Just because you run a relatively small business does not mean that you cannot have relatively big clients. After all, size can be a matter of perspective. Then again, what if you really operate on a small scale and yet you believe that you can provide a beneficial service to an establishment that operates on a much larger scale, say a government agency or some other private institution? Will this partnership even be possible?

The good news is that yes, it is indeed possible for a small business to cater to the needs of much larger entities. The trick lies in finding the right channel of communication in order to get your message across to the larger entities. If you have not heard of the Small Business Administration’s Business Matchmaking, then it is about time that you did. This program is intended to give a lending hand to small business owners so that they can build contacts that can open wide doors for them.

InYork carries this story:

Presented by SCORE, Hewlett Packard, and other private companies, Business Matchmaking is a series of regional events that bring corporate and government buyers to small-business owners. Since the program began in 2003, business owners have landed more than 20,000 appointments with key government and corporate officials from hundreds of major corporations and agencies.

The best thing about the activities under this program is that they are free! You only have to make sure that you have your killer pitch ready. You never know, you just might land yourself a big fish soon.

That does not sound particularly attractive or glamorous, does it? Don’t shut me off though – hear me out and you might think differently of placemats before the end of this post. I actually got the idea for this post from Small Biz Survival – same place where I found the simple article on accounting for small businesses. In his post, the blogger highlighted the idea of perceiving common everyday things in different ways. It’s kind of like the “glass half full or glass half empty” thing.

Anyway, he shared an experience wherein he saw placemats being used for ads:

I’m from a big town. 300,000 people live within 14 miles of me. It’s almost the smallest town I’ve lived in.

When I look at a placemat like this, I think “small town.”

It’s an advertising medium designed for people without access to or budgets for large media. It’s an advertising medium designed for diners and cafes and pizza joints rather than steakhouses and chains. It’s an advertising medium with instant gratification for local businesses. (“Hey, I just saw your name on the placemat.”)

I saw this placemat last week in my big town. It was in a diner, yes. And it got me thinking.

What if you used a placemat to drive traffic to your business’s website?

Indeed, what if you used a placemat to advertise your web site? I think it is brilliant – whoever thought of doing this should be given an award or something. For small businesses operating in a relatively small area, placemat ads would provide wide coverage for a relatively small cost. What do you think?

Accounting is one of the most important activities that you have to engage in when running a small business. For some people, the tasks involved are second nature. They don’t have problems with the numbers and making them bend to their will. For others, accounting is one of the most daunting tasks.

No matter how you view accounting, it has to be done. For small business owners, it can be a bit difficult if accounting isn’t their forte. While large companies can hire teams of accountants to do the job, many small business owners would be better off doing their own accounting. If you are not too keen on accounting, you should get started on trying to learn its ins and outs.

I found a very informative article on the basics of accounting for small businesses over at Small Biz Survival. There are actually a lot of resources which you can find online but I chose this particular article due to its simplicity. It says that first, you have to start with income and expenses:

Income:
Sales Receipts
Fees
Commissions

Expenses:
Supplies
Utilities
Payroll
Taxes

Then you have to look at assets, liability, and equity. This group might be a little more complicated. The idea is to take into account the things that your business owns. These can include vehicles, cash in the bank, money people owe you, and office equipment.

When doing accounting, you take into consideration all of the above to come up with you Chart of Accounts. That’s the outline – if you want to go into the details, I suggest heading over to Small Biz Survival and get started on accounting.

We are experiencing a recession. No, there is no recession. We hear both statements – and other similar things – from everyone. One camp says things are fine. The other camp says that things couldn’t be worse. I guess it does not really matter what people say. What matters is what you are experiencing and if you are like many other small business owners, you just might be experiencing lean times.

If so, what is the best route to take? What is the best thing that you can do for your business during this time?

I am sure that you will get a wide variety of answers to this question but this is what I can tell you: The best thing that you can do for your business in times like these is to try and make it better!

You might want to expand but you might not have the funds to do so. You might want to give up but the potential is still looming over the horizon. In the meantime, while you wait for things to get better, you should utilize your time and improve what you can with what you have!

So how do you do this? Try following these simple steps:

1. Determine the areas for improvement.
2. Determine which areas you can actually afford to improve given your circumstances.
3. Set specific goals which are realizable.
4. Identify measurable ways by which you can monitor your progress.
5. Seek help – find people who can help you achieve your goals.

Here’s to a better business!

In these days of economic turmoil (no, the problems are not over yet), it is not surprising to hear of businesses, big and small, cutting back on their expenses. I was just talking to a friend who runs a big BPO operation based in Europe. Majority of his producing entities can be found in Asian countries. Despite the fact that he has already saved a considerable amount in moving his operations offshore, he is still very much worried by the economic situation.

I can just imagine the plight of small business owners. With the prices of most everything going up, they are also being forced to increase their prices and at the same time, cut back on costs. I read something about a lean business – that is, one that spends on only what is necessary to improve profitability.

However, the author notes that cutting back on costs should be examined thoroughly as there are some cut backs that may actually do more harm than good to your business. Rieva Lesonsky highlights some of these areas in her article.

Of the areas she took note of, I particularly liked two. These are little perks and marketing. This is what she has to say:

Don’t be a penny-wise and pound-foolish business owner. You may think you can trim the fat by eliminating the morning donuts or the company parties, but the money you save will quickly be replaced by lowered employee morale.

I think that nothing can match a good morale and work attitude. These things should be nurtured – the rewards are worth more.

With regard to marketing, this is what Lesonsky thinks:

I’m a big believer that recessions (or near-recessions) are actually a good time to increase your marketing budgets. While that might sound counterintuitive, it’s not. While most businesses are hunkering down, waiting for the good times to start rolling again, your marketing message will be heard more loudly in the vacuum. Trimming your marketing budget (whether that means creative or staff or both) will likely hurt, not help, your business.

I tend to agree with her. Take advantage of the times. Be more aggressive and gain the attention while your competitors are quiet.

I think that the previous post was pretty convincing, wasn’t it? What better motivation than considerably less cost for marketing? Of course, there is always a downside to everything and email marketing is not exempt from this. I am not out to dissuade you from utilizing email for marketing purposes – far from it. I just want to provide an objective point of view as much as possible. So here we go with the potential disadvantages of email marketing.

I have mentioned this before – email can easily become spam. I am sure that you have had your own experiences with spam. You probably dislike spam with a fervor – just like any other individual. However, this topic is not as clear cut as we would like it to be.

What constitutes spam? For some people, spam is basically any unsolicited email. And they take action against this kind of activity. Now, if your emails are unsolicited and sent in bulk – and this would seem to be the route to take for email marketing – you just might find yourself being labeled as a spammer.

This is one complexity that you have to consider when choosing email as your medium for marketing. One way to avoid being labeled as a spammer would be to include a double opt-in method. Wikipedia describes this as “a method which requires a potential recipient to manually confirm their request for information by clicking a unique link and entering a unique code identifier to confirm that the owner of the recipient email address has indeed requested the information. Responsible e-mail marketing and autoresponder companies use this double opt-in method to confirm each request before any information is sent out.”

We’ve established the fact that email can be used for more than the simple day to day needs of corresponding with other people. If you are a business owner, you have probably realized that email can be a very powerful tool for marketing purposes. In this post, let us discuss some of the advantages that using email for marketing can bring you and your business. I have already mentioned the biggest advantage in the previous post – lower costs. What else does email marketing have to offer?

Short delivery time
When you conduct transactions via electronic means, the transaction time is usually instantaneous. Same thing goes with email – once you click the send button, you can expect your message to get to the intended recipients almost instantaneously.

Accessibility
Ask the average person how many times he checks his email. Actually, you do not even have to go that far – ask yourself the same question. I am sure that at the very least, you would say “a few times” a day. If this is the case for majority of your customers – existing and potential – then your emails will gain more exposure and customers will find you to be more accessible.

Automation
Certain actions can be done automatically without human intervention. This is a big advantage of email marketing. If you lessen the time that you (or your workers) spend on the less important things, you can free up their time to work on more urgent needs. Naturally, you see this as an advantage, right?

In the next post, let us look at the disadvantages of email marketing.

Email is a very powerful tool for marketing. This is a fact that is generally accepted by many. What do you know about email and its potential for marketing? Perhaps, if you are like the general public, your idea of email marketing might be limited to mass mailings. Though this is indeed one of the main ways by which you can utilize emails for marketing purposes, it is by no means the only way.

If you want to consider email as a marketing tool, then you should do away with that limited way of thinking. Instead, try to see email and related activities in a broader sense. Here are some relevant points I got from Wikipedia:

• sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,
• sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately,
• adding advertisements to e-mails sent by other companies to their customers, and
• sending e-mails over the Internet, as e-mail did and does exist outside the Internet (e.g., network e-mail and FIDO).

As you can see, the medium is the same, the ideas similar, but the results hold even more potential if you consider these points.

How about the advantages and disadvantages of using email for marketing? Naturally, these two concepts have to be considered. One of the biggest advantages of email marketing is that it does not cost as much as other forms of marketing. It could even be virtually free. There is more to it than this, though. Let us take a deeper look at the pros and cons in the next post.

We have been talking about a lot of P’s – here are more of them. In marketing theory, there are two promotional strategies in the broadest sense. These are Push and Pull. Let’s take a look at them.

Push
When we say that something is a push promotional strategy, you utilize your sales force to engage in activities that will create a demand for your product or service. What happens here is that you go directly to your consumers to get them attracted to what you have to offer. Though I said “directly” I do not mean that you have to get in touch with your customers yourself (although this is part of the strategy). In fact, you can “push” your product or service to wholesalers, which are the first line of people between you and your customers. They can then push the product to retailers, who in turn promote it to the end users.

Pull
The other P in promotional strategy means that you focus your efforts on advertising in order to build up a demand for your product or service. Notice that advertising plays a very big role in this kind of strategy. Naturally, this strategy could mean that you would have to spend a considerable amount of money, that is, unless you can find a way to advertise for free or for almost no cost.

So which one is better? I don’t think that one can be simply labeled as being better than the other. Which strategy you employ would depend on various factors. Either one works well if implemented properly.