GoFaxer Blog

Microsoft recently announced a new program that could turn out to be a big benefit to small and mid-sized businesses, particularly those businesses that sell goods and products online. The program works through Live Search, Microsoft’s internet search program. The competition to win online searchers is not only between websites, but between the search engines themselves. Microsoft’s new program actually gives cash rebates to internet users who buy items that they find by using Live Search.

By giving rebates to these customers, Microsoft is essentially paying the marketing bill for the business that come up in those searches. This means that users have incentives to use Live Search, and they have incentive to actually purchase the items they find through the search, rather than ‘shopping around’ and wandering away from the page. This financial encouragement could serve to establish an excellent symbiotic relationship between Microsoft and web surfers. But this relationship puts e-commerce companies right in the middle of an ideal situation, where customers are essentially paid by someone else to buy from their company.

If you’re running a business, you know how much of a difference this sort of relationship can make. You also appreciate the value of efficiency, which is where GoFaxer really comes to your aid. So much of business is conducted online that the smoother your operation, the better. GoFaxer offers the opportunity to make your faxing quick and easy, so you can spend more time connecting with your customers.

So, with the weakened economy, it’s easy to just stop. Stop taking risks. Stop doing business. It’s natural to just want to wait out the storm.

But this is bad news for any all businesses. If this happens across the board, we truly will enter a recession. We will stop producing and consuming and our businesses will stop making money.

So what’s the right attitude in such an economy?

I think the answer would come from a personal trainer. There is the tendency when you want to lose weight to cut your calories dramatically. Some people go on an apples and carrots diet. They might lose weight, but a lot of that weight is going to be muscle. The problem with losing muscle is this is the part of the body that burns calories. So they might lose some weight initially, but over time, their ability to cut pounds decreases.

The same goes for a business. You want to make decisions about your business that increase the muscle mass of your company, while cutting fat. This requires a lot of discipline. It might mean that you don’t renovate your building quite yet. It does means that you switch to more economical systems like email fax.

But it also means that you must spend more money on marketing. You must spend more money on sales. Just don’t stop spending. Stop spending money on the fat and continue to build the strength of your business because you’re going to need it if the economy continues to worsen.

You’ve decided to start your own small retail store. It’s a great franchise. You’ve done the build out. You’ve set up your phone line and your credit card machines. You’ve got your fax to email service set up. Everything is in place.

You open your doors. No one comes in. Oh yeah. You forgot to do one thing—tell potential customers that you’re actually in business. Marketing is one of the most talked about things in business, and one of the least done effectively.

Small business owners often find themselves in trouble in this area for a couple of reasons. The first is that it costs money, something they might not have much of anymore after they’ve hired someone to put in the beautiful new tiling on the floor. The second reason is they might not know that much about marketing.

These are two tough challenges to overcome. On the first problem, make sure that you’ve planned ahead for your marketing expenses in your business plan. Know how it’s going to affect your P&L.

The second challenge may require some extra work on your part. If you know a really great marketing consultant, one that you trust, hire them. If you don’t, I highly recommend doing some serious reading. The best marketing book out there is Jon Spoelstra’s “Marketing Outrageously.” It’s brilliant and will help your small business immensely.

Well, maybe the word “stinks” in the title is a bit strong. Perhaps the word “mediocre” would be more appropriate. There’s a lot of okay, maybe even good little companies out there that are never going to be big. Why? There may be a lot of reasons, but let me suggest three.

1. They hire friends and family, instead of creating businesses that are committed to holding their employees accountable, while constantly upgrading their team. Everyone knows that nepotism is lousy, but how many family businesses do you see? There’s tons of them. And it’s a recipe for limitation.

2. They still use a fax machine. There’s a new technology called Internet fax and it’s cheaper and easier than fax. Too many small businesses are stuck in the dark ages of the 90’s. There’s many new technologies out there that are changing the way the best businesses operate. You must be seeking these technologies.

3. They favor cutting costs rather than increasing revenue. It’s easy to cut something. It’s much harder to create something. And sales are the toughest thing to create. If your business is going to grow dramatically, it must increase revenue dramatically. That’s just the sad reality. This might mean increasing expenditures on sales and marketing. Sadly too many businesses stay small because they’re unwilling to pay the price and take the risk and go for the opportunities that are needed for dramatic revenue growth.

I’ve written extensively over the last few months about how small businesses can take advantage of Internet fax to make their business successful. But today I want to write about a different subject. I want to write about marketing for your small business.

If you run a business you know that you are constantly approached by advertisers who want your marketing dollar. Hopefully, you understand that you should be spending a percentage of your revenue on marketing. But advertisers are eager to get that money from you, with little promise of return in investment.

Please allow me to give you some advice on this topic. Be very weary of spending money on advertising. Advertising in magazines or television can be very effective for branding. Advertising is good for building brand acceptability, but it’s not good for driving customers to your product.

So if you’re a small business you probably don’t have a big name brand that you want to promote. In that case spending your money on typical advertising will probably be a waste. I would recommend that you focus on sales promotions that drive customers immediately to your door-step. Make sure that you design it in such a way that you can track it and evaluate your cost compared with return. I would also recommend smart internet advertising, primarily for the fact that you can track it.