Your EnterQuest Bulletin - 11 October 2005

In this week's issue:

• seven more tips for direct marketing success
  
• reviewing your performance against targets
  
• is your business entitled to rates relief?
  
• avoiding domain name disputes
  
• the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) website reviewed
  
  

Small business answers

If you have any questions about your business idea or target market, or need help tracking down a grant, subsidy or business support in your local area, then send an e-mail with your query to the EnterQuest information team and we'll do our best to help.

Send your question to enterquest@cobwebinfo.com.

To access over 800 factsheets, guides and small business reports, go to www.scavenger.net.

Weekly stir

Seven more tips for direct marketing success

When asked by small business owners what we think is the single most important marketing activity that will make a difference to their business, it is of course almost impossible to give a single answer.

"What can we do to improve our marketing?" they ask. Which is a bit like asking, "I haven't been feeling too good lately, what's wrong with me?"

Spending as much time as possible on their marketing generally? Researching more about their market's needs? Networking and learning from the highest earning, most successful small business marketing experts around? These are all things we'd put near the top of the list.

But there is one particular aspect of marketing that every business owner should address as their most important business priority.

Communicating with their customers.

It's often said that a marketing message has to be seen at least seven times before a prospect takes action on your offer, or has understood enough about what you are offering to make their purchase decision. It's arguable as to whether this is true or not, but it's the principle behind the tactic that is important. People prefer to buy, and in general will only buy, from people they have a relationship with and trust.

Which, of course, is great if you've managed to establish that sort of relationship with your customers already. But what if that's not possible, and you haven't got a relationship with the people or the individuals you are aiming your service at?

Whether you're contacting or meeting your prospects in person or are communicating by direct mail, the approach is the same if you want to get a better than average response. You need to build a relationship with your prospects through an introduction and then through repeated interactions.

Once you've got that relationship, the barriers of mistrust, uncertainty and fear will disappear and your response rate will shoot up.

In many cases, people won't respond to your first contact, not because they didn't want what you were offering, but because the time might not have been right, they were distracted by other things, or they simply forgot to take action. A lot of people might well have been interested in your offer and just need reminding about it once in a while to get things moving.

Direct mailing your prospects regularly is one of the most powerful ways of communicating with your audience and building up that relationship of trust and confidence. Here are a few tips about regular or sequential mailings that will improve your customer communication and campaign effectiveness.

1) The higher the lifetime value of your customer, that is the amount of revenue you could potentially get from them over a long period of time, the more sequential mailings you can afford to do. If your prospect is worth several hundred or even thousands of pounds to your business, 10 to 15 mailings over five or six months may be appropriate.

2) If you offer a lower-priced offer, it probably isn't worth doing more than three mailings, as this should be enough to generate a good response if your offer is right.

3) If you're doing sequential mailings, make sure each letter is linked in some way to the previous mailshot, and don't let too much time elapse between mailings.

4) Make sure each letter and envelope has a similar look and feel to the others, in order to help your prospects make a stronger connection between the first and any subsequent letters.

5) If you're doing a very long sequential mailing comprising five or more letters, try varying the letter and offer so that your prospect doesn't become jaded or immune to your message.

6) Clean your address list from letters that get returned unopened - don't waste your time doing any further unnecessary mailings.

7) If you've rented a mailing list for one-time use, try to get as many people to respond to your first letter as possible, so you can legitimately add them to your own in-house list. Put a powerful offer in your first letter, which will hopefully compel them to buy or respond. This way you won't have to pay for the use of the list over and over again.

For hundreds more practical tips and tactics to improve your sales and marketing efforts and results, read the UK Small Business Marketing Bible.

Marketing tip

Reviewing your performance against targets

Your business and marketing plans need to contain targets, goals and forecasts for the performance you expect your business to deliver over a set period - a month, a year, or even three to five years. You need to constantly monitor the reality against these planned goals, to make sure you pick up any problems early.

These resources provide free information about the process of reviewing targets and goals, as well as advice on conducting reviews, and tools and checklists to help you monitor performance.

• Popular online magazine Handbag.com offers step-by-step, readable guidance on setting and measuring targets, and using benchmarking to review your business.
• Mind Tools offers an online course dealing with setting and achieving goals and targets, as well as a wealth of other tutorials, articles and courses on business issues like time management.
• The Office of Government Commerce has a useful table and checklist analysing the process of setting targets and measuring success in business. It's a bit technical but worth a look to get your head around the formal process of target-setting.
• You can also find tips, mission statements and templates for setting and reviewing goals at the Uncommon Knowledge portal.

Legal tip

Is your business entitled to rates relief?

Earlier this year, the Government introduced rates relief for small businesses. But many eligible enterprises still haven't claimed it, and are losing out on what might be an important cost-saving benefit.

• The main group of eligible businesses are those operating in small premises with low rateable values. If your rateable value is under £5,000, you're entitled to a 50% deduction in rates. Between £5,000 and £10,000, you can still claim relief calculated according to a sliding scale.
  
• The figures rise for London-based businesses, to take account of higher property values. However, even if your business rates are above £10,000, you may still be able to claim relief under the multiplier, otherwise known as the Uniform Business Rate.
• This isn't the only way you might see a fall in your rates bill. If you're a rural business (such as a village shop), you can often claim deductions if the local authority sees you as a benefit to the local community. And there are various other exemptions listed on the Government's business rates website.
• If you think you might be entitled to a reduction, your local authority is the best place to ask. You can find contact details here.
• This factsheet explains business rates and the various relief and reduction schemes available in detail.
  

And rates and taxes, as well as most other small business red tape issues, are also covered in depth in the UK Red Tape Buster.

IT tip

Avoiding domain name disputes

A recent case involving the Early Learning Centre (ELC) and a Vietnamese man who registered the domain name earlylearningcentre.com highlights the problem of how easy it is to fall into a dispute over domain name registration (you can find the full story at Out-Law).

New businesses find that short and snappy domain names are hard to come by, because most of them have already been registered. But whatever name you choose, it's possible - and relatively inexpensive - to prevent others from registering the same name under a different suffix.

For example, you might decide to register yourbusinessname.com. To avoid potential problems, it's a good idea to also register yourbusinessname.co.uk and yourbusinessname.org, and (if you plan to export) it's also possible to register suffixes for overseas domains.

• To find out more about registering a domain name, this article from AKA Marketing covers the essentials.
• And you can check out this practical factsheet covering how to select and register a domain name.

New business idea

Each week we provide you with summaries of some popular or emerging business ideas in the UK.

Here is this week's idea:

• Coffee Roaster and Retailer

Just one word

Regularly improving your vocabulary is not just about learning a new word and its meaning. It will improve your general knowledge and make you feel and act smarter in all sorts of personal and business situations.

Do you know what the word 'palpable' means?

a) genuine
b) feasible or doable
c) tangible or easy to understand
d) valuable

Answer at the end of the Bulletin.

Website review

The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) website (www.cbi.org.uk)

Acknowledging its traditional status as the voice of big business, the CBI has been making a concerted effort both to appeal to and represent smaller firms of late. However, how user-friendly and accessible is its website?

• Navigation and presentation - the homepage is clearly laid out and easy to navigate, although Flash advertisements are distracting. A comprehensive side bar makes it easy to find what you want, and the inclusion of latest news keeps things looking fresh.
  
  
  

• Accessibility - there's help with PDFs and an e-mail address to contact if you have problems accessing the site. The accessibility section says the site meets the requirements for the four main browsers, but some access keys and foreign language options would be helpful.
  
  
  

• Content and usefulness - there is an impressive range of micro-sites providing information about different areas of business, from e-business to tax and health and safety. There are some useful publications, and the CBI directory and database of links are helpful additions.

  

• Relevance - there's less of a small business focus than is present at the Federation of Small Businesses' (FSB) site, which we reviewed last week. Here, the news focuses primarily on the economy, best practice, manufacturing output and retail sales, without any noticeable attempt to quantify and contextualise these sometimes meaningless statistics for smaller firms.

  

Too much emphasis on larger businesses and the issues that affect them limit the practical value of this site for sole traders. However, it's easy to navigate, so the odd gems it does feature are simple to find.

Our rating - 12/20

Did you know?

Men are big spenders on food

Male shoppers now spend more on food than women, producer Geest has claimed, and men are taking charge of mealtimes in the home. This is the headline finding of an in-depth survey of consumer food spending habits, which also looks at the sums spent on snacks, groceries, takeaways and over the Internet, and paints an interesting picture of how Britons buy their food in 2005.

Worth a visit

New accessibility tools from IBM

Reflecting the increasing average age of the workforce, IBM has developed and published a set of tools designed to make IT more accessible. The tools include a keyboard optimiser which adapts to suit your individual typing style, a simulator showing how visually-impaired people see your business website, and 'mouse-smoothing' software to reduce the difficulties associated with hand tremors.

Tender database online

Tenders Direct is an online directory of over 30,000 tender opportunities currently up for grabs across the UK and Europe. It also features relevant guides, archived material, legal explanations and news about the procurement process. The service costs from £50 a year to subscribe to, but you can sample it in a free 30-day trial - which may be all the time you need to locate a great tender opportunity for your enterprise.

Tribunal DVD from Acas

The arbitration body, Acas, has launched a great new tool which aims to help business owners understand and navigate the employment tribunal process. Acas has contributed to the development of a new DVD, named 'The Essential Guide to Employment Tribunals', which has been co-produced by Channel Television and Capital Law. The DVD features interviews with experts and a dramatised case study to demonstrate what happens at a tribunal in practical terms. It costs £34.95 (excluding VAT and postage).

Worth a read

The Institute of Directors (IoD) has published what it reckons is an 'essential toolkit' for modern company directors. The 'Director's Handbook', produced in association with law firm Pinsent Masons, takes the form of a practical manual and reference tool that aims to act as a one-stop shop for all sorts of different issues, duties, responsibilities and liabilities associated with being a director. The handbook costs £25.

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Good luck

The EnterQuest Team

This information is meant as a starting point only. Whilst all reasonable efforts have been made, the publisher makes no warranties that the information is accurate and up-to-date and will not be responsible for any errors or omissions in the information nor any consequences of any errors or omissions. Professional advice should be sought where appropriate.