Small Office, Home Office Information

More and more small businesses are using email as a way of marketing their products and services to past customers and some future customers too. But there’s always a potential risk of being labelled as a spammer when you use email.

Many countries these days have strict anti-spam laws in place that clearly identify what constitutes spam and what penalties those who break the anti-spam laws will face. Because the anti-spam laws in each country are different I would encourage you to read those laws for yourself.

Here in Australia there are three key requirements set down by our anti-spam laws. Those three requirements are:

1. Consent - you must have the consent of the recipient and you must be able to prove that you have received that consent.

2. Your emails to past clients and potential clients must clearly identify you and your business as the authorised sender.

3. Your emails must contain a functioning unsubscribe link
(you can read more about the Australian anti-spam laws here)

Now if your laws are similar then there is an important factor for every small business in that first point. You must have the consent … and prove you have the consent of the recipient … before you can start sending them emails. That means that you just can’t go round harvesting email addresses wherever you might find them and adding them to your email list. There’s simply no consent in doing that.

I know that’s what a lot of small businesses do to build their email lists but if you want to stay on the right side of the law then the only way you can build your email list is with the consent of of the people you want to send those emails out to.

If you’re trying to build up an email list of potential customers then the only way to do it to stay within the law is via an opt-in option … nothing less will do.

When times get tough for small business we small business owners often have to make some hard decisions about which accounts we’ll pay this month and which accounts we’ll let slide into next month as well as which accounts we’ll close and which accounts we’ll keep active.

At times like this you really do need to know all the facts so that you can make an informed decision because you could so very easily close something like an advertising account that happens to be generating a large number of very targeted leads.

So before you make a decision that could have an adverse decision on your small business do your homework and remember, the most expensive form of marketing is not always the most effective. A $19.90 website hosting bill each month could keep your phones ringing while a very expensive newspaper advertisment might produce nothing but a deathly silence.

by Stuart Livesey

Here’s a hat tip to Small Business SEM for mention of a a kit that every small business or home office person should have. So what’s in your marketing bag?

One of the biggest problems for small business - and especially those that operate from a home base - is not so much getting known as being remembered.

You can advertise your small business in all the various forms of media but being remembered when people are chatting comes down to branding. But how do you go about the task of branding you and your small business without spending heaps of dollars?

The Lazy Man’s Way to Branding by Neil Patel gives you all the information you need in just eight short paragraphs. (The comments made by others is also worth reading)

by Stuart Livesey

The big end of town can overwhelm the marketplace with advertising. They have more money to spend and they can call on the resources of huge advertising firms but who says that they spend their money wisely and who says that the big firms have a clue about what can resonate with consumers in the local area?

Here is a quote from John Carlton, a well-known American copywriter, that should give you some encouragement not to let the big guys win simply because they are big.

For business owners, the lack of good writing in your market is an opening you should leap into with guns blazing. Whether it’s honing your sales message, or building up your content and nurturing your list… this is the most important writing you will ever do.

And doing it really, really well allows you to stand out no matter how much better funded, or better situated your competition is. A single good copywriter can go up against Attila The Hun, Inc, and win.

You can read more of what he said here and you can find the rest of his blog here

Are you advertising your small business in the right places?

Who are the people who buy your product?

What other products do those people buy?

Is there a possibility you could network your product with others?

You might find The silver-greay Japanese car syndrome - over on Seth Godin’s blog interesting and perhaps your thoughts might go in the same direction as mine.

There are more ways to sell your product than you might think

If you’re involved in selling anything online then you can easily fall into the trap of thinking that the only way to do it is via banners and text. But there are definitely other ways of selling things online too and here’s a link to an article about a different way that IBM is marketing one of its products online.

A variation on this theme just might work for your small business. Here’s the link

We’re hearing a lot about viral marketing these days and sometimes it seems that if you’re not actively involved in viral marketing then your small business is doomed to fail.

But what is viral marketing? Is it more than just asking your clients and customers to tell others about your great service?

In an article entitled ‘What Makes It Viral?’ published on the ClickZ Network way back in July 2000 Kathleen Riley had this to say about viral marketing:

“Producing a message with a quality offer or an incentive for pass-along is what viral marketing is all about …

Offer something worthy of sharing a valuable discount, vital information or offer an incentive for sharing additional entries into a sweepstakes or an added discount or premium service and viral marketing happens naturally… and often quite successfully.”

So what can you do to get your clients and customers talking about your small business?

Now if you’ve been reading this blog for a while you will have seen me talking about various marketing strategies for small business and home office based businesses. It’s something that Toni and I have been involved in for some time but we’ve never really had a look at the way the big end of town does their marketing.

Well that changed earlier this month when we were invited to the release of McKenna - a new bourbon new to Australia. The marketing company wanted to create some buzz amongst bloggers here in Queensland and another well-known blogger suggested that Toni and I should be among those targeted.

Unfortunately, due to a mix up, we weren’t able to attend the official McKenna release party but we were kept in the loop with promotional material we could use on the site and two gift packs.

The promotional material was delivered via email in a .ppt file. Neither of us have Power Point installed so that was a bit of a waste.

Then the gift packs arrived yesterday. The cap was nice but there was no way it would fit my head (heck even the Army had to hunt around to find a hat big enough for me when I enlisted).

The t-shirt fitted me like a glove but Toni’s … well … at least she was flattered

And then there was the McKenna bourbon and cola … smooth … not overpowering … and didn’t leave a lingering taste in your mouth … and definitely worth buying again.

I guess the lesson here is that the associated fluff can be nice but when you have a great product you have to make sure that it can speak for itself. Toni can’t wait for it to appear in a bottle shop in Hervey Bay.

Thanks to Paul Francis from Zealot and McKenna Bourbon for the chance to peek at the way the big end of town goes about marketing.

If your small business or home office type business is involved in affiliate marketing then you need to be thinking more about press releases.

There is no doubt that press releases are changing and they are now becoming a tool that anyone can use to get your message right to the very people you want to talk to - the consumers.

If you want to get some ideas on how to use a press release to market your sponsors’ wares then you might find this article interesting