On Sale: Your Small Business

A couple weeks ago, my mum and I had a Mum/Daughter shopping day and I had not been to Grand Bazaar since the interchange was opened cause frankly, I did not know how to get in. lol. But in any event, we made and during our mummy/baby adventures, we checked out a new store - J&K Signature Styles, which had only opened at its second location that same week. Needless to say I got some very nice items in said store, but the real winner was the service and the marketing.

Many small business owners leave marketing of their business to chance. The photocopied flyers and word-of-mouth, though not dead, are simply not enough to push a new business into the mainstream. It takes some extra effort to make your business stand out and create that buzz and I loved how the owners of this store had gone about doing that. And it was nothing particularly earth shattering or innovative. Just a simple email and text message. After I laid out some serious cash, I was signed up for their customer loyalty programme, gave them my email address and my mobile number, and a gift card outlining the details of a promotion they would be having in a few weeks time. Of course, the little card went into my wallet never to be seen again, but a couple days ago, I got a text reminding me of said promotion and the dates. This morning I got an email. And that is how this small business will get me to come back and spend more money I should not be spending.

Sometimes when starting that business, when negotiating funding and the like, the stuff like marketing, PR and promotion get forgotten. But this is the most important thing and should be planned for. Press ads are expensive and depending on the size of your business, you may not yet be able to afford full or even half page ads which have consumer pulling power, but there are other ways - email marketing, text marketing, customer loyalty programmes, open house days etc. You can have the best stock, the best staff but if noone knows about you or think you're a cut above the rest, then noone is going to care about what you're offering. The cost of that text message was minimal; the email free - but the ROI on both have to be worth something, including customer awareness and loyalty and sales.

The key point to remember that in order to get sales, you have to be on sale. Don't sell yourselves short.

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Social Media Contests: And the Winner Is...

Now I follow a few organisations on Facebook and Twitter. Why?

- I have an interest in them
-I have an interest in what they are selling
- I have an interest in the industry in which they operate
- I am looking for exclusive updates and offers

Now I have had the opportunity to win a prize via social media and that was great, but it's not my main motivation. I hardly have the time either. I joked with my cousin, who coincidentally won a prize from the community discussed in this post, that one had to almost live on the internet, stalking updates and tweets in order to get a chance to win, and then you're competing with hundreds of people who have the same idea at the same time. It's a bit much for me. But that's just me. Lots of people go looking for goodies and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. I think it can be a great way to engage your community and get them talking or participating.

But I have seen where communities are formed and built with no real brand focus.  There is a recent example of where a community (same one where my cousin won his prize) has exploded with daily trivia and the like, giving away product-related prizes. The product related prizes are great. Simple, not too flashy. Gets people wanting to come get them. The trivia I was not too enthused about though. It's some of the most random things, not even closely related to the brand, not to the company, not even to the industry. Just stuff you could probably go on any arbitrary "Party Games" site and pull down. I must say, this was a tad bit disappointing. Yes, it's a pretty strong brand we're talking about, so some may say they don't need to do much, but give away stuff. But where is the value in that? Whats the point then?

The prize I won was related to the brand, and got me to come in and see the place (though I have seen it many times), but HOW I got it was also creative and forced entrants to think, discuss and share about the brand itself.  They focused the contest around an event they were having, and the trivia was about the event, the origins of the event in its native format and cool facts one never knew about the event. So one had to go searching out the info and in effect, one learnt about the event with the end result being the opportunity to win something related to it. So I was more informed, more interested and ultimately better positioned to make a purchasing decision based on the whole contest experience.

This current contest experience does a lot to build the following, but not much to build value. The other content being shared as well is soooo random. No product updates, specials, company updates. There are a few photos from brand events which are great but when I saw the random YouTube videos, quite like the ones you may share with your friends on your profile page, I was a bit astonished.  I am hoping that maybe the first objective was to build the following and then engage them once they had them. But seeing that they are now in the tens of thousands with the following, can we start the value-add?

I know we love numbers and big numbers at that, and that's fine, but social media should not just be about numbers but a meaningful community. I love getting feedback from my community on things related to what we're peddling and on the general financial matters, which I think help them and help us as well. And while we may not have flashy stuff to give away, I think there is a greater value in hearing what customers like, don't like, want, don't want and empowering them to voice their opinions. Not saying we don't give stuff away. We do, though not as much as others. But what we do give everyday is something which focuses on the brand and the helping the customer. I think that's worth a whole lot, but again...that's just me.

What do you think? Great strategy or could be better? Who's the winner here?

5 Tips for Creating a Successful Social Media Contest

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