About MarketingOverEasy.com | About Dave Ramacitti | Frequently Asked Questions | Dave’s kudos
About Us
MarketingOverEasy.com is about practical, understandable, actionable and affordable marketing know-how designed specifically for the needs of small business. Does this sound like you?
Advertising is so expensive and my budget is limited.
I’m pestered all the time by ad salespeople from radio, TV, yellow pages, and newspapers, all claiming to be THE answer to my marketing needs.
I feel like I waste half the money I spend on marketing.
Isn’t there any “free” publicity I can get for my business?
How do I know what promotions will work best for me?
You’re not alone. Millions of small business owners feel these same dilemmas. They know they need to do something to promote their business, they’re just not sure what. I started MarketingOverEasy.com because I “get it” that you want and need marketing and promotion advice that:
- Understands and is based on the unique needs and perspective of small business --- not globe-straddling giants with deep pockets.
- Speaks the language of small business --- not some incomprehensible “marketing-speak.”
- The small business owner can put into action the next day --- in other words, that’s real-world practical.
- Is customized to their individual situation and their unique marketplace --- is one-on-one.
- And last, but far from least, that the money-squeezed small business can afford!
MarketingOverEasy.com will leverage the power of the Internet to deliver powerful and affordable marketing products and services to small businesses, like…:
My informative books on small business marketing - Yea, I know there are lots of marketing books out there. But, you know what? Most of them are written by corporate marketing experts (or academics) for other corporate marketing (or academic) types! But what works for IBM or Proctor & Gamble isn’t what’s going to work for small businesses.
My books are practical “how to” books that the small business marketer can put to work immediately to market their business smarter!
The Marketing Over Easy blog – I love talking about marketing! So two or three times a week the blog will cover thoughts, comments, tips and advice guaranteed to be informative and lively. And the best part is, you can interact with me and other small business marketers! You can ask questions. You can share what works for you and what doesn’t.
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About Dave Ramacitti
Marketing is the most important thing you do as a small business, period. A bold statement, but I sincerely believe it. So sincerely, in fact, that I have been called “the evangelist of small business marketing.” To which I say, “Thank you, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
For over 40 years I’ve labored in the trenches of small business marketing, like:
- Trying to start my first business while still in high school, where I learned that you have to invest in promotion if you want your business to grow.
- Writing my first marketing “book” --- really a 45-page hand-typed booklet --- called “A PR Primer” while still in college, where I learned how much I love talking, writing and teaching about marketing.
- Owning a retail store, where I learned about the power of word-of-mouth promotion.
- Working as the editor and publisher of several weekly newspapers, where I learned the tricks of making small business advertising work.
- Working as the founder and editor / publisher of a monthly magazine and of other specialty publications, where I learned about customizing products to meet specific customer needs.
- Operating my own marketing and public relations firm for 15 years, where I did everything from knock out routine news releases to develop a major national rollout plan for a new product.
In the 1990s I wrote three books for the small business market --- Do-It-Yourself Publicity (1990), Do-It-Yourself Advertising (1992), and Do-It-Yourself Marketing (1994). They were published by the major business publisher AMACOM, the publishing division of the American Management Assn. The books received critical acclaim and two were translated for the international market.
Click here to read about the kudos Dave’s gotten on his books
I love to write, teach and talk about marketing. MarketingOverEasy.com lets me do all three!
Frequently asked questions
What is MarketingOverEasy.com?
MarketingOverEasy.com leverages the Internet to provide exclusive, customized, in-depth marketing information and advice specifically designed for small businesses. Our vision is to be the site where small businesses can go for understandable, affordable and actionable marketing tips, techniques and coaching.
Why MarketingOverEasy.com?
Because marketing is the most important activity a small business has. A business does not survive without customers and marketing is about bringing customers through the door. No matter what business you might think you’re in, sooner or later you’re also a marketing organization.
What will I find on MarketingOverEasy.com?
Loads of information for the small business marketer:
- Informative and highly readable books available in both online and hard copy formats.
- A lively and interactive discussion blog.
So how can MarketingOverEasy.com help my business?
It’s said that John Wannamaker, the founder of Wannamaker’s Department Store in Philadelphia, once observed, “I know I waste half the money I spend on advertising. The problem is figuring out which half.” The ironic thing is that he said this over a hundred years ago, when he probably had one-tenth the competition and one one-hundredth the media choices he would have today!
We’re not saying we will help you cut your marketing budget in half. Rather, by helping you make better marketing decisions --- like making more cost-effective media choices, like creating more effective advertising and promotional messages, like focusing on more specifically defined and therefore more productive target markets, like trying new and more efficient promotional tools --- we can double the power of your marketing dollars!
What if I’m just thinking about starting a small business, how can MarketingOverEasy.com help me?
That’s a great question. MarketingOverEasy.com can help the entrepreneur focus on crucial marketing decisions, for example, like understanding who they want their customer to be or deciding on whether they should advertise on TV or go with direct mail. In other words, whether you’re starting a nail salon or a dog grooming service, whether you’re thinking of hanging out your shingle as a self-employed consultant or buying into a restaurant franchise, MarketingOverEasy.com gives the hopeful entrepreneur a step-by-step way to build an effective marketing plan from the git-go.
What’s with the name MarketingOverEasy.com? Do you mean that literally?
Yes, I do. The underlying premise of my website is that marketing is THE single most important activity a small business performs in order to assure its survival, hence MarketingOverEasy.com. Indeed, in today’s super-competitive, big boys-dominated business environment, smart marketing is the only way the small business can succeed and prosper.
But isn’t there loads of free marketing advice for small businesses on the Internet already? What’s so special about MarketingOverEasy.com?
Yes, there is lots of free small business advice on the web. And we very much encourage any small business to make use of these resources. However, you’ll quickly find that the old adage is true, you get what you pay for. Most of the marketing info on the free websites is pretty generic, it’s intended to apply to as many businesses as possible --- which means it doesn’t apply to anyone specifically. It tends to be over-simplistic, giving lots of “do this” or “do that” advice, but usually not offering very many specifics on “how to” get it done. Or, you quickly discover they’ve got an axe to grind, like an ad agency trying to land you as an account.
MarketingOverEasy.com will be special in several ways:
Our advice will always be how-to oriented, providing practical, actionable and affordable tips and techniques you can put to work right away in your marketing efforts.
We’ll provide in-depth information, not just “once over lightly” cure-alls.
And perhaps most important of all, we will be focused on the unique needs of small business. The fundamentals of marketing don’t change, they apply to Proctor and Gamble as well as to a corner mom-and-pop store. But the execution of a mom-and-pop store’s marketing efforts is very different from the execution of a P&G marketing program, and we never forget that!
And perhaps most important of all, we will try to have some fun. Yes, we will always take marketing seriously, but will try not to take ourselves too seriously.
How do you define “small” business?
The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) says you’re a “small” business if you have fewer than 500 employees. However, we’d expect that a business with that many people surely has some kind of marketing expertise available to it, either on-staff or through an ad agency or marketing consultant.
Therefore, MarketingOverEasy.com focus will on the millions of business that are not big enough to have those kinds of resources on hand, who need and want timely and affordable access to expert marketing help because their marketing programs are pretty much a do-it-yourself effort.
By the way, MarketingOverEasy.com can also help the millions of small nonprofit agencies and volunteer groups who are discovering that they need be “marketing” (whatever the heck that means).
What exactly do you mean by “marketing?”
At MarketingOverEasy.com we use a very broad brushstroke definition of marketing: We believe that marketing is anything and everything you do that touches your customer or potential customer. Of course, it covers the traditional marketing activities like paid advertising campaigns, direct mail programs, in-house promotions, special events and public relations activities. But, we think key marketing decisions also include things like what you call your business, how you design your logo, the location you pick for your business, the “image” you’re trying to project, how you answer the telephone, what your staff wears, how you decorate your business, and your customer service practices. We’ll be talking about all of these and much more on MarketingOverEasy.com.
Why does MarketingOverEasy.com focus on traditional media and promotional programs rather than the Internet?
For a couple of reasons
- First, because our target market is not Internet-based businesses but the millions of traditional brick and mortar businesses currently operating or that will be starting.
- Second, and this is a corollary, for these traditional brick and mortar business the traditional local media has been and likely will continue to be the backbone of their marketing efforts.
Do I have to know something about marketing to understand what’s going on?
Actually, one of our assumptions is that you do not have a background in marketing --- which is why you need MarketingOverEasy.com in the first place! All of our information, tips, and advice will be presented in clear, jargon-free, understandable terms --- no marketing-speak allowed here!
Who is behind MarketingOverEasy.com?
My name is Dave Ramacitti and (often to my friends chagrin) I’ll talk about marketing at the drop of a hat! I’ve operated half-a-dozen small businesses, including a couple that flopped big time --- as philosopher John Dewey observed, you can learn a lot from failures! I’ve written and published five books on small business marketing and management and I teach college small business marketing and entrepreneurship classes. And over 40 years I’ve worked on literally scores of small business marketing projects, from simple things like designing a very basic capabilities brochure for a new local business to major assignments like researching and writing the national rollout plan for a newly patented specialty garden tool. It’s my “hard knocks” learned marketing know-how that I want to share with you through MarketingOverEasy.com.
And Nancy Ramacitti, the operations diva for MarketingOverEasy.com, who keeps me grounded. And yes, we are related --- who says husband and wife teams can’t work together?
What if I don’t have a fancy computer?
That’s okay. As long as you have Internet access and the ability to send and receive e-mails, you’re ready to start benefiting from MarketingOverEasy.com.