Online Marketing Education for Business

Many small and micro businesses need more sales but don’t have the in house expertise to market their business effectively. Buying in outside advice and support is often not an option in difficult economic times leaving business owners with the option of either doing nothing or doing it themselves using whatever marketing education online resources they may be able to find.

For a business owner who chooses the do it yourself marketing route this article discusses the various online resources that are available and their relative strengths and weaknesses. It is assumed the owner has limited existing expertise in marketing.

Many Universities and large education establishments offer distance learning modules in marketing. Although some is free or low cost the majority is relatively expensive and often targeted at achieving some sort of qualification - not what most business owners require. The Chartered Institute of Marketing and other professional organisations do offer a wide range of material to help small businesses (mostly free) via their websites.

The major problem with the major education establishments and the professional bodies is often their background and focus is on marketing for large organisations and for mass consumer markets. The experience of the people working and writing for these organisations is not generally in the small and micro business arena and the information is often either based on what works for large organisations, or very general in nature and of little use.

What is needed is good quality information and education written by people who have actually been there and done it at the small and micro business level. Luckily, content marketing is important to a wide variety of organisations and as a result there is a vast amount of marketing education information available online. The challenge is to sift what is good information from what is not.

Blogs are one potential source of information on how to market a small business effectively. There are many online, many written by people who have come out of big business and now attempt to apply their skills to the small business arena. The best ones however are written by a growing underclass of people (many without a formal marketing education) who have grown successful businesses using online marketing from nothing and now share information via blogging and other routes.

Another source of marketing information and also advice and support are a number of sites focused specifically on small businesses. Most of these sites do offer good quality information for free but make their money from associated mentoring and coaching which can be expensive and beyond the range of many businesses. Other online marketing education for business sites offer good quality information at relatively low cost but they expect the business owner to navigate the large amount of information available and apply it themselves without support.

Which ever do it yourself marketing route may be taken the key to success is ongoing commitment and consistency otherwise the marketing process will almost certainly fail. There is little doubt any business owner going it alone on marketing will need to invest a significant amount of time in both securing marketing education information online and applying it to achieve success.