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Can you describe what business you are in?

Now that's just stating the bleedin' obvious, most of you are no doubt screaming at your screen. Well, it may seem obvious to you, but many people overlook the importance of this question when planning to start a new venture, and this can also be said of many established small business traders.

What we're getting at is that many small business owners cannot clearly describe exactly what business they are going into, and exactly who it is aimed at. This can give you a number of problems right from the start, because without careful definition and focus, you will launch your venture with little or no obvious direction, which can be misunderstood by a number of key stakeholders in your enterprise, such as:

You - to keep everything in focus and pointing in the right direction.
Your employees - to understand where the business is heading and to deal with customers effectively.
Your potential investors - to help them decide whether to back your enterprise.
Your prospective customers - most important of all, so it is clear what your business can offer them.

Let's take starting up a restaurant as an illustration of what we're getting at.

Simply being able to state that you are going into the restaurant business is just not enough. This doesn't tell anybody very much about your enterprise.

Consider two different restaurants on the same street of a small market town.

Restaurant A provides good quality, local food, at competitive prices in a family-friendly environment (with kids' menus, high chairs, and a nice bright and breezy atmosphere). Restaurant B provides a more exclusive menu, with a fine wine list and candlelit tables for the more discerning customer seeking a first-class culinary experience.

Along comes a family with three kids all aged under 10 and a limited budget, and a middle-aged couple out to celebrate a special occasion in a quiet, romantic atmosphere.

Which restaurant will they choose? Customers should be in no doubt about what each restaurant provides, and the restaurant owners should be in no doubt about the target groups they are aiming at. Each one will have quite different marketing strategies and messages, and will offer different benefits to its target audience in terms of image, staff, experience and prices.

Take a couple of steps back and look at your own enterprise or idea. If you can't describe it in specific terms like in the example above, then you need to rethink your business idea, and refocus on your core purpose, mission and target customer groups.

Have you ever noticed how many brands have the word 'love', or have associations with love intertwined with their packaging, logo, slogan or general marketing campaign?

Just think about it for a minute. McDonald's - we're loving it, allegedly. Honda recently did an 'It Must be Love' advertising campaign, and Toyota's 'You could love it too much' car ads are familiar screen fodder. And there are hundreds more successful big-brand advertising campaigns over the years that have used love as their cornerstone.

Why? There must be a reason that large corporation after large corporation uses the concept of love in their promotional efforts so regularly. And experts at advertising behemoth, Saatchi & Saatchi, believe that it's to do with how emotionally attached consumers get to their favourite brands. They've developed a tool to quantify the emotional 'pull' of a brand, and the website (http://www.lovemarks.com) provides a fascinating insight into how emotional consumers are about certain products and services.

So this is all very interesting, but how does it apply to small businesses? Well, you should always aim to be passionate about your own products and services, as this is the best way to inspire your customers to love them, too. And you should make a point of keeping track of what the big brands are doing so that you can catch the latest trends and stay ahead of the competition. But it may also be worth trying to inject some love into your own brands. How? By talking to your best customers, and finding out what they do and don't love about you, and by using your promotional literature to communicate these positive responses, as well as to put your products and services into the context of a broader experience that will help customers improve their lives in some way.

You can read more about Lovemarks' most popular brands, and participate in community discussion on the topic of branding, at http://www.lovemarks.com.

The UK Small Business Marketing Bible contains hundreds more tips and tactics for boosting your sales using proven marketing strategies that work no matter what product or service you sell.

Let's be honest, looking up the law on Her Majesty's Stationery Office's website is wonderfully handy - if you're a lawyer. For the rest of us who aren't fascinated by the details, the original text of legislation is somewhat less than helpful. What we really need to know is how, in practical terms, the law affects us in our businesses - whether we need to provide headphones for someone working on a lathe, what toilet facilities we'll need to add before opening to the public, and so on.

First off, a round of applause for the Health and Safety Executive (http://www.hse.gov.uk), who index their leaflets by industry and by topic, and explain things in detail for everyone from woodworkers to restaurateurs.

Next up, the DTI. Well, you could knock us down with a feather, because despite our previous criticisms, their site is rather helpful for legal guidance, particularly for retailers wanting to get to grips with consumer law and competition policy. You can view it at http://www.dti.gov.uk/ccp, and there's also a useful section on employment law at http://www.dti.gov.uk/er which covers forthcoming changes as well as existing policy.

The Information Commissioner has a small business section here: http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/eventual.aspx?id=6111&expmovie=1. It doesn't let you skip around the site very easily, but the main thing is it's clear, and it's handy for checking your mailing lists and records are legal.

And finally, you can visit our own site at http://www.ukredtapebuster.com. It has hundreds of guides to the laws affecting small businesses, alerts that tell you when the law's about to change, frequently asked questions and practical scenarios that you can relate to your own everyday business experience.

Last week we defined a few of the new software terms that are being bandied around by techies - things like shareware, spyware and malware.

So now you know what it all means - but how confident are you that any of the stuff that's available for free online - such as shareware and freeware - is any good to you or your business?

People tend to shy away nowadays from any software that's available for free, because they worry that it will be packed with annoying ads or, worse still, plagued by spyware that will secretly monitor your online activities. But there's plenty of free software out there, either available free of charge for good or on a short-term, trial basis, which can be extremely helpful and practical for your everyday business needs.

This is something we're going to be looking at in more detail over the coming weeks, and we're putting together a directory of the best freeware, shareware and 'cheapware' - our own term for software that costs so little that it might as well be free - that we think is useful, practical and safe for business users.

There's an excellent article online at http://www.small-business-software.net/benefits-to-shareware.htm which tells you a bit more about how shareware works and explains some of its benefits. You can also check out http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/biztools for a guide to buying business software, product news and reviews.

Finally, visit http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/collection/0,collid,1324,tk,wb072604x,00.asp for a breakdown of the best shareware available in 2004, according to the Shareware Industry Association.

a) an electronic reminder
b) a new e-mail worm
c) an idea that replicates itself virally
d) a website traffic tracking program

Answer at the end of Bulletin.

It's not only identity theft and card fraud that worry consumers shopping online these days. A US report has found that despite growing concern over well-publicised fraud issues like identity theft, more than 50% of consumers surveyed were afraid their details would be supplied to third parties, thus generating unwanted spam. A further 30% feared that they would never receive the goods they'd paid for, and 20% had anxieties about the potential for a merchant to debit a higher charge than the price advertised on-screen.

The UK Government has launched a new website which offers advice and information for victims of identity theft, as well as tips on how to avoid becoming one. The site aims to act as a one-stop shop to help tackle a problem that now costs the UK £1.3 billion each year.

Access the site at:
http://www.identity-theft.org.uk

Get more details about consumers' latest fears at:
http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=12179

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