LOW COST, BIG RETURN MARKETING FOR YOUR SMALL BUSINESS; Six Mini-Marketing Workshops to Help You Grow Your Business

LOW COST, BIG RETURN MARKETING FOR YOUR SMALL BUSINESS;
Six Mini-Marketing Workshops to Help you Grow your Business

Tuesday, May 19, 2009 from 2:00 – 5:00 p.m.
San Francisco LGBT Community Center
1800 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

A successful small business marketing strategy includes a carefully selected assortment of tactics such as PR, advertising, Internet marketing, grass-roots marketing, and direct marketing.

This unique “Mini-Marketing” workshop series will introduce you to a variety of tactics you will need to grow your business. You will move quickly from one session to the next, and you can choose the workshops you need to build your own, successful marketing plan.

LOW COST, BIG RETURN MARKETING FOR YOUR SMALL BUSINESS is being presented by: The San Francisco LGBT Community Center, the Golden Gate Business Administration, the Small Business Administration, Wells Fargo, VISA, the Office of Small Business, and the San Francisco Small Business Commission

Join us immediately after the for the Golden Gate Business Association’s Mega-Make Contact event co-hosted by the SBA, Wells Fargo, the GGBA, the Merchants of Upper Market and Castro (MUMC) at the LGBT Center at 1800 Market St. GGBA is America’s oldest gay and lesbian chamber of commerce. www.ggba.com.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SCHEDULE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Mini-Marketing workshops will be led by some of San Francisco’s premier small business marketing experts.

2:00 – 2:50 p.m.    

• “How to Build Community around Your Small Business” featuring Russell Hamilton    
• “How to Market Your Small Business to Win!”featuring Mark Murphy

BREAK

3:00 – 3:50 p.m.

• “Viral Campaigns That Tell The World About You” featuring Edith Yeung   
• “Public Relations 101” featuring David Perry

BREAK

4:00 – 4:50 p.m.  

• “Online Customer Acquisition 101” featuring Jack Mardack 
• “How to Build Community around Your Small Business” featuring Russell Hamilton

About the Workshops:

“Public Relations 101” featuring David Perry
Public Relations (PR) is one of the least expensive ways of promoting your small business, and an effective PR campaign can help you reinforce your brand, establish your expertise, and build goodwill among peers, the press, and potential clients and customers. At this workshop, we will discuss the difference between marketing, public relations, and advertising. We will also cover PR basics including writing press releases, building press lists, pitching your story, and following up with editors and reporters -- everything you need to know to launch your own PR campaign!

“How to Market Your Small Business to Win!” featuring Mark J. Murphy
Marketing should be fun, right?! Attend this session and interact in a way that will provide you with ideas and tools to use immediately. During this session you will hear some tried and true strategies as well as find ways to bring your real life experience to your small business marketing efforts. Marketing is sometimes the 3rd rail of a company, but now more than ever, come hear why you should be thinking about marketing more than ever. Topics will include:
•    You can't be all things to all people
•    Demand and Lead Generation - it really doesn't have to cost a lot of money
•    Find your target customer - focus focus focus
•    What is your Social Media strategy?

“Viral Campaigns That Tell The World About You” featuring Edith Yeung
Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter are not just new social networking or Web 2.0 buzzwords. As business owners and entrepreneurs, you can now leverage these social networking and online marketing tools and websites to market yourself, your business, create viral campaign and tell the world about you!

"Online Customer Acquisition 101" featuring Jack Mardack
This is a beginner's level primer intended to bring someone with zero knowledge of online advertising to a working understanding in about 30 minutes. Attendees will learn the different ways it is possible to buy traffic, CPM, PPC, lead-gen and affiliate marketing. The concept of a "conversion funnel" will be explained and you will learn why understanding yours will mean the difference between success and failure for your online campaigns. You will also learn how to calculate your online customer acquisition ROI, the holy grail of online marketing. 30-minute presentation followed by 20 minutes of Q&A.

“How to Build Community around Your Small Business” featuring Russell Hamilton, Senior Business Leader, Small Business, Visa, Inc.
It is more important now than ever to build community around your small business – offline and online.  “How to Build Community around Your Small Business” will feature a panel discussion to help your grow your online community to get business results. The program will feature hands-on training and a new social networking tool that interfaces with Facebook.

About the Presenters:

Mark J. Murphy: Mark J. Murphy is Vice President of Account Services at OIC (www.oicweb.com), an Integrated Marketing and Brand Communications company. A 20 year veteran of marketing and strategic program management experience, Mark oversees the development and execution of strategic marketing and program deliverables and develops strategies to drive client expansion in both new and existing markets. A seasoned marketing professional with agency and client experience, Mark brings his clients long standing partnerships and delivers what they need, from strategic direction to communications plans to go-to-market activities in the high tech market. Mark received his Bachelor's Degree in Statistics from Creighton University.
 
David Perry: David has been a public relations practitioner for 25 years, and he has generated extensive media coverage – print, online, TV and radio – for a variety of clients and introduced many to the Internet, Web strategies and basic online communications. David believes in the philosophy that there are only two forces in the world – fear and open communication – David tries to mirror this concept by fostering dialogue between his clients, the media, and the community at large. Originally from Richmond, Virginia, David moved to San Francisco is 1987.

Russell Hamilton: Russell Hamilton, Senior Business Leader, Small Business, is responsible for managing Visa Inc.’s small business strategy, product management and consulting services for market segments that include small business in North America.

Jack Mardack: Jack Mardack is the head of marketing at Eventbrite.com, a Web site where people from all over the world publish and sell tickets to their own events. Prior to Eventbrite, Jack held leadership roles in marketing at IBM software, AltaVista and the FriendFinder Network. His expertise is online customer acquisition, traffic monetization, advertising performance measurement and search engine husbandry.  Jack has been extensively published on the subjects of search engine marketing, affiliate marketing and Web publisher responsibility.  He holds a BS in physics and applied mathematics from NYU.

Eventbrite: Eventbrite is a do-it-yourself event management service that empowers event holders with all the tools they need to publish, promote and sell tickets online. Eventbrite users enjoy higher attendance rates for their events and increased sales. Eventbrite is based in San Francisco, California, and serves event organizers around the world, transacting millions of tickets to date. For additional information about Eventbrite, please visit: http://www.eventbrite.com.

Edith Yeung: Chip Conley, CEO of Joie de Vivre Hotels, calls her “the go-getter.” Seth Godin recommends her as “the person I would hire.” Edith Yeung is the creator and producer of BizTechDay – one of the largest business-technology conferences serving small business. She is passionate about connecting and bringing business owners together and helping them succeed. She is the organizer for two San Francisco Entrepreneur Meetups with over 2100 members. She serves on the board for San Francisco Small Business Week 2009. Edith is also cofounder and CEO of Clue Market, a marketing and education firm. Prior, she consulted with numerous Fortune 500 companies including AT&T Wireless, Oracle, Siebel, Autodesk, Cisco Systems, Symantec, American Management Systems (AMS), Telstra Australia, Matav Hungary Telecom and Taiwan Semi-Conductor.

The San Francisco LGBT Community Center’s Business Development Program helps LGBT entrepreneurs in San Francisco develop their business plans by providing access to a full spectrum of business assistance services including access to small business loans for qualified businesses.  Free, one-on-one counseling is available by appointment.  

For more information call 415-865-5515 or e-mail Ken Stram, The Center’s Economic Development Director, at kens@sfcenter.org for an appointment.  

The GGBA: For thirty years, the GGBA has served as a dynamic voice for the Bay Area’s LGBT businesses. The GGBA provides members with networking and mentoring opportunities, informal business advice, business leads and referrals. For more information about the GGBA or any of its programs, please call us at 415-865-5545, or visit www.ggba.com.