Mine Your Own Business

The "So What" Test and Advertising

A few days ago we posted about a great article on getting Free Advertising in Mine Your Own Business. One of the things we discussed first was the difficulty of deciding on the most effective advertising mediums for your business. Unfortunately that is only half of the advertising dilemna for a small business owner. Let's assume you've developed the perfect advertising avenues to reach prospective customers and they actually see (or read or hear) your pitch, how do you make sure the content will be persuasive?

A recent article suggested using the "so what" test on your advertising message. It is a very short article that you can read in less than five minutes, but it promotes a very effective way to evaluate your advertising content. For each statement, the article suggests imagining your prospective customer saying "so what" to your statement. Simply make sure your message explains why that part of the message is important for the customer.

The article provides a couple of good examples, but the one I liked best was a refrigerator door with a textured finish. I had no idea before i read the article why that would be a selling point so I did a quick, impromptu survey of some of my co-workers and none of them knew either. The answer to the "so what" test is that the finish masks annoying fingerprints.

Is the Customer Always Right?

First some history on the famous phrase the customer is always right. In the USA it seems to have more or less originated with Marshall Field's department store in Chicago. If you have time you can read more about the the history of this famous phrase here. But is the customer really always right? An article by a small business owner makes the case that the customer isn't always right and some ask too much from your business.

The article gives three instances of their business trying to satisfy customers. In the first exampe they went the extra mile to the mutual benefit of both the business and the customer. In the second example they communicated to the customer some of the problems they were experiencing with satifying the customer and eventually everything again worked out for both the business and the customer.

The third example is similar to the first in that they went the extra mile to satisfy the customer and then the customer gave the business to someone else. Think of the situation where the customer comes in to your store for some information on your product or service and then goes elsewhere to buy it, either at another local store or even worse, online. Do you have any  examples from your business where the customer wasn't right?

Inflation Warning

If you believe that inflation is at our doorstep, read this to learn how to prepare. The author of this article is very concerned about possible upcoming government inflationary policiies and the posting provides some of the reasons for his concerns. He feels that inflation is especially rough on small businesses since they don't have some of the tools available for a larger business.

One fo the first recommendations in the article is to keep essential price increases small and frequent as opposed to larger, less frequent price increases. Here are a few more of the tips in the article that especially are applicable for small businesses.

• Continue to keep overhead low
• Watch your margins carefully
• Pay down variable interest loans as soon as possible.

The article provides more detail on these tips and a few more as well  The advice on keeping overhead low is something we mentioned last week in Mine Your Own Business in the posting Put Your Business on a Diet.

Free Advertising

All small business owners know that advertising is usually expensive. Another problem is deciding what type of advertising is the most cost effective for your particular business. Is it newspaper, radio, TV, Web....the list goes on and on and even ineffective advertising still costs you money. What if you could get free advertising? I ran across a great article from the Wall Street Journal with an idea I'd never heard or considered. Why not take advantage of advertising someone else paid for, your competitor who has gone out of business?

The article describes how signs and ads are paid for in advance for a few months or more, so when a business goes fails you can take advantage of their advertising. The article suggests you call the phone number on the competion's signs and ads. If the phone rings go on to the next ad. If you get a recorded message, call the phone company and have them redirect that number to your business line. Pretty clever, isn't it? When a prospective customer calls, just tell the the company went out of business and that you would be happy to help them.

The article continues with some ideas for other free advertising. What about using old trade-show directories, abandoned fax numbers and Web domains? There are tons of possibilities and for once you don't have to worry about what is the most effective for the cost because they are all free (or almost free).

 

 

Business and Customer Service

Small business owners understand the importance of good customer service (if not they are probably not small business owners for very long). We understand how important it is at Mine Your Own business since we have done around twenty posts on it in 2009 and 2010. Maybe even more telling is that many of the posts are some of our better posts (at least in our opinion). Bloomberg Businessweek reported on a recent survey that found that consumers also feel that good customer service is very important. It describes how 60 percent of respondents to the survey felt great customer service was important, but only one-third felt they are getting it.

The article then provides some of the reasons business owners are letting their customers down, such as maybe being short staffed due to the current economic times or focusing on other things such as pricing. The posting then gives some possible ideas for improving customer service, such as using SuggestionBox or IdeaScale to get online feedback. I know that even when I plan to purchase something locally, I'll go to Amazon or use some other Internet resource to get the opinions of actual purchasers of the product I'm interested in.

There are a lot more good suggestions in the article for improving customer service so the whole arricle is worh a visit. One of the last points the article makes is that if you use a tool like SuggestionBox or see some negative comments about your business somewhere else on the Internet, it  is very important to post how you've corrected the situation. This might turn an unhappy customer into a happy customer and show to other consumers that you really are concerned with good customer service.

 

Walking and Aging

Everyone has heard how beneficial exercise is, after all it is on television, radio, newspapers, magazines, etc. Now comes a new article from HealthDay about research from the U. S. National Institure on Aging that showed walking six to nine miles a week can help maintain a healthy brain. The study began in 1989 following 300 healthy adults with an average age of 78. All the participants started with good physical and mental health.

During the study, the exercise patterns of the participants were tracked and those who walked at least six to nine miles a week retained more of their brain size. The study also found that the chances of developing memory impairment were cut in half. Sounds like making sure you keep active as you get older is even more important than we previously thought. There is also a great link to the U. S. National Institute on Aging at the bottom of the article.

 

Put Your Business on a Diet

First a little background before we get to the main topic of this posting. Did you know the average American gains at least two pounds a year over their lifetime? I thought I remembered this depressing fact and then did a Google search and came up with this article. To add insult to injury, I've noticed as I get older that losing weight is a slow laborious process taking several days to a week to lose a pound or two, but one large meal can add a pound or more. Now to the main topic, there was a recent article that compared losing weight by dieting to controlling overhead in your business to keep it mean, lean, and profitable.

The article describes how overhead expenses are fixed costs that your business has every month regardless of sales, such as rent, leases, and salaries for your employees. It goes on to make the point that a business will get to break-even when the profit you make from sales covers your fixed expenses. Every time a business increases an overhead expense, increased sales are needed to reach the break-even point.

The final point was that many small businesses were forced to cut overhead just to stay in business. As in our dieting example in the first paragraph, it is a lot easier to rigorously control your overhead expenses on an ongoing basis rather than having to cut expenses. Think especially hard about large overhead expense increases just as you would avoid  large meals in order to control your weight.

Speed Coaching and SCORE

I think everyone has heard of speed dating, but if you're not familiar with the term or want a little more information Wikipedia provides some very interesting information on it. At the bottom of the article there are even listings of all the times it has been covered on television and the movies. A recent article on the Web from the BostonHerald.com describes how SCORE (which offers free business counseling) has used the speed dating concept in something new, Speed Coaching.

The article tells how small business owners are teamed with a counselor that has been trained to listen to the owner and pick out the main issues. The sessions are short, only lasting about thrity minutes, but it gives the owner an idea of what SCORE has to offer and also some initial steps that can be taken to resolve the problems.

These events have been conducted for three years and the article states that one of the most helpful things may be the networking that the small business owners experience at the events. By the way if you are interested in learning more about SCORE, we've posted several times about it before on Mine Your Own Business most recently in the posting More on Score ealier this year.

 

Emails and Subject Lines

There was a recent article that made the point that the subject line is very important in getting a prospect to open any email in the first place. Any email you send has to contend with spam and spyware software, firewalls, and just simple deletion by the recipient. We have to poke a little fun at ourselves since anyone who has signed up to get email updates on Mine Your Own Business gets an email that has Mine Your Own Business as the sending party and the subject. We have tried to have the subject line be the same as the title of the posting, but our current platform doesn't have that capablility. We are in the process of changing platforms in the near future.

The article then gives three ideas for what to put in your subject line:

1. The Blank Subject Line
2. The Referall Subject Line
3. The Cold Email Subject Line

There are a lot of very good ideas and techniques in the article and the final tip is especially good. It recommends that when you do get a prospect to respond, ask them what prompted their respoonse. Keep track of what works to develop the most effective strategy.

 

Small Business Credit Bill

USA Today had a recent article on the recently passed Small Business Jobs and Credit Act. Whether or not you agree with the the current Congress and Administration policies, the passage of this bill could result in some real savings to many small businesses. The article presents the following key provisions of the bill:

1. Sole proprietors can write off health insurance premiums as business expenses in 2010.
2. $30 billion fund for community banks to increase lending to small companies.
3. No fees on SBA loans and increasing SBA guarantee to 90% (from 75%).
   
4. Substantial increases in SBA loan amounts.
   
5. Zero capital gains taxes on investment in small businesses
   
6. Doubling the write-off of start-up expenses from $5,000 to $10,000 in 2010.
   
7. Increase the write-off of certain investments from $250,000 to $500,000 in 2010 and 2011 and allow "expensing" of some real estate improvements.

Read the whole article for more details if any of these provisions look like they might be applicable for your small business. Two important pieces of advice the article makes are make sure to check with your accountant and don't procrastinate, some of the provisions are only in effect for a limited time.