Reddit mentions: The best marketing for small businesses books

OK, so here is my advice.

First, some background on me so you know where I'm coming from with this. I started my own business almost 5 years ago. It's a tech company, but I think I've learned enough that there are applicable lessons, not only from my work but from the other entrepreneurs this has put me in contact with. Currently my company is self sustaining, has 5 full time employees, and Fortune 100 customers (we make B2B software).

First thing - you have to be really careful starting a business around your passion. This can be an easy way to come to hate your hobby. Remember that it is a business first. While I haven't reread it in years, you might want to read a book called The E Myth which talks about starting a small business.

Second, if you're serious about this, I hope this post wasn't some sort of customer validation experiment. Of course people here are going to be interested. However, most likely no one here is an actual potential customer. I've read some of your other answers here where you've mentioned that games sell "like hot cakes" and there is no real competition and it's a large market. If you do this without any real customer validation you're going to have a rough time at best and be out of business quickly with a ton of debt at worst. Who are your customers? How are they going to know about this place? How do you know what they are willing to pay to participate? How do you know THEY want a place like this? How do you know they are actually willing to pay you money to come to this place? A good book to help understand the various ways you can gain traction is Traction which discusses 19 different traction channels and how people have put them to use to grow their business.

Can you deal with competition? Even if there isn't another business like this in the area, how do you know someone isn't working to start one? If your business is a success will someone start a competitor? Are you ready for that? What if a month before you open a competitor beats you to it? If you have a solid business and plans to grow in place you'll be fine.

I don't know if you plant to raise money or not, but regardless of that fact, think of how you would pitch this to someone who could invest but doesn't give a crap about boardgames or pubs. Would someone who is looking at this from a purely objective money making standpoint be interested? Have you generated enough traction, attention, and interest to make this an appealing business prospect? If not, what can you do to change that? If you can't figure that out now, do you really want to wait until you're deep into this business to try and figure it out?

Set up some metrics. Probably the best way to do it for your business is to measure revenue per visit. How much profit do you expect to make per person per visit? If you are charging $4 per person and then you expect some % of them to buy additional things (food, games, drinks) - your avg per person should be over $4, obviously. How many visitors and at what average profit per visitor do you need to stay afloat? You can increase your overall profit 2 ways - increase the number of visitors or increase the average profit per visitor. You'll have some limits - you an only fit so many people in the building, for example. This will help you determine if this business can be profitable and give you an idea of where you need to be so you know early on if you're tracking well or not. Measure everything that you can.

Basically, just be careful. You're mixing your hobby with your work, but you have to remember it's a business first and foremost. Treat it like a business and be honest with yourself and you'll be fine.

Also, fried foods with games sounds like a good way to end up with a library of greasy games.

I kicked the idea around too, but never went through with it. This book is helpful: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1603582215/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=2GERCT1HPQMZN&coliid=I2ROIXFFE3ASS9 The Farmstead Creamery Advisor: The Complete Guide to Building and Running a Small, Farm-Based Cheese Business

There are lots of regulatory guidelines and certifications you would need to go through in order to sell cheese, not to mention cheese making supplies and marketing your product and the whole aging process. Check out r/cheesemaking for some more info too. My personal advice: start making a few cheeses (maybe a cheddar, gouda and a provolone) and really perfect them and develop them into something that's not just good, but something you can call you own. Enter some competitions and get some feedback. After that if you are still interested in making this a career start talking to a loan officer to see if you can get the financial backing you would need.

Good luck and keep us updated!

Just to build on this:

I couldn't make up my mind either, so I searched for these on the Amazon US site since I don't use Goodreads to see how reviews looked, etc. The resulting links, with the smile. prefix for charity aspect in case you make a purchase, are below. YMMV.


The Other F Word: 3.4

Business Development for Dummies: 3.5

Startup Mixology: 4.27

Starting a Tech Business: 2.67

The 4 Lenses of Innovation: 3.62

StartupLand: 4.01

All in Startup: 4.18

The Customer Funded Business: 3.73

Trend Driven Innovation: 4.38

Monetizing Innovation: 4.20

The Ways to New: 3.84

Startup Checklist: 4.10

The Art of Startup Fundraising: 4.11

Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 4.26

.

Not in the original list:

The Art of Opportunity: How to Build Growth and Ventures Through Strategic Innovation and Visual Thinking

Very few psychologists received any training in running a private practice (or anything business related) in graduate school. Most psychologists I know (myself included) have to make it all up as they go along, with varying levels of success. For me, the "easiest" part has actually been getting clients (way easier than I thought it would be). The hardest part, surprisingly, has been meeting other therapists. I'm a pediatric neuropsychologist, so I need therapists to refer to when I recommend that a kiddo should start therapy, and it is very difficult for me to build up a list of practitioners to refer to. And when I finally do find a therapist that I want to refer to, he or she doesn't have any openings. I've tried meetup groups (even started my own) and state/local agencies, but it's still been really slow going building a professional network.

More recently, some therapists have begun writing books about running a private practice specifically to address this gap in our education. There are also some websites/bloggers that address this topic as well. Try things like Casey Truffo's Be a Wealthy Therapist , Lynn Grodzki's Building Your Ideal Private Practice, or David Diana's Marketing for Mental Health Professionals... if you check those out on amazon you'll also see many other similar titles.

Answers here will vary based on experience. I'm a content marketing guy, so I'd say content marketing. (In-depth blog posts, podcasts, etc.)

Lots of ways to skin a cat here, though. My paid traffic friends scoff at content marketing and say I'm crazy. :-)

Best to stick to what you know or are skilled at. Use that as your bread and butter, but try testing out other funnels as well.

Neil Patel has some great content on getting traffic, IMO. There's a great book called Traction that you'll likely find helpful - worth a read.

I've built a successful SaaS business. The number one lesson is around sales channels. You can have the best product in the world, but if you can't sell it, you're wasting your time. If you don't know what a sales channel is read https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Guide-Getting-Customers/dp/0976339609

If you have a sales channel, you do not need an idea, your channel will tell you what they want. The cheaper your sales channel, the greater your chance of success.

Feel free to PM me with your other questions.

Depends on if you're sticking to the business-centric category or not. For instance, I think Antifragile (although the author is a bear to listen to) has even more impact than Zero to One. I personally know several startup founders or funded companies who swear by it and immediately dove into their systems to purposefully break the heck out them.

Similarly in slightly different direction, I found How They Succeeded: Life Stories of Successful Men Told By Themselves to be incredibly unknown and worthwhile, and Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant to be a "quake" book leading you down the rabbit-hole of marketing.

One last book, because I can't help myself, would be Traction. Although not necessarily a "must read," I perhaps took more notes from this than any of the others, save Antifragile.

Have you guys validated your idea? Do you have hundreds or thousands of people who already gave you feedback that they would put down money for your idea?

If you don't have validation yet, that is the number one thing I would say you need to get. If I had to recommend three books for you to hold close by your side, they would be:

• The Startup's owners manual (http://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step---Step/dp/0984999302) - that will teach you how to validate customers
  
  
• Designing for the digital age (http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Digital-Age-Human-Centered-Products/dp/0470229101) - a comprehensive guide on how to know your user and design for them
  
  
• Traction (http://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Guide-Getting-Customers/dp/0976339609) - gives stories and pragmatic tips on how to find your market
  
  Also, don't become the Winklevoss twins!

Skimming your other responses - you've got two products you're trying to monetize:

• eCommerce site for electronic components
  
• YouTube channel
  
  Both are commodities, with lots of competition, and very different marketing strategies.
  
  Meanwhile you're worried about PPC vs SEO, when you haven't even considered:
  
  
• who your audiences are,
  
• what they want, and
  
• how to reach them.
  
  Is FB the right channel for people who want 'electronic components'? Doubtful.
  
  As to PPC or SEO - it's just a cost benefit analysis.
  
  For example: I had a furniture client who was paying $1.50-$10 PPC for different types of furniture keywords. Average product price was $1,000+ with healthy 30% margin. PPC worked reasonably well. But so did direct mail of furniture catalogs.
  
  > There's is no potential for brand building with PPC
  
  That's right. PPC is best for 'acquisition' of new customers - "people actively looking for X." Once you've got them, email tends to be the popular 'retention' strategy - reminding people you exist. That's why all those annoying "subscribe" popups exist on websites.
  
  As to Secret Sauce, NO. Landing page is awful, and I can't believe someone selling growth hacking could have created it.
  
  Check out Traction by Gabriel Weinberg (founder of DuckDuckGo), or anything by Andrew Chen (growth @ Uber)
  
  Growth hacking can summed up as:
  
  
• There are LOTS of marketing channels (GW says something like 19, but I think it's closer to 110)
  
• Find the one that works for your audience (exploratory testing)
  
• Perfect your message and landing page for that channel and audience (e.g., test, test, test)
  
• Repeat until the channel is exhausted, and move on to another channel
  
• With the right budget, you'll probably do multiple channels at the same time

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

I'm reading (and following), Traction by Gabriel Weinberg (DuckDuckGo), it is awesome! Highly recommended.


http://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Guide-Getting-Customers/dp/0976339609

Rework

Traction

Web Startup Success Guide

I studied finance and was in audit for many years before I got a real accounting position. From one day to the other I was named a Global Financial Accounting Lead with a team of 12 accountants (several CPAs). Since I had to learn or relearn accounting fast I purchased several accounting and Excell books. Slowly I have been able to catch up. It's been 2 years but now I have a much better idea of what I am doing. See examples of the books below (I'm 49):

https://www.amazon.com/Introductory-Accounting-Idiots-Guides-Ringstrom-ebook/dp/B017TS9NVC/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540314704&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=accounting+for+idiots

I would talk to any supervisors you have had and talk to providers in the community. Many join a group practice first. Heard this is a good book too. https://www.amazon.com/Building-Your-Ideal-Private-Practice/dp/0393703312/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1484923541&sr=8-2&keywords=starting+psychology+practice

• netflix. period. (finally catching up on Scandal/HIMYM/Mad Men)
  
• new glarus spotted cow
  
• re-organizing weird parts of the apartment
  
• brainstorming marketing ideas from Traction
  
• stretchy pants
  
  (boyfriend is gone for the week. bachelorette life is sweet.)