Ever walk down a neighborhood street and become surprised to see a sandwich-board sign suddenly standing in your way?  It announces the newest coffee-and-donut deal or today’s lunch special.  If the person placing the sign was a bit more creative, they may have a couple cute words, a maxim, or some humorous pun tied into the store’s name.  But, back to the question.  Did one of these ever surprise you?  Why?  For me, it’s enlightenment of a new store previously hidden from my view.  “I’ve walked this same route to my office for the past 5 years and never knew there was a salon tucked away in that building!”  Well David, it’s been there all along with or without your knowledge.  And frankly, that’s where the attraction ends for me.  A momentary diversion of my attention.  No more.

The Internet is no different.  People, like me and my sidewalk example, are moving toward a specific goal.  They’re checking a news item or searching for home improvement ideas on their lunch break – whizzing past thousands of e-commerce stores and Websites.  And just like the hidden salon on the sidewalk, these products are completely out of sight.  While these potential shoppers wade through endless search lists and query results to get that breaking news story or a kitchen appliance comparison chart, don’t mistake their sole purpose; to find what they started out for – NOT your Website or product.  It’s foolish to think that just because someone became distracted by your ad that they will end up buying a product from you.  To a small business owner’s dismay, the thousands of dollars spent for SEO or SEM (Search Engine Optimization or Search Engine Marketing) become useless Voodoo.  Getting to the top of a search list, while creating visibility to the entire universe, doesn’t guarantee a landed sale or even acknowledge that the customer was correctly matched with the given results.  It’s equivalent to saying, “I’ll build the tallest hotel building in the city.  Because everyone will see it first on the skyline, my hotel will be more successful.”  Don’t count on it.  It’s a far too passive approach to stake your entire business on.  That said, the hotelier was partially correct.  People can’t buy something if they don’t know it exists.  However by actively guiding a pre-selected audience to your specific product creates an exact match, lands the sale, and doesn’t force you to endlessly chase search-engine placement.

First to be seen is NOT a differentiator.  It just means you spent more money than the next guy.  Think of this as picking a parking option outside a ball field with dozens of homeowners hawking their garage space and lawns.  Each one waving pennants, flags, and weary goofy hats to get your attention.  (I live by Wrigley – we get some doozies!)  Yet, one clown with a “$20 easy-out” sign is indistinguishable from the next.  It doesn’t matter if one of these guys runs into the street to be seen first.  You still have to wade through a thousand clowns and guess which one will satisfy your exact preferences.  Unfortunately this requires you to drive around until you suspect a winner.  Now put the seller’s hat on for a moment.  If you knew this specifically matched driver was coming down 14th Street and you’re parking space is five blocks away, do you buy a bigger clown nose than everyone else and begin running laps between those two locations to get his attention.  What if you could know exactly when Jim Specific is going to drive down 14th, say 1:45 PM and you show up at exactly 1:40 PM with the right message and no clown costume.  Then off to another exact moment with Sally Particular driving across Oak Street and so on.  Remember, you’re not selling to everyone.  You can’t and not everyone wants or needs you to.  Just Jim.  Just Sally.  Why? Because they were already committed to your category of product before they showed up – even if they didn’t know you had their specific match.  So cancel the juggling classes at clown school and skip the distracting top-of-the-list techniques.  Focus on establishing a relationship with a customer already committed to buying within your product category.  Better yet, one that knows you.  Best yet, one you can pre-select and confirm.

A true sales relationship is no different on the Internet than within brick-and-mortar.  Further, the Internet will probably not replace your physical store presence even if it is an effective and complimentary sales channel.  Obvious? Maybe.  Although business owners, technology companies, and SEO/SEM consultants seems lost on the concept.  The proper conclusion is that you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars getting to the top of someone’s list or wait passively for a speculative sale.  Instead use an easier, affordable, right-sized solution by sending a legitimate e-mail campaign out to your existing customers.  “But Dave – nobody reads e-mail!  It all goes into a junk mail folder or gets picked out as spam.  By the way, isn’t mass marketing just as ineffective as SEM and illegal (or at least harassing)?”  The answers are: 1) Not true, 2) Maybe but doubtful, and 3) No, not if you do it with a legally acceptable protocol.

To start, these people are already customers so they will naturally expect some communication from you.  If you have their e-mail address, use it.  If you don’t have it, get it.  Second, unless they’ve specifically blocked your e-mail address from their inbox, your message will probably pass through their spam filter without incident.    Keep in mind that misleading teasers get caught like “See you at lunch today” or “Your bank account is frozen and requires your immediate attention”.  This selling technique is nefarious and deserves the spam prison is gets sentenced to.  Legitimate messages are never at risk.  Moreover (and point 3), you can avoid being flagged as a spammer by providing a legal opt-in/out option on each campaign message.  This is a link that allows a customer to remove themselves from future mailings – no questions asked.

E-mail marketing software provides that critical opt-in/out feature.  Further, it is template driven, highly customizable, affordable, and safe (it won’t show your distribution list to the world – creating more unintended spam).  Yet the truest reward is in the numbers.  Real, valid statistic sets.  Not coincidental happenings mistaken for statistical correlation.  For instance, if a user opens the message you get a statistic.  If the user clicks within the message, you get statistics telling you where they clicked.  In fact, you can choose how each message tells you a “numbers” story about your customers’ habits.  Combine this with demographic information (remember – you already know these guys and should have this on file) and you have a valid statistical set that can be polished into a predictive tool.  For example, “45% of recipients living in zip code ZZZ opened the message and 95% of those that did open the message made a purchase”.  Translation: The teaser line didn’t land with zip code ZZZ, yet the copy inside the message or the message’s timing was spot on for those that actually read it.  Try changing the zip code to rule out a flaw in your message or try changing your message to appeal more specifically to zip code ZZZ.  Similarly, “77% of male recipients clicked on the blue button while only 15% clicked on the red one even though both buttons were for the same product”.  Translation: Change the color of all your buttons to blue when sending your future messages to males or experiment with moving all buttons to the same visible area as the blue one.  Why?  You’ve statistically proven this works for males within your customer-base.  (Please pardon any statistical over-simplifications in these brief examples)

So where do you find an e-mail marketing tool to begin your data collecting journey?  Take a look at Express E-mail Marketing from Kenesco as one example (http://www.securepaynet.net/gdshop/blazers/cb_landing.asp?prog_id=366391).  It’s great and readily provides all the features I’ve just listed.  Although, you will still have to dig into the data to analyze it.  Yet once you start, you won’t be able to deny the effectiveness of knowing how and why your customers buy.

In brief:

• Visibility is critical for sales.  A sandwich-board might get momentary attention while confirmed statistical information is money better spent and avoids a wasted message sent to a non-interested audience.
• You won’t change the category of a buyers purchase.  Remember – they committed to buy long before you showed up.  Knowing this, your immediate goal should be to stand in front of only those buyers committed to buying in YOUR industry category.  Then guide them into your specific company/product/item.
• Don’t hitchhike in the top-of-the-search-list spot and expect a passerby to pick you up and purchase your bottled water for sale.  It doesn’t matter how big your thumb (think ad-square) is.  After all, they may have been searching for beach-front property not drinking water and picked you up by mistake!  Hitchhiking (and loitering) is for amateurs.
• Use your existing customers.  They’re motivated.  They already trust you.  Now increase your visibility toward the category of goods they already purchase and guide them into a consistent, lasting relationship.
• Do it legit.  Use a tool like Express E-mail Marketing from Kenesco (http://kenesco.com) to avoid the Internet police and help us all curb the plague of spam.  Then craft an honest teaser that’s true to your product and statistically analyze the resulting customer patterns.

Happy E-mailing,

David Knea

CEO, Kenesco Computing LLC

http://kenesco.com

+1-877-218-1879

Business planning is never more essential than now.  Why?  As the world changes around you, so do your customers, their needs, your industry, and your competition.  From startups to establishments, mom-and-pops to franchisees – everyone has a plan.  If you don’t know what yours is, you’re using the "Plan of No Plan". 

Can you succinctly describe your business?  Some of us learned this as an "Elevator Pitch" or a "2-Minute-Drill".  If you can’t recite from memory and without hesitation what your company does, stop reading this and begin writing it out.  If this seems too easy, you’re probably too generic.  It’s not acceptable to say, "We do landscaping" or "We have a store down the street from you that sells specialty food".  You need to pinpoint what business you’re in, how you’re different from the million other "landscapers" and "specialty food" purveyors, who will buy your product, and why.

Here’s a better attempt:

“We are a local sole-proprietor of whole-grain foods and ingredients to DINKS (Double-Income-No-Kid families) aged 35 – 60 that have a combined income above $150,000 annually.  In a market where 82% of these shoppers go to a brick and mortar store, we allow our customer to place an order by phone or Internet for same-day home and office delivery.  OUR APPEAL: We give them the food they want and save them time within their appointment-busting calendars.”

Similarly if you are looking for money from a banker:

“We are a 3-person Illinois subchapter-S corporation providing bulk landscape materials to small residential contractors and designers within a 50-mile radius of our store.  To keep up with our existing contracts for the next 12-months, we need a $54,700 loan to triple our existing storage space and delivery area.  Without the money we risk losing 30% of existing customers.  However with the expansion, we keep our existing customer-base and begin expanding into commercial development projects.”

While neither of these examples is a "finished" product, the point is to be specific and be concise.  Bring the listener immediately into your business and drive home the niche or need by supporting it with real numbers instead of guesses.  This is your dream and mission.  Don’t worry about capturing every last detail here.  You’ll put more meat on these bones within the detailed sections of your full plan.

Hopefully this whets your appetite for getting started on your business.  If not, take note that whatever got you here is rarely lasting and probably won’t carry you unscathed into the future.  You need to stay on top of your own knowledge, customer tastes, and express this in an evolving business plan.  Whether accidental-entrepreneur, franchise owner, or start-up; sales will eventually flag.  As an entrepreneur you boast, “My idea was good enough when I started, why change?”  Similarly, "I bought a franchise because it came with a plan.  I don’t need a new one.”  The reality is that once the initial demand, excitement, locational advantage, or (fill in your favorite can’t-fail answer here) ends, you grasp for sales that should have been percolating as your world changed around you.  One way to combat this psychological anchor is by pulling against it through continuous learning.  Read some business books such as Gerber’s "The E-Myth Revisited" (http://www.e-myth.com/).  Attend a class or workshop related to your industry.  And by all means, get out of your store, plant, or office building.  The owner that stays behind the counter cannot possibly stay in touch with today’s customer (another psychological anchor).  Neither will they understand or have the leverage to win tomorrow’s buyer.  Begin cultivating for tomorrow by writing your business plan now and reading it every day.  Update your numbers when you can no longer confirm them (at least once a year).  Business plans, like their owners, are living breathing beings that need to adapt to their environment.  Let them.  The result will engage you, your investors, and most importantly – your customer.

During your trek, be diligent.  Work through all parts of the plan and avoid using yesterday’s numbers and assumptions (think history book).  Instead write a true plan (think map of your future).  Yes the process will take you a couple days at the minimum and more likely a couple weeks to complete.  However, you need it!  Just get started.  If you don’t know where to begin, perfectly acceptable templates abound on the Internet.  See SCORE (http://score.org) and similar organizations for free examples and tools (you can even call us at Kenesco http://kenesco.com – that’s what we do!)  However you choose to proceed, do ALL the homework.

Burn the plan into your memory so you don’t get lost.  Take it with you at all times to all places.  Put it on your Blackberry.  Tape a 2-page summary inside your work diary or appointment book.  Keep a full copy taped to the wall in front of your desk spread out page-next-to-page so you can see the whole plan at all times.  Sound stupid?  How many people drive with a GPS on their dashboard and don’t give it a second thought?  Those things are bright.  They talk.  They show moving maps and audible alerts when you get off course.  Where do we keep them? Right in front of our faces through the entire trip.  Ask yourself, “If my appointment is worth spending $100 on a GPS so I get there on time, isn’t my business investment of thousands of dollars worth a couple pieces of paper taped up on my office wall?”

Finally as you complete your plan, build an advisory board.  Even the smallest companies need support.  If you fail here, your competition will take your idea and run with it.  To prevent this, build your support team and make it strong.  Can you name each of these people from memory and expect them to assist you in a moments notice?  1) Your Attorney, 2) Accountant, 3) Insurance Agent, 4) Banker, 5) a Mentor, 6) and 2 or 3 advisors (these are peer business owners – not necessarily from your same industry).  If your contact doesn’t recognize you because your too small, you do to little business with them, or you’ve been given only a company name without a specific representative – you don’t have a contact there at all.  Start over.  Get a new person, or company.  Or maybe the problem is you.  Get out from behind you desk and make your face visible to each of them regularly.  It’s not your contact’s fault if you call for assistance only once a year.  You’ve turned yourself into a commodity to them; indistinguishable from the next guy.  Instead, keep in monthly contact with each of these people and build their trust in your business.  Treat them as stake-holders.  And remember, if you can’t get these individuals to help your business in its darkest hour, they’re doing you no good as simple names on a piece a paper.

In summary

• Know what business you’re in and be able to describe it consistently in a specific yet concise pitch.
• Improve your business knowledge constantly through reading, networking, and industry associations.
• If you have an old plan, dust it off as a starting point only.  Don’t rely on old numbers.
• If you’re new to the planning game, use a template.  Try the Internet.
• Skipping parts of the plan is like trying to put out a fire with a bucket full of holes.  Do ALL the homework.
• Improve your business focus daily by skimming the business plan to see the big picture.
• Update ALL numbers at least once a year.
• Collect strong relationships with a key team of people to help you weather the storm (and celebrate the accomplishments).

David Knea

CEO, Kenesco Computing LLC

http://kenesco.com

+1-877-218-1879