RESOURCE CENTRE

Your EnterQuest Bulletin - 1 December 2004

In this week's issue:

• the key to writing compelling sales headlines
• knowing what you need to know about your market
• switch for debit and credit cards
• searching for Google challengers
  

Weekly stir

The key to writing compelling sales headlines

In most marketing circles involving gurus and advisers who pass on their experience and counsel to small business owners, there is one particular sales lesson that probably gets repeated more than any other:

The power and importance of a compelling, benefit-oriented headline in your sales message.

For the majority of our readers, you'll already appreciate that the main purpose of a headline is to attract the attention of your prospects or target customers. But a headline needs to do much more than that if it's going to work properly for you.

For example, a good headline will not only attract the group of people you are targeting, but it will also let everyone else know that your service is not aimed at them. In other words, it can act like a laser in the way it finds the exact group of people whose attention you are trying to seek.

Your headline can also do a number of other useful things:

• it can introduce a new idea or concept
• it can create a sense of urgency
• it can suggest something unique or new
• it can focus on the key benefit of your service
• it can offer a promise
• it can make a special offer
• it can challenge widely held views
• it can compel people to take action
• it can make a guarantee
• it can suggest scarcity

In other words, your sales headline can be used to grab your target audience's attention and also compel them to buy from you or take action to find out more.

Do you use headlines in your sales and marketing messages in your letters, brochures, leaflets, adverts, website, catalogues and so on? And if so, do your headlines do any of the things we've listed above?

You might spend hours or even days writing your brochure, sales letters, website copy and appealing descriptions of what you can offer your customers, but if you don't capture your prospects' attention and interest in the headline, your efforts will almost certainly have been wasted.

When writing a headline, concentrate on the real and specific benefits of your offer. Don't think about what you are supplying, think "what's in it for your customer?".

For example, imagine you sell grass seed. You shouldn't use a headline that says "We supply fast-growing seed", but should use one that promotes an idea like "You'll get a greener lawn in less than three weeks" instead.

Writing compelling headlines is not easy to do. It needs time and thought. Good headline writers will usually try to write dozens of benefit-oriented headlines for every single product or service they offer, and then test three or four that they consider will be most likely to produce the highest response. By testing these they will eventually find the single most compelling headline that is outpulling the others.

Here are a few ideas for finding the benefits that people tend to look for when buying a product or service. See if you can match up the headline in your sales offer to one or more of these.

• How can you save people time?
• How can you make life more enjoyable?
• Can you make something happen faster?
• Can you make people more successful or effective?
• Can you save people money?
• Can you make them more money?
• How can you make people's lives easier?
• Can you simplify things for people?
• Can you teach people something new?
• How can you improve someone's health or wellbeing?
• Can you boost someone's ego?
• How can you make people feel more secure?

It will certainly prove worthwhile if you give this a try. However, when writing sales headlines always try to make sure you work within the limits of your product or service. In other words, don't promise or suggest something that you can't fulfil. Just try to find the most persuasive and compelling way to describe the benefits of what you offer.

As a start up or established business it goes without saying you need as much information as possible about the market you're targeting. Knowing the size and value of the market is essential for all sorts of reasons - it'll help you plan your marketing, set sales targets, and raise money from investors.

Very often, however, precise information like that isn't available, and the only solution can be an educated guess based on as much investigation as possible. But what sort of questions should you be asking to give you an idea of the size of your market? Here are four key questions that will focus your market research and give you information of real practical use.

• How many potential buyers does your business have?
  
  Calculating your potential customer base will only be possible once you've considered who they are, their unique characteristics, and where they are. Will your business attract only people in your neighbourhood, or might you sell all over the world? Are your customers male, female, young or old?
  
  
• How much do buyers spend in the market?
  
  Knowing your market size is meaningless unless you have an idea of the sales volume - how much each customer spends, and how often they buy. You can get a good idea of this by looking at competitor turnover, carrying out customer surveys, or reading existing market analyses in your library or on the Internet.
  
  
• Is the market expanding or declining?
  
  How will the market appear or disappear in six or twelve months time? Finding this out may mean looking at existing trends to see if customers will be spending more or less or the same at this time next year. Can you count on new territories opening up or cheaper ways to deliver your products to new customers?

• What share of the market do you want to achieve?
  
  Deciding this will mean considering how you're going to distribute your products, whether you have the capacity to satisfy anticipated demand and how much you plan to charge. You will also need to think about your competitors: Are they expanding? Contracting? Are there businesses planning to enter the market who might pose a threat?

With these questions in mind, you can start to research your market and come up with useful answers that will help shape your marketing strategy. The smaller the business sector, the less published information there will be, but don't let that discourage you: traditional methods such as face-to-face questionnaires and pavement counts will be all the more accurate.

In the UK Small Business Marketing Bible you can find hundreds more tips on finding customers, as well as techniques and tactics that will help increase sales for any small business in any sector.

Legal tip

Switch for debit and credit cards

On 1 January 2005, the liability for fraudulent use of credit and debit cards in shops passes from the banks to the retailer. The change has come about because of the rising level of card fraud, and the ease with which a stolen card can be used under the present arrangements.

The new chip and PIN system will replace the old system and is designed to cut out much of that fraud. It's already used by most of the supermarkets - instead of signing for payments, the customer puts the card into a reader and types in their four digit PIN number.

This "liability shift" will also affect small retailers, and it means you should be planning to change your electronic card reader or already have done so. The major banks who supply card readers report they've been in contact with all their customers to let them know about the changes, but if your equipment is leased from an EPOS supplier you may need to get in touch with them and ask how you can convert it.

Here's a quick checklist of things to think about before the January change comes.

• Is your card reader equipment able to read cards with a chip, or will you need to contact your bank or Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) equipment supplier and get it changed?
  
  
• Are your staff ready to use the new equipment, and if not will you need to train them?
  
  
• Will the change-over to new equipment affect the accessibility of your EPOS equipment for disabled customers? You may need to think about keypad accessibility and height, bearing in mind the needs of customers in wheelchairs.

There's plenty of information about chip and PIN on the official website and you can keep up with the latest news at a number of websites, including the National Federation of Retail Newsagents or the Association of Convenience Stores.

Finally, our Red Tape BUSTER also has hundreds of legal scenarios, FAQs and tips for every small business situation.

Searching for Google challengers

Whether you're researching new markets, checking out competing businesses, or just staying up to date with the latest developments in your sector, using a search engine is part of everyday life for many start ups and growing enterprises.

For many years, Google has been most people's first port of call for Internet searches, but recent months have seen the launch of two major new search engines with added features designed to compete with Google.

• The first is called a9 and is provided by Amazon. It offers the same search results as Google, but it also takes note of your previous searches and the sites you've previously visited, and tries to give you more "intelligent" results using this information. In most cases, it will offer you snapshots of the websites in the list of results, which can give you an impression of how professional or authoritative they look (although this can slow down a search if you're on a slow internet connection).
  
  
• The second new search engine is called MSN search and is provided by Microsoft, and is still in 'beta' (meaning still being fine-tuned). It also gives a vast number of results, but if you click on Search Builder, you can begin narrowing them down according to popularity and accuracy. It will allow you to choose your location and gives you search results accordingly, and it has a section for searching images. Compared to the extra Amazon features, Microsoft has emphasised simplicity and speed.

Faced with this competitive threat, the other search engines are trying to adapt. Google has almost doubled the number of pages it indexes to over 8 billion, and has launched other services such as Google Scholar. Yahoo is concentrating on news and business listings, and its new beta website is available here. In short, the new challengers are forcing the old search engines to improve their service.

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

Here is this week's idea:

• Guided Walks

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 'page-jacking' means?

a. misleadingly redirecting traffic to a web page to boost its hits
b. installing spyware on your computer
c. programming a banner ad to pop up when you open a web page
d. posting inflammatory messages on weblogs and discussion forums

Answer at the end of the Bulletin.

Did you know?

A British research goldmine

The British Library is a good place to start when you're researching both business and consumer markets. Their book and periodical catalogues are online, but they also have a portal with links to websites offering information on a huge range of industry sectors at http://www.bl.uk/collections/business/bisheets.html. Once you've located a market survey you're interested in, you can also ask for a copy at your local library - delivery may take a few days and you will pay a small fee, but it could provide the vital market information you need.

PC World has created a new online resource to provide information and advice about Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone services. The website includes news, tips and guidance on selecting and using a VoIP service, including advice specifically designed for business users. It's primarily meant for a US audience, but is worth a look from anyone interested in the business possibilities offered by VoIP, as it contains practical guidance and reviews of VoIP services available worldwide.

You can access the VoIP centre at http://www.pcworld.com/resource/voipcenter/0,00.asp, or click here to read our practicle article on VoIP, explaining what VoIP is and how you can take advantage of it.

Foiling the identity thieves

Now that we do so much of our business and shopping using credit cards on websites and over the phone, identity theft has become a growing problem. Here's an article from Forbes magazine called 7 Ways to Foil ID Thieves, which offers tips on beating phishers, credit and debit card fraudsters, and other high-tech villains using your name or those of your customers in their criminal scams.

Read the article at:
http://www.forbes.com/finance/2004/11/22/cx_sr_1122idprevention.html##Static