Trick or Treat Business Bloggers

In the spirit of Halloween, today’s blog will offer a few tricks and treats for business owners. So choose a costume and let’s carve a pumpkin. In today’s economy it is even more important to set your business apart from the rest like when we wear costumes or put up holiday decorations.

Think for a minute about Halloween. Do you decorate the front yard? Do you carve pumpkins and display them on the porch? Do your make costumes for the kids? For yourself? You decorate your home and yourself for many reasons, but two stand out. One is for the fun of it and two so that your home or children will stand out in the crowd. That’s what you need for your business.

Think about the exterior of your business, the windows, or parking lot. Are they clean, professional, and inviting to your customers? How does your exterior compare to that of your closest competitor. Which store would you as a customer prefer to enter and do business with? These non-verbal statements are the esthetics of a business and quietly speak volumes about your business and are as important to the success of your business as your advertising program.

So the trick or treaters (customers) have chosen your house (business) to visit on beggars’ night. Now that you have them in the store what treat will you offer them? Of course you will provide an excellent product or service, but what will you use to distinguish your store from your competitors’ store? This is the million dollar question. But think about your trick or treaters. It really doesn’t take much to make them happy. Your customers are probably the same. Think small. Most people will be surprised to get anything above and beyond your standard product or service. Simple things like bowls of candy, business card bowls from which a weekly winner is selected, one day a month that you can “celebrate” all the monthly birthdays, even holiday decorations, and employees wearing Halloween costumes can be looked at as a “treat” from the customer’s point of view.

Of course all businesses can’t do some of the specific ideas mentioned in this blog, but the concept is the same no matter what size your business is. For some additional assistance in learning how to make your business different visit http://www.businessknowhow.com/Marketing/dominate.htm.

But in the mean time just remember Halloween Tricks and Treats and your business will be successful.

Know-ing or No-ing Your Customers

Which Road Do You Take?

So you think your know your customers or do you really no your customers. You’ve been calling on one customer for a few years. You’ve been moderately successful but you can’t quite make the big sale. You’ve prepared great presentations and the customer seems interested but when you go back, the customer either turns you down or just places a small order. You politely thank the customer for this order and suggest that maybe next time it can be larger. The customer says “yea, maybe next time.” As you walk back to the car, you scratch you head in disbelief. What are you doing wrong? Why can’t you get this customer to buy your product? You’ve tried everything you can think of to get this customer to place a large order. Maybe instead of know-ing your customer, you are in fact no-ing your customer. Whether you own a large business or a small Mom & Pop store, know-ing your customers is critical to your success.

Let’s consider how you may be no-ing a customer. Do you make decisions for your customer? Do you assume that a particular product or pricing structure would or would not be of interest to your customer? Do you trust your customer? Have you developed a business or personal relationship with your customer? Now turn the tables; what type of sales person do you prefer when making your own purchases? Do you prefer a sales person who includes you in the sales decision or one who tells you what you look good in or what and when to buy? The answers to these questions will help you to begin to understand whether you are know-ing or no-ing your customer.

Present your product or service in a way that lets the customer see how your product or service will help him or make his life easier. In order to do that you must know your product, know your customer and his needs and know how those issues come together. By the way let your customers know that you care about his business and how helping him, helps you, your business and your employees. In this economy there are many businesses that offer the same product and you can distinguish yourself and your business by remembering to know your customer versus no your customer.
There are here are a number of websites which offer suggestions on this topic. I found http://www.mycustomer.com/topic/how-get-know-your-customer-build-trust and the blog http://www.smallbusinessnewz.com/topnews/2008/07/08/getting-to-know-your-customers very helpful.

Marketing versus Advertising

As a business owner, one of your business goals may be to increase sales for the upcoming fiscal year or one of your goals may be to give a little back to the community that has supported you over the years or your goals may be something in between. Whatever your goal, you know that advertising is expensive and that there are many resources available, but you don’t know how much you should spend. Should you advertise or should you market your company, product or service? There is a difference between advertising and marketing and knowing that difference can assist you in making the decisions involved in setting up and spending your budget to meet your business goals.

Marketing is the plan you will develop to bring your customers, your business, and your goals together. Marketing is the umbrella under which you will gather all of these marketing tools. Some of the tools you might consider using are advertising, market research, pricing strategy, media planning, community involvement, web-site development and so on. You know that you only have a limited amount of money to spend so you need to begin by breaking your marketing budget down into these various components. The next thing you need to do is determine how much each of these components would cost you to implement. Along with that decision, you will need to decide which tool will get you closer to your goals. Once you have a starting point, you will need to edit and revise both the tool and how much to spend on each tool, until you have determined the right mix of marketing tools that will assist your company in meeting itsr specific goals. The chart below gives an example of how your marketing budget might look.

By using a pie chart, you can better visualize your budget. You can readily see that your current marketing budget is weighed too heavily towards advertising and market research. Based on the type of business and the location of your business you might want to adjust the budget items and the priority of your budget items. If, for example, you own a small business, you might consider spending more on school, church or community involvement projects which you believe will show the community that you and your business care about the growth of the neighborhood. If you manage a larger business and/or have a larger budget, you may feel that supporting a community-wide issue is a way of giving back to the community that has supported you and your business over the years.

The reasons behind why, which resource and how much to spend are as individualistic as the number of businesses and owners. Some owners are looking for immediate return on their marketing investment, while others are looking for the biggest bang for their buck. In the current economy though, many are looking for ways to reduce their marketing budget and still maintain their presence in the marketplace. Whatever your reason or goal, just knowing that all advertising is marketing, but not all marketing is advertising should assist you in meeting those business goals. For more information on marketing and advertising differences visit:
http://www.hands-onsolutions.com/articles/advertisingvsmarketing.html
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/oct2003/sb2003109_3183_sb006.htm.

Employee Blogging

Now it’s time to tackle the issues of Content. Business Blogs can cover many topics, ranging from Hiring, Firing, Marketing and Advertising, Charitable Contributions, Employees, Economic Trends, Health Care and so on. But you will not be the only one posting or commenting to the Company Blog.

Employee Blogging

As we all know, new communication technologies are popping up every day with email, instant messaging, texting, blogging, and twittering, just to name a few. As a business owner it is easy to think of the positives that can come from all of this new technology. But it is also important to stay ahead of the curve on the negative or possible negative impact of these communication tools.

What would you do if an employee were to share trade secrets or air internal bickering between employees? What would you do if a potential new client were to find out the “deal” being offered to them was higher than the “deal” offered to other clients through the company Blog? Can a company be legally responsible for the information on a Blog post? Could a company be sued for the information found on their Blog? Some of these questions have yet to be answered in a court room. But it is important that these and many other questions and concerns be addressed.

Employee Blogging Policies

Many companies are realizing, much to their chagrin that preventing the problem is easier than trying to apologize after the fact. Every company has or should have employee policies on topics including but not limited to employment expectations, vacation days, holidays, issues regarding conflict of interest, and harassment. Regarding the topic of blogging, think about what specific topics your company needs to protect and develop a policy for you and your employees to follow. Consider contacting your attorney on the terminology necessary for your Employee Policy Handbook. You will also need to develop procedures for punishment or dismissal when the inevitable happens and an employee breaks that policy.

Sample Blogging Policies

A Google Search on this topic as one would expect brings up a number of sites, two that I have found very helpful are Groundswell http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2004/11/blogging_policy.html and another Blog site http://mmanuel.typepad.com/media_guerrilla/2005/07/corporate_and_e.html. Both of these sites are keenly aware of the issues surrounding the topic of Blogging Policies. The Media Guerrilla site lists the three biggest blogging areas which companies are at risk:
1. Protecting the company’s intellectual property,
2. Slander and invasion of privacy and
3. Security law.

The Groundswell site actually provides an excellent Blogging Code of Ethics and has links to Blogging Policies currently being used by a number of corporations.

Remember: Blogging can be fun and informational, but blogging can also have its down sides. Whether you are an employee or the owner of the business, think before you hit that BLOG SEND or POST button.