Small Business Musts: Outsource Your Marketing (and Expand Your Customer Base!)

March 8, 2011 2 Comments

Small Business Musts

By: Jonathan Katz

This is the fifth installment in a series of various business practices that entrepreneurs and small business owners should consider as ‘musts’.  Authored by an experienced MBA with the assistance of an attorney, what follows will help you enhance their business model, elucidate your plans and strategy, and ultimately help your small business become more successful.

Outsource Your Marketing (and Expand Your Customer Base!)

It’s no secret that entrepreneurship entails many responsibilities — you must ensure you have a quality product, sufficient financing, organized records, satisfied customers and your own piece of mind, to name a few — but the keystone to small business ownership is finding and securing customers to develop a strong client base.  Without clients, all you have is potential, and there’s no place for potential on a financial statement.  For most business functions, including accounting, operations and IT, business owners can manage themselves from the start or after a brief session with an expert.  However marketing is different.

Marketing expands your customer base, and customers are the life blood of your business.  You can have an excellent product, but if you’re not optimally reaching those who would want to purchase it, the best you can hope for is under-performance — and I have yet to meet an entrepreneur who sets that standard.

Proper marketing requires daily attention and familiarity with the evolving technology and its nuances to make effective use of it.  Between branding, advertising, social media, search engine optimization and everything in between, marketing your small business is a full-time job, and the entrepreneur who believes they can sufficiently manage their own marketing, while also effectively managing all other components of their business, is ripe for disappointment.

So, further the development of your customer base, ensure the future of your business, and hire a marketing expert.

Filed under Jon Katz, Management, Marketing, Small business, Small Business Musts Tagged with , , ,

Small Business Musts: Get Big

February 25, 2011 1 Comment

Get BIG

By: Jonathan Katz

This is the fourth installment in a series of various business practices that entrepreneurs and small business owners should consider as ‘musts’.  Authored by an experienced MBA with the assistance of an attorney, what follows will help you enhance their business model, elucidate your plans and strategy, and ultimately help your small business become more successful.

Get Big

Successful business owners often say that “the first million is the hardest.”  During that time when you are earning your first revenues, your primary objectives involve solidifying your organization, securing revenue sources, and ensuring that you can have a viable livelihood.  Once you’re confident in your business model and in your decision to enter entrepreneurship and business ownership, your next goal is to become a serious competitor.  At first, you should ensure that you’ll profit from most every business move that you make.  As your organization develops, and as you take on employees and develop cash reserves, make an effort to increase revenues, even if it decreases your margins, just to demonstrate to other businesses or clients that you are legitimate, you are serious about what you do, and that you are a competitive force in the marketplace.

Consider a company looking for a partner, or a client searching competing businesses for a lucrative contract. They’re interested in that company’s total sales, not their margins.  It’s a measure of experience.  It’s a measure of credibility. It’s a measure of where your company has been and where it’s going.  Get big.

Filed under Jon Katz, Management, Small business, Small Business Musts Tagged with , , ,

Small Business Musts: Capitalize on Strategic Partnerships

February 15, 2011 1 Comment

By: Jonathan Katz

Small Business Musts

This is the third section in a series of various business practices that entrepreneurs and small business owners should consider as ‘musts’. Authored by an experienced MBA with the assistance of an attorney, what follows will help you enhance your business model, elucidate your plans and strategy, and ultimately help your small business become more successful.

Capitalize on Strategic Partnerships

The whole is often greater than the sum of the parts, and business is no exception.  Strategic partnerships in their traditional form involve one company outsourcing a business process to another (X grows the grapes, Y makes the wine, Z distributes it), but there are variations on this concept that can apply to most any business.  For example, consider another business in your industry that offers complements (or occasionally substitutes) to what your business offers; this can lead to the two businesses exchanging customer leads and mutually increasing output.  In the above example, the wine distributor may partner with a cheese distributor (or even a beer distributor) to help provide its vendors with more complete offerings for its customers.

Be careful to protect yourself against other businesses usurping your client base – a simple legal agreement can guard against this – but in the long run, the expanded customer base and revenues will provide your business with greater strength and security, and they will lead to even more opportunities thereafter.

Filed under Jon Katz, Management, Small business, Small Business Musts, Tips Tagged with , , ,

Small Business Musts: Stay Organized

February 7, 2011 1 Comment

By: Jonathan Katz

Small Business Musts

This is the second section in a series of various business practices that entrepreneurs and small business owners should consider as ‘musts’. Authored by an experienced MBA with the assistance of an attorney, what follows will help you enhance your business model, elucidate your plans and strategy, and ultimately help your small business become more successful.

Stay Organized

A business must be organized in its plans, its direction and its records. A common trap for entrepreneurs is to become entrenched in the minutiae of their businesses, leading owners to lose sight of their more important, larger goals. A clearly crafted plan will help combat this. Set realistic goals for the week, the month and the quarter – perhaps launching a new marketing campaign, securing new capital, expanding your offerings – and revisit them regularly to ensure that you’re on the right path.

Organization is also critical for not only keeping yourself up to task, but for demonstrating to others that you are focused and a legitimate business. A bank or investor won’t care if your bedroom is messy, but they will be turned off if your balance sheet isn’t properly organized, up-to-date, or worse, is not in existence.

Set goals within your business model, stay faithful to them, and keep up-to-date accounting records so that you and others know how a dollar of revenue is spent within your business.

Filed under How To, Jon Katz, Management, Small business, Small Business Musts, Tips Tagged with , , ,

Small Business Musts: Find Your Core Competency

February 1, 2011 3 Comments

By: Jonathan Katz J.D., M.B.A. Co-Founder, Head Business Consultant
Email - LinkedIn

Small Business Musts

This is the first section in a series of various business practices that entrepreneurs and small business owners should consider as ‘musts’.  Authored by an experienced MBA with the assistance of an attorney, what follows will help you enhance your business model, elucidate your plans and strategy, and ultimately help your small business become more successful.

Find Your Core Competency

A core competency is a unique characteristic to your business that is, in theory, an activity that your business does better than any other competitor in the marketplace.  But in the global marketplace, while it’s hard to be the “best” at anything (Homer Simpson once told his son, Bart: “No matter how good you are at something, there’s always about a million people better than you.”), you can still identify your closest competitors and align yourself against them, excel in an area of import to customers, and market that fact to help clearly distinguish yourself.

Consider Southwest Airlines, a company that has aimed to instill in our minds that they provide the best customer service in the industry.  No added fees, a receptive attitude toward passenger itinerary changes, and frequent flights.  You know that Southwest is the airline for hassle-free flying. This tenet applies both to competing businesses and to those seemingly unrivaled in emerging or untapped markets.

Either type of business is likely to have a new competitor or ten within a short period, so the earlier you start distinguishing yourself, the easier it will be to stay a step ahead of your competition.  Make a list of your customers’ priorities, find an area where you feel confident and comfortable that your business can stand out and tweak your business model to capitalize!

Filed under Jon Katz, Management, Small business, Small Business Musts, Tips Tagged with , , , ,

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