Be honest, how successful is your online marketing?

You create websites and blogposts.  Like the rest of us, you write content, doctor images and add to the morass of social media posts – relentlessly. The effort is mostly all consuming, for you – true?  The elephant in the room question remains. “So, how well is it all working for you?”

We know that marketing has morphed from the traditional to add online to the myopia. Deluges of digital likes, posts, links, searches, pokes, tweets, comments and …well, so we go….all matter, so the Gurus repeatedly say. “To what good effect?” In the end, your marketing budget must provide good returns like any other investment. Obviously, but how do you know how you are doing? “How do you know your efforts are worthy?”

Tracking, monitoring, discussing, creating, checking, testing, counting and analysing are significant contributors to knowing what works. They all help you to get to that magical space of knowing what to aim at – what to focus on, finding that sacred simplicity of knowing the ‘way forward’. Online marketing particularly, demands this of you.

Getting a handle on change, trends, buyers, competitors takes effort and repetition. It takes some careful planning and thereafter a helluva lot of work. After coming up for air for adjustments, again the cycle continues, repeating itself yet again and again. All this would need to be done despite work commitments, the resemblance of a social life, daily challenges and dealing with the unforeseen.

An often used maxim applies here I think. “If you aim at nothing, you will hit the target every time.” I know there is excitement and a sense of well being from busily putting out loads of marketing messages. Yet, few would argue against the value of a carefully planned campaign, monitored against expectations and reviewed for improvements thereafter.

Improvement. This word lends itself well to the genre of managing change – and the digital world certainly has its fair share. You know that sustainable improvements are mostly evident in small steps, while constantly compounding benefits one on top of the other.

In order to know that improvement has been valuable, meaningful, relevant and productive, you need to measure something against something else. To know what these somethings are, takes some insight, information, knowledge and some discernment.  Inevitably, you need a system and that age old, often forgotten friend, management. You also need a process where you manage and monitor the variables and the constants alike and make some sense of the results.

Random or shotgun marketing works sometimes online, rarely most times. Best practice dictates that a strategy, albeit simple yet well thought out, is always appropriate. Doing what you do, over and over without measuring the results is just as inappropriate as doing what everyone else does and expecting to get ahead of the game. Failing which, you could always get someone else to assist who knows how, at a delicious price.

Share your thoughts below.

Is our great idea a real business opportunity?

Often research, technology or even our creative thoughts and discussions stimulate great ideas. However, are they real business opportunities? The sooner we establish whether our idea is viable as a business or not, the sooner we either ditch the idea to save money or compete in the market place to make money.

Seasoned entrepreneurs see this as the crucial step in investing in a business. They know that making money often starts with astute purchasing. Warren Buffett, one of the worlds richest men will always look at the market fundamentals and the ability of a management team to deliver, first. Always objectively first. If that principle is good enough for Mr. Buffett, then its good enough for us.

Assessing whether a business idea is a real business opportunity or not requires some careful analysis, such as:

1. What risks and rewards does the idea offer?
2. What skills, money, time & equipment are needed to compete?
3. How long will it take to make a profit?
4. How much cash is needed to operate the business?
5. How attractive is the industry and market you want to trade?

The point is, without an intelligent assessment of the ‘business case’ before a business is launched, the chances of success diminishes. This is why a ‘Dragon’ styled investor is able to assess your ‘opportunity’ from a single page proposal. Reading a lengthy business plan is not the initial step busy investors need to make. They want to see if you have ‘bottled’ the business opportunity down into a byte size explanation. We have all heard the story of choosing to draft a lengthy report because there is not enough time to do a shorter one.

Investors want to know that you understand the business opportunity well enough to be succinct and professional in your initial proposal – which is often best presented in a 1-page summary. If investors or stakeholders [those that will take a risk with you] see that there is a market for your idea and the numbers make sense, they will want to see you in person and hear what management expertise or designs and processes you have, to turn the opportunity into a real business.

After this, if they are still interested, they will want to do a ‘due diligence’ to look at your formal documents and assess your credibility and potential risk / reward and consequently the price in doing business with you.

I have no doubt that you have heard all of the above countless times. The problem is, where businesses are started without the rigour of a business idea being identified and assessed objectively, as a real ‘business opportunity’ by an investor, stakeholder or consulting professional – often huge amounts of time and money are wasted on businesses that should not have been started in the first place. This independent assessment of a real business opportunity, often saves time, money, suffering and negates a lot of naive enthusiasm.

What are your thoughts? Do you have a story to tell? Please share below.

Think slowly before starting

The credit crunch has quickly brought attention to the need to rely more on our own efforts and less on the whims and promises of others to earn our daily bread. With unemployment figures rising and new job creation figures plummeting, the days of assured employment even for graduates, is renowned to be a challenge at worst. With government cut backs, the prospect of assistance or benefits look bleak for many who are willing and able to work hard, contribute to the economy and pay their own way. So what should we do?

Its widely known that starting and growing a decent business is not for the feint hearted and often many of us just aren’t suited to ‘going it alone.’ Running your own business means becoming skilled at doing many tasks and acquiring many skills that are not particularly enjoyable. Take the routine ones for example, like tax returns, bookkeeping, admin and relentless marketing. If we have decided to start a business making and selling something we are passionate about or believe in – the prospect of doing a multitude of ‘other tasks’ can be tiring and in many instances boring. Mostly, willing or not, there is not always the time to learn how to do the ‘important extras’ let alone do them regularly and up to standard.

If we feel that we have no option in these economic times to take the initiative. In order to earn a decent living and build a nest egg to sell later, then starting and growing a business may in fact be the only answer. Starting out sensibly is essential – so, if one in twelve new businesses fail, please consider the five pieces of advice below before you get started.

1. Don’t compromise on what you offer

Its all too common to find new businesses starting out with make-shift marketing, accounting, marketing or planning tools. Many before us have managed to start a business with nothing and slowly put in place important systems and processes when they are affordable. Well yes, but times change relentlessly and in these modern days many a brand, logo or website poorly conceived and presented almost kills off any customer interest in the product or service from the start. We need to find a way of avoiding this compromise.

Each new or growing business has its own set of key success factors. Its the business owners responsibility to find out what they are and make sure that the business puts these key factors in place simpler, better and faster than others in competing their market. If this is easier said than done in your business, get help. Compromising standards makes staying in business very difficult.

2. Be careful who you associate with

What you want often determines who we get into bed with. Well, if we want a job or some income to ease the pain of retrenchment or early retirement we might be less choosy about who we elect to partner. An example being, if you want to create a business that you want to form part of your pension in twenty years and your partners rather want to sell in three years – unless you can afford to buy them out and replace their skills sooner than you would like, your goals will be challenged.

Its recommended if you are a natural leader, a maverick or someone who dislikes decision-making by committee not to start a business venture where you don’t have the option of becoming the majority shareholder. All too often, good intentioned efforts are thwarted later through earlier bad choices where associates ethics, goals or contribution are way less than others.

3. Keep the crown jewels

If you are one of those that provide either the main idea or expertise, the resources [especially the cash] or land up doing doing most of the hard work – make sure you don’t find yourself having to ‘carry’ anyone else when times are tough and there is little cash to share or worse, when times are good and you land up getting less reward for your risk and effort. At the start of any business its easy to be generous with partners future rewards as there is as yet nothing to share. This scenario is notorious for creating problems that may split a partnership at the worst of times.

4. Make sure your model is achievable

Spreadsheets while useful, are also easily used to create a business model that looks simple enough on paper and more complex, if not impossible to achieve in practice. Obviously, simpler models with few steps are more suitable for new and small businesses. Complex paperwork, poor systems and ambiguous marketing messages make it all the more difficult for products and services to be trusted, purchased and delivered successfully. If the market leader has a simple model, you at least need a model as good or better to compete.

Still today, many businesses increase their sales dramatically, without any significant increase in profit making or taking. Plan for profit and make sure your business model is realistic and fairly simple to achieve.

5. Plan to become the best of a bunch

We sell our products and services to buyers who collectively make up a market. Some markets grow buyers rapidly, others stagnate while others decline over time. This means we are competing with others for buyers bucks. We need to find out what it takes to be the ‘best of a bunch’ of sellers in a buyers market. If there are only a few sellers to many buyers – fantastic! Life will be easier for a while. If like most of us, there are many sellers to a not so rapidly growing group of buyers, we need to develop a better, different or cheaper product or service. Make sure you ALWAYS have the people around who understand this and are quick to join you to see that you take up the challenge. We all need a team that are willing and able to create a sense of urgency to compete, to know what to do at the right time. Failing which….our business life gets so much harder from the back of a bunch.

What do you think? Your comments posted below are encouraged and appreciated.

Beating the opportunity odds

Knowing which business opportunities are good or bad have for ages been questioned by eager entrepreneurs. If statistics are anything to go by, most opportunities are either bad or poorly implemented. We need to do something about this as a means to get rid of business proposals, ideas and ventures that have ‘no chance’ of starting, let alone being successful. With the odds so heavily stacked against entrepreneurs, why are so many attracted to the daily challenges and the mountains that need to be climbed? Is it the freedom, being your own boss, the potential income, the creativity or being in charge of our own destiny? Millions of entrepreneurs in the UK compete each year for scarce capital and customers. Many ventures don’t even start and those that do – most fail. Many of the business plans that are submitted to investors, only 1% are estimated to get the money they originally requested. Either the risk / cost was too high or the return on investment too low. Let’s face the facts: Most businesses fail. To be successful, we need to be different. We need to do different. Research shows that the three biggest reasons why business fails are because:

• customers won’t buy
• competition is too strong
• entrepreneurs aren’t good enough

We need to do our homework first to give ourselves the best chance of avoiding these pitfalls. Other than working harder and smarter, before we start writing a new business plan or developing a strategy to grow a business – entrepreneurs need to examine some important questions about their opportunity:

1. What do your investors want?
2. What is the market willing and able to pay for?
3. Have you a cash budget to begin and build your business?
4. Is the competition easily defeated in a few areas?
5. Are you able to deliver relentlessly, better than most?
6. Is your business model competitive and low risk? You will save time and money by answering these questions before you start a lengthy, expensive and resource intensive planning process.

Most importantly, you are able to veto good looking, yet flawed ideas.

How best should entrepreneurs go about answering these questions?

1. Put all answers to the six questions above in writing. As detailed and as factual as possible. Solid evidence helps.
2. Have at least a few hours in front of a whiteboard with peers and / professionals to clarify scenarios and options.
3. If you need significant resources to make your business work, commission a professional to complete a feasibility to test the business case.
4. Be critical about the numbers, forecasting is not an exact science.
5. Stay as unemotional as possible about the prospects the opportunity may deliver.
6. Surround yourself with good people, preferably with relevant experience.
7. Think slowly, act quickly. By doing a little essential homework first, entrepreneurs give themselves a better chance of starting on a solid foundation with lower risks, also of saving time and money. This way the odds can be tilted more positively in our favour.

What do you think? Your comments posted below are encouraged and appreciated.