While free fashion advice from your geriatric aunt would likely be unwelcome, free business advice from professionals with decades of experience in leading SMBs/SMEs would likely be met with open arms. Enter GrowthPanel.com, a “web-based marketing platform that blends marketing content with project management for intelligent marketing management.” I give them major kudos for giving away a significant host of free learning materials and tools to potential customers. You can download their Strategic Marketing Process ebook at no charge, plus their Marketing Exercises, spanning over two dozen functions that any business should be doing well, e.g. search engine optimization, developing brand architecture, etc. (Full disclosure: I did not discover GrowthPanel myself. Dr. Bailey at UT’s School of Information assigned the Develop Your Media Kit during a graduate Administration course I took from her.)
One thing’s certain- GrowthPanel loves lists. Bulleted overviews, check lists, short answer lists, these exercises are broken into readily comprehended and tackle-able segments that will have a working group thinking without being overwhelmed. The resultant material generated from the exercises can be applied by almost any institution, commercial or non-profit, for real world self-evaluation and use.