Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

Small Business Information You Should Know

Sunday, July 6th, 2008
small business management
James Copper asked:


What are small businesses?

Small businesses are businesses with less staff. The staff limit is different for different areas. These businesses are generally owned by individuals or are started in partnerships. Other criterions to decide small businesses are the turnover and profit. The less is the turnover or the profit, the smaller is the business. The smallest businesses are called as ‘micro businesses’ and those managed by families are called as ‘mom’s and pop’s business’. These smaller businesses generally have employees in number from 0 to 10. Many a times, the owners are the workers in these businesses.

Advantages in small business:

The basic advantage of starting a small business is that you need less capital and money to start the business. Also, one can start a small business on part time basis. The basics of a successful business are the regular modifications that one does to it. In small businesses these modifications can be easily done as one does not need to follow any trend or face any compulsions in small business unlike in big businesses. Also, a small business can give much more to its customers than a big one as they have the power to provide each and every customer the required personal attention and take into account all the suggestions and even implement some of them. Small businesses provide daily bread to many a people and thus are very important.

Marketing small businesses:

The most common methods of marketing small businesses are customer referrals, mouth publicity, radios, newspapers, internet, directories, boards, etc. Television ads can be a bit expensive for advertising small businesses. Internet marketing is considered the most cost effective and result oriented method of marketing small businesses. The ads can be placed on websites or even search engine web pages. The costs are decided on the size of the ad and thus can be easily moderated.

Small business ideas:

- Franchisee business: this is one of the extremely profitable ideas of a small business. The only things that you need to start this business are a place and some capital. The best part of this business is that the things that you sell are already quite famous in the market and thus you need to do very little expenses on the marketing.

- Event planner: if you know the knack of organizing things perfectly, then you can become an event planner. You need to plan out meetings, parties, weddings and other such get-together for your customers in the given budget. The best part of this job is that it is extremely interesting and your work does the marketing for you.

- Computer repair: if you have done any hardware or software course or have learned any computer language then you can start the work of computer repairing. You just need to sort out simple problems in computers. The best part of this job is that you get to learn a lot more than you have about computers. But, you should do only the work that you can manage and avoid doing any guess work.



Diane

Tags: , ,
Posted in Marketing | No Comments »

How To Manage A Small Business In The UK

Sunday, June 15th, 2008
small business management
James Copper asked:


Managing a small business in UK is not an easy job. One needs to know all the details and even consequences of every action that he or she will take. A small business in UK can make you loads of profit if you are able to manage it well. The success rates for a small business in UK are really high as it is one of the most developed places on the world and thus there is a need for everything no matter what you sell. Given below are some tips to run a small business in UK.

1. Keep business separate: Don’t mix up your daily life with your business. The accounts of your business should be maintained differently and regularly. They shouldn’t be mixed up with your daily money transactions. You can keep it all separate by opening a new bank account for your business and keeping a track of all the things in a separate diary or a book. Such separation of business related money transactions from personal ones may help you save money when you make your year end taxes returns records. This method may also help you calculate your profit or loss accurately and thus make your ideas clear about your business.

2. Receipt care: You should timely deposit all your receipts to avoid them getting either stolen or lost. All the money received should be directly deposited to the account without taking any money out for any expenses. If you wish to take out money, they should be withdrawn from the account afterwards.

3. Employee watch: Keep a watch on your employees. See to it that they work up to the mark or let them go. If you have good employees and don’t wish to loose them, give them timely treats like gifts on various occasions or dinners if you get a good profit in a month. This may encourage them to work harder and get you more profit each month. You should always keep in mind that to get something extra you should pay extra. Thus, you should increase the salaries of the employees that are extremely good at their work. You can get good information about your employees from your customers itself. Ask customers for timely feedbacks about everything.

4. Buy the best: Sometimes, to save some money, we make the really unintelligent decision of buying lower quality raw material or equipments in our offices. This may hamper the quality of the final work so never buy low quality material in your office. Even buying bad quality equipments may lead you to a big loss. Thus, you should try and buy the best available as per your needs.

5. Give the best: Give your customers the best possible service that is possible for you to give. This may help you flourish your business. This may also help you gain some more customers for yourself as mouth publicity is the best publicity that is available. Also, this may help you grow and establish on a larger scale.



Oscar

Tags: , ,
Posted in Marketing | No Comments »

Small Business: When Is It a Profitable Niche

Thursday, June 5th, 2008
small business management
Chris Marlow asked:


Recently I took the position that for freelance service professionals, copywriters, IT pros, trainers, coaches, and so on, small business can be a poor market, although it’s one that’s often targeted by consultant newbies.

As a copywriter for 20+ years, I know that one can get very good business from companies with, say, 25 employees and up. And after working with the big guns like IBM, Intuit, Microsoft, and others, I’ve also learned that the larger the business, the better the pay and the more pleasant the work (largely due to more sophisticated processes).

That said, small business can be a very lucrative market under certain circumstances. So by what criteria should you judge small business as a potential target for your service business? There are three rules of thumb that I go by:

1. Small business is a good niche for service professionals who can provide a complete solution. A perfect illustration is found in the distinction between offering copywriting services versus a full-blown marketing solution.

Small business might balk at paying thousands of dollars for the copy component of a direct mail package, but happily pay a healthy retainer for someone who can handle 100 percent of the marketing function and deliver real, measurable results. A small business needs lots of help communicating with prospects, customers, vendors, and news outlets. This is where a marketing savvy copywriter can shine.

One of my recent coaching students wants to help veterinarians. While there are some very large veterinarian conglomerates in the marketplace, small practices dominate. The diagrammed business model I made for helping small business vets looks very different from the diagrammed business models I make for my “big business” coaching students.

For one thing, the small business model has a 100 percent focus on local prospects. On the other hand, many of my “big business” coaching students can target both local and non-local prospects.

2. The small business must have a viable budget for your services over the long term. Whereas a one-time job for a very large business might net you thousands, the budget constraints of a small business leads to a model that supports an ongoing relationship. In my own business I have consultants on a monthly payroll for IT, office management, and accounting. These people are essential to my business growth and provide services on a weekly or monthly basis.

The savvy copywriter will choose only those small business clients who understand the value of copywriting, and can afford to pay “market rate” for the work.

A common complaint of copywriters who are working with the wrong kind of small business client is “I have to spend so much time educating them.” In ideal copywriter/client relationships the client does not need to be educated and the focus is on getting the work done. A small business client who wants you to educate them will drain you UNLESS you also charge for your time as a “tutor.”

3. When working with small business, there is often an advantage to viewing the business relationship as a partnership. Now I don’t mean an actual, legally-binding partnership, but I do mean an attitudinal one. Rather than straight “work for hire,” both parties benefit if there is a shared passion for meeting goals and objectives. There is a trust factor to be established which unlocks the vault, for as you might guess, the budget appears when the value becomes apparent.

For instance, I could have hired an office manager who just “took orders.” But Jackie Robinson comes from the heady world of the San Francisco-high-rise law firm. As a top-flight legal assistant for three decades, I benefit from her business acumen and her ability to see around corners. She solves problems I don’t even know I have. This makes her very valuable, and as her client, I look for ways to keep her happy too, with pay raises, added responsibilities, and a stake in “our” continued success.

So the bottom line is…small business can be good business under the right circumstances.

If you love the idea of being a significant part of the team, if you like the variety of handling full marketing and publicity campaigns, if you could see yourself as the “marketing department,” then small business could be your ticket to a very profitable and exceedingly satisfying career.

If, on the other hand, you’d rather come up with killer concepts and churn out blockbuster copy every day, then you’re better off to target companies that already have their marketing departments in place.



Alice

Tags: , ,
Posted in Marketing | No Comments »