BIDaWIZ Blog » MARKETING

How Your Business Can Benefit From Mobile Point Of Sale

The BIDaWIZ Team — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 20:19:21 +0000

Retailers are incorporating technology into more and more of their business processes. Independent of the obvious cost-reduction and efficiency reasons for utilizing technology, their customers require it. As such, retailers need to consider the benefits for utilizing mobile point of sale systems. Learn how your business can benefit from this system.

Traditional POS or mPOS?
At the very least, you’ll want to utilize a traditional point of sale system for your customers to process payments at your store. However, most businesses should also consider a mobile POS (mPOS) system. This doesn’t apply to just the obvious mobile businesses such as pop-up stores, vendors at fairs, food trucks, carpenters, exterminators, and other local service providers. In fact, any business can also incorporate a mPOS system such as Square. With Square in particular, you can get a card reader for free, and instead pay a 2.75 percent transaction fee for each card you swipe. Such a system can be particularly handy if you’re starting that bakery, and plan to sell your goods both at your shop and at local farmers markets.

Mobile POS systems for traditional retailers
Many brick and mortar businesses with significant foot traffic and square footage can reap massive benefits by incorporating mobile POS in their sales process. You can enhance the customer experience by offering mobile POS access points in various aisles of their store. Not only will customers be able to pay quicker, but your business will gain valuable insight into the performance of those products using mPOS. It’s quite possible that the business may learn that a specific product is not properly placed as it performs better on Mobile POS versus traditional POS lanes. You may also be able to identify peak time to properly position Mobile POS systems throughout the store.

In what other ways can mPOS benefit your business?
The system can be integrated into your existing customer relationship management (CRM) data that can help your business better serve your customers. For instance, local restaurants/retailers may use mPOS to learn which items were purchased by the same customer and when did it occur; it’s also possible to learn where (i.e. what table, aisle). This valuable information can be utilized for future marketing campaigns to that specific customer and provide a more personalized experience. It’s also possible that small businesses can utilize customer data capture through mPOS for larger scale strategic initiatives with their customers.

Ensure mPOS is compatible with your existing infrastructure
Before you implement a mPOS, first make sure you have the proper equipment that interfaces with a mobile device. For instance, you will need to make sure that the mPOS can integrate with your ERP database and accounting system that can store the collected data.

More business questions? Browse answers or ask small business questions online.

Tags: accounting software, point of sale, small business marketing, Ryan Himmel

Should My Business Have A Physical Presence?

The BIDaWIZ Team — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 23:24:41 +0000

While we generally advocate offering brick and mortar businesses and services online, there are certain industries that are simply not ready for it yet. Many retailers in the high-end luxury items business fall under that category. Instead of selling solely online, we would recommend also having a physical presence for those industries. Here’s why.

Most consumers still prefer to buy in person
First, only about 6% of all US retail sales occur online. The market has come a long way, but still most buyers prefer to purchase in person. Second, luxury items such as jewelry requires that the seller educates the buyer. This is very difficult to do via phone or email. You’ll need to be able to explain the product and how great it is in person for the buyer to understand the value. Third, due to the expensive nature of these items, buyers will want to see and feel it before they spend thousands of dollars.

Offer your products in the store and online
In terms of your online strategy, make sure you have an actual website. A Facebook company page or other social network medium are typically not enough. Your customers will be spending thousands of dollars on your product, so they will expect you to have a proper website. It’s really not that expensive at all to setup a website that even has limited functionality. There are many low fee turnkey web platforms such as Wordpress that can be very easy and cost-effective to set-up. Also, if you do intend to sell your product online, you’ll need an e-commerce site anyway.

More Questions? Ask your business marketing questions.

Do I Have The Proper Messaging On My Website?

Ryan Himmel, CPA — Fri, 08 Nov 2013 21:19:09 +0000

We’re glad to hear that you are questioning the messaging on your website. Many web start-ups build a product and become so emotionally attached to the inner-workings of their software that they lose sight of the importance of having the right words on their homepage.

Check your website’s bounce rate
Candidly, I have to admit that after visiting your website, I felt as though I had more questions than answers. I’m still not completely sure of what the site offers. This is a problem because on average you have only 7 seconds at most to get a prospective client’s attention. If they land on a website and don’t know exactly what it does, how it helps them and why it’s better than the other options available in the market, then chances are they’re going to leave the site. You can confirm if this is the case by looking up the landing page bounce rate. This rate represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and leave rather than viewing other pages on the site. Bounce rates of 60-70% or more for e-commerce sites should set off an alarm.

Test new landing pages
There are certainly still ways in which you can improve your messaging and conversion rates. I would try to get some feedback from the users who have signed up and like the service. Ask them why they like the service? You’ll probably gain some very valuable insight into what got their attention. Perhaps I and others that viewed your site were distracted by some of the other words in your messaging and overlooked these key words. After identifying these key words, try to experiment with placing them in a more prominent position on your landing page. Track the performance of the site with this new landing page. If you note an improvement, then you know you are making progress. But, don’t stop testing. Continue to test with small changes and utilize that data to optimize and continue to improve your messaging. It’s a continual process.

I hope you find this guidance to be helpful. Let us know how your testing goes and what messaging ends up work well for your business.

More Questions? Ask your business marketing questions or learn about our email marketing programs for accountants.

How Can New Businesses Keep Growing After The Big Launch

The BIDaWIZ Team — Fri, 11 Oct 2013 22:09:19 +0000

Let’s suppose that you’ve recently launched a new business and the initial press, buzz and sales were fantastic. After six months of solid growth, business has begun to dry up. Now, you’re faced with making many difficult business decisions. How should you proceed?

Leverage positive customer feedback
It’s great that you received very positive feedback from customers. However, how are you utilizing that feedback to gain new customers? If you’re just politely appreciating their kind words, then you’re missing an opportunity to grow your business. You need to leverage your best customers as they can be great company ambassadors in telling their friends, colleagues and family members about your business. Provide an incentive for them to make referrals and make it as easy as possible to do so. Perhaps, next time you tell them that you really appreciate their business and would like to personally offer this same experience to others that they know. You could also throw in some special offers or freebies for your product or service. In addition, you could run a promotion via Facebook and you tell your best customers about it and how to spread the word.

Launch measurable marketing campaigns
Social media channels can be helpful, but they aren’t worthwhile if you aren’t using them effectively by measuring your success and optimizing for future campaigns. Most marketing efforts require some trial and error. We recommend that you start with one channel (i.e. Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin) and put all of your focus and resources there until it proves to be effective. Then, move on to the next channel.

Identify product and service problems
Since this is a relatively brand new business, you need to be mindful that the initial growth was likely the result of curious customers. Maybe it’s possible that there are more people that tried your product or service and have decided not to return. This may not be the case, but it’s important to identify if there are more issues than you are led to believe from the initial feedback. To identify if there is a potential problem, we would recommend that you try to determine the mix of new customers versus repeat customers on a weekly basis. If you’re returning customer base is shrinking, then you’ll need to dig deeper.

More Questions? Ask your startup questions or learn about our email marketing programs for accountants.

Will Email Marketing Increase Company Sales?

The BIDaWIZ Team — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 13:50:38 +0000

Email marketing provides businesses with a cost-effective way to stay connected to their customers. In addition, companies can easily launch a program to meet many different objectives. Learn the best ways to increase sales with email marketing.

Email marketing programs
There are many different ways to use email marketing to connect to customers. Companies can launch campaigns with the objective of being promotional, informative, or to provide a company specific announcement. The type of campaign and frequency of emails will typically depend on the customer, company, and industry. For instance, a business targeting a previous retail customer may send promotional emails based on historical purchases and the time of day the open-rates perform best.

Key email marketing metrics
The open-rate is one email marketing metric that measure the number of recipients that opened the email as ratio of the total email send list. Most marketers should expect an open-rate of 25% to 30% according to the first quarter 2013 industry statistics provided by marketing firm Epsilon. In addition, to open rates, marketers will want to pay attention to click through and bounce rates. Click through rates are typically shown as the number of links in the email that were clicked in relation to the total number of recipients that opened the email. Click to open rates may range from 10% to 40% depending on the industry. Typically, consumer services such as telecom have the lowest click to open rates. In comparison, consumer product goods, retail apparel and financial services have the highest click to open rates. Bounce rates are important in measuring the number of emails that aren’t delivered to the recipient either because of an non-existent email address or other related issue. Marketers should try to keep their bounce rate as low as possible by removing stale email addresses. This ensures the sender’s email address stays in good-standing with the various mainstream mail clients such as Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, & Outlook.

Optimize your email marketing campaign
Right after you start your email marketing campaign, you should already be thinking about ways to optimize your emails. For the first few emails, marketers must rely heavily on their own intuition and assumptions. As more statistics accumulate, marketers can optimize their campaigns to better meet their objectives by running tests. For instance, the subject line of the email is one of the most critical factors impacting open rates. You may want to run a test by sending an email with different sets of subject lines to two small groups within your email list. The results of the small test should dictate which subject line will perform better for the group as a whole. For instance, one subject line title may have a 15% open rate and another title could have a higher rate or 27%. It’s clear that the marketer should use the subject line with the highest open rate for the group email as a whole.

Understanding the growing importance of personalized emails and mobile
There’s no question that email marketing can help a company improve their sales and branding. However, marketers need to stay on top of the latest trends to maintain customer attention. The more personalized that the emails are to the recipient, the greater the likelihood that they will connect with the content and become a purchaser. In addition, many recipients are relying heavily on their mobile phones to access email content. Marketers need to be obsessive about providing the very best emails for the most mainstream mobile platforms. For instance, the emails should have full functionality when viewing on a mobile phone.

How can I get started?
There are many different email marketing providers that offer a whole host of features. We’ve been using Constant Contact for over four years now and have been happy with the solution. The features, price, innovation and compatibility with other programs suit many small businesses. If you’d like to try constant contact for free, you can signup here or contact us at 866-991-3665 to learn more.

More Questions? Ask your business marketing questions or learn about our email marketing programs for accountants.

Advice For Launching A Product In A New Market

Ryan Himmel, CPA — Fri, 06 Sep 2013 19:23:48 +0000

Entering a new market can be an exciting yet challenging endeavor for any company. Specifically, many companies run into problems when they allocate too many resources to an unproven product, which in turn detracts from their existing business or what is currently working well.

Should I allocate resources to advertising?
As to whether you should focus on your pricing strategy or advertising to attract sales, I would recommend the former since advertising can be very expensive when you’re testing a new market. Furthermore, the feedback that you receive from even a small sample of customers can be much more valuable in converting future sales opportunities.

Know your customer
If you’re targeting a mid to lower end consumer, you need to be cognizant of the fact that they are focused on value. They may think your prices are high because they don’t believe they’re getting enough product/features for the cost. Before you slash prices, I would recommend first trying to offer additional value. What does that mean? Instead of selling one item, try selling two items as a bundled offering with a slight discount. This approach can be very helpful as the consumer is happy that they’re getting more for their money. In addition, I would also gain an understanding as to what your competitors are offering this same customer.

Create a separate brand for the new product
I would also recommend creating a greater distinction between existing items and your new product launch. It’s very difficult for the consumer to become comfortable with a product when they don’t understand the company brand and the different price points. Remember, you always want to try to make the sales process as easy as possible. Your current strategy may be too confusing for this new customer as the brand still attracts a different consumer.

Leverage cost-effective distribution channels for marketing
You need to get in front on your target audience with a cost-effective and thoughtful marketing strategy. Your existing customer base isn’t the answer. Try first experimenting with inexpensive distribution channels such as social media, consumer related blogs, and working
with affiliate partners. The sales may be slow in the beginning, but it should increase gradually as you’re targeting the right audience. Even more, you’ll be learning more about who your target audience really is without testing it with an expensive advertising campaign.

More Questions? Ask your business marketing questions or find a good accountant online.

How Can You Expand Your Home-Based Business?

Ryan Himmel, CPA — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 23:25:02 +0000

We recently contributed to Entrepreneur Magazine by providing a recommendation for how to grow a home-based business. We provided an excerpt and link to the full article below.

It’s ambitious to think big and try to expand your business beyond your home. To do so, you’re probably going to have to go out of your comfort zone and explore opportunities that may become challenging without prior experience scaling a business. Still, it’s typically worth it in the end. First, you need to identify specific ways to substantially increase your customer base. You have a few options to consider. Read more.

More Questions? Ask your business development questions or find a nyc accountant online.

How Can You Sell Your Product To Big Brands?

The BIDaWIZ Team — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 21:43:32 +0000

Once you’ve developed a new product, you need to start thinking about distribution. It’s okay to think big with hopes of distributing your product to the masses via a big box brand. However, gaining their attention and trust isn’t so easy. Still, there are certain steps you can take to help you reach your goals.

Establish proof of concept
There must be evidence to suggest that you have proof of concept. While you may believe that there’s a need for it in the market, there still needs to be proof. The best evidence is to show that people are using the product and have paid money for it. It doesn’t have to be tens of thousands of customers, but a large enough sample size to support the notion that market acceptance exists. Distributing the product to smaller retailers would be the best place to start. If you’re deeply concerned about sharing your product with the public for fears of competitors cloning it, there are other ways to show a need in the market, such as industry research, surveys and focus groups. It’s not the best evidence, but there’s a chance that it might be sufficient when presenting to a big box brand.

Utilize your network for introductions to big brands
Create a list of big box brands that you believe would embrace your product. Once you have a list, search through your professional network for individuals that are directly connected with business development contacts at these big box brands. Use LinkedIn and other networks to try to find the right person to contact. If you can’t identify any direct or third-party connections, you’ll need to try to gain introductions through conferences, events and trade-shows that the company attends.

Prepare your pitch with evidence of market acceptance
Once you do get the opportunity to speak with the company, you’ll need to be prepared to explain the product features, manufacturing process, costs, price, risks and market opportunity. The more facts you can provide with numbers, plus qualitative evidence suggesting market acceptance from customers, the stronger your case will be for them to agree to distribute your product. Be prepared to answer difficult questions you may not have thought of earlier. Could your product pose a risk to children if misused? If so, what can you do to mitigate that risk?

Consider working with a partner
Lastly, don’t overlook working with a partner or a professional that has specific experience selling products to big box brands. You may have to give up some equity and/or provide compensation, but if it helps you meet your goals, it can certainly be money well spent.

More Questions? Ask your business marketing questions or find an accountant online.

Identifying The Best Location For Your Business

The BIDaWIZ Team — Fri, 02 Aug 2013 11:45:16 +0000

Location can play an important role in determining the success or failure of an early-stage business. This is why you should spend time planning and analyzing locations to find the right one. With that said, you need to incorporate a strategy in your search.

Set a budget for rent
The first step is to establish a maximum budget for monthly rent. Theoretically, you should already have a budget in mind as rent is a line item of your financial model that you constructed when you wrote your business plan. It’s alright if your budget has changed since then, but make sure you have one in mind. This will help you manage your time effectively and reduce the number of options to consider.

Utilize mapping software to find your target audience
Once you know how much you can afford, you’ll need to perform a demographic analysis of the area you’re targeting for your store. The results of the analysis should indicate the location and travel patterns of your target audience. For instance, if you’re targeting educated consumers between the ages of 25 and 40 who earn between $40,000 and $80,000 per year, mapping software should indicate the location of people with those characteristics. Please note though that demographics are not the only factor to consider. You’ll need to also identify high foot-traffic areas as well highways that may draw a lot of attention to your store location.

Keep competitor stores in mind
In addition, keep your competitors in mind when you’re looking for the right location. You may notice that it’s common to see many banks and coffee shops in the same area. That’s by design, as studies have shown that stores located in close proximity to their competitors can benefit from higher-quality foot traffic. But don’t just target competitors, as complementary businesses that share a like-minded audience may also be of value. In fact, it’s quite possible that, for example, a Chipotle may have a similar target demographic to your business even if you’re selling completely different products and services.

Consider working with a consulting firm
It’s also important to know your limitations. There are many consulting firms that specialize in identifying the best location for your business. If that’s a cost you can’t endure, then utilize as much publicly available information as possible while following an overall strategy.

More Questions? Ask your business questions or find an accountant online.

Is Live Chat An Effective Sales Tool For My Website?

The BIDaWIZ Team — Fri, 24 May 2013 02:43:03 +0000

Over the past five years, many companies have expanded their online sales tools to include a live chat feature to better cater to new and existing customers. While there are a plethora of service providers offering a whole host of useful features, whether or not it’s effective may depend on your business and the purpose for using live chat.

The live chat concept
The early solution providers launched the live chat tool to meet the growing demand for real-time customer service and sales nurturing online. The purpose was simple. To provide customers with the same level of interaction with the company as is the case when someone walks into a brick and mortar store. In recent years, the live chat feature has evolved into a more proactive and intelligent tool for companies to selectively engage with potential and existing customers, while also being able to retain useful information about users.

Live Chat as a sales tool
This feature can be a fantastic way to educate new customers about your product and the industry in general. It may also assist a customer in navigating the website and going through the checkout process. In fact, recent reports by Forrester indicated that the live chat feature can nurture a sales and lead to higher conversion rates as compared to a static website.

Live chat as a customer service tool
The value proposition from a customer service perspective is obvious. It’s incredibly easy and convenient for a user to click a live chat button and chat immediately with a customer service representative. Those that have gone through the process of calling customer service, know how frustrating and time-consuming that experience can be for the client. Just make sure you have high quality sales agents because it can back-fire.

Greater access to valuable customer feedback
The other perk with live chat is that you can gain valuable feedback. It may relate to your site’s user-friendliness, pricing, and ideas for new products/services etc. It’s also documented instantaneously for your reference in the future, which is rarely the case with brick and mortar feedback cards.

What is the cost for live chat?
The cost can vary greatly by service provider. However, generally most offer a free trial period and then starter plans range from $10 to $30 per month. As more agents are needed to service your website, the monthly fee increases. In addition, there is the cost to pay employees to provide the customer service or sales support. You’ll need to determine whether or not the overall cost is less than the traditional customer service and sales support models.

Should I consider live chat for my company website?
You should certainly consider it if you have a website. However, whether or not it will be effective depends upon your business and the specific objectives for the live chat tool. If you’re offer products or services that require a certain level of customer knowledge, then an online sales support agent would be very helpful. If you find that many customers are submitting inquiries and comments through your contact us page or voicemail, then an online customer service agent would also be valuable.

More Questions? Ask your business questions or find an accountant online.