Blog posts in Sales and marketing

The 2012 Olympics - opportunity or threat to small businesses?

Recently, I read that 55 per cent of small-business owners in London do not think the Olympics will pose any disruption to their sales or operations. Only 14 per cent were concerned about transport issues and less than one in 10 business owners were worried about staff availability (according to research carried out for Deloitte).

This prompted me to investigate whether they are right not to be concerned, or whether contingency planning is advisable, by weighing up the opportunities and threats that the games may pose.

Opportunities

• 11 million spectators are expected to flock to Olympic and Paralympic events in the city, generating a huge source of potential customers and spending, particularly for the tourist, leisure and catering industries.
• 500,000 visitors are expected to arrive from abroad, creating an opportunity for small businesses to raise their profile among a brand new pool of customers and potentially unlock the door to a global market.
• The Olympics are expected to create a positive mood among consumers, driving them to spend more, which would open up a wealth of opportunities for innovative small businesses to increase their revenues.

Threats

• An additional three million journeys are forecast to take place in London over the seven-week games period, putting pressure on the tube and bus network and potentially making access difficult for small business staff and supply/distribution networks.
• Diversions, traffic and parking restrictions may also hinder accessibility to small business premises.
• Should the Olympic Games not run smoothly or generate negative publicity, small business revenue could drop (as in the case of the 2004 Greece games).

Overall, the opportunities and threats are roughly balanced, but they will vary from business to business. Therefore, to tip the scales towards ‘Opportunity’, I would advise each business to assess the risks in advance and devise a management plan, based on their location in relation to event venues and individual operational dependencies. Putting aside time now to prepare will minimise the threats and increase the chances to successfully reap the many rewards that will be available.

John Davis, managing director of Business Centric Services Group

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Could a January sale give your business the perfect start to 2012?

As consumers, often we see January sales as a way for retailers to clear stock. If you run a business that doesn’t hold stock – be it a craft business where you make everything to order or a service based business where you sell your time – it’s easy to dismiss sales as not being for you. But is it worth looking at them from a different angle?

Sales are just as much about stimulating demand as they are clearing stock.

And when you think about it like that, it sounds a whole lot more attractive. If your business is quiet in January, rather than sitting and moping about it, should you be doing something about it? A sale could be just the thing – with one caveat – it needs to be planned and executed well.

Discounting can look desperate and damage your brand. It can also affect your pricing strategy in the long term, so I would only ever do it with caution. But it really can work.

A poorly planned sale also looks weak. 10 per cent off everything isn’t a sale – it just looks desperate. You need to give people a compelling reason to buy, and a blanket discount just won’t cut it. If you sell product, consider slicing between 25 per cent and 70 per cent off various groups of products rather than applying a discount to everything. Again, this gives people a more compelling reason to buy from you.

Last year, one of my clients, Clare Yarwood-White, ran a sale that started on Christmas Eve. Her sales increased by 600 per cent compared to the previous year, and it didn’t cannibalise her figures for the rest of the month.

Printing.com has run a January sale since 2003 and it works wonders for stimulating demand (although it certainly affects margin for the month). I’ve yet to see a serviced-based business pull this off, but I wonder – can it be done? Should it be done? What do you think?

Fiona Humberstone, Managing Director of Flourish studios

Read more of Fiona’s advice and thoughts about running a small business on her blog site.

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Are your customers really happy?

I’ve written in the past about many aspects of a successful start-up, including playing to your strengths, being realistic with your plans, utilising your skills and properly working out your business proposition.

But when all is said and done, there is one critical question you need to ask: are your customers happy? In the rush to get sales started, you can celebrate your first sale and then quickly move on, but that’s not the right thing to do. Instead, with your first (and probably next few) customers, make sure they’re really, really happy and that you totally understand them.

Nothing helps a business more than happy customers telling their friends and colleagues about you. Nothing destroys a business more quickly than customers that bad-mouth you, refuse to order again, clog up your sales lines with complaints and even sue you for failed service.

When your product or service hits your first customer, that’s when reality sets in. All start-ups are desperate for sales, but you’ll get the most value from the real-life testing of your product and service. You can also glean intelligence from how your customer found you, understand their profile and why they bought from you and not a competitor.

And don’t stop there. Make it your business to continuously seek out customer reviews and feedback and to compare yourself with the competition. Encourage comments on blogs and Facebook, introduce forums, mystery shoppers and independent feedback systems.

Put simply, a business can’t succeed in any meaningful way without happy customers. And you should start as you mean to go on.

Chris Barling is chairman of Actinic.

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Important online selling lessons you can learn from Papermash

To celebrate my son’s birthday, I ordered several items from various websites, both large and small. One of them, Papermash, completely blew me away with their customer service – so much so, that I just had to share it with you because I think there’s a great lesson in there for small e-commerce businesses.

I arrived home this evening to find a beautifully packaged set of paper straws along with a lovely note. It’s not a grand gesture, but it was personal and it gave me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

I was also hugely impressed at the speed at which they despatched my parcel. Of the five or six orders I placed on Tuesday evening, just one of them arrived today – one working day after ordering. It’s not enormously expensive to implement that sort of turnaround, but it does make a big difference to customer satisfaction. I will certainly be shopping with Papermash again, and I would certainly recommend them.

So what can small retailers learn from Papermash?

Personalise. It doesn’t take a huge amount of effort to write a personal note – or if you’re larger, at the very least put in a pre-printed postcard saying thank you. Or you could write a thank you on your invoice. However you choose to do it – just make sure you do it.

Be quick and efficient. I know that despatching same day adds pressure to an already overstretched small-business owner. But, my goodness, does it make a difference to the customer, who will be sure to be much more keen to shop with you again (or perhaps even write a nice blog post about you).

Make sure people can find what they’re looking for. One of the reasons I went with Papermash in the first place was that when I searched for Stripy Paper Straws, they came up high in the search engines and they had an offering that represented good value for money.

These things really are fundamental, they don’t need to cost you huge amounts to get right, but they will make a very big difference when it comes to gaining repeat business through your e-commerce website.

Fiona Humberstone, Flourish design & marketing 

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The key to successful blogging - and why it’s worth the effort

Blogging isn’t easy is it? You work all day (and sometimes into the night) with the day job and then somehow you’re expected to find the time to blog. And for goodness sake, does it even work? Is it even worth it? You hear horror stories of people putting in dozens of hours a week with nothing to show for it and it becomes scary.

Having blogged for my own business for the past four years I can categorically say that it does work. Blogging has helped me develop relationships with my current and prospective clients, showcase our work and gain recommendations. I’ve also gained countless speaking gigs from the back of it and forged some online friendships along the way. And on top of that, we gain a good chunk of enquiries and clients through the blog. It has certainly become a core part of my marketing mix and something I’d be loathed to do without.

That said, it takes time (that I don’t have) and energy (which as a mum is often in short supply) and determination. There are times when I just don’t think I’ll be able to find the time to blog, and times when I’m so busy that I just need to let it go for a week or two. But, the world doesn’t stop turning just because I don’t blog for a day or two.

After four years I hope I have a healthy attitude to my blog and social media. I know that I’ll get out what I put in. And I love to put in a lot, but not at the expense of my wellbeing. And I think it’s that attitude that really makes a difference.

I got thinking about the difference that makes the difference. Here’s my thinking…

Focus. A great blog with a strong and loyal readership is focused. The author is clear about what they write about, what their focus in and how that feeds through to their business. And if the blog is your business, this still matters (see my case study on Flowerona (www.flowerona.com)) for more info on how she has turned her blog into a business).

Consistency. Of design, frequency of posts and tone of voice. I guess it’s about being authentic. Think about your favourite magazine – you buy it because it has reliably consistent content around a theme. It speaks to you and it inspires and motivates you. It’s the same with a blog.

Design. Blogs with big readerships are well designed. It’s easy for readers to find their way around, pleasurable to look at and the branding complements the tone of voice.

Generous. With information, positive energy and knowledge. We read blogs because we love to learn. We love insights into someone else’s business of life. Positivity is key and a feeling of “not holding back” information also really matters here.

Passion. Passion is contagious. It keeps people coming back for more. It enthuses them to tell their friends and it helps them engage with you. Passion is one of the key words people use to describe my blog and I think if you look at most successful bloggers you’ll see passion right up there as a key attribute.

What do you think is the difference that makes the difference in the blogs that you read?

Fiona Humberstone, managing director of Flourish design & marketing

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The truth about email marketing

The last thing busy start-up owners want is extra tasks and for some the very idea of setting up an email marketing system can seem daunting. However, it’s one of the best marketing channels available in terms of return on investment. Here I will cover three common email marketing misconceptions and explain why they’re no longer a barrier to your first email campaign.

1 “Setting up email marketing is tricky” - Email marketing is such a lucrative and competitive market that it’s driven advancements in ease of use and account availability. It often only takes a few minutes to get a basic account set up.

Additionally, actually setting up a mailing list of contacts takes so long that every day you leave it is a day wasted for accruing subscribers. With the rise of permission-based marketing, essentially it’s illegal to email people who haven’t opted-in to your list. This issue is compounded when you consider email providers who require double opt-in, so now the customer has to signup and confirm a subscription to your list. This means that any start-up joining the email marketing world needs to populate a list before doing anything else.

This ultimately nullifies any set-up times, meaning you can happily create an account with your chosen supplier, get a sign-up form on your website and leave email marketing for a month or two while your list (hopefully) gets populated with interested customers.

2 “The cost of email marketing is high” - You’ll never criticise competitive markets again once you see the impact they have had on email providers.

Free accounts are available from numerous providers, some of which actually provide an astoundingly good service considering you don’t pay a penny. They’re only free up to a set number of subscribers, with a small monthly free once you pass that threshold. This isn’t worth worrying about though, once you hit that threshold your bank should be laughing anyway with the additional return you can enjoy from a loyal email base.

3 “Sending an email-shot is complicated” - Google something like “email marketing advice” and you’ll be met with a deluge of Top-10 and how-to guides. It’s a little intimidating, but don’t be put off.

Email marketers have realised the value in smaller businesses and have invested a huge amount of time and resources to provide the information you need to start emailing hassle-free.

Most email marketing providers now have step-by-step guides and templates for you to follow for your first few campaigns, and everything really is at your fingertips. To demonstrate the advances in usability, a complete novice could select a template, put their message in and have an email sent in about 20 minutes – a tiny investment potentially for such large gains.

Once you’ve got to grips with the basics, you’ll find you actually enjoy finding new features and customising templates to be more in line with what you need. With basic reporting available in most email clients, you don’t even need proper analytics set up on your website to dive into the email performances.

I hope these tips help and you feel confident enough to dip your toes in the vast ocean that is email marketing. If you’ve got any other fears about emails or indeed have helped others start up new accounts, comment below and let us know.

Matt Bird of printer cartridge supplier, StinkyInk

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Exercise your democratic right – vote Donut

Here at Donut Towers we don’t normally go in for self-congratulation. We enjoy our work, prefer to get on with it quietly and take seriously the responsibility we have to help new and established businesses, which, at the end of the day, is what it’s all about.

Personally, one of many things I enjoy about editing the Start Up Donut is reading the many favourable comments people send us or leave behind on our pages. I’m sure my Donut colleagues feel the same way. We’re all greatly encouraged by the record number of visitors we now attract, which continues to grow month on month.

But occasionally other things happen that really make you realise just how much people appreciate the Donut sites and really “get” what we do.

So we were all chuffed to bits to hear recently that Start up Donut has been shortlisted for the Website of the Year awards being run by www.thegoodwebguide.co.uk

The organisers have told us they received a huge volume of entries, and the standard was extremely high, but Start Up Donut is in the running for overall winner of this prestigious award. Esteemed perfume entrepreneur Jo Malone will make the announcement at the awards reception at The Royal Institution in London in November.

Our fingers – and everything else – remain crossed.

The event organisers have asked us to let our site users (that’s you) know that they will also be announcing the winner of The People’s Choice award, voted for by, erm, the people (again, that’s you). So, if you’re a fan of Start Up Donut (and the other Donut sites – they’re one and the same), you can vote for us here.

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High streets are changing - but independent retailers can still compete

Britain’s High Streets are undergoing a major change – and many independent retailers are struggling to keep up.

According to a recent survey from business insurance broker Simply Business, a third of the UK High Street is now made up of cafes, pubs, restaurants and takeaways. Hospitality businesses are thriving but independent retailers appear to be lagging.

Newsagents, for example, now account for just 5 per cent of High Street premises, and they appear to be in a state of decline.

The increasingly difficult situation in which independent retailers find themselves is due, in part, to the continued and aggressive expansion of the chain supermarkets. The so-called ‘big four’ are spreading further into town centres across the country and many independent shops now find themselves faced with the prospect of a pile-‘em-high-sell-‘em-cheap megastore across the road.

But independent retailers are not powerless in the fight against the supermarkets. If you find yourself in competition with one of the big four, there are a range of ways that you can fight back.

1. Use your independence

   You can make your independence work for you. You might not be able to compete on price, but many people are reticent about shopping in supermarkets, and are willing to spend a bit more in order to support independent retailers. Make sure that your customers know you remain under independent ownership, for example by putting an A-board outside your premises advertising this fact.

2. Tighten up service

   Service is notoriously bad in supermarkets – and this provides your business with a chance to shine. Make sure that all your customer-facing staff receive a ‘refresher’ in service standards, and consider drawing up a set of guidelines to ensure that all your employees understand how best to treat customers. Think about ways that you can put customer service at the heart of your business – because it is these personal touches that will encourage customers to return.

3. Encourage loyalty

   Great customer service is an important way to encourage loyalty. But you might also want to consider other, more adventurous tactics. For example, why not launch a loyalty scheme? These are increasingly common in hospitality businesses like coffee shops, but there is no reason why they shouldn’t work for a retailer. You might, for example, produce cards, which can be stamped with a discount offered on the tenth transaction. Schemes like this can be particularly useful if you find yourself in direct competition with another shop, as they can encourage customers to choose you over your competitor.

4. Be flexible

   Finally, you should remember that flexibility and convenience are amongst the most common reasons that customers choose to shop in supermarkets. You should consider ways that you can make the shopping experience as easy as possible for them. For example, do you offer a comprehensive range of payment options? You should ensure that you accept the types of payment that your customers wish to make, in order to avoid losing them to your competitors.

Jason Stockwood, Simply Business

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My appearance on Dragons’ Den

Start up Donut regulars might already have read about my business, Rico Mexican Kitchen. A while ago, on this very website, it featured in blogs that charted some of the early challenges I faced as I worked hard to get my new business off the ground.

Some of you might also have seen me on Dragons’ Den last week, about 30 minutes in, so I thought I’d tell you a little bit more about my experiences on the show.

Since I launched Rico Mexican Kitchen from my kitchen in Belper, Derbyshire, inspired by a strong desire to offer the genuine flavours of my childhood in Mexico (I was born and brought up in Monterrey), I’ve been on a hugely exhilarating rollercoaster ride. My appearance on Dragons’ Den was part of this ride.

I really wanted to set my pitch apart, so I decided to sing for the Dragons. I asked the Mariachi Mexteca Mexican band to accompany me onto the show. As well as cooking, singing has been an important part of my life (I have a music degree, sang in choirs professionally and conducted many more).

For Dragons’ Den, I wrote some lyrics about my passion for Mexican food to the melody of a favourite childhood song called La Bikina. The band and I practised and had loads of fun. We came to an agreement over copyrights with the author, so we were all set to appear on the show.

Two days before filming, the BBC said it wouldn’t accept the agreement, which meant we couldn’t use the song we knew and loved. The fantastic Mariachi Mexteca made up a new tune to the words I’d written and we practiced our new song for the first time in the changing rooms shortly before going into the Den. Talking about winging it! If you listen carefully you might notice I missed a bit – and I sounded nervous.

I was in the Den for two hours and enjoyed the experience immensely. Ultimately, I didn’t attract any investment from the Dragons, which at the time was slightly disappointing, but at least they loved my products.

Despite failing to attract investment (I offered a 20 per cent share of my business for £75,000), last week, a couple of days before the show aired, I was able to secure the investment I need to take my business onto the next level.

A group of Northamptonshire-based investors will provide funding that will help Rico Mexican Kitchen with marketing and PR, product development, brand development and the drive to get my products onto supermarket shelves throughout the UK.

The investors really believe in my products and my commitment not only to making delicious, authentic Mexican food available to UK consumers, but also to supporting growers in Mexico and Britain. It’s certainly been a week to remember!

Marcela Flores-Newburn, Rico Mexican Kitchen

• Please take a look at my Facebook page and follow me on Twitter @ricomexkitchen

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Are you selling your customers something they want?

Some of you will find this an easy question to answer.

You’re on the front line, you know what needs your clients have, you gain instant feedback on new and not so new ideas. And you are able to innovate with your products and services. You’re able to be sure you’re always one step ahead of your competition.

Some of you will find it much harder to know whether you’re selling something your customers want.

Perhaps you’re one or two steps removed from the sales process and you don’t know what motivates people to buy what you sell. Or perhaps you’re so passionate about your stuff that you just don’t want to listen.

The fact is, you can’t sell people something they don’t want to buy.

They might need it, but if you can’t get them to want it, then you’re on a hiding to nothing.

So many businesses get themselves into hot water because they lose touch with what their customers want. They become so absorbed in making their widget better that they fail to notice no one is interested any more.

Ask yourself:

• Are my customers still passionate about what I’m selling?

• Does the market in general recognise that there is a need for what I’m doing or do I need to find new powers of persuasion?

• Are we still getting good feedback about our product or service when we sell?

• Do people want what we’re selling?

• Why should they want it? Will that reasoning wash with your customers?

Let your mind wander back to these questions whenever you have a moment. I think on long walks, long car journeys or just for a snatched minute or two here and there throughout my week.

You may throw out more questions than you answer initially. That’s OK. Knowledge is power and just knowing what you don’t know is a big step forwards.

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Are you attracting the wrong sort of attention? Getting your design right.

It’s a long time since my mum ever uttered those time honoured words “You’re going to attract the wrong sort of attention in that“. Well times move on and it’s going to be less than a decade (much less than a decade, scarily) when I’ll be saying those things to my own daughter. But have you ever thought that you might well be attracting the wrong sort of attention for your business through your design?

Poor design won’t stop you getting enquiries to your advert or leaflet drop. It won’t even mean that your website fails. But it will mean that you miss opportunities. It will attract the wrong sorts of potential clients (you know, the ones who don’t value what you do and don’t want to spend what you want to charge) and unless your brand position is based around you being “the cheapest”, then you’re going to be selling yourself short.

When you’re shopping for a new website please, think carefully about the message you’re sending out. Sure, budget is important. But what really matters is the return you get on your investment. And the quality of design is essential in this. Creativity, attention to detail, vision – all these things take time and years of expertise, and that means that they won’t come cheap. But like everything in life, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly.

We’re currently working with a very talented, utterly lovely and very inspirational photographer on her website and marketing strategy. Her photographs are just beautiful, but her marketing literature is sending out mixed messages at best.

The challenge is that she has a well-designed website, but she’s mixing that with self-designed leaflets and advertising. And sadly the company that designed her initial branding didn’t give her any brand guidelines, which means that she’s now mixing Lucida Handwriting with Times New Roman for her advertising. Not a good look…

The advert will attract attention, but as my mum would say, it’s going to be the wrong sort of attention. It’s going to attract brides looking for a cheap wedding photographer, which means that my client will waste her time on a lot of enquiries that simply don’t have the budget for a high-end photographer. She’s making life very difficult for herself. Happily, we’re going to redesign the advert, and I promise I shall share the before and after story with you very soon on my blog (http://blog.flourishstudios.co.uk/).

Fiona Humberstone, Flourish design & marketing

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What does your photograph say about you?

If I had a pound for every time I’d suggested a client or prospective client change their headshots I’d be very rich.

Your ‘headshot’ (ie a portrait image of your face and head) is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal. A great headshot will communicate professionalism, enable people to engage with you and actually help raise your profile. If you have one of those headshots that people tell you they’d never have recognised you if you hadn’t been wearing the name badge, it’s a sure sign you need to think about speaking to a photographer – and fast!

Let’s think for a moment about why people look at portraits in a business sense. They want to see who the person is behind the business. They don’t want to see you with a silly hat on or you in your favourite bar – they want to see the professional person they’re going to be dealing with. That means that your photograph must fit your brand.

Start off by making a list of how you’d like your ideal customers to perceive you professionally (in my case, approachable, friendly, creative, warm and professional). Now take a look at your photo – does it communicate those things? Chances are – if you’re at a party or a wedding it probably won’t be – you need to invest in a professional headshot.

Secondly, how are you posing? My brief for headshots is always look at the camera, look relaxed, welcoming and engaging. You want your photograph to make you look as approachable as possible. Now, if you work for a law firm, you’re going to need to put the emphasis on formality and professionalism. And if you’re in an ad agency, you will naturally need to look more relaxed and creative – but you should look like you.

Which leads me on to point three. Why this obsession (particularly amongst creative agencies) to produce illustrations/ baby photos/ school photos? Sure, it might look a bit funky, a bit cool, but I’ve clicked on your profile because I want to see who you are. An illustration doesn’t cut it for me. I’m not going to recognise you at a networking event. And – you’re missing a trick.

Finally, and this is so important if you have a team, get your photography done by the same photographer so that images are consistent. I recently worked with an estate agent on some marketing mentoring and this was one of the first things we addressed. Three people in the team – two pictures in colour, one in black and white. One very formally posed with a suit on, one in a nightclub and one at a wedding. That doesn’t suggest “cohesive team”.

Essentials of powerful headshots

• Decide how you want to be perceived and brief the photographer accordingly.
• Dress appropriately.
• Look at the camera.
• Look like you.
• Do team headshots at the same time.
• Natural light always looks more real and approachable than studio lights and backgrounds. 

Fiona Humberstone, Flourish design & marketing

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