Small Office, Home Office Information

Several years ago we had a client who was spending a heap of money on advertising his small business - a tourism related business in a town that relies heavily on tourism.

He spent a small amount on having us build his website … but then spent nothing more on promoting it. He spent up big on advertising in glossy magazines produced locally for the the tourists. He did some local television advertising because what he offered to tourists was also appealing to the local population. He also spent a reasonable amount on brochures and leaflets as well as a very small amount each month on a newsletter that went out to all the motels and resorts in town.

The one problem for this client was that he had no idea which form of advertising was the most effective and claimed to be too busy to find out. We even designed a short, simple questionaire that would have identified what form of marketing had attracted them to his business. He could have given to each client who came into his business but that was too much trouble for him or his staff to hand out.

At the time we parted ways he still had no idea which form of advertising was giving him the best return on investment.

In today’s tough economic times, when money is in short supply and advertising is so important you need to know which form of advertising works for your small business. Don’t think that doing a little simple research … something as simple as just asking new customers where they saw your business advertised … is a waste of time.

Sometimes it can mean the difference between surviving times like these and watching your business go down the drain because you’ve wasted your advertising dollars.

Many small business people who do their own email promotion campaigns or build their own websites struggle to get their target audience to actually read what they have written.

If that’s the situation for you and your small business then here is an interesting report that should help you to get your customers to read what you have written.

If you advertise your small business or home based business where do you advertise?

Do you have complete control over where your advertising appears?

Of course if you advertise in the newspapers you do have some control over that advertising but what if you advertise on the Net and have your ads placed by an advertising network? How much control do you have then … and is it really important?

Some recent research has found that wrong positioned ads do damage brands and if you follow the link you’ll be able to read more about it.

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