreement required to download. With having the pdf to download, I cannot see the detail.

But from the list of topics that are given in the web site where the download is initiated, I can give you my opinion based on many years of small business ownership, marketing, and experience.

setting your marketing goals — this belongs to a topic all to itself, and just about every tutorial about small business marketing has this in lengthy detail for the entrepreneur;
SEO basics and the audit — this is something that is natural for anyone interested in maximizing a return from SEO marketing, and thus is not new. In fact, a good resource with sufficient detail from someone who knows about SEO (as he created a course called SEO FOR PODCASTERS) is Daniel J Lewis from The Audacity to Podcast show.
Branding, competitive analysis and analytics — this is handled by someone who has been delivering posts and podcasts since 2006 by the name of Jay Ehret. He has had a few podcast shows (e.g., The Marketing Spot and The Marketing Plan podcast show) where he demonstrates his knowledge for small business (in his other show called “Power to the small business”) in the early days of the podosphere. His prior program called The Marketing Spot outlines all of these topics in detail. And, as I have known Jay in person, his podcast shows deliver a wealth of free information with plenty of lessons learned, gems in marketing and experiences that you can learn from them and help your business to succeed.
Detailed marketing tactics such as search and brand value are also covered in Jay Ehret’s publications and blogs. You may want to refer to them for details on what really works in the world of entrepreneurship today.

So thus, with the lure of the latest on marketing tactics and programs for what is considered “digital marketing for small business,” I do not feel that there might be new information, but possibly older info delivered with the flare of newness in the digital world.

And again, in all truthful disclosure, it was because of what I considered onerous terms of service and license in just being able to download the pdf. Well, I do not like my information sold willy-nilly by any firm just to get a free pdf with what I would consider a probably revisit of old ideas with different names. Thus, I did pass on this.

But you may want to get this, especially if you are a new or aspiring entrepreneur and do not have any qualms of giving up your information that can be sold to another firm for getting a free pdf only.

Whether you wish to see the pdf or not, we hope that you can find the value of digital marketing that will enlighten your plans and help you to become a successful entrepreneur — regardless of whichever source you get that from.

Thank you for your attention.