Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Maybe try an ad campaign in entrepreneur publications.

I just posted a long reply to a similar question. Although you are more on the marketing end, you are running a business nonetheless and may benefit from some of the posts.

Check it out:

https://www.marketingprofs.com/ea/qst_question.asp?qstID=1684#11173

Good Luck!

Ficticous Business Names are often known as Doing Business As or DBA. They are used by companies to allow them to do business under a different name than their own. The basical value is that it allows you to open a bank account in the company name.

Part of the process of registering for the FBN is to go to the appropriate business office for your State (in California it is the county office) and fill in a form and pay a fee. Then you have to publish your name in the legal section of a newspaper for 4 weeks. This is usually a local newspaper - it has to be in A newspaper, so you find the one that does it for the least money.

You could check these listings to get information on new companies.

Note - what I said above appleis to the US. If you are in a different country, the rules will likely be different.

Why?

You talk about educating folks - often, that takes time. Why would you do this, when there are larger firms who won't cry about paying professional rates for professional services?

You talk about targeting folks before they start a business. Why? People I know who are starting small businesses are too busy and too broke. Most of my good clients have been in business several years, my best clients have been in business over 10 years.

You want to target them "when they consider their marketing". Why? Unfortunately, for many small business owners, they won't be considering marketing before incorporation (or even before product development), but they will be forced to consider this 6 to 9 months down the road, when they realize the world is not beating a path to their door, and when they are running out of money.

I've been selling quality marketing services to small business owners for close to ten years - and I have come to the conclusion that "marketing oriented small business owners" is an oxymoron.

So you want to teach them the error of their ways. Personally, I love the educational portion of a sale. To me, it's such a blast that I focus 100% on the prospecting and education, and leave the sale to others. But the problem with a long term educational approach is that, once they are educated, your prospectrs are free to choose any vendor. And although you have trust and rapport, you will be one of the higher priced vendors, because you will have to recoup the cost of your educational program, while you have created a "bluebird" for your competition.

An educational approach works best when you have a unique product - once you have educated your prospects, and convinced them of your benefits, they have to buy from you. Do you have a unique service? If not, I would be very wary of trying hard to "educate" people.

An alternative to a long-term educational approach would be to take a more direct and less tactful approach (such as this posting) designed to make a point quickly, then seize the moment, and get them to sign a contract before they have a chance to shop for options. And so I would be less concerned about signing up folks before they incorporate, and more interested in getting my message in front of CEOs of existing small businesses.

Have you considered developing an informative and helpful presentation which could be delivered at meetings of small business owners?