HOW SMALL BUSINESS CAN LEVERAGE THE GLOBAL MELT DOWN…

There’s still a lot of doom and gloom in the media – but I don’t think you should let it get you down – there’s a huge opportunity to not just weather the storm but to come out of this current “slow down” in even better shape than when it started…

Losing faith in yourself or your business can be fatal for the business, your staff – and you. Don’t buy into the negative news at the moment – grab the ideas below and turn this time to your advantage.

This is a great time to try new things – and to also stop doing things that are not bringing rewards into your business.

I think one of the core things that has happened with the global slow is the general mistrust of the consumer with large corporate entities and banks.

We’ve seen locally here in my city a large overseas based corporate winemaker look after itself first while pretty much ignoring the small business winegrowers.

There’s also been a large overseas based food processing company that has shut down a processing plant that used to be owned by the growers themselves.

I see many reports out of the US that consumers are looking for “local” they are looking for humanity in their purchasing decisions – they don’t want to support the large normally faceless corporate style business.

Think about this for a little while – why are we starting to see real staff talking about the large corporates on tv ads (not that I watch much these days…!)…

It’s all about presenting a real human face to your business – people buy off people and at this time of market turmoil you may need to look at your marketing efforts – and your underlying business philosophy – is it “real” – does it build on your (good) reputation and focus on your customer’s problems.

If you’d like to know more information about how “reputation” can be used in your marketing – check out Seth Godin’s blog at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ and subscribe with your email address.

Elements of your web site that you need to check that you have to enhance this “reputation marketing” are: -

1) Real people photos
Having of real people rather than stock images lets people relate to you better. It stops being faceless and plastic – and more “real”. People want to buy from real people.

2) One to one voice
NZ’ers dislike talking about themselves in a marketing sense – but just have the content on your web site sound like a conversation between friends. The statistics tell us that the hard sell works best – but for building long term relationships be a friend by using friendly voices on your web site

3) Full contact details
Please don’t hide behind a PO Box and not have physical addresses – especially if your are undertaking to direct sell something from your web site. Purchasers need to have trust that they come and visit you to make good if a purchase turns out bad

4) A way for visitors to leave their email address and name to join your tribe.
Reaching out to visitors is not about expecting them to always come to you – make it easy for them to choose the hear from you every so often – just like this newsletter – it is easy to create and to send to those people on your email list.

2021 Edit - Having "old school" email contact with your raving fans is even more important if you lose that social media account for some reason or the terms of use change on the social media platform.

5) Social Media Links
Ensure there’s links to the social media sites that you use – and if you don’t use any YET… make it easy for people to add your web pages to their social media web sites.

2021 Edit - Goolge in particular assumes that every business will have a Facebook Business Page - if yours doesn't then your website may get penalised in Search Engine Optimisation terms.

6) Staff Bios
Who cares if you coach kid’s soccer…? Other kid’s soccer coaches…! Be more “real” with information about hobbies and other interests outside work on your web site – you may be surprised when existing customers read it.

7) Updated information about what you and the business are doing – now, yesterday and want to do tomorrow.
The tools are available (especially with the content management tools available now) for you to update your web site whenever you want to. Take advantage of that – make comments about topical things prove to visitors that your web site is central to being real of them

Our content management system has been designed for you to accomplish many of the things above – we are here to help you add these things to your web site and to further explore the relationship marketing and reputation marketing of your business – while being web centric.

We’ve been talking with lots of information & marketing gurus lately and doing a few social media presentations and social media consulting – let us know if you’d like to know about using social media in your business.

In the words of Seth Godin: -

“Earn the privilege for your networks to become customers…”