Small Office, Home Office Information

Publicity is important for any small business and it’s even more important for home based businesses. So how do small businesses go about getting publicity for their business?

Unfortunately some small business owners seem to think that any publicity is good and they will do anything just to get the names of their businesses in front of people.

And, if you ask them, they will tell you that notoriety works … but I wonder if it really does. Would you really expect a business person who uses those techniques to really tell you the truth if their move for more publicity actually bombed?

I think not and to me, anyone who wants to work the notoriety angle is showing signs of laziness and desperation.

So what can a small business or home based business do to generate publicity?

Here is an interesting article written by Abe Cherian. He talks about what every small business needs to know regarding publicity.

I read some interesting statistics the other day that made me wonder if small business people actually realise who they are selling to. Are your real clients - as opposed to the people who just come and have a look - men or women?

In America it’s been found that while lots of men look it is actually the females who buy and that includes the big ticket items. If you run an electrical store you might find that there are a lot more men in the store than women but the men are only looking while it is the women who are actually doing the buying.

Of course, once you know who is actually buying your product, you will then be able to better target your marketing and approach the people who have come in to your business.

One of my daughters, a highly skilled single young woman, went to buy a washing machine recently. She went in her lunch hour from work and a male co-worker just happened to accompany her. When a salesman approached them my daughter enquired about a washing machine and the salesman showed her and her co-worker a number of models.

But the salesman could not handle dealing with a female, he addressed all his comments to my daughter’s co-worker who had just come along for the ride. Even when my daughter told him that it was her who was interesting in buying the salesman continued to address the male co-worker.

Needless to say, my daughter did not buy a washing machine in that store.

Are you missing sales because you’re talking to the wrong person?

I had an article I submitted to an article site rejected today due to spelling errors.

Oh the shame, me, a professional writer rejected because I couldn’t spell!

Initially I couldn’t believe what I was reading because I really had gone over the article carefully. It was something that I was submitting to an article site so that my writing could get more exposure and so I wanted it to be as near perfect as I could get it.

Then I read beyond the initial comment about the spelling errors and noticed that the site only takes submissions if American spelling is used.

At first I was angry, then I was incredulous; they were getting my article for free, to use in any way they wanted and yet they had problems with my spelling?

Now I’m just laughing at the stupidity of whoever decided that only articles written in American english would be accepted. I’m laughing because it doesn’t reflect on my writing or my ability to spell, it actually reflects on their inability to accept the fact that they are dealing with the world and the world is a far bigger place than the United States.

You see, there are more Internet users in the rest of the world than there are in just the United States. From memory there are something like 100 million more Internet users in the rest of the world than there are in the United States.

There are more people on high speed Internet connections in the rest of the world than there are in the United States and people in the rest of the world are just as likely to read my articles as people in the United States.

But here we have someone who is presenting their site to the world but they are uncomfortable with anything that is not written in American english and they want the rest of the world to conform to their view of the world.

People, if you want to take your business to the world by having a website that deals with people around the world then you have to be prepared to take your clients as they are and not as you want to make them.

Why should little things such as the way we spell words like favour (the English english spelling of the word) get in the way of doing business - especially where it is a business deal where we are giving you more than you are giving us?

I sometimes think that many small business people are very short-sighted. They tend to forget that the people who are doing work for them today may well be their own clients at some point in the future.

An example of what I am suggesting happened this week. A friend who runs a small business here in town was having his carpets cleaned by a professional cleaner. The conversation turned to advertising and our friend mentioned that he had a website.

The carpet cleaner told our friend that he spent thousands of dollars each year on advertising and would like to talk to someone about having his own website. Our friend, as all good friends do, recommended us and the carpet cleaner asked our friend to get us to call him.

I called him next day and obviously caught him at work in someone’s house so he asked me to call him back after six that night. And I did call him back after six … and got his answering service.

I left a message and asked him to return my call.

Several days later I’m still waiting for that call.

Now if he couldn’t return a call how reliable is he to come and clean carpets at a pre-arranged time?

In small business you shouldn’t just be working to impress your clients, you should also be working to impress those who are working for you. You never know when those people could turn into prospective clients.

A business with attitude can be very attractive to potential customers but some business attitude tends to get right up my nose.

The Korea Times is preporting that Samsung is about to release a new mobile phone that includes a 3 gigabyte hard drive. With that much storage users can carry up to 700 music files.

The new phone also comes with a 2 megapixel camera built in. The camera has a 2x optical zoom.

Unfortunately we Luddites in the rest of the world won’t be seeing this camera and here is a direct quote from the Korea Times to explain why.

The outfit has no plan to ship the models to other countries since there will be no demand for the top-of-the-line phones other than in Korea which boasts ubiquitous tech-savvy people.

Is that a sad reflection on us or on them?