Want Free Business Advice? Listen to Your Customers!
How well do you listen to what your customers have to say?
It’s easy to hang on every positive word a customer utters, and quietly dismiss any negative criticisms, but as Richard Branson points out in this short interview segment with Seth Godin, listening to all customer feedback should be part of your business strategy.
Listening is Free
In the past week we’ve featured many ways for you to save your business money, but listening may be one of the best uses of your energy. And the best part of it is, listening is free!
Mr. Branson points out that when you really listen to what your customers have to say you’re opening yourself up to a world of innovative ideas. Think about it, customers tell us:
- What we’re doing well
- What we can do better
- What they’d like to see us do
- What they have no interest in
- What’s important to them
- What’s not
- What they’d pay more for
- What they think should be cheaper
Customers give us all the information we need to get better for free.
Put More Smart People on Your Team
A concept that struck me during this clip was that some of your customers, my customers, our customers – are smarter than we are. They may be better at business, have more skills, or just plain brilliant, and that’s a good thing.
When we listen to their ideas we are effectively adding more smart people to our team to make us better. Usually in order to get smart people on your team you have to pay them – sometimes a lot – but that’s not the case with customers.
They willing share their thoughts and ideas with us for free, and then we can pick and choose the best ideas to implement. It doesn’t get better than having a perpetual think tank giving us fresh ideas about our business from people smarter than we are.
Granted not all feedback or ideas will be good ones, and our job will be to know the difference. But it begins with listening, and when something that doesn’t cost a dime and only takes a small amount of my time, can radically change my business, I’m on board.
Are you listening?
Photo Credit: striatic
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Don’t Create Your Business Website Without Reading These Five Tips
If you’ve got a small business, you need a website – that much is clear. But don’t go off hiring a designer until you check out Corey Perlman’s five website design tips to help your website not only look good, but make your business money.
If you leave your website’s look and feel strictly to the designers, be prepared to get a beautiful, sexy, artistic site that does everything but make you money.
Why? Because they know website design, but they do not know your business. The five tips below will help ensure that you not only have a website that looks professional, but a website that’s open and ready for business!
Five Design Tips for Your Business Website
#1 – Keep your important information above the fold
64.9% of people don’t scroll. And 77.3% of statistics are made up on the spot.
So forget the statistics, just remember that your phone number, physical address, “Buy Now” button all have a greater chance of being clicked on if you don’t require people to scroll down to click on them. Make sure all of your important information is eye level and consistent on every page throughout your site.
#2 – Include an Opt-in Form on your Website
By securing a person’s contact information prior to them leaving your Website, you’ve ensured that you can continue to communicate with this person down the road.
This is critical to your success via the Web. As you know, people are very protective of their information and will be hesitant to give it away. To increase your chances of having a successful opt-in box, offer something of real value so people feel good about giving you their name and email address.
Remind them that you will only email a periodic eNewsletter and that you will NEVER sell or give their email address to anyone else.
#3 – Link Clarity
Another rule of thumb: if the user doesn’t feel confident they know where the link they are about to click on is taking them, they won’t click on it. So take the guess work out of it and make your links abundantly clear. Contact Us. Yep, that’s pretty clear.
#4 – Color Pollution
Remember when your mom thought anything you brought home from art class was the most beautiful masterpiece in the world? Well, no offense, but I’m willing to bet it fell into the category of color pollution. Color pollution is simply more than three primary colors on a page. Any more than three and your brain slowly begins to turn to mush. This is crucial when it comes to your website because you want your user’s attention to stay focused on the content, not that odd shade of mauve.
#5 – Include Key Words in your homepage content
This is not your web designer’s job, so you can’t blame them for not doing it. Again, they don’t know your business and wouldn’t have the slightest clue what words would make the most sense to include on your homepage. Key Words are those words your users will type in search engines to find you…or your competitors. You want any word or phrase that they might type in to be scattered throughout your homepage as the search engines will give you credit for those words and that will increase your likelihood of a higher search engine ranking.
Author Bio:
Corey Perlman is the author of the #1 Amazon.com bestseller eBoot Camp: Proven Internet Marketing Techniques to Grow Your Business. The book provides easy-to-do strategies and techniques to help you market your business on the Web. It covers topics such as social networking sites, Web site optimization, online articles and press releases, video marketing, and much more. To learn more about eBoot Camp or to purchase a copy, go to www.ebootcampbook.com.
Photo Credit: billaday
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Top Ten Money-Saving Tips for Your Business
Not wanting to miss out on the cost saving fun we’ve been having around here, Barbara Weltman offers her Top Ten Money Saving Tips for Business in this guest post.
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In today’s current economic environment, finding new and creative ways to save money while obtaining the things your business needs, can help your business survive and thrive. Here are some great products and services that you can explore in order to save money and increase profitability.
MyFax lets you send faxes online, saving paper, ink and more. Faxes can be sent domestically and to over 40 different countries worldwide. You don’t even have to set up an account if you send no more than two faxes (ten pages each) per day.
Add It Up™, a new online shopping portal recently launched by Bank of America, allows small business owners to earn up to 20 percent cash back from more than 270 retailers when they shop online with their Bank of America check card. Participating retailers include top names such as Staples.com, HomeDepot.com, Walmart.com, and Costco.com.
SCORE provides free business counseling through its 11,200 volunteers nationwide. Find an in-person mentor by zip code and schedule an appointment to critique your business plan, review your marketing plan, or discuss start-up or expansion plans; or, ask a question online.
Small Business Development Centers, like SCORE, offer free counseling and training from a network of more than 1,100 service centers.
Work.com offers nearly 3,000 free how-to guides about e-commerce, legal contracts, sales and marketing, business plans, or other subjects. These guides, which are rated by viewers, are concise articles on the topic, with links to resources. Particularly helpful are the guides of regional interest, including state-by-state guides and guides for those doing business internationally.
Refund-Retriever and Refund Technology can get you refunds on shipping costs. You may be overpaying because of packages you send that arrive late (an estimated 10% do), third parties use your account without permission, or the shipper erroneously charges you for items you didn’t send. They keep 50% of any recovery.
Business.gov can help you over regulatory hurdles by connecting you with the federal agency that can help. Also cut through red tape at the state level by finding the right person (go to www.business.gov/contacts/state and then click on your state and the rules you need help with).
Avery Dennison Office Products gives you access to low-cost and royalty free photos and illustrations that you can use for business cards, brochures, post cards, catalogs, a website or other marketing materials. (FYI: If you download an image from the web without permission, you risk legal exposure for copyright violations.)
Guru.com is the world’s largest online service marketplace (a database of more than 100,000 freelancers) where you can find experts to work for you. Hire by the project and you won’t incur payroll taxes and other costs related to employees. Ensure your satisfaction by paying the freelancer through Guru’s SafePay Escrow; if you’re not completely satisfied, Guru refunds your money.
Health savings accounts is a website from the Treasury Department and the Small Business Administration to provide small businesses with information about HSAs. HSAs can be a perfect solution for health coverage. The site contrasts HSAs with other health care options and suggests ways to save money through HSAs.
Author Bio
Barbara Weltman is a top selling author and has written the titles “The Rational Guide to Building Small Business Credit” which features a foreword by Dun & Bradstreet, “J.K. Lasser’s Small Business Taxes” and “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Starting a Home-Based Business.” She is also a contributing writer for Inc.com, PINK magazine and New York Enterprise Report. Barbara has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Reuters, Forbes.com, Marketwatch.com, WABC-TV, Fox News, CNNRadio and CNBC.
Photo Credit: yoppy
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Stop Twittering Your Life Away Trying to Figure Out Social Media
The following guest post is from Jimmy Vee & Travis Miller the nation’s leading experts on attracting customers and the authors of Gravitational Marketing: The Science of Attracting Customers. Together they have leveraged over $96 million dollars in marketing into $12 billion dollars in profit for their clients.
Here are their tips on using social media make more money and keep you business growing. Be sure to check out their free report, the Social Media Success Blueprint to get your business up to speed on social networking in 37 minutes or less!
Creating Authentic Relationships
There’s one thing you need to do if you want to make more money and keep your business growing even when things are tough. In fact, if you do this consistently, you can keep your business from feeling the effects of a slowdown in the future.
You may be asking yourself, "What’s this magical thing you’re talking about?" It’s not revolutionary. It’s an old thing. It’s something that used to be commonplace but now is a lost art.
What we’re talking about is simply creating more authentic relationships with your prospects and customers — a connection, a friendship.
We all enjoy going somewhere we’re recognized and appreciated. We frequent the places where people know our names and value our patronage far more often than those that don’t.
The better your relationship with your prospects and customers, the more money you will make and the less susceptible you will be to feel the effects of an economic slowdown.
Leverage Technology
Today this is easier than ever. Technology allows us to connect with people from all over the world and connect with them like they were coming into our country store every single day.
The explosion of social media sites on the web gives you an even greater opportunity to create a connection with prospects and customers. If you’ve never heard of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter then you are certainly behind the times.
More than likely, you have heard of social media and these sites. You probably know someone who’s on them. Heck, maybe you’re on them yourself but don’t really know why you’re there or what you’re doing.
Don’t Worry – We’ll Get You Up To Speed
Social media is information content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. It is intended to facilitate communications, influence interaction between peers and with public audiences.
That definition sounds complicated and convoluted doesn’t it? Let us break it down. Social Media is basically water cooler chitchat going on 24/7 between a whole bunch of people regardless of geographic location or time of day.
Think about the kind of relationships that are formed by the water cooler, in the break room, golf course or at the Starbucks in the morning before work. Now these same relationships can be formed without leaving your home or office by "hanging" out with others on social media sites.
We’re aggressive implementers and testers. Especially when something can potentially be used as a cheap/free lead source. With that being said, we’ve been testing and researching to find out if social media can be used to generate leads and make sales.
As of right now our belief is yes it can… but there are some pretty big butts. Because these sites are about building and leveraging relationships it’s not fast. It takes time and work to build quality relationships, friendships, confidence and trust and that’s what you need to be doing on these sites to get them to work.
Depending on where you are in your business, how much time you have available to invest and other resource issues, social media as a traffic source or business tool may or may not be right for you.
Social Media Success Blueprint
With that being said, here are some short cuts we’ve discovered by using and testing social media sites. Download the free report to get all the tips, tricks and hits on getting up to speed on social media fast.
Author Bio:
Jim & Travis help entrepreneurs attract more customers and get the FAME & FORTUNE they deserve NOW by "leap frogging" traditional hurdles and positioning them as the RECOGNIZED EXPERT in their field. Using both online (video & social media) and offline (radio, print & direct mail) they help their clients double their customer base in as little as 6 months with NO STRESS and ZERO MARKETING WASTE. Start Attracting More Customers Now by getting their FREE Customer Attraction Starter Pack at http://www.GravitationalMarketing.com
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20 No Cost Ideas for Marketing in Tough Times
Last week we talked about some low or no cost ideas for marketing your business, and in keeping with the theme I thought I’d bring you 20 more.
Here are 20 no cost marketing ideas from Keith Monaghan, a veteran marketer who helps businesses with their marketing strategy and advises them on building relationships in today’s hyper-social marketplace. He’s also from my hometown of Portland, OR which makes him a swell guy too.
My Favorite Ideas
Here are a couple of my favorite ideas from his list. As you can see they aren’t your “typical” low cost ways to advertise, but they can have a powerful impact on your business.
For the full list you can read Keith’s eBook below, or download your own copy here.
IMPROVE CUSTOMER SERVICE
The difference between good and great is in the details. Can your customer service experience be improved with a few tweaks or an easy policy change? Do it. Make it as seamless and enjoyable as you can (yes, enjoyable). In short: make it rock, because happy customers are loyal customers and you need those more than ever right now.
LET CUSTOMERS KNOW YOU APPRECIATE THEM
When was the last time you said “thank you” to a customer? Just as with any relationship in your life, it pays to express gratitude on a regular basis. Sound corny? Think of it this way: Customers who feel appreciated are going to give the love right back in the form of loyalty. Send them and email, make a call, interact with them any way you see fit. Just let them know they are important. It works.
SET UP A COMPANY BLOG
Many companies are making great use of blogs. Amazon uses a variety of blogs to cross market products. The CEO of Zappos keeps investors and customers up to date via his blog. Even Fortune 500 companies understand the value of engaging customers through blogs. Start by having the free, open source, and highly popular WordPress installed on your site, then do your homework. Here are two guides to help you find the right tone and strategy: 10 Tips for Becoming a Great Corporate Blogger, and Problogger’s Guide to Corporate Blogging.
SEARCH FOR YOURSELF
People are talking about you online. Find them with Google Blog Search, twitter search, Technorati, and whatever other tools you like. Once you find them, make contact. Respond to their comment. Address a complaint. Right a wrong. Say thank you. Start a conversation. Just let them know you appreciate the comment. Most of them will be happy to hear from you. See also: “Help Your Fans Spread the Love”.
KNOW YOUR NUMBERS
Peter F. Drucker, the father of modern business management said “What’s measured improves“. Are you measuring your web site traffic? Google Analytics is free, includes enterprise level tools, and features Conversion University, where you can learn how to make sense of the numbers and improve traffic to your site. Now there is no excuse.
GO BACK TO OLD CUSTOMERS
We’ve all heard the old adage that it’s easier to keep an existing customer than win a new one. But it may also be worth going through your list of older inactive customers and trying to reactivate a few of the better ones. Give them a call, tell them you value them, ask what it will take to get them back. You might be surprised at how simple or low-cost it is. If they say no thanks, consider it a learning opportunity and wish them the best. Then call them back in a year and ask again.
Try full screen view for best readability
Marketing in Tough Times – 20 No-Cost Ideas
Photo Credit: John Althouse Cohen
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Building a Community Through Blogging
I had the pleasure of being interviewed on Thursday by Shelia Buyukacar, of IMAG Connects, as part of the 2009 Action Success Summit.
My topic was on “Building a Community Through Blogging”, and we covered a lot of ground over the course of the 40 minute interview.
What Did We Cover?
It’s interesting that we only scratched the surface of how to build a community with your blog, especially your business blog, but I think we laid a lot of the foundation work for what it takes to start up a business blog, and some of the many benefits.
Specifically We Talked About
- What IS a blog?
- Why do I REALLY need a blog…I’ve got a website—I’m on Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin. Isn’t that enough?
- In my experience some of the common problems I see entrepreneurs face or create for themselves in regards to creating/implementing/maintaining a blog?
- What are some of the “devastating” problems new blogs make?
- What are some of the easily solveable problems when starting up a business blog?
- What are the elements of a blog…what are the MUST haves?? What are the SHOULD haves?
- What should an entrepreneur know about monetizing a blog?
- In regards to creating and implementing/maintaining a blog what type of “experts/professionals”…should we consider getting on our team and what is the normal way to hire them?
- What should we look for in each type of “member”?
- What are the top X (3 to 5) action steps an entrepreneur MUST DO (to be successful) when it comes to creating-implementing-maintaining-monetizing a blog?
Great questions all of them, and the conversational style of the interview made it fun for me and hopefully fun for the listener.
Want to Listen to the Full Interview?
Listen Now! Aprx 35mins, .mp3 format
Interviews from all the Action Success Summit speakers can be found at: Action Success Summit
Photo Credit: Duchamp
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The 2nd Age of a Business: Naivety
I’m extremely excited to share this guest post with you all from Dragos Roua who blogs at eDragonu.ro. Not only have I enjoyed his business perspectives, but he is undertaking a very unique guest posting approach, which I admire the creativity of.
The 7 Ages of Business, is a 7 part guest post series, in partnership with this blog and 6 others – and they are all being published at the exact same time!
Enjoy the business wisdom from Dragos, and be sure to check out the other 6 parts of the series – links below.
This article is part of a series about the 7 ages of a business, an entrepreneurs perspective, initially published at eDragonu.ro. The remaining articles are published as guest posts on other 6 fine personal development and business blogs. You will find links to them at the end of this article.
Seeing The Real Picture
The naivety age is the second age of your business. It comes after the initial enthusiasm and exhilaration and it marks the beginning of your real activities as an entrepreneur. But as the name says, the naivety phase will be also a time for trying and failing, a time for learning and growing.
The biggest challenge during this age will be to see the real picture around you. After you clarified your vision and started to move the things around during the enthusiasm age of your business, it’s time to start looking around and see what’s really happening. During this period there will be an intense desire to “walk into the shoes” of a real entrepreneur, but it will mainly be mostly a mimicking approach, not one based on a clear understanding of what’s happening.
I remember I made hundreds of business cards during that period and also I remember I hunted for business cards obsessively. 10 years ago,& when I started my internet business, social networking wasn’t so advanced, so the only way to get in touch with a potential partner or client was by meeting him in person. During my naivety business period I also acquired most of my shirts and starting to wear a suit,& strongly believing that if I dress like a business man I will somehow become one.
What To Avoid
It’s pretty easy to get caught in a bigger wave that you can swim during this period so here are a few things to keep an eye on.
Speaking Over Doing
Your desire of making yourself and your ideas known can make you speak more than you actually do. While this is great for your speaking abilities, it won’t help the real business much. Avoiding excessive speech in favor of more grounding activities, like organizing and planning, would be a solid approach at this stage. Continuing to write in the journal you already started in the first stage would be a good idea.
Believing Everything
Being so exposed in search for clients or partners will make you extremely vulnerable. There is a real danger of believing everything around you. This belief is fueled by your hope that everything will turn out well, a sense of positivity that would be fantastic, if backed up with the proper assessment. During this age you can fall for “get rich quick” scams or you can get involved with rather slippery people.
Sudden Partners
This is a particular case of the problem described above. You will observe a lot of opportunities for partnerships – mostly because you get out much more often than before – but most of them are not appropriate for this moment. As a rule of thumb, you should enter partnerships only when you can offer an approximate equal value, which, at this stage, is rather unlikely to happen. Learning to say “no” is one of the lessons of this stage
What To Do
But being so exposed can also have some positive consequences. Here are some of the things you should insist on in order to make your path a little bit more enjoyable.
Increase Your Network
Your continuous hunt for partners and clients should end with a big rolodex. Even if you don’t start something together, even if you don’t close a sale, this period could leverage a big asset: a network. Networking is more often than not better than advertising, a secret that not many entrepreneurs will be happy to reveal. And networking can be started at any level. Since you’re already going out a lot, why not starting it now?
Work Your Presentation Skills
Being in the position to speak a lot, you will be somehow forced to speak better. This is a great time to start improving your presentation capabilities. You don’t really have something to lose at this stage, so any mistake will have minor consequences. But the advantages of becoming a skilled speaker will last even if you’re not making to the next stages.
Control Your Cash-Flow
I’ve seen a lot of businesses failing because of a faulty cash-flow in the first stages. Up to the next age of your business, attention you should pay extra care to your budget. You may or may not have an initial funding, but regardless of the physical availability of money, you should take extra care now to any money commitment, because it’s really easy to make mistakes. Use this period to try and assess errors as much as you can.
From Naivety To Attention
The next age of your business will be marked by attention. It’s stage in which you will start to really do things. My initial naivety period lasted a few months. I consider it closed when I finally decided it’s time not to wear my suit at the office, but put a tee-shirt and start some real coding. Your mileage may vary.
As always, there is no quality measurement of a stage, I think all are necessary and all are able to give you the tools to reach your goals. The most important thing I remember from my naivety period is the belief that everything is possible. Despite the failures and broken projects, I still have this feeling till the present day. And it’s a wonderful feeling.
Want to Read the Rest of the Series?
You can find the remaining 6 ages of your business on these fine personal development and business blogs:
Attraction Mind Map – 1st Age: Enthusiasm
Advanced Life Skills – 3rd Age: Attention
Steven Aitchison – 4th Age: Maturity
Rat Race Trap – 5th Age: Expansion
My Wife Quit Her Job – 6th Age: Leadership
Learn This – 7th Age: Exhaustion
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Four Nonnegotiable Rules of Advertising
The world of advertising is a wide open landscape. There is almost no limit to the creativity, depth and breadth your advertising mix can take – Not to mention no limit to the amount of money you can spend.
In such an environment a few set of rules can help give you a proper framework by which to operate. I consider these to be nonnegotiable if you want to stay on track and not break the bank.
1. You Must Budget For Regular, Recurrent Advertising
Set a budget up front that you will allocate to your monthly advertising. Make this a % of revenue – not a fixed $$$ amount. Stick to this budget month in and month out – but spend your ad dollars (see next point).
2. You Must Be Consistent
Consistency creates opportunity in advertising. You will never give your advertising a chance to work if you don’t remain consistent.
Don’t change it with the weather, unless you have good reason too (see rule #4), and once you set the budget think hard before cutting it.
This is why you set a monthly budget, and spend it. Month in and month out you give your advertising a chance to work, and you give yourself more data to analyze results.
Also, if your advertising comes and goes, you never give your target market a chance to internalize your message (i.e What you want them to do)
3. You Must Have a Clear Message
Are your ad messages crystal clear? Is it obvious who you are targeting and what you want them to do? Don’t waste a dime trying to be cute, clever, or catchy until you have clear and concise down pat.
Be specific, to the point, and sometimes blunt. Remember "Here’s what I got, here’s what it will do for you, here’s what I want you to do next".
4. You Must Measure, Measure, Measure
It’s amazing how many businesses fail to measure their advertising – don’t be one of them. You have to test and measure to know what is working!
Don’t be afraid to make changes, or try new things, but make those changes backed up by data – or validate their effectiveness with data.
If you have no idea as to what the effectiveness of one advertising campaign was versus another, you may as well throw money out the window. It will always be a crap shoot.
The more you measure, the more you know what works, the more you can allocate ($$$) to what works, and the more successful your advertising will be – period.
Photo Credit: ttarasiuk
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Random Acts of Recessionary Kindness
Plaza Cleaners in Portland, OR had this sign up in their window recently.
I’m calling this a “Random Act of Recessionary Kindness”, and it’s nice to see people working together to get through the tough times. Not only that, but what cleaner do you think the people who take them up on this offer will use once they get jobs?
Have you seen any Random Acts? Let me know about them in the comments below, or better yet send us a picture.
Photo Credits: Rebecca Gabriel (via WWeek.com)
arimoore’s photostream (front page)
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The Lost Law of Branding
Before Nike, there were sneakers. Before Coca-Cola, there were soft drinks. Before Godiva, there was chocolate. And hard to believe as it is, before Starbucks there was coffee.
In this presentation David Brier (Chief Gravity Defyer) of DBD International, LLC takes a look at branding and what it takes to make your brand stick.
World Class Brands Have One Thing In Common
David points out that every world class brand started out as a commodity. And through exact, planned, marketing became the name synonymous with that category.
He asks, “Is your brand really creating the necessary ties with your customers and potential customers to rise above an overstimulated marketplace?” And answers that question as he delves into “The Lost Law of Branding”.
Remember
Everything you are currently doing is creating your brand, whether you know it or not or intend for it to happen. Every interaction, every customer experience shapes the brand. It’s up to you to do what it takes to craft the right experience, and consistent message so that your brand becomes in your customers eyes what you believe it to be.
- Your brand is not your logo
- Your brand is not your identity
- Your brand is not what you sell
Your brand is not what you say it is – it’s what they say it is.
Well Worth a Look
If you are looking for some ideas, and inspiration to entrench your brand within your market, I highly suggest you check out David’s presentation.
Photo Credit: Ende’s photostream
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