Auckland Small Business Help

Auckland Sales and Marketing

Does your business rely on your Marketing efforts in order to bring in business?

If so, are you an expert marketer ?

There’s an old marketing proverb that goes “You can’t sell a secret”

If your business relies on marketing then the whole business is only as good as the marketing, and if you are not telling anyone about your business or product, then how do you expect them to buy it ?

If you are not good at marketing, then it makes sense to outsource to someone who is.

Fortunately there are many low cost marketing activities that you can undertake yourself, or outsource to an expert and get good results within a very short time.

These activities are generally Direct Response marketing such as Newspaper adverts, Internet adverts, mailbox fliers or Postcard drops etc.

Done correctly these can be very effective, however a business’s most valuable asset is it’s database.

If your business does not currently keep a track of your customers, then begin doing it immediately.

Your existing customers are your best prospects, as they are already familiar with your business and its’ products, so all it takes is for you to make them an offer that they cannot refuse and your turnover will immediately increase. The key is to recognise the lifetime value of your customers and then design an offer that will be very attractive to them and still make you money in the long run, through either repeat sales, upsells or cross sells, or through referrals of new customers.

Web Site

Another important tool in your marketing is your web site.

For most businesses, there should not be any expectation to make a sale directly off your web site, unless you have products that are saleable on a site.

Your Website is your customers window into your business and a brochure for your products.

Your customers will make judgements about your company based on how they find using your website.

That does not necessarily mean you need to have a flashy site with all the bells and whistles, as if the site is too slow because of all the add-ons then the prospect can quickly get frustrated and move onto another site.

Good sites are about providing quality information and solutions to the problems that the prospects have, not about how pretty they are.  So in ugly website with lots of good content may perform better for the company than a pretty one with little in it.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Your web site is of no use to you if no-one can find it. This is where the SEO aspects of your site become important.

You can choose to ignore  SEO and pay for direct advertising such as Google Adwords pay per click PPC (the sponsored ads you see on the right hand side of search results and often embedded into sites) these cost you money every time someone clicks on your ad.

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Alternatively, by careful use of words and choice of key words, by having good quality content on your site and by submitting your site to the search engines, you can have your site “Organically ranked” high on the search results for particular words relevant to your product or service.

This then becomes Free advertising (apart from the work you put into the site- which you should do anyway)

eg if you search Google for “Business Turnarounds Auckland” this site should be on the first page of the results.

To a small business with little advertising budget this is invaluable.

Other technologies such as Social Networking sites (Facebook, Twitter) provide other opportunities to reach a wide audience for very little cost and are well worth assessing as to how they might fit into your business marketing plan.

Be sure to check out the Website Tools menu above for some useful resources

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Auckland Small Business Help

First Steps to Helping a Small Business that is having Trouble

With any Small Business that is finding times hard in this economic environment, there are some fundamentals that make up the starting blocks of recovery.

Cashflow

Preservation of Assets

Reduction of Liabilities

Develop a plan

Cashflow

“Cash is King” and is particularly so when a business is struggling.

Take a close look at the cashflow:

Where is the money coming in from and where is it being spent.
The old 80/20 rule is useful in these examinations,

Income
80% of your income is probably coming from 20% of your customers- so concentrate your efforts on them.

Can you increase your sales by presenting a particularly attractive offer to your existing customers ?

Can you get referrals from your existing customers by offering them an incentive to bring in new customers ?

Instead of spending your advertising on blanket adds, can you spend money directly on existing customers to get more sales,

If you use advertising to bring in customers, look closely at how effective it is – can it be measured, can you reliably say $1 spent on this medium will give me $x worth of sales ?

If your cost of goods /production has gone up, have you increased your sale prices to reflect it ?
If the market can’t take a price increase, can you package something else with it as a cross sell or up sell, that will give you better margin (the classic “Would you like Fries with that ?”, “Would you like to upsize that drink ?” )

Expenses

80% of your expenditure is probably coming from 20 % of your creditors, & the chances are that the Banks or finance companies  are one of the biggest.

Can you reduce your borrowings by using the income to pay off debt rather than your own wages or “luxuries”.

Cut back on anything that is not involved in the money making process (except insurance)
ie make sure every dollar spent is moving towards getting another dollar back from a sale.

If you rely on advertising, don’t cut back on the dollar value, but take a close look at how or where you are spending it. Target your advertising dollar.

Can you do a joint venture with your suppliers where they put up some money or resources for a promotion or supply their product at a discount, ie reduce your input costs and increase your sales at the same time.

Preservation of Assets

Do what you can to ensure existing assets are protected from being lost to a firesale or creditor action.

Talk to your Accountant or Lawyer.

Reduction of Liabilities

Do what you can to reduce your Liabilities, either by selling assets that are saleable, or finding other sources of funds such as investors rather than Bank or Finance company borrowings.

Carefully assess what the income is currently servicing.
Is there lots of high credit card debt or penalty overdraft debt that could be reduced by restructuring  loans or consolidation, ie increase loan on house at 8% to pay off credit card debt at 22%

Look at the Business Holistically and Develop a Plan

Decide on how the Business is going to move forward from the current situation and write at least an overview plan.

Can you make more in the end by spending a little more in one area, rather than insisting that every area cuts back to the bare minimum?

Will  you trade at break even levels for a while – turnover at breakeven is better than no turnover at all.

Most importantly- make sure the staff are with you and that they understand what you are trying to achieve.
If all they see is cutbacks, they will begin worrying about their jobs and productivity will fall.
If they see there is a plan and that they have an input into the viability of the Company (with possibility of reward also) the plan is more likely to succeed.

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Small Business Help