I am basically a small business management consultant – but since last 1 decade mostly spend my time in Digital Marketing and Virtual Stores.
This morning, I was thinking about – is the Social Media a social, management or a marketing science because it deals with stuffs like social CRM, social community and ofcourse social marketing.
I could confidently conclude, that its more about social science rather than a management or marketing stuffs – as it brings people more closure, change the way group thinks and it acts exactly like how a community use to be few century ago – where we use to spend time at social gathering and sharing information and ideas.
Summarizing – social media is yet to be discovered and I hope it will bring lots of bounty to small business as well.
Increasing online sales during economy crisis
Many businesses suffers low sales volume during economical crisis Apparently there are ways to keep abreast in agile economy
1. Consumer like to have discount and save money while buying products. Services like Groupon is ideal to boost online sales and bring local visitors to store. There are several such models that attract customers to visit store such as Coupon sites, Local Search where you can offer discounts and social media sites
2. Another way is to keep updating products / services to attract more and more customers. There are atleast 2 things that buyers see while buying online a) Convenient – How easy it is to buy product online ie easy to search or browse catalog, easy to checkout and so on. b) competency – How competent your product / service is because eCommerce has open whole world to offer product and services that compete with local market.
Although there are tough competition but there are opportunity if marketing plans are plan keeping in mind customers’ wishlist
ebusiness advantage are far from the reach for SME
After so much advancement in ebusiness, SME are still to be blessed.
There are so many technical service provider offering ebusiness services, but many of them dont think long term. Recently I was in touch with a service provider they sign a contact with one of our client and I was later appointed as a consultant to finish the project on urgent basis, what I found was that this company was buiding a CMS system and then adding hand coded payment transaction and no backend admin management, I was shocked, I said for this amount a person can buy a ready to use ecommerce software or open a store on yahoo store or some good store.
So, SME got to be smart, there are economical and reliable service provider available, all you got to do is check for the authenticy with the body they are register with a complain if they dont perform well, including me 
settingup online store
Many small and medium businesses are still scared of having their website online, there are many factors that delays the setup and finally force them to close down. Let us discuss some of them
1. The foremost question is of getting the right ecommerce company that would understand product, market and company requirement
2. Finalizing the store design and layout that would have all sorts of requirements like promotion area, product brief, etc.
3. All contents like privacy, terms of use, refund policy and more
4. Taxation, Shipping and other additional cost
5. Addon features like color variance, matching shoes, matching ties and so on
6. Marketing aspect
7. Prompt support from service provider, the ecommerce service provider must be sound to look after hosting, addons, critical payment issue, etc
These are few things that needs to be kept in mind
Cost for online marketing
Unlike offline advertising, online advertising doesnt paysoff quickly, it takes time to generate momentum and the results. Small Businesses would spend huge money on radio, newspaper, magazine and other ads but, they would be scared of spending online. There are many reasons for that. Here we will discuss what issues could
1. Right Marketing Company
Finding a right marketing company is a difficult task, as online advertising request a company to be live, it should change the its dynamics to produce results. So check do the company have some R&D and team to do analysis
2. Selecting the right solutions
Your online marketing company will comeup with short-term and long-term proposal, you got to select the right combination of both to get results in short-term and sustain in long-term. There are many options like CPC, CPA, SEO, EZINE, Social Network and more.
3. Set a budget
Generally business resist to spend on online advertising, and those who spend they rule. As mentioned above, after select a right company, right solution the entrepreneur should be patient and wait for the results to come.
4. Use tools
Ensure to use tools like word-tracker, google analytics and more to keep eye on marketing activities, you can even watch who are coming from which source, using which keywords and finally which source is generating conversion
Finally ensure the site is healthy, and ensure to use small size CRM to track emails, XML to distribute content (data feeds) and other such objects to keep the site updated
Google Apps or Hotmail Live
Sometimes I think competition between 2 mega-firm is good for small business. For instance the serivces offered by Google and MSN. Now businesses can opt for GMAIL or HOTMAIL a world class email along with colloboration.
For GMAIL look at http://www.google.com/a
For MSN look at http://domains.live.com/
Yes there is a difference – I found google to be good as it provide with pop access, I am not sure about customize domain for MSN. But even though it works great, I have put one email on MSN and one on GMAIL and both works great with spam filter, contacts and more
practicing ebusiness
eBusiness is booming like never before, never before it was thought that web would change the way we live. Web tools like wireless, wifi, global call diversion and more. Now business have more opportunity to tap. We have created this blog to share you our experience here.
