When you are a small business or you are the face of your business you can use this to develop relationships with members of your target market.  Look at one of the world’s most famous business people Richard Branson, when people (especially in the UK) think of Virgin they think of him.  Branson has said that one of the most important aspects of his success is that people feel like they know him, they know his story, he’s just the ordinary guy who made it big in business.

There are other Bransons out there but on a smaller scale and in slightly different ways.  If you read one thing this week about SEO then take a look at Aaron Wall’s SEO question and answer session.  It would be very easy for Aaron not to do this, it’s hard work, he already has a large blog readership with plenty of happy SEO Book readers.  But Aaron, being the clever guy he is realises the need for this interactive community like relationship with his readers.

There are benefits of an approach like this for SEO Book and for other businesses who adopt similar practices:

• it creates an almost tribal feeling amongst SEO Book readers, readers already feel like they know Aaron but now he has directly answered their questions that identification has become much stronger, referrals and purchases of his book will surely increase

• if Aaron launches new business ventures within SEO this support is likely to follow him giving him a head start straight away

• prospective SEO Book buyers may be swayed to buy the book by the quality of the answers he provides and the large amount of testimonials about how good his book is.  The question and answer page has turned into a magnificent sales page, who needs a sales letter when you’ve got that amount and quality of “natural” testimonials?!

Many small businesses spend their time trying to look big when they should actually be spending their time developing meaningful relationships with members of their target market and using the fact that they are smaller than the big guys to offer a better more personalised service.

Marketing is now more about these personal relationships, trusted experts are extremely valuable to consumers, just as the consumers are extremely valuable to the businesses.