Promotion is not the same as marketing. Promotion of a small business encompasses all methods of getting the word about your small business out into the community. Marketing, public relations, networking, advertising, press releases, and many more actions all are forms of promotion.
The purpose of promotion is name recognition, without negative association. Famous criminals are not sought out for business relationships. Positive association is best, but even neutral or no opinion association is valuable. The objective is to get the most people possible saying "I've heard of them" when your business name comes up.
The reason name recognition is important to your success is because people are more likely to approach something they are familiar with. When they need the product or service you offer, and are looking at their alternatives, they are most likely to call the business whose name they recognize (unless they have heard bad things about it).
Part of promotion has to do with presentation. Negative association is more likely to come from poor presentation than from enemies whispering unflattering things about you. Therefore, a great deal of your promotional energy should be devoted to the quality of your promotion. Amateurish, error-ridden promotional work will turn people off, and once they are turned off, it is very hard to again make them receptive.
Presentation reaches beyond the quality of your printing or advertising. Every single contact your business name makes with anyone reflects on their impression of your business. Every email, every conversation, how you dress, how quickly your website loads, and any other interaction between you or your business and people are all promotional actions, and are affected by the quality of their presentation. So be professional at all times, and project competence and other positive qualities to the best of your ability.
Books have been written full of promotional ideas, and many can be found for free on the internet, by searching for "inexpensive promotion" or "promotional ideas" or the like. Many of them are impractical or inappropriate to your business, but some of them will make sense to you.
A fifteen-dollar table at a church flea market might result in 500 new people hearing of you or seeing your name. High school event programs are seen by hundreds of parents and are cheap to put a small ad in. Always having a business card to hand to anyone who will take it is a basic of promotion. There are hundreds of ways to promote a local business, including on the internet.
If your business is not local, but internet-based, promotion follows the same rules: keep the quality of presentation high, and seek out ideas with a search for "internet promotional ideas" and similar words. Beware anything that says "free" except downloadable ebooks. There are ways to effectively promote for free on the internet, but most of them are not advertised.
Look for bloggers with many followers, and make intelligent comments about their blogs. Get your website included in specialized directories (not the huge directories that no one uses or even sees). Offer a free ebook on free ebook sites. Probably the best inexpensive way to promote on the internet is with an ezine that you email out regularly, but that route is time-intensive and requires a firm commitment. You will find many more ways if you look for them.
You can measure the success of your promotional efforts in a local setting fairly easily: each month, ask 30 or more strangers if they have heard of your business, and keep track on a graph of the percentage who have. If the graph line isn't going up, you need to promote more or with better presentation or both.
On the internet, promotional success is clearcut: keep track of the number of unique visitors to your site.
One final warning: promotion is not marketing. Do not neglect actual marketing actions, as they are what will produce actual leads and actual sales. Promotion plows the field; marketing sows the seeds; salesmanship tends the crop and reaps the harvest.
***
Don Dewsnap is the author of Small Business Magic, published by Oak Wand Publishing. Small Business Magic details the principles of quality necessary to business success, applying to all aspects of business from production to sales. The principles of quality are not well known, and almost never applied to their full potential.
Showing posts with label business quality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label business quality. Show all posts
Friday, June 18, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
Small Business Success Tips - Carefulness
Almost every printing company has this sign on its wall: "Why is there never enough time to do it right, and always enough time to do it over?"
This ironic, even cynical statement can be applied to almost any business, large or small. In some industries, up to two-thirds of working hours are spent on correcting mistakes. In a small business, wasted hours and materials can easily make the difference between success and failure.
Yet almost all mistakes can be prevented. The secret to preventing mistakes is in being careful.
Carefulness usually takes a little longer. Note this: a "little" longer. Being careful does not mean doubling the time it takes to do something. It means twelve minutes instead of ten, or seven hours instead of six and a half.
Two simple actions will eliminate almost all mistakes made in your business:
1) Pay attention. When your mind is elsewhere, mistakes happen. If you get interrupted, stop what you are doing, handle the interruption, then get your mind back onto what you are doing. If you start daydreaming, it is time to take a break. Go take a short walk, get a glass of water, and come back when you can concentrate.
2) Check your work. This unbelievably effective procedure is overlooked by almost everyone, every day. Small business owners particularly are so full of self-confidence that they just assume they have done something correctly. Maybe nine times out of ten they have. Then the mistake in the tenth time costs them all the profit from the first nine.
Every action in a business deserves carefulness. Misspellings in emails and on websites project an image of ignorance and lack of quality. Incorrect invoices don't get paid. Unswept floors and dirty windows can repel customers, especially the ones you want most: the wealthy, well-bred ones.
Then there are the products or services your business sells. A nick here, a scratch there, a form not filled out correctly or completely, a missed spot in the painting, little mistakes that could have been prevented by being more careful, will make a customer look elsewhere the next time he needs that product or service.
As a small business owner, the burden is on you to insist that both you and your staff follow a firm policy of carefulness. When an error is made, figure out how carefulness could have prevented it, and make sure everyone knows, so it doesn't happen again. This doesn't mean to make someone feel bad for making a mistake; it means to make them feel better and more capable in the future. Probably all they have to do is slow down and be more careful. Don't worry: as they get more experienced, the speed will return, but without the mistakes.
Above all, do not, repeat do not, let mistakes go by with a careless phrase like "Don't worry about it. Mistakes happen." If you don't do something about it, the same mistakes will continue to happen.
Carefulness results in higher quality at lower cost. It is worth your investment.
***
Don Dewsnap is the author of Small Business Magic, published by Oak Wand Publishing. Small Business Magic details the principles of quality necessary to business success, applying to all aspects of business from production to sales. The principles of quality are not well known, and almost never applied to their full potential.
This ironic, even cynical statement can be applied to almost any business, large or small. In some industries, up to two-thirds of working hours are spent on correcting mistakes. In a small business, wasted hours and materials can easily make the difference between success and failure.
Yet almost all mistakes can be prevented. The secret to preventing mistakes is in being careful.
Carefulness usually takes a little longer. Note this: a "little" longer. Being careful does not mean doubling the time it takes to do something. It means twelve minutes instead of ten, or seven hours instead of six and a half.
Two simple actions will eliminate almost all mistakes made in your business:
1) Pay attention. When your mind is elsewhere, mistakes happen. If you get interrupted, stop what you are doing, handle the interruption, then get your mind back onto what you are doing. If you start daydreaming, it is time to take a break. Go take a short walk, get a glass of water, and come back when you can concentrate.
2) Check your work. This unbelievably effective procedure is overlooked by almost everyone, every day. Small business owners particularly are so full of self-confidence that they just assume they have done something correctly. Maybe nine times out of ten they have. Then the mistake in the tenth time costs them all the profit from the first nine.
Every action in a business deserves carefulness. Misspellings in emails and on websites project an image of ignorance and lack of quality. Incorrect invoices don't get paid. Unswept floors and dirty windows can repel customers, especially the ones you want most: the wealthy, well-bred ones.
Then there are the products or services your business sells. A nick here, a scratch there, a form not filled out correctly or completely, a missed spot in the painting, little mistakes that could have been prevented by being more careful, will make a customer look elsewhere the next time he needs that product or service.
As a small business owner, the burden is on you to insist that both you and your staff follow a firm policy of carefulness. When an error is made, figure out how carefulness could have prevented it, and make sure everyone knows, so it doesn't happen again. This doesn't mean to make someone feel bad for making a mistake; it means to make them feel better and more capable in the future. Probably all they have to do is slow down and be more careful. Don't worry: as they get more experienced, the speed will return, but without the mistakes.
Above all, do not, repeat do not, let mistakes go by with a careless phrase like "Don't worry about it. Mistakes happen." If you don't do something about it, the same mistakes will continue to happen.
Carefulness results in higher quality at lower cost. It is worth your investment.
***
Don Dewsnap is the author of Small Business Magic, published by Oak Wand Publishing. Small Business Magic details the principles of quality necessary to business success, applying to all aspects of business from production to sales. The principles of quality are not well known, and almost never applied to their full potential.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Personal Development vs. Personal Improvement
Both personal development and personal improvement deal with growth or expansion. Yet they are two different viewpoints. With the first, you are looking at the horizon, and with the second, at the stars. Clearly, the two complement each other. But they should not be confused.
When you read an article or a book about making your life better, ask yourself whether it is talking about adding a new capability or direction to your life (personal development) or about how you can do what you are already doing, but better (personal improvement). The answer to this question matters, because each viewpoint needs a different attitude in order to succeed.
Personal development needs an adventurous attitude, with some courage on the side. Say, for instance, you decide you want to increase your self-confidence. You're tired of being shy, and want to feel comfortable in groups. Treating this undertaking as anything but an adventure will get you not very far, not very fast.
Adventures are full of risk, and possible injury, and the unknown. They include blind alleys and monsters and heroes and villains. Above all, adventures take place in unfamiliar territory. And therein lies the secret to not only surviving the adventure, but gaining the prize at the end.
Increase familiarity with the territory. That is the essence of personal development. Enter a new, unfamiliar territory, and become familiar with it. It takes time, and you will stub your toes on unfamiliar rocks once in a while, or step into quicksand, but the faster you can become familiar with the territory, the closer you are to owning the prize.
To use the self-confidence example, you know the prize is out there, of being able to speak easily with others, and feel comfortable in any situation. Dozens of articles and books give advice on how to reach that prize. So, pick one that seems to make sense, and try it. Give it a good, honest try, and see if it works for you. Some will, some won't, but the only way to find out is to try. Try another, and another. Be ready for the lumps of embarrassment when one doesn't work, but also be ready for the glorious feeling of finding one that moves you closer to the prize.
Personal improvement, on the other hand, needs a quality attitude. A quality attitude boils down to one simple premise: making things better is a good thing to do. When you fully understand that, and live by it, personal improvement follows as surely as day follows night. Any and every aspect of life bows to the power of that attitude.
It seems so obvious, but it is not. Very, very few people apply that attitude with any consistency or regularity. It is one of those ideas that everyone agrees with, but almost no one considers as a guiding principle. They haven't looked at the corollary, the logical conclusion, of that attitude: making things worse is not a good thing to do. And most of all, they haven't looked at the fact that those are the only two choices.
It is a fool's errand to try to make things the same, or keep them the same. The universe will only allow that for a very short time, before some random factor will come slamming in to change things. Very seldom does the universe change things for your benefit; the laws of probability alone dictate against it. So if you are just trying to keep things the same, in the long run you are making them worse.
Making things better, then, is not just a good thing to do, it is a necessary thing to do. What things, you ask? All things. Every action you take, every email you write, every conversation you hold. The questions should be at the top of your mind every moment: am I doing this as well as I can? How can I do this better? How could I have done that better? What do I need to know to do my job better? Lots of questions, all looking at improvement.
It is really quite astonishing how much life can improve when you make it happen.
So there you have it, the difference between personal development and personal improvement. You can walk both roads, concentrating on one or the other at a given time, or both at the same time. But I hope you find them easier to walk, now that you have a map of each.
One last note. This essay needs to be read a few times to get everything from it. Once more with an attitude of adventure, and then again with a quality attitude, trying to read it better. (Remember that phrase above, "Every action you take"? Reading is an action. End of hint.)
http://www.oakwand.com/
When you read an article or a book about making your life better, ask yourself whether it is talking about adding a new capability or direction to your life (personal development) or about how you can do what you are already doing, but better (personal improvement). The answer to this question matters, because each viewpoint needs a different attitude in order to succeed.
Personal development needs an adventurous attitude, with some courage on the side. Say, for instance, you decide you want to increase your self-confidence. You're tired of being shy, and want to feel comfortable in groups. Treating this undertaking as anything but an adventure will get you not very far, not very fast.
Adventures are full of risk, and possible injury, and the unknown. They include blind alleys and monsters and heroes and villains. Above all, adventures take place in unfamiliar territory. And therein lies the secret to not only surviving the adventure, but gaining the prize at the end.
Increase familiarity with the territory. That is the essence of personal development. Enter a new, unfamiliar territory, and become familiar with it. It takes time, and you will stub your toes on unfamiliar rocks once in a while, or step into quicksand, but the faster you can become familiar with the territory, the closer you are to owning the prize.
To use the self-confidence example, you know the prize is out there, of being able to speak easily with others, and feel comfortable in any situation. Dozens of articles and books give advice on how to reach that prize. So, pick one that seems to make sense, and try it. Give it a good, honest try, and see if it works for you. Some will, some won't, but the only way to find out is to try. Try another, and another. Be ready for the lumps of embarrassment when one doesn't work, but also be ready for the glorious feeling of finding one that moves you closer to the prize.
Personal improvement, on the other hand, needs a quality attitude. A quality attitude boils down to one simple premise: making things better is a good thing to do. When you fully understand that, and live by it, personal improvement follows as surely as day follows night. Any and every aspect of life bows to the power of that attitude.
It seems so obvious, but it is not. Very, very few people apply that attitude with any consistency or regularity. It is one of those ideas that everyone agrees with, but almost no one considers as a guiding principle. They haven't looked at the corollary, the logical conclusion, of that attitude: making things worse is not a good thing to do. And most of all, they haven't looked at the fact that those are the only two choices.
It is a fool's errand to try to make things the same, or keep them the same. The universe will only allow that for a very short time, before some random factor will come slamming in to change things. Very seldom does the universe change things for your benefit; the laws of probability alone dictate against it. So if you are just trying to keep things the same, in the long run you are making them worse.
Making things better, then, is not just a good thing to do, it is a necessary thing to do. What things, you ask? All things. Every action you take, every email you write, every conversation you hold. The questions should be at the top of your mind every moment: am I doing this as well as I can? How can I do this better? How could I have done that better? What do I need to know to do my job better? Lots of questions, all looking at improvement.
It is really quite astonishing how much life can improve when you make it happen.
So there you have it, the difference between personal development and personal improvement. You can walk both roads, concentrating on one or the other at a given time, or both at the same time. But I hope you find them easier to walk, now that you have a map of each.
One last note. This essay needs to be read a few times to get everything from it. Once more with an attitude of adventure, and then again with a quality attitude, trying to read it better. (Remember that phrase above, "Every action you take"? Reading is an action. End of hint.)
http://www.oakwand.com/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
