I love social media marketing success stories about small businesses and startups operating on a tiny budget.  If you’re a small business owner or entrepreneur looking to create awareness, earn interest and actually win paying customers on a budget, blogger Mary Hall’s recent interview with the founder of GoGo Gear is a must-read.

Marketing expert Mary Hall published a valuable, how-she-did-it interview for anyone starting a new company or looking for a marketing tactic that won’t break your budget.

Mary Hall spoke with Arlene Battishill, founder of GoGo Gear, a new company making stylish and protective riding gear for women motorcycle riders.

This interview is a rich case study for small businesses and startups in all industries because it provides insightful detail about the founder Arlene’s thought process.  You can peek into her personal approach as she  shared steps to building her new brand using social media and no budget.

Social Media Was New to Founder
Arlene Battishill acknowledges that she didn’t know a lot about social media.   Importantly, she did deeply understand GoGo Gear’s target customers and her new company’s mission to fill a gap in the market.  This clarity helped considerably.

She knew that her future customers, women motorcycle and scooter riders, did not believe that riding apparel could be both stylish and safe (padded for protection in case of falls).   Why?  Because as a motorcycle rider herself, she couldn’t find any protective riding jackets that were also fashionable.

Arlene kept the skepticism in mind when she began her Twitter account @LAScooterGirls three months before launching the company’s finished website and new riding apparel line.

Arlene used a business approach to Twitter.  She searched for terms that pointed to her potential customers on Twitter (“motorcycle” or “scooter”) and began following them.  She crafted a clear Twitter bio that explained exactly what the company does. In her words, “… we only have only one  click to gain their interest.”

Seth Godin, visionary author of global bestselling books like Purple Cow and Tribes, would say, GoGoGear set out to appeal to only those folks that shared their worldview:  Women motorcycle and scooter enthusiasts who want to wear stylish jackets while riding.

Women motorcycle lovers on Twitter began following @LAScooterGirls because Arlene was a real person sharing her ideas for riding apparel quietly.

• She shared openly and candidly experiences in building the brand new company.
• She was not selling or pushing her new brand.
• Arlene posted on Twitter frequently and enthusiastically.

Twitter Followers Became Referrers

When the new company’s website was launched, three months after the @LAScooterGirls Twitter community began, GoGoGear experienced a wave of support and it’s Twitter followers acted like, well, a community.  They shared the new company’s website with friends, made purchases and then shared their delight with the fashionable riding jackets on Twitter.  In other words—Arlene’s Twitter followers built buzz for the new company by referring others to GoGo Gear.

The Best (Marketing) Money We Never Spent

According to Arlene Battishill after the launch of the clothing and website,  their Twitter followers   “…started sending out RT (Retweets) to their own followers and we continued to pick up more followers. The momentum continues to this day. The “Twitter-verse” has been the most important marketing tool we’ve used and the best money we’ve never spent.”

2 Key Success Factors

Personal Approach. I think the key success factor in this new company launch success story, is the personal approach Arlene Battishill used when posting on Twitter.  She was her authentic self and she was “all in”.    She achieved the personal touch in her Twitter posts  by sharing overseas travel anecdotes as they were happening.

Commitment to Use the Marketing Tool.  The founder Tweeted non-stop for three months before the company website and product line launched.  What did she Tweet (post) about?

She frequently Tweeted about her global travel adventures involved in finding manufacturing partners in Asia.  Arlene’s Twitter followers became invested in the progress of the new apparel line and startup company because they connected with Arlene as a person first.  They followed her progress for three months and became “invested” in the new brand.

Twitter Followers to Sales

For those (few) cynics among you that may be saying, well, Twitter followers are not customers—wrong! @LAScooterGirls followers soon became customers and sent their friends and family too.  When new riding jackets were shipped to a retailer, GoGo Gear Tweeted the details.  Retailers would find a line of loyal @LAScooterGirls fans lined up to buy the new jackets right out of the box!

Follow the new company on Twitter here http://twitter.com/lascootergirls
Their Twitter handle is   @LAScooterGirls
The company’s blog is here

Social media marketing is long on hype and short on from the trenches examples of what works.  Mary Hall has prepared a terrific case study for consumer marketing with the article, read full interview here. Thanks Mary!

Mary Hall blogs at Huffington Post and at the wildly popular blog, The Recessionista here.  You can follow Mary on Twitter here.

Ready to put BtoB social media marketing to work for your small business to increase leads and sales like IBM?  See my earlier post here about how IBM has generated millions in sales based on social media and blogs by sales folks and others.

Here’s a quick next-steps checklist to help you get started:

1.    Identify people in your company to create exceptional content. IBM suggests that subject matter experts are the best. (Usually not sales people.) Business buyers and prospects want from-the-trenches technical help to make buying decisions.  Here are some content ideas:

• Develop easy-to-locate information that answers questions quickly for your crazy-busy prospects.

• Include information that helps a prospect ‘fill in’ her business case to her boss to purchase your products and services.

• Create valuable case studies about niche problems you can solve better than anyone else.  This 1-2-3 format works for many small BtoB companies I’ve worked with: problem, solution, result.

Impact Interactions has built online communities for BtoB companies for 10 years.  Their research shows senior executives use information from online BtoB communities to build business cases for purchasing upgrades and new solutions.

• Write a short story that explains clearly to new website visitors, prospects how to use your products or services.  Get help to make it into a how-to video that shines like IndustrialInterface.com

2.     Determine the keywords or industry terms that are most popular with your prospects for online searching.  Then use these terms to monitor websites where your prospects are discussing their issues and questions.
 Click here for a keyword tool I created. Copyblogger has great articles on choosing keywords for blogs that apply for websites too.

3.    Share your how-to and informational content on the social media websites frequented by your prospects.

DemandGenReport.com’s survey titled “Transforming the BtoB Buying Process,” showed that 90 percent of BtoB buyers said “blogs impacted their research during the “Solution Analysis” phase and 3 in 4 respondents said social bookmarking sites such as Digg and Delicious were utilized during the early Analysis phases.”

4. Launch a company blog that’s updated at least weekly.

• Prepare a plan and assign someone to monitor websites where your industry, your competitors and your products are being discussed.

5.  Choose your metrics to track success.  Create a list of metrics that will best help your business to measure and evaluate social media efforts. For IBM it is: number of leads created, lead value, win revenue and win rate.

• If you’re just starting, your metrics might include:  number of new visitors to website, number of pieces of content downloaded, number of new enewsletter subscribers, number of leads generated, number of returning visitors to website, or new sales.

• Or any other data points that let you know how social media is helping you to grow your business!

Have any ideas to get results from social media like IBM?  Let me know in the comments below.

Photo: iStock.

Is your small business looking for proven B2B social media marketing tactics that generate leads and sales?   Read on!  You may like this business-to-business marketing case study.  IBM shares their experiences with social media roles for subject matter experts, sales reps, and results metrics. Clark Fredricksen at eMarketer uncovers valuable social media best practices from Ed Linde II, who is in charge of Internet presence at IBM.

According to Linde, IBM’s social media efforts have uncovered millions of dollars in sales.

I think the aha fact shared here is the four classic metrics IBM uses to track social media leads: number of leads created, lead value, win revenue and win rate.  These basic metrics sound a lot like traditional marketing measurements to me.

B2B Social Media Marketing Excerpts, Tips from IBM interview:

Who in the business should participate in social media?
Experts are best to lead social media marketing in the B2B space.  Not sales reps. Use your subject-matter experts with established authority on key topics.  They have credibility in their area to help buyers that are looking for more information in order to make informed decisions on equipment purchases.

Note:  According to IndustrialInterface, a BtoB startup using social media marketing to grow, it’s all about sharing on social media—not talking about your products and services. Brian Jones, co-founder at IndustrialInterface.com says, “Internet users can smell marketing speak a mile away…Social media marketing is all about people sharing with other people.”

Sales Reps (Do) Blog
Sales reps use individual blogs to deepen relationships with their own customers.   Many IBM sales reps have blogs with RSS feeds that are connected to LinkedIn and Twitter.  Sales reps’ customers can follow them and have an individual relationship.

How to Listen for Leads
The Listening for Leads program consists of IBM employees that are volunteer “seekers” who monitor particular social media sites.  They listen to online conversations and determine whether there’s a potential sales opportunity.  “Seeking” is not a full time job.

”Seekers” visit government agency sites where RFPs (request for proposals) are posted, and there are discussions about proposals. In the tech space, they frequent blogs or discussion boards about the new Intel chip for servers.

“Seekers” listen for clues (leads) that someone is in a buying mode:

• “I’m about to issue a RFP. Does anyone have a sample RFP that I can use?
• “I’m looking to replace my old server”
• “Does anyone have any recommendations on what kind of storage device will work in this in type of situation?”

Then “seekers” try to get these leads to a telephone rep that qualifies and validates the lead then passes it to a sales rep.

Events are Tweeted
IBM uses Twitter to inform customers about Webinars, podcasts, virtual trade shows or physical trade shows and to advertise some promotions. Individual reps keep their customers updated about interesting news and events via their own Twitter accounts.

Right Keywords are Key

Key to B2B social media success: knowing what the right keywords are so that you can search the various blogs and other sites where people are talking about your products.  Using Google tools that filter the conversations that are happening within blogs or on Twitter will help you locate the best websites.

In my next post, I’ll suggest next steps for business-to-business owners and marketers looking to use the IBM approach.

Have any thoughts on the IBM social media successes?  Share them below in comments.

Photo: iStock

You can read more of the IBM interview here.

Related posts you might enjoy:

How to Use Social Media to Get People Listening

5 Social Media Tips from IndustrialInterface.com

Business owners and startups are often looking for ways to increase visibility, stand out, and get known.   Social media marketing can level the playing field for small businesses working to get known online—even on a tight budget.  However, gaining recognition and visibility is still a steep hill to climb for many small businesses.

Here’s a from-the-trenches success story of how a small, startup organic skin care company named Four Truffles won an award for its “Do Good” work.  Four Truffles and its founder, Ana Soriano, were recognized along with three others with the “Do Good” award from Ladies Home Journal.

Full disclosure, I’ve been working with Ana Soriano and Four Truffles for several months.

Small is the New Big

Take note small business owners!  Size is not a barrier when it comes to winning recognition for your products and good works.

In addition to Four Truffles, three other companies received the LHJ Do Good Award: Lands End, Avon Products, Inc., and HERSHEY’S.  Three established companies with large staffs.  FourTruffles is a young startup with a tiny staff, but a big vision for giving back to the community and the LHJ editors recognized their work!

Small Company, Big Commitment

Ana Soriano founded Four Truffles a year ago with two key goals as her mission:

1) Expand her philanthropic work of empowering women
2) Develop eco-friendly skin care products that meet high performance targets

Before launching Four Truffles, Ana traveled to several countries researching eco-friendly ingredient sources.  Four Truffles makes organic skin care products using sustainable ingredients that also give back to the communities where they originate.

Giving Back from Day One

From the beginning Four Truffles has donated 10 percent of all profits to its charities.  Also the company sources all ingredients and most packaging from global communities where women are the primary workers.

Extending the volunteer work she does in her Southern California home community, Ana made it her mission to develop Four Truffles in way that helps to empower women globally.  She found the Women Cooperatives in Morocco to source the Ecocert certified Argan Oil used in the company’s body butters, body smoothers, body wash, and other luscious products.

The Women Cooperatives are the caretakers of the endangered Moroccan forests where the Argan trees grow.  The Cooperatives provide a structure for the local women to support their families in a sustainable way.   You can read more about Four Truffles’ sustainable sourcing here.

Get Social to Get Known

The Four Truffles team makes the time to participate in social media.   Not always an easy task for a small team growing a new brand.  They post as often as they can on the Four Truffles Blog.  They are active on Facebook, Twitter and ImagineThis TV.

They collaborate with their online partners like, BeautyFix to create fun giveaways.

In fact, the ImagineThis website is where Four Truffles learned about the Do Good Awards opportunity!  They took the time to prepare the application, reach out to the charities they support to request recommendations, and prepared a thoughtful post-interview follow up to the LHJ editors.  The process was a big investment of time.  But it certainly paid off!

Branding Opportunities

As a winner of the LHJ Do Good Award, Four Truffles can use the Do Good Award logo for two years on their website and packaging. They will be featured along with Avon, HERSHEY’S and Lands End, in the July 2010 issue of Ladies Home Journal.

Self Nominate!
What can your small company do?  Keep your eyes open for recognition opportunities such as the LHJ Do Good Award.  When you find them, invest the time to apply.  If giving back to the community is part of your mission, make sure others know about it.

Have your own Big Image/Giving Back success story? Post it in the comments below.

These are the nonprofits that FourTruffles supports:

Bridges of Hope South Africa

Paul Carlson Partnership

Palos Verdes Jr. Women’s Club

As a small business owner you’re wearing a ton of hats—entrepreneur, chief sales person, accountant, product developer, customer service rep, and more.   If you’d like to jump on the social media marketing bandwagon, great!  Social media marketing is really the way business gets done now. It’s time to put on your publisher’s hat.

Before you fire off a bunch of clever Tweets or set up one of the latest Facebook pages, you’ll want to make sure you’ve got a plan to develop lots of original, exceptional how to articles, white papers, online videos and other content.  Content that’s going to set you apart from your competitors.

Do yourself a favor.  Figure out what tasks and functions aren’t paying off.  Evaluate everything you and your team are doing—include marketing and every other function.  If a program or task isn’t producing new prospects and leads, delivering happiness to your customers, or producing revenue—either outsource it or eliminate it. Be brutal.

Free up your time and your team’s time and energy for creating exceptional content that demonstrates your unique competitive advantage..  Social media marketing can’t be phoned in.  She with the best content and the best interaction online wins.

During my time in corporate America, I experienced repeatedly how new programs and initiatives failed because the senior team didn’t (have the guts to) eliminate non-productive, non-revenue producing tasks from their staffs.  Executives simply piled on new programs/tasks and rarely considered what functions could be eliminated.

This is the beauty of a small company, you’re more nimble and you can quickly discard what’s not working and invest your time and energy in a new role:  exceptional content publisher.

What tasks have you seen successfully eliminated in order to find the time for social media marketing?  Or successfully outsourced/delegated? Post your thoughts in the comments section below.

Other posts you might enjoy:

1. Five BtoB Social Media Marketing Tips from IndustrialInterface.com’s Brian Jones

2. Junta42 Content Marketing Blog:  37 Reasons to Blog

This begins a series of posts for small business owners, startups and B2B marketers that are new to using social media to grow their companies.  Or, are ready to reconsider established marketing tactics and look for new ways to achieve customer and business growth.

Every dollar and every minute you spend on marketing tactics is for one purpose:
business growth!   If you’re not satisfied with the growth from your current marketing tactics you’ll want to explore new options for attracting prospects.  That’s what I’ll be posting about in the coming weeks.

According to Gary Vaynerchuk, venerable social media entrepreneur, blogger, successful retailer, WineLibrary  expert, and author of the best seller Crush It! ,

Regardless of what business you’re in, you’re really in the content business. –Gary Vaynerchuk

So the sooner you get into the I-am-in-the-content-business mindset the better.

Also, I firmly believe that social media marketing and content marketing are excellent tools for small businesses.  Social media marketing is no longer a nice to have—it’s a must-have.   But before you jump on the Twitter/Facebook bandwagon, there are some key steps to take to get your small business marketing ducks in a row.
This means:

1. Define your goals
2. Create tactics that support your goals
3. Think though the benefits

Here’s the first example of a goal, content marketing tactic and benefits to using the tactic.

Goal: Sharpen your ability to stay on top of developing customer trends, issues and problems.

Tactic: Build your own process for listening online.   You probably have some proven ways of monitoring what on your best customers’ minds.  (Taking them to lunch or just checking in with a periodic phone call.) Map out a process that works for your company to accomplish the same goal online.

To keep up with online mentions of key terms used by using Google Alerts, Google Reader or other free tracking tools.   Fine-tune the list of keywords you track.

Review the terms your customers are using to search online for solutions and answers.  Issues may crop up online before your customers mention them to you or your staff in offline conversations.

Think how in control you’ll feel after setting up your own process to monitor your industry’s online conversations!

Related posts about monitoring online conversations and finding the right keywords to track:

Mashable’s post on How to use Google Reader

Identifying Keywords, How to Listen Online to Find Content Topics That Lead Prospects to Your Site

Colin Alsheimer’s great post How to Set Up a Listening Station

Photo: istock

Gary Vaynerchuk, the New York Times/Wall St. Journal best-selling author of “Crush It!  Why Now is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion” is a savvy businessperson that every entrepreneur, small business owner, marketer, CEO, etc. can learn from.

He’s raised the business use of blogging, online video, and Twitter to an art form.  He’s mastered social media as a method to reach out to customers, engage them and sell them products they love, like few others have.

Gary stopped by Carlsbad, CA (my hometown) a few weeks ago, thanks to Loren Sanders.  Loren Sanders owns North San Diego County-based Coastal Home Finder.

Gary Vaynerchuk, Nov. 4, 2009, Carlsbad, CA

Gary’s Story

If you haven’t heard about Gary Vaynerchuk, the short version is that he was a child-entrepreneur who taught himself to turn a profit selling baseball cards.  He then turned his family’s New Jersey wine retail store into a multi-million dollar operation.  I won’t waste space with how many blog readers, @garyvee  followers and Wine Library TV viewers Gary has now.  Check out Wine Library TV episode number 792 here .

The 140-page Crush It! is a guide not to just social media, but contains the code to doing business successfully in our Web-centric economy.    Gary speaks volumes to any businessperson that has a passion for their company, product or service.

Gary Vaynerchuk is also the most generous speaker I have heard in years.  He speaks from the heart; I could see him digging for more words to ensure that everyone got his points.

Content, Customer Service, Content

The key message of Crush It! and of his presentation in Carlsbad was not just that social media is the future.  He also believes that:

• Content is K-I-N-G.  No matter what business you are in,  you’re (first) in the content creation business.
• (Excellent) Customer service is mandatory.  Gary once  (when her order was misplaced) drove 3 hours one way in a snow storm to deliver a case of white Zinfandel to his wine store customer who needed it for a party.
• Passion for what you’re developing, selling, marketing is mandatory.
• Being authentic is, well, mandatory.

You can best create content, according to Gary, by consuming everything written, spoken, published about your industry space.  And then producing the most authentic content available and sharing it via social media.   Until 3:00 am if necessary.  (You get the feeling that to Gary, sleep is overrated when you’re launching a company or a product.)  He believes that when you’re following your passion you’re not going to feel the fatigue.

Lee Odden posted a terrific book review of Crush It! at Toprank Blog. Read it here.  Thanks, Lee!  You nailed it! I couldn’t have done a better job of summarizing Gary’s key messages.

Crush It the book

check out my friend Gary’s Business Book

add this widget to your site.

Gary Vaynerchuk fielded our audience questions with eloquence, tough love and truly helpful suggestions.  And he didn’t give up till we did!  Oh, then he kindly signed books for as long as we stood in line.  Generous.

Thanks Loren Sanders for bringing Gary Vaynerchuk to Carlsbad!  Thanks Gary for sharing your timely insights in a way that we can all get!  Everyone in the audience got a ton out of your wisdom.

What’s your opinion of the messages in Crush It!?

How Service-now.com is Beating the Goliath(s) in the IT  Management Software Space

Shannon Free-Cleveland, UCSD Extension, Matt French & Rhett Glauser of Service-now.com  (San Diego, Dec. 3, 2009)

• Does your small B2B business have a great story to tell and no one is listening?

• Are your primary B2B lead generation tools cold calling and large (pricey) industry events?

• Do you have more than 1 mention each month by your industry analysts/influencers?  Less than 1 mention each month?

If so, you’re where Service-now.com was about two years ago with their marketing efforts. Think: small team, small budget.  You may benefit from reviewing a presentation made at a recent Marketing Boot Camp I put together for the TechAmerica San Diego Sales & Marketing Roundtable.

Service-now.com is the industry’s first IT management software as a service (SaaS) provider. Two years ago the small startup company’s marketing efforts were not increasing visibility and awareness for the Service-now.com brand.  Service-now’s then 2-person marketing team dug in and tried new marketing tactics like content marketing using webinars, Twitter to drive attendance at webinars, blogging to keep customers and prospects informed and more.

The results? Service-now.com has nearly doubled annual revenues to north of $35 million, has won 335 of the world’s biggest companies as customers, and has over 130 employees.  And the marketing team is all the way up to 4 folks.

Find out how Service-now.com:

1. Dove into social media—Twitter, blogging, Ning and more—learning as they went along and began to get their story out.
2. Put their raving fan customers to work telling the Service-now.com story without asking anyone to spend hours/days writing a detailed document.
3. Created valuable content in the customers’ own words using cost- and time-effective webinars.

Here is Service-now.com’s PowerPoint from the TechAmerica San Diego event.   Enjoy:

In his video Qualman asks, “Is Social Media a Fad or the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?”

If you’re a small business owner that is still sitting on the sidelines of social media marketing, watching this video is a wise use of 4 minutes.

Best quote: “We no longer search for news–it finds us. In the near term we won’t search any longer for products and services–they will find us via social media”

My favorite small business-impacting stats from the video:

- If Facebook were a country it would be the 4th largest (China, India, US, Facebook)
- 25% of search results on world’s top 20 largest brands are links to User Generated Content
- 34% of the world’s 200,000,000 bloggers post opinions about products and brands
- For most brands, their social graph is a more important ranking than their rank on Google

Read Erik Qualman’s list of statistic sources here. The 180+ blog post comments are interesting too.

Are your small business products and services ready to be found via social media?

If your small business is looking for ways to increase the number of web visitors—as most of us are—here are seven content marketing ideas.  The secret to being found online is a web site updated with an ongoing supply of fresh, relevant content when your prospects are searching for solutions.

Before you can Tweet your way to successful marketing and sales, you’ll want to publish lots of valuable content.   Content that sets you apart from your competitors.

Content Marketing Tactics:

1. Create original, relevant content that attracts your prospects. Invest time in asking your customers and prospects about their information needs. What kinds of answers/how-to’s/tips are they having trouble finding online?   What are their favorite information sites when problem solving?  Do they use online forums?  Blogs?  Trade publication sites? When do they use print sources? More content ideas here.
2. Generate content that stands out. Go way beyond FAQs.  Your competitors publish frequently asked questions. Break the mold.  Be creative.  As Seth Godin suggests: “Go to the edges…Start where the last person left off.”  Look for innovative content formats that are not common in your industry.  Short videos?  Coolest case study of the month? Top 10 questions people forget to ask when buying a solution.
3. Publish fresh content on your web site as often as you can. Searchers and search engines love fresh content.  Don’t wait for a new product release.  A press release doesn’t usually equal fresh content.  Unless it includes a customer success story using your products/services.
4. Monitor your Google Alerts and Yahoo Alerts closely. Track appearances of keywords relevant to your offerings. Check out the web site where your industry content is published.
5. Monitor your competitors’ content to keep up with current topics. Set up Google Alerts for competitor company names, products.  When the Alerts arrive, review the sites where your competitors are getting their content published.  Find the holes in competitor content.  Fill them with better content.  What’s missing?  What info can be presented better?
6. Publish a company blog.  If you don’t already maintain a corporate blog, it’s time to start because blogs are easier to update than (most) web sites.   By posting relevant content a few times a week, you will be more findable by the search engines and prospects.  I posted more about business blogging here.
7. Stay on top of the latest issues/trends talked about online by your prospects/customers. Check in often with the key social networking sites that your prospects use.  If you do not have time to do this—find someone that can.  Stay in front of your market’s info-needs curve by producing timely content about new issues that your prospects are facing.

A recent Forbes survey here of the online searching habits of 354 top executives confirms the need for relevant content.  Some key survey findings from these execs (firms with $1 billion-plus in annual revenues):

• Executives cite a more than 2:1 preference for viewing work-related information online (70%) instead of in print (30%).

• 53% of executives surveyed prefer to gather information online themselves.  Not delegate it.

• Are you selling to execs under the age of 40? These folks search online for information over 20 times each day.

• 86% said they occasionally or frequently click on linked words from Web articles and content

So, as an example, given the specific data provided in this post, how likely are you to click through to review the Forbes CSuite Digital Survey?  Or to read more about it at Forbes.com?

Related posts:

How to: 5 Social Media Marketing Tips from IndustrialInterface.com Co-Founder