This week in small business: Apps, apps, and more apps to fuel your success
It’s an “App Bonanza” (App-a-loosa?) this week. Two writers give us the lowdown on a slate of productivity apps while another lists 15 great apps that will get your business off to a fast start. Leadership, management, and productivity Some of my favorite apps are the ones that increase my productivity. Robert Nachum introduces us to three that will help you get better focused and organized. Along those same lines, Pratik Dholakiya describes five apps busy executives use to squeeze 25 hours out of the day. Laura Dunn has been doing a Huffington Post series where she sits down for a question and answer session with women in business. In this installment she talks to Laurie Fabiano, president, Tory Burch Foundation. And here she talks to Yvette Butler, president, Capital One Investing. Could your small business use a $50,000 grant? Okay, dumb question, but entering this Lending Tree contest is quite smart. Marketing and sales Shama Hyder, CEO of The Marketing Zen Group, gives you four specific ways small business and franchise owners can use social to boost their sales. This Marketing Land article by Jim Yu delivers seven omni-channel marketing tips to attract holiday shoppers. Timely, indeed. Rid yourself of these “5 Common Reasons Your Sales Conversations Get Derailed,” and you’re going to see your bottom line improve big time. Experts offer their take on what’s working for organic mobile search this holiday season in this MarketingDive article by David Kirkpatrik. Joshua Nite checks in this week with a very original article: 11 Brain-Training Exercises for Your Content Marketing Team. (I don’t know if they’ll burn any fat, however.) If your digital marketing efforts are a bit on the unorganized side, Alex Oliveira’s “A Four-Step Guide To Creating Your Digital Marketing Plan” is a good starting point to get things in order. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation Young Entrepreneur Council member Justin McGill lists and describes 15 apps that startups will find useful to use post launch. Believe it or not, this Phil La Duke piece entitled “The Top 5 Reasons Not to Become an Entrepreneur,” should be required reading for everyone who does want to become an entrepreneur....
read more3 A/B testing hacks you can use today
The online power players use A/B testing (also called split testing) constantly to fine-tune their web pages to get the best conversion rates. They wouldn’t present virtually any web page to the public without having first tested it to see if it does the job. Small business owners may think that they don’t need to do this or that A/B testing is too complicated for them to bother with, but that’s not the case today. I will outline three ways you can bring A/B testing to your website. But, before I touch on those three methods, let’s quickly define what we’re talking about when we discuss A/B testing. As I said above, we are going to describe how to use A/B testing to determine what works best on a website, such as landing pages or calls to action. Therefore, in its simplest form, we would create two web pages that are designed to get the visitor to do something, such as buy an item, push a button, or perhaps stay long enough to read some information. We would send half of our visitors to “Page A” and half to “Page B.” We would measure what we’re testing for and then compare the results. After some amount of testing, we would eliminate the page that finishes second in our test. We might tweak it again and then test that new version against the winner of the first A/B test. A/B testing with Google Analytics The problem with Google Analytics is that it allows you to do so much, that it’s sometimes difficult to know all the tools that are available to you. If you have Google Analytics on your website, you can do A/B testing fairly easily…but you have to find it first! (And you have to know that Google doesn’t call it A/B testing, or even split testing.) Navigate to your Google Analytics page, then select Behavior, then select Experiments; that’s where you can set up your A/B test. There are a few “default” experiments you can set up (bounces, pageviews, session duration), but if you select “Create a new objective,” you’ll get an even bigger menu of tests. There is a little bit of code involved in setting up these tests; you need to put line of code on Page A in your A/B test. If you have a static website, you just paste it into the header, or have someone a bit more HTML savvy than yourself do this. If you’re using a WordPress site, there are plugins that will get this done for you. And that takes us to our next “hack.” A/B testing with WordPress As with everything in the WordPress world, there are multiple plugins available to help you accomplish A/B testing. There are also various services you can use to accomplish different A/B tests on your WordPress site. Further, a service you’re already using might have A/B testing built in. Thrive Leads, for example, lets you test different email-capture pop-ups against each other, as well as against other forms of capturing email addresses. Brenda Barron has written a good article that gives you the run down on what she believes are the 11 best tools for WordPress A/B testing. If you have a WordPress powered site, you’ll find it very helpful. Voyeuristic A/B...
read moreSales growth by multi-channel mastery
People are different in so many ways, nonetheless, they share many traits as well, and that’s why you need to have a multi-channel sales strategy in place. Let me explain. People are the same in that they have a preferred way of buying. People are different in that those preferred ways vary greatly. Probably all of us have given a nod to these facts by stereotyping the shopping habits of women versus men. We usually say that women like to spend quite a lot of time browsing through stores and trying things on. Men, on the other hand, we stereotype as grabbing an item, marching to the checkout counter, paying, and going home. We know that these images aren’t entirely true, but there’s enough truth in them to make them a common stereotype. The lesson to learn is that sellers who are better able to accommodate these different buying styles will be rewarded with more repeat business. Further, the number of channels we have through which we can sell is greater than ever before. Therefore, to achieve sales growth the smart business owner will work to match the channel – and its configuration – to suit the buying preferences of various customers. The three major channels for selling are: Traditional stores, Catalogs, and E-commerce. For sales growth, you should work with each one of these, but these major divisions don’t tell the entire story. There are many variations of each that might be “customized” to better reach your buyer, or discover new buyers for your product of service. Brick-and-mortar Even what we consider a traditional store exists in a range of configurations today. We all know the standard mall store, strip mall business, and main street store. But today we also have subchannels such as mobile stores, seasonal stores, pop-up stores, outlet malls, and permanent flea markets. Are you finding which of these are a favorite way of buying for your shoppers. Here’s a VW bus turned into a rolling flower shop. This might be a mobile business all unto itself, however, it might also be used as an additional sales channel for an established florist. It would, for example, give the florist a tool to sell at local outdoor events, or gain access to other promising locations. Mail-order When we think of catalog sales, the big names usually come to mind: L.L. Bean, Lands’ End, or Chadwick’s of Boston. (However, note that all of these have sales channels in addition to their catalogs, sometimes even including traditional retail stores.) But, you don’t need to start pumping out a monthly catalog to see if mail-order sales would work for you. You can produce a smaller mail piece, maybe just for holiday sales or some other “hook” that would work for your product line – seasonal, for example. E-commerce There are many subchannels for Internet sales as well. You can sell through your own website, of course, but there’s a wide range of third-party sites where you can sell. The best known of these are eBay and Amazon, but there are other good marketplace sites in addition to these. Further, if you’re making a serious e-commerce play, you’ll also want to explore affiliate marketing. With a good affiliate offer, you can get your product wide exposure in the online world....
read moreYour personal niche market definition: From inception to success
“A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” – Steve Jobs I’ve always considered this to be a brilliant quote, but because it came from Jobs, I framed it in terms of the big, mass-market product categories where he was such an important force. But, when I began to explore the niche market definition, I saw that the idea he was expressing relates directly to creating niche markets. You see, one of the most important attributes of the niche market definition is that a niche market is created – it doesn’t pre-exist. Niche market requirements You can carve out a niche market for yourself with consumers or in a B2B (business-to-business) sector. For success, one of the most important requirements is that your product or service is so unique that people must go you to get it. Further, you need to be able to clearly define who your customers are. If you can’t do this, you can’t reach them. This is important in any market, but its importance is magnified in a niche market. When your product or service appeals to a broad market segment, you can be less precise in your marketing and advertising campaigns and still achieve some degree of success. But when you know that your market is small to begin with, any misfires in your marketing and advertising will deliver two bad results: You’ll spend a lot of money, and You won’t make any sales. We want “win-wins” not double whammies! If you don’t know who your customers are, don’t go any further with your business idea. And that brings us to the question of how to come up with solid niche market ideas. Let’s touch bases with the two concepts we’ve already discussed. The niche market definition makes it clear that these markets are created, and You must be able to identify your customers. Defining your own niche market I suggest that one of the best starting points if you want to build a business, product, or service around a niche market is to build on what you already know. Further, this can be ideal for budding small business owners and even those of you who want to create a business from home. What are your interests? What are your hobbies? What professional expertise and experience do you have? Dig deeply into those areas of your personal knowledge to discover needs that aren’t being met. What inconveniences do you find yourself often coping with? What would you like to do, but right now getting it done is a hassle, so you don’t even try? If you can develop a unique product or service in an area that’s very close to you, you have a good chance to succeed. You will be in a position to judge the value of your creation – its marketability – and you’ll also know who your market is. That’s a winning combination. Let me add one final bonus of setting your sights on developing a niche market: Because you know who you need to sell to, you can conduct smaller inexpensive tests to gauge your probability of success. And if you succeed, you’ll be in a position to write your own niche market definition!...
read moreYour personal niche market definition: From inception to success
“A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” – Steve Jobs I’ve always considered this to be a brilliant quote, but because it came from Jobs, I framed it in terms of the big, mass-market product categories where he was such an important force. But, when I began to explore the niche market definition, I saw that the idea he was expressing relates directly to creating niche markets. You see, one of the most important attributes of the niche market definition is that a niche market is created – it doesn’t pre-exist. Niche market requirements You can carve out a niche market for yourself with consumers or in a B2B (business-to-business) sector. For success, one of the most important requirements is that your product or service is so unique that people must go you to get it. Further, you need to be able to clearly define who your customers are. If you can’t do this, you can’t reach them. This is important in any market, but its importance is magnified in a niche market. When your product or service appeals to a broad market segment, you can be less precise in your marketing and advertising campaigns and still achieve some degree of success. But when you know that your market is small to begin with, any misfires in your marketing and advertising will deliver two bad results: You’ll spend a lot of money, and You won’t make any sales. We want “win-wins” not double whammies! If you don’t know who your customers are, don’t go any further with your business idea. And that brings us to the question of how to come up with solid niche market ideas. Let’s touch bases with the two concepts we’ve already discussed. The niche market definition makes it clear that these markets are created, and You must be able to identify your customers. Defining your own niche market I suggest that one of the best starting points if you want to build a business, product, or service around a niche market is to build on what you already know. Further, this can be ideal for budding small business owners and even those of you who want to create a business from home. What are your interests? What are your hobbies? What professional expertise and experience do you have? Dig deeply into those areas of your personal knowledge to discover needs that aren’t being met. What inconveniences do you find yourself often coping with? What would you like to do, but right now getting it done is a hassle, so you don’t even try? If you can develop a unique product or service in an area that’s very close to you, you have a good chance to succeed. You will be in a position to judge the value of your creation – its marketability – and you’ll also know who your market is. That’s a winning combination. Let me add one final bonus of setting your sights on developing a niche market: Because you know who you need to sell to, you can conduct smaller inexpensive tests to gauge your probability of success. And if you succeed, you’ll be in a position to write your own niche market definition!...
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