The 5 W’s of a Small Business Website
5 Keys to a Good Small Business Website
One of the simplest, most cost-effective ways to market a small business is to have a great website. For the price of a small newspaper ad, a small business can create a very professional, smart looking website.
Considering that it is such a small investment, why do many small businesses have websites that are reminiscent of the Internet of the mid-1990s? For most of them, it’s because they put up their website in the 1990s and forgot it was there.
Here are 5 simple ways to have a great website that meets your customers’ expectations:
1. Who are you?
Keep it simple and to the point. Finish the following sentences and put them front and center on your home page (eliminating the lead-ins, of course).
- We make money by…
- We are great at what we do because…
- Our customers buy from us because…
Your customers either came directly to your website through advertising or word of mouth, or they found it through an Internet search. Either way, make it easy for them to figure out who you are and what you do.
2. What do you charge?
Don’t be too secretive about your pricing. Have a price range if it makes you feel better, but set your customers expectations. You might give up a bit of competitive information, but if you’re selling a consumer good, it is easy enough for your customers to comparison shop. If you don’t provide at least a price range, most of your prospective customers will just find a competitor who is more open with their information.
3. When are you open?
If you have a storefront, post your hours and keep it up-to-date. Think about your customers driving by your store. Don’t make them read the small print. Make you ‘open’ sign big and neon-bright. (Figuratively, I mean. neon went out with the 80s).
If you’re an online business, what is your turnaround time? When should people expect a response from you? Set their expectations and then meet or exceed them.
4. Where are you?
Make sure your address is easy to cut-and-paste into Google maps, even if you have an embedded map. The easier your customers can find you, the more likely they are to shop. If you are an online business, specify your country, where you are willing to ship and for what additional cost. If you’re not clear and transparent, your customers will go somewhere else simply due to uncertainty.
5. Why buy from you?
Your customers have lots of choice. Given them a reason (or several) why they should consider buying from you. Once your prospective customer knows what you do, where you are, and what you charge, they have almost everything they need. The only thing left is why they should buy from you instead of your competition. Give them a clear, differentiating reason why you’re different.
That’s it. Five basic pieces of information that your website should provide. For a small business, a clean, minimal, professional website that makes it easy for your customers is all you need.
Finally, use a modern content management system (CMS) to do the heavy lifting for you. With a small investment in time and money, you can be up and running with a fresh new site for your business.
Here are a couple of places to get you started:
Chris McPhee, MBA
Email: Chris.McPhee@Marketing-Matters.org
Improve Your Direct Marketing Response Rates
Do you use direct marketing as part of your marketing strategy? Are you getting strong response rates?
If not, there are a few techniques that you can use to improve your direct marketing response rate.
In general, any type of marketing where you send it to a specific target consumer is called ‘direct’ marketing. It is often associated with postal mail, but is any type of marketing where the business reaches directly to the customer. In a previous post, I talked about a specific type of direct marketing – email marketing.
One main advantage of direct marketing is your ability to directly measure the Return on Investment (ROI) in terms of response rate. Mass marketing, on the other hand, is measured in impressions, but that is a much more general measure of effectiveness.
The response can be any number of types of responses. It could be to sign-up for a newsletter, to request a free product trial or to make a purchase.
The downside of direct marketing is the cost per mailing. If you are sending out physical mailings, the cost per customer can be quite high. Email marketing is significantly less expensive, but it still requires management of customer contact information.
Given the relatively high cost of direct marketing, consider some techniques to improve your direct marketing response rate:
1. Run a contest
In a study that looked at response rates for surveys, the most effective method of improving response rates was to enter the respondent in a contest. The study used a prize of $100 awarded at random to one of the responses. As compared to other incentives such as $1 or $5 per response, the contest was significantly more effective.
2. Offer a coupon
A second study examined the effect that coupons had on direct marketing response rates. Some interesting findings from the study included:
- The inclusion of a coupon, rather than the promise of a future incentive or deal, was more effective in improving purchase intentions.
- The amount of the coupon did not significantly affect purchase intentions (10% off was no less effective than 20% off).
- Coupons that seemed to be too self-serving actually decreased purchase intentions as compared to the control group.
- Coupons were most effective for loyal users of other brands, as compared to loyal users of the advertised brand or non-loyal users.
3. Personalize the offering
Given the relatively high cost of direct marketing, consider only sending the offers to a particular target market. Loyal customers might simply appreciate a ‘thank you’ direct mailing, whereas less loyal customers might respond well to a special sale offering or coupon.
In any case, ensure that you personalize the letter and ideally, personalize the offering to the traits of the customer.
4. Provide the respondent with the ability to opt-out
A third study researched the effectiveness of charitable donation response rates. A very effective direct marketing technique was found to be the offer a ‘one time donation’ option combined with the ability to opt-out of receiving future donations.
The surprising effect was that many respondents who selected the ‘one time donation’ did not check the opt-out box. The hypothesis had been that the respondents who selected ‘one time’ donation would do so to avoid receiving future offers. However, the respondents seemed to just appreciate having the option.
Direct marketing campaigns can be an expensive affair. Consider ‘giving back’ to the recipients of your direct marketing efforts by providing them with the right incentive to respond.
Chris McPhee, MBA
Email: Chris.McPhee@Marketing-Matters.org
Effective Email Marketing
Email marketing is a very effective and affordable way to reach your customers, as long as it’s done right. Unfortunately, many companies take a ‘fire and forget’ approach to their email marketing efforts. This approach is equally as likely to annoy your customers as it is to engage them.
Here are a few tips to get the most out of your email marketing efforts:
1. Use an Email Marketing Service
The first approach that many small businesses will take is to simply send emails to a set of customer addresses. One problem with this approach is that you may get targeted as a ‘spammer’ by your internet service provider. You also have little ability to determine who is opening your email messages and how they are responding.
By using an Email Marketing service, you can provide your customers with the respect they deserve with opt-in/opt-out ability. You’ll also be able to check on response rates by looking at who is reading your email and who isn’t.
Popular services include MailChimp and GoDaddy and most small business email marketing needs can be met for less than $20 per month.
2. Personalize, Personalize, Personalize
Consumers are weary of marketers who simply blast them with information. This digital junk mail clutters up their lives and makes them resent the senders. Even the least tech-savvy marketers can use some basic customer information to personalize their emails so that at least the recipient feels that some basic effort was spent on addressing them as a person rather than as a dollar sign.
3. Make the Content Relevant
Personalizing the message is a start, but ideally the message should have some immediate value for the consumer. Consider where the consumer is when he or she receives the email and what type of response you’d like to elicit. Don’t assume that your customers are sitting at a computer reading your image-laden email. They are just as likely to be in a car or at a restaurant reading your email on a little iPhone or BlackBerry screen.
Sometimes, even a ‘Thank you for purchasing’ email can be a useful brand-building message, especially if it provides the consumer with an ability to provide you with feedback. Are they still using the product? Were they happy with it? Were they frustrated with it? Use your Email Marketing efforts to do more than simply advertize sales promotions.
4. Do a Test Run
Before you blast everyone on your list with a new email marketing promotion, do a little test run. You can’t undo a full scale campaign, but you can make adjustments if you start small.
5. Less is More
In the article on Focusing your Message, I provided a template for specifically tailoring your message to the intended purpose and audience. Email marketing is so relatively inexpensive that you should focus more, rather than less, than you would do with other mediums.
If you don’t have an email marketing strategy, consider adding it to your advertising strategy. And don’t simply send emails to your list of customers. Sign-up for an email marketing service and do a test run.
Here are a few links to get you started:
A well-crafted, laddered email marketing campaign will take some planning, but will be much more effective than a lengthy email blast.
Chris McPhee, MBA
Email: Chris.McPhee@Marketing-Matters.org
How RIM Lost its ‘Product’
Research in Motion (RIM), maker of the once popular BlackBerry, has taken a terrible turn this year. From being the darling of the burgeoning mobile tech market to almost a has-been in the tech sector, RIM seems to be in dire straights.
What caused the sudden demise?
Answer: RIM lost its ‘Product’.
I’ve written a couple of articles on the importance of properly structuring marketing around the 4 P’s: Product, Promotion, Place and Price. Although it seems to be an overly-simplistic framework, loss of focus in any one area can severely affect a company’s future. Blockbuster was a casualty of losing focus on Place and now RIM seems to have lost its way regarding Product.
RIM was an R&D spinoff from the Canadian Waterloo University, well known for its strong Engineering program. This technically-savvy company built a strong, first-mover business on mobile email. It was a brilliant strategy of implementing a proprietary network of email servers through which all BlackBerry emails are processed. By using this strategy, RIM was able to provide secure, mobile email when the alternatives had to deal with the inconsistency of a variety of email servers and Internet infrastructure. The end result was that RIM had a vastly superior product in terms of reliability and security.
RIM rode the wave of its technical superiority until the competition started to catch-up. RIM had first-mover advantage and had all but conquered the business market. However, seeing Apple’s rise in the consumer market, RIM must have thought, “if we make our products sexier, we can compete with Apple.” The result was a series of BlackBerry products that were much more sleek than the original models, but without substantial technical innovation (at least compared to Apple).
The death knell for RIM was the Playbook. In the rush to catch-up with Apple’s iPad, and to meet analyst expectations of a competing tablet, RIM rushed the PlayBook to market. The bugs and limited set of applications could, perhaps, be overlooked. What cannot be overlooked, though, is the fact that the PlayBook was released without built-in email!
RIM made the fatal mistake of abandoning the one thing that it always did best – support reliable, secure, mobile email. That was closely fallowed by network outages which crippled anyone with a BlackBerry device.
Although the co-CEOs have now stepped aside, it is interesting to note that the first executives to abandon ship (pushed or jumped) were the marketing executives. I believe that these marketers saw the writing on the wall.
You can’t fix a marketing problem with engineering and you can’t fix an engineering problem with marketing. An organization must remain aligned in the two disciplines, or it will have trouble delivering a consistent end user experience.
The take-away for any product-based business is to remember what you stand for. What is the one thing, above all else, that your customers associate with your product. If you move away from that main point of differentiation, you had better know what your doing, or you’ll likely be playing catch-up for a long time.
Chris McPhee, MBA
Email: Chris.McPhee@Marketing-Matters.org
Marketing Lessons from Disneyland
As far as brands go, Disney is one of the most valuable and recognizable in the world. It consistently ranks in the top 10 brands in terms of brand equity, and has been able to maintain that streak despite changes in consumer choice, technology evolution, and economic ups and downs around the globe.
So how do they do it?
I had the opportunity to visit Disneyland Resort in California during the recent Christmas break to see for myself. Although much of the park has expanded in the 15 years since I had last visited, much has stayed the same. Watching the operations through marketing glasses, there are a few things that Disney does extremely well to manage the brand.
Marketing Lessons from Disneyland
- Keep the Brand Consistent
What does the Disney brand stand for? I recall hearing a 4-year-old tell her mom after watching a Disney commercial say, “We have to go there – that’s where dreams come true!”Maintaining an image of a dream-maker would be a high order for anyone. Fantasyland, the ornate castle, and quaint Main Street all support the image of the fantasy dreamworld of Disneyland.So how do you have scary Haunted House and Pirates of the Caribbean rides while staying true to the brand?
I was fascinated to see that the main difference between these rides of 15 years ago and today was that they have now been completely sub-branded. The Haunted House is now fully branded under Disney’s “Nightmare before Christmas” and the Pirates of the Caribbean is branded under the Johnny Depp persona that made the movie franchise so successful.
Rather than risk brand dilution, Disney has deftly sub-branded both of theses aspects of the park to that they have their own unique character, yet are still tied to the overall brand.
- When Selling a Service, Invest in Training
The people-management skills of the staff in the Disneyland park are something to behold. If Disney ever gets tired of managing traffic in their parks, they could lend their expertise to traffic congestion in major North American cities.What is more astounding than the traffic management process is the fact that the staff seem to manage it with a smile. Under conditions that most employees would become impatient and rude, the Disney staff seems to keep it under control. Some of that can be attributed to the hiring practices, but it is obvious that Disney invests heavily in training not just in the logistics of the job but also the attitude that the staff shows.As I left after midnight on New Years Eve, the staff was still in great spirit wishing everyone a Happy New Year. They must have been exhausted and annoyed at the mass amounts of people, yet were still all very upbeat. That type of customer service doesn’t come by accident or by chance.
- Watch, Learn, Adapt
As the rides became more popular and the lines became longer, Disneyland noticed a couple of concerning trends:
1. Moods tend to get worse the longer people stand in line.
2. When people are standing in line, they aren’t buying souvenirs or food.Disneyland implemented an innovative FASTPASS solution that involved allowing customers to obtain a free ticket to come back later in the day and skip the line. This has a number of positive effects:
- Customers are guaranteed at least four or five rides, even on the busiest days.
- Customers can enjoy the park more because they’re not waiting in lines.
- Customers don’t feel like they need to pay a premium to receive special treatment.
By keeping their brand consistent over all touch points, investing in training, and adapting to their environment, Disneyland has been able to maintain a very strong brand image.
Any service-based company would do well to take lessons from the success that Disneyland has had over the years.
Chris McPhee, MBA
Email: Chris.McPhee@Marketing-Matters.org
The Four I’s of Service Marketing
One of the fundamental tenants of marketing is the concept of the 4 P’s: Product, Promotion, Placement and Price. Although this is a very useful framework for product marketing, it doesn’t always translate directly to service marketing.
To frame service marketing in a similar manner, we can use a couple more letters of the alphabet.
The 4 I’s define the service offering, which can be managed with the 3 R’s.
The Four I's of Service Marketing
The Four I’s of Service Marketing
- Intangibility
Services are inherently experiential. They will typically involve some sort of accompanying product, also known as the facilitating good; however, the primary value to the consumer is intangible - Inconsistency
Service delivery is prone to inconsistency. The most successful service brands will often invest heavily in training and quality control programs in an attempt to reduce inconsistency. - Inseparability
In addition to being intangible, a service is also inherently inseparable from the service delivery vehicle. It involves a necessary ‘touch point’ with the customer that is necessarily linked to the service itself. - Inventory
Although services may be linked to a facilitating good, inventory associated with a service is perishable.
The Three R’s of Service Quality
A useful framework for maintaining service quality is to focus on the following:
- Reliability
Whether product or service, the foundation of any strong brand is reliability. The customer must know that when they interact with the service offering that they will receive reliable service. That can only be controlled through training, quality standards, and measurement. A service-based brand can only survive based on a reliable offering. - Responsiveness
A service offering necessarily requires a back-and-forth between the customer and the supplier. The supplier must ensure that the customer’s expectations for responsiveness are met, or the customer will start to look for alternatives. A service-based brand doesn’t need to be the fastest, but it must be consistent or the customer will become anxious. - Respect
Once a service offering is consistently reliable and responsive, it is the ‘respect’ that separates the premium service offerings from the rest of the field. A customer who feels respected will be more satisfied and loyal.
As service-based businesses become more and more important in our economy, marketers must be aware of the inherent differences in managing the customer experience. Creating a Reliable, Responsive, and Respectful service offering will increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, and will ultimately lead to a more profitable business!
Chris McPhee, MBA
Email: Chris.McPhee@Marketing-Matters.org
How Blockbuster Lost its ‘Place’
How Blockbuster Lost its Place
Blockbuster Video will go down in history as a tragic marketing misstep in the digital revolution. Its mistake was being in the wrong ‘place’ for its customers.
In my 4 P’s of Marketing article, I talked about the importance of defining your Key Marketing Issue and then examining it in relationship to Place, Product, Promotion and Price. Of those, Price is the one upon which you should avoid competing, because it’ll force you into a commodity game.
The irony of Blockbuster is that ‘Place’ had long been the company’s competitive advantage. At one time, it boasted that 80% of the population of the United States was within a 20 minute drive of a Blockbuster location.
That type of competitive advantage was extremely powerful. Blockbuster could reap great return on its marketing investment because it could advertise almost anywhere in the country and reach a significant number of its target consumers.
When Netflix started to creep-in on Blockbuster’s territory, Blockbuster made the tragic mistake of focusing on ‘Price’ and ‘Promotion’. Rather than think strategically about what mattered to its customers, it eliminated late fees to compete with Netflix. Not only did that not have the desired effect of stopping the exodus of its customers to Netflix, it significantly hurt the company’s top line revenue.
If it had looked forward, Blockbuster would have seen that the digital revolution was arriving, albeit ten years later than the tech bubble of the late 1990′s had promised. By converting its brand equity into an online presence, Blockbuster could easily have been the leader in online movie rentals.
Despite its recent public relations setbacks, Netflix has done very well with it’s flat-rate video streaming service. Rather than compete with Netflix on price, if Blockbuster moved its $4.99 two-day rental business model to the Internet, it would likely be a thriving business today. Instead, Apple saw an opening left by Blockbuster and moved into the rental business. Apple now commands a 68% market share of a high-growth market while Blockbuster Video has gone bankrupt.
The lesson that marketers must take away from the Blockbuster tragedy is that ‘Place’ is a key component of the marketing mix. Tread carefully if your strategy is to to ignore ‘Place’ and focus on ‘Price’.
Chris McPhee, MBA
Email: Chris.McPhee@Marketing-Matters.org
Handling Motivational Conflicts
In previous articles, I’ve outlined the decision making process and summarized some persuasion techniques. Although these discuss the general process that consumers go through to make decisions, the guidance in these articles has been fairly one-sided.
Most of the discussion has been from the perspective of the product or service that you are offering to the consumer. The consumer, however, is always comparing your offering to something else. Everything in marketing is relative.
The concept of ‘motivational conflict’ refers to the internal conflict that all consumers feel when making a decision. To understand the buying behaviour, we must consider the two main types of motivational conflicts.
Types of Motivational Conflicts
Approach-Approach Conflict
The ‘approach-approach’ conflict can be thought of as, “I want this, and I want that, but I can only have one.”
When a consumer makes a buying decision, he or she typically must choose one option amongst the available alternatives. Unless there is an obvious winner in their mind, they will typically feel a sense of loss for not being able ‘have it all’.
Use perception maps to position your offering to address your consumer’s approach-approach motivational conflict. If your offering is correctly positioned, you can make it the ‘obvious’ winner, and reduce the sense of loss that your customer would otherwise feel for not selecting a competing product or service.
Approach-Avoidance Conflict
This type of conflict can be a bit tougher to manage. This is when the consumer wants to make a choice, but wants to avoid the downside. For example, “I want a large vehicle, but I don’t want to impact the environment.,” or “I want that decadent desert, but I don’t want to spend 3 hours in the gym working off the calories.”
Almost all choices consumers make have some downside or risk. We can’t always eliminate the downside, but we must recognize it exists.
A good option to mitigate the downside is to offer complimentary products or services.
For example, a tire store might want to sell winter tires, but it knows that a downside is that the customer will need to switch between summer and winter tires twice a year. That involves a cost of both time and money on for the consumer. To mitigate this approach-avoidance conflict, the tire store can offer free or discounted tire exchange.
Everything in marketing is relative and consumers always have alternatives. When positioning your product or service, consider the motivational conflicts your customers face. It might cost you relatively little to have a big effect on reducing that conflict for your customers.
Chris McPhee, MBA
Email: Chris.McPhee@Marketing-Matters.org
Make your Marketing Messages ‘Sticky’
In previous articles, I’ve discussed how you need to focus your message and how you can use tried and true methods to try to persuade people. There is still something missing, though, if you can’t make your pitch memorable.
Most decisions are based on first coming up with a ‘consideration set’. If you’re asked to buy peanut butter at the grocery store, what brands come to mind? You can probably think of one or two brands, but is that all there is? There must be more than two brands of peanut butter, but only two are memorable. They are top-of-mind brands for you, and achieving top-of-mind, or ‘unaided recall’, is the holy grail of brand management.
To achieve that, you’ll need to come up with a compelling story. There is some magic in doing that, but there is also a good, logical framework that is clearly outlined in the book by Chip and Dan Heath called, Made to Stick.
Creating a ‘Sticky’ Message:
- Simplicity
You need to keep your story simple. People are bombarded with information, and if you don’t keep yours simple, you won’t get through.
- Unexpectedness
In the article on constructing a good advertisement, I talked about how people will remember your story if there is a little twist. By having a little bit of unexpectedness, people are more likely to remember your pitch. - Concreteness
You like have a strong mental image of your product or service as being, ‘best in class’ or ‘high quality’, but people often can’t relate to those abstract images. What does ‘best in class’ smell like? What colour is it? What does it taste like? Translate your message into something that people can concretely visualize. - Credibility
Think about what stories you’ve been told that you can’t believe. How do they differ from the ones that you do believe? We don’t have time to check out all of our facts with first-hand experience, so we depend on credible sources. Add the details to make your story credible. - Emotions
Most good advertising pitches allow the consumer to connect emotionally with the advertisement. Have you ever noticed that you never see the drivers in a car commercial? We are meant to visualize ourselves behind the wheel of that sports car roaring through the picturesque mountain roads. - Stories
Throughout time, human beings have connected through stories. Share your story. It doesn’t need to be about you, but it does need to be authentic. You won’t connect with everyone, but with any luck, you’ll connect with your target market.
Take some time to measure your marketing efforts against these six principles. If you can start to build your messages around these principles, you’re well on your way to creating ideas that stick!
Source: Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick (2007)
Chris McPhee, MBA
Email: Chris.McPhee@Marketing-Matters.org
The Concept Test: An Inexpensive Way to Test Your Ideas
Entrepreneurs have a tendency to look before they leap. In some cases, that results in extraordinary success. In most cases, though, it results in heartache and an empty bank account. If only there was a way to test the waters before getting in over your head.
One inexpensive and effective way to test your idea is the one page ‘Concept Test’. The core of this exercise is to determine if potential customers will buy your product for a price that would allow you to make a reasonable profit.
Marketing isn’t just about getting people to buy your product or service. Marketing is about meeting needs profitably. You might have a great idea, but if people won’t buy it at a reasonable price, then its time to rethink the product before you make a significant investment in it.
Structuring a Concept Test:
- Draw a Picture
First create a rudimentary picture of your product and how it works. If you’re thinking, “My idea is too complicated to show in a single picture.”, then your idea is probably too complicated. If your potential customers don’t understand your product or service, then they’re definitely not going to buy it. - Describe the Key Benefits
What problem is your product or service solving for the customer? You should have one to three compelling reasons that your customer needs your product. Again, if you can’t describe three compelling reasons to buy, then your product or service likely isn’t compelling enough. - Ask Customers What They’d Be Willing to Pay
Give a range of 4 or 5 price ranges including the option, “I would not buy this product.” It is important to give a set of price ranges to simulate the customer’s decision-making process. If they love the product, but not the price, then they’re probably not going to buy. Here is an example of the price ranges for a low-cost consumer product:
- $4.99 or Less
- Between $5.00 and $7.49
- Between $7.50 and $9.99
- $10.00 or More
- Would not buy this product
Send out this concept test to people who you would consider to be in your target market. You can either buy a distribution list from a market research company, or just ask a few acquaintances. You’re looking for at least a 50% positive response rate in a price range that you believe is feasible.
In the example above, if you think your cost per unit is around $5.00, then you had better be getting 50% or more responses saying that potential customers would pay at least $7.50. Otherwise, you’ll need to rethink the product or get the costs down.
As Thomas Edison said of his failed inventions, “I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” It’s relatively inexpensive to run a concept test as compared to the money that you’ll eventually need to invest, so at least stack the odds in your favour by testing your concept first.
Chris McPhee, MBA
Email: Chris.McPhee@Marketing-Matters.org
