1. Crowd funding:
By now, you must have heard about Crowd Funding. It is a relatively new and innovative way of raising funds for a project or business, without the need to go to the bank and ask for a loan.

You might ask why are we referencing it in a marketing blog and the answer is simple. If you are developing a new product or service and you look to crowd funding as a means of funding it, at the end of the project you potentially have a preformed client base. This is particularly well exemplified across the gaming industry, where new games are crowded funded by enthusiastic individuals, passionate about the game and keen to help fund its development. These investors are frequently the game’s target audience and are emotionally, as well as financially, invested in the final product. Crowd funding can be a shrewd way of building a product / service’s client base, as well as funding its development.

If this has got you intrigued, here are a few sites to take a look at:

• Crowd Funder
• Kick Starter

• We Fund

2. Marketing Grader from Hubspot:

Interested in finding out how your website scores across the following categories against competitors and industry best practice?

Blogging
Social
Lead generation
Mobile
SEO

Visit Marketing Grader for a quick and insightful report outlining where you site is performing well and where there are areas for improvement. It is free and they will even keep you updated on the impact of your future website changes on your site’s benchmarked performance on an on-going basis.

3. Delivering Happiness – A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose

This book comes very highly recommended and is a must add to the libraries of all those interested in learning how CEO Tony Hsieh took online retailer Zappos (now part of Amazon) to annual sales of $1 billion by employing some rather unconventional and innovative methods. SMEs can take inspiration and ideas from Hsieh’s techniques.

You can find out more about the book here – Delivering Happiness.