In this podcast, I offer several tips for small businesses looking to improve their implementation skills. Listen or download below:

Download the small business marketing implementation MP3 file here. (4.7MB)

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Being naturally optimistic, I always try to turn bad situations into new opportunities. Our still-faltering economy may be dragging down business, but there are ways for small businesses to take advantage of the economic downturn. Here are a few:

• Landlords may be willing to make deal and offer short-term leases. The Wall Street Journal reports that a new trend has started in retailing: the pop-up store. These stores operate with a short-term test lease to determine their feasibility. Creating low-risk leases enables more entrepreneurs the opportunity to start small-business retailing.
• Start a business, and start making money. With many businesses unwilling to hire new employees in this uncertain economy, “accidental entrepreneurs” are being born. A USA Today story shows that 25% of workers laid off in the last six months are considering starting a business instead of finding a new job. Businesses still need work done, so they are increasingly turning to outside resources (that has certainly been my experience).
• On the flip side of unemployment, if your business is looking to hire, you have great options right now. You need to maximize this opportunity. Make sure not to rush hiring decisions- conduct enough interviews to find the right person for the job who will fit with your culture.
• If you have the cash to ramp up your advertising, you can buy more for your buck. For example, one of my clients is in an industry where pay per click (PPC) advertising has completely dried up. Now we can advertise with little competition and a much smaller budget. There may be fewer customers than before, but we are reaching almost all of them.
• If this economy is leaving you with too much extra time, put it to good use. Take my small business marketing test to find your weak areas. When your business is booming, it’s hard to find time to plan for the future. If you work on your business strategy now, your business can come back stronger than it’s ever been.

Has your business developed any opportunities as a result of the recession? Please share!

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Yesterday, an acquaintance asked me for advice on his startup company’s marketing. He just didn’t know how to get started with his first customer. He wanted to know what kinds of brochures, business card or website he needed to get people interested.

I told him, “Decide who you want your customers to be.”

He replied, “Oh, you mean middle class or upper class?”

“No, I mean decide which specific people in which neighborhoods should be your customers. Get to know them, how they talk and what their needs are. Then you can start selling. Then you will know what should be on your website.”

When people first start looking for customers, their instinct is to look for large groups of people and hope to convince a few of those people to hire them. The idea is, “If I aim for all middle class families, surely I’ll get a couple of customers.” But this instinct is wrong. The more people with whom you try to communicate, the less each one will pay attention to you. For example, I imagine you rarely pay attention to the loudspeaker at the grocery store. It’s just not that meaningful to you because the grocery store is trying to communicate a general message to the entire store. When you try to be meaningful to everyone, you end up being meaningful to no one. Generalization for the masses is the worst way to sell a new (or any) product.

To find its first customer, a startup needs to get specific. Instead of selling to groups differentiated by demographics, sell to individual people. Talk their language and address their needs.

On a related note, marketing expert Steve Yastrow wrote two very helpful newsletters on how to differentiate your customers as individuals instead of groups– Do Differentiation Differently and How to Do Differentiation Differently. Steve’s essential message is:

“Your customer doesn’t really care if you are different. But he will be blown away if he sees that you think he is different.”

Showing your customer you think he is different is more work than blanketing a city with flyers- but it will also yield more results. As counterintuitive as it may seem, startups (and all companies) will find more customers if they focus on fewer people.

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You know that the marketplace changes rapidly, and you have to change your business model with it. But how do you know which changes to make? It’s simple. Ask your customers.

In this small business marketing podcast, I discuss changing business strategy with David Weatherholt and Russell Ball. Russell successfully changed his marketing approach- and company name- to fit the needs of his marketplace. I detail how all small businesses can keep their fingers to the pulse of the marketplace by conducting simple, thorough research with their customers.

Listen or download below:

Download the small business marketing research MP3 file here. (12.8MB)

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Listen or download below:

Download the measure your marketing MP3 file here. (12.8MB)

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She has owned the business for the last 20 years and recruits mostly in Chicago and the Midwest. Lorena started off our interview by telling me, “I love being a small business owner because of the flexibility it allows in my schedule and because I love what I do. I’m able to control the quality of the work that gets done. I am committed to quality work; I have a commitment to my clients, and they really appreciate and value that.”

(Some recruitment definitions for my readers: Clients are the companies LMB Associates represents, while Candidates are those seeking jobs with LMB Associates’ clients.)

Since LMB Associates is in its twenty-first year, I wanted to know what factors Lorena credits for her success. She was able to give a very forceful answer:

“Determination to succeed is critical and most important. There never was a question that I would succeed. Sometimes other people just give up.  When I first started, someone told me that I would make a lot of money and make it very quickly. In actuality, it took me eight months to make my first dime, and it wasn’t so easy. To people on the outside, they only see the end success. But there is a lot of work that goes into creating something and making it successful.”

Lorena emphasizes that hard work and determination are crucial for any aspiring entrepreneurs:

“It’s a very important thing to know and understand before you start your own business that it is going to be challenging. I’m glad I went through this experience, although I wasn’t glad at the beginning, while I was going through the pains of starting up. The truth is the start-up time gives you an accurate, honest assessment of what you’re in for, and I think that’s very important.”

Lorena’s hard work continues, as the economic downturn has become the biggest challenge for LMB Associates. Lorena says, “It’s been a shrinking job market, and my business is very dependent on economic circumstances.” She adds that the economy has had other, indirect, influences on her business: “There’s been a lot of volatility in the market, such as clients downsizing, consolidating offices or moving technology responsibilities offshore. Understanding these market changes present challenges but can also present opportunity.”

There is another looming challenge for the recruitment industry:  the Internet. Lorena isn’t worried about the challenge from Monster or HotJobs in the long run, because recruitment web sites aren’t necessarily saving companies time or money.  Recruitment web sites offer a high volume of resumes, but they provide no quality control. She says, “Companies need more capable, human resources to put toward screening candidates when they choose that option. I offer more than bodies to fill a room or paper in the form of dozens of resumes. I work with each client organization to find the best match for their needs.”

Many companies find that using recruitment web sites can tarnish their reputations among job seekers, if they do not follow up with candidates. Lorena explains,

“Candidates often don’t get responses from the companies to whom they send their resumes.  Companies should send a letter of thanks to a candidate who has sent his or her resume. It makes the companies look bad when they don’t respond. The way a person or organization treats people is very, very important. If you treat people poorly, they won’t want to work with you and that reputation will get into the marketplace.  And if you treat people with respect, they never forget it.”

Treating people respectfully is key to LMB Associates’ business. Lorena’s marketing strategy is to treat people as individuals, learn about their needs and develop relationships with them. She says,

“Often recruiters are just looking for the next buck. I differentiate myself by treating people as people. I give people the respect they deserve. Candidates might not know how to write a résumé, so I give them my time, sample resumes, suggestions and support. Candidates can become demoralized while searching for a job. I pump people up to feel good about themselves, because they need to know that, even though the market may be tough, they bring value to the marketplace. It’s a big deal to give people a boost so that they can get out there and do what they have to do: find a new job.”

She uses a similar strategy for her client organizations:

“I listen to what my clients say they need, then I ask questions, based on the qualifications they seek, their insight and feedback. My clients have personnel issues that need to be addressed, certainly that they need to hire someone but also often beyond the job description. What my clients need from me is to maintain confidentiality, to understand their needs and to assess what types of candidates will fit into their organizations.”

From listening to Lorena, it is evident that she loves what she does:  working with her clients and candidates. Before concluding the interview Lorena added,

“I like working in technology because it’s always changing and mind-expanding, and I like working with technology people, who are on the cutting edge of that change. I like having clients in a variety of industries; it makes work more interesting. I love working with candidates, who are all different kinds of people from all cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds, religions, and environments.”

To learn more about LMB Associates, view current job openings or contact Lorena, visit LMB Associates.

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Jerry and Janis’ business planning skills are very impressive. They managed to plan for every scenario, except one… becoming an overnight success.

Listen to my segment below:

Download the marketing a startup bakery MP3 file here. (7.6MB)

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To add up your own scores, take the test below. To use the automatic calculator, take the Small Business Marketing Test here.

1. Be easy to do business with:
Do you make your customers go through hoops?

Many small businesses don’t realize how their processes affect their customers’ experiences. Answer the following questions to identify if you are “easy to do business with.” Feel free to create your own questions to suit your particular business.

• Does our billing cycle consider the customers’ schedule? Or is it based solely on our convenience?
• Are we open when customers want to buy?
• When a customer calls, does a person answer the phone?
• Has a customer ever said something like, “I love that you are a small business. It makes things so much easier for me.”?

On a scale of 1-10, with ten being the best, how would you rate your company in this category?

2. Communicate with your customers in ways that are meaningful to them.

If you don’t communicate with customers in ways that are meaningful to them, your messages will be ignored. Evaluate your communications with the following questions.

• Do you know how different customers like to be contacted? Which ones prefer email? Which ones prefer phone?
• How is the response rate on your print/TV/radio advertising? Are you settling for the industry averages, or do you outperform?
• When you communicate with your customers, does the message resonate with them? Be wary of messages such as, “We have the best technology!”
• Do customers receive consistent messages from your company?

Based on your answers to these questions, how would you rate your company on a scale of 1-10?

3. Know where you want to go – What are your business goals?

If your company finds communicating with customers difficult, perhaps it’s because the company doesn’t have a future vision. Answer the following questions to determine if you know where you wan to go.

• What should your revenue be in three years?
• Are you planning on introducing any new products or services?
• How much do you want to grow, and what resources will you require to do it?
• What steps have you taken today to help achieve your company’s future success?

On a scale of 1-10, how well do you know your company’s intended future?

4. Involve your team

“No man is an island.” If you have employees, they should understand your business and should participate in communicating your marketing message to customers.

• Can you remember an instance where an employee came to you with an idea, and you let her run with it?
• Do you share financial information, like revenue projections, with your employees?
• Do your employees feel that they will succeed if the business succeeds?
• Do you help your employees focus on the big picture, or are they always caught up in the day-to-day minutiae of their jobs?

Rate how well your employees are engaged in your business, on a scale of 1-10.

5. Keep at it – How are your implementation skills?

We all know the best plans are worthless if they aren’t implemented.

• In the past year, how many initiatives have you started? How many have you finished?
• Have you ever heard an employee say something like, “Oh, we’ll never finish this project. We started something just like it last year, and management got bored before we finished.”?
• Once you make a decision, do you monitor its progess during implementation?
• Do you ever have follow-up reports on your initiatives to measure their success?

Are you an implementation novice or master? Rate your company from 1-10.

Add up your scores. How did you fare? If your company scored less than 50, there’s work to do.

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Not too complicated, right?

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Laura starts by telling us what she enjoys about owning her own business:

I love the freedom I get from owning a business.  I have full creative control over all my work, so I’m free to try new techniques and experiment with new ideas.  I’m also able to work at my own pace, set my own hours, and choose my own assignments.

But all small business owners discover challenges as they grow. For Reflected Spectrum Photography, Laura was already an experienced photographer, but running the other aspects of the business, such as sales, marketing and finance, was difficult at first. Since her core competency was photography, she sought advice:

I continue to learn as much as I can about these fields to improve my knowledge and skills in those areas, but I have also benefited greatly from the help of good consultants, such as Zoo In A Jungle Marketing and Andrew Technology. Having expert advice available has been extremely helpful to give my business a head start.

As with most successful small businesses, Reflected Spectrum Photography focuses on the customer experience and building relationships. Relationship-building is easier for small businesses than with large ones, which is a key competitive advantage of being small. Laura agrees and adds, “I really enjoy building relationships with all my clients. I find it very rewarding to be present at the most special moments in my clients’ lives, and to see how their children have grown at each new portrait session.”

Laura realizes that satisfying her clients involves more than delivering beautiful photographs, so she ensures they have a great experience during the photo shoot as well:

I try to help my clients feel relaxed and get them excited about having their pictures taken. If my clients are enjoying themselves, that allows me to capture special moments as they happen and preserve them as art, and I hope that they will be treasured for years to come. The most rewarding part of my job is seeing the expression on my clients’ faces when I’ve captured the perfect expression of happiness on their child’s face, or caught a spark of real emotion from their wedding day. If my customers enjoy the experience and love the results, they are likely to hire me again in the future and refer me to their friends.

As for building her customer base, Laura has employed a very successful web marketing strategy and client referral network. She says, “Before you can make a client happy, you first have to actually get some clients, so well planned sales and marketing strategies have played a key role in my success.”

As a successful small business owner, Laura parted with the following advice for aspiring entrepreneurs:

Before you start to focus on selling your products or services, build a solid foundation for your business to grow on.  Once you become successful, you may be too busy with your clients to focus on building a good web site, formulating targeted marketing initiatives, or finding a record keeping system that works for you.  If you need help with any of these things, don’t be afraid to ask!  Help is out there in many forms.  Books, forums, internet articles, and expert consultants are all available to help you get your business off to the right start.

Contact Info:

Reflected Spectrum Photography
Laura Poland
http://www.reflectedspectrum.com

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