How One Chocolate Retailer Increased Holiday E-commerce Sales 40% |  |
- How One Chocolate Retailer Increased Holiday E-commerce Sales 40%
- Top Story, SBA Nominee’s Confirmation Hearing Held
- What Small Businesses Can Learn From Barcoding At The Olympics
- 5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Social Media Marketing
- Jamie Sutherland of Xero: Modern Cloud Accounting Services
- Cupids are Going for a Share of the Leprechaun Market
- Coffee Company CEOs Should Watch What They Say About Fair Trade
| How One Chocolate Retailer Increased Holiday E-commerce Sales 40% Posted: 14 Feb 2014 04:30 PM PST
Lake Champlain Chocolates has three brick and mortar retail locations in Vermont. So this small business knows how to sell chocolates to shoppers in person. But the chocolatier has also learned how to sell online. And when it comes to holidays, Lake Champlain Chocolates knows how to capitalize on them to increase sales. Lake Champlain Chocolates was founded by Jim Lampman, originally as a wholesale truffle maker 30 years ago. Customers soon tracked them down directly, and customer demand led to the company opening up retail stores. Fast forward to today, and the company has expanded beyond their local area in Vermont. In addition to its 3 chocolate shops, the company now engages in mail order and online sales — and says those represent the fastest-growing segment. The company now ships confections to all 50 states. How to Increase Holiday E-Commerce SalesFor a chocolate vendor, certain holidays are peak times. According to Greg Tickle, E-Commerce Manager for Lake Champlain Chocolates, the year-end Christmas holiday is the biggest time. But Valentine’s Day and Easter are also big holidays for the company. So getting as many sales as possible during holiday periods is important. This year the Valentine’s Day season provided lessons about how to use online advertising to increase holiday e-commerce sales. Lake Champlain Chocolates increased its Google AdWords spend by 14%, but saw a 40% increase in website sales this Valentine’s season. The company’s experience shows that executing intelligently makes the difference in getting a good ROI from advertising. Lake Champlain’s Tickle points out how important it is to collect data, be flexible and adjust — on a near-daily basis during holidays. With holidays you have a limited number of days to capture the opportunity. You must stay on top of things. ”Monitor Google AdWords campaigns closely,” he says. ”Change your ad text. Drop keywords that aren’t producing sales, and bid on other keywords.” And it’s not just AdWords you want to monitor. You also should look at your site performance as a whole, to see how well the traffic you are drawing in from your ads is turning into actual sales. “Monitor your analytics. Then adjust as you see where visitors are coming from, when they come, and where they go once they are in the site. You need data to know what’s working and what isn’t,” Tickle emphasizes. Keeping a close eye on Google Analytics is what led Lake Champlain Chocolates to optimize landing pages and its AdWords ads for mobile devices. Traffic from visitors using mobile devices has been growing steadily and now constitutes roughly 30%. Even the company’s email newsletter gets opened on mobile devices. With evidence of mobile growth, the company made it a point to work on improving the mobile visitor’s experience, and increased mobile sales as a result. Another of Tickle’s advertising tips is to “speak to” the shopper’s needs. He says it is important to make sure the words in your ad and in your website work together to help the searcher find what he or she is looking for. The ad text and the landing page copy should match closely. Optimize AdWords Campaigns and Optimize The WebsiteRobert Brady, a per-per-click advertising expert with Righteous Marketing, agrees that Google Adwords can be very effective to increase holiday e-commerce sales volume. “Holidays present an opportunity to obtain additional traffic by adding holiday-themed keyword variations. If you normally sell knitted sweaters before Christmas it would be wise to also bid on keywords such as ‘Christmas sweaters’ or ‘knitted sweaters for Christmas.’ Your ads should speak to the Christmas theme and then send these visitors directly to your Christmas-themed landing pages where you would expect them to convert at a higher rate.” It really breaks down into two activities that work hand in hand, Brady emphasizes. For best results, e-commerce sellers must optimize their pay-per-click advertising campaigns to get better-qualified visitors to their sites. They must also engage in “conversion optimization” on their websites to get more sales from those who in fact end up visiting, he adds. Lake Champlain Chocolates’ Tickle sums it up this way, ”Increasing traffic to your website may not always result in increased sales and may likely result in higher advertising costs; however, by improving your website conversion optimization and the user experience, you will increase your return on ad spend … your ROI.” The post How One Chocolate Retailer Increased Holiday E-commerce Sales 40% appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Top Story, SBA Nominee’s Confirmation Hearing Held Posted: 14 Feb 2014 03:30 PM PST
Here are the stories most important to small business owners today, from the Small Business Trends editorial team: SBA nominee has confirmation hearing. President Barack Obama’s recent appointment Maria Contreras-Sweet seemed to do well before the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. It’s uncertain when she might finally be confirmed. PolicyThe IRS will start enforcing new rules on gratuities. The new rules require any automatic gratuity at a restaurant be treated as part of regular wages. Here’s a look at what that would mean to both small restaurants and servers. Obamacare gets delayed again. Delays and snags in the new healthcare law seem to have become almost commonplace. Here Small Business Trends, CEO and publisher Anita Campbell, has the latest on a delay that may push things back for small businesses until at least January 2016. The Affordable Care Act may reduce small business employment. That’s according to data provided by the Congressional Budget Office. The office concluded fewer people would be employed in 2017 than would be without the new law. WebYelp’s local business listings will soon appear in Yahoo search. Google actually tried to buy Yelp for $500 million back in 2009. The deal means Yelp results will show up prominently on yet another search engine. Imgur launches new analytics service. The photo sharing site traces the popularity of images as they go viral online. The new analytics service gives you more information on how that happens. There’s a paid tier and some opportunity for sponsorship, too. AT&T believes not all Internet use is equal. A filing by the company proposes a means of monitoring customers and charging them extra or even discontinuing their services in instances where it determines that use was not permitted. A local attorney sees his ad go viral. Though personal injury attorney Jamie Casino, a.k.a. Jamie Biancosino, did pay for Super Bowl advertising, it was only in his local market. But what YouTube did for his video had a much greater impact. AcquisitionImperva plans to acquire Incapsula. The database security company was an early investor in Incapsula. Now Imperva says it is trying to acquire both Incapsula and Skyfence in pursuit of an estimated $115 billion cloud security market. LinkedIn will acquire Bright for $120 million. The two social sites could be a good match. LinkedIn is a networking site for professionals while Bright matches prospective employees with the jobs they fit best. LinkedIn also has a similar feature but may be trying to enhance it. Yahoo shuts down Donna. The Internet giant plans to acquire Incredible Labs and eliminate a virtual personal assistant and productivity app called Donna. The purchase is apparently largely a talent acquisition. But it will leave Donna fans disappointed. Sony to sell PC, laptop business. The company is apparently doing extremely well with smartphones, but not so much with its desktop and laptop products. Sony is expected to sell that PC business to a Japanese firm. BrandingIlly CEO makes Fair Trade remarks. Readers commenting on this post have already taken issue with criticism of Illycaffe CEO Andrea Illy’s remarks on Fair Trade recently. While it’s certainly true that any label has its limits, some issues are very important to consumers. And brands must have some sensitivity to how their customers may react. Canadian comic launches “Dumb Starbucks.” It’s difficult to gauge how the real Starbucks would have reacted to Nathan Fielder’s “Dumb Starbucks” stunt, if the health department hadn’t shut him down first. SecurityAdobe announces a Flash vulnerability. The company says the problem could allow hackers to take over your computer. Fortunately, protecting your system seems to be simple. Here are some things to consider if you’re worried. Reading Photo via Shutterstock The post Top Story, SBA Nominee’s Confirmation Hearing Held appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| What Small Businesses Can Learn From Barcoding At The Olympics Posted: 14 Feb 2014 12:30 PM PST
The Winter Olympics opened in Sochi on Friday, and with it came a logistics challenge of nightmare proportions. Fifty one billion was spent on this Olympic Games, so it is vitally important that things arrive on time in the right place. How is this achieved? Barcoding at the OlympicsUsing barcoding technology where everything is tracked from its point of origin all the way to its point of destination. But it isn’t just huge venues and businesses like the Olympics which can take advantage of barcoding. Small businesses are in a position to have virtually the same system, for a surprisingly low price. Have you ever wanted to be able to inventory or track your stock with a barcode system, but thought the price of setting up such a system was out of your reach? Well think again. A barcoding system can be as little as a few thousand dollars complete with phone support and training, says Brian Sutter of Wasp Barcode Technologies. And such a system could save up to $30,000 a year in lost, broken or stolen inventory or equipment. So what are the benefits of having such a barcoding system? Well, apart from that $30,000 that you could be saving each year, here are some other reasons why an initial $3,000 investment might be worth it. Tracking Your InventoryEquipment is flying in from all over the world for the Olympic athletes. It is essential that things turn up in the right place at the right time. It is a monumental logistics effort which requires a huge amount of organization. Can it be done by wrapping that bobsleigh in brown paper, slapping stamps on it, sending it to Russia, and hoping for the best? Of course not. Instead, it gets a barcode, and every step of the way, the system is updated with the item's status, so its exact location can be confirmed in seconds. Now consider this system in the setting of a typical small business (albeit on a much smaller scale). Imagine you have a company of 100 employees. That’s also probably 100 computers, 100 telephones, 100 software licenses and also things like furniture, copy machines, stationary, etc. Now consider the following scenario. Your printer breaks down, but it is still under warranty. Nobody immediately realizes that. So someone from the company then goes out and buys a replacement printer. But if that equipment had been barcoded, it could have been scanned to show that the warranty was still valid. So the company has now wasted money on a new printer when it wasn’t actually needed. Or say you are looking high and low for that overhead projector. Eventually you sigh in frustration and give up, putting on your jacket and going out to the shop to buy a new one. But all the time, Fred in accounts upstairs had it. If that overhead projector had been barcoded, a quick query would have showed that Fred checked it out from the storage room last week for a presentation. Again, a new projector is bought for no reason at all. More wasted money for your business. A Complete Audit Of Your InventoryThe Olympics will have a huge amount of equipment in various places. How do they know where everything is, how much of something has been used, when something is running out fast and needs to be replaced, and so on? That’s right – slap a barcode on everything to help you keep track. Now back to our small business scenario. Do you have merchandise sitting in a warehouse somewhere or in the back of a shop? Do you know exactly what you have and where you have it? If necessary, could you lay your hands on a particular item right away? If the answer to those questions is no, or "eventually, but it would take time," then you need to start barcoding everything. The barcode system is tied to a database. That database identifies where each item is based on its code. Locations are coded, too, to match the item to be found there. A place for eveything and everything in its place. Sutter calls this system "asset tracking," and says it improves the organization and productivity of a company to a huge degree. Tracking PeopleThe Olympics in Sochi will have issued a huge number of tickets for all of the events, relying on barcoding to coordinate who goes in and out of the stadiums (and to cut down on fraud). But small businesses can also take advantage of barcoding technology to manage their ticketing systems. Say you are the owner of a small bar, or nightclub. You want to sell tickets to an event but need to control the number of people. How do you make sure that fake tickets are not made? How do you know if everyone has arrived to start the show? That's right – barcode the tickets. With barcodes, you will know which tickets are genuine. Just one swipe with the barcode scanner will tell you in seconds. You can scan each ticket as people arrive, so you can finally see that all tickets have been accounted for and the show can start. Promotions and MarketingThis involves a whole new kind of barcode — the QR code. Although there has been recent chatter that QR codes are on the way out, Sutter insists they remain as popular as ever in the States. So what is a QR code? A barcode is something tied to a database, which requires a barcode scanner to read it. A QR code on the other hand is tied to a website, and can be read by a barcode scanner on your smartphone. This is what a QR code looks like :
If you scan that QR code with a barcode scanner on your smartphone (available for free from the app store for your phone), it will take you to Small Business Trends. QR codes are extremely easy to make. Just by searching “make QR code,” you will get countless websites that will make them for you. Now imagine if your website was in that QR code. You could have a special page for a promotion you are running right now. Leave your QR code around town on printed materials and invite people to scan it. Curiosity will do the rest. Sutter concludes:
Never think that certain technologies are out of your reach by virtue of your small size. Sochi Photo via Shutterstock The post What Small Businesses Can Learn From Barcoding At The Olympics appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| 5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Social Media Marketing Posted: 14 Feb 2014 10:00 AM PST
It seems like every company is interested in how to become better at social media marketing, whether they're just testing the waters of social media for the first time, or whether they have been on Twitter and Facebook for years and are trying to hone their process of social media lead generation. No matter where your company stands on the spectrum of social media marketing, below are a few easy ways that you can get better results and improve your lead generation on social media. How to Improve Your Social Media Marketing1. Listen First, Then TalkOne of the great things about social media is that it makes it possible to proactively find out what problems and concerns are already being discussed by your audience. For example, you can go on Twitter and search for keywords related to your industry or to the solution you sell, and immediately find out what people are saying. Are people complaining about a competitor, asking for ideas or referrals, asking for price quotes, or expressing frustration with some aspect of their current service provider? Find out what people are saying, and be ready to respond with offers of assistance. 2. Build Relationships with People Who Have Bigger AudiencesEven if you are relatively new to social media, don't be afraid to find ways to jump into conversations. Don’t be afraid to strike up conversations with experts in your field, even if they have big audiences. That’s the best way to expand your audience, by getting retweeted and mentioned by people who can introduce you to their followers. If you offer productive contributions to conversations and share your expertise, you'll be likely to develop a reputation of your own as someone who is worth following. 3. Start Your Own “Tribes”Look for opportunities to start conversations related to topics that affect your industry or that respond to questions posed by your customers and prospects. If your industry doesn't already have an active LinkedIn group, start your own or start a group that is based on your local geography. Be a leader of conversations on social media, and people will start to look to you for real-life leadership. Leadership is, in itself, a powerful form of marketing. 4. Don't Spam PeopleThis should go without saying, but too many companies are still making the mistake of bombarding people with canned, insincere messages. Remember, you're talking with real people – act like it. 5. Make Your Social Media Activities More Automatic – and More PersonalThat said, there is a place for automated social media messages. Use tools like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to schedule messages in advance, in bulk. Then use a dedicated 20-30 minutes per day to respond personally to questions, inquiries and to pose questions to people you follow on social media. Social media is a promising tool because it enables us to put a human face on our companies and interact with customers in real time, with more focus and precision than ever before. But make sure to do it the right way – with genuine authenticity and constructive contributions to the discussion. Marketing Photo via Shutterstock The post 5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Social Media Marketing appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Jamie Sutherland of Xero: Modern Cloud Accounting Services Posted: 14 Feb 2014 08:00 AM PST The cloud has always been about promotion, marketing, content and communication. But in order to create modern business, you also need to look at how the role the cloud can play in managing less glamorous areas just as important to a business' success, like accounting. Jamie Sutherland, President of cloud-base accounting service Xero US, talks about how cloud-based accounting solutions are impacting small businesses today. He shares his take on how these kinds of services can help small businesses understand their customers, and help companies make better, more efficient decisions leading to better results. Below is an edited transcript of the conversation. The full interview can be heard by clicking on the player below. * * * * *
Jamie Sutherland: My career in software started with Sage. I ran a division that had small business accounting and some HR tools. But it was desktop software, and I saw the writing on the wall for that software and then came across Xero. They were looking for someone to lead up the expansion in the US, and we hit it off. I believe in the way Xero is approaching the market, solving the needs of small businesses as well as accountants. Having them be able to collaborate easily is a winning model, and that was an easy decision for me to jump on board. Small Business Trends: So for folks that may not be familiar with what Xero is and what you guys do, can you fill us in? Jamie Sutherland: Xero US is cloud-based accounting software for small businesses. We take the premise of design and usability to the next level and have built the application from the ground up for the Web. Not only that, we focus in on making sure every single feature that we deliver to the market goes through a very rigorous process around design and ability. It’s not just look and feel. We call it beautiful accounting software. It’s more about the workflow. Rethinking the old paradigms of desktop software and how a small business operates in today’s world, and designing features that just make sense for the modern small business. Small Business Trends: How does a service like yours help an accountant build a modern accounting practice today? Jamie Sutherland: We have a number of accountants in our network that have built their businesses on the back of Xero’s model, which is a really rewarding thing to see. You can subscribe to Xero and see these online applications in a flash. Not only that, we provide a program to help you develop your business. What we are seeing is a number of partners of ours have gone from not having any clients up to over 100 in under a year. They can do that because the software is obviously easy. Because we partner closely with accounting professionals, we list them on our website. What happens is, a small business that’s looking to get their taxes done, or some bookkeeping done, or some mechanic services, will come to our site and look up these accounting firms. I guess essentially driving them leads. So a number of reasons are why being part of the Xero eco system is helpful to getting your accounting practice up and going. Small Business Trends: Lets look beyond the accountants. How does a service like yours help a company who’s not an accounting based company, but still needs accounting services? Jamie Sutherland: We focus on simplicity and ease of use. We’ve won some awards around our software being just that. We hear from small businesses time and time again that accounting can be complicated. So what we do is strip out all the accounting jargon for a small business so they understand the critical pieces of their business – which comes back to cash flow. It’s a clear line of site into what money is coming into the business and what money is going out. Historically small businesses don’t keep their books up to date, and what we are seeing with Xero is that we make it easy to get information into the software through our partners. If you have a bank account and you authorize that bank account with Xero, back information will automatically appear inside Xero. So you eliminated that step around data entry, which is the bane of a lot of small businesses and bookkeepers. Getting that information in on an automated basis and then keeping it up to date allows that small business or their advisers to help them make decisions in real time. So the small business can save time and money, not only from the processing that needs to happen to get the data in and allocate it into the appropriate accounts, but you’ve got better information and insights into your account so you can make business decisions that are going to improve your business. Small Business Trends: How has a service like yours given small businesses the ability to look at business a little differently, focus on customer engagement and less on important functionality, but functionality not core to their business? Jamie Sutherland: We really see the Web as this open platform where connectivity and data flow should be seamless. I think that becomes the evolution of this. So when you’ve got that ease of data flowing back, whether it’s your eCommerce engine, or accounting software, or CRM, point of sale, you’ve got not only real time information. But you’ve got the capability with a solid reporting tool to bring up information to make those decisions that can be key to your business. Many of those decisions revolve around the customer insight you get. Small Business Trends: As an example with some of the stories you hear from your customers, how has that information impacted the way they view the business? Or the way they view customers? Jamie Sutherland: From an accounting perspective, that visibility into the money owed to you and the money you owe – you can see where you’re spending your money throughout the month, and in real time so you can manage your cash flow. Then looking at the payments that need to be made. And then looking at payments you were receiving, you can see who the outstanding debtors are and be able to keep up with that in real time. I think it does come back from an accounting perspective, at least, because its a real time cash flow, and how you manage that. Money coming in is very, very visible inside Xero. Small Business Trends: So where can people learn more about Xero and the services that you guys offer? Jamie Sutherland: Xero.com, spelled with an X. This interview on cloud accounting services is part of the One on One interview series with thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This transcript has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click on the player above. The post Jamie Sutherland of Xero: Modern Cloud Accounting Services appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Cupids are Going for a Share of the Leprechaun Market Posted: 14 Feb 2014 05:00 AM PST
Cupid is a pain to draw. You’ve got the wings, the bow, the quiver, the arrow, the diaper… there’s a lot to get across in a character that’s tiny by design. So for me to draw five of them in a meeting takes a really, really good idea. Turns out that Cupids trying to steal business away from Leprechauns before St. Patrick’s Day is one of those really good ideas. I’d also considered throwing hiding Easter eggs into the mix, but then the caption was getting to be more of an essay instead of a few sentences. Still, that bunny should watch his back. The post Cupids are Going for a Share of the Leprechaun Market appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
| Coffee Company CEOs Should Watch What They Say About Fair Trade Posted: 14 Feb 2014 02:30 AM PST
What happens when a business owner dismisses a common standard for quality and fairness in their industry? Andrea Illy, CEO of Illycaffe, makers of the well-known Illy brand, recently told Quartz that his company would never sell fair trade coffee. Fair trade is a popular standard for coffee that ensures growers receive a higher price for their product. But Illy said it's unsustainable:
He went on to explain that his company employs its own set of sustainability efforts, which he said go beyond fair trade standards. But by effectively dissing a popular standard for the coffee industry, he may have already done some irreversible damage to his company's reputation. People who buy fair trade coffee do so for a number of reasons. According to the Fairtrade America's website:
Social and environmentally conscious customers like having that assurance every time they make a purchase. But Illy claims that fair trade buyers are less likely to become loyal customers because they just buy these products on occasion to feel good about their purchases. Even if there's any truth to his statements, customers who care about this standard and buy accordingly might not like seeing their buying habits classified as such. In fact Lloyd Alter, managing editor of Treehugger says because Illy’s Fair Trade policies he and many he knows won’t be buying the coffee again. The company's own environmental and social policies might be enough to satisfy some customers. But not everyone will do the research to learn about such policies. That's one of the reasons that certifications like fair trade exist in the first place. So even if it doesn't make sense for his company to identify with this standard right now, dismissing it altogether may not be a good move either. Fair Trade Photo via Shutterstock The post Coffee Company CEOs Should Watch What They Say About Fair Trade appeared first on Small Business Trends. |
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