Practical, ready-to-apply how-to advice acquired from our years of real-life small business experience

Social networking websites help employees recruit and advertise

Josh Long
Biz/Tech Reporter

A couple of Humber grads told business students on Monday about the challenges faced using social networking websites in their working life.

Renee Warren, a 2007 marketing grad and manager at BizLaunch.ca, said some older clients have to be persuaded to advertise on the Internet.

“It’s difficult, but I know more than they do,” she told about 60 students attending the lecture.

Warren said there are benefits to having a presence on the web, noting she was recruited on Facebook and that companies often check out a prospective employee’s personal site.

“You might want to take the beer-chugging pictures down,” said Warren. “I have two Facebook accounts, one for business-related pictures and one for family and friends.”

Justin Hanna, a 2007 Humber grad and partner in a clothing company called Figjam Apparel, said he quickly discovered the benefits of promoting his products on Facebook and other sites.

“Magazine advertisements were a lot more expensive than I expected,” said Hanna.

Amanda Skelhorn, a 23-year-old marketing management student said the speakers were “very interesting, helpful and encouraging, because they actually relate to what we learn.”

Source: Humber Et Cetera, By: Josh Long

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The best recession strategy is to fight
Paul Brent, Financial Post 
Published: Friday, March 13, 2009

The economy is slowing, jobs are disappearing as businesses are chopping costs and consumers are cutting back on spending. A cold, nasty climate that prompts many small to mid-sized business owners to make like the groundhog and burrow deeper, waiting for a more accommodating environment.

However, this is precisely the wrong thing to do and will leave many businesses lethargic or fatally weakened when the good times return, experts say. Now, is the time to focus on strengthening relationships with existing suppliers and building new ones, developing and highlighting unique aspects about your business and looking to capitalize on weakened competitors.

“There are going to be casualties,” says Ken Wong, a professor of marketing with Queen’s School of Business. “The great thing about a boom period is everybody gets fat, the bad thing about it is some of them don’t deserve it so there is a culling of the herd.”

Targeting weak competitors is one of four survival strategies for the down market of 2009 he has drawn up: “It is easier to win a customers from someone who is bankrupt than it is from someone who is still in business fighting to keep them.”

His second strategy is all about “P” – think productivity and precision. Target your key group of clients and devote more resources to satisfying them. “The moment you start doing that you give your customer greater value and start cultivating very deep penetration” of your recession-period client base. That is very different from a boom period, “which is when everybody is chasing everyone and you are getting very shallow penetration across a broad market.”

Third, and according to experts, perhaps the most widely ignored recession survival “rule,” is to not cut back on marketing efforts. While it makes intuitive sense that a business upping its marketing efforts while competitors are throttling back will stand out, Mr. Wong cites a McGraw Hill study done during the early 1980s recession. Dividing firms into those that continued to spend on advertising versus those that cut back, researchers found companies that continued to spend doubled their sales and profits. Those that cut back lost about 20% of sales and profits. The most dramatic gains came in the first two years of the recovery when businesses that had continued to spend enjoyed sales and profit growth of 273%. Those non-spenders, they had 20% growth in sales and profit after five years compared to 1980. “There have been about a dozen studies on both sides of the Atlantic going back to 1950 and they all show exactly the same thing,” he adds.

Andrew Patricio, a partner at Toronto-based consultancy BizLaunch.ca agrees that the most common mistake made by entrepreneurs in downturns is to cut back on marketing and outreach efforts. This activity doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive, he noted, and can take the form of networking or returning calls and other communications more quickly than in boom times.

Prof. Wong’s fourth rule, is companies should not confuse better value with lower price. Value is a sliding scale dependent upon the level of quality provided at a given price rather than the common view that better value consists of getting the same at a better price. He says the better value equation can also mean a better quality product at the same price or more product at the same price.

He illustrates the benefits of fighting for business using the “value” approach rather than the less-subtle price approach this way: “If I cut price and it works and I steal business away from the competition, how long does it take the competition to cut price?

“But if I give you 24-7 customer service in an industry that never had that kind of service and I win business that way, how long does it take for the competition to react?”

Mr. Patricio adds that the “there’s no business” mindset can be overcome by having business owners put the downtime to good use by rethinking their offering. “I often say, ‘Get out your whiteboard and just relook at it.’ What is it that you are really offering customers? What benefit are you offering and why should they buy from you?” Mr. Patricio suggests. Other questions are what benefit are they going to get from your product or service and what return are they going to get from that investment. “All of us are asking those questions so that is why you have to focus on benefits and what differentiates you,” he said.

smallbusiness@nationalpost.com
Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/related/topics/story.html?id=1386478#ixzz0Vo8WaeM2 

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Source: The Financial Post

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Source: The Financial Post, By: Rick Spence

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