What the font....?

What the font is a cute little website that allows you to discover what font is being used in a particular image. Useful if you see a font that you want to use for your business - logos, fliers, to create a specific image, to fit with a theme etc.

Click on the headline to go to the What the Font website....

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Market Research - A User's Perspective

For some time now, I have been looking at ways in which companies conduct market research online, and persuade people to share feedback, opinions, thoughts about their brand, products etc. In particular, surveys.

There are many companies offering to get your surveys in front of targeted potential customers and users of your products. These range from the YouGov type - high-end, occasionally political, surveys through to the very many consumer market research surveys, from the likes of LightSpeed, Nielsen, Ciao, and others.

Those searching for participants for their market research offer either cash rewards or points, which can be redeemed for prizes with participating stores. Some companies offer a combination of paid / prize surveys and loyalty shopping to their merry band of consumers.

There are several noticeable ways to fail to engage the users and therefore fail to get quality results.

Firstly, those who demand huge quantities of personal information, despite disclaimers saying that all results will be anonymous - big put off.

Secondly, those who offer a prize in return for the survey and in the small print require the user to send emails to x number of friends, and for those friends to partake in a number of similar draws etc before they qualify for the prize - enormous put off, asking far too much in return.

Thirdly, those who only offer the points, prize or cash once you qualify or complete the survey. Invariably, despite having completed a large number of fields as part of the survey and given an amount of personal or useful data to the survey owner, a screen pops up saying you don't qualify.

(There is one particular company who never seem to pay out ever, but who must have gathered incredible amounts of data before the user gets wise, according to the forums on several consumer sites such as MoneySavingExpert.com etc).

Then there are those who gather feedback on new products by sending out samples. One would assume that the drop out rate, and the difficulty in obtaining feedback from customers who were just in it for the free lunch, might prove to make this a non-profitable exercise. But from a consumer point of view tasters and freebies are always popular.

And lastly, those who take the email address of the consumer and then bombard them with messages from highly unrelated companies. Agreeing to this is of course in the Terms and Conditions but there is often no indication of how far or how widely the email address is going to be shared.

Note to consumers: always use an unimportant email address to sign up to any of this type of websites.
Note to marketers: think about the quality of the email addresses you are harvesting, or if you buy lists from this type of company.

Certain companies seem to have managed to acquire a solid reputation in this field, such as YouGov, both with consumers and those for whom they conduct surveys, whereas others must really be struggling in the face of the very negative publicity they receive from consumers.

There are additionally companies gathering user data through the installation of software, not just on PCs but also now on mobile and smart phones. These also offer a variety of reimbursement for the data gathered, which is generally anonymised but may not be. This would allow a company to hold rather too much information on your surfing or mobile habits if the consumer does not take care and understand exactly what the software is capable of.

For those who you wish to engage in market research, and in order to yield workable and usable results, it would seem necessary to offer cash, or points which can be redeemed for a wide variety of prizes from a choice of retailers or online stores.

Cash would seem to be the easiest option in some ways, and has the biggest pull for the consumer, even if only a small amount per survey such as 50p. However, you would need to only send cheques out once a certain amount has been reached eg £20 or £50, and this would require a large number of survey completions in order to do so. This may not be possible for a single company, and may require a group to join together to attain the required number of surveys eg a Chamber of Commerce, or Trade Organisation.

If you are a small business looking to run some market research, why not consider setting up a survey with SurveyMonkey? Or you could set up an Opinion Poll on your website that gathers useful market data from your site visitors.... Both of those options can be free, rather than paying a market research company to upset your potential customers with some of their unpleasant or underhand tactics (as detailed above)!!

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Investing in the youf generation

Not that long ago, no teen even had a mobile phone, and those adults who did were ridiculed for carrying around a small power generator and a technological brick. Now the age at which our children 'demand' a mobile, (as some sort of right, like clean air or pocket money) is plummeting fast.

Now, we see the internet marketing world afire with ways to personalise mobile content, market to the text generation etc, and considerable investment in ways to capture that immature market share.

However, this 'immature' market is a whole new generation with a different take on what is worth spending money on and what isn't, and I wonder just how deeply into those heads and that culture the marketers etc have gone.

Although there has always been considerable surprise expressed at how people will pay for a snippet of a song eg a ringtone where they will not necessarily be willing to pay to download music eg the whole song, it would seem that the age of information etc on the Internet being free may have spawned a generation who believe everything should be free.

Ask most teens whether they will pay to download a ringtone now, and they will look at you askance and ask,"Why pay? You can get them for free." Ditto if you replace 'ringtone' with 'music'.

No matter to them whether there is law breaking going on with copyright infractions etc, these teens are of course outside of the law usually because of their age, but also seem to be almost entirely unaware that bluetoothing to a friend a song that you downloaded last night over a torrent is illegal. To a teen, there is no visible crime, not understanding, as of course they don't, how the copyright, DRM, royalties etc world operates.

"Why is it illegal? It's just a song she wants that I have."

And with word of mouth and mouse being rife amongst that generation through their use of MSN, Skype etc, it doesn't take long for a new source of freebies to go viral amongst their peers. The playground jungle drums have always been effective in transmitting new trends but with the use of online chats etc, viral amongst that age group can be almost instant.

And the big pull is FREE. Anything free attracts tight-fisted teenagers by the bucket load. So, to me, for any business seeking to get market share in the youth market, the first thing to do is brand the product line as FREE and work out how you can capture these greedy little monsters for their lifetime, build them into loyal cutomers (never minding that for some time they are going to be unpaying customers) and run loss leaders until their credit cards start to work online and the need/desire/want turns into a capitalisable asset.

Building email lists with their addresses won't always work because many of them change email addies as frequently as they swap their SIM cards. Most of them lie like hairy eggs about their real address as this is what their parents advise them to do to prevent stalking etc. So, picking them off at Facebook, MySpace and building loyalty through Second Life and other virtual worlds, social networking sites etc may prove to be the only way forward.

And that means mastering the existing hot sites, and keeping up to date with the new ones. Without becoming predatory, or breaking netiquette.

I wish you luck! Having two of these mercenary little buggers myself, I advise my clients to come up with products for the other end of the maturity scale - the silver surfers with high disposable income!

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Get paid to blog

If you are looking at ways to make money online, and you are a prolific blog poster, it is always worth looking for ways to monetise your blog.

This is just one of those ways: PayPerPost



For a small business, there is an extra twist to this blogging malarkey.

Instead of just asking for a reciprocal link (from complementary, not competitive websites, remember?!), why not offer to post about their website, or product range on your blog? The company you are linking to can provide some of the text to make your life easier, and you could have the beginnings of a great new partnership.

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Reward your customers

Where I live, in Cumbria, this time of year sees the beginning of the influx of thousands of people attending Appleby Horse Fair - an ancient fair where horses used to be traded by gypsies from all over the UK, including Ireland. In this modern age, far more is traded than just horses, but the horses still take a major part in the week-long event.

When a horse is sold, or sheep or cows by our local farmers, there is a practice called "luck money".

The seller returns to the buyer a small amount of money as a token of a successful sale. This may be as little as a pound, but the amount of luck money can occasionally become as hard driven a bargain as the purchase price of the animal! And the amount of luck money given by each particular vendor can influence who buys from them again in the future. You are more likely to hear how tight or how generous the luck money was, than about the purchase of the horse!

We were discussing this practice last night in the pub and saying how different that is from how the supermarkets etc treat you these days. 1p or 10p short? Put something back then. Completely inflexible and indifferent to the customer, despite all the sweet talk in the adverts.

Recently, I went into a garage where there was a small change pot by the till. It is so easy to go a few pence over when filling your car, and should you find yourself short, the money in the pot is there to help you make up the difference. Anyone with a few pennies spare change can add to it, knowing that one day they may need just such a service. And it's surprising how many people in the queue in front of me put in their coppers and undoubtedly also remember that garage for this small service.

Simply by putting that change pot on the counter shows an attitude towards your customers that is also illustrated by the luck money, whereas it is countermanded by the 'greed' of those large corporates who do not want their tills to be down by even a penny, despite posting billions of pounds of profits each year.

If you have conducted a successful transaction with a customer, why not show them that you are pleased to have done business with them by showing your appreciation for their business?

Recently I purchased some boots from Ebay and when the parcel arrived, inside it was a little cloth bag with some sweets in as a thank you. Yesterday, I received an extra surprise packet of seeds in with my gardening order, which was a great touch, It was a small gesture, but those sellers will stick in my mind for that practice. Ditto the garage, and ditto the luck money idea.

However, I felt aggrieved when a large supermarket could not be flexible over a few pennies, nor did I enjoy feeling humiliated (and skint!) at the till when I needn't have been treated like that, and have never returned there to shop again. So, the reward does not need to be much in value, it really is the thought that counts.

And in building up a base of loyal customers, treating them as people and showing you are thankful for their business can really make all the difference. And it should not be in vouchers, encouraging them to spend again with you to see any return, but something for them, like a cashback, or a small bag of sweets, or a free packet of seeds.

Customer loyalty is cheap to buy if you just take one or two steps out of the ordinary, and make yourself different from those large, unfeeling corporates who care only about the money and not about the people/customers.

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Google Base competitive analysis

Want to know how your products are doing compared to your competitors on Google Base? Just give this a whirl using your top keyword terms to conduct some instant competitive analysis. Very nifty!!

Oh, and if your products are not listed in Google Base/products - ask yourself why not?!

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One Time Offers

It is always worth going round the IM sites (of which there are zillions) to see what their latest tactics are.

One word of warning: leave your credit card somewhere safe when you do. Internet Marketers really are remarkably good at sales, as well as getting you to their site in the first place, and the use of hypnotic writing means you could find yourself needing, and hence buying, products you had never heard of 5 mins earlier. It is likely that 5 minutes later, when you have dropped out of your trance, you will wonder why on earth you bought this remarkable e-book or that incredible software when you are still trying to build a working website!

One of the things you will discover when you explore IM sites is the One Off Offer or OTO. The hardcore Internet Marketing bunch started using this back in 2006, but it now seems to have become ubiquitous, and has moved into other niches.


This actually is something that most shops etc cannot achieve without very good sales staff willing to stick to their guns that this is a one off offer and won't be available another day, as they have targets to meet, and is a particularly good strategy for websites, whatever you sell. As long as you are happy to be "aggressive" with your selling technique, there is no reason not to start exploring OTOs and time-limited price discounts.

The point with an OTO is that with a little decent programming (cookies, registering IP addresses etc), you can ensure that that person is never offered the product again at that price (or has to work quite hard to get it), and so you can work on that facet of human nature which loves a bargain. With time-limited pricing, you just keep putting the price up in your sales cart, and with some well-timed autoresponder messages sent to their email address, you will probably grab them at some point if you have a good product they feel they really need or that is unique to you eg an info product.

Much research has been done with OTOs, as well as with selling 'must have' products whose price is only held for a certain amount of time. If your site visitor is already in 'buying mode' and has their credit card in hand, further offers made to them, particularly those which are OTOs or where the price is due to increase in the near future, become attractive. The buy rate for these new tempting products has been seen to be up to 150% higher than if the product is offered at other times or in a non-urgent manner.

It can be a very good way of clearing stock, of selling info products eg ebooks, or of offering training courses and unique content. Many people are also selling affiliate and third party products through this method, which can mean that you earn money without actually needing to develop your own product, deal with shipping etc.

In this day and age, with the current economic conditions, it is worth considering all this types of sales techniques to keep your sales ledger moving.

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How not to advertise your business...

Yesterday, I drove past a new business up the road. They sell vinyl etc signs for business advertising, and yet their own sign is a really poor example of what they could offer you.

Although the sign does include the business name, and the fact that they make business advertising signs, it failed to include any basic contact information eg phone number or website address to make an enquiry or look at examples of their portfolio and prices. What does this say about their business?



This business is in the middle of nowhere and is unlikely to pick up any passing trade that isn't on the way to somewhere, and therefore unlikely to take the time to drive down the very long drive to 'drop in' and enquire. More likely to make a quick note of the phone number and ring later.

I'm not having a go at this particular business, especially as I know them, but to me this is a prime example of how you can overlook even the most basic necessities of advertising your business, or worse still, give a poor example of your products and work.

To me that sign says: If they forget the contact details on their own sign, what will they forget on mine?

Another example I saw of this today was on this green energy website. Now, as far as I know, most of the world is looking at eco-friendly solutions to our ever-increasing electricity consumption, so these guys should have an eager audience.

And they had me interested until I came across this promotional cock-up. Check out the photo. Especially the after photo. Now, how long would it have taken to clear the debris out of the bottom of that cupboard, or even Photoshop it out?

In these days of belt tightening by consumers, businesses need to ensure that they stand out from the crowd, and beat their competitors. (scroll down for some other ideas about what you could be doing to beat the credit crunch). You need to show in all your promotional material, even if it is just a photo, that you are the best company to be dealing with, whatever niche you are in.

You need to show that yours are the highest quality products (ie by producing a fantastic sign to advertise your own company), and that you fully understand customer service (ie after we have installed your new smart meter, we tidy up).

How hard can it be?!

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Don't let the credit crunch eat your business

The media are busy creating a huge amount of tomorrow's chip papers around the credit crunch and economic crisis. The power of the media is such that it could actually become a self-fulfilling prophecy - like when there isn't a fuel crisis until the media tell everyone there is about to be one, so everyone goes and panic buys.

Except this time, it's not panic buying that is happening, it's panic saving. Every which way you look, people are tightening their belts. And if you run a small business, or are self-employed, you could start to feel that affecting your sales anytime now, whatever niche you are in.

For instance, the current reduction in house buying is not just affecting estate agents (150 closing each week), but it also means people are not spending as much on home furnishings, paint, kitchens etc.

However, there is no need to tighten your belt, as this could potentially have a disastrous effect. Let others tighten their belts, cut their advertising and marketing budgets, drop prices etc. Undoubtedly, the most likely thing that will happen is that certain companies go to the wall by taking this all one step too far, falling off the shopper's radar, and seeing their sales fall below the necessary levels to stay in business.

Actually, fortune favours this brave and this is one time where being brave rather than fearful about the situation could benefit your business. Especially if your competitors do not take this type of action and go bust.

What should you be doing during this time to keep your business going?

Well, there is no reason not to cut costs but there are probably many things you are NOT doing yet which you could be doing that cut costs within your business anyway. So, rather than try to cut production costs, find a cheaper supplier, drop your prices etc, why not look at some areas of your business that could be carried out more cost-effectively? And many of these are environmentally friendly too!

For instance, are you using VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) to make your phone calls or are you still putting the money into the pocket of a very expensive incumbent telco for every call you make? There are plenty of companies offering VoIP systems for small businesses and home offices, or you could just use Skype and encourage your customers etc to do so too. Try adding a Skype Call us for free now button to your site and watch them change without you even asking!

Instead of driving to meetings and putting large sums of money into the Treasury and oil producers' hands, why not video conference? Obviously, there are times when a face to face meeting is essential, but video conferencing works in many situations, and also cuts down on the time you are away from your business. And it really can be done with just a £15 webcam....

Are you still using print brochures and the postal system to send information to your customers and potential customers? Use email. Produce a PDF brochure and email it to prospective clients or existing customers. Send invoices by email rather than post. Think of all the trees that this will save each year! This has the added advantage of helping you keep an up to date list of email addresses to use in other ways eg special offers, launching a new product, a regular email newsletter etc.

Look at your utility bills. The electricity and water companies are desperate for new customers so there are all sorts of deals on offer. Ditto mobile operators, banks etc. Go to Uswitch and just check you are getting the best deals for your business.

So, there are probably many savings you could make within your business just by thinking along those lines. Look at all your costs and find out whether you could be using technology more effectively, or ingeniously, to improve your profit margins.

Now, let's look at the bravery element of what you could do from a marketing angle. It is worth keeping an eye on whether any of your competitors start reducing their ad spend eg if they start dropping down the PPC listings in Google adwords or cease to feature for certain keywords. Take their customers by increasing your budget and the number of keywords you list under.

We all know that regularly updating your site can be a pain, but now is very much the time to get it done. Add as much new content as you can, particularly focussing on long tail and organic search terms, as well as targeting terms that might normally be too expensive or competitive for a small business to feature in top listings.

Take a look at your advertising. One of the things that is most infrequently done by small businesses and the self-employed is testing and measuring your ads. Any ads that are not working, or that are not proving cost-effective, stop them today. You must measure results from advertising, and this can be done by adding tracking URLs or individual website addresses for specific campaigns, codes and reference numbers, dedicated phone numbers or email addresses, etc.

Test different headlines and copy to see which works, and don't forget a call to action. Tell people what to do, and remember AIDA - Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Every ad should capture the reader or viewer's attention, arouse interest, make them express desire for the product and then respond to a call to action.

Whilst we are talking about advertising, now may well be the time to approach your local TV station and ask how much advertising is. As companies begin to cut marketing budgets, the TV companies (and national press) will need to work harder to fill the many ad breaks they force upon us. And never pay the first figure they tell you - it is haggling time! It doesn't need to cost a fortune to create a TV ad, and if you can focus on the benefits of your product at this time of economic crisis and why people need it, then you could well be onto a winner.

Anyway, plenty more of this to follow over the coming days and weeks as we see how the credit crunch can be taken advantage of. Watch this space!

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Keep up! This week: C rate

Oh god. Here we go again. The Internet Marketers have coined a new phrase, and are ALL blogging, sending newsletters etc about it. This time it is "C Rate".

Now, let's make this clear, I am not going to take Mark Joyner and his cronies apart and then put them back together to sell you something. You only need read a few of the emails already doing the rounds to see that is happening.

I would quite like to take them to pieces and leave them in pieces, with you still holding your pounds or dollars in your hands.

I am no longer on the side of the internet marketers, although by being on their drop lists etc I can at least spot useful trends that can be employed by your average website owner ie you.

This latest is, I promise, nothing new, and it certainly isn't worth paying out for. Now, the VSA (Virtual Sales Agent - customer service tool) see previous post, I forked out hard cash to try it, as it seems to be to be a worthwhile module for any Linux/Php based site. (But you will need to wait, as I am still trying to suss Joomla through the newly bought videos. When I have won.....watch this space.) I think that VSA and the Joomla/Moodle stuff might be worth investing in, but this latest viral charge isn't.

The problem for me is that I follow one particularly successful money-making world _ IM. If I followed the developments online of the porn industry, I could be anywhere up to 5 years ahead of the online activities of my competitors in other industries, even if I was selling dog leads. Actually, that could be misconstrued as a porn item, let's try "Queueing systems" instead.

But I follow the IM guys, and see what is going to be big in 1-5 years time on the Net. And some of the stuff they trial is interesting, and some is crap (as they openly admit themselves), and some is just a license to print money from mugs.

Going back to the point of this post, if you think viral marketing is the biz then work out how it works. It takes:
1) a community
2) a buzz
3) timeliness

Just search on "C rate" on Google and discover whether the folks promoting it are all 'inter-related'. Type some of the names in, bearing in mind most of these guys have 100s of websites. It can take quite some time to put together the family tree but you only need to look for a few of the well-known names to see how they inter-promote each other to make things work.

Thing is, you can do that too.

In Bolivia, I learnt more about co-operatives and co-operation than I ever did looking into Mondragon, or the Rochdale folk. And I know quite a lot about that stuff...

So, today's lesson is: find others, doing the things you want to eg promote your businesses in a niche or locality, and work together. It will never, or very rarely, hurt.

I spent this evening trying to sell something on Ebay. I'm an Internet Marketer, trying to sell a personal item but looking to check out some skills using new techs.

I didn't need any of them. I needed some really old skills to make contacts, become a human, find the forums/community where people treat you as a person and say, "Hell, if that is why you selling it, I'm interested."

You honestly don't need a C rate or anything similar from the Mark Joyners, Kevin Wilkes etc of this world. You need to be you, belong to a community (or 3 or 100), and deliver good, sound honest products.

Not promises. Empty or otherwise.

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