About Corte Swearingen

Building Relationships

Hello, my name is Corte Swearingen and in case you're wondering, I'm the little boy on the left. The guy that's holding me upright is my very first marketing teacher - my dad.

Dad is retired now but he worked as a shoe salesman his entire life and I had a lot of opportunities to listen to him talk to customers on the phone.

He probably didn't realize it at the time, but he was an expert marketer. He had a natural ability to create relationships with people - and this is way before the term "Relationship Marketing" became a key phrase in the industry.

While building relationships is important, you have to build them with the right kinds of people. That means attracting prospects that have a particular problem you can help them solve.

A Better Way?

I started my marketing career in 1991 selling scientific instruments. I remember always feeling uncomfortable pushing my company's products and trying to talk customers into buying. I always felt I was pressuring people and thought that there had to be a better way to attract customers and get them engaged.

The company I was working for at the time was a pure marketing company. By that, I mean they didn't have a sales force and relied solely on direct marketing techniques to grow. These were the years before the Internet so marketing meant direct mail and lots of it. I learned a lot of direct mail techniques during these years but I still felt something was missing.

Well, there was something missing. I was looking for a system that would allow me to effortlessly attract the right kinds of prospects to the products and solutions I was selling. But it couldn't stop there. Once I engaged them with a sale, I wanted them coming back again and again to buy more.

The Integral Marketing System™

In order to solve my dilemma, I started pouring over all marketing the material I had at my disposal. To my surprise, I discovered that every single marketing technique I came across could be classified in one of four ways. This eventually led me to develop the Integral Marketing System™ and to define The Four Marketing Quadrants. Although the technique is simple and allows business owners to start applying it immediately, it's an extremely comprehensive and integrated system. And the best thing about it? It produces results! I've used it to:

Created an upstart direct mail catalog that generated $1.75 million in sales within 12 months
Tripled web sales of a small business in just 3 years (sales in the millions)
Managed a highly successful $8 million dollar web business
Managed a highly profitable $7 million direct mail catalog

Want To Learn More?

There are three ways you can learn more about the Integral Marketing System™.

1. Read the article Intro to the Integral Marketing System™. This short article will introduce you to The Four Marketing Quadrants and give you tips on how to apply these four areas into an integrated marketing plan for your small business.

2. Subscribe to my monthly newsletter SmallBiz Marketing Tips. This newsletter will focus on the Integral Marketing System™ and provide tips and techniques you can implement immediately to grow your small business.

3. Subscribe to my SmallBiz Blog through my RSS feed. By subscribing to my feed, you will be notified every time a new article is posted on this site.

No matter how sophisticated your marketing gets, as my dad always said, it's all about cultivating relationships. The tips in this website all focus on one very simple yet powerful strategy:

Delivering relevant solutions to your customers and getting those customers coming back to you again and again.

Corte Swearingen When your business provides solutions people are looking for and you have a way to attract presold customers to that message, you can't fail! Of course this doesn't happen overnight. It will take effort on your part.

Read carefully through the tips presented on this site, subscribe to SmallBiz Marketing Tips and start putting these strategies into practice today. I guarantee you will see your profits grow way beyond your expectations. At the same time, you will be cultivating customer relationships for the life of your business. There's no better or faster way to grow your profits!

Here's to your success!

Corte Swearingen, Founder
small-biz-marketing-tips.com

Corte Swearingen, at various times in his career, has worked as a particle physicist, jazz pianist, composer, marketing manager, bird trainer, magician, metal bender, business development manager, piano tuner, and e-commerce director. He is the developer of the Integral Marketing System™ and founder of SmallBiz Marketing Services. He holds a degree in physics and mathematics from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and lives with his wife and two daughters in the Chicago suburbs.