Danielle MacInnis – Marketing Blog for Small Businesses

There are a few events in the calendar year that small business owners should be leveraging, especially you are in the retail sector. Mother’s Day is one of those key events, this year on the 13th May. Here are a few simple ideas that can really help increase your sales of products and or services when you market this promotional opportunity  well.

1. A special offer that is only available for mum. This works a treat especially if it is timely and it is what your customers want. It has to be of value. If you don’t know what they want then survey them. Sometimes it is not a discount, it may just be a value add. Extra 20 minute foot massage, coffee vouchers, Mum and Me offers, babysitting service etc.

2. Packaging up a couple of items to specific price points can work well for quick buying. This is enhanced if your customers and prospects can buy online! Build the packages around different mum segments, new mum, grandma, mum with teenager etc.

3. Create partnerships with like businesses to great really great offers. Morning tea at the local cafe followed by a spa treatment!

4. Reach out to the men as they are the ones usually buying the Mothers Day gifts. Build your database with a competition.

5. Communicate the offer in different ways: Email, SMS, flyers, on Facebook, Website and store signage. You need to start doing this a month before Mothers Day on your web and in-store with Facebook offers, Email and SMS closer to the actual date to capture those last minute shoppers.(normally my hubby)

6.Attract window shoppers with a great window Mother’s Day display!

You can create some really eye catching window displays and these can be enough to stop traffic and create some easy new purchases from passer bys.

7. Sponsor something that women care about. This goes a long way towards establishing a caring brand. It might be the Mothers Day fun run or another foundation. 

Linking to a good cause can also help build an audience and can be used to write some great PR stories to send traffic back to your website or Facebook page.

So if women are apart of your ideal customer audience how can you gain their attention this Mother’s Day? If you have a relationship with their partner in life or kids it could still be a way to provide them with a special offer.

This is a guest post by Jane Johnson

Put your smartphone to work in your small business 

Business apps are the next wave of small-business innovation—small businesses depend on agility and responsiveness to stay competitive, and that’s why working efficiently from your smartphone can be such an important boost. If they don’t seem that significant, keep reading; these are the apps that will change the way you do business in 2012.

1. Square (Free – for Android, iPhone)

If you’ve been a small business owner for a while, you know how hard it can be to find a secure, reliable, and inexpensive method for accepting payments. You can take cash or checks (an impossibility for e-business), you could buy a pricey external card swiper, or you could pay a substantial fee to use PayPal. Square allows you to accept Visa, American Express, MasterCard, and Discover using a free card reader that plugs into your iPhone. Square provides the app and reader free, and charges a 2.75% fee from each transaction, so it’s cheaper and quicker than PayPal or an external swiper. The app comes with analytic software to track sales, tips, and tax.

1. Dropbox (Free for 2.25 GB of storage, with a monthly subscription – for Android, iPhone)

Dropbox allows you to share a single folder structure between any number of computers and mobile devices. You can choose who gets to see which folders, so you can securely share and collaborate with employees, partners, or clients. Dropbox really shines in the smartphone version—if a client or employee needs your input while you’re away from the office, you can access your shared folders from the dentist’s office. A word of warning—because it keeps your files in constant sync, you should probably turn it off when you’re not using it, unless you and your employees have unlimited data in your phone plans. It’s cheap, fast, and easy to bring your employees up to speed.

1. Dragon Dictation (Free – for iPhone)

The biggest obstacle to turning your smartphone into a powerful small-business tool is the clumsy virtual keyboard, and there’s no obvious way to improve them, but voice-recognition and dictation software has become surprisingly accurate and powerful. Any task that requires you to produce a lot of text is easier to dictate than to type, and Dragon is the most popular and well-supported free option on the market. Similar apps are available for Android, and you can find more expensive professional options for both Android and iPhone, but the performance isn’t noticeably different.

1. RDM+ Remote Desktop Management  ($9.70 AUD – for Android)

RDM+ allows you to remotely access your home or office computer from your smartphone, enabling you to do pretty much everything you can do at work, as long as you find a way around the limitations of your smartphone keyboard. This app is more expensive than the other apps we’ve recommended, but if you or your employees travel frequently or spend a lot of time away from your desks, RDM+ might allow you to get more work done from your phone than you do in the office.

1. Skype Mobile (Free – for Android, iPhone)

If your business requires you to make a lot of internal or international calls, Skype Mobile can potentially save you a lot of money. Skype provides free, unlimited voice and video chat between Skype users—so if you and all your partners and employees get the app, all your internal communications are now free. Skype Mobile also provides video functionality, so you can provide a personal, direct touch with far-off clients.

Bio: Jane Johnson is a writer for GoingCellular, a popular site that provides cell phone related news, commentary, reviews on popular providers like T-Mobile.

Small Businesses are always on a tight budget. We need each dollar to really work for us. Here are some ideas to ensure your marketing dollars are working hard for you.

1. Target the right customer. A critical part of your marketing plan is targeting the right customer. For a low-budget high-impact marketing plan to work, find customers who are easy to identify and affordable to reach.

2. Get a piggyback ride. I am sure that there are businesses that work with the same customers and by working together you can do a cross promotion. A gym and naturopath, a builder and interior designer, a marketer and a web designer. Think about who you know and how you might share a database or email campaign to package up something valuable to these customers that you both share.

3. Build inexpensive lead generation programs. You don’t need to spend thousands on Google ad words. In many cases Facebook ads are way more affordable and effective. In any case, you can use other lead generation techniques.  Create a press release and put it on PRwire to bring traffic back to your site. Have a sign up form and offer something of value. Put an offer on your Facebook page if people like you. The ideas are endless. Offer a sample if people sign up on your website.

4. Learn as much as you can about marketing. Leverage the web, u-tube, articles and blogs to pick up tips to save you time and energy and pick up some great ideas. I love hubspot.com, mashable.com to mention a couple of resources. I also have a how too section on my website with videos and templates.

5. Use web tools and apps to increase your marketing ability. There are heaps of great apps that can give you great functionality online. Here are my top apps. To see the stuff I am into visit my website.

6. Some marketing tools. Getting some basic marketing collateral is a must. Website, brochure, business cards. To do this you can outsource to resources like

• guru.com – freelance
• fiver.com – anything for $5
• odesk.com – freelancers
• elance.com – projects
• 99 deigns.com – design freelancers
• Wordy – copywriter freelancers
• grader – grade your own website for SEO

7. Leverage social media to amplify your messages, offers and engagement with customers. You can run giveaways and ask for customer reviews.

8. New customer offers are a great way to create attraction for your business and gives the customer a sample or reason to try you. These don’t have to be big offers. Free blow wave, new toothbrush for a dentist or a new pair of socks as a shoe store. Think about what you can give to delight your new customers.

9. Tell a Friend or referral program can give a boost to your business by leveraging your existing customer base. Just by offering a 2for1 for friends or you both get $10 off could be another reason for customer to come back and try you again and bring a friend! Worth the small investment.

10 List your site on key directories. Listing on google places, local directories is a great way for your customer to find you and most are free. Look for directories that cater for your business niche. Having a profile in all the social media where your customers are is another must have.

An Interview with Michael Neaylon the author of True Brand Toolkit

It was my pleasure to interview Michael Neaylon Author of the True Brand Toolkit. This interview gives the small business owner some great insights into branding and some great resources. Listen to the podcast here.

Visit Michael’s website at: www.mcme.com.au or purchase the book here.

Is your business sucking the life out of you?What are your goals for 2012 as a small business owner?

There is something about the comfort of an old t-shirt as p.js or a nice pair of warm socks that keeps you turning back for things of comfort. I guess the same can be said for setting goals for your small business. It is comforting to just go with the flow, rather than set some ambitious goals that make you get out of your comfort zone. But without the end game in mind, your small business becomes a job can have you working 80 hours a week and sucking the life out of you.

As Brian Tracey says in his goal setting sessions, “success is goals.”What do you want out of life? What do you want out of your small business? What will make you happy? Seems simple, but most us seem to do what is easy or do what we have always done even if that means our business runs us, instead of us running our business. We put our heads under the doona and hit the snooze button, rather than take the challenge of changing and do that brisk walk when the alarm button goes off in the morning.

For me, to grow my small business and even keep it afloat it is about knowing what are the important questions to ask? It is being able to make the right decisions on a day by day basis that takes me that ideal company I have in your mind. To do this I have to be able to picture that vision with real clarity. Here are some aids I have found that will help you ask those tough questions and set the stage for a great 2012 and a business you want to run. A year that you will look back at and say, “yeah, 2012 was a great year for me and I am getting closer to that vision I have for my company and my life”.

• Have a vision for where you want to go. Is your business sucking the life out of you? What is it would you like your life to look like? John Jantsch Goal Setting Video is a must resource. John has a exercise of describing your business as it is 3, 5 years from now and what does it look like? Goal Setting I find it useful to have a personal vision and a company vision.

• Set some realistic but stretch revenue goals. We all need money to live. We need our small business to provide for us. What do you want your income to be now and in the next 1, 3, 5 years? I do this every revenue setting exercise  every year. I sit down and write an amount that I need and would like to make. Guess what? I come within 5% of  this figure year on year. Each year I try and stretch the figure and each year I reach it. I guess it is because once I have a target I plan my plan to support it. I do everything in a purposeful way. As a consultant,I find it useful to set, monthly, weekly and daily targets that sharpen my focus. It is a real measurement for me in terms of how I am tracking . http://freelanceswitch.com/rates/ is a great tool for this purpose. I love Freshbooks.com for time, invoice and estimate tracking. (heaps better than MYOB in my book).

• What do you need to invest in yourself to reach your roles

“Success is something that you attract, by becoming an attractive person.” As Jim Rohn says “work harder on yourself than you do on your job.” Personal development is an area all about developing skills that will serve you well in growing your business and making better business decisions. An extra skill I have developed digital marketing have served me well. Podcasting and writing has enabled me to reach you. What do you need to be able to make better decisions this year. How can you be the expert in your industry? Invest in yourself.

• Build a great team around. Zig Ziggler says, “if you can help enough people get what they want then you can probably get what you want.” This give to get mentality is already used in content marketing to great affect. We can no longer interrupt, persuade or buy people’s attention. We need to earn, give and educate to receive it.  Building a great team around me is critical to business success. I spend a lot of time on communicating and sharing with my team so we are all on the same vision with clear goals to get there. I also focus on having fun.

• Get a Coach or Mentor. The biggest growth I got in one single year was when I took on a lifeline.  A Lifeline concept was introduced to me by Keith Ferrazzi when I read his book, Who’s Got Your Back. This is a person that I could banter with, share ideas, and would be accountable to. As a small business it is easy to feel isolated. Networking groups help but there is nothing like having that person who as got your back.  I am lucky in that I found this person just when I was ready and he has shaped my approach to business. He shares the same value set as me and I respect his opinion. However he has a different approach to me and asks me the tough questions and always has my back. I do the same for him. I remember interviewing Linda Hailey another successful small business marketer and she did this with her competitor. They would have lunch and share information, ideas and learn. Who can you ask to mentor you? Most people will say yes. I set up a group called BrainJam for CEOS and BrainJam for Marketing Students to do that very thing. To share ideas and banter. It is a must for small businesses.

Other resources

Brian Tracy – Goal Setting

Vision Mission Values Template

Who’s Got Your Back by Keith Ferrazzi

Your True North Exercise