Victoria Small Business Festival

Bright and early this morning we attended the Small Business BIG Marketing conference held at the Melbourne Convention Centre, which is part of the Small Business Festival running this month.





















Guest speakers included Peter Williams from Deloitte, Dominic Thurbon from ChangeLabs and writer and public speaker Paul McCarthy. We picked up some great tips and tricks on how to use social media for small businesses, which we'll share with you in this post!



The first to take the stage was Peter Williams, who spoke about how social media has been supercharged by the huge growth of smart phones and computing. Some tips and facts we took away that are relevant for small businesses are:

• 93% of marketers use social media to market small businesses. This means if you have a small  business, you should be using social media too.
• There are many cloud services that are available to small-medium businesses that will simplify and reduce the time you need to spend on tasks: Xero Accounting allows you to do your accounting yourself on your smart phone, Mail Chimp allows you to easily create and manage newsletters subscriptions and email marketing campaigns, and Eventbrite can be used to organise and accept ticket payments for events.
• Out of the Australian population who are users of social media, 97% are on Facebook. This makes Facebook the most important platform for establishing your business online.
• When writing copy for your businesses services and products, remember that self praise means nothing to your customers. Reviews and recommendations from others are much more important as your customers are interested in what others are saying about you.
• Linked in is the second most popular social media platform and should be used as an online business card. It is also a great way of keeping up to date with what your clients and contacts are doing.
  
  

 

The second guest speaker, Dominic Thurbon, spoke about the potential of collaboration in the workplace. Some important points we gathered from his speech are:

• Collaboration unleashes innovation, drives productivity and increases engagement.
• Collaborating with your own customers/clients and people from all levels of your company can be a great way of gaining new ideas and inspirations from a different perspective.
• Disorganised collaboration via social media can be a very powerful tool as there is always the potential that they will go viral. For an interesting story on this, have a read of the article The Stolen SideKick.
  
  

 
Last but not least, Peter McCarthy spoke about how to stand out from the competition in your industry and avoid the common pitfalls when starting a new business.

• 80% of new businesses fail within the first five years as their owners burn out.
• Most small businesses direct their energy into delivering the product/service but neglect the essential marketing and advertising steps to get their product in front of their audience. Your product/service may be the best but if people don't know about them, another company who has invested more in marketing will nab your potential customer.
• Every business needs a unique selling proposition or selling hook that differentiates them from the competition. If your company does not have a unique point of difference, it will be judged on price alone.
• Marketing is a process of sewing and reaping. By giving something first, you compel others to give something back. An example of good sewing is offering an e-book for free instead of a brochure. As an e-book is seen as a valuable source of information it is much more likely to be read and shared with others than a brochure. 
  

Overall, the Small Business BIG Marketing conference offered a great opportunity to gain insight and ideas and we had a great time. If you have any questions about the conference or any of the tips we've discussed, please leave us a comment!