By Karon Thackston © 2009, All Rights Reserved

A recent article found in Internet Retailer revealed that 85% of consumers plan to shop online this holiday season.  Sixty-nine percent plan to make holiday purchases online.  The survey goes on to say that 57% of shoppers are planning to use the Internet to “compare different retailers to find the best price.”

This comes as no surprise during a time of economic upheaval.  But is your ecommerce site ready to convert these shoppers?  What if you offer the same price as many other retailers?  Or even a higher price?  Are dollar signs the only card consumers are willing to play this holiday season?  No.

During an economic challenge, the focus isn’t necessarily just on price alone.  What shoppers want is value.  Sure, it’s an old-school term, but it still holds just as true today as it did in the ‘70s and even the ‘30s.

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Fraud happens, and new ways to commit fraud are always being developed. This is an unfortunate reality for all business. Because of this, fraud prevention has become a tricky and specialized field. Fraudsters targeting webhosts use different methods than they would for a florist, for example. 2Checkout has expert fraud analysts who are experienced at detecting these different methods and figuring out how to dissuade fraudsters in the first place. By assessing your business, your account’s history, and your own needs we can offer reliable, tested, effective strategies to assist you.

One aspect of 2Checkout’s fraud prevention that we’ve mentioned – but not discussed in depth, is our ability to tailor our fraud protections to suit your individual needs. While our normal fraud procedures provide sufficient protection for the majority of our vendors, from time to time a more tailored approach is helpful. Do you ever feel that we are flagging too many valid orders as fraud? Do you ever feel that your product attracts more fraudulent consumers than you expected? We are happy to work with you and offer suggestions to help reduce fraud and allow good sales.

These strategies may be as simple as changing how we review orders for your product or service. It may also be suggesting simple wording changes in your product explanations on your website. We have been doing fraud prevention for nearly 10 years; let us work with you and show you how effective we are.

With over 85% of small businesses failing in the first three years of operation, one has to wonder why this number is so high.  So I did a little research and this is what I found.  It turns out that banks, business schools and different organizations that support small business were asking themselves the same thing.  With a passion (not unlike mine) to see small businesses succeed, they decided to find an answer.  They decided to survey small businesses and find out what the heck was going on.  Funny thing, all of them found the same revealing yet simple answer to the question.  Why are so many small businesses failing – simply put, “it is a lack of marketing”.

Even after discovering this, I was still perplexed as to why someone would put so much “blood, sweat, and tears” into creating something that they love just to see it disappear before their eyes.  But then I realized that we all start businesses (and I’m no exception) because we want to work for ourselves doing something that we love.  So we start our own (marketing, retail, literacy, training) business with all the right intentions to make it successful.  But then we get so involved in working in the business that we forget or don’t know how to work on the business.

So how do you break the cycle of working in your business instead of on it?  Simple, you have a plan:

1. Schedule time with yourself each day or each week to work on your marketing (do not break these appointments; they are as important as any appointment you would make with a client)
2. Decide in advance what you want to accomplish this year with your marketing (this will eliminate the “promotional panic” where you spend money on last minute ideas and get no results)
3. Commit to a budget to support your efforts (decide on a number that you can spend monthly; you can’t grow on zero dollars)
4. Identify your ideal client (it’s easier, cheaper and more effective to market to a specific group of people that wants your service than to market to the masses)
5. Define your differentiation and communicate it (you have to stand out from the crowd/competition if you don’t want to be shopped solely on price)
6. Create a communication system that allows you frequent and regular contact with your prospects and clients (it takes 7 – 10 touches for someone to know, like and trust you and then buy from you)
7. Stop talking about you in your marketing materials and start talking to your ideal client (people want to know what’s in it for them; tell them about the benefits; not the features)

John Jantsch said it best in his Duct Tape Marketing book, “If you’re in business, you’re in the business of marketing”. Continue reading…

Advertising is a key component of the lead generation. It is typically the most expensive tactic,  so it is important to create effective ads.

Browsing through a local business magazine, I noticed four common advertising mistakes:

Lack of an attention grabbing or confusing headline

While most of the ads had headlines, several headlines did little to communicate the benefit the company provides to their customers. Some were confusing when viewed in context of the overall ad. Two ads in particular made me think they were for health care companies, but after reading carefully, they turned out to be for construction companies.

Here is a headline from a construction company that does clearly communicate who they work with – “Let us show you how we make healthcare construction easier for your customers.”

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Over the last few years I have had the pleasure of being involved in a number of e-commerce projects on behalf of clients. And in that time, as the internet has grown more and more in popularity and as more people have seen it as a possible route to riches, I have recognised a growing trend – an increasing amount of people who want to build an e-commerce business, but have given very little thought as to what their specific products will be, who their target market is and how they are going market their business and create sales. They just want to be like Amazon or Dell. Then as long as they get a solution with all the bells and whistles, with a bit of SEO everything will be fine. Then comes the disappointment – the orders don’t flood in.

In order to be successful in online e-commerce, the same basic business principles apply. You must research your market – there must be a need or desire for your product. You must asses the competition, who else is doing what you want to do and how are they doing it? What are the market segments or niches within your chosen market? Are there obvious areas of opportunity or are certain areas saturated? Then look at your own goals and objectives, will your business give you the returns you’re looking for, both personally and financially.

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