David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, advisor to emerging companies, bestselling author of eight books including three international bestsellers, and a professional speaker on topics including marketing, leadership, and social media. One of his most popular books is, The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to use news releases, blogs, viral marketing and online media to reach buyers directly (currently on the 3rd edition), was a huge success and popular with companies trying to make sense of how to use tools like blogs, social media, press releases etc.

I caught up with him briefly over the phone and did a quick interview on how exactly the new rules of marketing and PR work. In the interview I also asked very practical questions I believed could help small business development.

Can you briefly describe what exactly the new rules of marketing and pr are?

Prior to the web there where 3 ways to get noticed, one way was you could advertise to buy attention, the second way was that you could convince the media to talk about you and a third way was that you could use direct selling. Those are what I call the old rules of marketing and pr. Not that those are going away, many people use them. The new rules are about understanding your audience and then creating content on the web (videos, e-Books, webinars etc) that appeals to them.

Do you think these new rules apply to local small businesses? Can they benefit from them? Or are these techniques better suited for well established brands?

I actually think that the best organizations for these ideas are small businesses. Because small businesses don’t have big budgets. Therefore big brands don’t use these methods that much, instead they spend money on TV advertising and so on, which small businesses cannot afford. So absolutely these ideas work for small businesses. Think about the ways people reach a small business. Number one is that they might go to Google and enter a phrase, so if you are creating information on the web, people will find you. The second way is people ask their friends and colleagues through social media, whether its a blog, Twitter or Facebook, and if you are creating content on the web you have something people can point to. So it’s no question that it’s good for small businesses.

3. For older local small businesses that are used to the “old” methods of marketing or newer ones struggling to get new clients, what can you define as a clear first step?

The first step relates to what the biggest mistakes I see. What most businesses do is that they talk about their products and services when they do marketing. And that’s the way we were taught and that’s the way most companies do it. The way to be successful with the new rules of marketing and PR is that you forget about your products and instead you think about the audience you are trying to reach. So for instance if you run a small hotel or bed and breakfast, you should be thinking about who are the people that will go to the hotel and then create content for them. So don’t talk about the hotel room, nobody cares, instead talk about what you think a visitor to your town is going to want, think about what a business man in your town is going to need to know and then create content around that.

4.  Is budget a huge factor with the new rules?

Well, from the perspective of money no. Because everything you need is free. It’s free to start a blog, it’s free to create a Twitter or Facebook account. So no it doesn’t cost any money. However what it does take is time. It takes time to do these things. So you don’t need to budget money, you need to budget time.

5. As a small business, If you are in a crowded space and your competitors are already implementing the new rules successfully, how can you stand out?

Oh I think so, because I have found almost no market were it’s to crowded with people using these new rules. We are still at the very early stage of a revolution of the ways people are communicating. This is a revolution that’s going to take another 20 or 30 years to play out. When the printing press was created 500 years ago, it took over a 100 years for the majority of the people in the world to know how to read. And the same thing is happening with this revolution.  This revolution around web based content is that very few businesses as a percentage are truly using the new rules of marketing and pr effectively. So for people that say the competition is already doing a very good job, that’s actually a fear based excuse for them not doing it. Just get going, the longer you wait the more difficult it is to get noticed.

6. How do you measure success of the new rules of marketing?

The main way you measure success is how is business? Is your business growing faster than before? And for many people that’s the most  important measure particularly if your running your own business and so I will use that as the primary measure. But your not going to be able to see an up tick in your business for several months or a year from when you start doing this because you have too build up your content. So what I like to look at is a primary and secondary measure. The primary being revenue and the secondary being where do you appear in search results for the important phrases for your business, that’s really important. And  you can measure that, you can measure how many people are talking about you and your business. So there are things you can measure but ultimately it’s about making money.

7. What would be your advice for a “marketing” company looking to implement these techniques for themselves as well as their current and prospective clients?

That’s a good question. I think that it’s really important for a marketing company to use the new rules because this is the way that marketing is going. The biggest opportunity for marketers is to be an expert in these ideas. What I always tell companies who are considering hiring a marketing agency is, how does that marketing agency market themselves? And that’s the perfect test for how they are going to market your own business. So if you go to a marketing company’s website, and there’s no video, no blog, no twitter feed, and they’re trying to tell you that they are going to help you do your videos and twitter feed, you have to say no. Because if they can’t do it for themselves how can they do it for you? So, I think in today’s world it’s getting more and more difficult for marketing agencies to sell things, like traditional advertising. Although it still exists, it’s not going away, but there is a big opportunity with these new ideas.

8. Do you have any final advice a secret tip or one rule for small business development?

I think this goes back to what I said earlier, spend the time to truly understand the people you are trying to reach. The potential customers who will buy your product or services. I call them your buyer personas, you really need to understand deeply by speaking with them and interviewing them. What are the motivations of the people who you sell to. Really spend a lot of time understanding them, literally interview them whether by talking with them in person or on the phone so you can understand their motivation. Because the more you understand their motivations, needs, problems and requirements, the better online marketing you can do.

For more info about David Meerman Scott, you can visit his website. I strongly recommend his book: The New Rules of Marketing and PR for ANY small business owner.