Best Practice for Small Business. Marketing ideas for small business.

Ah, the holiday season! Truly a season of giving. Unfortunately most of us suffer from the gift that keeps on giving: holiday debt. Americans on average will take 6 months to pay off Christmas debt. Here are a few tips to keep your holidays bright and debt free this year.

Before the holidays arrive, do some careful plotting and planning. A few hours spent in preparation can mean less money spent on gifts. You don’t have to be Scrooge, you just have to be smart.

1) Decide how much you are willing to spend, and stick to it. Pretend you are spending cash. How much can you afford out of pocket this month? If you cannot afford it right now, consider that you cannot afford it at all.

2) Make a list of everyone you will be buying gifts for, and estimate how much you want to spend on each person. Include the smaller gifts for teachers or your mailman. Include the price of cards and stamps, because Christmas cards count as gifts when it comes to your budget. Then, add it up and compare the total to your budgeted amount. Make the necessary adjustments. Your brother-in-law may only get socks this year.

3) Cut down your list. This may sound harsh, but look closely at who you are buying gifts for. When saving money is an issue, you don’t need to give gifts to everyone you know.

4) Be creative. Determine if maybe some people wouldn’t be happy with a nice card or maybe some home-baked cookies. Remember, the holidays aren’t about presents, but about good will towards man. Good will comes in many forms and does not always need wrapping paper. If you have a skill or a hobby, use it: needlework, knitting, art, poems. Make a photo album, or offer to plant their garden.

5) Carry your shopping list with you. Take every opportunity to shop. Start early and look for sales. This gives you a chance to comparison shop. It also takes away some of the stress and reduces your risk of overspending just for the sake of getting shopping over with.

6) Have willpower. Stick to your estimates and you won’t go over budget. eBay is a wonderful shopping tool if you remember to start early enough to account for shipping time. Find the right item, bid your budget price and leave it. If someone outbids you, don’t get into a bidding war, just bid on something else within your price range.

7) Increase your income for the season. During the holidays there are lots of ways to make a little extra money. Many stores hire part-time workers for the holidays. Since it is a party season, babysitting is in high demand. Be imaginative. You could be the Official Gift Wrapper in your neighborhood and wraps gifts for friends and neighbors for a small fee.

Last January, when you started paying those credit card bills, you probably mumbled to yourself, “Next year will be different!” It can be. A few hours spent planning can save you lots of money come January, and can make next year start off happy and holiday debt free.

American Credit Foundation offers a free self-help holiday spending guide. You can get one by clicking on the following link for a debt free holidays handbook.

from B2B News

Continuing what’s become something of a small business-themed week, today we look at how conducting DIY market research can be fraught with difficulty for the unacquainted and why it’s something that’s sometimes best left to the professionals.

In her article, Do-It-Yourself Market Research which recently appeared in Business Week, Karen E. Klein runs through some of the ways a start-up business can get to grips with their industry. Her suggestions include:

• Exhibiting at relevant conferences and disseminating surveys to attendees;
• Stationing one’s self on the pavement outside the such conferences, handing out surveys; or
• Hiring street teams to target particular areas;

Klein points out, however, that such techniques may end up looking like selling exercises and could even be misconstrued as harassment. Added to this, any business carrying out their own ad-hoc research would also have to be wary of the legal implications of doing so, as well as the issues involved in appropriate questionnaire design and sampling.

Given all this, and the fact that hiring staff or attending conferences could themselves be expensive ventures, the conclusion appears to be that there’s often no substitute for expertise where market research is concerned. As the article explains:

Sound advice indeed - Especially because there are few worse things a business can do than not understand their market or their customers properly, as demonstrated by the picture below…

from b2bsee * The Market Research Blog

Without vast marketing budgets to call upon and with acute time-pressure upon employees, small businesses can sometimes struggle to generate interest in their company.

Finding the most efficacious promotional strategy possible is something of a Holy Grail for SMEs – But without enough care, this can soon become an exercise in not seeing the wood for the trees. In essence, focus is key.

That’s why the notion of guerrilla marketing has become a bit of a buzzword amongst marketers in recent years. A simplified distillation of this technique is as follows:

• Concentrate your efforts on small, focussed areas of promotion that are effective; and
• Repeat them over and over again.

Colin Campbell, a sales and marketing professional from a large corporate background started his own business recently. In the following article, he reflects upon his own experiences of going guerrilla, and argues that a pared-down, but channelled, marketing strategy is what most SMEs need:

I launched my business at the end of 2005, and six months later I found myself in a position of trying to carry out too many marketing activities - yet I had too little business coming in.

I was going from developing my websites, to writing marketing collateral, to developing newsletters, to making contacts and attending networking meetings. All this was taking time and money.

Step back

Taking time out to think about what I was doing and how I was trying to develop my business proved to be the best thing I did.

I immediately discovered some problems. My marketing consisted of a series of activities - they were not linked up. I was meeting people, picking up business cards and not following up sufficiently quickly - people didn’t have a clear enough perspective of how I could help them or how they could help me.

I turned to the internet for answers - Perhaps people with similar business challenges could provide me with some new ideas. I went on some online networking communities and it was here that I came across the concept of guerrilla marketing.

Don’t do too much

The first key with guerrilla marketing is to seize responsibility and analyse the best marketing activities to undertake. One of my problems was that I was trying to do too much at the same time.

On top of this, I was attending a lot of networking meetings as I knew other people had very successful businesses through having a wide and deep network. I’d failed to realise that all these other people had achieved initial success through using one of these strategies, not all of them all at once!

Narrow your focus

The second key with guerrilla marketing is to focus on a small number of marketing activities and carry them out to the best of your ability. CJ Hayden, author of Get Clients Now! says that businesses often know what to do - they just don’t do enough of it, or get distracted.

I therefore concentrated my efforts on networking and following up. By doing this I was able to focus on building relationships with people I already knew and go to events to meet new people. When they showed an interest in what I did, only then did I hand them some of my marketing material. By putting people first, my business increased rapidly.

Repeat it again and again

The third key is to execute and repeat whatever works over and over again. In his Guerrilla Marketing books, Jay Conrad Levinson says:

Mediocre marketing with commitment works better than brilliant marketing without commitment.

I started a programme and five weeks later my business doubled. The growth was far greater than I could have expected if I’d continued with my previous approach.

Factors for success

Here are some other factors that are critical to success.

• Establish how much business you have today.
• Establish how much business you would like in the long term.
• Establish how much business you could add in 28 days, if you put your mind to it.
• Work out where you are stuck or need most effort - Most people think they need to fill the sales pipeline, in fact, most need to focus on following up!
• Work every day on putting the ingredients for success in place.
• Monitor your progress every day.
• Stick to your plan and it will work.

So what are you waiting for? Grab your gun and start your own bit of guerrilla warfare!

The above article originally appeared in the October 2007 edition of Better Business magazine

from b2bsee * The Market Research Blog

Research from business-to-business market research specialists B2B International shows low awareness of noise levels at work as deadline looms for entertainment industry regulations

When the Control of Noise at Work Regulations 2005 came into force in 2006 the music and entertainment sectors were granted a two-year transitional period until April 2008. As this deadline looms close, and with exposure levels necessitating voluntary or compulsory protection for employees, Aearo [1], a leading manufacturer of hearing protection, commissioned B2B International to research:

• The needs and practices within the entertainment industry;
• Their knowledge of the forthcoming regulations; and
• How they are intending to respond to these.

The market research project included 30 depth interviews with managers/owners of music venues, clubs, pubs and bars with live or recorded music; two focus groups in London and Manchester with staff who work in noisy environments; and 200 telephone interviews with managers/owners/H&S officers in venues with music.

B2B director Carol-Ann Morgan was in charge of the research. She says:

Two thirds of respondents had heard of the Noise at Work Regulations, yet one in five had no detailed knowledge and only half the respondents knew when the regulations come into effect. Nightclubs seem the furthest along the actual preparation line and pubs/bars the least prepared to meet the regulations. The regulations were considered to be good in that staff hearing needed to be protected at work and employers were keen to avoid lawsuits.

Impact and action

The perceived impact of the regulations is low and will be dealt with by noise limiters, provision of a range of hearing devices, and changing shift patterns and working locations. Music venue/club respondents gave more technically focused responses, such as applying limiters to sound systems and taking sound readings, whereas bars and pubs focused on staff issues such as getting staff to wear ear devices and giving staff breaks. In music venues and nightclubs, provision of hearing protection devices is the most popular approach to meeting the regulations whereas reducing the noise levels is favoured by pubs and bars.

Noise in the music industry is loudest in live music venues closely followed by nightclubs. The latter are most likely to measure levels and pubs least likely. Larger companies tend to have fewer staff exposed to noise. Where there is concern, it is for staff and not customers.

Likely actions (showing low reference to enforcement practices) to meet the regulations include:

• Provision of a range of acceptable hearing protection devises;
• Monitoring and reducing noise levels through limiters and education of the industry;
• A change in shift patterns;
• A change in work locations;
• Working with hearing protection suppliers (only clubs).

Advice

Gaining information about the regulations comes from trade press and H&S bulletins for music venues whereas internal communications are very important for clubs, pubs and bars. However when advice on the changes is pro-actively sought, employers approach local councils, local colleges and universities rather than expensive consultancies. Decisions about staff protection from noise are most definitely taken by management, with no employees driving the change.

Awareness, acceptability and availability

Staff awareness of noise levels is very low and noise complaints are negligible. Also, staff exposure to noise varies. The majority of staff in larger pubs and bars are casually employed rather than contracted – many of these are students, and so are more affected by noise in the evening. Nightclubs are more likely to have their own employees, with the exception of security, however here there are more strategies in place to protect staff, such as rotation. Music venues mainly employ a mix of staff, contract for security and crew staff for bands. Some employees in such venues are exposed to noise, but the bars are often located away from the main venue or speakers are faced away from where staff work.

Research indicates that acceptability of ear protection by the workforce and its subsequent adoption are real issues. Workers in the entertainment industry are often students and young people, conscious of current trends and fashions, who show little awareness of noise-levels and low concern for the damage noise may cause.

The preferences for the type and features of hearing protection vary according to user group. Buyers and management want performance, comfort, security, staff acceptability, and a good price, whilst wearers want discreet protection, comfort, design, versatility/ease of use (e.g. to take in and out). A price premium will be paid for performance features such as discreetness and especially the ability to hear conversations and protect simultaneously. Branding is not an issue for hearing protection among end users. However Aearo was found to be well-known and reputable, with products that are widely available and easy to use.

There are issues surrounding availability – pubs and bars especially are looking to buy ear protection devices through wholesalers and cash & carry outlets, whereas music venues and larger clubs are more likely to expect availability through specialist suppliers (music, bar and PPE suppliers).

Carol-Ann believes that “our survey indicates that companies really should be making plans to address the noise issue now. It has been refreshing that Aearo wanted to conduct market research to see what was happening (or otherwise!) in the marketplace. They have recognised the importance of trying to understand the needs and concerns of the entertainment industry and responding to these needs.”

[1] About Aearo - Aearo are world leaders in sound protection. They manufacture a complete line of hearing protection for anyone who spends time in noisy environments. Their goal is to provide the greatest possible comfort, security and safety whilst being at the forefront of innovation.

from b2bsee * The Market Research Blog

Following on from our initial post last week about the findings of the 2007 ESOMAR Prices Study, in this post we look in more detail at how online research methods, such as e-surveys and e-focus groups, have continued to exert a strong downward pressure upon research prices.

That online research tends to lower costs is amply demonstrated by the fact that while telephone interviewing was found, on average, to be roughly three-quarters of the cost of face-to-face research, online techniques were a further 33% cheaper than telephone-based methods.

The article then concludes by examining the key factors that determine market research price differentials between countries and regions:

How cheap will on line go?

In the current study, 19 countries were able to provide at least three bids for conducting a tracking study using online data collection, up from 10 countries in 2005. Prices fell, in US dollars, in five of the eight countries that were included in both the 2005 and 2007 studies. These falls were despite the fact that exchange rate movements alone should have made most of them more expensive. In Australia, Japan, and UK the absolute price reductions were particularly large. It appears that a major factor in these price cuts is the increased number of suppliers and fierce price competition.

However, there is an indication in the study that prices won’t continue to fall indefinitely. In the USA prices rose between 2005 and 2007, by about 13% per year.

The main drivers

The study suggests the key drivers of price are the cost of labour and the size of the research market where the work is done. The cost of labour, in turn, being driven by a combination of local wage rates and the shortage or abundance of talent (markets that feel the need to hire international talent certainly end up more expensive). Smaller research markets, in economically advanced countries, find it hard to create online access panels. Without a range of online access panels, these countries miss out on the cheapest options for research. This, in part, explains why Ireland was the most expensive country on the Global Index.

The cheapest countries tend to be those with the lowest cost bases, with the cheapest being Pakistan, followed by Bulgaria and Macedonia. Several of the recent EU accession countries, for example Bulgaria, Cyprus and Romania, are amongst the cheapest on the Global Index. This position may change markedly over the next few years, as these economies harmonise with the rest of the EU.

The above article orginally appeared in the October 2007 edition of Research World

from b2bsee * The Market Research Blog