Expert Financial & Business Insights for South Africa
Strategic analysis from Idea Accelerator and ready-to-publish content from Financial News Daily.
I recently saw an ad with a headline that said, “How to wake up with the financial genius in you”.
The business person then went on to explain how he and his wife had come up with a system to help others with increasing their wealth potential.
Any expert will agree that increasing your wealth to become financially independent is to be welcomed, especially in this economy when two incomes barely enough to pay for the monthly expenses. Continue reading “Can you really make money from ideas?”
Activate your thinking with these seven low-cost, no cost ideas relevant to your marketplace whether you run your business from home, retail on a main street or shopping mall or trade online. Learn how to position your products and services in a price-driven environment.
In tough, competitive markets, businesses need to come up with fresh ways to promote their products and services. Promotions attract attention to your products and services, help make them stand out from your competitors and give your sales a much-needed boost when customers are looking for strong reasons why they should buy from you.
Rethink your positioning
Some entrepreneurs think promotions mean discounts. They baulk at offering discounts when sales are down more than a third on the previous year, and larger chains are offering incredibly low-priced deals. Promotion doesn’t have to equal discounts. Assess the value of your offer, the quality of your service and guarantee. Think low costs, high impact.
How can you change your offer to a market that is cautious about spending? If you have been selling expensive products and services in the good times, you’ll need to rethink your strategy in a price-driven environment. Your marketing materials also need to reflect and reinforce your cost-value proposition.
Think through your positioning strategy carefully because positioning moves are like those you make on a chessboard. Your move may prompt your competitors to make counter moves. So you need to think about not only your next move but the one you’ll need to make after your competitors have responded to your repositioning.
Quick promotional ideas brainstorm
Use idea generation tools and techniques to come up with new ideas to promote your business. Brainstorm ideas and keep them in a notebook, a journal or on record cards (3 x 5 cards). Choose your best three and try one out.
Check what other businesses are doing by reading magazines, dropping in on stores unrelated to your business and speaking to business people you trust. Listen to customers because they can be your best source of promotional idea.
Gold in mailing lists
Do you have a customer mailing list with both postal and e-mail addresses? How quickly can you mail out a special offer to your customers? A physical sales letter is personalised and can stand out in a crowded market.
Consider acquiring marketing “assets” from businesses that are closing down. Perhaps they have a customer mailing list that you can purchase for a fraction of the cost it took the original business to acquire. Such a list is valuable because it represents people who have bought products before — and may need your products or service.
Social media strategy
Social media such as FaceBook, Twitter and other Internet-based social networking offer low-cost promotional opportunities. But you need to know what you are doing. You must know how to promote your business without turning off prospects. You need to devote time to keep your content fresh. Will your social media marketing provide any follow through for conversion? A FaceBook page may not convert any new business but customers may ask why you don’t have one.
Professionalise your communications
Poorly written and designed marketing materials are a recipe for disaster. Getting in well-meaning family members, friends and secretaries to write with no knowledge of business or marketing is just plain short-sighted. Even blogs for small businesses can be better handled by a professional copywriter or ghostwriter. You may especially need such services if you are in your store or business the whole day and can’t find the time to write blog posts and publish them. You also need to learn how to promote your blog because there are gazillions of then out there (get a number for how many blogs there are).
Network face to face
Networking with your customers at your local chamber or commerce or business organisation is often the last thing on the entrepreneur’s mind. But it provides a strong opportunity to promote your business face to face. Think carefully about driving customers to your business through FaceBook, Twitter or LinkedIn when you aren’t even doing some direct selling by calling on businesses in your town or city.
A low-cost prospecting idea
While everyone is blasting out e-mails, FaceBook posts and Tweets, track down names that you spot in newspapers, magazines and even advertising flyers if you think those people will make good prospects. Call them or pay them a visit — personal contact will stand out from the electronic blizzard.
Arrange a promotional ideas swop meet
Share your promotional ideas with your fellow business people. Perhaps organise an idea swap meet group which involves meeting like-minded business people once a month to share new sales and promotional ideas that have worked.
Promotion helps your products and services jump out in a competitive, tight marketplace. By generating your own promotional ideas, you may not only save costs but you will breath life into your sales when your business needs it most.
Sources:
“Marketing on a Shoestring: Low-cost Tips for Marketing your Products or Services”, Jeffrey Davidson, Wiley Small Business
“Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind”, Al Ries and Jack Trout, Warner Books
Dear Friend,
Walk into retail shopping centres these days and rows of shops have gone to the wall. What went wrong? Did these business owners know what they were doing? Did they stop creating value for their customers?
Very often we can trace the downward spiral in a business to the customer value proposition. A what? A value proposition really just means all the benefits a customer receives in return for payment.
The danger of an iceberg is what lurks underneath – in business poor customer service signals a value proposition that’s somehow got lost along the way. Here are some warning signals:
• Call centres that force you through menus and make you wait and then the personnel have no clue how to solve your problem.
• Websites run by marketing experts who don’t answer queries on simple things like shipping charges.
• Household repair service contractors who take down your details but never get back to you to set up time to meet with you to assess your needs.
• A clothing shop that sells you long-sleeved shirts with buttons that come off after the first wash.
• A daily newspaper whose subscription “service” is so cumbersome that it takes weeks to finalise a simple annual subscription.
• A credit card company that tires to lure you into catalogue purchases with little understanding of your needs, aspirations and lifestyle.
Some of the larger businesses that allow these things to happen can get away with turning customers away but for the smaller business it can be deadly.
When you drive under normal conditions you might glance at your dashboard to check key indicators like fuel and oil. But driving alone on a country road at night wouldn’t you watch your dashboard with a much sharper eye? Isn’t it amazing how some businesses riding through the economic storm don’t keep their eyes on their dashboard, constantly looking at key indicators — customer satisfaction levels, cash flow, debtor days (see financeglossary for a good example) and shrinkage levels.
One restaurant owner I interviewed recently told me that she watches her shrinkage by conducting daily stock takes, closely watches portion size slippage and works overtime to come up with ideas to attract more customers.
A smaller business may find it relatively easy to brainstorm the key indicators for their business — and keep their eyes fixed on what they believe is crucial for the survival of their business. Whatever the indicators selected, customer value is vital. Lose your focus on this one in a changing market and you will soon find yourself in serious trouble. Customer value parity is useless in today’s competitive market.
Smart business people who want to thrive in any economic conditions practice these methods to keep their business healthy:
• Spend time using proven methods to generate ideas to promote their business and achieve higher sales volumes in low-cost, high return ways.
• Ask for advice on how to implement systems that reduce shrinkage in their business if their own methods are not effective.
• Recognise that when economic times are tough to implement controls to stop debtors endlessly delaying payments with easy-to-implement practices.
• Resist dishing out generous discounts to all customers regardless whether the customer buys before a certain deadline or buys in bulk.
• Communicate to employees how they can contribute to repeat business through providing superior service and value.
• Focus their energies on filling the sales funnel. If they run a restaurant, as an owner recently told me, forget about tinkering endlessly with your decor — find ways to attract more customers (get to know what they need and want).
• Ensure that their products and service have the best real and perceived value for their customers.
• Talk to business people from other fields, other industries, to find out what’s working well for them.
A mechanical cheeriness isn’t going to win over sceptical customers. To add value requires a deep understanding of your customers’ needs, customisation and a delivery system that offers quality and perceived value quickly flexibly and competently.
Don’t blow your relationships with your existing customers either — repeat customers, your backlist, have already been paid for by your upfront marketing and advertising acquisition costs.
Co-creating customer value requires listening to customer needs, wants and desires. Creativity and imagination are needed to identify new opportunities for creating customer value. Anticipate customer needs through brainstorming or use of other idea generation methods to produce breakthrough ideas for superior customer value.
Stay focused on creating value.
Chesney Bradshaw
Founder of ideaaccelerator.co.za
PS Breakthroughs happen when you combine your understanding of your customer’s needs and expectations with creative ideas to solve their problems. Read similar posts on creating value and generating ideas for income and profit in the ideaaccelerator.co.za archive, while they are still freely available.
When we think of breakthrough innovations, we may assume that they originate from developed countries such as the United States, Europe and Japan. Sure, these countries come up with innovative products and services all the time to reach mass consumer and global business markets. But the problem for innovations exported from these countries is that products and services are often high-value and high cost – a difficult proposition to penetrate markets in brutal recessionary times.
Where is the competitive edge in today’s innovations? What countries are leading the field in new products and services relevant for times when pockets and budgets are tight?
On a visit to India, it was amazing to learn how this country’s innovations are finding their way into world markets. The Economic Times reported now historically multinational companies designed products in developed markets and adapted them for the rest of the world. Now increasingly low-cost, high value products developed primarily for emerging markets are graduating to the developed world. Breakthrough innovation through Indian frugal engineering skills means that products such as the Nano could be launched as an upgraded version in developed markets.
What are some of the spectacular innovations being produced in India? Ford’s Figo and Toyota’s Etios are examples of India-designed low-cost cars. Nestle has a high-nutrient, low-cost variant of Maggi noodles developed for the rural poor in India and Pakistan soon to be exported to Australia and New Zealand. General Electric has made a cheaper, stripped down version of its ECG and ultrasound machines. Kentucky Friend Chicken (KFC) Krushers is a range of new beverages. McDonald’s Aloo Tikki Burger is another value-for-money product. HP Labs India launched SiteOnMobile which enables web access from low-end phones without GPRS connectivity. Indian business people have developed many other products including low-cost water purifiers that are now being exported to world markets.
The story of India’s innovation is one of a country determined to find solutions that are suitable for local conditions in quality, cost and value for money. It also demonstrates that innovation knows no borders, nationalities and culture. Ideas are to be found wherever people are who have a passion to improve, grow and develop.
In a world where challenges such as global warming, poverty, social breakdown, high unemployment, inferior government education and stratospherically high cost medical care are ever present, new ideas and innovation are required for consumers and business markets where cost and value-for-money is an increasing requirement. Sharp entrepreneurs can take advantage of the opportunities that these circumstances present.
What is the source of all this innovation? Multinational corporations are developing products and services in emerging markets adapted to local conditions. Local companies are also developing solutions suited to local circumstances and are beginning to export them.
There must be more to this innovation. What lies beneath the surface? What is driving this phenomenon? Education for one thing. India is producing thousands of qualified engineers, providing a rich source of technically skilled people who can apply their ingenuity to generating low-cost, high value products that provide convenience and superior quality and performance.
What lessons does such innovation hold for other countries, other communities and individuals who have been caught in corporate downsizing, factory and mine closures and family businesses that have gone belly up in the vicious worldwide recession? Wherever we are, in whatever country or community, we should be aware of the opportunities that our local innovations have for export markets.
Innovation requires experimentation, new ways of thinking and seeing, envisaging new possibilities, re-imagining products and services that have become too costly. Today’s breakthrough innovations require products and services that offer optimum utility and performance. As Michael Michalko in “Cracking Creativity” says, “Each time you look at a problem in a different way, you increase your probability of discovering the unique perspective or insight that will lead to the breakthrough idea.” India’s innovation is a call to action, an inspired story of people generating ideas, commercialising their innovations and taking them to the marketplace in a world hungry for innovative products and services that cost less but provide greater value.
Copyright 2010 Bell & Cray Business Research™. This excerpt has been used by special permission from Bell & Cray Business Consulting™. Bell & Cray Business Consulting™ is a division of Bell & Cray™. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be duplicated or re-disseminated without permission.
Copyright 2010 Bell & Cray Business Research™. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be duplicated or re-disseminated without permission.
