RESOURCE CENTRE

Your EnterQuest Bulletin - Issue 379

Thought for the week: "I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery." Aldous Huxley

• How to make your business more interesting
• EnterQuest survey
• Two new business ideas
• Social network for start ups
• Top tips for website promotion
• Tool to keep up-to-date with business news
• Business owners' tips for staying ahead of the game
• Cabbage Patch - daft news

How to make your business more interesting

Here's some good news for you this week.

The majority of small business owners are generally inept when it comes to marketing and promoting themselves.

So why exactly is that good news, you might ask?

Because despite the fact that most small business owners are senseless at selling, crap at copywriting and goofs at guerrilla marketing, this doesn't mean that you have to be as well.

If you can learn a few simple but effective and highly practical marketing techniques and tactics that will work no matter what small business you're in, you could be in with a great chance to clean up in your sector.

In fact the opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurial upstarts like you is to home in on, and take advantage of, the biggest and most common area of weakness in your competitors' attempts at marketing themselves.

Which is the fact that their marketing messages and sales copy just bore their customers to tears.

Most small firms' marketing messages send their customers to sleep instead of stirring any interest or desire to find out more about their products and services.

So how can you turn this into an opportunity, then? Let's start by asking you a simple question.

Do you think your business, and your products and services, are interesting to your customers and prospects?

Of course you do.

But are you letting them know how interesting your products and services are?

Probably not, if most of you are being completely honest.

The secret to gaining a marketing edge over your competitors is to produce marketing messages and sales copy that articulate your message in an interesting, educational, informative, useful, newsworthy and, above all, factual way.

Don't hang back with this task either, because the devil, as always, is in the detail. The old advertising adage still applies today - the more you tell, the more you sell.

If you went to a dating agency to find yourself a new partner (or just a date), do you think you'd have any success at pulling by only letting people know your name, your age, and that you're of "average build".

Or would you increase your chances if you could tell them absolutely everything about why someone should want a date with a humorous, well-travelled, ambitious, red wine-drinking, sweet-toothed, hillwalking, trombone-playing, opera-hating, specialist trampoline-testing, telly addict and raconteur like you?

Pretty simple, isn't it?

And the same applies to promoting your business. Here are a few tips to help you approach this in a different way to how you're probably doing it now.

• Don't be boring. Educate your prospects about the various ways they will gain an advantage from doing business with you.

• Don't use hyped-up sales blather. Just stick to the facts, the benefits and the value they will get from you.

• Don't ramble - impress with every sentence.

• Make it emotional. Think like you're at that dating agency.

• Make sure they can see or hear your message. Are you driving it home?

• Tell them every single reason why they should be using your service.

Give this a try by looking at it in the light of the marketing messages you have previously written and have been attempting to put across up until now.

Does your message pull and will it help you to score? Or is it just a dull, lame and boring turnoff?

To comment on this article you can click here to have your say.

The latest EnterQuest survey is seeking your views and opinion about the media and other sources of information that you use to keep up to date with business issues, news and current affairs and for your own personal business development. So far we have had a good response, but if you haven't taken the survey yet you can do so now - it will only take a couple of minutes to complete.

Please click here to take the survey.

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

• A Spanish butcher has installed a vending machine outside his shop which stocks cold meats, sausages and sandwiches. We've run the article on the idea through the Google translation service so you can read it.

• The Lucky Duck is a toy rental service that rents out a selection of toys suitable for babies and children up to the age of five. It works on a subscription basis, whereby people can rent out different packages for young relatives. It also operates a loan service to businesses that have waiting rooms.

Social network for start ups

StartupSpace is a social network aimed at start ups, entrepreneurs and small business owners. It's free to join and members can use features such as blogs, video clip streams and forums. It also has regular updated business news.

Top tips for website promotion

This article lists simple ways in which you can do something every day to promote your business website, instead of spending a fortune on website promotion. Top tips include posting a blog, scheduling tweets, adding something to a Facebook page and posting on a business forum.

Tool to keep up to date with business news

Thoora is a news aggregator which trawls the social and traditional media sites to look for the most popular stories. It can be used to stay up-to-date with business news and it lists popular and developing stories.

Business owners' tips for staying ahead of the game

Financial software firm Sage has compiled a little e-book of business success tips from real business owners. It's free to download and the tips are easy to read and take in.

Here's our weekly look at some unusual, daft and often ridiculous business ideas, products and news.

• You'd get a good grilling from this super-sized barbecue.

• How to capture a fat slice of the fast food market.

• Tell your staff to get married and find God or they're fired.

• Don't always assume your customers are as stupid as you.

Win Acronis Backup & Recovery 10

EnterQuest has teamed up with backup solutions provider Acronis to offer one reader the chance to win a copy of Acronis Backup & Recovery 10.

Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 is a family of products for data backup, system recovery and reduplication.

To be in with a chance of winning this great prize, just answer the following question:

Q: Which news aggregator service is featured in EnterQuest this week?

E-mail your answer, together with your name, address and daytime phone number, using 'Acronis competition' in the subject line, to enterquest@cobwebinfo.com.

All entries must be received by 30 September. Full competition rules are available on request.

To promote your products or services in EnterQuest Classifieds,
call us on (0191) 461 8000 or e-mail enterquest@cobwebinfo.com.

Also from EnterQuest's publisher EnterQuest readers can receive a free copy of our sister publication, Better Business magazine. Simply send us an e-mail with your name and address with 'EQ magazine offer' in the subject box to enterquest@cobwebinfo.com. The UK Small Business Marketing Bible contains hundreds of tips and tactics for boosting your sales using proven marketing strategies that work no matter what product or service you sell.

Visit www.enterprisequest.com to access all back issues of the EnterQuest bulletin. If you have any feedback or suggestions for us to make this service more relevant please e-mail your comments to enterquest@cobwebinfo.com.

If you wish to discontinue your subscription to EnterQuest please click on the 'SafeUnsubscribe' link at the bottom of the bulletin.

Remember that we guarantee never to sell or give your e-mail address to anyone else.

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.