Doing Business Online with Transparency

One of the benefits of doing business online is that you have a platform from which you can communicate openly with the world at large. You can engage customers, relay information about your industry, and broadcast details about your business.

You can also practice transparency. Merriam-Webster defines transparent as follows:

2 a : free from pretense or deceit : frank b : easily detected or seen through : obvious c : readily understood d : characterized by visibility or accessibility of information especially concerning business practices.

Let’s examine these definitions and see how they can be applied to doing business online.

Free from Pretense or Deceit

Nothing makes customers more uncomfortable than feeling like they’re being deceived. Empty promises (you too could be filthy rich in less than 90 days!) and impossible guarantees (your website ranked #1 on Google or your money back!) are rife with deceit. Oh sure, it’s possible to get rich in less than 90 days, but statistically, it’s unlikely. And nobody should make Google guarantees unless they are (you guessed it) — Google.

When you practice business ethically, you don’t need to deceive people into buying your products and services. If you’re fulfilling a need or desire that people have, then they will be willing to pay you for it. When you’re doing business online, if you can’t sell your wares honestly, then maybe your wares aren’t worth selling.

Easily Detected or Seen Through

We’ve all visited a business website, trying to contact customer service to get a little help. You click a help button, then a support link, and you end up on a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page. But your question isn’t addressed, and you can’t find a single way to contact the business. There’s no email address, no phone number, not even a mailing address. Somebody doesn’t want to be detected. Why?

Businesses that allow themselves to be easily detected have an advantage over other companies. Consumers are increasingly willing to pay more for the same product if they believe they’ll get better service and support because in the age of phone answering systems and websites, it’s easier than ever for businesses to give their customers the runaround. Transparency means allowing customers to find you and get in touch with you (or a representative of your business).

Readily Understood

When customers come to your website, is it clear what you’re offering? You’ve probably seen commercials for products and wondered, What is that? Maybe you’ve visited a website and had no idea what, exactly, the business behind the site could do for you. When you use industry jargon or complex language, people cannot understand what you’re saying, and they, in turn, will not become your customers. Make an effort to always be clear.

Visibility of Information Concerning Business Practices

Hidden fees and questionable agendas are the bane of consumers everywhere. You think you’re getting the full package, but it turns out you’re just getting some parts. They told you it would cost $50 a month, but then you get the bill and it’s closer to $60. You ordered a product online and the company automatically entered you into a monthly program, so now you’re receiving an ongoing, monthly supply, and your credit card keeps getting charged over and over again.

There are plenty of ethical dilemmas in business that can give business owners or customers pause. Occasionally, situations arise where it’s not completely clear what the morally right course of action should be. In other cases, it’s as clear as day, yet businesses continue to operate in murky waters, and they just keep getting dirtier and dirtier.

This is not a good way to create a buzz about your products. The fact is, consumers talk. People love to complain to each other about how crappy your service is or how shoddy your products are. Or how you duped them. For every ten positive experiences that your customers have, you’re lucky if one of those gets shared. For every ten negative experiences, you can bet all ten will be retold again and again.

Doing Business Online

Transparency online is easy. You tell folks what you’re selling. Show them how your products or services will make their lives better. Promise that you’ll do your best to serve them. Then, meet that promise. If you’re selling a viable product or service, this shouldn’t be a problem.

I’m always confounded by businesses that sneak around and try to pull underhanded tactics on consumers. If you’ve got a worthwhile product, you don’t need to be sneaky. You can be completely transparent.

Doing Business Online with Multiple Income Streams

Most small business have established an online presence. They have a website and are running ad campaigns and using marketing strategies to draw targeted traffic to their sites. But some small businesses are missing online opportunities for diversifying their income streams because their efforts to draw traffic are too targeted or their offerings are too limited.

Think Outside the Box and Beyond the Zip Code

Take, for example, a small nursery with a simple website that provides their location, hours of operation, and listings of plants and flowers that are in season. The only customers they’re targeting are people who live within a reasonable driving distance and who are interested in gardening or landscaping. They have an online presence but are not doing business online — yet.

Then, the owner of the nursery adds a blog to the website and begins writing regular entries about the growing process, including tips for taking care of plants and ideas for creating beautiful gardens. Several of the nursery’s customers start reading the blog but many more readers come from regions beyond. Within a year or two, there is a large following, which is not constrained by geographical limitations.

The nursery’s owner puts together a collection of her best, most popular, and most informative articles and self publishes a book, which generates some much needed extra revenue during a year that’s otherwise slow for business.

Grow Your Offerings by Doing Business Online

Now, instead of selling plants, flowers, and gardening supplies, the nursery owner is also selling information — information that was obtained through years of experience and that people are willing to pay for.

Selling information products is just one of the many models that business owners can adopt to expand their offerings, increase revenue, and diversify their income streams by doing business online.

There are several ways to harness an online presence that can breathe new life into the bottom line. Here is a small sampling of other possibilities the nursery owner might have explored:

• Online consultations – share expert, personalized advice for a small fee via phone or chat
• Affiliate marketing – sell gardening-related products on the website through the Amazon Associates program or some other affiliate marketing provider
• Online store – develop a unique line of products and sell them online – it could be something as simple as a mug that says “I love to garden” or something as complex as a specialty fertilizer mix
• Basic advertising – contextual ads throughout a website, especially one with a blog, can do well if there is a significant amount of traffic passing through on a daily basis
• Paid membership site – create a section on the site that is for paying members only – a forum, workshop, or online course related to gardening

Re-evaluate Your Demographics for Multiple Income Streams

Once a business decides to branch out in new ways and create multiple income streams, there will likely be a shift in the target customer demographic. Our friend the nursery owner used to advertise strictly to local gardeners and landscapers. Once she realized that people were actually interested in her blog, she had to change her marketing strategy.

She should still advertise locally, but online, she can launch a broader marketing campaign, one that appeals to hobby gardeners and professional landscapers all around the world. Her perspective audience has grown from a few thousand to several million.

As more and more of those perspective readers subscribe or visit her blog, more and more of her books are selling and not just to folks who live in her hometown. People who live on the other side of the country are buying. People who live on the other side of the world are buying. Meanwhile, she’s enjoying an increase in profits.

Generate More Revenue

Because gardening is her passion, the nursery owner enjoys writing about it and with relatively little effort or work, she is earning larger sums each year as her blog audience grows. During a time when most folks are strapped for cash and the economy is in dire straits, the nursery owner has demonstrated true enterprise through a willingness to think creatively and try new things.

Millions of small business owners have websites but have not seized the opportunities that an online presence provides. Launching a new income strategy involves planning and research, some elbow grease, and may even require an initial investment of either time or money, but the payoff can be great.

If you already have a website for your business, there’s no better time than right now to start looking for new ways to generate revenue online. You may even decide to launch a second website devoted entirely to your new pursuit. In difficult economic times, like those we face today, it will be the entrepreneurs and creative risk-takers who ride out the storm and rise to the top.

BONUS TIP: Make a commitment to setting aside a few minutes each day and start exploring the nuts and bolts of expanding your offerings and creating multiple income streams.

An Introduction to Doing Business Online

Many of my clients do business offline. And by offline, I mean they do all of their business in the three-dimensional world that exists far from the computer and way beyond the internet.

Some of them are new business owners who are just starting out and want to make sure they establish an effective online presence. Others have been in business for years and are finally ready to harness the Internet to expand their customer reach and product or service offerings. Many want nothing more than to update their website with current information, a fresh design, and compelling copy. A few would prefer to keep it entirely offline, but they know better.

Since Scribizzy’s primary service has been website copywriting, these spirited entrepreneurs usually hire me to write a few pages of copy, and as we work through the project, various comments and questions arise about doing business online.

• Do you think this logo looks outdated? What do you think of this tagline I came up with?
• I just had my site redesigned. Any feedback is welcome!
• Is the site missing anything? Are there pages I should add, remove, or change?
• Should I have a products or services page even if I don’t sell my services online?
• What? You mean there’s a way I can sell my wares on the web to thousands more customers?

Funny thing about the web. It’s relatively new. Folks who’ve been in business for twenty years got started before the business website was commonplace. People who are becoming entrepreneurs in their retirement or starting up a small business because they lost their jobs in the down economy may not have any knowledge about the web, website design, or online marketing. They may not even know how to use the internet beyond checking their email, connecting with old friends on Facebook, and shopping on eBay or Amazon.

So, some of these entrepreneurs know very little about online marketing. Most know just enough to be dangerous. But just about every single one of them knows that in this day and age, doing business online is imperative. Even if your website is nothing more than a few pages with basic details about your shop or office.

Getting Started

No matter what you sell or where you sell it, establishing an online presence starts with a website. Your website should clearly communicate your offerings and explain how your products or services will benefit customers. It should include a way for visitors to visit, contact, or order from you, so they can become paying customers.

You also want them to become loyal customers, so your site should espouse outstanding customer service, competitive pricing, and a friendly, positive atmosphere. Loyalty can also come from establishing brand recognition. Make sure your business has a clear, identifiable logo. A tagline or slogan will help make your brand recognizable as will your business’s tone, color scheme, and the general impression it makes.

When visitors come to your website, how does it make them feel? Safe or scared? Confident or confused? Weak or strong? Welcome? Comfortable? Does the information on your site speak to your target audience in language that they understand? Does it include all the details they’re looking for about your industry of field of expertise, products, services, pricing, location, or hours of operation?

Doing Business Online vs. Offline

If your business operates entirely offline, you still need an online presence. People will conduct localized searches for your products and services, and you want them to be able to find you! If you have existing customers, they’ll expect to be able to check your website to grab your phone number, find out your hours of operation, or obtain directions to your location.

You might be planning or already running a business that operates entirely online. Maybe you sell information products and communicate exclusively through email. Perhaps you run a consulting business and your rates depend on the project or the client’s needs. You might even have a blog or some type of website that doesn’t sell anything at all (yet). You need to determine what information is relevant to your visitors — people who you will be dealing with entirely online.

Want the best of both worlds? Lots of businesses are combining online and offline offerings, keeping their local and loyal customers happy while reaching out to millions more potential buyers. If you own a cafe, you can sell recipes online. If you are a handyman, you can make recommendations for do-it-yourself repairs and earn income from affiliate sales by promoting your favorite tools and supplies on your site. If you run a consignment shop, you can take photos of your wares and sell them with e-commerce technology.

For just about every business in the world, there is a way to expand beyond merely having an online presence and start actively, profitably doing business online.

Get Serious About Doing Business Online

Scribizzy offers services for entrepreneurs and small businesses that want to establish a successful online presence, grow their offerings, and expand their customer reach.

Learn more about our web content services and get a quote online.

Doing Business Online with Niche Marketing

Today’s businesses are learning to harness the power of niche marketing, and many modern small businesses are being built entirely around niches.

This smart strategy puts small businesses in a position to target a smaller and more well-defined pool of customers.

Niches are effective for business models in the brick and mortar world, but they’re even more effective when you’re doing business online.

Niche Businesses

You can be a florist. Or, you can be a wedding florist. As a general florist, you are looking at a huge range of customers – people who buy flowers for anniversaries, funerals, Valentine’s Day, and a host of other occasions, celebrations, and holidays.

As a wedding florist, all you have to think about are customers who are getting married.

In fact, your entire business is built around people who are getting married, so your entire business model shifts and becomes a lot more focused. You don’t need a shop because you’ll be doing most of your work on location. You don’t need to worry about having enough red roses on hand around Valentine’s Day. You can focus on a single service for a very particular type of client, and in that niche, you can quickly and easily become an expert.

Niche Marketing

As a wedding florist, you can market exclusively to your target customer. You’ll go after features in bridal magazines, set up booths at bridal fairs, and build your entire marketing campaign around a single event: your client’s wedding.

You’ll team up with other wedding professionals and offer packaged services. Connect with bands and DJs, makeup artists and event planners. Develop cross-promotions, referral programs, and venture partnerships with wedding service providers.

And remember, whether you offer your products and services to the public at large (anyone who needs flowers) or just a small segment of the population (people who are betrothed), you can always use niche marketing to promote your business, especially when you’re doing business online.

Doing Business Online in the Niche Marketplace

The Internet provides a venue in which you can take full advantage of niche marketing.

For example, you don’t have to limit yourself to one website. The Friendly Florist may have a shop on the corner that carries a wide variety of flowers for sale. There’s probably a Friendly Florist website that features seasonal arrangements, provides options for ordering bouquets online, and lists the shop’s location and hours of operation.

But the Friendly Florist can also launch a second (niche marketing) website: Friendly Florist Weddings. The entire website can focus on services that are designed especially for weddings and bridal parties, thus drawing very specific visitors to the site (ideal for SEO) and providing information that is more relevant to those visitors.

When doing business online with niche marketing, venture partnerships are also easy and effective. Exchange links and referrals with other wedding professionals. It doesn’t cost either partner a dime and has the potential to double all partners’ business.

You can run special promotions online with other businesses in your niche, and you can build an entire team of professionals for a special promotion or for an entire website. Get the DJ, makeup artist, wedding planner, and caterer all on board. Call it Friendly Weddings. Split the cost of the website and the advertising, and then everyone can enjoy greater revenues by doing business online.

The Benefits of Niche Marketing

Nothing compels a perspective customer more than feeling like the business she is patronizing caters exclusively to her needs. A young bride has a problem. She’s getting married in six months and she’s going to need flowers, and lots of them. You might have a flower shop, but she’s going to take greater notice if you’re a wedding florist, because what you’re offering is a direct solution to her particular problem.

Niche marketing also make it easier to identify target customers and then send them a message that is appropriate and relevant. Compare a slogan like “flowers for all occasions” to one such as “perfect flowers for your perfect wedding day.” If you’re about to walk down the aisle, which business would you choose?

There are lots of businesses that offer a wide range of general services, and niche marketing may seem too small or limiting at first. But it’s much easier to identify and market to small groups of customers than to try to appeal to everybody. Remember, a business can launch as many niche marketing campaigns as it wants and with the affordable cost of web hosting, doing business online with multiple websites is more effective and more cost efficient than ever.

When it’s time to put together your next marketing plan, take some time to consider the benefits of niche marketing for doing business online. You may have to divide your customers up into smaller groups and pay more for branding, advertising, and other promotions, but doing so could have a positively exponential impact on your bottom line.

Ten Tips for Doing Business Online

These days, having an effective online presence can make or break your business. Even if you have a traditional brick and mortar location, setting up shop online will give you access to a larger customer pool, provide a cost-effective avenue for information sharing, and dramatically open up your opportunities for marketing.

More and more entrepreneurs are skipping brick and mortar altogether and are exclusively doing business online. For small business owners who are used to working behind a storefront or in an office, making the switch or expanding into the online arena can be challenging, confusing, and overwhelming.

The benefits of doing business online are undeniable. A website costs far less than a shop or office. You can communicate with hundreds, thousands, even millions of web users at a fraction of the cost of doing a television commercial or major ad spread. And you can sell your products or services across the globe, removing geographical limitations entirely.

How you handle the details of doing business online will depend on your industry, target customer demographics, and professional goals, mission, and philosophy. You might sell products using an automated online store or you might sell a service to a small, select group of clients. You may use your online presence strictly for marketing but keep transactions offline. You might even offer free products and services, like a blog or informative newsletter, as a strategy to entice customers.

While the specifics vary, there are general tools and strategies that every business owner can use on the web. Here are ten tips that will prove beneficial to all entrepreneurs who want to harness the power of the internet to make their businesses more successful.

Get a Great Website

A great website is one that helps establish your brand online, provides relevant information to visitors, and works to convert those visitors into customers by issuing a clear call to action. Plus, it has to have an aesthetic design and be user friendly in terms of navigation. It can be as simple as one page or as elaborate as Amazon or eBay. This is one area of doing business online where you’ll want to take your time, learn the ropes, and make sure you hire the right people to get the job done.

Go Global

The Internet has a worldwide reach. For some business owners, this is a boon. Using e-commerce, you can set up an online store with all the same merchandise from your brick-and-mortar store and reach millions more customers. For other business owners, the global reach of the web is a conundrum. How does an electrician or a consultant harness the Internet to expand a customer pool? Be creative and consider all your alternatives. Can you do phone consultations? Write an ebook and sell your expertise? Is there any part of the service you offer that can be done remotely? If so, package it and sell it on your site. If not, create a complementary information product and sell that instead.

Diversify Your Income Stream

Once you figure out how to sell your product or service online, you have diversified your income stream. However, you can continue to look for new opportunities to generate income online. If you’re a gardener, write an ebook with gardening tips and sell it online. If you run a clothing boutique, post your merchandise online and add a blog with fashion tips. Information is one of the biggest sellers online, but you can also publish free information to round up visitors (and then convert them into customers). Some ideas for doing business online and diversifying your income stream: consultations via phone, Skype, or chat; information products, such as ebooks; training with videos and multimedia; affiliate marketing and website advertising.

Develop and Memorize Your Elevator Pitch

An elevator pitch is a 30-second explanation of your business. You have 30 seconds to explain what you offer, demonstrate how it benefits people, establish why they should buy it from you, and tell them what to do next (click, call, or email). It sounds a lot easier than it is. Try it now. Set your timer for 30 seconds and describe your business. Make it sound good. Go ahead and do it. I’ll wait.

Like I said, it’s not as easy as it sounds. But if you take some time to put your elevator pitch together, it will help boost your business online and off. You’ll be armed with an answer whenever someone asks what you do. Also, make sure you keep the written version handy so you can copy and paste it into online directories and the bios or profiles that you’ll fill out on the web.

Know Your Niche

Get familiar with how other professionals in your industry are using the web by perusing their websites. You’ll find important trends and as a newcomer, you’ll be able to spot attractive opportunities that your competitors might be missing. Sign up for their newsletters and email lists, pay attention to the ads they’re running, and strike up conversations on blogs and forums so you can get involved in the online community. Reach outside your niche too. Explore similar companies and those that offer products and services that complement or enrich your own.

Networking

The Internet has a heartbeat and before long, you’ll realize it belongs collectively to the millions of people who are sitting at their computers and connecting online. People who have a knack for networking will do well on the web. The bonus is that people who suffer from shyness may find that it’s a lot easier to network online than off. Your next big contact could be just a click away. As you travel around the web, look for people who work in your industry, professionals whose services you could use or who might need yours, and watch for folks you might want to team up with. Strike up conversations in forums and in the comments sections on blogs. Make friends and expand your contacts with your online professional network.

Use Social Media

Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can help you with your networking activities. Through these sites, you can easily connect with tens, hundreds, even thousands of people instantly. They are all free to use and you can upload your address book and immediately your existing contacts will become your first connections. Check out each of the social media sites to determine which ones are a good fit for your goals and purposes. LinkedIn is great for professionals. Twitter is excellent for link sharing and brief conversations. MySpace is a valuable tool for artists, such as musicians. Facebook lends itself well to just about any business imaginable. You can also get involved in social media sites like Flickr and YouTube. Publish your photos and videos, build your brand into them, and use those sites to share media and spread the word about your business. Put yourself out there!

Add a Blog

There are lots of reasons why website owners rail against the idea of including a blog on their websites. A blog adds a whole new dimension of technology and maintenance, requires regular post writing, and in many cases a blog will need a separate marketing campaign from the core site. However, the benefits can be vast. Business blogging allows you to communicate with customers in an open forum, acts as a vehicle for company news and announcements, and is ideal for staying fresh and focused on SEO keywords. In short, a blog expands opportunities for marketing and doing business online, and it’s worth considering as a potential investment.

Practice Diligent Maintenance

Make it a point to keep track of your online presence. You’ll probably list your business in dozens of online directories. You’ll leave comments on blogs. You’ll also have all those social media profiles. Be aware of your own presence and don’t let anything get too outdated. You never know who will surf into an old profile. It could be your next big client! So keep everything current and let people know about your offerings and availability.

Give Back

Nothing grabs people’s attention like an act of charity or a good old-fashioned contest. Find a cause you believe in or add a little publicity about the organizations that you donate to or volunteer for. People are drawn to the positive message of giving back and may well choose your company over one that is seen as uncharitable. Throw a contest for your customers or readers as a way of saying thank you. It’s good karma and great for publicity!

These are tips that any professional, entrepreneur, or website owner can utilize as they start working to establish themselves in the online environment. People who are used to doing business in a more traditional, brick-and-mortar format might find these newfangled tools awkward at first, but part of being successful in business is having the ability to adapt with the trends.

So log on and get busy doing business online!

Scribizzy helps small businesses succeed online. Visit our services page to learn about our website design and copywriting solutions for online marketing.