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Overcome Social Media Fears with 3-step Approach

February 22, 2012 1 Comment


Depending on whom you ask social media phenomenon of the last few years has either been a great boon to small business owners or a complete nightmare. No matter which side of the fence you are on, one thing is certain – small business owners can no longer ignore social media these days. Number of savvy owners has been using social media in innovative ways to improve different aspects of their business leading to higher sales and improved profit. Despite this fact, there are some who are fearful of delving into social media due to lack of knowledge or for fear of getting into quagmire.
Fear no more, friends!! The 3-step approach we have described below will navigate you through the challenging road to conquer the social media battle. We do not promise that you will become next Mark Zuckerberg with this approach, but we do believe that you will be able to overcome your social media fears and use it to the benefit of your business.
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7 Interesting Ways Small Business can Use Social Media

February 18, 2012 1 Comment


When small business owners hear about social media their attention immediately goes to Facebook and Twitter. They think of social media as a place where customers go to gossip and complain about their businesses or where business owners can go to publicize their products. This limited view doesn’t do full justice to the potential social media holds for small businesses. There is lot more to social media than just Facebook postings and Twitter broadcasts. We showed how you can use other interesting social media tools as well as some emerging social media tools in earlier posts. In this post we will review how you can use those and other tools in interesting ways to improve your business.
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How to Make Daily Deals Work for your Business

February 14, 2012 Leave a Comment


Daily deals facilitated by companies like Groupon and Living Social are double-edged swords for businesses. On one hand, they help you get new customers and improve sales. On the other hand, you end up with high operating expenses and dissatisfied customers, if not done right. Reading the horror stories that some businesses experienced you might think that it is never a good idea to work with daily deal companies. While this reaction is understandable, it may be extreme and may result in you losing out on the benefits offered by daily deals. We think with the right approach and proper planning you can make daily deals work for your business. Below we provide tips on how to do it.
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Is Groupon and other Daily Deals Good for your Business?

February 11, 2012 2 Comments


Daily deals have proliferated in the last year like dandelions during spring time. I am receiving at least 4-5 deals from one well-known daily deal company alone. Are you feeling left out because you still have not run any daily deal yet? While many businesses and consumers have taken advantage of this latest marketing tactic, I don’t think you need to feel sorry if you have not jumped on this bandwagon. This is because for every business that has seen great success with daily deals, there is another one who can share horror story from his experience. Just look at the experience of one particular business.
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What Business are you Really in?

January 28, 2012 1 Comment


“What business are you in?” This is one of my favorite questions to ask when we meet with small business owners and entrepreneurs. On surface this appears to be a very simple question. If you are a pizza business owner, of course you are in the business of selling pizza or food. But, think about it in terms of what value are you bringing to your customers rather than what you are selling. Are your customers really craving for pizza or are they looking for the convenience of no cooking and pizza happens to be one of the choices? Are they ordering pizza to feed bunch of kids at a birthday party? Are they looking to satisfy their hunger after late night partying without having to drive to your store? As you can see, how you look at your business can have a significant impact on how you run your business. In fact, it can determine the success or failure of your business down the road.
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What can Small Businesses Learn from Netflix Mistakes

January 15, 2012 3 Comments


If you have been following business news in the last few months you know that Netflix is going through rough times. Their loyal customers are cancelling accounts in droves and the stock price that was around $300 just 6 months ago is now hovering around $70, wiping out almost $10 Billion in market value. Ouch!!
So what happened? Well, everything that could go wrong did. On one hand, the business of movie rental is going through massive shift – from DVD to streaming video and the competition is increasing with large companies including Apple, Amazon and Google entering the market. On the other hand, Netflix picked wrong time to make changes to their business model and made big gaffes in communicating to their customers.
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How can you Send Consistent Message to your Customers

December 14, 2011 1 Comment


In earlier post we showed how sending inconsistent messages to customers through your actions can harm small business owners greatly. Many small business owners don’t pay attention to how customers perceive their business as a result of actions they take and end up confusing the customer who keeps wondering what your business stands really stands for. Is it low price vendor like Wal-Mart or high quality, easy-to-user products like Apple?
To provide consistent message to your customers all departments within your business have to work in harmony like well-oiled machine. The departments you have to pay particular attention to are customer service and marketing. The list below gives specific actions you can take to achieve this:
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Are you sending consistent messages to your customers?

December 7, 2011 1 Comment


Sending inconsistent signals to customers through your actions can harm your business greatly. After your customers do business with you for some time they expect to receive certain “treatment” from your business. They will probably forgive you for a slip-up once or twice, but they will not accept it beyond that. Three strikes and you will be out!!! So what do we mean by sending inconsistent messages to the customers? Let me give you an example:
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Not All Customers are Equal – Which ones are Right for your Business?

December 3, 2011 1 Comment


As mentioned in the earlier post it is crucial to pay attention to the types of customers your business wants to attract. Most small business owners do not pay sufficient attention to this subject and end up leaving money on the table or not making money at all, as a result. That is why it is important to not try to sell everything to everyone and instead think about what types of customers are the right fit for your business.
But how do you go about finding the “right” customers? We think this should be a two-step process. First you should think introspectively about your business and then identify what types of customers will be attracted by the value offered by your business. We explained these steps in detail below.
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Not All Customers are Created Equal

November 19, 2011 1 Comment


Most small business owners do not give much thought to what types of customers they serve. They are happy to sell to anyone and everyone who walks into their business. This can be a mistake, and it can lead to either leaving money on the table or, even worse, not making money at all. When you take a careful look at your customers you are likely to find that some customers bring significant profit to your business, while others may not bring as much or even make you lose money on them. Why would you want to keep those later type of customers or at least treat both of them equally?
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