Business reveals all aspects of human nature and most of it is unpleasant. This may sound harsh but the first thing you learn in business is that you can’t trust people. They will not do what they say, pay when they are supposed to and when confronted about it will turn defensive and avoid you. So in effect not only are you out of pocket but you have lost a customer too. I have learned some expensive lessons during the course of the last ten years as an entrepreneur. By implementing a few basics you can avoid paying expensive school fees too.
1.) Make sure that all undertakings by both parties are clearly spelt out in a written agreement. It does not have to be a 20 page legal document but it should clearly spell out each parties role and the costs involved. The fact that a verbal agreement is binding is not worth the paper it isn’t written on. If you don’t have a written agreement you are setting yourself up for an expensive lesson in legal procedures.

2.) Whenever possible get payment first before providing the goods or services. This may sound more difficult than it is to implement. A simple phrase like:“ I will send you the invoice and as soon as I receive proof of payment we can proceed “ Will save you hours of time on the phone and legal fees pursuing payments. A retail outlet never lets you have goods without payment, a mechanic won’t let you have your car until you have paid, so why should you provide goods or services without receiving payment. It is not always possible to implement this with bigger corporations but they will often pay a large deposit without qualm.

3) Make sure the client understands the nature of your services and the limitations. The client may assume you are including certain services when in fact they are optional and on a pay for basis.

4) Things go wrong. Plan for it and spell out clearly what the penalties are should deadlines not be met.

5) Don’t do additional work unless you are being paid for it. Freebies set you up for a cycle of abuse. If the client wants x additional, immediately tell him what the cost implications will be.

6) Do not continue supplying services or goods to a client that is behind on payments. Contact the client, tell them you will be happy to provide the goods or services once the outstanding payment is made. It is the old adage of throwing good money after bad.

7) Leopards don’t change their spots. Don’t take chances on people with bad payment reputations.

Whenever I ignore the above I am inevitably disappointed and out of pocket. When I do implement I find the whole process runs smoothly and the client and I am happy. It is a jungle out there for small businesses and cash flow is the major reason for small businesses failing. I hope these few pointers can make a difference in your business.

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So you are thinking of starting a blog either for business or personal reasons. Before you do you might want to think about what is involved. The blog aggregator sites have got their act together and submit their stats to World Wide Worx for collation. Arthur Goldstuck recently published the first instalment on Mail and Guardian’s Thought Leader.

Number of blogs at end of August: 25 037

Number of active blogs (updated in last two weeks): 2 953

Percent of active blogs: 11%

Number of posts in August: 39 938

Page views in August: 5 198 693

Unique visitors in August: 621 204

Source: World Wide Worx

This makes for interesting reading but also signals a few warning signs for wannabe bloggers.

Fact one. The Drop out rate for bloggers is exceptionally high.

It seems from the stats above that about 89% of bloggers drop out or radically decrease the frequency of posting. Many bloggers, when starting do not factor in the commitment a blog takes. Not only in time to create regular posts but also in the time spent becoming part of the blogging community. You have to read and comment on other blogs in order to generate links and readers to your blog. Regular posting is crucial to the success of a blog.

Fact two. You have to market your blog outside of the blogging community.

Of the 621204 unique visitors to blogs, only 25 037 could in the wider sense be counted as bloggers. Although one has to take into account that many of the readers could potentially be from other countries and could be bloggers. However if one looks at the popular blogs like Keo and Though Leader then, in my opinion, a large portion of their readers are not bloggers themselves but have migrated from  traditional media or are finding niches not filled by traditional media.

Fact three. Generating traffic to a blog is a difficult as generating traffic to a website.

In May 2007 Technorati reported tracking 71 million blogs worldwide. The blogosphere is becoming increasingly competitive. According to Arthur the top nine blogs have more readers than the rest combined and the four media sites have more traffic than all of the blogs combined. With about 40000 posts in 31 days readers have plenty of choice so care has to be taken in terms of topic choice and headlines. Blogging for the sake of blogging is fine but don’t expect a huge readership base.



If you are still convinced that a blog is for you then perhaps the following posts could help you minimise your school fees in time and effort.

Josh Dorkin : Top 77 mistakes new bloggers make  ( I wish I had found this when I started, I still haven’t rectified all my mistakes.)

David Airey : Top 7 blog mistakes to avoid (Short and to the point )

If at this point you are going ahead with your blog I can just say welcome and let me know I could just be just be your first subscriber.



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Over the last few weeks I have consolidated some of my activities under a new banner. Allow me to introduce my new company …. Drumroll…..Webactiv8. A definition of activate is, to switch on and web well, obviously the internet. So in a nutshell that is what I am going to be doing, switching on the tourism industry to the internet. So far the strategy seems to be working. We have preached the gospel of internet marketing to over 170 delegates in just over 6 weeks. Not bad going if you ask me but then, I am biased. The delegate’s feedback has been very encouraging and that in itself has been rewarding.

Plettenberg Bay Seminar 04 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

The services we will be offering will include

* Training Seminars

* Consulting

* Search engine optimisation (SEO)

* Search engine marketing (ppc and adsense)

* Viral marketing campaigns

* Social Media Marketing

* Marketing strategies

* Strategic marketing assistance.

Most of the seminar dates and feedback will now be on that blog. If you are currently linking to my blog will you please consider linking to my webactiv8 blog as well? I would be happy to reciprocate. I will also appreciate any input on the blog design so pop on over and take a look.

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George Seminar 02 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

In conjunction with George Tourism we held our second internet marketing seminar for tourism establishments. The first was oversubscribed and Joan Shaw of George Tourism asked me if we could do a second seminar. I agreed. Fortunately, Loerie Guest House who hosted the first seminar agreed to host the second as well, although in a smaller conference facility. Seemingly smaller venues have a positive effect. The seminar was much more interactive than the first and ultimately we overran by two hours. But I do believe the delegates get more if the seminar is more interactive. I am seriously considering the possibility of changing the seminar from a half day to full day. At the same time making it a more interactive, more of a workshop than seminar.

I must congratulate the George Tourism Bureau team on their positive approach to internet marketing. Several of the committee members attended the seminars and already the go ahead has been given to draw up an integrated internet marketing plan. Joan Shaw, director of George Tourism approached me yesterday about involving me in the process and I think this will be an excellent opportunity to grow our local tourism.



I have invited all the delegates to comment on the blog and it will be interesting to see how many will actually visit the blog to comment.

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On Tuesday I held the Internet Marketing Seminar for the George tourism vendors. It was arranged by Joan Shaw from George Tourism and a great job she did to. It was hosted by Loerie Guest house and their conference facilities for this size seminar is fantastic. If you need a venue for a mini conference call them. The turn out was good and although the attendees where a little stiff in the beginning they soon started to get into the swing of things. I met some really interesting people and I hope they left armed with the knowledge to maximise their use of the internet as a marketing tool.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of addressing the Strategic Marketing Seminar convened by  Bitou Tourism. They had a fantastic turnout of close to a hundred people. I was really impressed with the mayor who I later had the pleasure to meet and chat with. My highlight was listening to Larry Gould. He is an excellent speaker and to be honest I could have listened to him for a lot longer. We had a brief chat afterwards and I must say what a charismatic man.I fluffed my presentation completely, my video clip would not run on their laptop and to top it all I was halfway only two thirds through my presentation and I was given a two minute time call. It was downhill from there. Everybody came back afterwards saying it was a great presentation but I know I it could have been so much beter. Below Larry Gould in action.

Larry Gould’s Presentation on The Garden Route of Golf on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Plettenberg Bay Strategic Marketing Seminar for Tourism 2007 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

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I held the first of a series of internet marketing seminars for the Garden Route tourism vendors yesterday at Kingfisher Restaurant in Mossel Bay. A big thank you to Riaan of Mossel Bay Marketing for his hard work in organising the seminar and secondly to everybody at Kingfisher Restaurant thanks and well done.
I tried to give them a basic introduction to
Google
Search engine optimisation
Web 2.0
Search Engine Marketing (PPC)
Social Media Marketing
Web site strategies
go2sa.co.za

I am now gearing up for the second seminar which will be held at the Loerie Guest Lodge in George on the 24th of this month.
I do hope the attendees of the first seminar will visit the blog and give me some honest feedback, but I don’t know, maybe I pumped their heads so full that it might be awhile before they get to blogs as a resource.

Here’s hoping

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I opened two new Nedbank accounts recently and asked that they be setup for internet banking. I received the form promptly but noticed that my two existing account’s internet banking cost me R20 a month and now I will be paying R95 per month to access internet banking for the two new accounts.

So today I phoned up Elmien my friendly E banking consultant who has, I must say, been very helpful in the past. Hoping to get a simple explanation as to why, since all four accounts are business, there is a difference in price.

My answer was four pointed

Security

security

security

security.

I asked her if she was therefore  telling me that my current Nedbank internet banking is not secure. Her reply shook my faith in Nedbank internet banking fundamentally.

“Secure enough for a retail client who wants to pay their Edgars and electricity but we are not comfortable with that security level for our business clients “ She said.

I have been using the retail service for two years and I was assured at the time it is completely secure. Forgive me but when it comes to my money, or yours for that matter, security does not have a grey scale. To me it is black and white, secure or not secure. So either Nedbank is admitting that their retail internet banking is insecure or they are trying to rip of the business client for more money.

So Nedbank. Which is it ?

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Max made a comment on my recent Blog about Marketing misconceptions where she stated: “I secretly believe that without marketing we’d have no idea about value.”

“Social consensus determines value & the price on a service/ product.. and the dictates of the current general opinion are swung by marketing efforts that move our hearts & minds. And we make a choice based on who benefits our highest values best .”

I am not 100% in agreement with that statement. Yet when I thought about it more, I realized that the issue of price and value is quicksand underfoot. Thrashing about only makes you sink deeper, quicker.

IF we define value as ‘relative worth, utility or importance or in marketing parlance the benefit the client will enjoy less the cost. Or for my friend Stii, who speaks only Geek, lets define it mathematically as the difference between the price and the benefit experienced, or V = B - P.

But value has in my opinion two components namely real and perceived. For example lets compare something with a defined real value. I have an ounce of gold which currently trades at around $626-00 per ounce. If I can prove that John Lennon sold that very ounce of gold the day before he was shot, how would that change the perceived value? The trade value of Gold would bear no effect in determining the price only perception of value would play a role.

The other factor which affects real value is scarcity. This was aptly demonstrated recently at the launch of Sony Playstation 3 where production problems created a shortage and individuals who managed to purchase consoles resold them at enormous profits on E bay. The example of the gold ounce is also affected by scarcity.

Marketing can only influence the potential customers perception of value. This can be done in the following ways.

Reliability

By creating the perception that a product is more reliable than another adds value in the mind of the customer since it is associated with fewer usage problems. It will save cost, frustration and time in the long run.

Status

Creating the perception that ownership will present them in a category above others.

Customer Service

Creating the perception that the customer service is above the level offered by competitors making the ownership experience better. This gives the customer peace of mind and should something go wrong he will be looked after.

Overall Cost Savings

Greater perception of value can be created if the user of a product feels they are saving in other ways. They can use less of the product to get the same result or the learning curve to master the product is shorter.

What is interesting however is that customers are becoming increasingly sceptical to claims made by manufacturers and marketers. The information age has brought about a customer that is better informed and often very likely to seek external sources to verify claims. Marketers are therefore less able to shape the perceptions of customers and their friends, acquaintances and social networks may play an increasing role in creating value perceptions. We as marketers have to realise that clients are talking about our products and services on the Internet and the only question is how long are we going to let the discussions go on without us.

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Marketing has in recent times become an abused word. You will find individuals and organisations fighting for the rights of the abused, women, children, animals and even languages. I thought it was high time to call attention to the plight of marketing.

It has recently become passé to be a sales person. No, marketer has a better ring to it. One does not sell anymore, one markets. Organisations doing door to door selling have become marketing organisations. Countless adverts in the employment classifieds glamorise the position by calling for trained marketers when in fact the advert is calling for trained sales personnel.
Sales used to be an honourable profession and we as humans do it everyday by selling ourselves. If sales is dishonourable then by extension so is purchasing, yet we seem to do that with aplomb and often with a touch of grandeur. Witness the brand new owner of a car, proud of the fact that he is a purchaser.

By the continued misuse of the word marketing we are losing sight of whet marketing means and more importantly, the vast range of activities involved under the much maligned word.
Classically, marketing involved four functions
Product
Price
Place
Promotion

Advertising, brand building, sales, etc. all form part of the Promotion function.
This is not meant as an introductory course on marketing, the point I am trying to make is that it is difficult to understand how marketing has become a function of a function of itself.

Often we lose sight of how important the other factors are in terms of the eventual success of the product. In the last few years in the tourism industry I have encountered countless individuals ignoring pricing issues, competitors, supply and demand, etc. and spending enormous sums of money on promotion and then lament on the terrible state of the tourism industry. A few individuals spend very little by comparison but do their spending in a targeted fashion and are consequently doing quite nicely, thank you very much. Mainly because the location is good, the pricing relative to the product is excellent value and they have selected a niche for themselves.

Recently I have become quite interested in viral marketing and guerrilla marketing. I would like to add a word of caution. Many of the tech junkies I speak to on a daily basis seem to have come to the conclusion that this is the answer to every marketers dreams and I think however that we should approach each form of promotion carefully in terms of what we would like to achieve. A quick case in point.
The Budweiser ads have over the years been an excellent viral marketing tool. I have received countless Bud ads in my e-mail, forwarded them to friends and talked about the ads to friends and acquaintances, Yet to date I have not bought a single Bud beer.
How successful was the campaign. Well to measure the success we would have to know substantially more than we do. Was the purpose of the campaign to increase sales or improve or change branding ? If the purpose of the campaign was to promote WOMA or Word of Mouth Advertising it was a phenomenal success.

Let me finish on this point.
Quantify your objectives, select your target market and then, only then, select your means of promotion.