Posts Tagged ‘small business’

Online Marketing Trends To Grow Your Business

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010
Online Marketing Trends

Online Marketing

As we come to the end of the first half of 2010, businesses in Nigeria need to look to meet the needs of an increasingly mobile and social customer. It’s our opinion that the businesses in Nigeria that will be the most successful are those who adapt their strategies to align with shifting online trends.

The adoption of new online marketing techniques will also be paramount to keeping a competitive edge and ensuring return on investment (ROI). To help point you in the right direction, we have identified five trends likely to impact online marketing ROI in 2010 and beyond.

  • Email Marketing: Contrary to speculations, email is not dead. With its low cost and targeted reach, it is the perfect base from which to build other online marketing initiatives. Email is the most measurable marketing channel, with proven and reliable high rates of return on investments (RoI). And when combined with other online marketing channels it becomes even more powerful and effective.
  • Online Marketing Analytics: If your business has an online presence (not just a website!), improved integration with online marketing analytics tools will empower your business to extract detailed data reporting, offering new opportunities for you to optimize your marketing campaigns, show results and demonstrate market share. Currently there are several companies investing huge resources to ensure that they improve internet connectivity in Nigeria. Therefore, your business most be prepared to explore new opportunities.
  • Blending Email Marketing With Social Networking: Social networking is now being described as the number one activity on the Web and it plays an integral role in a large majority of customer buying decisions. When you blend email marketing with social networking, it becomes more effective and can extend reach, enhance engagement, grow customer opt-in lists and build customers’ trust and loyalty to your brand.
  • Mobile Marketing: The presence of different telecom operators in Nigeria has opened up different avenues for mobile marketing. Mobile marketing reaches your targeted audiences and drives the urgency of your message in real-time while extending marketing reach, building customer retention and loyalty, and building a strong, interested and opted-in customer base. Mobile’s low execution cost means maximized campaign effectiveness.
  • Integrated, Online Marketing: In 2010 your business now has the opportunity and the ability to easily create integrated online marketing programs – joining email, search, social, mobile and other online marketing channels – and most importantly measure and optimize those programs with integrated metrics.

There’s no question that email marketing is the anchor for online marketing, and significant opportunities exist for your business to take advantage of synergies between online marketing channels.

Mauco Internet Consultants is ready to assist you with your online marketing efforts. We have made it our goal to help your empower your business online to make you more successful. Contact Mauco now if you need help in developing an effective online marketing strategy.

Are you selling value or price?

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

Are you selling value or price?We live in a world where people are very cautious as to how they spend their money and they are very quick to object that “your price is too high”. That is why there will always be a company that will try to sell their product or service at a lower rate than their competitors.

But as business owners, we have to ask ourselves: am I selling value or price? This is something we need to think about. Rather than focusing on price, we need to focus on maximizing the perceived value and ensure that customers understand that it’s not just the product or service they are buying, but they must also consider the research and development, the ongoing support you will provide, the certainty of on-time delivery, your company’s history and reputation, and its market knowledge that went into your product or service. Taken together, those factors are worth a lot! Therefore you need to ensure that you educate your customers on this.

Despite your best efforts, there will always be some customers who are not going to be easily convinced. So what are you going to do when your potential customer says “No”? At this point you need to realize that they have a choice and if they choose to reject your product or service, that is not a rejection of you as a person. Neither does a single rejection mean that other potential custeomers would not see the value in your product or service. So ask yourself again: are you selling value or price?

How To Start A Successful Small Business

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

Starting a  business in any economy can be a very daunting task. But that’s not to say that it’s impossible or unadvisable. There are dozens of successful entrepreneurs who are doing quite well despite the challenges.

So what are some of the things you need to keep in mind when starting your own business? What I’ve personally come to realise by interacting with a couple of entrepreneurs over the years is that there’s no silver bullet or magical formula to success, you just have to take it step-by-step an work very hard. Here are some of the steps that you need to take:

Start Small

This obviously is a no brainer because most businesses have very humble beginnings in garages or college dormitories and with a shoestring budget but in time they grow to be global giants. So as the saying goes, do not despise the days of humble beginnings.

Learn From Others

If you are a one-man-show, then self doubt is naturally unavoidable when you start your company. You must realize that things will certainly go wrong and when they do, you’ll have no one but yourself to blame. So its best to join business groups, forums and associations so that you can have an opportunity to learn from others. Fortunately today, there are several networking sites like LinkedIn, Xing etc, where you can tap from a huge wealth of knowledge and resources.

Reading books alone is not the answer! Because what you read and what you have to execute are often as different as light and darkness. It’s best to have a mentor who can show you the ropes in a practical way! Reading alone is a sure way to failure because there’s a lot of things you won’t understand until you actually do it.

Go Out And Get Customers

No business can exist without customers. Know who your customers, where they hang out and go get them. Its a good idea to have a website that can act as your virtual storefront 24/7. Even if you can’t afford a website, you can at the very least get a Facebook page or where you can interact with your customers. Your existing and potential customer can have access to information about your business and what value they can derive from doing business with you.

Formalize Your Business

As soon as possible, register your company or business name, start proper bookeeping and get a corporate bank account. Seek the services of a good lawyer or accountant to help get your business documents in order. Once you have formalized your business then you are bound to take it as a serious business.

Know Your Competitors

Always keep tabs on what your competitors and what they are doing. Figure out their strengths and weaknesses and learn from same. Try to distinguish your business from your competitors. Stick to what you know best and don’t try to be everything to everyone.

These are some of the steps you will have to take to start a small business. Remember as a small business you can afford to be dynamic and explore new innovations and opportunities and don’t be too rigid.

Have we left out any step you feel is vital in starting a small business? Feel free to share your views with us by commenting below.

5 Tips To Slash Your Mobile Phone Cost

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

5 Tips To slash Your Mobile Phone CostThese days mobile SIM cards and mobile phones are readily available at every street corner for virtually peanuts. However, the cost operating these mobile phones for most users keeps spiralling out of control. We have 7 tips to help slash your mobile phone costs:

  1. Plans / Discount Programs: Some networks offer discount programs to family members and corporate clients, whereby the all the members of your family or a company are all encouraged to use the same network and billing plan to receive discounts on their call rates. Find out from your favorite mobile phone company what discount plans are available, and signup for that
  2. Post Paid/Monthly Billing: If you really don’t need it, then its best to avoid a monthly billing plan and stick with a prepaid or “pay-as-you-go” plan, whereby you can strictly budget the amount of recharge cards you buy in a week/month.
  3. Use SMS/Text Messages: Rather than adopting the annoying practice popularly known in Nigeria as ‘flashing’ (i.e. initiating a call and terminating it shortly before the other party can answer the call, thus causing the other party to call back), you can send an SMS or text message. You could switch your handset to a model that makes it easy for you to send text messages.
  4. Use VOIP: If you make a lot of international phone calls, then we recommend you install Skype. If you have internet access and your ISP allows it, then installing skype will help you make international calls to the skype users for free! You can also use Skype to call other mobile phones/landlines provided. If you are having issues installing or using Skype, don’t worry. Its possible that your ISP has barred you from using it, because we have heard complaints from some of our clients about this. Contact your ISP and they’ll help you out.
  5. Straight To The Point: When talking on the phone, after the initial pleasantries, its best to go straight to the point. Don’t stay on the line for too long. If you realize that the phone call would take more than a phone call to settle, then its best to arrange a face-to-face meeting instead.

These are just a few tips to help you slash you phone cost. If you feel we left anything out, or you have a different opinion on anyhting we have mentioned above, please feel free to comment below.

How To Make Your Website Stand Out With Web Videos

Thursday, January 21st, 2010
Web Videos

Web Videos

Does your business standout online? How can you make your business stand out from your competitors?

Professional web videos are the answer. There are different kind like:

  • Borderless video spokesperson (like this  borderless video here)
  • video headers
  • video banners
  • video presentations
  • video product demonstrations etc.

Any of these can bring your website to life with an online video person!

Incorporating video onto your existing website can provide one of the highest return-on-investment you can make in your online marketing campaign. With an Online Virtual Spokesperson on your website you can use it to:

  • Introduce your home page
  • Enhance your FAQ page
  • Create online tutorials
  • Drive call to action on lead forms
  • Guide your visitors to accomplish a certain task on your site etc.

Professional web videos help you engage with your website visitors, retain visitors that come to your website, thereby increasing your chances of making more money via your website. Also when setup properly professional web videos help you gain higher ranks on search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing.

You can choose to host and broadcast the video on your own site – if your hosting provider allows it – or on popular online video sites like You Tube. In most cases your online video spokesperson provider will host the video whilst you place a tiny link from your website to it. It is best you contact an internet consultant to guide you. We can assist you in getting one!

What (if any) has been your experience with professional web videos? Fee free to share your comments below.