The Zen of Running your Own Business

When it comes to satisfaction, nothing compares to owning and operating your own business. Everyday is exciting. You wake up energized, full of ideas and objectives to be accomplished. When you launch a business that is something you really want to do, your chances of success are high and (as the psychologists say) you become "self-actualized."

I spent over twenty-five years in entrepreneurial and corporate environments. Sometimes it was fun. Sometimes it was drudge work. And then there was the corporate politics, artificial deadlines, and incompetent bosses to deal with, not to mention driving at two hours daily through exhausting traffic. I don't miss it.

Now, I work out of my home office and have a virtual company made up of knowledgeable executives who like myself leverage our vast experience to mentor start-ups and small businesses. We hold meetings (when necessary) at Starbucks overlooking the Pacific Ocean surf.

It is amazing how much you can accomplish in a day when you're not bothered by the minutia and frustrations that are the price of working for someone else in exchange for getting a steady paycheck. Your workday becomes very targeted. And if it's a nice day, there's always time to "smell the roses," go for a bike ride along the beach, or just take a break to reflect on life.

Don't get me wrong. Starting a business takes a lot of work. You will work harder and longer during the first couple of years than you ever did when employed by someone else. There will be victories and defeats. Some days you will wonder how you are going to pay the bills this month. You will learn and overcome adversities. You will grow. You will grow a lot!

But mostly it doesn't seem like work, because you are making your own decisions and building a future for yourself. You are your own boss. You get to be creative and test new ideas. And when you succeed, it brings a special sense of joy and satisfaction.

I look back over the past five years since launching my own consulting business and my only regret is that I didn't do it sooner. With the ugly economy and layoffs, maybe it's time for you too to take an entrpreneurial leap. One door closes and another opens. If you do your homework upfront and are prepared to dedicate yourself for a few years, you may find the rewards in both your business and personal life to be overwhelming.

Five Low-Cost Marketing Activities for Small Businesses during a Recession

With the recession gathering steam, 2009 looks to be a tough year for small businesses. Belt-tightening on marketing budgets is a natural reflex to diminished sales. However, it would be a huge mistake for a small business to shut down marketing in a recession because marketing is essential to surviving a downturn. And fortunately, there are effective marketing activities that can be conducted for little or no cost to help keep your sales alive.

Marketing promotion doesn’t have to cost a bundle to yield results. Some of the most effective marketing activities are inexpensive and require little more than investing your time to make them work for your business.

Here are five inexpensive marketing activities a small business can do to keep existing customers coming back while creating new ones:

1. Fine-tune your Website. Go over your site from the perspective of a first-time visitor. Are visitors able to discern what your site is about and why they should do business with your company within the ten seconds that you have to capture their interest? Is the site easy to navigate – can visitors readily find what they are looking for? If your business is selling online, is the purchase process simple to use and fool-proof? Do you offer complementary items for sale during the checkout stage? And finally, have you at least performed basic search engine optimization by including meta, alt and header tags, as well as populating your page titles and textual content with keywords relevant to each page? If that sounds like gibberish to you, check out sites like www.WilsonWeb.com to get helpful non-techie site tuning tips. Take an hour or so to perform an audit of your Website – it will ultimately yield big returns for your business!
2. Nurture your customers and prospects with a monthly email newsletter. Use “push” marketing through an email newsletter to stay in touch with your customers and prospects. Gain their ineterst by providing valuable information. This allows you to promote your products or services directly to potential buyers. Include incentives and create a sense of urgency. Insert click-through links to special pages on your Website that are germane to any offers or subjects promoted in the newsletter. Use low-cost ($30-$50 monthly online services like www.ConstantContact.com which offer professional newsletter templates and email list management. Just remember to “drip, drip, drip” on your clientele to remind them of the value your business provides.
3. Include your Website address on all correspondence, especially business cards and emails. Add a tagline to emails under the signature block that promotes your business. For example, “World’s Largest and Most Affordable Supply of Custom Widgets.”
4. Do press releases. These can be simple one-page releases announcing new products or services offered by your business, your latest achievements, new employees, management changes, new markets, discount programs, etc. – basically anything of public interest. Press releases are free advertising! Distribute them online to targeted geographical locations or audiences by using inexpensive services like www.PRWeb.com ($80). Don’t worry - these services show you how to set up the release. Make sure to include a link back to your site to provide interested readers with more information or drive traffic to an online sales funnel. And since online press releases get picked up by other Websites, newsletters and blogs as “filler content,” they help to create one-way links to your Website from a variety of complementary sites, thereby enhancing your search engine ranking. Don’t forget to mail your press release to local hard-print publications as well!
5. Advertise weekly or monthly promotions on your Website and in your newsletter to generate new sales and keep your customers coming back. If appropriate, you can even get a unique Website address (e.g., BigSale-TailorMadeSuits.com) for about $10 that points to a page in your Website where the promotion is presented in detail along with possible online purchase options. You can also add this unique online address to flyers or small ads in your local paper or industry periodicals.

With a little effort, your small business can have an effective marketing program for minimal expense. And now is the time to try new things and learn new marketing skills while you may have some slack. If you master the above activities, they will continue to provide a foundation for inexpensive marketing once the economy recovers. So make an investment in your future by starting with just one of these proven marketing techniques. Then tackle the others. You will be surprised and pleased with the results!

Do the Business Plan First!

I'm constantly amazed by how many entrepreneurs just jump in and start spending money on websites, marketing, etc., without having first accomplished their homework. Then after several months and maxed-out credit cards, they turn to someone like myself to help them understand why they are not getting any leads or generating any business. In almost every case, these fledgling millionaires failed to complete a business plan before leaping into the unforgiving world of commerce.

A business plan forces one to apply logic and rationale to "bright ideas." Done right, it highlights the risks, tests assumptions, helps to identify winning strategies (if there is one), and presents the expected return on investment in cold hard numbers for different scenarios.

Completing a business plan before launching a business will not guarantee success, but it will give you a much better chance of succeeding. Rushing to market without a business plan almost always results in expensive surprises and ultimate failure.

Having a business plan provides a targeted roadmap and benchmarks against which progress can be measured. It also alerts you to "bailout" opportunities if things are not going as expected. And it will help you to avoid costly pitfalls. In short, preparing a rigorous business plan upfront will more than pay for itself.

A CRM Solution for Small Businesses

Managing customers, conducting marketing campaigns and achieving timely follow-up on sales leads is a vital process that can overwhelm a small business. Keeping promises, storing correspondence, managing sales and being able to quickly determine the status of accounts is crucial to success. Having a single, integrated solution to accomplish all this makes the lives of small business people so much easier and more productive.

Internet-based customer relationship management (CRM) and contact management solutions offer significant advantages. Typically, they are more affordable for small businesses because there is no software to buy or maintain. Equally important, online CRM solutions are accessible from any Internet connection by authorized personnel, providing a good centralized answer for both far-flung sales forces and company management. Too, online CRM solutions circumvent the danger of viruses accessing or destroying vital company data. And most solutions do not require a long-term contract, so it’s easy to get started and companies are not locked into a solution that may not be right for them.

I recently helped a client modify his Website to communicate with AppShore’s online CRM and contact management solution. I was impressed by what I saw.

Why? First, AppShore is designed for small businesses, a market that my own consulting service targets. Having tried other online CRM solutions myself, I am familiar with their functionality. What struck me right away about AppShore is how simple it is to use. Things that seem complex in competitive Internet-based solutions like Salesforce.com or desktop packages such as Goldmine are straightforward and fairly easy to understand in AppShore. I believe this reflects the background of the AppShore team, which consists of seasoned software professionals experienced in start-ups and small businesses.

Speaking as a small business person myself, here are some things that I particularly like about AppShore:

• It has an intuitive design and offers functionality that is a good fit for small businesses rather than enterprise-level companies. I didn’t have to spend hours studying a manual to understand the function of each tab or how to use it.
• It employs “mouse over” technology to give you a quick overview of accounts and leads, as well as the ability to edit them.
• Accounts and leads can be imported using csv files. This means your Outlook Contacts and ACT! files, for example, can be easily imported to AppShore.
• Relevant documents, such as proposals, agreements and RFQ’s can be uploaded and stored for fast access and management.
• AppShore even offers a means to seamlessly transfer captured data from Website forms into the AppShore “new leads” database and then automatically notify you via email. This is a terrific time saver that ensures that Web-generated sales leads never fall through the crack!
  The ability to prioritize tasks by customer or prospect helps you to focus on activities that generate business.
• Opportunities are easy to track and (by assigning a probability and dollar amount to each) provide a basis for forecasting sales. Setting up a sales funnel with different stages is straightforward and beneficial.
• Versatile reporting capabilities facilitate management of marketing and sales functions, as well as providing fast looks at expected revenue.
• AppShore includes a convenient outbound Webmail function that allows you to send email using your domain name. Emails can be linked to customer and prospect accounts for easy retrieval and reference.
• The ability to set up and use templates with multiple “insert” fields for outbound email marketing campaigns and customer/lead follow-up is available with the premium plan. This is both convenient and effective, allowing small businesses to be responsive and conduct inexpensive marketing campaigns. Just be sure that emails are sent only to valid contacts to avoid violating CAN-SPAM laws and provide an “unsubscribe” capability if you use this feature to send email newsletters or promotions.
• A “dashboard” tab allows you to quickly review upcoming activities, your latest leads and top opportunities.
• Password-based access and a separate Administrator function provide adequate security. AppShore databases are also backed up on a regular basis. Having vital customer and sales information located offsite also facilitates disaster recovery.

Overall, AppShore is an excellent solution for a small business. It’s not too much, nor too little. Like any CRM package, however, set-up and terminology may be a little confusing for small businesses that have never used a CRM package before.

What would I like to see more of? The AppShore solution is surprisingly lacking in online tutorials and a Help tab to provide quick answers for “how to” questions. This oversight is balanced by AppShore’s free personalized training, set-up assistance, and excellent telephone support (I know because I tried it!). And, AppShore will release a new version in June 2008 that includes a searchable FAQ (answering “how to” questions), user manual downloads and online problem ticket submission.

Best of all, AppShore is affordable for small businesses, with prices starting at just $11 monthly per user after a thirty-day free trial. Moreover, there are no long-term contracts, so companies can export their data and discontinue AppShore at any time if they are dissatisfied. But from what I’ve seen, small businesses will be pleasantly surprised by the positive impact on their bottom line once they start using AppShore CRM.

PPC Advertising Is Not For Novices

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a challenging, dynamic endeavor. You can't just set it up and walk away from it. PPC advertising requires constant monitoring and tweaking to be effective.

Those who first launch a PPC advertising campaign are usually disappointed by the results. Expectations are high; results are low. That's because the initial launch parameters are just a starting point (i.e., your best guess based on keyword research, etc.). From that point on, be prepared to make adjustments to inch towards desired results.

The tools to refinement are provided by the PPC vendor. Google, for example, has excellent tools...if you know how to use them. For example, what ads and what keywords are giving you the best results? Narrow down your market attack to get more bang for your advertising dollar.

Here are some other parameters to employ in optimizing your advertising campaign:

• Set up your ads to run during daylight hours (why spread your budget over ad impressions in the middle of the night?).
• Focus your ads geographically (city (also by zip or radius from a zip), region, country, language, etc.)
• Unless you are selling consumer products or really know what you are doing, avoid settings that display your ads on other Websites, but do take advantage of having your ads appear on major auxiliary search engines (e.g., AOL).
• Target your keyword bids to get your ads to appear in positions 3 to 5 - your money will go further and you will still get good results.

Of course, the purpose of PPC advertising is to sell something or capture a sales lead. Hence, your real measurement of success is not how many ad clicks you get, but how many of those click-throughs turn into useful conversions that lead to more business.

Most PPC advertisers take the clickers to the home page (or an internal page) of their Website. What happens thereafter, nobody knows because there is no easy way to track clicker behavior. Most wander around and leave the site because material germane to the reason they clicked on the ad is not readily apparent. And there is no way of knowing how many ad click-throughs turn into customers or at least prospects. So, these advertisers spend a lot of money without any means of determining whether their advertising bucks are worth the effort.

That's why it is critically important that you have special landing pages where ad clickers find content relevant to the ad AND the ability to make a purchase or fill out a form to acquire an incentive. Completing this desired process is the goal of your campaign, and by arriving at a "thank you" page afterwards, you can measure how many ad click-throughs actually result in achieving this goal. Inserting special code into a "thank you" page allows the PPC vendor to report how many conversions your campaign is achieving and the cost for each. This is the real cost for your PPC advertising.

By tracking your PPC advertising results through the entire sales process, you can measure your return on investment. For example, if you sell Widgets at $10 each and the PPC advertising cost to achieve a sale is $1, then it's working for you. If PCC advertising costs $10 per resultant sale, then you probably want to re-think your marketing strategy.

PPC advertising is not for the novice. You can burn through a lot of money very quickly with little or no results. In the long run, small businesses are much better off by employing a professional, such as Pacifica Endeavors, who understand the pitfalls and can fast-track PPC advertising while saving them money. The result can be a dramatic growth in sales within one-to-two months, which more than compensates for the advertising expense.

Get More Mileage with Internet Marketing Compared to Traditional Marketing!

I'm often surprised by how many small companies haven't yet grasped that Internet marketing is far more economical and yields much better results than traditional hard-print marketing. Compared to the latter, online marketing yields a significantly higher ROI.

Having a good Website that is optimized for search engines is a first step. Once accomplished, ongoing expense is minimal. Email newsletters cost less than a penny apiece compared to about $.50 each (minimum) for direct mail pieces. And online press releases reach a larger audience than hard-print coverage. Moreover, pay-per-click advertising costs only a fraction of - and is much, much more effective than - newspaper or magazine advertising.

In short, Internet marketing is the perfect answer for small businesses on a budget. Done right, it can dramatically increase sales while saving a bundle over traditional marketing. Contact Small Business Smart Marketing for a free consultation.

What is the Purpose of your Website?

There are millions and millions of business Websites on the Internet, and I'm continually surprised by how many were apparently put up without any thought about what was trying to be achieved.

I say this because many are obviously nothing more than online brochures for the business products or services. These treat the Internet the same way as hard-print advertising or collateral materials.

Other business sites are designed for the Internet but are not optimized for search engines. Many also lack a means of capturing sales leads and hard to navigate. Kinda makes me wonder what they were hoping to achieve...

The first and most important step in launching any Website is to define its purpose and goals. Is it to be a reference site? A customer support site? Or, do you want an online marketing machine? The answer determines the resultant site design and content. Conversely, failure to address this subject before building a site will inevitably lead to frustration and expensive site revamping.

So, what do you want your site to do? Is it accomplishing this? Need help?

Business Plan Sanity Check

For a small business or start-up, getting a "sanity check" for your business plan from an experienced consultant can mean the difference between success and failure. The small expense of having an experienced person review your business plan (or simply your strategy, whether it's written down or not) is more than recovered by the insights gained and the avoidance of costly pitfalls.

And for those of you who do not have a written plan that has been scrutinized by someone who is "business knowledgeable," recognize that you are winging it! Are your goals realistic? Are they achievable? Are they even the right goals for your business? And do you have realistic action plans to achieve your goals? Are you leveraging your strengths while minimizing your weaknesses? If you don't know the answers to questions like these, you may already be headed for serious trouble.

Too often, start-ups and small businesses don't even see trouble coming until it is too late to do something about it. That's the purpose of a well-thought-out business plan - to look ahead and increase your odds of success by avoiding likely speed bumps. The failure rate of businesses who don't take the time to think through their objectives and strategies is dramatically higher than those who accomplish this upfront and perform at least annual reviews.

Without a roadmap for your business, how will you know if you're going in the right direction? If you don't have the experience, aptitude or skills to prepare a business plan, then employ a knowledgeable consultant to help you put one together. It will be the best money you ever spend.

Every Small Business Needs An Internet Marketing Strategy

It is almost impossible for a small business to survive today without a Website. If you don't have one, you are just not credible. Moreover, since most Americans go online to find goods and services, you will miss out by not being included in the world's largest virtual directory. Of course, this means that a small business must also have its site optimized for its keywords, or it will still be invisible on the Internet. And, as long as your business is online, why not leverage it to capture sales leads or boost your revenues by letting customer buy online?

Plus, it is easy and economical to employ local online advertising to boost awareness of your business. Free local listings are available from Google and others. Moreover, local pay-per-click advertising is very cost-effective. This is where your ad only appears to those in your local marketing area and you are only charged a small fee if and when they click on it.

So, if your business doesn't have a Website, get one! And if your Website is doing nothing for you, fix it. Contact me, and I'll give you a quick evaluation of your online situation and how you can turn it into a money machine.