Ideas for Business

It’s almost impossible to survive today without some kind of web presence. It is more and more becoming a necessity to have a website. In any kind of business, a website can be an essential marketing tool. Small business marketers have realized that a website can enhance their message, increase their brand image and provide potential customers with a better picture of what a business is all about. The website is the 21st century marketing brochure.

In essence, your small business website can contain elements (and I’d argue that it should) of several traditional marketing collateral:

• It is your digital brochure
• A website is a billboard on the Information Superhighway
• It can communicate like a TV commercial
• It should be a gateway for news media to your organization’s public relations strategy – i.e. a press release
• Through podcasting you can make your own radio advertisements
• Social media can turn your website into a word-of-mouth phenomenon
• You might call it an electronic kiosk
• Turn it into a bulletin board
• Each page on your website is like a marketing flyer
• Blog posts are like little postcards

If you take everything you know about traditional marketing and apply it to your website using the unique techniques that are effective for online marketing then you can have some powerful marketing. There isn’t, of course, a one to one parallel. Traditional marketing does have a style of communicating that is not considered acceptable online, however, while the styles of communication aren’t the same the methods of delivering that communication are similar enough that you can still transfer your off line traditional mareting materials to your online marketing plan.

Will businesses some day decide they no longer need a brick and mortar presence or traditional marketing strategy? Many have. What about you?

Marketing Pilgrim reports on a survey by ChannelAdvisor.

MP concluded the following based on the study results:

• Retailer value is more important than brand recognition
• Price is the leading factor that determines whether consumers will purchase from you or your competition online
• Free shipping is also highly influential in determining buying decisions
• Third on the list is trusted seller status, but this only makes sense on sites like Amazon and eBay
• Fourth – discount coupons; I consider this one related to price

In other words, if it comes down to a premium brand versus small Mom and Pop and you can offer the same or similar product for less while providing greater value, guess who wins? Yep, you do. Small business rules!

Of course, Marketing Pilgrim also points out that 83% of online consumers are influenced by product reviews.

So how do we put this all together? What’s the take away? If you can drop your price lower to beat the competition and still profit, offer free shipping and get positively reviewed on well trafficked websites while building your trust as an online retailer, you’ll sell a lot of product.

For the second time since its introduction, the Kindle will sell in an off line retail environment. The company has announced that the Kindle will be sold at Staples.

By selling its flagship product in real stores, Amazon is expanding its reach. This is a smart move. It takes Amazon into an environment where small business owners and retail customers are doing business. If those customers are not already buying books from Amazon online then they will be once they purchase a Kindle. I think Amazon is looking long term here.

If you consider the price of Kindle books and how many of those that Amazon can expect to sell over the life of a single Kindle then the company stands to make more long-term profits from the sell of its books if it makes the Kindle more available and in more places. That’s why the company started selling Kindle in Target last June and now has gone into Staples. It wouldn’t surprise me to see more retail locations in the works.

In light of this real world move by Amazon, will the Kindle become a staple of small business productivity? Will small business owners buy their business books from Amazon to read on their Kindle? Will small business owners use their Kindle for connecting to the Internet, and do all the other wonderful things the Kindle will allow them to do?

I don’t know what the future has in store for Kindle and business applications, but I do know that making the Kindle available to small business owners at Staples is a smart move.

We’ve recently been looking into Cloud Based Accounting for our business, and I thought I would share some of what I’ve learned so far as I’ve started to research which among the many choices out there we should consider.

This is a very brief overview of cloud accounting, also known as online accounting, or in some circumstances SaaS (software as a service) accounting software.

What is cloud software?

Cloud accounting software at its most basic level is on demand accounting software, so (as long as you have the right internet browser) and an internet connection you can access the software and your company’s financial data from anywhere in the world through a number of devices. Your data is held either on several servers hosted by the software provider in house, or on a third party’s server – for example, Amazon. This is a very basic description, but the main things you should be concerned with are the security of the servers and what happens if something goes wrong (how quickly will things be back up and running?).

Benefits

Access it anywhere:
So the above idea of not being tied to one computer is one of the clear benefits of using cloud accounting software over desktop based accounting software. Not being tied to one location or PC means that you and your work colleagues can access your financial data anywhere in the world (internet connection required!). In the case of a small sized business, if it has an accountant that completes the end of year financial returns then they no longer have to come and visit the company on site; saving the business money in accountant’s fees.

Subscription based:
Another small or medium sized business benefit here, the fact that cloud accounting tends to be subscription based means that it can scale with your company. A small company with few transactions may even find a free package, then (hopefully) as the company grows this can be upgraded through a few clicks of a button. The fact that there is no installing of software or on site data storage also means that you don’t have a horrendous up front bill to pay. Very nice.

Upgrades on the go:
Speaking with accountants you find that one of the really annoying things about old school (desktop) accounting software is the fact that if a client did not have the same software as you then you would have to explain how they can export the software and then send it to you. This time consuming process has been banished as cloud accounting software (depending on the provider) can be upgraded on the fly. The twofold benefit of constant upgrades being that new features will constantly keep coming available and you the customer have the ability to help shape the software’s development. There should be no additional cost for this process. The competitive nature of the cloud accounting market means that software providers need to keep on their toes, if a competitor has a feature you want (like a PayPal import) then leave and go to them.

There are other benefits and drawbacks to cloud accounting software, but this gives you an idea of a general place to start!

Providers:

When choosing cloud accounting software, always make sure the provider allows you at least a 30 day trial. During this period you can then try out several software systems and find which is the most intuitive for you to use or has the features that you need.

The market place is growing rapidly with new providers springing up every day. Below are some of them that are worth a try:

• Xero New Zealand based $18 – $37
• Quickbooks Online $10 – $35
• Clear Books UK Based between $7 – $23

I’ve got to hand it to Bill Slawski. He writes about search engine patents and the gems he uncovers are fabulous. This morning he wrote about a Google patent that establishes an algorithm for helping searchers find blogs about a particular topic.

Note that this is different than Google’s ordinary search algorithm, which helps users find individual blog posts about a particular topic.

If you are a searcher, for instance, looking for blogs specifically about small business marketing then you might go to Google’s blog search – not the home page search – and type in “small business marketing”. Then you’ll hit the button labeled “Search Blogs”. You’ll get a list of blogs that regularly write about small business marketing as opposed to random blogs that sometimes write posts about small business marketing. You’ll find the blogs, not individual blog posts.

This has huge potential for marketers. If you want to develop an audience for your particular niche then it helps to know how the search engines rank blogs that target niches. By learning the criteria search engines look for to determine blog rankings you stand a better chance of having your blog rank highly in the search engine’s blog search feature.

Thanks, Bill. That was a really useful post.