THIS OFFER HAS ENDED!

You may have heard that we’re expecting our fourth child sometime in the next couple of weeks. My wife, the kids and I are extremely excited and are looking forward to meeting this new little Miracle (sorry, couldn’t resist).

At the same time, I’ve been looking for an interesting and fun thing to do with another birth in my life – one of a website nature. And I think I’ve done it:

Until noon, eastern, on Sunday, August 30th, I’m going to sell my business-ready, template-based websites for the absolutely insane low price of $350. No typo, I mean three hundred and fifty dollars. Sounds pretty good, huh?

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Word-of-mouth is certainly the most powerful form of marketing.

You know how it works, you find some amazing product or use some stupendous service and you can’t help but tell people about it. It’s as though you’ve found something unique that you have to share with others.

As a small business owner, word-of-mouth marketing can be your best friend. The cost is low and the affect can be huge.

But on thing that always gets in the way more effectively using word-of-mouth marketing is the idea that you have to create the greatest product or service in the world. If it’s even possible, it’s not necessary.

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If you run a small business you’re likely making decisions all the time. If it’s not what product to develop it’s where to publicize your business. Or perhaps you’re considering hiring a virtual assistant or looking for a joint venture partner. Either way, you’re business is forcing you to make choices all day long.

But to be successful, you’re ultimately not the decision maker. And if you want to be successful, you shouldn’t be.

I know what you’re thinking (other than this Dawud cat is crazy), “Then who makes the decisions if I don’t?”

Your market does, of course.

You can sit back everyday, all day and make decisions about where to steer your business. Sure you decide what emails to respond too, what phone calls to take, and where to put your marketing efforts. You decide to develop this product or refine that service or to build this relationship or that one.

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A number of the clients I work with blog. Either they want to get started and need to learn how or they’re already blogging and want to make a greater impact with their blog.

But one thing is similar between almost every client…they somehow see their blog as their business. I’m not sure where this developed exactly, but I see this all over the web as well. Perhaps there’s a misunderstanding between those who have made money blogging and those who want too.

But a blog is not a business. Blogging, in it’s own right, is no more a business than your gasoline is a car. Sure, the car and gasoline are forever linked, even dependent on each other, but you’re not going to step inside a can of gas and make it to the grocery store.

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According to some, email marketing is dead because of beefed up spam filters. Others say that interruption marketing – where you’re life is interrupted by some marketing pitch has reached the end of its effectiveness. Email marketing is definitely a part of interruption marketing.

But what’s the truth? Have we reached a point where we should dump our email lists and find other channels to market through? Or is email marketing still as viable as it always has been?

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You know I love word of mouth marketing. I find it to be one of the purest, simplest and most rewarding ways of getting my business known.

But did you know that word of mouth marketing can be illegal?

According to Andy Sernovitz there’s a new bill (pdf) being introduced in the U.K. which will make some marketing practices illegal. The bill is meant to stop false and misleading marketing practices. Of course, word of mouth marketing could easily fit into that category if marketers were deceptive about their campaigns.

So what makes word of mouth marketing illegal?

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There are lots of keys to creating a successful business. Yet the one that I’ve found to be most important – and often most lacking in small businesses is positioning.

There’s lots of definitions of positioning because the term is often used along side branding. The definition that I gravitate to is:

Positioning is the space that you wish to occupy in your target audience’s mind, relative to your competitors.

In this short video, [ continue reading & share your thoughts → ]