Archive for February, 2012

Event Ideas for Your Business

Events can be a powerful marketing tool. They provide something new, timely, and interesting you’re your customers and prospects to talk about. By building some excitement around your event, you build excitement about your business. Because of this, it is important for your small business to plan events that help with both marketing and customer service. The following are some ideas to do so both in the real world and online.

Monthly clinics or seminars about a product or service you offer – These can give you a chance to highlight chosen products/services, bring in new clientele, and network with others in your community. If done successfully, these types of regular events will also create buzz about your business and expose it to potential customers.

Host an after-hours gathering for your employees and friends/families. If you have a brick and mortar location, after-hours events can be effective marketing tools, but even if you are home-based, you can tweak this idea to work for your business. Provide refreshments, music, and put together some special displays on which to focus the event. Be sure to provide business cards, brochures, a free sample or giveaway, and other promotional materials to your guests.

Host an Open House for your community. Consider holding an open house with city officials (mayor, congressmen/women) and local press in attendance. Center the event around a theme or cause that is of interest to your community.

Sponsor a holiday window design contest for art students at a local school. Involving the young people in a community is a surefire way to spread word about your business. You can even modify this idea to include technology students competing to design your next online ad or website graphic. The announcement and celebration of the winner could be incorporated into the unveiling of the finished product.

Host an open-mike night for local business owners. Most comedy clubs reserve their slowest nights of the week for amateur open-mike nights. You can use this idea by hosting a forum for other local small business owners to exchange ideas for marketing and customer service. Each participant could take a turn at the mike to offer input and take questions from the audience.

Do a Twitter Q&A about your industry or products. This obviously requires you to have a moderate following on Twitter, but with the right promotion among your customers and preparation by you, it can be done fairly easily. You can even offer a reward or incentive at the end for participants that can be tweeted about intermittently throughout the session.

Host an online suggestion box via video chat headed by a panel of related industry experts. Choose like-minded people in your field and/or fellow small business owners in your community with which you have no competition for your video chat using a program like Skype or iVideo. Invite customers to “call in” with suggestions for what they think would improve their own shopping experience.

What events you have sponsored or attended which you have found to be informational and fun? Tell us about them in the comments section below!

Blog

Improving Your Customer Engagement

In this era of big box store dominance, it is more important than ever to help your customers feel that doing business with you is a worthwhile experience. Improving your customer engagement builds customer loyalty, which in turn can help grow your business. There are several ways to develop relationships with your clients so that your engagement with them results in a positive perception of you and your business.

Make yourself personally available to your customers. As a small business owner or direct seller, you have an edge over big corporations in that you are able to personally interact with your customers. Be sure to provide your customers with every possible way to reach you. Use it to your advantage by taking some time out to contact them once or twice a month. Make a phone call, send out an email to 15-20 customers a month, connect over Facebook, or make time to have coffee with a few of them. Discover their passions, connect and start the conversation with topics important to them. Then, ask how satisfied they are with a recent purchase, ask if they need further assistance, and find out if there is some other way you can be of service to them. Your customers will appreciate and remember the individualized attention, and won’t hesitate to mention you to their friends.

Use social media wisely. If the thought of maintaining a Facebook page, a Twitter profile, a website, and a blog are overwhelming to you, then don’t try to do everything at once. Start with Facebook. Be a positive and supportive voice online. Post fun, useful tips and be their cheerleader online. Treat them like a friend, and they’ll remember how you made them feel.

Ask and listen for feedback regularly. Most people find it difficult to hear others point out what they’re doing wrong. However, it is essential to seek out constructive criticism in business because not only will you be able to improve, but you also show your customers that you care about their satisfaction. Eliciting feedback can be done in a variety of ways, including email and phone surveys, face-to-face conversation, and links placed on websites and blogs. Be creative in your search for feedback; you can use reward and referrals systems, contests/giveaways, or even feedback parties. Whatever you decide, make sure your customers know they are being heard by taking their suggestions to heart and thanking them for their input.

Invite your customers to participate in your business. Many small businesses are encouraging participation by using “customer models” in ways that promote a product or service. For example, a company that sells clothing or jewelry could ask customers to Twitpic a photo of themselves wearing a product, which would then be displayed in a special section of the company’s website. By doing so, you are incorporating your business into your customers’ lives and making yourself more memorable than your competitors. And to top it all off, you’re interacting with customers and promoting a product all at the same time.

Promote your values and build trust. Regularly talk about what’s important to you and the high standards you bring to your business. Put your high standards on your marketing materials and in your business practices. Your customers will begin to depend on your services/products and trust you as a person.

Customer engagement is all about having a genuine concern for your customers’ satisfaction. With that idea as your guide, any or all of the above ideas can be tailored for your specific needs and allow you to improve your relationships with clients.

How have you engaged with your customers? Share your ideas with us in the comments below!

Blog

Return On Investment (ROI): Evaluating Your Progress

What does ROI stand for? It means Return On Investment; the effort and time you put into something and the measurable return for your hard work.

Have you ever tried to shoot a basketball into a net? For most of us, the first shot is almost always a miss. But from that first shot we make many small and large adjustments. Things like aim more to the right, use more force, create more arc, push with your legs and eliminate distractions.

Imagine going through this kind of process for your business. What kind of success can you achieve based on accurate evaluation and ongoing improvement? Here are some ways to help you evaluate your progress and point you towards building a successful business.

Establish a goal. Give it a time frame and completion date.
Separate your goal into smaller tasks and give each task a completion time. However, be prepared that you may need to adjust your completion date depending on the circumstances.
Decide on what you want to measure. Here are some more common areas that you may want to measure depending on your goal:

Number of prospects
Number of customers
Time needed for each process related to your business (where can you improve/streamline?)
Retail value of sales
Amount of expenses in relation to income produced
Changes in seasonal cycle
Impact of training on performance
Engagement
Performance level of team members
Online marketing results

4. Once you have this data, look for improvements, trends, patterns, negatives, positives and how you are measuring up to your goal.
5. Decide on how often you need to evaluate your progress.
6. Create a report and make some conclusions on how to improve.

It’s important for any business, whether home-based, small or large, to evaluate their process of doing business. This process will give you insights to quickly improve, adjust, minimize risks and help you plan for the future.

How do you evaluate your ROI? Share with us in the comments section below!

Blog / Teleseminar

DSEF & Money Wise Women: The Practical Aspects of Divorce

Today’s highlighted post from Money Wi$e Women Get Smart Teleseminar Series (Click here):

The Practical Aspects of Divorce

Gain insight and learn answers to the “how, what, where, when, why” questions of divorce.

Decrease legal expenses while increasing your knowledge of the divorce process and how it will affect you – today and years down the road.
Get an accurate picture of not only your divorce but your life after divorce.
Address your financial issues and accept the importance of knowing about the money in your life.
Deal with all the issues and create a realistic settlement that is fair to all parties but will not lessen your quality of life.

Jamie Thomas, Divorce Network

Jamie Thomas learned the process of “divorce recovery” first hand by not only living through it but by recognizing that merely surviving divorce is not enough. She found when going through her own (second) divorce after a twelve year marriage that many aspects of the process were left unexplained. Although she worked with a good attorney, information she had expected to get from her lawyer was not forthcoming. The reason, she discovered, is that many problems and situations which have to be dealt with during the process of a divorce do not fall into the realm of legal help. Therein lies the reason for establishing a business which “fills in the gaps”. Jamie teaches women what they will need to know during their divorce on a general, elementary though very broad level – a kind of Divorce 101. Jamie founded the Divorce Network in 1996.

www.divorce-network.com

DSEF proudly sponsors the free Money Wi$e Women Get Smart Teleseminar Series hosted by Marcia Brixey, Founder and President of Money Wise Women Educational Services and author ofThe Money Therapist: A Woman’s Guide to Creating a Healthy Financial Life. The series covers topics related to business and finances and provides women the opportunity to learn from professional experts in a safe, comfortable environment.

To find out about upcoming teleseminars, visit http://www.moneywisewomengetsmart.com/