RESOURCE CENTRE

Your EnterQuest Bulletin - Issue 179

Thought for the week: "The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem." Theodore Rubin

• Why sales copy that is specific is also believable
• Avoiding corporate ID fraud
• Top ten...business blogs

If you have any questions about your business idea or target market, or need help tracking down a grant, subsidy or business support in your local area, then send an e-mail with your query and location to the EnterQuest information team and we'll do our best to help.

Send your question to enterquest@cobwebinfo.com.

To access over 800 factsheets, guides and small business reports, go to www.scavenger.net.

Why sales copy that is specific is also believable

Whatever it is that your business sells or intends to sell, the most important objective of your advertising or sales copy is to get the attention of your prospects in the most compelling way.

But that task in itself is often beyond the grasp and experience of the majority of small business owners and marketers.

The mistake that most people make when writing sales headlines and descriptive copy is simply to use superlatives and generalities that make no impression on their prospects at all. Commonly used examples of this include things like:

"Quality service"
"Lowest prices"
"The best products"
"Superb food"

The problem with using advertising statements like these is that at best, all they do is claim the minimum that a customer or prospect will be expecting. They are all also claims that absolutely anybody (and usually almost everybody) else is using at the same time, so you have no opportunity to stand out and get noticed.

But even worse than this, the use of superlatives can often do harm to your business. Over-egging your claims may suggest to your prospects that you and your business have a tendency to brag or exaggerate, and will possibly be loose with the truth.

Now, of course, this doesn't mean people will automatically assume that the supreme claims and exaggerations used in your sales pitch aren't just the natural passion you have for your product or service. But consumers are canny enough to look elsewhere and shop around to make comparisons with businesses selling similar products and making similar claims.

So the point here is that making supreme claims or general statements about your product might not get you labelled as a liar, but will almost certainly incline your prospects to be circumspect or even suspicious about your claims.

The business owners who succeed in their marketing and hence make more sales than their competitors manage to attract the attention of their prospects by using advertising headlines and copy that makes specific, benefit-oriented claims about their products and services.

You see, people who see or hear a specific claim about a product or service are more inclined to believe it to be true, whereas a general or superlative claim may not be regarded as being believable by your prospects.

Specific facts, figures and qualified statements not only tend to be harder to disregard but they also tend to get noticed and grab the attention of the audience you're striving to reach.

In other words, using specific, benefit-oriented claims will magnify the attraction of your advert headline, sales pitch or marketing message.

Making a sales pitch that not only sounds interesting and exciting but is also factual and believable will considerably increase your response rate.

For example:

• Instead of generally claiming you have "the fastest blind fitting service", you should state more specifically "blinds will be fitted within two working days of an order".
• Rather than blandly claiming "prices have been reduced", which may not get noticed or believed, you should claim that "prices have been reduced by 20% until the end of the month".
• Making a meaningless statement such as saying your product is "the most powerful weed killer" will not be anywhere near as compelling and believable as specifying that the product "kills all weeds within 12 hours, and is harmless to pets, birds and insects".

If your specific claims are honestly made and you can genuinely back them up, you will see an improvement in your sales results.

The main point to make is this: if there are specific claims about your product or service that have customer-oriented benefits attached, and these claims are worth making, make sure you do so in a compelling and interesting way.

After all, it costs exactly the same to buy ad space or print a sales leaflet regardless of whether you make claims that are superlative and general or are heavily customer-benefit specific. But the value of getting the right response over getting little or no response from your claims is priceless.

For hundreds of practical tips and techniques about finding new customers, increasing sales and growing your business, check out the UK Small Business Marketing Bible.

Avoiding corporate ID fraud

If you thought registering your venture as a limited company would mean that only you were able to trade under that business name, then think again.

Company identity fraud is one of the latest scams affecting small businesses. Bogus callers pretending to be Companies House officials have been able to set up fake companies and steal goods and services, after obtaining secure authentication codes for Companies House files from bona fide business owners.

Federation of Small Businesses chairman David Croucher told Out-Law.com that "Company identity fraud, though still mercifully rare, is on the increase and can go undetected for a long time. When it does happen it can be devastating for small firms and in the worst cases, businesses can go bust because of it."

To prevent this happening to your business:

• Look at the Companies House website and familiarise yourself with their advice on hijacking by fraudsters.
• Use Companies House's PROtected Online Filing (PROOF) service to file company paperwork only electronically, thus reducing the risk of someone being able to pose as you.
• Look after your business data and be especially careful of how you dispose of old computers that may still have sensitive information stored on their hard disks. See this article from Information Week for tips on how to do this.
• Don't give private information to anyone, and certainly not to people making unsolicited calls - Companies House will never contact small businesses by phone asking for authentication codes.
• Read the advice on the Home Office's Identity Theft website for practical tips on ensuring that you don't fall victim to this type of scam.

You can check out our guide to choosing and registering a business name for more details on how to protect the name you've selected for your business.

Business blogs

More and more small business owners are visiting and writing on blog sites as a way of making contacts, networking online, keeping up to date with developments in their sector, and even promoting their businesses.

The current top ten business blogs, according to Blogtopsites.com, range from a forum focusing on the stock market picks of key business gurus, to one in which entrepreneurs can share general tips on success in a range of business areas:

1) GuruFocus.com
2) AllFinancialMatters
3) StocksandBlogs.com
4) True Ratings Board
5) Fat Pitch Financials
6) Successful Blog
7) The Art of Growing Money
8) TriplePundit
9) The Bull Trader Blog
10) PharmaGossip

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

Here is this week's idea:

• African/Caribbean Bakery

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 the term 'quixotic' means?

a) unrealistic, not practical
b) unique, one of a kind
c) contradictory
d) essential, mandatory

Answer at the end of the Bulletin.

Why making mistakes is good for you

If you want to get ahead in business, making a mistake can actually help you. Or so a group of American entrepreneurs claim - because they all say they learnt valuable lessons from their mistakes. Ranging from a lingerie shop to a bakery owner, they've been telling Business Week how the real world taught them lessons.

Petrol has plummeted again

Another round of cuts is on the way at the pumps as the supermarkets look like reducing the price of fuel again. Nationally, motorists paid an average of 89.28p a litre for petrol on Friday - around 9p less than they were month earlier - while diesel was an average of 94.35p a litre, compared with 99.5p in August. The AA Motoring Trust says this is the biggest fall in petrol prices since it started keeping records 18 years ago, Ananova reported.

Meanwhile, Petrolprices.com is a useful site that aims to help save small business motorists up to £50 per month on their fuel bills, by providing details of the cheapest prices at the pumps in their areas.

Food trends are going back to the future

They called it the decade taste forgot, but now the 1970s is giving the next generation a taste of something different. Storecupboard staple Smash is making a comeback, with a new healthier recipe and extra flavours to tempt the tastebuds. The dried potato, which is reconstituted with boiling water and is perhaps best-known for its adverts featuring robot Martians, is joining a host of other 1970s food and drink on the comeback trail. Like Spam, Blue Nun wine and sweet vermouth Cinzano, Smash didn't disappear from the shelves but its relaunch is expected to capitalise on the 30 to 45-year-old age group's love of nostalgia, The Guardian reported.

Find out why websites fail

This week's PC World has a candid summary of 25 of the worst websites - in terms of issues like usability, design and business idea. The problems with each site are succinctly summarised, with an explanation of why it doesn't hit the mark - so the article includes some useful tips for budding website owners.

Tips for responsible business

The Small Business Consortium has a range of practical information, how-to guides and toolkits offering realistic, achievable and practical examples of how your small businesses can improve its environmental performance and thus reap some of the business benefits of being more socially responsible.

Tools for calculating financial performance

The Insolvency Helpline, as well as offering a range of information about dealing with bankruptcy and financial problems, also provides a series of calculator tools to help you work out various aspects of your venture's financial performance. Available resources include a basic financial health calculator, a stock turnover calculator and a gross profit calculator - simply select from the list on the left-hand side of the page.

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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.