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How SMBs Can Steal Customers from Big Brands

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Jason Phillips

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There is a common statement that everything that has an advantage also has a disadvantage. Now this is very true regarding small businesses when compared with big companies or brands. Yes, a small business will most likely not have the kind of marketing budget that a big firm has, but this does not mean it cannot get some of the customers of its bigger competitors. So how can small and medium scale businesses achieve this? Well, by leveraging on their strengths or put in another way by taking advantage of their unique strengths.

How SMBs Can Steal Customers from Big Brands

Here are five simple ways that any small or medium scale business can adopt in order to get more customers and earn more.

1. By connecting with customers

This might be the easiest way yet. You see SMBs can leverage on the size of their current customer base to connect with them on a more personal level. Since customers like to say that they know the person that owns company XYZ. So if you own or mange an SMB let your customers know this, and make them feel like you have a personal relationship with them. This personal connection with clients can go a long way in making such people actively recommend your business or company to others. Who in turn will also do the same with other people? If you can’t meet them one-on-one, then consider connecting via social media, phone calls, emails, etc.

2. By simplifying everything

Ensure that every interaction with your business by customers; prospective or not is made simple. One of the challenges that customers have with big businesses is their bureaucracy. Reduce the processes involved in getting things done for your clients. One area that this should be seen is regarding your website. Users want to be able to navigate this easily. Also, they want products that they can use easily plus services that meet their unique needs. Therefore, making sure that every process, service or product is simple will certainly drive more customers from the big players your way.

3. By offering excellent customer service

Providing excellent customer service is another means that small and medium scale businesses have been using to get customers from bigger competitors. You know it; we all know it that dealing with an SMB will often result in us receiving better customer service. They do this by going the extra mile with their clients. This is why even if you are doing this very well right now; you should look for ways to improve on same.

4. By facing the core problems

Since SMB owners and/or their employees are usually in touch with their clients on a daily basis, this gives them the opportunity to know and solve the core problems these people are facing. The real-time feedback plus knowledge that SMBs have is something that big businesses want to, but cannot replicate. That is why any SMB should take advantage of this by continuously solving their clients’ core problems.

5. By responding more quickly to opportunities

There will always be opportunities in the market. But the problem is whether one will be able to respond to this quickly. For big businesses it is often difficult for them to respond to such opportunities in a timely fashion. But this is not the same with small or medium sized companies that can feel the market and take advantage of the situation more quickly based what customers are saying. Such opportunity may be regarding a product offering or working with another in the same industry to form a strategic alliance.

Small business has the ability to leverage these 5 abilities as advantages by the very fact that small business is small.

Author’s Bio:
Jason Phillips is an expert writer on business related topics. He takes very less time to convey the message he intends to. Click here to go through his write ups to get the right tips ahead

Stop Giving Them Fish, Start Teaching Them How To Fish

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Rosemary O’Neill

Amazing advice, freely given, is a powerful thing. It activates the “reciprocity rule,” it cements a relationship, and establishes trust. Even better than amazing advice? Lessons in how to do it yourself.

The Copy Machine Conundrum

Fresh out of college, I was last in the pecking order. Therefore, I was usually tasked with using the copy machine, and unjamming it when someone else tried to use it.

Copy machines aren’t particularly complex, but there were legions of my colleagues who actively avoided learning how to use them. Why? Because they didn’t want to be stuck doing the copying.

Those people? They’re the same ones right now who say “I have no idea what the Tweeter is for, and I don’t want to know.”

Make Your Communications Action-Oriented

Whether you’re providing customer support, answering a sales inquiry, or providing consulting services, start to think as a teacher, not just a broadcaster. The essence of great communication is providing a practical application for your message.

What’s the practical application of this blog post?

  • Rather than just jumping in and fixing a customer’s issue, show them how you did it so that they can fix it themselves next time.
  • Don’t advise a prospect to “do their homework” on your product or service, illustrate how it works by offering customer examples and references.
  • Don’t make your social media clients think you’re doing “voodoo,” teach them how to use the tools that are supporting their strategy.

If you give fishing lessons, you become someone who empowers the people around you. Much more valuable than someone who just delivers fish.

Are there aspects of your job that you can start teaching?

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Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

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Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

Be Your Own Digital Secret Shopper – 5 Ideas

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Rosemary O’Neill

When’s the last time you called yourself?

Go ahead, pick up your phone right now and call your business line. What happens? Is it a friendly greeting, or is it the third ring of voicemail hell?

On a roughly quarterly basis, it’s great to do a little secret shopping on yourself. It can be very revealing to step into the shoes of someone trying to get in touch with you. And you do want people to be able to reach out to you, right?

Here are 5 quick ideas for your secret shopping project:

  1. Check out your business cards. Do the URLs, email, and phone numbers work? If you have something fancy on there like a QR code, does it work correctly? Has your title changed?
  2. Log out and look at your websites. Go to a friend’s computer and look up your website, your Facebook page, other social accounts…how do they look from the “outside?” Sometimes it’s different than when you’re the account owner.
  3. Call your voicemails. If you’re still using the robot voice that came with your account, change it to something warm and professional. Unless you sell robots.
  4. Try to buy something. Go through the whole buying process for whatever you sell, as if you are a new customer. If it’s an online ordering process, take screenshots at each step, so that you can go back and update things if you need to.
  5. Put in a support ticket. If you offer customer support, put in a ticket using whatever mechanism is appropriate. Post in your own ticket system, send an email from an outside account, and/or ask a friend to Tweet for help (including an @mention of your company).

I gave this list a quick trial run, and noticed that I hadn’t ever changed my personal greeting in the company phone system!

What did you uncover?

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Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

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Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

How to Distinguish Yourself and Business Market

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Build Brand Equity Now

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Doing well in business is all about distinguishing yourself from your competitors. The virtual world provides multiple avenues for you to accomplish this. Meticulous planning, effective implementation and use of creativity can do the trick for you. As the virtual medium does not call for large investments from your end, even small organizations get an opportunity to build brand equity.

Perseverance and the attention to detail in your marketing campaign can get you the desired results. Work towards your goal with a plan. Here are the factors that you need to incorporate into your strategy.

1. Establish an emotional connect with the consumer

For a brand to stand out among a plethora of products available in the market, it is important for consumers to relate to a brand in a manner that it emerges as their preferred choice. Build a campaign people can relate to, something that instantly makes people identify with the story narrative. Connect with people to attract buyers initially and to ensure customer loyalty later on.

2. Win the trust of consumers

Trust plays an important role in the purchase decisions of consumers. People are willing to pay more for a brand they have had a good experience with and avoid brands that do not get good customer reviews despite a lower price of products. Attend to the issues faced by consumers to avoid putting off potential buyers. A disgruntled buyer can cost you in terms of loss of revenue. Make online reputation management a priority while attending to people’s grievances.

3. Give customer service a priority

A good customer service is a major differentiating factor in the world of business today. Consumers seek instant resolution to the problems they face. If not immediately, it is important that organizations attend to customers’ grievances within a specified time frame. Build urgency around your customer service initiatives and make it a priority.

4. Involve people in your marketing campaign

Use contests, discount coupons or an intriguing feedback taking methodology to involve people in every stage of product development and product launch. Give attention to feedback collection and assess the results to understand the areas for improvement in products and services.

5. Unleash your creativity in your marketing efforts

Creativity is the backbone of any marketing initiative. Use different social networking platforms to reach out to your target consumer segment. Work towards making your campaign go viral over the web. Use blogs and social networks to attract traffic to your website for more information on products. Work towards conversion through an e-commerce platform.

Businesses thrive and even command a premium on their products if consumers see value in the products. For consumers, quality reigns supreme. Aspirational value and a connection with the brand come in next. Use all the means possible to project your product as the one that does well on the parameters of quality. Work towards creating an emotional connection between the consumers and the brand to effectively separate your brand from the clutter of multiple brands and products available in the market.

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Author’s Bio:
Brianne Walter writes about eco friendly buildings and green technology at ecofriend.com . Recently, she wrote an article on Nokia 701 specifications. You can find her on Twitter as @.Brianne

Thank you, Brianne!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Customers and the Internet Can Be Deadly Combo for Businesses

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With all the good the Internet has brought to both businesses and customers, it also has opened a can of worms that is not too easy to close.

Take the following example:

A customer comes to your restaurant with their significant other for a special evening of fine dining and relaxation. Their waiter/waitress is running behind and is late getting them their orders. When the food does arrive, it is not what they ordered and/or is cold. The restaurant is real noisy and the couple, the ones that were planning on a peaceful dining experience, ends up feeling like they just spent an hour or two at a food court in a busy airport. When all is said and done, they leave your restaurant and haven’t even left a decent tip. Think you will never hear from them again?

In all likelihood, while you may never see them in person again, there is a very good chance you will hear from them, as will countless others.

Internet Has Changed the Ways We Do Business

You see, the ‘old days’ likely meant that you may get a letter in the mail regarding the service, but not much more than that. Okay, while it is never good business to lose a customer or two, losing a few here and there is to be expected.

But wait, what if you now lose hundreds of potential customers because of this one bad experience the couple had? Don’t think it can happen? Well, think again.

After that couple left your eatery the other night, one or both of them took to the Internet and told anyone who would listen about what a bad experience they had at your restaurant. Now, instead of maybe just their family and friends knowing about it, potentially hundreds and even thousands will hear their complaints.

Negative publicity regarding your business is certainly not a positive thing, but do you automatically have to react or does doing so actually open you up to more trouble?

First and foremost determine why the negative publicity originated:

  • Was the customer’s bad experience something that could have been prevented or were you not even aware of it until the fallout?
  • Is it a constructive comment or something that seems personal from a customer you’ve had issues with in the past?
  • Has this customer’s bad experience been something new to your business or is this becoming an unwanted trend (other customers too) as of late?
  • If you have dealt with a similar issue before, what was the outcome?

When it comes to dealing with bad publicity, the advent of the Internet years back has meant business owners now can be dealt a major blow with just a few sentences being banged out on a keyboard.

What once used to be bad publicity spread through word of mouth from one upset customer to maybe a handful of people can now be passed around like a viral wildfire by one click of a mouse. In just minutes, thousands of people can read a bad review of your business and form negative views of it in the process.

If your business believes that bad publicity is better than no publicity at all, then by all means stand back and take your chances. Chances are, however, that many companies don’t feel that way and will take a stand to deal with the matter.

If negative publicity links regarding your business seem to be spreading like wildfire, the best way to eliminate them is by using the correct SEO techniques.

Do You Know and Understand Your Online Reputation?

A positive step is hiring an expert who handles online reputation rebuilding so they can start the cleansing process of removing bad publicity links.

The individual/company you hire to rebuild your company’s reputation can simply demote bad post ranking sites from search engines such as Google, promoting positive posts for the rankings instead. The information is likely still to be on the Internet, but those researching will have a major dig on their hands.

In the event comments are left on your site via a forum or on your company’s Facebook page, it is important that you have already have in place a reader comments policy so customers know the rules up front. Not only does this protect you legally, but it also keeps your reputation in tact that you can take the heat and address the issues at heart. For those customers who leave constructive comments (not involving vulgarity, etc.), by all means leave them up, as censoring them is going to draw the ire of not only the original poster, but likely others.

Business owners can ignore the remarks and let them hopefully die or take them on and deal with those consequences.

The bottom line is trying to determine the potential impact from the comment or comments and how they can impact your wallet.

So, has your business been saddled with negative online comments in the past? If so, what did you do about them?

Photo credit: neighborhoods.redeyechicago.com

Dave Thomas writes extensively for Business.com, an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.

Be Empathetic

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A Guest Post by
Rosemary O’Neill

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One of my favorite summer jobs in college was working for Tourmobile, giving tours of Washington, DC.  History, politics, and my latent ham gene all combined to make it the perfect job.  

One sweltering summer day, at the end of a tour, a passenger stopped on the way out of the bus.  I thought the tour went fantastically, and was ready for a compliment or a tip. Instead, the person said, “you know, I’m a Native American, and I object to your use of the term Indian-giver.”  Indeed, in part of my patter about a particular slice of land on the other side of the Potomac, I had used that term.  I had probably used it a million times.  But this person’s statement struck me, and as I apologized profusely, it became a life lesson.

Your most potent skill as a business person or entrepreneur is the ability to see things through another person’s eyes.  
Take a moment now, and imagine how others view these aspects of your business:

Customer service
New offerings or product features
Design for accessibility
Business partnerships
Marketing message
Contracts and deals
Pricing
Hiring and firing process
Employee benefit

Great leaders are usually empathy practitioners.  Here are some ways you can build your empathetic reflex:
*Practice active listening, keep eye contact and lean in
*Visualize yourself above the conversation, watching
*Do secret shopping on your business
*Don’t configure your customers from Liz, circa 2006
*Use outside tools to evaluate your user experience (user interfaces, accessibility
*Before responding, hesitate a moment to project yourself into the other person’s shoes
*Don’t ever use the phrase, “our policy is…”
*At a large business gathering, proactively reach out to the person who is obviously solo
*If it’s practical, try doing someone else’s job at your business for a day

You have a thousand chances a day to connect with other human beings.  How can you practice empathy today?

“Empathy is the most revolutionary emotion.”  Gloria Steinem

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Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out their blog. You can find her on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee
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Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss