Do Business Well

Purchase History

<FIRST PURCHASE DATE, LAST PURCHASE DATE, PURCHASE FREQUENCY, PURCHASE VALUE (ACTUAL PURCHASES OR AVERAGE PURCHASE), PRODUCTS PURCHASED, PURCHASE DRIVER (WEBSITE “WALK-ON,” EMAIL RESPONSE, BANNER CLICK-THROUGH … )>

Because past purchases are among the leading predictors of future interest, you should use the information contained in the customer’s purchase history to determine the timing, offer, targeting, and personalization of your promotional communication. If, for example, you bought book from BarnesandNoble, you’ve probably been identified as someone who’s interested in high-tech business books, which means there’s a good chance you’d be interested in Geoffrey Moore’s Inside the Tornado. Continue Reading »

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Whenever we talk to people about why they don’t start their own business, the most common excuse we hear is, “I don’t have the money”. Well, if you are truly committed to starting your own business, you’ll find a way or make a way of getting the money. But here’s the problem: All our lives we are encouraged and taught to invest in CASH ABSORBERS and not CASH GENERATORS.

CASH ABSORBERS are those expenses that absorb your cash like the Karoo in the rain. An example of a CASH ABSORBER is a brand new motor car. First of all, it costs a fortune. Then the day you drive it out of the showroom it loses approximately 20% of its value. The interest rate makes the monthly payments even more exorbitant, not to mention the cost of insurance, maintenance and, of course, the essential state of the art sound system. This car will absorb your cash like a vampire around your throat. Or to put it a tamer way, you are committing yourself to a substantial negative return on investment. To tell you the truth, you are committing yourself to a lifetime of financial struggle. Continue Reading »

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Occasionally, every manager must use his or her authority to take over a difficult situation without explanation or discussion. At such times, pulling rank is not only acceptable, but necessary. Dr. Leland Forst, a vice president at the New York City office of the management consulting firm, A.T. Kearney, suggests scenarios when this arbitrary use of power may be called for:

• When you alone can save the day. “Sometimes the manager has information, know-how or authority that the employee lacks,” says Forst.

Example: A subordinate is making a presentation to a client group and you see them becoming uneasy or antagonistic. By virtue of your relationship with the client, your knowledge of confidential information, or just your position (people are generally less inclined to challenge a senior person), you can override the employee and steer things back on course. Continue Reading »

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Mergers can be tough, as any employee who has survived one can testify. James C. Cabrera, president of the outplacement-counseling firm of Drake Beam Morin Inc., in New York City, and contributor to The Merger/Acquisition Consultant newsletter, finds that, even for employees who keep their jobs, anxiety remains high. He says that with a merger a new entity suddenly exists which is unfamiliar to everyone. Things are turned upside down, and the three basic things all employees feel entitled to know—what is expected of them, how their performance will be measured and how they will be rewarded—become unanswered questions. For a time—and it may be a long time—there may simply be no answers.

In this sort of reorganization, you and your employees are likely to be left hanging, wondering whether your positions will be eliminated, restructured or combined; whether you will be demoted, promoted or asked to relocate. Continue Reading »

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You can also use the Internet and commercial online services to launch your BBS. For example, you can put the connection software for your BBS on a Web site. If someone is interested in joining the BBS, they download the software from your site and install it on their computer. This saves you the trouble and cost of mailing a disk to new subscribers.

In general, the proactive approach is the best way to get a BBS started. If you want people to connect electronically to your company, go to their home or office and set up the system on their computer. You need to be proactive because many people do not have the motivation or the inclination to install new capabilities on their computer. But once the software is set up, they will use the BBS to communicate with your company. So get out there and be proactive.

The Ongoing Process

Following the successful launch of your program, keep it exciting and vibrant by constantly changing the content, and look for new _opportunities. Unlike traditional marketing, digital marketing is an ongoing interactive process. Continue Reading »

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Web site display advertising: You can place an interactive display ad on one of the popular Web sites. For example, you can place an advertisement on the Yahoo search engine. When people access Yahoo, they see your ad. If they want to see your site, they simply click on the ad. The cost of running a Web ad can range from a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands. It all depends on the amount of traffic generated by the host site. As I’ve contended a few times, I believe this kind of online advertising should be billed based solely on results. In this case, you should only pay for the number of visits you receive from the host site. If you don’t get any visits, you pay nothing; if you get thousands of visits, you pay more. If you can, negotiate this kind of results-only program.

Web site links and pointers: To generate traffic on your Web site, you want people to discover your existence on other sites. For example, if you have a site about fishing supplies, you want to be listed on all major sites frequented by anglers. Continue Reading »

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Market leaders choose their customers very carefully because they know that they will be judged by them: Nothing says more about a business than its customers. Unfortunately, conventional wisdom can’t help in this task. The first rule in sales is, go after the low-hanging fruit—that is, the easy-sell customers—rather than clamber for what is hard to reach. But this is good advice only if there is a plethora of fruit on the low branches, and in the era of customer scarcity, the pickings are getting slimmer. The real plums are in the high branches.

Market leaders deliberately pursue some of the most difficult and demanding clients they can find because they know that satisfying these customers will stretch their abilities and help them become better at what they do. I call these stretch customers.

But not all tough customers are desirable matches. Some of them are simply the wrong ones to have because their demands don’t play to a company’s strengths. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are undesirable for other suppliers. Picky, critical eaters who want personal service could be ideal stretch customers for a swanky full- service restaurant but a very bad match for McDonald’s. Continue Reading »

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Genie was launched in 2001 as the world’s first exclusively online mobile service. Genie’s 1J K mobile service operates on the BT Cellnet network and is therefore now part of 02. BT Cellnet is one of the largest UK mobile networks, with over 8 million customers, and offers 99 per cent coverage of the UK population. Genie is the UK’s leading mobile Internet company, with over 3 million registered users of the Genie Internet portal. It provides free text messaging and free access to WAP. The mobile Internet is the technology that allows users to view information, play games and manage personal email via a WAP phone. WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol and is the worldwide standard enabling WAP mobile phones to access the Mobile Internet. Genie Mobile Internet provides a number of services available on WAP phones: Continue Reading »

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The quarters have an old industrial feel, with gritty exteriors that belie the company’s sleek online identity’ (1999: 3). Many other ‘new economy’ employees work in call centres that have been dubbed ‘the new sweatshops’ because of pressure to work as quickly as possible under electronic surveillance that monitors, for example, the number of customer emails responded to per hour. In these service-intensive organizations, the power is in the hands of lower-level, front-line employees, upon whose handling of customer services managers must depend for the achievement of organizational objectives. As Piercy notes, ‘Too many employees who deal directly with customers are damaging the product, service or corporate brand every time they open their mouths’ (2000: 187). This means that intend marketing needs Continue Reading »

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We will now consider more specifically the benefits and drawbacks of ethics to online marketing:

Ethical benefits

• Online marketing has the potential to remove prejudice and barriers, as transactions are carried out via disembodied computer screens.

The lack of need for a physical presence in a particular place allows the inclusion of people whose physical needs make working in an office environment difficult.

Internet-based business activities are opening up markets, thereby improving information provision and freedom of speech about different products, including non-corporate information (see Hamelink 2000: 139-164). For example, typing ‘Nike’ into a search engine also finds sites about Nike products alleging human rights abuses by the company. Continue Reading »

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