Perfection doesn’t work in business

A few concepts are starting to dawn on me since I’ve stopped my business.

One of them is perfection – it isn’t always possible and it certainly isn’t necessary. Believe it or not, if you constantly strive for perfection you will never get anywhere, and you will waste so much time trying to attain it.

And even if you did manage to get there, who would notice? The majority of your clients or followers wouldn’t know perfection even if it hit them in the face! The only thing that does get noticed is when something is rubbish, of poor quality and not worth its value. Then the public start to complain, and all attention is drawn towards the mediocrity of the service or product.

Perfection is something that only comes to the fore when promoted with somebody with the right callibre to do so. Even so, it is still dependent on personal choice: what some people think is perfect may not be what others think, and if perfection relies on the masses to make an impression, then sometimes you have to give in and go with the flow.

Another side of perfection comes with practice, and when analysed you find that the majority of your perfection is attained in the first 80% of completing the task. The final 20% only achieves what you think is improvement, when probably it makes very little difference at all. By learning to let go, you will create material that certainly gains the right level suitable for your public without impairing your performance.

Nevertheless, this isn’t an excuse to not strive for perfection. After all, you will always want to do the best for your clients, and offer the best solution to their problems. But remember there isn’t enough hours in the day to create total perfection in your business, so offering something that is really close is the next best thing.

Don’t work without project security

There is nothing worse than doing a load of work and not getting paid for it.

Over a year ago I was approached by a man who wanted me to market some books he had published. This project sounded too good to be true (and in fact this was the case, as you will read later).

So I redesigned his website (with the minimum of information), set up a shopping cart and autoresponder, plus a blog and other social networking accounts. I tried so hard to promote his terrible books (learning that you need to have a good product that people actually want to be able to succeed), tried to get them redesigned so that they actually looked nice both inside and out, fielding his awful adverts in expensive magazines that were so bad they were a complete waste of money (not designed by me of course), and coping with a torrent of emails and telephone calls from this persistent and annoying person.

Of course he never paid the invoices I sent him, always coming up with excuse after excuse. I stupidly carried on working for another month, amassing more money owed, until I’d had enough. I downed tools and refused to work any more until I was paid. More excuses, and no payment. Then silence…

The next thing I had was an email from his cousin saying my client had died and since his business was illegal and he had no money, it was highly unlikely I would get my invoices paid. I actually rang up the crematorium the day of his funeral to see if he really had died and had not done a runner. I also heard that all the bailiffs for his other debts had totally stripped his flat, so there was certainly nothing left for me.

The moral? There are several. Draw up a contract at the beginning carefully laying out exactly what you are supposed to do. Calculate a price for the amount of work decided upon, and get at least 50% deposit in advance. No deposit, no work: it shows good will and commitment. Form a strategy for work to be done, including when contact is to be made (don’t tolerate constant interruptions) and confirmation of drafts before the final product is published or produced. And above all, make sure the project you undertake has a possibility of success – go with your gut feeling about quality, consistency and – above all – get a credit check done first to learn the liability of this new project.

And don’t put up with this trash for 3 months, only to land up with nothing at the end. No wonder my business has gone to the dogs…

How not to choose the wrong client

Don’t get seduced by a potential customer with a fat, bulging wallet. Remember the old saying: “all that glitters is not gold”.

My husband is working on a tender for a job in the Far East. Of course the businessmen concerned are rich, and want large, expensive work to be done, which adds to the attraction of the job, but they are proving to be nightmare clients.

Why so? Well, these particular kind of businesses are used to asking for things to be done immediately, which is generally accomplished for them because of their financial power. As long as the job is completed within the requested time, then they’re happy. Trouble is, to get the work done within such a time frame, it usually is rushed and of poor quality. Then another commission is made for a repair job to rectify the first one, and again it needs to be done now! So the same thing happens again.

Now if proper attention was made from the beginning to properly analyse the job needed, with appropriate materials and an adequate time span, then everything would be completed in less time and with fewer expenses. Ideas should be fully discussed, and understood, even starting as jottings on the back of an envelope right up to fully developed proposals put out to tender. If all the details are not fully explained, don’t then wonder why your workers haven’t completed your commission to your expected standards.

To have an idea and then click your fingers towards a likely candidate isn’t the answer: careful consideration and well thought out procedures put into place will save money as well as time later. Don’t wear out your task-force by expecting them to drop everything and produce at short notice. Respect your workers and how they operate, be mindful of their needs and understand why certain things are ‘not possible at the moment’.

I know this is hard, but if you find you are out of your depth, sometimes it’s better to say ‘No’ to a such a client if you want to keep your sanity (and in some cases your business) rather than to run yourself ragged trying to fulfill a job that isn’t possible. This is especially prevalent during a recession when there isn’t a lot of money around, and it is usually desperation that causes bad decisions to be made.

And especially be aware of the client hasn’t coughed up yet, in spite of all their supposed wealth! – remember to get a deposit first to prove their good intentions. If they don’t show good will through a down payment, then leave them well alone. You’ll be saving yourself from a huge amount of hassle later on.

How are blogging and teeth similar?

Blogging as like flossing your teeth, you need do it fairly regularly to maintain your oral hygiene (or marketing awareness). It doesn’t need to be done everyday like brushing your teeth (or working on your marketing strategy), but you need to keep it up if you want a nice smile (or well marketed business).

Nobody likes looking at yellow teeth (neglected blog) or being subjected to bad breath (badly composed posts). Fluoride in your toothpaste (sharing your expertise) will encourage a broad smile (widely promoting your business) which will attract friends (more customers).

Your body, like your blog, needs good nutrition (interesting and valuable content) to result in a healthy disposition (frequently read blog). And regular exercise (internet research) will help you find suitable material, as both stimulate the brain!

What are your blogging barriers?

Many people have told me that they are afraid to start blogging. Digging further into this revealed a number of different fears, and not necessarily about the technology side, which I thought was the main reason. Yes, technology is a hindrance, but it is something that can eventually be overcome with guidance. It is the psychological aspects that can be real barriers.

One psychological area is how you appear to your public. Are you as good as your peers, so is what you write worth reading? Everybody else seems to have such intelligent things to say, and your little contribution will be swamped.

Not so! If you are really passionate about your subject, and know it inside out, what you write about will always be interesting to others. You are the expert here, so why not let others know about it? What you think is just ordinary may be totally new to others, especially if you are able to explain it in a different way to the other bloggers.

Another way to overcome this barrier is to watch and listen (read) other blogs, and follow (or subscribe to) experts as they regularly post. This passive observation will enable you to understand more about how others talk about their businesses, how they publicise their benefits and solutions, and how they increase their visibility and therefore their reputation.

It will enable you to sort out the real experts from the time-wasters who have nothing particular to say, and the latter should fire you up in to producing your own viewpoint to counteract their crass statements. Don’t just sit there stewing, correct it within your own blog!

Another way to contribute your two-pence-worth is through commenting. If you like what someone has posted (or even disagree), then leave a comment! It doesn’t have to be much, but it does have to be more than just ‘Nice post’.

I advise always to be polite, complimentary or forthcoming, even if you are totally disagreeing, to maintain your good character. Remember how horrid it is to receive negative responses that drain all your self-confidence, so don’t go down that road. Stand in good stead with other readers and encourage them to offer their own sides in the argument.

And another barrier is if you are unsure of your own credibility to write well. All I can say to this is, practice. I didn’t start out writing well, so I read lots of blogs and learnt a few techniques, and started writing posts to see how it went, and eventually I picked up a style that seemed to work.

One technique is to imagine talking to your readers, so write like you’re having a conversation with them. It will enable your readers to warm more towards you and your posts. If you find this difficult, try yabbering away into a dictaphone and then transcribe it as a post – this will train you into your conversational style; you can always edit it into good English later. And once you’ve accomplished this ability it will make writing posts that much easier.

If I haven’t covered all the reasons why this stops you from blogging, then why not let me know? If I have enough information I could write another post about it, and acknowledge my sources appropriately (thanks go to Helene Cooper and Ute Wieczorek-King for their ideas). And remember, leaving comments helps bring traffic to your sites too.

Combine price and quality to attract customers

While visiting Nottingham we decided to go for a Chinese meal. Just down from our hotel was an restaurant called ‘Big Wok’, which looked enticing at £10 for all you could eat.

Now normally these ‘pile it high and sell it cheap’ establishments skimp on quality for the sake of price, but we were pleasantly surprised. For the nominal price you could go up several times with your plate to a buffet section in the middle of the restaurant to help yourself to a variety of well presented Chinese food. And that also included a ’sweet’ section for afters.

So how did they make their money, being so cheap yet good quality? Well, they probably made a bit on the drinks, which were not included in the main price, and the place was absolutely buzzing, with all the tables occupied. We worked out that at least 200 people at £10 a head per weekday (and more at the weekends) would soon result in very respectable profits, certainly compared to other places that charged more but had less covers each night.

I had seen this phenomenon around the corner at a local restaurant chain which offered main courses for as little as £5, but then you knew they were making up for it on the drinks and other courses. They were also packed during prime hours, being a very popular haunt for taking the family out for Sunday lunch.

What’s the verdict on this? Can you afford to reduce your prices down during this economic downturn to get the punters in? If what you offer continues to be exceptional value, not tainted or reduced in quality to accommodate the cheaper prices, then you will maintain your status and keep your clientelle who will stand by and support you, and will still be there once everything starts to improve.

Both these businesses are working on their customers’ greed, understanding the state of their wallets, and providing a solution which is plentiful food at very good prices in convenient surroundings at suitable times.

Now – can your company adapt to this mind-set? Hmmm, not all of us are in such a position to accommodate this practice, but we can all be aware that offering a few good quality products at low prices can act as a lost-leader towards gaining more in up-selling or by increasing the ‘bums on seats’ capacity. Both seem to win in the end.

Customers’ copy outweigh your business profile

All copywriting, whether for web or paper, should be biased towards one thing: the customer.

Blabbing on about the company is a total waste of time, customers don’t give a tinker’s toot about the business, they only care about “what’s in it for them”, how will they benefit from the product or services offered, will it make them feel better, look good, improve their life, or whatever.

So much promotional material uses the wrong slant; if they were to adapt the way their descriptions were written into the customers’ point of view, talking about how the customers will benefit, then they will achieve more sales.

Analyse the successful ads on TV: the one’s that work don’t even mention the product, they go on about the effect it will have on their customers, how their hair is thicker and glossier, how much the decor of their house has changed, how soft their skin has become, how good their feet now look, what a fantastic two weeks their children will have on holiday, etc.

Stop being selfish and start thinking about who you are actually selling to. The customer is king, not the content.

How aware are you of the power of the picture?

I’ve just finished my blogging package ‘The Power of Pictures’.

This is just one of my series of blogging packages I’m creating to help women (and men) towards creating their own successful business blog. The first ones of the series are scheduled to be ready towards the end of July, so watch this space!

I like it when I see pictures in a blog. This isn’t only for photographers and those whose business survives on imagery such as arts and crafts, jewellry and silver-ware, stationery and cards or whatever. I know I am guilty in the fact that I don’t put enough pictures into my blog, but it certainly does make a difference, not ony because it is colourful, but because it enables those who thrive on the visual side of comprehension to understand your point of view better.

But there are a few pointers that you need to know before submitting an image to your blog.

First, do you have copyright? So many pictures are ’stolen’ from the web, both consciously and unconsciously, but it is a crime. This also includes scanning in images from books or whatever, just like photocopying music, which carries a heavy fine. Please be careful about where your pictures come from.

I generally create my own, or otherwise I pay for my pictures from the web from special websites that provide imagery, usually at very reasonable costs. I’m very much aware of copyright, since my mother said she fell foul of this practice in the beginning of her freelancing days, and had to pay the author more for his picture than her commission for her work. It truly isn’t worth it, as it’s very easy to be found out.

OK, so you have your picture, then it needs to be adapted for the web. I use Photoshop because as an ex-graphic designer I have it to hand. It sizes my pictures by centimetres or pixels (whatever you are used to), transforms the image into RGB which is the correct form for the web (as oppose to CYMK for printing), and can create a myriad of file types that are acceptable for uploading.

And once you’ve created your pictures to the exact specifications, it’s very easy to pop into your post – but to find out how you’re going to have to buy my ‘The Power of Pictures’ blogging package that’s available at the end of July!

Saying exactly what in the tin

Following on from my visible networking material idea I came across this business card from Jill Wigmore-Welsh. I wanted to share it with you because it stood out from all the other business cards at this networking meeting I went to.

Why? Because the first thing it said is what she does, but in a way that was beneficial to the customer. There isn’t much room, and she even managed a rhyme, but the aim of her business was the most visible element on the card, whereas her details took a back seat.

I like this idea, because the customer should always come first. Why should our networking material bang on about ourselves? The customer cares only about themselves and what they can get out of you and your business, not actually your business. Use the fact that we’re all naturally self-centered, so by turning the tables we can take advantage of this fact and steal a march on our competitors.

What do you think of this idea – your comments are always welcome!

Forget your blog, forget your readers, forget SEO

There is nothing worse than setting up a blog and then forgetting about it – like someone said in a Twitter post, “a blog with no new content is like a cheese sandwich”. Although this made me smile, he is right. An inactive blog is the same as a brochure website, looking pretty but with no search engine optimisation activity it is worth nothing.

The answer? Get off your backsides and start contributing.

How? There is lots of material all around you. Look at your old articles, e-newsletter material, past emails answering questions from your clients, stuff you may have read from other blog posts or whatever that you would like to put your own slant on it, articles from business magazines, overhead conversations at networking events, general gossip: this forum is full of it!

How often? Regularity is better than frequency. Michael Martine of Remarkablogger stated in a recent post that he now blogs less than before, but his posts have a much higher value in their content so his SEO impact is higher, as well as the quality of comemnts. See what he says in one of my posts: http://www.designyourmarketing.co.uk/2009/07/blogging-less-can-be-effective-too/

What should you say? The aim is to provide value for your readers, give them something to think about, provide solutions to their problems, pose a question to encourage comments: comments are treated as new material too, so getting lots of these is also good for SEO.

Create an editorial diary so you can draft a number of posts in advance and come back to them later to spruce them up for posting. If you’re really clever, or if your original post is too long, split up a subject into many installments: this will keep the audience’s interest going, and incorporating cliff-hangers will encourage them to look out for the next post. It also will make it all the easier for you if you know what you are going to write next.

Don’t make your posts too long. People don’t have time to read huge articles on blogs, keep it down to five paragraphs, or more if they are short ones. Short, snappy and sweet is my motto. It makes it quicker to write them too.

If you get an idea, write it down in a notebook, or if you’re online, create a quick draft and go back to it later. Once you’re creative juices are following, why waste them?

Constant contributions are more important than making your blog look wonderful, stuffed full of imagery and widgets, but with no content. Get writing – the more your readers, and therefore potential clients, get to know about you, the more likely you are to do business with them.

Oh, and another thing, try and put a purpose into your posts. Blogging aimlessly about everything and anything is also a waste: there must always be an ultimate aim in whatever you do.

My purpose for this post? To raise awareness of who I am, you’ll follow the link to the post above, and you’ll realise that I want to help women to blog successfully to further their businesses by visiting my blogging pages.

Treat Twitter respectfully for the right response

Twitter is also called micro-blogging, because it is an opportunity for you to express yourself and tell the world all the facts about you and your business you are unable to fit into your website. It’s micro-blogging because it is confined to only 140 characters per ‘tweet’, which means you have to be concise with your message. (If you reduce it down to 120 characters that will leave room for any retweets.)

Just go ahead and join up, but make sure you’re careful with your username. Does it truly reflect you or your business? And if you were to change direction, would it continue to be useful? And is it memberable, easy to spell, universal to understand? If you can squeeze in a keyword, so much the better.

Communicate with your followers, don’t just post endless bits about yourself. Also don’t tweet rubbish or uninteresting material. Find out others within your target market and ask them questions, engage them in conversation, just like networking. People react to a lively commentary, and if you want to know something, tweet it in general – some people say Twitter is better than search engines for finding out what you want.

Find all the gurus and experts in your field through Twellow.com. Ask them questions and try and get to know them, but don’t bombard them – they also have a life. It’s best to watch and read their tweets first to learn how to tweet effectively and what line they are taking. Look at their followers and see if there are any you would like to follow too.

Post up some valuable information for your followers to read, and if you’re stuck for content, use Google Alerts to send you material on your chosen subjects, then trawl through and post up the interesting stuff using tinyurls for the links (this facility is incorporated into applications like TweetDeck). But usually the advice that comes direct from you is best because it shows off who you are, unlike those people who tweet endless quotations.

Get fodder for your tweets from the stuff you have already written – any articles, blogs, e-books, old emails or whatever. You’d be surprised what you have already, and it will be all your own material. Feed your new posts from your blog into your Twitter stream, and get retweet widgets for your blog so people can retweet your posts if they like them, and you can also feed your e-newsletters through Aweber.com and articles from EzineArticles.com into Twitter through their automation.

And finally, get a following to follow you, which you can achieve if you continue to post up valuable information, strike up intellectual and humorous conversations, provide relevant input to discussions, regularly retweet stuff you like and acknowledge kind gestures towards you. Then you’ll get to be known as an expert in your field, and can start to achieve more business through your other business media.

How many of you can cope with blogspeak?

I’ve just listened to a video about blogging. Normally I would be very excited and would take voracious notes, but this time I just sat there bemused.

As a result I am determined to develop my new niche. Since the end of May, when I developed Bell’s Palsy, I had to take a back seat from my business to recover, and I used the time to rethink my strategy and where I was going with my business. This is an important activity to do now and again, and there’s nothing like having half a face to focus on what’s doing well and what isn’t.

I’ve decided to adapt my business in stages, and the first stage will be explaining how to create and maintain a blog for British non-techie females. The ‘British’ part is as relevant as the ‘non-techie’ and ‘female’ parts, because there are so much stuff out there that is American – sorry those from the other side of the pond, but American is not the same as English. The ‘female’ part is apt because, after coping with my dear, wonderful and thoroughly techie brother who sorted out minor problems with my blog, I realised that there is another vocabulary out there that isn’t tuned in to women or mumpreneurs.

So I would like to boost my ‘marketing research’ I’ve been doing at networking events lately, and ask for questions from equally bemused ‘would-be-bloggers’ what they would like to know, which bits they don’t understand, what is holding them back from setting up a blog, and how would they like their ‘lessons’ to be presented to them in the best way for them to learn.

Oh, and for those ’starting out’ bloggers, I will be working with a ‘free’ blog from WordPress.com so you can get to grips with blogging the easy way, and don’t have to worry about all that nasty techie stuff needed for self-hosting blogs. (Once you have begun to understand blogging, then you can try your hand at the more advanced stuff at a later date.)

Come on girls, let’s have some questions… leave your contributions in the comments box below.

Blogging less can be effective too

I would like to reprint a portion of a post How to get more time to blog by Michael Martine of Remarkablogger, Blog Consultant and Blog Coach. I hope he doesn’t mind, but it raised some points that I wanted to share with you and hope you would find interesting.

Blog Less

Despite the fact that nearly every blog-advice blogger on the planet says you should blog every day, quality is much more important than quantity when it comes to blogging (most people aren’t successful, so why is doing everything they do a good idea? Hmm?). I’ve seen this first hand for myself, ever since I dropped down from seven posts a week to 5, and now I’m down to a whopping single post per week. Did I kill my business? No! In fact, my subscriber count and my income are up, up, up! (Some of you are aware of FeedBurner recently adding FriendFeed subscribers in with feed counts, which raised everyone’s feed subscriber counts overnight — I’m talking about an increase I saw before FeedBurner made this change.)

It’s true that in some ways, posting every day or even more than once a day can grow your blog’s audience. Certainly it will help with blog SEO, but maybe not as much as you might think. In my own example, I’m writing bigger, meatier blog posts that are absolutely my best writing. The result is that each post gets more trackbacks and more traffic. The more backlinks a webpage gets, the more authority it has in Google’s eyes, which is ultimately better for SEO.

Having more posts indexed by Google but getting fewer trackbacks or less influence & reach is not an even trade. Quality is better than quantity. If you make people happy, you’ll also make Google happy. And if you make Google happy, Google will make you happy when you see your PageRank numbers and search engine rankings.

Blogging less leaves me more time to do important stuff like spend time with my granddaughter and really be there for her in her life as she grows up (I just got her her first kite, and now we’re waiting for a day with some breeze in it — I can’t wait!). Blogging less also allows me to make more money, because I have more time to create and promote information products or maintain my network.

You just don’t need to blog everyday (but you do need to be consistent). What you need is to blog about stuff your audience can’t live without. You need to blog about stuff they want to spread to their friends and link to in their own blogs and on social media.

3 ways to successfully market your messages

OK, without the multi-million pound marketing budgets the big corporates have, how can SMEs compete? But you can accomplish it just as well within your sphere by using these three simple, common sense marketing techniques that needn’t cost the earth.

First, make your messages regular, repetitive and always upbeat. There are plenty of ways to achieve this: blogging is just one of them, and now with the rise of social networking, Twitter in particular, there are other media where we can bombard our followers (or potential customers) with carefully constructed marketing messages frequently posted to gain maximum effect.

The good thing about Twitter is that is you only use 140 characters (or 120 to leave enough room for, hopefully, retweets) so you have to think about what you are going to say before submitting it. This is a very good practice all marketers should adhere to. The same should apply when posting on your blog, or playing with Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites: keep it short, sharp and sweet, making it obvious what you’re talking about from the beginning, and be appropriate, relevant and newsworthy.

Second, turn your marketing around so you don’t mention the product or service directly, but how it will affect the customer, how they will feel, who it will change their lives for the better, what impact it will have. This is a concept most successful businesses employ, and it works! Customers aren’t interested in your product, they only care how it will affect them: will they get their money’s worth, will they look good, feel good, be the envy of their friends, raise their social status or whatever?

Third, be consistent with your marketing messages by creating a routine. OK, this is difficult for SMEs who may not have enough personnel to spend time on this, but try and make it part of your 40% a week marketing activities; I’m sure you can slot in a few tweets and calendarise a blog post now and again? It will pay dividends, as large successful businesses promote their new products at least 27 times, in the hope that their customers will see it between 7 and 9 times.

Frequent marketing tactics will eventually sink in: this is all part of building your relationships with your customers (which is what marketing is all about), either for immediate effect but definitely for the future. Remember, you don’t want them to forget you, or be seduced away by your competitors, do you?

New business? Want a website? My advice is: don’t!

You’re an entrepreneur and you want to start up a business. Great.

The first reaction to getting a slot on the internet is to get a website. Wrong!

Why wrong? This is because websites are notoriously expensive things! How much cash do you have? I suggest you should have a good think before you go throwing it away on unnecessary, inappropriate, uncostworthy things such as a website.

But surely everybody needs a website, or they won’t be taken seriously by prospective customers?

Of course you need a presence on the internet – it’s a requisite requirement nowadays. But not a website. What you need is a blog, and a good grasp of social networking. That’s how you get yourself known on the web. Only when you’ve made it, got a load of followers, built up your list of contacts, made some money, then you can go ahead and get yourself a website. By then you will know exactly what you want it for, and will build it with a proper purpose.

The trouble is, so many people get themselves a website, and it just sits there, looking pretty, and doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. They haven’t got the money to update it, because unless they have built it themselves they will have to pay a fortune to their webmaster to make any changes.

Now, if you have a blog, that’s exactly what you can, and should, do. This is because blogs are self-editable; they thrive on new material because they are designed for it. They are also little web magnets for internet traffic, as the search engine spiders are programmed to visit blogs extremely frequently, just in case there is something new for them to ‘read’. If they like what they find, and there are lots of keywords and key-phrases that match up to what is ‘hot’ at that moment, then you can get really high in the search engines!

And the other side of the coin is to get into social networking. The beauty of the web is that you can link and ‘feed’ all your blog content into social networking, so a lot more people can start reading about exactly what your business does – as long as you have written about it. And blogs are the place to write about your business: frequently, easily and regularly.

Don’t hide under a bushel – reach out and network. Tell the world about what you do. If people like what they read, you can start to make friends, contacts, business, liaisons, strategic alliances or whatever, all on the internet, through a relatively inexpensive blog – not by wasting your money on a website!

And does it work? There are plenty of businesses who are extremely successful today and have all started with just a blog, even before social networking got off the ground. Blogs are the beginnings of social networking, it’s just that the interactive side of the web (Web2.0) has developed a bit more recently…

You don’t buy gifts with yourself in mind, do you?

When you choose a present for a friend, I hope you don’t choose it because you really like it?

When you choose the colour, you don’t choose your favourite and not your friend’s?

When you choose the size, you don’t see if it fits yourself, do you?

Think about these facts and compare them to how you treat your customers.

Long ago, when I was creating my totally unsuccessful wedding stationery, I was making stuff that I liked – what I would have chosen for my wedding stationery. Unfortunately I did not think whether it was anything that anybody else would have preferred. OK, I thought about the kind of card it was on, the matching envelopes, the accompanying reception stationery like place cards and favour-boxes, I even tried to consider what colours where fashionable and how much brides were prepared to pay (grossly undervalued as I was not creating them in bulk [thankfully] so I made a BIG loss), but I didn’t understand the way brides thought, where they got their ideas from, what really was in fashion, what their friends were using, what was already in the shops and catalogues.

The moral of this blog is: you must truely understand your customer. Get inside their heads, find out what makes them tick, look at the world through their eyes – and the way to do this is by asking questions. Only your customers know what they want. You must get outside of this naturally selfish trait we humans have, and start being Mother Theresas in the marketing world – consider others before yourself. Strip away any preconceptions you have, and reform your marketing strategy totally from your customers’ point of view.

Then do something about it. Action the reactions – change and adapt your business, products or services according to your market research. I met a market researcher who told me she had saved one particular company tens of thousands of pounds because she had found out what their customers were really thinking, and it was totally the opposite of their new advertising campaign. A big shock, but also a big wake-up call – and now their new adverts are spot on, with the inevitable results.

Ask questions > analyse the results > action the reaction = success in business!

Never give up on your marketing

I read somewhere that small businesses really ought to spend 40% of their time doing marketing if they want to survive. 40%! That’s quite a lot, especially if you’re a sole trader or only have a few employees, but if you think about it, a lot of what you do would be already considered as marketing without you really knowing it.

Write down all the marketing activities you already do, and I expect you’ll be surprised. Certainly contributing to a blog is one of them. Writing your newsletter, answering questions from clients, writing a sales letter, updating your website, writing the words to advertise your next promotion, getting new literature printed, networking, thinking of a new elevator pitch – I could go on and on.

Next, split up these tasks into their respective areas. By reducing them down to their bare elements they become less oppressive and more manageable. Concentrate on what you enjoy doing the most, and see if you can farm out the less deletable to someone who does enjoy doing them or knows more about it.

Set up a marketing system – mark out on a calendar your tactics ahead, focusing on next week or month or even a year. Work out how they will be achieved systematically and automatically, planning in advance so that nothing is missed out and you know exactly what the end goal is. In fact, why not work backwards from the final product? This method will certainly sort out the time factors much more easily for you.

Try new marketing methods – there may be new ones you haven’t thought of that might make a big difference. Do lots of research and ask others who may already be doing it before you take on any large projects, but certainly dabbling won’t do you any harm. It’s always good to keep in the know.

And don’t forget to keep asking questions to make sure you are on the right track. Do a poll or a questionnaire, find out where your target market is hanging out, what they need and want, and what solutions will be the best thing for them. Be able to adapt your business accordingly – you must keep up with changes.

And remember, marketing is not a quick fix. It does take time, because what you are aiming to do is to gain the trust of potential clients. It can take several months for a marketing cycle to produce results, so don’t get despondent if nothing seems to be working immediately. A watched kettle never boils, but you will get your cup of tea in time.

Aim with the end in mind

My mother publishes books about Brighton, and her company is a non-profit organisation which she trades from her home. As a self-taught publisher, she relies on her many years of art and design techniques, and yet with her advancing years she produces excellent books as well as managing her own website and blog.

One thing she has to be aware of is the current economic situation. In the past she could price her books according to its content, and there were no restrictions in size, length or capacity. Nowadays she has had to plan her books from the finished product, that is, work backwards so that she starts with the end in mind, making sure there are the correct number of pages, photographs, chapters, etc on the correct size of page to fit in with the printer’s requirements, who are also cutting back on costs to achieve the desired result. People won’t spend abundantly any more, so a fixed retail price of under £10 is set, and the contents, paper quality, presentation and final finish have to be budgeted accordingly to fit.

As a result my poor mother was greeted with a last minute request from her printers to reduce the sizes of her pages so that they would fit ’six up’, a term which means how he lays out the pages within his large pieces of paper to reduce costs. Now my mother, being self-taught on QuarkXPress only a couple of years ago, didn’t relish a massive change to her book layout in less than 24 hours, so had to call on technical support to help her sort out this problem. She did it with five minutes to spare – goodness knows what her blood pressure was like!

Do you work with the end in mind? It is certainly I will have to do when I restart my business in the autumn. Previously I have been winging it, and it has certainly contributed to my increased stress levels resulting in my Bell’s Palsy. Now I will concentrate on one project at a time, planning it to the enth degree, totally completing every stage and transferring it to full automation on the net. That is a sure-fire way to cope with any project to make it both successful and profitable.

How can questions help small businesses?

If you start thinking in questions, it will benefit you to:

• focus your mind on what your customers really want or need
• ask your customers what they are asking for
• work out what your own business should be asking for
• then aim to provide what your customers are searching for

This sounds deep, but it isn’t really. It’s not worth providing something nobody really wants.

Years ago I designed wedding stationery which many people told me was beautiful. But it wasn’t what brides wanted. It’s no good designing beautiful stationery that 99.9% of brides don’t want. I spent 2 years of my business life churning out stuff nobody wanted because I didn’t ask. The trouble was, when I eventually found out what brides wanted, I didn’t want to produce it because to me it seemed so tacky. If only I’d known, I wouldn’t have wasted all that time and effort for so little return.

Do you really know what your customers want? Do you think it would be a good idea to ask questions to find this out? Are you willing to adapt or change it if necessary? It might make all the difference to your profit margins…

Think of five questions that would provide you with all the information you require. They should be designed for you to find out whether you are giving your customers exactly what they want. Make sure the questions are open ended so they aren’t replied to with a single word, and are carefully structured so the answers don’t go off on a tangent.

Go to a questionnaire source like surveymonkey.com to compile your questionnaire and send it to all your contacts. If the questions require a full answer, put them onto separate pages: it will facilitate a better response. Include an explanation as to why you are asking these questions, and provide some sort of incentive to get a reply, like a free gift or prize. And once they’ve been completed, don’t forget to take heed of the answers and undertake some sort of process in analysing them.

More information = better informed = higher value = greater success

What's the similarity between blogging and twittering?

Hi Alice

I am new to all this twittering and blogging and I need some help. I have my business and have been told that blogging and twittering are a great form of marketing my business. So I have a blogger and twitter account but am unsure of how these work. I know that you post your little blurbs but how does that send people to my site? Can you help me please?

Kerry

–oo00oo–

Hi Kerry,

Blogging and twittering are similar that they are both a medium for you to express yourself, except that blogging allows a bit more than 140 characters to do so. Twitter is also called ‘microblogging’.

Twitter works on the question ‘what are you doing?’, and you shouldn’t tweet mundane things like what you had for breakfast, but snippets of information about your business that people will want to know more about. Your link in your bio should either lead to a special landing page all about you, or to a relevant page on your website or your blog. Each Twitter post can also link back to your website or whatever (use tinyurls for this purpose) so that your traffic will increase. If you tweet questions or leading statements this will also increase any interested parties.

If you’re starting out I suggest you get blogging under your belt, and then you progress to Twitter. But as you already have an account (mine’s @alicedesigns) you can feed each new post you make on your blog onto Twitter through the RSS feed I’ve been talking about. There are lots of applications to do this, but I expect Twitterfeed.com is the most well known.

Why do this? You want a many people as possible to read your posts, hence why you should also have a well publicised link from your website to your blog. Search engine optimisation thrives on links, and if you can create as many links as possible to both your blog, Twitter and website, your traffic will increase and so will your followers if they like what they see.

Alice