Small Businesses Pick Up The Crumbs

The well known 80/20 rule says that 80% of your business comes from 20% of your products and if you cut out the 80% and concentrate on the 20%, 80% of the sales of remaining products will come from 20% and so on.
This is one reason why the internet is wonderful for small businesses. While the big companies are chasing the 20%, you can go 'under the radar' and make a business out of the other 80% by targeting niche markets.
There are two problems which I find when trying this approach with our own website Your Life Your Style. Firstly, it can be a lot of administration for a small number of sales. You spend the same amount of time loading up text and imgaes whetehr a product sells in the ones or the thousands. Secondly, to reach these niche markets with key words, links, social networking and Google AdWords is very expensive in time and money for the return. But, as we have found, if you get it right there are enough crumbs to make a decent loaf.
By the way, the 80/20 rule applies to all sorts of aspects of life. For example, iIt seems most of us only use 20% of the clothes in our wardrobe 80% of the time.

4 in 10 Customers Are Wrong

"4 in 10 people use the wrong postal service" shouts The Post Office's website and display posters. Meaning you sent your parcel second class when you could have used standard parcels, or standard letter when you should have used large letter or Special Delivery when Recorded would have been all right. Meaning you need to check with an assistant before dispatching your package.
It's a strange business that blames the customer for getting it wrong. Most of us would say the blame lies with the Post Office making their charges too complicated. Can you imagine a commercial business finding it acceptable that 40% of their customers find their ordering process too difficult? At Your Life Your Style, it's a flat rate for delivery of orders worth less than £40 and free carriage on anything else.

Help The High Street, Mr Darling

By any standards, my shop is a small business, yet because the rateable value is very high (the new level being £27,000), there's no business rate relief for us, even after the Budget increase in the qualification level. I find it hard to imagine the kind of high street shop that would have a rateable value of under £6000 and therefore gain business rates relief- a tiny newsagent in a deprived part of Liverpool perhaps.
Ironically, if we were to concentrate only on our online business, we could rent a smaller unit on an out-of-town industrial estate and would very likely be able to qualify for rates relief. Yet it's the high street that needs help. Perhaps square footage or turnover would provide better criteria for defining a small business.

Post Online Or In The Letter Box?

Just when we got our email lists building up, we found we needed a blog. Just as we managed to get in the habit of writing one of those a week, we found we had to have a Facebook page. Panting to keep up with that, we're now told we need to Tweet as well. Your Life Your Style has started a Facebook page and begun to Tweet @yourlifeyour (damn these characetr limitations!).

It's right to embrace new channels of communication but we all have limited resources and it's important to decide what is going to give you the best return on your time. A few hundred devoted Facebook fans or Twitter followers will be worth a great deal as they will be the leaders that spread the word.

That's the good news. However they will expect it to be worth their while signing up and they will also tell you and everybody else when your business has done something wrong. Consequently you have to be reasonably confident that not only are there enough people out there wanting to sign up (how big is your email list?) but you or someone has the time to write regularly and respond to criticism and queries. All the time without neglecting those tools that are already working for you, like the email list or, dare I say it, your blog. Best to do one thing well than many badly.

Each medium has its own demands so you will need to research carefully what, for example, Twitter followers or Facebook fans are expecting from your communications. A Facebook page may be a forum for debate and tips whereas Twitter may be best for the latest news. Neither may be right for a constant barrage of hard selling. 

All businesses must develop or die. So you have to try new things. However some experiments will fail. Most of us can afford to wait for the trailblazers to do the groundwork and then jump on the bandwagon of the proven successes. 

The converse is that just because something has been around a while, it doesn't mean it's dead. We're not footballers who dirch their wives for the latest model.  Even though a customer could get an email and order online, some people still prefer the size, feel and portability of a letter in the post or to buy in person so they can see who and what they're dealing with. Don't ignore them just because a bright, shiny, new plaything comes along.

Why Competition Can Be Anti-Competitive

The private sector is often praised because it is about choice. This is because capitalism encourages enterprise and competition. The problem is, it's in the nature of competition to want to wipe out your competitors. Hence the need to control the free market through mechanisms like the Monopolies Commission.

I sympathise with media companies who cannot gain traction because of Sky and BBC's dominance. Businesses like our shop find Google's virtual monopoly of search presents a problem because if we want our website to be found, we have to play by Google rules or not play at all. State monopolies are even worse as we saw in the moribund communist economies of cold war period. Even cuddly John Lewis with their third way model of employee ownership make life difficult for smaller retailers (and which shops aren't smaller than them?) because of the way they stamp on any competition by always matching prices.

The difficulty of dealing with a monopoly reminds me of the time my wife and I stayed in the Everglades. We were miles from any other habitation and there was one restaurant. Our lunch was close to inedible so we complained vociferously, "That meal was awful." Followed quickly by "Table for two for tonight please."

Does The Internet Kill Creativity?

Many of the novelists who contributed to The Guardian newspaper's Writing Tips recommended turning off internet access. I can understand why. The constant stream of emails, RSS feeds, Google Alerts, Facebook postings, Tweets and all the rest makes it difficult to concentrate. Of course many will claim they can still write their novels, essays, features, advertising copy or whatever while the world babbles on in the background but I am pretty sure brains work better if they don't have to keep picking up the, er, the... where was I?... oh yes, thread of a thought.
I've resolved to turn off my internet access for a couple of hours a day, starting now. OK, in 10 minutes. Well, maybe half an hour...

Bad People Can Write Good Copy

I always delete spam emails without a second thought but the Subjcet Line of one the other day did catch my eye. One of the abilities I most admire is being able to write good advertising copy- finding the right words presented in the best way to get a positive response from the targeted audience.  So let me deconstruct the Subject Line of this spam email: "I sexual Russian blond, want to see, come closer".

To start with, it has the authentic 'foreign' phrasing that someone not totally familiar with English might use. You can almost hear the sexy Russian accent. Then there's the choice of words. "Sexual", as opposed to the more predictable "sexy", implies the sender is actually wanting sex rather than simply offering it. "Russian" is the nationality currently most associated with women who are keen to offer sexual liaisons. And of course she couldn't be anything other than a "blond", it's a hair colour perennially associated with sexiness but it keeps the description at a fun level instead of going for more potentially offputting explicit sexual attributes. 

So, having got the target's attention, we move on to getting the interest- "Want to see". Not a question, more an assumption intended to get you nodding in agreement.

Finally the call to action- "Come closer". In practice, this means 'click on the email' (then open a virus infected attachment or go to a website where we'll extract money or identity data from you). But by using this metaphor, the writer has created something far more powerful, evoking the memory of past experiences and that frisson of excitement when an intimate friend has wanted to get to know you on a more physical level. No-one but an idiot would even consider opening the email but that clever copy might just be enough to persuade the aforesaid idiot to click.

I deleted it, being neither the target market nor an idiot. If only such copywriting skill was being used for the power of good.