by Kyle Lacy - January 27th, 2012
If you’re running a small business of nearly any variety, it’s incredibly important to understand who your niche market is. Unless you’re one of the Wal-Marts or Amazons of the world, you definitely do have a niche and being able to define and cultivate it will help you with improving your web analytics, increased sales revenue, and robust brand management. Here are 3 tips for catering to your niche through social media:
Offer promotions, contests and incentives. Creating a verdant garden of discount possibilities, savings, and incentives is one of the best ways to cater to your niche. In short, people like getting stuff for free. They also like to compete for free things, so hosting contests on your social media sites, such as Facebook or Twitter, is a great idea for creating an online stir. Have a logo design contest, or a viral video contest and host it through YouTube. Inviting user generated art and design can be a tremendous boon. Also, promote your brand on Foursquare, where you can offer discounts on products in exchange for check-ins.
Promote valuable independent resources. Customers respect a company or site that is not afraid to refer to others. For example, if you’re running an online education forum and your site lacks decent tutorials, you should provide links to great sites that do have tutorials such as the Khan Academy or Open Culture. Not only will this enhance your community, it can lead to you getting linkbacks, blogroll features, and considerable street cred. There’s always the opportunity that later on you will be to partner with these other sites in a way that is financially agreeable to both of you. In short, put your money where your mouth is—if you claim to be “the leading authority on…” don’t tolerate obvious gaps in your knowledge base.
Use media effectively. Consider having a YouTube video of the day that is relevant to your niche. See the previous tip about viral video contests. Many companies use online video as vehicle for ingenius marketing campaigns in which the consumer ends up doing your marketing for you. Or consider having a photo contest through Tumblr, Flickr, or Imgur. Beyond just video and photos, investing in some research as to what kinds of visual aesthetics your niche prefers can go a long way. You don’t have to get too psychological about it, but your website and company ethos should appeal visually and emotionally to the demands of your community. For example, if your niche is science fiction, a general space-age aesthetic wouldn’t be too cheesy would make your fans feel at home.
Appealing to your niche market is one of the most important elements of running a small business. Investing considerable effort and resources into defining who your niche is and how you will reach them is an excellent idea for the present and future.
kyle lacy
ExactTarget
(blog) www.kylelacy.com
(join) www.smallerindiana.com
(tweet) kyleplacy
Tags: indianapolis small business, Kyle Lacy, Niche marketing, Small business tips, Social Media
Posted in Business Profiles, Indianapolis Small Business, Marketing, Social Media |
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by T. Ray Phillips - January 26th, 2012
Presented by T. Ray Phillips
MMS, Inc., a computer service business, had survived recent industry turbulence through the persistent efforts of its owners, Ralph McMillan and Janet Shaw. In fact, MMS had enjoyed good cash flow for the past three years and its future looked rosy. Successfully meeting these challenges made Ralph (age 59) more anxious than ever to leave the business and Janet (age 48) more than ready for Ralph to leave. But neither owner had a clear idea of how to proceed, who to ask for guidance or even how to take the first step.
Janet and Ralph had to find the starting line before they could run the course to the successful dissolution of their partnership.
Ralph’s Tasks
First, Ralph must assess his income needs and timing of his exit. He must determine how much of the purchase price he needs (or wants) on the day he leaves and how much he is willing to receive after he leaves (a Retirement Needs analysis). This is a very different question from how much his interest is worth yet the questions are related because the cash Ralph needs must be attainable from the sale of his interest.
Second, Ralph must obtain an independent valuation of his ownership interest.
Note: Ralph is unwilling to leave unless he exits with full value for his ownership interest (hence the need for the valuation) and unless that value is enough to meet his retirement needs (hence the need for a retirement income needs analysis).
Janet’s Tasks
Janet wants to balance the risk/liability she and the business will assume in Ralph’s buy-out with the opportunity for continued growth in the value of business interest. Since Janet is likely to be unwilling to buy Ralph’s interest—if doing so puts her (or the business) at too great a financial risk—she must secure a professional’s projection of the company’s future cash flow.
This cash flow projection with enable Janet to determine if the business will likely have enough cash flow (after Ralph leaves) to finance the purchase of Ralph’s interest without stifling the growth and prosperity of the business.
Ralph’s Exit Plan Design
Ralph’s Exit Plan should be designed to:
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Tags: Exit planning, financial strategies, indianapolis small business
Posted in Business Tips, Expert Columns, Financial strategies, Indianapolis Small Business, T. Ray Phillips |
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by Dan Lacy - January 25th, 2012
Go back to San Diego in 1954, a group of local businessmen approach an attorney, Sol Price, looking for investors in a new retail concept: a large warehouse-style store featuring department-store-quality products at lower prices. The idea they proposed was that selling a lot of goods in a no-frills setting could be a new and profitable niche in the retail world. They called the store Fed-Mart, and over the next two decades the company grew into a successful regional chain in the southwest.
A German retailer purchased Fed-Mart with plans to make it into a leading national retailer, but failed. Sol Price, a top manager with Fed-Mart, and his son Robert were now unemployed. Mulling around new ideas, they came up with a membership-based warehouse retail operation and called Price Club. They opened their first store in San Diego in 1976 in an old manufacturing building built by Howard Hughes. Several Fed-Mart managers came to work at Price Club including Jim Sinegal, who started at Fed-Mart unloading mattresses when he was 18 years old.
This bit of history is important to this story because at Fed-Mart, key relationships were formed and a set of operating principles for running the company
were clearly defined and spelled out by their president at Sol Price. They included pricing, displays, policies for handling customer complaints, rules for advertising and more. The very first item on the list: “Customers come first, integrity is the cornerstone upon which we much build consumer confidence that creates customer loyalty.”
A retailer in Seattle was interested in the Price Club model, flew their son Jeff Brotman down to check it out and he came back with glowing reports and there was nothing like it in the northwest. The Seattle group looked for a CEO and chose Jim Sinegal who agreed to manage the new start-up. In 1983, the group scraped together $7.5 million from investors to open their first store in an industrial area of south Seattle.
Fast forward to 28 years as Jim Sinegal announces his retirement as the CEO of the third-largest retailer in the U.S. – Costco. It has $89 billion in revenue, 64 million members with 600 locations including 81 in Canada, 32 in Mexico, 22 in England, 9 in Japan, 7 in South Korea, 8 in Taiwan, 4 in Puerto Rico and 3 in
Australia.
Jim Sinegal ingrained five simple and down-to-earth business principals into the Costo’s corporate culture that made the company what it is today. The following are excerpts of these principals:
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Tags: business evaluation, business tips, Financial growth, indianapolis small business
Posted in Articles, Business Tips, Indianapolis Small Business, Sales |
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by Cindy Hartman - January 24th, 2012
Though not a favorite topic for anyone to discuss, we wanted to share the importance of preparing a home inventory now rather than leaving that task to your executor.
Estate Settlement
Being an executor of an estate is a time-consuming, emotionally draining experience. Most people choose an adult child to take on those responsibilties. Have you considered what you can do to make this easier for him or her?
One required task will be to compile an inventory of the estate’s assets. Consider how difficult this will be for your executor as he or she prepares this document. Emotions aside, they will also need to find the time to document the items and assign a market value to each. One executor stated that he sat for hours staring at a blank piece of paper. He didn’t know where to begin, what he should list, or how to know what value to place on each item. Most prominent was the sadness he felt when thinking about looking through everything in the house. Additionally, he was from out of state and knew it would require him to be absent from his job for a few more days. Having the inventory professionally prepared addressed all of these issues.
How can you prevent this from happening to your adult children/executor?
Estate Planning
Creating an inventory of your personal property now will ease the estate settlement process for your executor. At your death, the inventory proces will have already been taken care of it. The only changes necessary will be making any recent updates and changing the replacement value of each item to the fair market value. That will be a very small task compared to compiling the entire inventory.
Whether you are elderly or just entering your adult life, an inventory is a living document that is extremely important to have prepared. For now, to ensure a maximized insurance claim after a loss. And for later, to ease the stress your executor will face.
Cindy Hartman
Hartman Inventory, LLC
317-501-6818
cindy@hartmaninventory.com
Tags: Estate inventory, Estate Planning, Estate settlement, Home inventory, indianapolis small business
Posted in Blog, Indianapolis Small Business |
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