Seattle Small Business Blog

Talk to almost any advertising agency, or Fortune 500 company exec about advertising and promotion, and you will almost certainly hear the buzz words “fragmented advertising” and “consumer-centric campaigns” and long discussions about the many pitfalls and difficulties of creating effective advertising campaigns today.

What is fragmentation exactly? It’s the increase in the number of available methods for getting your message to your audience.

One of the main difficulties faced by any entrepreneur is that advertising has changed and evolved over the last few years. It now includes visual, audio and electronic media.

In fact, if you do a Google search for advertising, you may feel overwhelmed by all the options available to you now — if you just look at the options for your Website you’ll find popups, popovers, audio messages, flash video, RSS, even animated “sales people” that can be programmed to appear right on your Website and interact with your customers. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

So is traditional advertising — which includes billboards, radio, television, newspaper and magazine — dead?

Not by a long shot. According to one top advertising mogul, traditional advertising methods are still around because they still work. The trick is to figure out who your target market is, what they want, and how they look for that information.

Mark Twain said, “Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.”

If you know customers, you can spend your advertising dollars on the mediums they use to look for answers. If your customers are senior citizens who are not online, then focus the majority of your advertising dollars on the newspapers, magazines, television, and radio that they are reading, watching or listening to.

If your target market is working parents, you need to know how, when and where they get their information. Is it on the Internet? What radio stations do they listen to? What magazines are they reading? Do they watch television? When? Why?

So what are your best options for creating an effective advertising campaign? Here are some simple steps:

1. Know your audience. What do they want? Where do they shop? What do they read? How old are they? Where do they hang out? Do they need your product or services? Can they afford your product or services?

2. Know your competition. Be prepared to do a little detective work. What are your three main competitors doing to advertise? Where are they advertising? How often? What types of advertising methods are they using? How long have they been running? Are you reaching the same audience? Is your message different? Look at what they’re doing right, and figure out creative ways that you can make your advertising just a little bit better, or differentiate yourself from the crowd.

3. Next take a look at what the “big dogs” in your field are doing, and see if you can adapt some of their methods to your target audience and your budget.

4. Know your message. What exactly are you trying to say? What do your customers want to hear? Why should they buy from you, and not someone else? Make every word count.

Chances are, your customers are much more tech-savvy than they were five years ago, or even one year ago. The Internet has made unbelievable amounts of information accessible, but it also has contributed to the “information overload” consumers complain of.

Another side effect of the Internet is that your customers have probably become used to getting “instant gratification” when they are looking for information, products or services. They want it, and they want it now. Are you giving your customers what they want, when they want it?

If you want to have an effective advertising campaign, don’t try to be everything to everyone. Think of your advertising as a conversation between you and your one “ideal” customer.

Remember, if you’re giving your customers what they want, they don’t perceive your ads as a nuisance, they see them as a service.

Traditional advertising is not dead and you can use it to your advantage if you pay attention to who your customers are, and what they want.

Multi-tasking is a natural aspect of business for women business owners, especially those with families.

The fact is if you are a woman business owner, you are most likely already a multi-tasker of epic proportions. You know how to combine family, childcare and business tasks as a matter of course. Whether it’s carpooling, deliveries, and business errands, or phoning clients, babysitters and arranging multiple schedules, you think in terms of multiple areas of impact most of the time.

When your business is in your home you have additional challenges and benefits which your multi-tasking abilities can make work for you. You can handle household chores and meal preparation in between appointments, phone consultations, or writing that new piece for your monthly newsletter. You routinely make decisions which involve multiple areas of your life more or less simultaneously.

Taking that next step of how to apply your natural ability to enhance your business success is not so difficult, but it does require a new focus. You have to start thinking in terms of the various areas of your business the same way you think of the various areas of your life. You have to step back and get a little wider view of things.

The best way to do this is to set aside some quiet time when you will not be disturbed and really take a look at what it is you want your business to accomplish, in what time frame. Using the backward planning approach works very well.

Once you have developed your general goals, rework them into specific targets. In other words, take the generalized goal, say of “X number of new clients by X” and develop the set targets you’ll need to accomplish to reach that goal.

A project plan (target list) and work chart can be a very helpful tool for the next process of breaking down each target into the associated tasks required to fulfill each objective. Using these two tools, you can create the work chart for each specific area, and then see how the various targets are related. For instance, a new promotional pack for your business will have various components: brochure, logo, support materials, testimonial letters, perhaps a multi media presentation. Each of these items becomes a block in the project work chart, and completing portions of any one may provide materials for the others.

Once you have accomplished this you will have a clear picture of all the tasks required for each area of your business. Now the process of checking in on the larger picture as you work each day becomes a simple matter of using these tools to keep you on track.

Target lists and project work charts are tools often used by engineers as they develop a new piece of equipment, hardware, firmware, or software. First the targets or functions of each piece are defined and then the steps to creating each working component are laid out. By following this method, the relationships between the various targets, or, in this case, components of your business plan, are visible and easily identified.

This avoids getting the cart before the horse, or working on portions of the plan that cannot be implemented without other components also being in place.

The next step is to integrate the project work charts into a daily system of self check as you naturally group your work according to like tasks which can be accomplished in clusters of multi-tasking events. In this way you can significantly increase your progress and your business will thrive.

Once you have clearly charted targets for the business you can start to apply the multi tasking skills you aridly have to what needs to be done to make the targets happen.

The next step to optimizing your multi-tasking is to ask yourself where you do your best work. What gives you the most energy and creativity? What is the most difficult for you to tackle of the things that require your attention?

A professional counselor, in the midst of changing her business from one based on individual clients to seminars and group events met the challenge of having to think in ways unfamiliar to her by relocating her new event planning activities to her kitchen! She recognized that her most relaxing and enjoyable activity was preparing fresh foods for family and friends. When she moved her event planning to the kitchen, her natural confidence and creativity in that environment enabled her to expand her event planning thinking much more easily than she could in her office.

The food and her pleasure in its preparation, as well as her sense of well being and confidence in this environment gave her the creative energy she needed to expand her thinking and create new and different events for her clients. By providing herself with the support of her naturally creative environment, in this case cooking, she added to her creative power in an area where she had less strength and experience.

Often, by breaking up more mundane tasks with those which are more creative or inspiring, it is possible to keep your energy level higher than if you were to attempt to force yourself to do the “boring” task alone.

Learning your own personal rhythm and areas of your own natural creativity and enthusiasm and thinking in ways which allow you to tap into those parts of yourself you can greatly enhance not only the results of your work, but the sense of well being you find in your work.

Finally, as a multi-tasker, there is some danger that you can become too diversified and lose the focus and clarity of knowing what is most important in your business and in your life. By implementing target lists and project work charts as a guide to daily actions and updating them as each new target is complete you have a simple and effective system for starting each new day, and for meeting all your business objectives.

The daily action of a quick review of the target list and work chart also provides the added benefit of stimulating new ideas and inspirations to continue enhancing your multi tasking skills, keeping your work fresh, interesting and exciting.

Any business will cringe at the thought of what the banks put them through to use credit cards. If you do not know what I mean, then this article is for you!

The fact is that everyone online wants to use a credit card or debit card to process their order. It is very true in our society that the credit card is a way of life, and if you do not offer that ability to accommodate them, customers will move on to another website that does allow them to use their cards. This society has become driven by instant gratification and expects to receive their products immediately, either by a download or a short shipping duration. Taking credit cards as a form of payment on the internet or offline should be thoroughly understood. Read on to see what I mean and how to protect yourself.

The fact is that any merchant taking in payments is immediately at risk for whatever amount is charged and MORE. The banks will take the charge disputed along with a “charge back” fee right from your merchant account, and you better have enough in there that has cleared to pay your own bills or you will be charged more for “overdraft charges”. Some banks are waking up to the fact that it is not always the merchant at fault and most merchants are more than honest in their dealings. There is so much credit card fraud out there and since the merchants are ALWAYS liable, you need to realize this and take action to prevent as much disaster for your business as possible.

First, if you have your own merchant account, then you have a lot of work to do when you receive a credit card order. You must verify as best you can that the card, the name on the card, the address, the cvv number verification, and the quantities are all in order. You need to verify the IP address of every order and see if it is within the location of the card holder. A person living in Toronto, Canada, probably would not be in Las Cruces, New Mexico, charging products. This is a red flag but not a deal breaker, some people DO travel. Caution needs to be taken to protect your cash flow. As a merchant you must get money safely into your account for any goods or service you provide, so that you can become a larger or more substantial independent business.

Do not just take in cards and believe that everything is going to be just fine now that you have the money in your account, because it can come out just as fast, or faster, than it went in. There is a real need for you to understand a lot more than can be mentioned in this article.

The best way to receive all the tools and services you need to protect yourself and to make your voice heard is to check this website: http://www.merchant911.org This is a group of dedicated individuals who have been working for years to try to change banking and processing company rules and regulations as relative to merchants, both large and small. If you need any more proof of their dedication, just read some of the press releases and look at the tools they have assembled for merchants to use.

Right now is the time to start to protect yourself from credit card fraud. If you have read any of the newspapers or listened to any of the news reports, then you already know you are at risk. There are reports of over 40 million cards in the hands of criminals and thieves and they will sell these cards or will use them in various illegal methods. It’s not hard to imagine that some day soon you will be approached and asked to spend your time and money to ship a product or provide a service with these fraudulent cards.

Outsourcing is when you hire someone from outside of your business to perform certain necessary tasks.

Different business owners have different reasons for outsourcing their business tasks. It all depends on what they want or need to accomplish, how much time they can personally devote to particular tasks, and how they value their time.

One mistake that many small business owners make is thinking they have to do everything themselves, either for reasons of creative control, or because they think outsourcing is not a justifiable expense.

The truth is, if you can outsource part of your business workload, you will be able to devote more of your time to tasks that hold more value and importance for your business.

In some cases, businesspeople outsource some of their work because they do not have the equipment or resources, or they do not have the expertise to do it themselves. Or they may simply need help through a busy period.

Whatever the reason for outsourcing, if planned with purpose, it can contribute to the productivity and ultimate success of a business.

One advantage of outsourcing is the fact that it is much more efficient than hiring, training and supervising new employees. Simply hire a professional, tell them what needs to be done and let them go to it. A side benefit is you won’t need more office space to accommodate more people. Not only does outsourcing leverage your time, it can also help to leverage your resources.

Additionally, when you outsource some of your workload, you won’t need to worry about additional paperwork involved with hiring an employee, such as tax forms and scheduling. And you won’t have employee costs like taxes, vacation time, workers compensation and so on.

Another advantage is that you won’t need to purchase or lease new equipment or go through the ever-challenging process of learning new software or new skills.

The key benefit to outsourcing is the time it frees up for you to concentrate on more important business-building tasks.

You can focus on your marketing efforts; work on improving your customer service; devote some time to new product development; speed up your delivery system; develop new markets; land some bigger customers and larger orders; expand your services to take on any overflow your competitors can’t handle.

Some small business marketers may look at outsourcing as a burden of expense rather than a benefit. “How can you justify the expense,” they ask, “when sales and income are low?”

The thing is, if sales are low, that is exactly why you need to outsource some of your tasks – so you can devote more time and attention to your marketing and advertising in order to generate more sales, faster.

The key is to have a solid marketing plan. Know what you need to do to achieve your sales and income goals; identify the tasks that are critical for you to pay personal attention to, and determine which tasks can be delegated to an outside service.

Outsourcing is just one of many resources at your disposal. When used wisely, outsourcing can definitely contribute to your business and marketing success.