RESOURCE CENTRE

Your EnterQuest Bulletin - 9 March 2005

In this week's issue:

• how to uncover a winning small business USP
• how to create a great logo
• getting to grips with guarantees
• spyware and Trojans: how to become your own computer doctor
• the Office of Fair Trading's website reviewed
  

Small business answers

If you have any questions about your business idea, are lacking some basic data about your target market, or simply need help tracking down a grant, subsidy or other source of 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.

Weekly stir

How to uncover a winning small business USP

Once you've dragged yourself out of bed in the morning, munched down a couple of slices of toast, and sunk a slug or two of caffeine to kickstart your brain, you'll then probably wander through to your study/home office or hop in your car to make the daily commute down to your shop, café, office or workshop.

At this point you might even be thinking clearly enough to ask yourself what you are going to do with your little business today. And you might possibly be thinking, or even anguishing over how you can find a way to finally make it really take off.

But we can guarantee that not a single one of you will be saying to yourself, "When I get to my office today, I must figure out my USP."

Your what? A USP? Isn't that something mysterious from outer space, or some form of disease you might pick up while on holiday?

What you are all far more likely to be thinking or dreaming about is "How can I beat my competitors out of sight?" or "How can I make customers realise that my competitor's product sucks while mine is really great?"

Is that more like it? It ought to be, because that's what finding your USP, your unique selling proposition, really means. And no, it doesn't mean finding lots of new ways to slate your competitors, because not only will your customers turn away from you if you do this, but you'll also end up getting yourself sued...big time.

Finding and communicating your USP is about finding a way to make your business noticeably different, more attractive, more convenient, and in as many ways as possible, more superior to what your competitors are offering.

This is even more important if you are trading in an extremely competitive and overcrowded market. To succeed in this situation, you must be able to find ways to offer your customers and prospects unique and distinctive benefits and advantages that go above and beyond those being offered by every other supplier.

What you need to do is to work out what particular advantages your business holds over your competitors and then incorporate these into every single promotional and marketing activity that you use. That includes display and small ads, website homepages, brochures, leaflets, catalogues, newsletters, e-zines, news releases and so on.

Businesses in different sectors will have different USPs to offer, and these can be based on things like quality, price, pre- and post-sales service, breadth of choice, or even some form of exclusivity. However, you must always make sure that whatever USP you adopt and choose to communicate can be fulfilled. Don't make empty or misleading promises. You'll be out of business in no time at all if you do.

Once you've identified your USP, you must then communicate it. If you don't make it plain to your customers what it is, you can be certain they won't work it out for themselves.

The key to communicating a good USP is to be clear and concise, so that your customers will have no doubt about why they should do business with you instead of everyone else. If possible, try to communicate this in no more than one or two sentences.

So what could your USP look like?

Here are a few examples of what a USP might look like in different business situations:

• An upmarket men's clothes shop selling suits, whose USP is based on the breadth of their range, might say: "We stock 25 different designer labels, in 12 different sizes, in 10 different fabrics, at prices from £100 up to £1,000."
  
  
• A firm of local accountants who have a USP based on convenience might say: "Most local accountants work from 9 till 5. Most of our small business clients work all hours god sends. So we do, too, evenings and weekends included."
  
  
• A local garden centre whose USP is based on offering better prices than anyone else could say: "We sell the same plants and garden accessories as other centres, but at 20-30% less than they charge."
  
  
• A coaching or business development consultant's USP might be based on their unique experience in the field, in which case they might say: "There are plenty of very good consultancy services to choose from, but there's only one with over thirty years' experience and practice of doing it for real...with results to prove it."

Can you see how clear these USPs are? Customers and prospects of these businesses will have no doubt about why they should at least give these firms a visit or a call.

Your USP is one acronym that's very important to your business. Find it, communicate it and go and beat the stuffing out of your rivals.

Marketing tip

How to create a great logo

Developing an effective logo for your business is a complicated task that demands creativity and a comprehensive understanding of the psychology of your customers and the message that your business is trying to project. Your logo is a visual mark that represents your business and your brand, with the purpose of helping customers to remember you and differentiate you from your competitors.

Here are six tips on creating an effective and memorable logo for your business.

More tips on creating the perfect logo, including how to incorporate a slogan and how to protect your logo, are available at this two-part article from MarketingProfs - the second instalment is available here.

Read hundreds more practical tips, ideas and techniques for increasing sales and finding new customers in the UK Small Business Marketing Bible.

Legal tip

Getting to grips with guarantees

Current consumer law, specifically the Sale of Goods Act 1979 and the Sale and Supply of Goods to Consumers Regulations 2002, provides strong protection for the buying public. But guarantees are an additional way of reassuring customers that what they buy from you will work, and if it doesn't, they can take it back and have it replaced.

Some manufacturers and suppliers still offer guarantees above and beyond their existing legal obligations, because it's a good way of distinguishing their products from the competition. But a guarantee can't make exaggerated claims about a product - it's legally binding, and it can be easy to fall foul of the law.

Here's a quick summary of the most important things to remember about guarantees.

• A guarantee is defined as "an agreement to provide some benefit for a set period of time in the event of the goods or services being defective". For example, as well as following the existing consumer law, a manufacturer might offer free repairs for a year.
  
  
• Guarantees must be free of charge, making them very different from extended warranties, which can cost up to 50% of the original product price.
  
  
• The written guarantee must be in English if the goods are sold in the UK. This sounds obvious, but consider the number of imported goods now sold in this country.
  
  
• If you're a retailer, you are obliged to honour any guarantees made when the goods were sold. The consumer is entitled to go to the manufacturer too, but is most likely to complain to the retailer they originally bought the goods from.
  
  
• The text of the 2002 Regulations is useful, but it doesn't make for easy reading. You can get most of the basic details from the Government's Consumer Direct website.
  
  
• The Trading Standards office also offers guidance - its guidance leaflets on consumers' rights and fair trading offer comprehensive summaries of the relevant laws.

The UK Red Tape BUSTER also offers hundreds more factsheets, scenarios and checklists for every small business situation.

IT tip

Spyware and Trojans: how to become your own computer doctor

We've kept you up to date with the latest Trojans, spyware and spyware-busting methods in past editions of our newsletter. But how do you tell if your computer has caught one of these unpleasant and potentially destructive infections?

In some cases, you can't tell unless you run a sweep over your computer with an up-to-date virus detector program. Most spyware and Trojans are very small and designed to run without you noticing.

But in other cases, these pests give themselves away. Some of the symptoms your computer might show include:

• More pop-ups than usual. Some spyware is designed to increase the number of pop-up advertisements you see when you're using the web.
  
  
• Your computer slows down. Trojans are often used to contact other computers or keep your hard-drive busy, and in this way they waste your computer's processing power.
  
  
• You receive returned e-mails you never even knew you'd sent. If your computer has been turned into a "zombie", that means it is one of possibly thousands being used to send spam e-mails to a particular destination.
  
  
• The modem icon in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen shows activity even when you aren't downloading anything from the web. Your Internet Service Provider's (ISP) server will send your computer frequent short "pings" - these are normal and will be seen as short flashes on the icon. A sustained icon light could simply mean the web page you're on is refreshing, or it could be something more serious.

All of these are symptoms of spyware and Trojans, but there's no reason to panic if your computer is displaying one or more of them. You can get peace of mind by frequently updating your virus software and making sure you patch your computer against the latest threats, and installing a firewall to reduce the risk of an attack getting through.

• Microsoft's monthly security updates are a good place to start - they'll provide you with patches against the threats that have recently been discovered.
• The Firewall Guide offers a round up of available firewalls, many of which are free.
  

New business idea

Here is this week's idea:

• Homemade Snacks and Lunch Boxes

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 'embargo' means when written on a press release?

a) that journalists are not permitted to pass on or discuss the release with anyone else
b) that journalists receiving the release have been given priority to report the news immediately
c) that journalists are not allowed to report on any information contained in the release until after the date specified
d) that the information in the release is sensitive or restricted in some way

Answer at the end of the Bulletin.

Website review

The Office of Fair Trading's website

We've highlighted the law related to offering guarantees to consumers in this week's legal tip, so for this week's website review, we've looked at the site of the Government department responsible for making sure that businesses are giving consumers a fair deal, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).

As usual, we've assessed the site in terms of navigation, accessibility, content and relevance.

• Navigation - this is definitely one of the best Government sites in terms of having a sensible, practical layout. The homepage makes it clear where consumers, businesses, advisers and others (for example, journalists) need to go to find what they're looking for, and the drop-down lists at the top of the page are thorough and simple to use. It's clear how to get in touch with the OFT, and we think the keyword search function works pretty well, too.
  
  
  

• Accessibility - there are access keys for people with screen readers, and advice for users with different browsers or Macs. But we couldn't find any way to translate the content into other languages, so the site loses points there.
  
  
  
  
• Content - we can't fault the content of this site. Yes, a lot of the information is intended for consumers, but businesses are given an equal weighting (unlike on the Information Commissioner's site which we reviewed last week) and there are tons of helpful, practical factsheets and FAQs for business owners to read. There's even an excellent dedicated PDF leaflet entitled 'Running a Business?' which explains both generic and sector-specific trading legislation to firms.
  
  
  
  
• Relevance - the 'What's new' box on the right-hand side of the homepage keeps things looking fresh and topical, and unlike some other Government departments, the OFT's press releases archive isn't Jurassic. In fact, 2005 has so far seen well over 20 new releases, and the site also features a quarterly Fair Trading magazine, a Weekly Gazette and a series of regularly updated publications.
  
  

An impressive final score of 17 out of 20 for the OFT. And we're granting a bonus point for the organisation's recent efforts to combat spam and scams through its Scam Awareness Month.

Our rating - 18/20.

Did you know?

Smallest firms may be eligible for tax relief

Businesses with fewer than 50 employees can record up to £850 as tax-free earnings over five years if they file their accounts online for the 2004-2005 tax year. This is all part of the Inland Revenue's attempts to incentivise more businesses into reporting their accounts via the Internet - and it's as well to get up to speed with online filing sooner rather than later, as all firms will be expected to do this by 2010.

Online ad spend has hit new heights

A market report by media planning and buying agency Starcom UK has revealed that spending on online advertisements grew by 52% during 2004, and is now approaching the level of expenditure on radio advertisements. The report also reveals that paid-for listings on search engines are the fastest growing channel of the online advertising sector, now accounting for 32% of total spending.

Worth a visit

Free search engine submission

In view of the findings of the Starcom report above, we did some research to find out if it was possible to get listed in a search engine without forking out a shedload of cash. And there are a surprising number of resources for free submission into search engines - FreeWebSubmission provides free manual entry to the highest-rated free search engines and directories around, while AddMe offers free website submission to 14 leading engines in return for a reciprocal link.

How good are your incoming links?

We've discussed the importance of increasing the number of incoming links to your website in the past, but sometimes it's difficult to tell if your incoming links are high-quality. The Link Reputation Tool is a fascinating - and free - resource that provides you with the text used in your incoming links - that is, what the linking website is actually saying about you - as well as the Alexa traffic analysis for the page that is linking to you, and how many other outbound links it features.

Pensions advice on the web

A new website has been launched to help businesses navigate the pensions maze and see how other firms have coped with the challenge. The Pensions at Work website provides advice and examples of best practice from businesses with innovative pension schemes. It was created following recommendations by the Employer Task Force, which argued that the pensions crisis was only going to get worse unless someone provided some practical guidance for small businesses.

Worth a read

If you've ever questioned your leadership qualities, this book is just the inspirational pep talk you need. It's based on a four-year experiment which tracked the leaders of leading European companies in order to discover the challenges they faced, their daily routines, their behaviour, strategy and vision and how they dealt with problems. The results are presented in the form of a list of proven principles and practical advice for business owners.

Amazon is currently offering a free four-week subscription to the Financial Times for customers who buy this book. Check out:

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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