What are the most common problems/questions small business owners need to solve on the topics of marketing, sales, and business development?

This is one that I hear all the time.How do I grow my business using social media?We at SCORE are beginning to try and put together a beginners first steps.Example:I sell a widget online and no one is coming to my site.Sounds easy, just do social media, SEO and add Google analytics and wawla!?!?!?!? Well this advice is actually not very helpful to an entrepreneur.Where do they begin?We are trying to say a few things need to be done first: the web page needs to be set up properly. You may need to pay for a correctly structures page verses a free web page.... What value does your widget have from the customers perspective? The product selling description has to WOW or its just another me two. What is the value. Many clients don't figure this out and go directly to selling without knowing what they are actually selling or don't have a real value Then, how many platforms will I begin to use in social media to start. We are saying begi with Facebook and Pinterest. Go slow and learn the process and then expand If you expand, who is going to do all this work!?!?!? I hope this will somewhat answer your question. Try to help them through a limited focused approach first. It's a huge learning curve, because after doing the above, their web page maybe 7 pages down in a Google search. Now what do they do?!?!?!It goes on and on......

This depends on who your target market is. You don't want to be a generalist or you can create the best content ever and few will see it. "Small business owners, start ups, and professional service providers" is a fairly broad target market, unless geography defines your target market, but my guess is you're looking at a national or global market, so you need to narrow it.Once you've defined your crystal clear target market, you have to know what problems they face. What keeps them up at night? We can give you general answers, but you want content that your ideal clients interact with and that speaks directly to them. You also need to position yourself as an expert for them, not for a general business audience. When your business grows big enough and you have amassed a big following, you can expand your target market to these broader categories. Why I say to narrow the market, is because content marketing gets more and more challenging as more content goes out onto the web, and it is going to get more difficult over time with more and more content out there.My guess is you have clients, based on your question. What challenges do they have? Are there common themes? Your clients, prospective ideal clients, and your fans/followers are the best resource to answer this question.Hope this helps!

The most important - How to get more sales? There are so many ways available still reaching out to the right buy is not accurate. How should one reach to the right buyer.

The first thing that smaller businesses tell me that they need is more customers. Most however don't have much of a sales process or much of an overall plan to achieve the increased business that they desire.  I help them with internet visibility but that is really just the beginning of a much more involved list of needs that hopefully help them grasp simple management concepts, and the use of systems to help minimize labor while increasing customer leads and additional sales. I'd be willing to contribute to your cause, as long as it does help small businesses grow without attempting to disguise a sales pitch as help.

How to create a presence in a crowded market quickly and on a budget?