Tagged: small business opportunity RSS

  • admin 1:28 pm on June 26, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , , small business opportunity,   

    Can We Add Value To Coffee News? 


    Coffee News 2

    Image by be OH be via Flickr

    Allow me to recap:

    You know that Coffee News is a small business opportunity allowing work from home moms, dads and others to publish a weekly one-page newspaper. This newspaper is distributed to local or community restaurants. The content consists of ‘news to amuse’ and takes less than 8 minutes to read. On the left, right, front and back page edges of the paper are 32 business-card sized ads where local businesses promote their business.

    Currently more than 8 million people read this newspaper across the world every week. This is a significant publication with a reach stretching 52 countries.

    My questions:

    Are we utilizing the true power of Coffee News?

    Why not add value to this amazing publication?

    This is my suggestion:

    1. Create a reason for readers to subscribe to an online newsletter via a blog
    2. In addition to the paper version publish a shortened e-version with different news.
    3. Create Google Adwords like ads for the local advertisers and publish it on the edges of the e-newsletter.

    Just think about the opportunity:

    • We have a captive audience having fun getting a Coffee News newsletter weekly.
    • We have small business advertisers who get more exposure
    • Coffee News marketing agencies can add more value to their sales pack.

    What are the negatives?

    Let me know what you think…..

    johansig

     

  • admin 12:38 pm on May 28, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , crm, , , , , response rate, small business opportunity, ,   

    How Do You Measure Off Line Marketing Success? 


    How can you sell advertising with an off line marketing medium, like Coffee News, if your advertisers cannot measure the response they get? You may ask if it’s your job to teach them or even your job to worry about it…… because they advertise all over the show and they don’t measure anywhere.

    I suppose nothing stops you from selling your services even if your advertisers don’t measure response. But when your advertisers start asking questions about distribution and poor response rates then it means they want out. They want to stop paying you. And it’s all because they have no way of knowing how to measure – and you have not told them how to measure either.

    Before we get to the list of possible off line advertising measuring tools lets have a look at a few loop holes. Loops that are difficult to track off line.

    When you measure off line advertising response rates you have many people who could potentially bypass any of the measuring control points, listed below. It’s therefore critical to create a measuring system that caters for this. 

    How Do You Improve the Confidence And Integrity of the Measurement?

    Well, this is a complicated story, which we only will touch now, but will discuss in detail in another post. The summary has two angles;

    1. Give the responder (person reacting to the ad) a compelling reason to reveal the source where she saw the advertisement. This can be done by offering a free gift in exchange for the revelation (sounds like a line from a soapy). 
    2. Have a system in place to collect the data, analyse that data and present the data in a useful form. 

    Here’s A List of Ideas to Measure off Line Marketing Response Rates:

    1. Generic Phone Number: This is a radical idea. Or should I say an idea to be expanded on by a marketing mind who wants to become the marketing hub for a community. You advertise a central (call centre) phone number on all ads. Depending on the size of your advertising business you receive the calls yourself or you ship it out to a professional call centre. When you get the call you do the entire ad source checking, and provide the caller number to the advertiser who will follow-up. This can be an added benefit service to your advertisers and if you package it well you may even get a premium rate. Read this story on becoming Yellow Pages for your community.
    2. Fake Extension: Your advertiser includes a non existing telephone extension on the ad that relates to a specific advert or publication. The caller does not know this but the person answering the phone makes a note of the advertising referral.
    3. Bogus Name: You advertise “Call Gerty for the special”, again  Gerty does not exist.  One suggestion from previous experience is using a contact name that helps the advertiser remember which source the lead came from. For instance for Newspapers you could use "Nate", for TV advertising you could use "Teresa", for magazines you could use "Molly" and for Coffee News you can use Cathy. That way there are less data errors because the first letter of the name helps people remember.
    4. Promotional Code: Try using a promo code when people contact the advertiser. Example: "Mention Coffee News to receive X". Then use different promotion codes for different ads.  
    5. Coupons: If you use coupons, put a coupon code in small print at the bottom. Same idea as above, count up the coupons which have different codes for different ads. If you do direct people to a website: Give different web addresses for different ads and then replicate the page you want the person to land on at that address. Ex: http://www.yourwebsite.com /coffeenews.html. Using your web analytics (Google Analytics is an excellent free option and highly recommended) you can get an idea of the response for each ad. This works well for print advertising, but also can be used in many different vehicles.  
    6. Online Tags: Again, if you are using Google Analytics or a similar software and sending out any electronic communications, you can "tag" the links by hyper linking a URL which sends data as to the source, medium, and ad version. Check out Roirevolution’s analytics URL builder for an easy tool which will help you build the tags.
    7. Questionnaires: If you use any customer response forms or customer service questionnaires: (Which can also benefit any e-mail marketing campaigns by helping to generate your e-mail lists.) Include a question on how they heard about your business. This is a tried and tested method: 
      • Train your first point(s) of contact to ask. I have seen this be incredibly effective, but it depends on the situation. Also, remember the follow up, if possible survey past contacts for customer service, and remember to include how they heard about you. Not as good as getting the info at point of contact, but can give an additional data point.
      • In the end however, the data is only as good as the analysis. A few suggestions:  Enter all of this information together in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool. Personally, I really like Salesforce.com, but there are plenty options out there and even some good free open source solutions. At minimum, excel will do in a pinch. [For another simple and effective tool consider a blog with an integrated and automated newsletter.] 
      • Data is only as good as how you use it. Many people use data for reporting, but really successful marketers use data for optimization. i.e. Where do I put my ad spend? What copy worked and why? If I A/B split test headline 1 and headline 2, what works better? etc.
      • Be careful about data integrity. It is important to be honest with how accurate your data is… the worst thing that can come about is to have bad data direct your marketing efforts.

    I sincerely hope that you found this post useful. If you did, please leave a comment and if you want to add to the list feel free to do so.

    I want to thank one of my friends Nicholas DeGraff at Linked for his contribution to this article. Nicholas DeGraff is the Marketing Manager, Pacific Business Centers. He provided me with the great ideas; 3 to 7. 

    Have fun

    johansig

    Johan Horak

    Author: Johan Horak is the South Africa owner of http://www.SA.CoffeeNews-4u.com a small business opportunity publishing a newspaper in local neighbourhoods. They also provide a marketing consultancy and training service for business who wants to adopt online marketing techniques. Tel: 0860 COFFEE (0860 26 33 33)

     

  • admin 9:47 am on April 30, 2009 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: accounting, billing, , credit card, management, , small business opportunity, ,   

    Is Your Cow Getting Fat? 


    A cow [15/365]

    Image by publicenergy via Flickr

    My dad used to say, “It’s the framers eye that keeps the cow fat.”

    Meaning you must have your finger on the pulse. This is where I believe a program like QuickBooks is the answer to the success or failure of a small business. You cannot run a business without being in control. You need to weigh the business, measure and drive it from a cockpit and that cockpit can be QuickBooks.

    Let me share with you why I decided to investigate QuickBooks:

    • Our South African small business opportunity, Coffee News, sells advertising space to small to medium neighbourhood businesses. The ad rates are calculated on a weekly basis. And the advertiser can pay monthly or weekly for periods of more than thirteen weeks. A serious time waster is the time spend collecting advertising payments.
    • And then when paid in cash, it disappears before it’s recorded. Well, not in all cases but it’s easy to just spend cash in hand.
    • At the end of the month you have no idea what happened to all the collected payments.
    • Also, the re-sale of a small business depends on a proven record to establish the value of the business.
    • The professional will keep strict records of income and expenses.
    • Experienced business people will tell you that keeping records and paying your taxes is better than not knowing whether you are successful or not. 

    There is more than 1 100 Coffee News businesses worldwide therefore making it easy to do research on the pros and cons of QuickBooks:

    This is what they had to say:

      1. “I find it to be a great tool for keeping my accounts organized and doing my bookkeeping & billing, and ability to take credit cards too. It is great that I know what the current status of my business is at all times- but I also find that I am spending at least 1/2 a day per week reconciling”.
      2. “My husband does my books and he only spends about 15 minutes a night doing them. We then send just a flash drive to the accountant who makes sure we did it right. Just do it each day when you are making your list of to do things for the next day.” [I suggest spending 15 minutes everyday rather than once a week]
      3. “I find it to be a great tool for keeping my accounts organized and doing my bookkeeping & billing, and ability to take credit cards too.” [QuickBooks can take not only credit cards but you have many debit options and that’s what I suggest it for South African Small Business]

    How Easy Is It To Get The Hang Of Quick Books? 

    This is what our Coffee News experts had to say:

    “Might be worth taking a Quick Books class… They are pretty reasonably priced by Quick Books Pros in your area. Reconciling is simple and takes minutes to do on your QuickBooks.  Once you perfect the program… like anything else… it will save you money and time and you’ll be the expert!  You can find the Quick Books pros in your area on the Intuit website I believe.  HMMMMM…Maybe you could barter a lesson or two and book her for an ad?”

    Some Will Tell You That You Need To Focus On Your Business

    “Keep Coffee News enjoyable and farm this out. If you love accounting then by all means do this. Also, think about the extra time and energy and motivation you will have to sell the additional ads to make up for the cost of the accounting service.” [There’s a lot of truth in this statement and many people will agree but others will tell you that you need to be very disciplined and most small business owners I came across need a cash flow cockpit and the time it takes to update QuickBooks is nothing compared to the time wasted collecting money].

    Another Coffee News Licensee:

    “I will say there is something to be said about doing the books yourself to see where the money is going, QuickBooks gives very good reporting that can give you several snapshots and trends of your business.”

    For Small Businesses, Like Coffee News South Africa, I propose:

    1. Get QuickBooks Pro. The last time I looked it was R2490.
    2. Get training if needed and set-up your structure.
    3. Get advertisers to agree to a debit order via the bank or their credit card.
    4. Offer them a small discount and extra value.
    5. Make the debit order open ended.

      Let’s watch the cow become healthy and fat. Measure, weigh and tweak the levers that will make you a success.

       

    1. admin 11:52 am on April 8, 2009 Permalink | Reply
      Tags: , , , small business opportunity, ,   

      Home Based Opportunity: South Africa 


      Coffee News

      Image by merfam via Flickr

      We promoted Coffee News as home based opportunity in South Africa. And we believed it is business you can run from  home. But just in this sentence you may note the difference;

      1. Home based business
      2. Business run from home

      A lady who purchased Coffee News complained to us, after a few months, that Coffee News is not a home based business.

      I am not sure how you define home based business but to me home based means that you work from home, you don’t have an office in town, etc. It does note mean that you can sit on your base the whole day. You have to get off your home base and meet people, help them and do things for them.

      If you want to sit on your home base then Coffee News is not a small business opportunity you should ever consider. If you want to use your home as a base to work from  and not sit in an office across from the nasty boss then , yes, Coffee News can give you the opportunity to work from home.

      Have Fun

       

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