Articles >> Vol.2 Issue 12

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I- Business Watch
II- Webmaster Tools
III- Internet Tidbits

I. Business Watch

To insert some HUMOR into our busy lives, here’s some management strategies that we can all recognize.

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from one generation to the next, says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.

However, in modern business, because of the heavy investment factors to be taken into consideration, often other strategies have to be tried with dead horses, including the following:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Threatening the horse with termination.
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
7. Appointing an intervention team to reanimate the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase the riders load share.
9. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
10. Change the form so that it reads: "This horse is not dead."
11. Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
12. Harness several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Donate the dead horse to a recognized charity, thereby deducting its full original cost.
14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.
15. Do a time management study to see if the lighter riders would improve productivity.
16. Purchase an after-market product to make dead horses run faster.
17. Declare that a dead horse has lower overhead and therefore performs better.
18. Form a quality focus group to find profitable uses for dead horses.
19. Rewrite the expected performance requirements for horses.
20. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position. II. Web Master Resources

II. Webmaster Tools

How to make a tiny marketing budget work overtime

By Ray Hurst 

Without the resources of the ill-starred Boo.com which in two years completely blew £94.5m of venture capitalists' money (including £450,000 on promotional giveaways, £420,000 in PR fees and £29.5m - yes million! - on ads), small businesses rooted in the real world have to make a very little go an awful long way.  

Fortunately, with a bit of cunning and savvy, small businesses can use a range of online marketing tools to bring plenty of custom knocking at their virtual doors.

These tools can be divided into two broad categories: customer acquisition tools, (which help you win the hearts of new customers), and customer retention tools (which help you keep existing customers coming back for more). I sought out two successful small businesses which make great use of online marketing tools (with very un-Boo-like budgets) to discover the secret of their success...

Winning hearts and minds

West Country Violins, a UK seller of the eponymous musical instruments, first set up a Web site three years ago. It now does about 95 per cent of its business online, selling violins to customers in Japan, Canada, Korea, Taiwan - and recently Honolulu.

To get itself known among potential customers, West Country Violins got a listing on VioLink, a portal site "devoted to the world of violins". "It's quite a well-known site, which appears very high up on search engine results pages," says Brian Ward-Smith, founder of West Country Violins. Brian got his Web site listed on the VioLink company directory for free, in return for putting a reciprocal link to VioLink on his own site. "Our entry on VioLink's directory worked well for a while, as we used to be one of only ten UK violin dealers listed," he explains.  

But as time went on, his listing was drowned out by the ever-expanding number of other firms adding entries in the directory. "It didn't help that my company name begins with a 'W', since the listings appear in alphabetical order," says Brian. "We appeared at the bottom of the screen." So, in order to attract more custom, he decided to shell out for a banner advertisement on Violink, which would be more prominent than his directory listing. "It's brought me a lot of business," says Brian who pays between £300 and £400 per 100,000 banner "exposures" (the number of times the banner appears on Internet users' screens).

Brian uses Internet user analysis software provided by his ISP to track where visitors to his Web site come from. This gives him a clear idea of which marketing tools are working for him, and which are not. "More customers come to us via VioLink than any other site on the Web," he says. "The second most popular route is via Google, the search engine."  

This brings us to another powerful online marketing tool: search engines. The importance of ensuring that your site appears high-up on search engine results pages should not be underestimated: for millions of Internet users, search engines are the first port of call for finding products and services on the Web.

Botham's of Whitby , a Yorkshire-based food specialist, has been selling online since 1994, and knows a thing or two about effective online marketing. "The vast majority of our online visitors come from Google," says Mike Jarman, the firm's managing director. Like Brian Ward-Smith, Mike uses his ISP's user tracking software to examine not only where visitors to his site have come from, but also what they have typed in to search engines to find his site. "I can see, for example, that so far this month 14 people have typed 'history of bread' into Google, and then clicked through to our site," he says.

Having seen that so much of his traffic was coming from Google, Mike decided to take the marketing power of the search engine a step further. Now, if users type certain words into Google - such as "hampers" - a prominent "sponsored link" to Elizabeth Botham will appear at the top of the page. "It only costs us a few pence per user, and certainly helps to bring us business," he explains. He adds that search sites Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves are also fertile sources of new online business for the company. Any firm can set up sponsored links on Google by clicking on the "Advertise with us" link on the search engine's home page.  

But, as well as ensuring that you've got a steady flow of new customers arriving at your online outlet, it's also important keep your existing customers hungry for more of your products and services...

The secret of repeat business - delight the customer

Email is faster, cheaper and more interactive than its traditional counterpart, direct (printed) mail, and allows companies to reinforce and nurture their relationships with existing customers.

Mike Jarman of Elizabeth Botham says email marketing is an important part of his commercial box of tricks. "We ask every customer if they are happy to be put on our mailing list," he says. "It's important not to bombard them with emails; we send out just three or four a year, in the run up to Valentines Day, Easter, and so on." The personalised emails offer suggestions of appropriate foods for special occasions, and help to keep the company in the front of customers' minds.

The possibilities for email marketing are legion: you can run competitions, flag-up special offers, target messages to select groups of your customers, announce new product developments or send out an online magazine. It's also possible to send email messages in HTML format (the language used to make web pages). Advantages of doing this include the ability to add graphics and photos to mailings. However, some customers' email software may not be set up to view HTML, and even if it is, it may be take a frustratingly long time to download on slower connections. So always offer the option of text or HTML.

But according to Jarman, whatever your approach to email marketing, a personal approach is key to success: "We get a phenomenal amount of repeat business; we treat all of our online customers just the same as if they walked into one of our shops. Adding a personal touch to online communications is not a waste of time; it delights the customer."

Quick Tips:

Portal sites and banner ads: Look on the Web for portal or community sites dedicated to your product, service and/or industry. These will provide you with a pre-defined, ready-made target audience. Get an entry on these sites' company directories, and put your banner ads here too. West Country Violins is on VioLink while Elizabeth Botham is listed on a number of sites including Yorkshire Pantry, Buy! Eck and the Tea Council.

Search engines: Build relevant keywords into your site to ensure that search engines can find it. Use Internet user tracking software to see what visitors to your site are typing into search engines. Pay for sponsored search engine links to make your site stand out.

Email: Create mailing lists of existing customers (ask them if they are happy to receive emails first!), and send them personalised incentives to come back to your online store.

III. Internet Tidbits

The passing of CAN-SPAM Act 2003 has had a direct impact on the e-mail marketing practices of all US-based advertisers. In particular, the new law requires that specific steps be taken when sending nearly all types of commercial e-mail. The Act defines a "commercial electronic mail message" as any e-mail message in which "the primary purpose is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service." This definition does not mean that all commercial e-mails are now considered spam, only that commercial e-mails are now subject to opt-out and other restrictions under the law. To view the Act, follow this link:            http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/108s877.html