Small Business Success Index 5

Index Score^*		Grade
SBSI INDEX	73	C-
Capital Access	67	D+
Marketing & Innovation	65	D
Workforce	76	C
Customer Service	88	B+
Computer Technology	75	C
Compliance	92	A-
*Index score is calculated on a 1-100 scale.

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Small Biz Resource Tip: Strutta

January 26th, 2012 :: Maria Valdez Haubrich

Strutta

Starting a business page on Facebook is easy enough, but getting people to come back to it again and again is another story. One way to increase traffic is to offer promotions and hold contests on your Facebook site, and Strutta can make that happen. You can upload your own photos, videos, audios and text to create a promotion; then consumers can share your promotion and encourage others to participate. You can use the promotion on your website, too, and Strutta also includes an app that makes it easy to spread the word via Twitter or Facebook. Plus you can capture important data from the customers you’ve engaged.

Tags: small business marketing, small business resources, social media
Posted in Marketing, Resources, Small Business, small business, Social Media, social media | No Comments »

What Do Consumers Expect When They Engage With Your Business on Social Media?

January 20th, 2012 :: Rieva Lesonsky

By Rieva Lesonsky

What consumers want when they engage with your brand on social media is often very different than what you think they want, according to a new study by The CMO Council and Lithium. The study, “Variance in the Social Brand Experience,” polled more than 1,300 consumers and more than 100 marketers and found that, by and large, businesses aren’t giving consumers what they want.

More than half (55 percent) of consumers say they interact with brands on social networks primarily to learn about new products. But the biggest group (65 percent) do so to enter promotions or contests or to play games. About one-third use social media to share positive experiences with a company, and 25 percent use social to connect with other fans of a brand.

Consumers have high expectations when they interact with businesses on social media. They expect to get answers to questions or complaints within 24 hours, with 22 percent of consumers seeking instant responses and 19 percent seeking a response within a few hours. As for what they expect to get in return for following or liking your business:

Exclusive offers (67 percent)
Games and contests (65 percent)
Opportunity to interact with other customers (60 percent)

While consumers are focused on offers, games and chances to get a reward, marketers, in contrast, think consumers “like” their brands just because they like the content they find online, to get news and information about the brand, or to make their voices heard. Just 27 percent thought customers followed their brands in order to get special offers—and only 22 percent of marketers actually offer special promotions or deals via social media.

What’s the takeaway? Sure, your fans and followers want to learn more about your company, and they do want to connect with their fellow fans. But as the old advertising truism goes, their biggest concern when liking you on social media is “What’s in it for me?” Unless your social media strategy offers something of concrete value to them, you’re likely to find your fan base becoming less and less engaged, as they move to competitors who give them more of what they’re looking for.

Image by Flickr user birgerking (Creative Commons)

Tags: small business marketing, social media
Posted in Marketing, Small Business, small business, Social Media, social media | 1 Comment »

Group Deals Are Growing Strong

January 13th, 2012 :: Rieva Lesonsky

By Rieva Lesonsky

Has your business ever offered a group deal via a site such as Groupon or LivingSocial? Despite some reports of backlash against the programs, new data from MerchantCircle’s 7th survey of U.S. small business owners shows that group deals are growing steadily in popularity among small businesses. As of December 2011, nearly 12 percent of local merchants reported they had offered a daily deal at least once. That’s an increase of one-third (33 percent) since June 2011.

What’s more, three-fourths of respondents said they would offer a daily deal again, and 61 percent said they found deals effective in acquiring new customers, while 37 percent said deals were profitable for them.

However, not everyone is thrilled with daily deals. One-fourth of respondents said they wouldn’t offer a group deal again, with the top reasons being:

42 percent said it was not effective for customer acquisition
36 percent said it was too costly
34 percent said they lost money on the deal

When businesses are deciding what daily deals service to use, here are their top considerations:

Cost: 64 percent
Local targeting: 57 percent
The ability to reach a large audience: 52 percent

While Groupon and LivingSocial continue to lead the daily deal game, MerchantCircle surmises these two may face increased pressure from Google Offers in 2012. In the survey, about one in five local merchants who have offered a group deal said they had used Google Offers since it launched in mid-2011. And 32 percent of merchants planned to use Google Offers for their next daily deal, as opposed to 26 percent who plan to use Groupon and 16 percent who plan to use LivingSocial.

In addition, Google Offers had the highest retention rate of all major daily deals providers, with 66 percent of merchants that had used Google Offers planning to use it again. In contrast, just 41 percent of merchants that had used Groupon and LivingSocial to offer deals say they plan to use these services again.

But Google Offers isn’t the only contender out there. Nearly half (43 percent) of local merchants have used other, specialized deal providers.

Customers love daily deals, and increasingly, merchants are taking to them, too. Have you used daily deals in your business?

Image by Flickr user Roger Price (Creative Commons)

Tags: small business marketing
Posted in Marketing, Small Business, small business, Social Media, social media | No Comments »

The New Risk to Your Business From Employees’ Social Media Use

December 28th, 2011 :: Rieva Lesonsky

By Rieva Lesonsky

I know you’ve heard about the risks to your business’s reputation from employees using social media irresponsibly. Whether it’s an employee who gives a flippant response on your company’s Facebook page, accidentally reveals future business strategies or posts criticism of your company on his or her own personal accounts, there are many ways social media can go haywire. But now there’s a new worry: Employees who run social media accounts for your business could quit your company—and take their “followers” with them when they enter competitive businesses.

CFO.com recently reported on a California case in which an employee who managed a company Twitter account left the company and took the account—and its 17,000 followers—with him. (He just switched the account into his own name.) The company valued the followers at $42,000 and sued the ex-employee for stealing company property and causing “damages to its business, reputation and goodwill, including lost users and user opportunities.”

A federal court denied the employee’s motion to dismiss the suit, which is moving forward. However, the company has some hurdles to jump to prove its case. First, they’ll have to prove they owned the account and went through the proper measures to protect it, such as keeping the password confidential. They’ll also have to prove the monetary value of the account.

With social media being such an informal mode of marketing, it’s easy to see how this type of situation could arise. You have an employee start a Facebook or Twitter account, he or she gets good at it and catches on—and you never put anything in writing as to your ownership of the account or restrictions on it. CFO.com notes that social media can now be considered part of a company’s “goodwill” and, as such, needs to be valued and protected like any other form of goodwill.

CFO.com suggests three steps to protect your business from such a situation:

Review all the social media accounts your company uses and which employees manage them.
Update your written social media policies (you do have them, right?) to reflect your ownership of the accounts and set parameters.
Finally, regularly monitor and measure the ROI on your social media accounts to that, if worse comes to worst, you’ll be able to put a monetary value on the accounts.

Your own attorney can give you specific advice on protecting your accounts. As social media becomes an ever more important part of a small business’s marketing mix, cases like these will only grow in number. Take the right steps to make sure you never find yourself in the middle of one.

Image by Flickr user David Drexler (Creative Commons)

Tags: business law, small business, social media, Workforce
Posted in Business Law, Compliance, Marketing, Small Business, small business, Social Media, social media, Technology, Workforce | 1 Comment »

Being Listed on Yelp Gives Small Businesses an Edge

December 23rd, 2011 :: Rieva Lesonsky

By Rieva Lesonsky

Is your small business on local review and ratings sites such as Yelp.com? If not, you could be missing out in a big way. In fact, a Harvard Business School professor recently did a study which showed that being on Yelp actually gave small independent businesses an advantage over larger, better-known chains.

In the study, reported on Harvard Business Review’s blog, Michael Luca reviewed records on all 3,582 restaurants in Seattle between 2003 and 2009. He found that when independent restaurants’ Yelp ratings rose, the restaurants’ sales also increased. The more good reviews the restaurant earned, the more effect reviews had on sales.

Luca says his data suggest that if every independent restaurant in Seattle was on Yelp, the result would be a shift in revenues with the average big chain restaurant seeing a 5 percent sales decline. In other words, by making potential customers more aware of independent restaurants, Yelp can attract attention to them and away from the bigger, more familiar chains.

“Although my research focused on restaurants, it’s likely that Yelp and other consumer-review sites are helping (or have the potential to help) independent businesses in a variety of industries, from retailers to tax preparers to tutors to dental practices,” Luca wrote, adding that he believes the most dramatic changes would occur in industries where consumers are excited about writing reviews and where traditional advertising is expensive.

I find this fascinating, especially since so many independent business owners are intimidated by Yelp. Yes, if your business is on Yelp, you could get some bad reviews, but Luca’s study suggests that the benefits of being on Yelp far outweigh the risks.

Sites like Yelp help consumers spread their knowledge of the products and services you offer and how they differ from the competition. If you’re not already listed on Yelp or other rating and review sites, take some time to learn how they work and get involved. It’s a simple step that could make all the difference in your business’s profile, image—and bank account.

Image by Flickr user Mike Licht (Creative Commons)

Tags: small business marketing, social media
Posted in Marketing, Search Marketing, Small Business, small business, Social Media, social media | No Comments »