Business Networking: Small Business Owners' Recession Survival

Part of recession survival is keeping the customers you have and finding new ones. Many small businesses struggle with finding the right answer within their marketing budget. New book, MUDDLED, MEAGER AND MESSY, Marketing performance repair manual for small business, offers plain language information specifically designed for small business.

Released just last week, the new book by Canadian author and marketing consultant, Wendy Moore-MacQueen, shares information to focus small business marketing and help owners figure out how to spend their marketing budget efficiently.

Moore-MacQueen has over 25 years experience helping businesses of all sizes make the most of their marketing budget and grow their business. She currently specializes in small and rural business through her marketing consultancy firm, Mormac Brand Re-engineering.

"I get so frustrated when I see business people handling their marketing when they don't really have any training or experience to back up their decisions," Moore-MacQueen says. "I based the book on my marketing workshop for small business. The workshops allowed me to see the things that get small business owners excited about their marketing and the things they are missing."

The book has been designed to be a quick read. It's divided into sections from the importance of branding even for the smallest business right through to how to build a marketing plan and budget. The section about customer definitions is very popular, according to Moore-MacQueen.

"Business owners and managers know they have to define who their customer is before they can make decisions about how to reach them," she explains. "But it's interesting to see them discover what they don't know about really targeting their marketing."

The book talks about the importance of targeting, particularly in recessionary economies. It reviews information about traditional and emerging media along with tactics that are functional and inexpensive for small business.

"I had the chapter about gremlins but up on the website," she adds. "There are five things about small business marketing that make me crazy and rather than repeat myself throughout the book, I made it the first chapter. So business people can read the sample chapter and even if that's all the information they get, they'll be in a much better place to handle their marketing well."