Archive for the ‘marketing small business’ Category

Start A Business – Ideas

Saturday, March 20th, 2010

Brian Tubbs just published a comprehensive article on how to start a web based business from your home. In it he touches on what the pitfalls are, “easy to become disoriented…” but then he goes into what all you need to do to get it going.
This is great reading and it should be one of those articles to go through and add to the pros and cons list that you are probably already compiling. It’s great advice for any wanna-be web business owner.
Read it here
Here are a few more interesting tidbits about the differences or not between an internet business and a bricks-and-mortar business:
Internet Marketing is very dependent on marketing more than anything else. Having a good product or service is secondary. You need to have the traffic or the eyes seeing your content for it to do you any good.

Starting a Business Online
Starting a business online is not much different from starting a business in real life. The process to attract walk-ins is also related to the Internet Marketing process, you must have a good marketing to be able to accomplish this. It could be as simple as a sandwich board outside your store, but it must have a compelling marketing message.

So, how do you go about starting an internet business?

There are many things that correspond to the brick-and-mortar process of starting a business.

List of For Instances on Starting a Business
For instance, you need to make sure you have a good feasibility study done. In other words, is this something that the market has an interest in and are there enough interested eyeballs, bodies, with money that will make this worth creating.

For instance, you need to decide what it will cost to have the business going, irrespective of whether or not you make sales. In other words, how much money will I need to keep the business alive if I don’t have anyone buy anything. This involves the rent, phone, utilities, salaries, taxes, and so on. Online, it would be your hosting fee, your Internet access, and so on.

For instance, you need to determine your costs if you are creating products, selling services, or retailing products. Each one has a different set of requirements. When creating products, both online and offline, you will need more upfront costs to take care of than if you are retailing a product. So, the amount of money you have available will determine which route you can go. We are not talking about having others invest in your venture here because that will also make a difference on the decision.

For instance, will you run the business on your own or will you hire out for some of the areas you aren’t equiped to handle. Will you hire personnel or will you outsource it.
For instance, what type of business entity will you have. This has to do with the type of liability you want to protect yourself for. Corporations and non-corporations are pretty much it. Then you also need to decide what amount of leadership are you willing to share if any. Some corporations will allow one single owner, partnerships will always involve someone else, and “doing-business-as” (dba) will always be the least safe of all business entities.

These are just a few of the items that come to mind.
Let me know if you have other questions that still bug you and we’ll try and get you the answers.
To your success

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Email List as Online Marketing

Monday, December 8th, 2008

One very important form of marketing is the creation of an email list.

It’s very interesting but many business owners ignore this when they put together their marketing program. When it comes to online marketing list creation is the mainstay and the main push by many online vendors.  You should seriously consider email marketing as at least one tier of your Internet marketing campaign. Many business owners shy away from email marketing because they believe all email marketing campaigns are purely spam. However, nothing could be further from the truth and not doing this type of marketing can cause your business to lose out on a great deal of business. By not appealing to potential customers via email, your business may lose a great deal of business to competitors who are using email marketing campaigns to reach customers around the world. However, the first step of an email marketing campaign should be creating an email distribution list. We will discuss some popular options for doing this and we’ll help you learn more about what is acceptable and what is not when it comes to email marketing.

Email Marketing

Once you have made the decision to start using email marketing to promote your business your next task will likely be compiling an email distribution list. This is essentially a list of email addresses to which you will email your advertising and promotional materials. One common way to gain a list of email addresses is to purchase a list from distributors. However, this may be a waste of money. Stay away from it.  The problem with purchasing an email list is that you have no way of knowing whether or not the members of the list would have any interest in your products or services. This is very important because while you want to reach a large audience with your email marketing you also want this audience to be members of your overall target audience.

Purchasing Email List

When you purchase an email list you may be sending your email messages to some users who might be interested but this is largely coincidental and is not likely to be well received because the message was not solicited. This would be what I call SPAM! Not worth it.

Online users are very quick to delete materials they believe to be spam without even opening or reading the emails. In fact some Internet service providers include spam filters which may automatically delete your emails if your messages are deemed to be spam. These filters run complex programs on the subject heading and content of the message to determine whether or not it is spam and are quite adept at weeding out spam. Therefore you run the risk of having your email marketing effort turn out to be a complete waste if your message doesn’t get read.

Creating an Email List: A far better Way

A far better way to create an email distribution list for your email marketing campaign is to ask current customers as well as interested potential customers to register with your website to receive additional information and periodic updates about your products and services as well as other information which might be of interest to them. This provides you with a database of email addresses from current customers as well as potential customers who have a genuine interest in your products and services and who are interested in learning more about these products and services.

Offer something that will entice your visitors to subscribe with you:

Subscribe to this blog and receive a free Feng Shui Manual

First Name:
Email address:

Content is still king!

Once you have a list of interested customers or potential customers you can send them emails or create  and send them newsletters. These documents should contain a wealth of valuable information as well as a soft sell pitch for your products and services. This information will be valued by the readers and may help even  persuade them to buy your products and services.

PostScript:

You might also want to include useful links to either your website as well as other websites which may be of interest to your readers. Each contact whether it is an email with information or newsletter should also contain a portion which urges the reader to take a specific action such as making a purchase or at least investigating your website offerings further.

Best wishes in your ventures

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Posted in Brand, advertising and the small business, business colateral, corporate you, email list marketing, marketing small business | 1 Comment »

Are You Already Marketing Online?

Sunday, December 7th, 2008

When considering marketing online the business owner wonders about the cost, process, and what it involves, but may not realize that whether or not they intentionally organized an Internet marketing campaign, they may already be marketing their products and services on the Internet. This article will examine some subtle ways business owners may already be marketing their business on the Internet.

Does your business already have a website online?

If your business is already marketing your products or services online just by virtue of the fact that you have a website online means that you are marketing online. Having a live website means there is the potential for curious Internet users to access your website. You may not be actively promoting your website but you may still find that your website generates interest in your products despite the lack of promotional endeavors; this is a form of passive marketing.

Forum, Message Board participation, and Signature notation with link back to your website.

If you regularly participate in forums, message boards, and use signature notations on your messages, you are already marketing your website online.  Savvy business owners should realize the importance of participation in industry related message boards to create an interest in their products and services. Combine that with a signature notation linking the post to their website and they will be establishing themselves as knowledgeable about the industry and products they offer. However, even business owners who do not realize this may already be inadvertently enjoying the benefits of Internet marketing which result from message board participation just by doing something they enjoy such as message board participation which they may be doing as a pasttime.

On the technical side, do you research and include keywords relevant to your business or website content?

Business owners who do are already marketing on the Internet by optimizing their website for these keywords. These search engine optimization (SEO) affects the websites whether or not they were even aware of the concept of keyword density and how it can help to SEO a website. Business owners will likely use certain words often depending on the type of products and services they offer just because it is natural and logical to do so. This behind-the-scenes work, can result in search engines boosting your website rankings for these particular keywords whether or not you realize it. The concept of SEO is much more involved and complex than simply using keywords frequently (keyword density) but business owners can gain some benefit just by naturally applying relevant keywords to their website.

Do you solicit feedback from your customers online?

This is yet another example of how business owners may be marketing their business online and not realize it. Most business owners realize the importance of soliciting feedback from customers for business purposes and business owners who offer products online might solicit feedback in the form of online surveys. Although the business owners may be doing this simply for a business purpose, it is another form of online marketing.

Increase your online marketing impact.

This covered several ways in which business owners may already be marketing online but what about business owners who want to have an increased online presence? Business owners who may already be marketing online accidentally may wish to launch a full scale Internet marketing campaign. There are a number of ways to do this, one is to hire a consultant who is already an expert on this area; another is through self-training; another maybe to simply work with mentors. Irrespective of which way you decide to work on, remember, one size does not fit all in online marketing. You must make sure that your marketing fits your target market. Anything else will be a waste of resources, money, and time.

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Rude Customer Service!

Monday, November 24th, 2008

Rude Customer Service Does Not Equal Sales!

Someone said that politeness isn’t all that’s cracked to be and that was because the person who said that was not polite. So, we tend to avoid that type of individual.

Rude Customer Service tends to do the same for customers.

We go to stores where we feel comfortable and appreciated. Even if we don’t end up spending a dime. Why is it that business owners have a hard time understanding this?

When I go to an organization, be it a retail store, a manufacturing, a service organization, or whatever other type of business it is, two things strike at me immediately after I enter the business, one is how clean the business is and the other is how friendly the organization is. Often, the business is sterile clean and any friendliness there could have been there is also wiped out. That’s usually enough to get me moving as quickly as I can to get out and to avoid dealing with such a business.

It is interesting that many business owners could care less about this and will go to great lengths to emphasize the fact of their rudeness. Interestingly enough, they are the ones typically spending thousands of dollars to attract customers, which they typically do, but aren’t able to translate all that traffic into sales.

Are you a rude business organization?

How easy is it to find out?

There are some very simple ways to do this.

One is to contact the customer who just finished doing business with you and asking.
You will be surprised how much you can find out when you ask the right question. Yes, ask at most two questions, or you will come across as another dreaded poll taker.

Another is to hire someone to do a secret shop for you. You don’t have to pay an arm and a leg to get this done. Simply find a relative, friend, church member, who ever, that you trust, and ask them to go to your store and do a quick overview of their experience. For this, you would have a much more detailed list of items to be on the lookout for, and that should be enough to let you know how your business is perceived in the community.

Another way is to send out a survey to your existing customers and asking them to rate your business on a number of areas. Offer a small gift for anyone who returns those surveys.

Any one of these will be enough to provide you with information on how your business is being perceived by your customers.

Finally, make sure that you treat your employees as you wish they would treat your customers. The rude behavior an employee exhibits is nothing more than the behavior he or she copies from the manager above. GIGO is a computer acronym that stands for garbage in garbage out, so make sure that you are not filling the garbage can.

Remember, a customer who is treated with respect will value that enough to often overlook other issues.

Best wishes on your venture

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Seriously, What do You do for a living?

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

Business Owner, Entrepreneur, Dreamer, Wastrel!

How often have you wished that you could come up with a great sounding title for what you do instead of what you actually do?

“I’m a business owner!”(Said sotto voice)

‘Yeah, sure! Where’s your shop?”

“I work out of my home!”

“How’s the weather?”

Seriously though, don’t you wish people would take you seriously when you say you are a business owner?

I do and one of the things I do that makes a difference to me, at least, is that I (am working on this) consistently do some small step to get closer to my goal of generating a serious income so that I don’t have to justify anything. What you or I do has nothing to do with anyone else other than as a customer or vendor. If you are a customer and are interested in my products or services, you should be concerned primarily on the quality of what I provide and on the reliability of my business. You want to know that I’m going to provide an above average product that will provide you long term satisfaction and that I will be around when you decide you need either more of what I provide and or need support for what I provide.

As a vendor, on the other hand, you should be looking at my ability to pay for what I order from you and that I will be a long term customer.

That should be all that matters.

So, how do we as business owners go about satisfying those goals?

First off, make sure that you are able to deliver and if at all possible, over-deliver, before you even think about opening your doors. Also, make sure that you have made yourself very visible to your customers. you don’t want them to guess where they think you live. Customers or buyers will be very reluctant to part with their money if they don’t know it is going to be returned in some form either product or the service your promised in exchange for the money. So, if you have a website, make sure there is contact information there.

Second, when you enter into a contract with a buyer make sure everyone knows exactly what is going to happen at every stage of the game. You don’t want to deliver a door to a customer who was expecting a half-door. Sometimes, the extra time you take to go over the order will pay dividends when the time to deliver is at hand. Under promise and over deliver.

Third, when you are starting out it is easy to promise the moon, the stars, and everything else in between. That is not a good idea. Your work is your very unique contribution to society and should be valued highly. Each minute you devote to complete a job for a customer is a minute that you won’t have for your family or for something else you would rather be doing. Treat it as a great treasure that you are making available to someone else to enjoy, so don’t give it away.

Overextending your reach!

Next, When you are starting out, you will be overjoyed to receive many orders, and have customers wanting to do business with you. The problem is when you start getting into delivery conflicts where you aren’t able to meet your deadlines and then your ability to stay in business gets impacted. This could be from lack of resources – not enough cash to pay for inventories, not enough cash to meet payroll, and so on, or it could be simply from burnout from working such long hard hours to meet those deadlines while working at a full time job and taking care of a family. Having lots of orders is great but not having a contingency plan can lead to disaster.

Another area that is a problem is dealing with vendors that are also working on building their reputation. When you started working with them you were an unknown and they treated you carefully, then as things improved on your end they started overextending their promises hoping to keep you coming back. Then, the realities of the business start impacting their bottom line and the vendor starts pushing back on promises made earlier on. At this point you could be placed on a hard place where you have no choice but to use the vendor in spite of the broken promises. So, diversify and even work with more than one vendor for the same product. It’s not lack of loyalty but business reality. Your customers expect you to meet the commitments you made to them, every thing else is an excuse.

Working for yourself is a challenge for sure, but you can make it a fun time too.

I’ll revisit this next time with my take on helping you reach out and touch someone to make working for yourself even more interesting.

Until the next time,

Good luck with your business venture.

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Marketing Small Business

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

The Art of Schmoozing!

When a business gets started it’s pretty much like a new baby. You get much advice by a few who have been there and know it all, by a few who pity you your sleepless days and nights, and by a few who wish they could be there. But, you, the new business owner, live in your enchanted castle and every thing looks rosy, fluffly, beautiful. What’s a few sleepless nights when customers are beating a path to your door? You have read all the right books, and listened to all the tapes, and went to college, so you know what to do.

I hope so! I really do!

When my son was 12 and 13 he would not listen to advice either and would get himself in serious trouble, as we knew he would, and then would work himself out of it, to our utmost surprise! As a new business owner, you are probably a mixture of caution and optimism and you will also find yourself in serious trouble and like my son, will get yourself out it, to the surprise of everyone who knows you.  There’s nothing wrong with going through experiences to learn the lessons you need to learn, however, sometimes it makes more sense to experience the situation through someone else’s life. Let them have the pain!

Marketing is one area where many small businesses try to do it all by themselves and end up in trouble and eventually figure it all out, at some considerable cost.  So, this is a way to help you avoid some of that.

First off, don’t do what everyone does, specially if you are looking for a better result. I worked with a small business owner who was spending close to US$3,000.00 in newspaper advertising and was getting nothing for it. When I asked what kind of response she was getting, she responded that she didn’t know. So, why are you spending the money like that?  Many small business owners behave just like that. They do things because they were sold on it by someone who wanted a commission and nothing more.

Next, measure your advertising process. If you still use newspaper advertising find out who actually responds to similar ads, what their impact is, and so on. Newspapers, as far as I’m concerned, are a thing of the past. I haven’t opened a paper in a long, long time. I believe I am not alone in this. Find out exactly what kind of reach the paper has and then spend your money accordingly.

Third, test, and then test some more. There is more than one way to reach the audience you intend to reach. Sometimes all you need is one less word or one more to make the impact you wish to make! Without testing you won’t know whether or not your customers will respond to what you are asking them to do. “Free! Today Only … Come And See!” Or “Come and Get your Very Own Free Report, Valued at $997 …Find The Top Secrets The Gurus Don’t Want You To Know!” or “Click Here for Your Very Own Free Report!.” Until you put it out there and let your customers vote you won’t know which one works best and leaving it to chance isn’t a good business marketing strategy.

Fourth, capture your visitors, find out what they want, and create a relationship with them. Any time a visitor stops by, find a way to get their contact information. Only the exception proposes to someone on a first blind date! So, why do you think your visitors will buy from you on the first visit? Get their permission to go to them on another date, –just kidding :) — and finding out what would delight them to have you around, then do whatever it takes to fulfill their wishes. Dazzle them and they will reward you for a long time.

Fifth and last, let your customers educate you. Listen to them. Let their advice fall on your fertile little ears. Then, sift through all that information to respond to them based on your business goal. And, for those you can’t dazzle, tell them so! Let them free to pursue their dream so that they won’t burden you. There is nothing more energy-draining than satisfying a customer who has no interest in what you can offer.

Marketing for a small business is very much like going on a blind date in hopes of finding a partner. You have to preen yourself well at all times. You never know when you will be on display! You must continually let others know that you are available. And, you must stand out in the crowd! (Even if you have to carry your own soap box!) It’s a lot easier online as you can experiment as much as you want and often your cost will be minimal and you can change on the proverbial dime, as well, if you need to.

Without marketing though it’s like you going to an old fashioned water pump and pumping away hoping to get water out of it, forgetting that you need to prime it before you can get it to work.  Once you prime it, it won’t take long before you start the water flowing strongly and when you taste of it, how sweet it tastes!

Good luck with your business endeavors.

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Posted in Brand, advertising and the small business, marketing small business, newspaper advertising | 4 Comments »