With full credit for the inspiration to Pamela Slim at Escape from Cubicle Nation, here’s a new service: GroundUp, community-based sustainable marketing consulting.
Read on to learn what it is; how it works; who can be client and community consultant; and more.
What is GroundUp?
- I meet a lot of microentrepreneurs, small business owners, and nonprofit managers (”clients”) who want to improve their marketing but have “no money” or “no budget” or they “can’t afford” a consultant or agency. (True, everything an organization does is marketing, often investing in better marketing is a matter of resource reallocation, and “[p]articularly in small organizations, some things are not going to get done unless you pay for them”, but that’s another conversatoin.) GroundUp offers a platform for clients to get advice and resources from others like them. Because we all trust “people like us” the most.
- At marketing seminars and workshops I do around Portland, Oregon, participants always praise the opportunity to exchange ideas, tips, and experiences with other participants. GroundUp offers a platform for you to exchange your ideas and share experiences and expertise with others like you. Because we all can benefit from the wealth of expertise accumulated in our community.
How does GroundUp work?
Clients: You are a 1) 1-5-person socially responsible / sustainable / triple bottom line business with less than $250,000 in annual sales, or 2) similar non-profit with less than $500,000 in annual revenues.
Email me a max. 400-word project brief. After I post it, subscribe to the post’s Comment RSS feed. Post comments of your own to participate in the discussion. A few rules for you to get the most out of the service:
- Be succinct. Your community consultants are busy people who, if they are to help you out, must grasp your problem quickly.
- Keep the main thing the main thing. Describe only one challenge, include only the necessary and important details, and ask specific questions. The service intends to help you overcome the greatest or most immediate marketing hurdles, not be a comprehensive solution.
Community consultants: You are a generous individual willing to help others like you succeed in marketing better. You have experience, expertise, or skills you’d like to share or to give back for the advice you got when you were starting out.
Keep a lookout for new community consulting project posts (the best way to do this is to subscribe to my RSS feed). If you feel you can contribute to solving the client’s problem, let’s hear it in your comment! Every opinion and advice count. A few rules for you to make this most helpful to clients:
- Keep your response short, succinct, and to the point.
- Don’t advertise or pitch or sell. DO recommend low-cost/cost-effective or open source tools.
- Focus on sustainable marketing practices, i.e. marketing in a sustainable way and marketing to sustain the triple bottom line of Prosperity, People, and Planet.
How is GroundUp different from a forum?
Forums like MarketingProfs Know-How Exchange focus on answering very specific, typically closed, questions, which are limited in scope. GroundUp opens the conversation and delves deeper into client challenges. And it allows consultants to tackle those challenges in any way they like.
How is GroundUp different from Answers on LinkedIn or similar discussion platforms?
GroundUp keeps project briefs (questions) and consultations (answers) up indefinitely as blog posts. It’s very targeted as to who can ask questions and the type of marketing solutions. And we keep it personal and conversation-like.
All community-based sustainable marketing consulting posts are under the tags “GroundUp” and “community-based-marketing“.
So, the invitation is open. Need marketing advice? Ask your community for help! Email me your project brief now.
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I really like this idea. I sent the link on to another small business owner that I know. What a great concept…free marketing! I will be sending in my project page (I don’t know what the guidelines are for that but I will look to see if they are on the site). Suzanne Captured by Porches Brewing Company