Category market and sell

Entries 45 Total

Free Press Release Distribution for Small Business.

Nov 13, ’07 12:18 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Entrepreneur, Home Business, Marketing/PR, Small Business / SOHO, Sole-Trader, Start-Up, WinWeb, bootstrap, grow your business, market and sell, start-up in business, use online IT

When you sign up to WinWeb’s free LiveNet – still in public beta – you can also use our useful and FREE RSS Press Release service.

While LiveNet is an online marketplace for your services and products, which allows you to promote your business to others and find others to help you with work you need to have done. It is also a great place to make new business friends and share experiences.

The PR tool has been around for some time and we have registered this RSS feed with many different search engines and news sites. Using this free service will give your small business web coverage, sometimes even the old media picks it up.

Give it a go – it’s free – and that makes it a great bootstrapper tool. ST.

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New Small Business Startup Idea: Virtual Import/Export Assistant

Nov 13, ’07 11:57 AM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Business Ideas, DIY Business, Entrepreneur, Exporting, Home Business, Marketing/PR, Self-employed, Virtual Assistants, bootstrap, export, grow your business, market and sell

You may speak more languages and have market segment knowledge about a certain product or service. That is a great basis for a small business startup, two scenarios spring to mind:

Virtual Export Assistant: You may know, or can find a business which has a great product, but they don’t export yet. You could offer your services for a particular country and become their Virtual Export Assistant for that country. You use your language and local knowledge skills and open up a new market for this small business.

Virtual Import Assistant: You could source – using your language and local knowledge skills – products in other countries for retailers in your country of residence. Or you could help the foreign business to import into your country.

But remember you are working with small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer- or Personal business, like professional, contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants, you need to keep the price low for them. To do that you can offer your services to ten or twenty businesses, each paying you a retainer of about $200 – 400/£100 – 200, this makes it affordable for them and low risk, while presenting them with sales opportunities. If they pay you a small commission on top, you are generating a nice little income for yourself.

For this kind of service it would be advisable to get a low cost telecom service for your calls abroad, sometimes you can get fixed monthly subscription pricing for unlimited calls – have a look around.

Other than that your setup cost should be low, if you have computer, ADSL, and telephone. Monthly cost including telephone could be as low as $90/£45.

You can work from home, have your work-life balance and do it on a shoe-string – these are the business ideas I like. ST.

NOTE: If you have any problems with setting something like this up, give our 24/7 live support a “click“, they can help you.

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Twitter, better late …..

Nov 13, ’07 10:57 AM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Marketing/PR, Mobile Technology, Relationships, market and sell, use online IT

Twitter I joined Twitter.com, well I have been signed up for some time now, but with a friendly push from Shama, I’m using it since yesterday. It allows you to stay in touch with colleagues and friends while on the move or on your desk.

It is an electronic messaging service, that works on the web and on your mobile via SMS - you get charged your standard SMS rates – so if you have an unlimited package, this is a great service.

On my new iPhone – I’m an Apple junkie, with occasional supply problems – I can use the ThinCloud web-client for Twitter, thanks to O2 for free, that is really good.

It could be a great marketing and networking tool, that is the idea anyway. I found some friends already, Stuart Jones is “Focusing on the important rather than the urgent!”, or at least he was on Oct 15, 2007.

The jury is still out on how much of a business tool this will be for me, so we’ll see. You can twitter me anytime, I’ll try to be as twitter-able as possible. ST.

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Q & A: How much time should I spend on product development vs. sales/marketing in my small business?

Nov 11, ’07 12:38 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Development, Marketing/PR, Question & Answer, bootstrap, market and sell

For me this question has a simple answer, and it goes like this:

  • 90% sales and marketing
  • 10% product development

Let me quantify that a little. Before you start in business, and the clock is ticking, sort of speak you should have a two things:

  • at least one order for your product, to see if someone will actually buy it, preferably more orders if possible and
  • the product to sell, which you will have produced in your spare time, while still having an income.

But from the time you launch your small business or start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer- or Personal business, like professional, contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants, you need to spend most of your time on selling and marketing, because that is what brings the money into your business.

Many thousands of businesses go bust every year with a “perfect product”, but no sales. So get a product out there and sell, sell and sell. If you then have time develop your product further or develop more product. By now you will have had some feedback from your clients and they will guide you as to what they would like to buy from your next.

That is the bootstrapper way of doing it, in my mind the only way to do it with the least amount of risk and on a shoe string. Remember the aim is to make money, not to spend it. ST.

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Small Business Advertising and Marketing a Black Art?

Nov 7, ’07 4:09 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Marketing/PR, SOHO/SMB/SME/Micro, Small Business / SOHO, market and sell

It is not a black art, you need to be clear about it’s purpose:

Advertising is about getting a response, nothing more and nothing less.

So when you think about advertising start in a way that does not cost any money, talk to people, work online in forums, this will help you to get your message right. Once you have done that you can start to think about putting money into your advertising. Always ask yourself:

  • How effective is my advertising?
  • Is there a better way to advertise?

Like with so many other things, you need to fine tune your messaging and your advertising campaign. You will not be surprised to hear that I prefer the internet and it’s many way of telling people about yourself and your small business:

  • Your Website with a little search engine optimization.
  • Start a blog, a great way to get people to hear about you.
  • Use RSS feeds to distribute your news.
  • Use online PR tools to tell more people about your business.

Best of all, these tools are all free to use once you set them up, which should not cost you more then $20/£10 a month maximum. Traditional advertising is often very ineffective, since it is not very targeted.

Ask yourself this, would you know about me or WinWeb without my blog or our website? Probably not. ST.

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Do you have a 10 seconds marketing speech for your small business?

Oct 30, ’07 6:18 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Marketing/PR, Small Business / SOHO, be successful, manage your time, market and sell

When ever I meet new business people I’m curious to find out what they are doing, what is their business all about, so I ask. But too often I walk away and I’m still wondering what it is my new contact does, that is not good.

So here is something I think you should do, get a piece of paper – or even better use my comment form below – and create a little 10 – 15 second marketing and PR speech for your small business products and service. Here is what I tell people who ask – and some who don’t ask actually:

WinWeb provides an on-demand online small business infrastructure, including an OnlineOffice and LiveNet, a social networking community and online marketplace for small business and business startups in the US, Europe and Australia.

Every meeting is a opportunity for you and your business, so don not let it pass. Rehearse you speech until you can say it in your dreams, it will also help you to focus on your core business better. Your new contact can then work out if there is anything interesting for him/her in your portfolio. They may also remember you in month and years from now – so 10 to 15 seconds well spent.

So what do you tell others about your business, your products and services? Tell us about it, in a comment. ST.

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It's not personal, it's business….

Oct 12, ’07 7:50 AM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Marketing/PR, SOHO/SMB/SME/Micro, Small Business / SOHO, do a reality check, handle problems, market and sell

My last post got me thinking about the relationship I have with current customers and with customers in other companies I’ve owned. A good personal relationship with your customers, in my case at least some of them, is vitally important to understand your(my) own business.

But as always in live, not every relationship is going to work. I’ve had people tell me that my business idea of a Small Business Infrastructure would never work, in-fact some are downright hostile about the idea.

Those are some of the best personal relationships you can forge, because here is the thing, what are you going to learn from someone who will tell you all day your services and products are the greatest? Not a lot!

I once meet with an accountant to try and convince him that he should be offering our free accounting and business planning software to his clients for free, this to help him to get more small business clients and became the local small business accountant guru.

This guy was having none of it, he told me that my idea was silly, because nobody was going to put their data online, and anyway his clients would not do that, because it was too difficult for them.

I said, that we offered free 24/7 support and our product was accredited, so perfectly safe to use and people use online banking all the time. This all did not help at all, he was not having any of it. In fact he went as far as to suggest I had wasted a lot of money for nothing.

I left the meeting and you would probably expect me to be demoralized or feeling personally attacked, he was quite rude after all. But then I asked myself, why the hell did he even see me?

Well as it turned out he had just invested in a very expensive hosted accounting application, he needed to charge a vast amount of money for per seat to make it pay. I was invited so he could find out what we were doing, how it worked and how it would affect him – he obviously did not like what he heard. The moral of this story is, sometimes it’s true:

It’s not personal, it’s just business!

When ever you or your products are criticized, stay cool, take notes and then work out if any of it has any relevance to you. You can learn the best lessons about you products this way.

Your customers are THE best sounding board for your products and services, but don’t take everything personal. ST

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Bookkeeping for Small Business

Oct 12, ’07 6:33 AM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Accounting, Entrepreneur, Failure, Health Check, Marketing/PR, Outsourcing, Small Business / SOHO, Software as a Service, Work/Life Balance, avoid growing pain, be eco-friendly, be successful, bootstrap, do a SWOT plan, do a reality check, do bookkeeping., do cost cutting, do credit control, grow your business, handle problems, lower overheads, market and sell, outsource effectively, plan cash-flow, plan your business, use online IT

I have discussed before that it is important for small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer- or Personal business, like professional, contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants, to do a minimum of business planning, but does it stop there?

Not really, you need to keep up to date with your bookkeeping, to complete the business planning process. You may ask why, if you have done the planning, why not get your bookkeeping done once a year for your tax return?

The answer to this question is the business planning process never ends. Remember I have been talking about going back to your plan at least once a month. In order to fine-tune your small business planning you need to actual information how your business performed in the last month. The only way to do that is to do your bookkeeping or accounting.

By doing that you will be able to compare your predicted numbers in your cash-flow with the actual number your business has generated. This in turn will help you to update or modify your cash-flow plan for the future. More important than that, you will learn new things about your business:

  • You may have higher (good) or lower (bad) sales, than you expected?
  • Your cost in your business may be higher (bad) or lower (better) than you expected?
  • Your cash-flow may be better or worse do to the above two points?
  • You may need to outsource some business processes to lower your fixed cost structure, to make your business more recession proof or just more profitable?
  • You may need to ramp up your sales and marketing activities for your small business products or services?
  • You may also have to adjust your SWOT analysis and your business goals?

You will be surprised how creative you can be, once you know about and understand a problem in your business plan. It may not even be a problem at that time, you may just need to adjust the way you do things, and you may have avoided a small or big problem in the future.

In my opinion strict cost control and bootstrapping are not like nice to have features, they are essential for your small business survival. Often the difference between failure and success is just a little planning and checking the “plan” – doing a reality check. There is no excuse not to do it, all the tools are available for free, for anyone.

If you feel the initial process of business planning is too much for you, than get your accountant or bookkeeper to help you to set your cash-flow fore-casting, SWOT analysis with you, doing it online will give you strategic advantages, like you can work with your accountant or bookkeeper in real time in different places, this lowers your cost, no time wasted and is good for the environment.

I would like to make one more point here, the aim of all this planning is not to get it spot on – no, the aim is to understand what is happening in your business, that is why you should be doing it.

Among other things, it will give you a measure of certainty, security and confidence, if you understand what is happening in your business. So, how confident are you about the future of your business? Why not take the weekend and have a planning session, it is like playing monopoly, only this game will secure your future. ST.

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Clever Marketing by Kitchen Table Business

Oct 11, ’07 3:15 PM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories DIY Business, Home Business, Marketing/PR, Small Business / SOHO, bootstrap, market and sell

Shirley Jaffrey wrote me an email today, telling me her story how she started her business on a kitchen table and is now supplying the stars.

But she started her email like this:

A story on the BBC website yesterday “When did normal people fall so in love
with Tattoos” see link http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7034500.stm

There is no mention of her product in this BBC article, but she has associated herself with this article, more importantly the BBC. She got me to read her story based on this BBC link, since I’m not really into tattoos.

Here is some of what she emailed me:

“… I was a nurse of 13 years experience in all areas of nursing and a practicing aroma therapist, so using my extensive knowledge in health care and natural essential oils and emollients I created my blend, Tattoo Aftercare®, (Scots are also famous for blending skills!)

I was not working, my youngest child was a year old, my daughters were 11 and 13 and my husband was unemployed due to ill health. We had no spare money and were living on social security benefits, yet I saw the gap in the market and had a vision of seeing my product in tattoo studios around the world.

With a borrowed £400 and home PC a lot of determination and hard work and testing the blend on willing testers we began putting samples out to studios in the UK . From that we got our first few customers. We worked from home for the first two years blending hundreds and hundreds of jars of aftercare every day. We would then label and package them, with the help of my daughters, and sell them to tattoo studios. In the early days we lived off soup, (I now make great soup), so we could post out samples, turning back all money made into the company. Two years on we moved into premises but were still hand blending using a small stainless steel pot and kettle for pouring. Finally after hand blending over 70,000 jars we were able to have the product made at a manufacturer in Laurencekirk , Scotland , where it is still made toady.

We moved home from Balmedie in Scotland to Chester , England in 2003 so we could visit more customers and attend more tattoo conventions to raise awareness about my product.

Now seven years on we supply tattoo studios all over the UK and Europe, and use a number of distributors selling into Canada , Sweden , Czech Rep, and Indonesia and are in the process of securing a deal with an American distributor. To date over 400,000 people have used my product as an aftercare for their tattoo, many of them stars. www.tattooaftercare.co.uk

My company has had several magazine reviews and newspaper articles written about my success and personal achievement as a woman in business. In 2005 I was surprised to find myself as one of three finalists in the North West of England Business Awards 2005, Women in Business Category. My product recipe also won the BUAV first ever Gold Bunny Award in 2006 for not being tested on animals. My blend is made using the finest natural ingredients; It is 100% Natural contains no chemicals and is paraben preservative free and is the only aftercare in the world approved under the Humane Cosmetics Standard. ”

THIS is what I’m talking about when I talk about bootstrapping, work-life balance and all that. I love this story and I’m proud to be used for advertising, in this quint-essential bootstrapping marketing drive. Her last paragraph reads like this:

As we move our company forward and set up business links with companies across the world I believe my story can be seen as an inspiration to others who have the get up and go to begin in business and shows that hard work and determination can cross boundaries and countries.

I could not agree more, I hope Shirley is well on her way to business and private life success. A lot can be learned here and if you have similar stories, why not tell us about them? ST.

PS. Before I retire for the day with a nice glass of my favorite malt, I wonder what she means about the Scots and blending skills? Any idea anyone?

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SmallFuel Marketing for Small Business

Oct 10, ’07 8:09 AM
Author Stefan Töpfer (Editor) Categories Marketing/PR, Small Business / SOHO, grow your business, market and sell

SmallFuel Marketing is a great site which introduces a marketing system for small business and I must say I like their approach:

“Welcome to the SmallFuel Marketing store. You’ll find that every product here will serve one purpose: to grow your small business. With that as our goal, we created a coherent marketing system that combines everything you need to grow your business into a simple and extremely effective package. In short, we created what we believe is the best possible way to grow a small business: the SmallFuel Marketing System.”

Marketing is still a kind of “black art” for most small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer- or Personal business, like professional, contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants, but these guys give you a marketing plan layout for free in three steps:

This system will not break the bank, but will fast-track your small business marketing, even if you are not going to spend the money read their pages, most informative.

Hat-tip to Small Business Trends. ST.

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