Positioning in Small Business Marketing

5 Keys to Building Wealth Online Posted By : Will Smith

If you are wondering about the keys required to build online wealth, then you have stumbled upon the only source that you will ever need. If you would employ the keys presented here, you would be destined to overcome almost every reason that people fail to build online wealth. The keys are very similar to the keys to build wealth offline as well. So lets not linger, lets get to it.

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The Number One Reason For Business Failure!

by: Hans Hasselfors

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.”

But when you’re starting your own business, there’s no guarantee that your “mousetrap” is going to survive, especially in today’s fast-paced business world.

Nearly half of all small businesses fail within the first two years of operation. The number one reason for business failure is inadequate planning. The second reason is under-capitalization.

So before you mortgage your house, or go into debt financing your business, you need to know if your business is going to do more than survive — you want to know if it’s good enough to thrive! Here are three things successful businesses that have stayed in business for five years or longer have in common:

1. The idea. A successful business start-up always starts with an idea. Something that makes your business stand out from all the rest. So how do you know if you’ve got a good idea?

You’ve probably got a good idea if you can answer yes to any of the following questions: Does your idea provide the solution to a significant problem for your target market? Does it satisfy a need or want? Does it create an opportunity?

The most successful businesses either fix problems (either real or perceived), or they increase your customer’s pleasure. They create a repeat need for a product or service among the target market.

2. The market. Your chances of survival are better if you can answer the following questions with a yes: Is there already a market for your product or service? (It’s much easier to fill a need than trying to create an entirely new market.) Can your target market afford to buy your products or services? (If they can’t afford it, it doesn’t matter how great it is, you won’t sell any!) Will your target market perceive your product or service as valuable? (If they want it, but don’t think it’s worth what you’re selling it for, you won’t make any sales.)

3. Your ability. Do you have the people, the resources and the knowledge to be able to consistently provide your products or services to your target market? Can you maintain a competitive advantage? Do you have enough manpower? Can you purchase the supplies and materials you need over the long run?

Your first step always is to create a solid business plan. Your business plan is more than an essay on “Why I deserve to get funding for my idea” however. Don’t spend all the time creating a business plan and then toss it in the bottom drawer of your desk. Your business plan should be a living, breathing roadmap that helps you make sure you’re on course and reaching the goals that you set for your business.

The second step to business survival is getting enough financing. Although the term “bootstrap entrepreneur” describes most small business owners, having enough capital to be able to keep your business afloat is vital to your survival.

When you’re creating your financial analysis of your business, make sure you’re being realistic about costs and expenditures, so that you give yourself the cushion you need to succeed.

If finding financing is a problem, either because you don’t have enough credit or equity, or there are other problems, take the time to look into the resources that are available in your community. There are a wide variety of grants and loans (including microloans) for entrepreneurs, if you know where to look.

Some great resources will be:
-The Small Business Administration
-Local Small Business Development Centers
-Women’s Organizations
-Local University or Community College
-Chamber of Commerce
-SCORE (The Association for Retired Executives)
-Nonprofit organizations that work on economic development in your area

Use other successful business models as a guide. When you’re getting started, look around. What businesses are successful? Why? What is it they’re doing that is working? What attributes do you admire, and why? You stand a better chance of succeeding if you’re modeling someone who is already successful.

Find a mentor. Most entrepreneurs have great skills and abilities, but no one does everything well. You probably already know what your strengths and weaknesses are. (If not, there are many resources and tools that can help you figure it out!) Rather than ignoring your weaknesses, find a mentor who can help you either build your skills in your weaker areas, or offer advice for getting what you need.

If you take the time to plan to succeed, you could be creating a legacy that will be enjoyed by future generations, and that other entrepreneurs will look at as a model for building their own businesses.

About the author:
Hans Hasselfors is a successful home business entrepreneur and internet marketing consultant. Get the net working for you. Join a community of like-minded authors and publishers and make your living online. Become a member of our article directory. http://www.SubmitYourNewArticle.com

Are You Ready To Go International? Posted By : Gihan Perera

Are YOU ready to communicate and sell in this international medium, where most Internet users are outside North America and English may be their second language?

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How To Rapidly Reduce Your Overhead Costs and Increase Your Profits Dramatically Posted By : Rasheed Ali

There are definite ways to reduce overhead costs and increase revenue but they all come at a cost. However, in the modern world, the internet is tipping the scales in favor of small businesses, allowing them to thrive in the face of their incumbents and quickly create products and services at mere pennies on the dollar compared to their larger and more formidable adversaries.

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Traditional Print Publishing versus Online Publishing Posted By : Miles Galliford

Most print publishers want to expand their businesses online. Some already have websites, whilst many others plan on launching them soon. However, to be successful, traditional publishers must understand the differences between the two mediums. Most believe they do, but if you look at what many of them are doing online, they clearly don’t. They end up trying to replicate what they do offline on the internet.

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Trying it in other ways

When all your business cards, postcards and catalogs do not seem to be working anymore, you can try out the strategies being advices to how to make them work best.But then, when that does not seem effective too, maybe you are putting all your efforts on something that will not be your business booster. There are actually ways you can make your business known. They just might prove to be more successful.Look for foundations, organizations and charities. Most of the time, you can find these things in your community. Offer them your help. There may be some of these functions that are in need of what your business is for. By becoming more visible in these functions, you not only prove how helpful can you be but you also made your business a household name. You never know who might happen to be present in these occasions. Some of them may just turn out to be your most loyal customers. Try these things out sometimes. It can never hurt.

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Can You Really Make A Full Time Income By Blogging?

We’ve all seen the stories about teenage kids sitting in their bedroom at their parents’ house — writing daily entries in their photography blog and making over $5,000 per month.

Is this stuff for real?

Are there really people making that kind of cash with no boss, no 9 to 5 grind, and no crazy customer service calls?

The answer is YES, and Yaro Starak can teach you exactly how to make it happen…

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Early-Warning-Systems for small businesses

by: Stephan Szugat

Most of you would say, that this might not be the most important problem small businesses have to solve during their business operation. Well, that might be true, but on the other hand, if your business has an early-warning-system, than it could assist you in operating your business and keeps you focused on solving the bottlenecks you are actually facing.

But first of all, in case of Early-Warning-Systems it is necessary to define what a small business is. A small business is usually a business operated by 1 or a few people, but could also be a company with as much as 500 employees. This article concentrates on small businesses with 1 to 50 employees. As this is the definition of small business, than we have to define what an Early-Warning-System should look like.

While running a small business, the people involved usually have not the time dealing with Early-Warning-Systems a lot. Because of the lack of time, there has to be a lean solution, which takes care of the following things:

easy to use solution
not time consuming
showing recommendations for possible actions/measures on early warnings
giving priorities which bottlenecks have to be solved first
having a short reporting cycle
a reasonable price, every small business could afford.
Lets go to the list one by one.

Easy to use solution

What does that mean? On my opinion, easy usage is, when something is easy and fast to understand. Something I do not need to read a huge book with hundreds of pages or where I have to attend a training, which keeps you occupied by several hours or days, just to know the basic features.

Having a system with huge databases and many features and reporting alternatives, is not only time consuming, it is also annoying, because you ever feel you need to perform a lot more reports. And you always feel that you may missed something.

Furthermore a good Early-Warning-System solution should work with only few input. But that’s another point.

Not time consuming

When you have to input a lot of data that is one possible time consuming task. On the other hand, you do not know, if a huge database will make your Early-Warning-System better. So it is better to focus on a few important data, than having a huge database, which you probably never use.

When concentrating on important data, you are not able to use every data from your business operation directly. Some data have to be calculated to business ratios, which are a better basis for analysis. But this brings to mind to select the right business ratios. There are so many to find.

Well, there are a few which could be used for all kinds of businesses, such as
Customer Contacts
Complaints
Orders in Process
Customer Loyalty
Usage of capacity
Order Processing Time
to show just a few. Would be an analysis, which uses only 30 business ratios or business numbers a time consuming solution? I guess you say no. But, what would be if you have to fill in these numbers every day? Well, that’s not necessary. One time a week should be enough.

However, even if 30 or 60 values for business ratios per week does not sound much work, but there is a little more work to do upfront, before you could use these values for analysis. You have to find the values in your company, you have to calculate the business ratio values and so on. This I believe sounds to be a lot more work as you thought.

When you install the right procedure to get the necessary data for analysis, you may have an addition big one-time work. It’s all in the procedure you choose. Make it as easy as possible and it won’t be a time consuming task.

Recommend actions/measures

Early-Warnings are signs, which a system should generate, when a point is reached you said it should inform you that a situation is going to be worse. There are many systems out there providing early-warnings, but the question is always, on basis this warning has been calculated and to what will it lead you.

To understand an early warning signal it should be as easy to understand as a traffic light signal. Green says that everything is all right, yellow shows you that caution has to be taken and red should bring the alarm clock ringing at you.

Well, providing recommendations for actions/measures is not a very important feature, but if you are not familiar with business operations or just starting a business it is of help to get recommendations for actions/measures to keep your business running.

But even if you have lot of experience runninga business, it is sometimes very helpful to get new ideas on how to act. Actions/Measures could only be a recommendation here, because industry sectors are different, and it wouldn’t be possible to cover all types of businesses.

Showing priorities to solve bottlenecks

Remember the paragraph above about early warning signals, they could be used to find priorities to solve bottlenecks in business operation. First of all the warning signals must follow some rules. That means that the business ratios supplying the signal have to be in a consecutive timely manner to each other. For example, when you have 5 ratios depending on each other in a consecutive manner, than you have automatically a priority to follow when actions are needed.

In case your ratio number 3 has a yellow signal and number 4 a red signal, than you know that you first have to solve the problem ratio 4 is showing, because you got the red flag and it has influence to ratio 5, which was green. This small example shows how important it is to use the right business ratios and how important it is to concentrate on the traffic light systematic when taking actions.

Short Reporting Cycle

A short reporting cycle may be a month for some business operators, but when waiting for Early-Warning-System analysis for about 4 weeks, you are only able to take action on erroneous trends once per month. And in some cases this could be already to late.

Really short is a reporting cycle, which uses a week as its basic period. Why using reporting cycles of one week? Just because you can see erroneous trends earlier and being able to take actions, while others are still waiting their reports to come. On a weekly reporting cycle you could act at least 3 to 4 weeks earlier as on monthly reporting cycles.

I don’t think you are driving your car blind for more than a small part of a second. Just imagine what happens, when driving your car blind for a month, just like the usual reporting cycle for business reporting? You are right, just a few seconds after start driving you have the first accident. Even if you are an airline pilot and having an autopilot system, you steadily have to control the system, to be sure that you are heading in the right direction.

Reasonable Price

Reasonable is a price, which nearly all small businesses could afford. Even if the price is paid in instalments or as rent for the licence to use a system. An Early-Warning-System, as the lean version described here, doesn’t has to be very expensive.

However, the decision is yours, if you like to pay more or less on an Early-Warning-System, but you should carefully check the features and benefits a solution offers.

Conclusion

Early-Warning-Systems for small businesses is a very important and often overlooked issue, which could assist to establish a more focused business operation, but only when the Early-Warning-System shows actual bottlenecks and is able to provide priorities for actions/measures.

However, most small business owners or operators are not aware of the problems Early-Warning-Systems could bring them before there eyes. Furthermore, the possibility of finding new target markets, new solutions or ideas to improve existing products, is just a benefit an Early-Warning-Systems solution may offer as well.

If you think the described solution is not an Early-Warning-System, because an Early-Warning-System has to be something where you have to handle lots of data and documents, well, that might be another definition for it, but starting with a small solution is always better than doing nothing. There is no reason to use a big system to provide early-warnings, and for small businesses big systems don’t make sense at all.

About the author:
Stephan Szugat is founder of abenetis a web-based service about Business Management Solutions focusing on the core needs of business management. This includes Operational and strategic analysis especially Early-Recognition-Systems, Knowledge-Management and other Services for small and mid-sized businesses. He has approx. 15 years experience in the Finance and Accounting Area from companies of different size and from various industries. http://www.abenetis.com

You’re SOOOO Close to More Business - It’s Scary!

by: Scott Rauber

Many small business owners are longing for more prospects right now. They are contemplating giving up because they don’t have potential for more income or they’re pondering the plunge of launching their business for the first time. Either way – you are soooooooo close to more business – it’s scary.

Finding prospects for your product and or service is not as hard as most people make it out to be. In most cases you don’t need to unload your income on advertising avenues that are nothing more than bottomless pits. You can usually find them right under your nose and more likely than not you can uncover them without the use of money. All you need is time and hard work.

Here are a few suggestions to help you find some prospects right now:

Quit Cold Calling

Whether you cold call on the phone or face-to-face why not try contacting people that already know, like and trust you. The people that know, like and trust you will; read your emails, take your phone calls, read the mail you send them, return your calls, etc. Most of us overlook contacting friends and family from the past, the far past. Look here first.

Be pinpoint specific and ask for referrals now

If you’ve ever asked for a referral, you’ve probably got the response, “Not right off the top of my head.” as an answer to your request. Last year I asked a client for a referral like this; “Who’s your courier company?” I got the answer, and B-A-M a new client. Be specific when you ask for a referral. Ask for; a neighbor’s name, best friend, who works across the hall, etc. Pick up the phone, call a customer and be specific when you ask for a referral. It works.

Introduce yourself locally

Old-school marketing at it’s best. Now don’t confuse this with cold calling. Take a handful of business cards and introduce yourself to local businesses, just let them know what your business is – nothing else. It’s no different than meeting someone at your child’s soccer game. You simply exchange cards. It’s strange, but when you go “introducing” and not “selling”, people defenses are dropped and you just might find a prospect or two.

If you have a small business, distributorship or are a sales associate, try these 3 tips right now and see if you don’t find a few more prospects.

About the author:
Scott Rauber Author, Speaker - How To Find Prospects Using Little or NO Money www.getmorebiznow.com

Why Do You Want to Start a Business?

Why do you want to start a business? This may seem like a very simple question but it is actually one of the most important questions you will have to answer before you start your business. As you think about your business idea, it will help if you understand your own reasons for choosing to […]

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