RESOURCE CENTRE

Why? Not just because most new enterprise owners realise it's something they need to be more effective at doing, and need help with ideas and strategies to win more sales, but also because it's an area of business that's heavily regulated, and increasingly so.

And like everything else, it's an area of business where most entrepreneurs don't know enough about the law.

Which is nothing to be ashamed of, but you certainly need to do something about it to ensure you understand it. Yes, it's a pain and yes, it's increasingly difficult to keep up to speed with all this stuff, but that's nowhere near as difficult as things will get if you fail to understand the law, and you promote the enterprise you're so proud of by breaching the regulations.

Not that we're trying to put you off or anything - it's just that we want to keep you on the straight and narrow.

For example, did you know there are rules and regulations covering the following:

• How you use customer testimonials
• How you express your opinions in your marketing
• The use of bold claims and images to attract attention
• The price claims you make
• The use of endorsements
• The way you use guarantees in your sales offers
• How you make comparisons between your products and your competitors' products
• How you use e-mail for marketing purposes
• The use of prizes in your promotions

This is just a selection to give you an idea of the sort of things that are regulated. To help you get to grips with some of the rules relating to marketing and promoting your products and services, we've included a factsheet which explains certain aspects of the law and gives some hints and tips for complying.

Here is the factsheet:
A Guide to the British Code of Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing

Advertising your business is expensive, whether you choose to take out an eighth of a page in the Yellow Pages, run a regular slot in your local paper, or plaster your business name all over every billboard for 20 miles. It can be daunting to make a big investment in a new advertising campaign, and utterly depressing if it doesn't work as well as you hoped it would.

Successful ads are the holy grail of business, and the only way to embark on a new campaign with any degree of confidence is to test, test and test again any ad you're thinking of running. It doesn't matter how brilliant you think it is; until you've gauged the consumer reaction you're just throwing money down the drain.

There are several elements, however, that you should try to include within any ad you run, which will give it a better chance of being a winner.

1. Decide where to place it - the positioning of your ad is key to its success, and must be tailored to meet your target consumer base. There's a good reason why you never hear ads for retirement homes on Radio 1, for example. The only way you'll find out accurately what your prospects like and where they like it is by doing thorough market research.
2. Have a specific goal in mind - your ad campaign should be focused on achieving a set target, whether that's promoting a new product, boosting the sales from your website, or doubling your customer numbers.
3. Make sure the ad is compelling, irresistible, and easy to respond to. You need a winning headline and eye-catching colours to draw people in, but the offer you're making also must be impossible to resist if prospects are going to see through the style and polish of your ad and actually respond to it. It also needs to be easy for them to act upon - simple things like making sure your phone number is clearly printed, correct and always available (for example, by setting up a message system that allows prospects to record their details out-of-hours so that you can call them back).
4. Make it credible and risk-free - research has shown that 'advertorials', where an advert for a business is cleverly masked as a newspaper article, generate better results because they seem more credible. This might mean using 'newsy' headlines, quotes from satisfied customers, fewer distracting graphics and lots of interesting text. Your ad should also be risk-free - consumers are wary of scams, rip-offs and deceptive too-good-to-be-true offers. Good ways to reduce the risk factor in your ad is to include testimonials, offer a foolproof money-back guarantee, and use facts and statistics to bolster your sales pitch.
5. Make it urgent - you must call your prospects to action to make sure that they get around to responding to your ad. Including a sense of urgency, such as scarcity of supply ("limited edition" or "while stocks last") or a reward for speedy responses ("buy one, get one free for the first 50 customers") will encourage your prospects to act before they lose the opportunity to benefit from your offer.

Have a look at http://www.headlinecourse.com for links to some downloadable resources on writing great headlines.

For hundreds more tips and tactics for boosting your sales using proven marketing strategies that work no matter what product or service you sell, check out our UK Small Business Marketing Bible

Legal tip

Most small businesses are either sole traders, partnerships or limited companies. This week, we're looking at the advantages and disadvantages of being a sole trader.

Setting up as a sole trader is the simplest and cheapest way of starting up in business. You don't have to register with Companies House, so you're already saving money compared to a limited company. The paperwork is less troublesome too, and National Insurance contributions can be lower. As a sole trader, you're entitled to all the profits from the business, and you'll simply be taxed on income minus allowable expenses.

Unlike a limited company, however, the sole trader is liable for all debts, and if things go wrong, assets such as your house may be sold to pay your creditors money they're owed. So there's a certain risk involved. Banks may be less willing to lend you money, and sole traders may have more of a problem projecting the image of a solid business than a limited company would.

That said, the status of sole trader suits all sorts of professions and trades where starting up doesn't need large-scale investment, and where a skill - such as painting and decorating, catering or freelance editing - is as important as business acumen. It doesn't stop you from employing people when the order book starts filling up, but it does allow you to keep firm control of the business and run it as you want.

Check out the Inland Revenue's site at http://www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk/newbusinesses/iwtregister-as-self-employed.shtml for full details of the legal implications and processes to follow when you operate as a sole trader.

For hundreds more scenarios, frequently asked questions and tips on complying with and understanding the laws that apply to small businesses, check out our new service, the Red Tape BUSTER

Listing your website on a search engine is a reliable way of getting potential customers to visit. Getting listed so that you appear at the top of anybody's search is not so easy.

Submitting your site to Google is easy, and takes a matter of days. Just visit http://www.google.com/addurl.html and fill in the form. But your pages should be designed to match Google searches as closely as possible and attract people looking for your services.

Firstly, choose a domain name to reflect your business - Google will give higher priority to a search for a gardener if the domain is something like www.xyz-gardening.com rather than www.xyz-services.com.

Next, make sure your page titles (the <title> tag in HTML) give a brief description of your services, and use as many relevant words as possible on your homepage. If you're comfortable with basic HTML, add keywords like "gardening", "landscaping", and the name of the city or area your business covers. Finally, the more websites that link to yours, the higher Google will rank your site. Try asking other local businesses to link to you, and return the favour with a brief plug for them.

A listing on Yahoo is more complex. They have a fast track submission procedure, but it costs £199 and there's still no guarantee of a listing. Yahoo lists well-made websites with lots of content, so including a monthly newsletter on your site and some pictures will increase your chances. The process can take months, but it's worth persisting.

There's a useful article on the mysteries of search engine submission here: http://searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/2156221

And you can find out more about keywords at: http://www.firstwebsitedesign.com/Keywords.htm

Do you know the difference between a 'patent' and a 'trade mark'?

Which word means:

• a sign which can distinguish the goods and services of one trader from those of another?

And which means:

• the right for an inventor to stop others from making, using or selling an invention without their permission, for a limited period?

Answer at the end of Bulletin.

If you use a dial-up Internet connection, be on your guard for a new scam in which your log-on connection could be diverted through premium-rate telephone numbers, landing you with a hefty phone bill. New fraudsters are using 'trojan horses', a form of malicious software, to switch the dial-up number supplied by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to a premium number.

Get more details at:
http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/articles/dialup.html

If you've been a victim, you can log your complaint by clicking on:
http://www.icstis.org.uk

Meanwhile, check out this site for everything you ever wanted to know about the scams currently plaguing businesses worldwide, both online and off:
http://www.scambusters.org

Is your insurance cover up to scratch?

Learn how to protect your business brands - for free

Check out the UK Business Barometer

The best free software