Marketing:
E-Commerce, Direct Sales & Customer Management
Session 6
Date:
Due: 	Section IV: Part C
Class Opener (10 min.)
Articles of interest, best / worst news, brainteaser, etc.
Instructor Topics (60 min.)
(20 min.)	1.	E-Commerce
(15 min.)	2.	Online Marketing and Social Media
(15 min.) 	3.	The Art of Selling
Marketing vs. Selling
Understanding Buyers
Eight Steps to Sales Success
Creating a Sales Plan
(10 min.) 	4.	Customer Management
Customer Service Strategies
Resolving Customer Problems
Guest Speaker (30 min.)
Salesperson, online business owner or Web designer
Break (20 min.)
Refreshments
Networking activity
Work Period (60 min.)
Optional Discussion: Advertising and the Internet
Homework Review—Session 5
Workbook Preview—Session 6
Assignment for Session 7
WORKBOOK	Complete the worksheets in Workbook Session 6. WRITE	After completing the Session 6 worksheets, follow the instructions on the Writing Your Business Plan page at the end of the worksheets to write Section IV. Marketing Plan: D. Direct Sales and Customer Service. TEXT	Read Chapters 17 through 19 (Keeping Books and Records, Budgeting, and Cash Flow Management).

Learning Objectives
Understand the importance of having an online security plan. Understand the basic issues involved in website design. Think about the pros and cons of building or buying a site. Think about how e-commerce and social media affect your business plan, and update the relevant sections and costs. Understand basic methods of direct selling, customer service and customer management.

Additional Instructor Notes
Session 6
Class Opener—Thinking Like A Customer
EXERCISE: Write the following two questions on the board with plenty of space between them:
As a customer, what do I expect from the businesses that serve me?
What must a company do to earn and keep my business?
As students enter, ask each of them to write an answer under each question. Students who can’t think of any answers that haven’t already been logged should put a checkmark by the answer that’s most important to them. You’ll return to these answers later in the class.
E-Commerce
NOTE: This is a huge subject, and you won’t have time to address it fully in this class. Tailor the discussion to the needs of your class, and alert them to relevant trends that have emerged since the TEXT chapters were written. Above all, they should understand that due to the swiftly evolving nature of online technology, they will need to stay on top of new and emerging e-commerce tools and trends for as long as they run a business.
Staying on top of technology issues is a must for today’s entrepreneur. Online trends create the world in which your business will be competing tomorrow. Even if you’re not interested in a given technology, you can be sure that some of your competitors are.
This doesn’t mean that old business models are outdated. In some cases—like customer service—they’re more important than ever. Follow up this discussion with the points on OHD 6-1, about why people buy—or don’t buy—online.
Choosing the Right ISP
No matter what type of business you run, the Internet is likely to be a crucial part of your business’s infrastructure. Choosing an ISP is one of your most important decisions.
Ask the question: How many of you already have a business-grade Internet connection?
Even if you already have an ISP, consider whether it will meet your current and future needs. Consumer plans may not be adequate for e-commerce!
When choosing an ISP, consider all the things your business needs to do, from accessing cloud services to sharing large graphic files to videoconferencing. Also, consider how many employees will need to be online at once; more users means more bandwidth. Research your options with growth in mind!
Online Security
Understanding online security is crucial to protecting your business and financial data, as well as your customers’ personal information. Although high-profile cybercrimes usually involve banks or giant retailers, smaller businesses are increasingly targeted because there are far more of them, they tend to have weaker security, and attacking them tends to generate less attention.
You must identify specific vulnerabilities and legal responsibilities, decide how to address them, and develop a security and online privacy plan. This is not a one-time activity; a plan that doesn’t evolve and adapt in response to new threats and tools will soon become ineffective.
Advise students to research current security, spyware and other issues carefully. Security threats change often, so encourage them to stay up to date.
Planning Your Website
Some students will have websites and others won’t. Either way, the question of site planning and design (or redesign) should be looked at from the perspective of meeting growth goals. As with ISP selection, site design needs to meet tomorrow’s needs as well as today’s.
Depending on your needs, you could design and launch your own site with low-cost tools, or you could hire professional designers and spend hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars. Either way, think about the following three aspects of online business:
Commerce means selling your products and services online.
Content includes experience-based offerings like news, opinion, education and multimedia.
Connection means giving people an opportunity to interact or collaborate.
In the past, these approaches were often distinct. Today, they are better viewed as complementary aspects of a single offering. When planning a website, think about where and how these areas will intersect. Example: Your product page might allow customers to buy (commerce), and also include an instructional video (content) and user comments (connection).
Whether students are planning their first site or upgrading an existing one, they should start by thinking about the issues on OHD 6-2.
Registering your domain name
Your domain name is the basic address for your website. It’s the “personal” part of your site’s uniform resource locator (URL).
A domain name can be up to 67 characters long, but short names are preferable.
Your domain name should include your business or product name. If you don’t register the name you want today, it may not be available tomorrow!
Watch out for double meanings! Example: A site called Experts Exchange learned this lesson after realizing there was more than one way to read www.expertsexchange.com. Today, their domain name is www.experts-exchange.com.
Do a Google search to make sure that no one else is using your name, and that it doesn’t have inappropriate meanings in English or another language.
Most ISPs can register domain names for their customers.
Researching sites online
Spending time online is one of the most important things you can do when planning or upgrading your site. Which online stores are easy to use, and why? Which aren’t, and why not? Which sites load the fastest? Which work best on mobile devices? What are competitors doing?
Have students turn to the Website Research Worksheet on page 6-98 of the WORKBOOK. Explain briefly that students should make six copies of Questions 1 through 14 and answer them for the three websites listed, as well as three websites of their own choosing. The goal of this exercise is to demonstrate the decisions involved in Web design and the effect that each decision has on visitors to the site.
Once you’ve done enough research to describe the features you want, you can prioritize them. The Site Planning Worksheet will help you assess your options.
Should you build or buy your site?
Use OHDs 6-3 through 6-5 to explain the pros and cons of building a site, selling through an e-commerce platform or portal, and hiring a Web designer. Here are some points to emphasize:
Building your own site. Site building tools like Wix and Squarespace let you create your site by dragging and dropping preferred features into a template. They usually either include e-commerce features or work well with third-party shopping carts and payment systems. However, you may need custom features the tool doesn’t offer. Also, if you don’t have good design skills, this may not be the best option for you.
E-commerce platforms. This is one of the easiest ways to sell online. You simply register with a service like Shopify or Magento, choose a template and upload your product information. They’re often bundled with hosting services, and most of them are upgraded frequently to reflect new capabilities and security features. This is a cheaper way to keep up with new technology than overhauling your own site, and many platforms offer upgrades when you’re ready to grow. However, you may have to give up some flexibility.
E-commerce portals. Many startups sell through online marketplaces like eBay Stores, Amazon Stores or Etsy. The downside is that these sites often don’t allow much customization, making it hard to differentiate your business and build your brand. Also, monthly charges and transaction fees can be significant.
Hiring designers and developers. Hiring design professionals is the most expensive option, but it gives you the most control over appearance and function. Once you’ve decided which features you’d like to have, get at least three quotes. Visit sites they built—their own, especially. And of course, ask for references.
Site design
NOTE: Depending on the online presence and skill level of your class, you may be able to skip some of the more basic material in this section and focus on issues relating directly to growth.
No matter who’s going to build your site, the first step is to draw up a basic blueprint. OHD 6-6 lists some important site planning issues. If you wish, you can expand this discussion with the site design tips on OHD 6-7.
There are many ways to design your site. People often start with a home page and move down to individual product pages. We think it’s better to start with the end pages, group them into categories and subcategories, and then decide how to link to them from the home page. If necessary, use OHD 6-8 to present a simplified version of this scheme.
Page elements and navigation
Once you’ve come up with a site diagram, you must decide which elements will appear on each page and how they’ll work with the rest of the site. This process is called wireframing. You will find a good overview at www.usability.gov. It also includes templates and tutorials.
Interactivity
How will users interact with your site? Will they fill out forms, click on buttons or choose shipping options? Will they search your catalog or access a database? Each of these features requires careful planning. Describe the features and what happens when the customer uses them.
Site design for mobile devices
As of this writing, there are three basic ways of designing for mobile devices:
Mobile website. This is a separate, parallel site configuration. When a mobile user accesses your main site, she is automatically redirected to the mobile version. Mobile sites usually function well, but creating and maintaining two sites can be a headache.
Responsive design aims to deliver a single site that looks equally good and performs equally well on desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones. It relies on fluid, flexible layouts and page elements that can adapt to different devices. But if it’s not done right, it can slow down a mobile device’s performance.
Native apps deliver optimized site content on a specific device. This results in a very fast-loading page that often works without an Internet connection. However, each app will be tied to a specific device and operating system.
Many experts argue that it’s best to start with a mobile site and then adapt it to desktop screens, rather than vice versa. This is a good point to discuss with a design professional.
Basic E-Commerce Capabilities
Now, we’ll take a brief look at the four basic stages of online selling: merchandising, making the sale, getting paid and shipping goods.
Merchandising
Many sites assume that high-tech wizardry is the secret to attracting online customers. In reality, most people would rather see clear information than fancy graphics. Use OHD 6-9 to offer tips.
Making the sale
In this stage, the customer must be able to put items in a shopping cart, choose shipping, get a price and enter shipping and billing information. Use OHD 6-10 to highlight essential features.
Getting paid
Credit cards are the most popular method of paying for goods online. According to SCORE, online sellers who don’t accept credit cards lose 60 to 80 percent of their potential sales.
If you want to sell online, set up an Internet merchant account (IMA) with your bank so you can accept credit cards. Research all terms, fees and conditions beforehand!
You also need to choose a payment services provider (PSP)—also known as a payment gateway—to process credit card payments. A good PSP should have reasonable fees, strong references and excellent customer service. Again, read the fine print!
Security
When choosing a PSP, pay attention to security issues. This is important not just to protect your finances, but also to encourage customers to buy. Find out what steps the PSP has taken—online and off—to thwart identity theft and other types of fraud.
As of this writing, the primary security standard for credit card sales is the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Compliance is a basic requirement for PSPs.
For websites, the standard security method is secure socket layer (SSL). Studies show that sites with SSL enjoy increased sales, fewer abandoned shopping carts, and more repeat purchases.
To implement SSL, you’ll need an authentication certificate, which you can get from a certificate authority such as DigiCert (www.digicert.com). The certificate also encrypts data. For maximum security (as of 2015), you’ll want a 2,048-bit certificate.
Mobile payments
Check current trends and capabilities before discussing this topic—the TEXT may be outdated by the time you teach this class! Being able to accept payments from mobile devices is a basic e-commerce functionality. As with any other merchant service, look carefully at subscription and transaction fees when considering a mobile payment platform.
Calculating taxes
Check current laws before discussing this topic! Sales tax rates vary from state to state, county to county, and city to city. As with all taxation issues, have a long talk with your accountant before you make any decisions.
Value-added tax (VAT)
Value-added tax is a type of consumption tax used in many countries worldwide. As of 2015, U.S. businesses that sell digital goods and services to consumers in the European Union are required to collect and pay VAT. This law does not apply to business-to-business sales.
Affected goods include e-books and magazines, music, videos, photographs and illustrations, podcasts, games, software, screensavers, hosting and storage services, and online advertising space. The TEXT discusses this issue in some depth. The main point to emphasize here is that students who will sell digital goods in the EU need to learn and deal with VAT rules.
Shipping
Should online shoppers be socked with a higher shipping cost for spending more money at your site? Of course not. If anything, the shopper should be rewarded! Free, discounted or upgraded shipping are typical rewards for big online spenders.
If you decide to offer free shipping, make sure your system restricts it to a specific region and service level (e.g., ground shipping within the continental United States). Also, set a minimum order level (e.g., $50 or more). Note: Tracking capabilities are standard for most online orders, and that online customers generally expect very fast shipping times.
Online Marketing and Social Media
In Chapter 2, you created a customer profile. If you have not already done so, you should update it to reflect anything you know—or can learn—about your target customers’ online behavior, needs, preferences and concept of value. Online marketers call this a buyer persona, and they design products, content, features, benefits and strategies with that persona in mind. Consider:
Who are you targeting (existing customers, new prospects)?
What are they looking for online? Do they want information and help? Coupons and deals?
What types of content do they prefer (text, audio, video, images)?
Which social media do they use?
What are your key performance indicators (KPIs) for customer engagement?
Content marketing
Content marketing means publishing text, graphics, audio or video online in order to attract, serve and retain customers. By presenting helpful, entertaining or informative content on a regular basis, you can drive traffic to your site, build customer loyalty and increase revenues.
That’s the theory, anyway. In the real world, creating compelling content requires skills that few people have—like writing ability—and resources that many entrepreneurs lack, like time. If you doubt that writing good copy is hard, just look at the number of online marketing “gurus” who endlessly repeat worn-out phrases like “content is king” while offering content-free advice like “think outside the box.”
Remember: Content is a product, and products must provide benefits. Content should be personalized (it relates directly to your customer) or professionalized (it relates directly to your industry). Examples: Flow charts that guide people through a complex process, troubleshooting tips, clever shortcuts and workarounds, infographics, year-end predictions and book reviews.
Use OHD 6-11 to highlight content marketing tips.
Crowdsourced content
Crowdsourced content can reduce the burden of content creation, drive user engagement, and provide new product or marketing ideas. Some firms specifically request consumer help with ad campaigns and product development. Example: Dell Inc.’s IdeaStorm lets users make comments and suggestions, which are then rated by other users.
Other firms have found that consumer comments and reviews identified unforeseen uses, features or benefits of products, enabling them to improve their marketing messages.
Social Media Marketing
NOTE: The features, rules and uses of social media channels change frequently, so don’t rely on the TEXT. Get the latest information by researching the channels in question before class!
Discuss the basics of social media. Depending on the needs of your class, consider discussing the specific features and benefits of individual channels like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Choosing social media channels
If you don’t claim your business name on the major social media channels, you have two problems. First, you’re not taking advantage of a powerful tool for serving customers, networking and growth. Second, you’re giving someone else the opportunity to take your name.
The solution? Visit each of the major sites and set up an account for your business. Even if you’re not ready to use a specific channel, the time to stake your claim is now.
When choosing social media, consider these questions:
Which ones do your customers use?
Are you marketing to businesses, organizations or individuals?
What skills and resources do you need?
Does your business have them? If not, can it develop them?
Is social media the best way to use these skills and resources?
Think carefully about what you can offer. A bakery might post daily specials, offer recipes and ask for suggestions. A gardener might offer pruning and transplanting tips.
The most important thing to understand is that social media is not advertising. You can’t simply bombard users with your promotional message. You must participate and contribute in ways that may have little or nothing to do with your business. You need to be part of the conversation, rather than an interruption.
Use OHD 6-12 to discuss basic rules for using social media.
Once you’ve identified the channels that are appropriate for your business, your content and your customers, create an online identity for each channel. Take advantage of all customizing options with an eye to creating a consistent brand. Whenever possible, use the same text, logo, imagery, avatars, icons, color palette and other elements in each account.
Earning trust
There are many ways of earning trust on social media, from using your real name and highlighting your expertise to sharing valuable content, links and comments. This is not something you can fake; marketing goals must be secondary to a sincere desire to participate.
Scheduling content
It’s common for social media beginners to bite off more than they can chew. They start out with 10 blog posts a day, but three weeks later, they’re updating once a week or have given up. To avoid this problem, pace yourself. Commit to a small number of posts you know you can handle. If you can produce more later, great. If not, at least you can maintain the pace you started with.
You should also consider how your content production will tie in with larger marketing issues like seasonality, sales and events, competitive pressures, new product launches, and industry trends.
Online civility
Ask the average social media expert how to present yourself online, and she’ll probably tell you to “be authentic.” That’s good advice, but it’s equally important to know when not to be yourself. It shouldn’t need to be said, but it does: Some topics are off-limits online.
In particular, your employees should understand that when they’re online, they’re representing your business. Caution them against oversharing personal or company information, and set a zero-tolerance policy for online aggression, namecalling and disrespect. If you operate under specific privacy or confidentiality regulations, make sure they understand how to comply. You can find best practices for creating a social media policy at socialmediagovernance.com.
Managing comments
If you decide to let users comment, chat or review products on your site, set strict commenting guidelines. This is easier than dealing with offensive comments case by case.
Check for comments often and respond promptly. Commenters can be an invaluable source of information, insight, advice and market data, so it pays to engage with them as thoughtfully as you’d like them to engage with you.
Managing promotions
Discounts, coupons and other promotions are good ways to reward attention on social media. Different channels have different rules for promotions, so make sure your tactics comply. Also, make sure you can handle the increased demand!
Each promotion should be unique to the social media platform. This allows you to compare the response rate between channels and improve your strategies.
Online Advertising
NOTE: Online advertising evolves rapidly. Students who want to learn more can visit Google AdWords, which offers detailed, current advertising info and tutorials.
Types of advertising
Most online ads are based on contextual advertising, which serves consumers with targeted messages based on site content or search terms. If you’re looking at a hiking site, the system might deliver ads for camping gear.
In-text advertising matches site content with contextually related advertising. These ads might appear as popups or keyword links.
In-image advertising delivers contextual ads based on images that appear on a website. Visitors who move the cursor over an image will see an ad, which usually covers only a portion of the image. Clicking on this link directs the user to more detailed ad content.
Display ads often feature animations and other eyecatching graphics. Ads may target customers through behavioral targeting based on past browsing behavior, but they can also appear contextually on specific sites or by geographic location.
Video ads are the fastest-growing form of online ad (as of 2015). Although many of them follow a similar format to television ads, others focus on useful content or entertainment.
There are three basic ways of buying ads:
Pay per click (PPC). Advertisers place a link on a host site and pay only when users click on it. The advertiser’s cost per click (CPC) can be a flat rate, or it can be the result of a bidding process where your CPC depends on your maximum bid, the competition for the keywords, and the relevance of your page. Google AdWords is the best-known platform for PPC ads.
Cost per impression (CPI). Advertisers pay to expose their message to a specific audience. An “impression” occurs every time an advertisement loads on a page. CPI costs are usually calculated per 1,000 impressions. Thus, they are also known as CPM (where M = 1,000).
Pay per action (PPA). Advertisers get paid only when the user completes a specified action, like requesting a brochure or buying a product.
The bottom line: Like any other kind of advertising, online advertising requires careful attention to cost and profitability. Set a modest test budget, do your homework and learn as you go.
Landing pages
To measure and improve your marketing efforts, create a dedicated landing page for each method. If you have one landing page for a paid search results campaign, and one for a social media campaign, you can analyze the stats for each landing page to see which campaign is generating more traffic, inquiries and conversions.
To improve your targeting, create ad groups with variations on a specific set of keywords. You might create one ad that says “caps for sale,” one that says “buy our caps,” and one that says “men’s cashmere caps 25% off.” This way, you can find out what works and what doesn’t.
The landing page for a given ad should include a clear, obvious and easy call to action. The page’s layout should match or complement the ad, and it should also reference any special offers or selling points mentioned in that ad.
Clickthrough and conversion
Clickthrough rate refers to the number of people who clicked an ad. To calculate your conversion rate, divide the number of conversions by the number of visitors to your landing page. Example: If 2,500 people click your ad and 25 of them buy, your conversion rate would be 1 percent. This means that to generate one sale, you’d need to pay for 100 clicks.
Search engines offer tools that help advertisers track conversions. Google’s Conversion Optimizer is a well-known example.
Retargeting
Retargeting delivers repeated, relevant ad content to prospects as they visit different sites. Simply put, a prospect who visits your website is tagged with a cookie based on the products viewed. When the prospect visits other sites, ad servers will display ads for your product, prompting her to complete the transaction. This approach can deliver a higher conversion rate than standard PPC campaigns.
Geotargeting
Geotargeting delivers relevant ads to prospects based on their location. In many cases, it uses location data from the prospect’s IP address. It can also target smartphone users through cell tower, satellite or wi-fi data. As an example, smartphone users in a mall might receive ads or promotions based on their proximity to a retailer.
Alternatively, PPC ads that target residents of a specific city, state or neighborhood are a great way to increase conversions and make your ad budget go further. In Google AdWords, you can do this by picking a state or city, entering a ZIP code or specifying a radius from your site. AdWords tutorials can help you select options that make sense for your region and customers.
When choosing a geographic area for paid ads, think carefully about what “local” means. In high-density cities like New York or Chicago, “local” may mean “within the city limits”; it could even mean a specific neighborhood. Rural customers may be willing to drive for an hour or two!
Email Marketing
Offering special coupons and incentives, or a regular feature such as an online newsletter, is a common way of building an email list. This enables you to reach thousands of contacts at a fraction of the cost of direct mailing, while also abiding by the terms of the CAN-SPAM Act.
Although someone who signs up for your mailing list has effectively opted in, it’s best to use a double opt-in method (e.g., send each subscriber an email with a link they can click to confirm). This reduces the risk of spam complaints and ensures that the signup is legitimate.
If you intend to engage in email marketing, keep track of your Sender Score by entering your email IP address or domain name at SenderScore.org. The lower your score is, the more likely your email will wind up in a spam folder.
Email marketing tools like MailChimp allow you to segment customers and track sent emails so that you can see if users opened them. If a contact keeps deleting emails without opening them, stop sending them!
Marketing emails should be optimized for mobile devices. In most cases, this means keeping content brief, informative and concise. The less users have to scroll to read your content, the happier they’ll be. Messages should also be designed to facilitate content sharing (e.g., by including a link to Twitter). Last, always offer customers the option to unsubscribe.
Mobile marketing
NOTE: The evolution of mobile marketing is fast, disruptive and unpredictable. You must research current trends and capabilities before teaching this section of the class! The Mobile Marketing Association maintains guidelines, codes of conduct and best practices for mobile marketing at mmaglobal.com/policies.
Once, online marketing was primarily geared to desktop computers. Today, mobile computing is far more relevant to the average consumer.
Although most basic marketing rules apply to mobile marketing, the smaller screens and different operating systems may affect presentation. Gathering visitor statistics can help you understand how mobile users are interacting with your site, which can improve your mobile marketing strategies.
Text message marketing
Mobile marketing often uses short message service (SMS) or multimedia messaging service (MMS) to deliver ads and promotions. SMS is limited to 160 words of plain text, while MMS allows large text messages as well as video, photos and other media.
Like email marketing, this requires an opt-in from the consumer as well as clear and effective opt-out methods. The fines for violating these rules can be very high.
Text marketers often create promotions and services that require users to text a code word or number to unlock a deal, enter a contest or get valuable information (e.g., a notification when an item is in stock). SMS/MMS promotions should usually be valuable, exclusive and time-sensitive. For example, you might offer a 25-percent discount code for subscribers who buy today. In some cases, such offers will also be geotargeted. Again, review legal restrictions carefully before planning such campaigns.
Online Coupons
Online coupons can be bought and used online or—in the case of mobile coupons—redeemed at the point of purchase. To use this service, businesses sign up with a provider such as Groupon or LivingSocial and make offers to subscribers (e.g., 50 percent off on dinner).
Limit coupons to a manageable amount. Will you be able to meet demand and maintain customer service standards if you’re suddenly overrun with coupon holders?
Consider your costs. You will be asking for less money per sale, and you will also have to pay a percentage to the coupon company. Will you still make enough to cover your costs?
Don’t offer online coupons too often. Otherwise, customers may start thinking your regular price is too high, which could end up hurting sales.
Data and Analytics
Many site hosts offer built-in Web analytics features, as do most social media channels. Alternatively, you can choose from a wide variety of free and commercial programs, the most popular of which is Google’s Universal Analytics.
Analytics tools can chart data by day, week, month and year. This allows you to identify seasonal traffic patterns and to see whether key metrics are increasing or decreasing. To identify trends, you must allow adequate time to eliminate day-to-day “noise.” Monthly statistics provide a clearer picture than daily ones, and annual statistics provide a clearer picture than monthly ones.
Which pages are the most popular and what kind of content do they offer? If visitors are routinely spending time on your Tech Tip pages, but tend to ignore your audio diary about learning to play the accordion, this suggests that you should focus on creating more Tech Tips.
If people are flocking to one page and avoiding another, you may need to improve the keywords, content or advertising strategy for the underperforming page. You should also consider adding calls to action or relevant sales links to the popular page.
Gathering online data is relatively easy. Interpretation is much harder and often varies by business. The takeaway point: Don’t get bogged down in data. Choose a few metrics that are easy to understand and track, and build on your analytical skills gradually. Looking at too many factors at once will scatter your attention and waste your time.
Setting baselines and goals
By using an analytics tool to create a baseline report before undertaking a new marketing campaign, you’ll be able to see what is and isn’t working. Ideally, you should gather at least three months of data to set a baseline. But even a week’s worth of data is better than nothing.
Next, set goals for specific objectives. Suppose you want 35 percent of customers to sign up for your newsletter. If you’re using Universal Analytics, you can set this up as a conversion goal and the tool will track it. You can also assign a value to each goal in order to track return on ad spend (ROAS). The Universal Analytics tutorial pages explain this process in detail.
An effective promotional campaign will produce results that can’t be tracked online, such as calls, referrals and offline sales. Therefore, you should also establish baselines for these contacts.
Last, create a calendar that includes the description, launch date, purpose and duration of each online marketing effort. This will help you to pinpoint and interpret relevant analytics data.
Local Business Directories
Local business directories let users search for businesses by location, type and popularity. These directories are crucial for small businesses, partly because consumers who use them are usually ready to buy, and partly because they allow customers to rate and review businesses.
Popular directories include Google My Business, Bing Places, Yahoo Local and Merchant Circle. Listing your business on these sites allows you to add photos, edit descriptions and interact with users. Most local directories are free. However, some charge a fee for premium listings.
Search Engine Optimization
The higher a site ranks in a search engine’s results list, the more visitors it usually receives. Studies show that only 1 percent of Google users look at the top listing on the second page of search results. Thus, search engine optimization (SEO) techniques are in great demand.
However, designing your site with customer needs, security and convenience in mind is the best SEO tactic. Instead of trying to game the system by looking for SEO “secrets,” use that time and energy to deliver a faster, smoother, more fulfilling experience for everyone who visits your site!
Use OHD 6-13 to highlight important SEO factors.
The Art of Selling
Sales skills are fundamental to every business. But they’re especially important for entrepreneurial businesses, because a commitment to growth is by definition a commitment to sales. As long as your business exists, selling will be the primary task on which all others depend.
New customers are essential to growth, but so is keeping old ones happy. Studies show that it costs a lot more to get a new customer—or to win an unhappy customer back—than it does to sell to a loyal customer. Also, loyal customers are one of your best sources for new customers.
Use OHD 6-14 to discuss traits of effective sellers—all of which can be learned and practiced!
Marketing vs. Selling
Too often, entrepreneurs confuse marketing activities—like posting on Facebook or offering Groupons—with selling. Marketing ensures that people know who you are and what you do. Selling convinces them to buy from you and recommend you to others. Marketing has little value if you can’t sell, just as an ability to sell has little value if people aren’t aware of you.
Balancing marketing and sales
The right balance between sales and marketing varies. For lower-cost items, such as glue or gardening tools, marketing is more likely to drive sales. For items that are more expensive or require an ongoing relationship, the sale is more likely to depend on a personal sales pitch.
That said, effective personal selling techniques always rely on good marketing data.
Integrating marketing, sales & customer service
In a well-run business, the marketing, sales and customer service teams work together seamlessly, with each providing data and knowledge that the other teams can use to improve.
Even if you’re currently handling these tasks by yourself, keep them distinct but integrated so that you won’t have to invent a system from scratch when you hire staff. Your goal should be a responsive, evolving, scalable system that facilitates feedback between teams as you grow.
Understanding Buyers
If selling were just a matter of listing features and benefits, it would be easy. In reality, buyers have many motivations, and not all of them are rational or obvious. Often, buyers who haven’t bought into a product emotionally can’t be swayed with facts and figures. Once they buy in, explaining features and benefits helps them feel they made a smart choice.
Use OHD 6-15 to discuss psychological factors involved in getting customers to buy in. If time allows, invite students to discuss recent shopping experiences. What kind of sales tactics made them buy in? Remember: Thinking like a customer is basic to selling success! Wherever possible, help students relate the topics in this session to their own experiences as customers.
Eight Steps to Sales Success
Use OHD 6-16 to introduce this topic. You should already have identified:
Your target customers’ location, needs, problems and goals (market research and analysis)
The unique benefits your product offers these customers (positioning statement)
How your offerings are better than competitors’ (competitive analysis)
The resources you have to encourage consumers to buy (marketing plan)
Now, you will use this information to sell effectively.
Step 1: Prioritize Prospects
A sales prospect is someone who has the demographic and psychographic traits you’re looking for in a customer. Once you’ve made a list of prospects, sort them into the following categories:
Short-term and long-term prospects. Short-term prospects are available now. To sell to long-term prospects, you may need time to build relationships or improve products. Creating a timeline can keep sales efforts for long-term prospects on track.
Most profitable and least profitable. Larger accounts may offer less profit per sale, but more in total. Small accounts may provide more profit per sale, but less over time. Balance the amount of time it takes to sell against the revenue it will provide.
Strategic accounts can open doors for you elsewhere. If you provide excellent service to a well-known business, this may make you more credible and visible.
Prestige accounts provide great exposure for your business, so you may be tempted to accept less profit to win them over. However, remember that it doesn’t matter who your clients are if you’re not earning enough to sustain your operations!
Next, develop a targeting strategy. Which accounts should you target first? Which are critical to your long-range goals, and which are the bread-and-butter accounts?
Think about the solutions you offer, and identify prospects who will benefit quickest. Note that customers with the greatest need for your product may not be your best prospects: They may be harder to sell to or take longer to serve. A beginning seller should focus on getting great results quickly. Once you have a strong track record, you can move on to more challenging customers.
Whenever you learn something about your customers, document it! Plenty of good database software is available to small businesses, but even an index card system is better than flying blind. Customer data is at the heart of every business, so keep it organized, protect it and use it.
Step 2: Prepare to Sell
Planning ahead lets you get the most out of your time with buyers by asking them the right questions and giving them the right answers. The key: Know what your customers need, know what competitors are offering, and be ready to explain why your product is superior.
Again, emphasize the importance of keeping records. Without records, you might end up contacting the same person multiple times or overlooking a prospect’s request for specific information. Also, if you don’t keep track of outcomes, you won’t know what works!
Each record should state when, how and why you contacted each prospect. It should include the outcome of the contact, as well as any important information you learned. Personal data (sports, hobbies, etc.) can also be important for a well-prepared sales call.
Cold calling
Cold calling means personally promoting your business to strangers who may or may not have any interest in it. Telemarketing and door-to-door selling are well-known forms. If you’re like most people, you’ve probably given more than one cold caller the cold shoulder.
Cold calls are often intimidating. It’s natural to feel frustration, dejection and even anger when people reject you. That said, it’s also a valuable learning experience. You’ll learn a lot about your customers, your products and yourself. You’ll learn what does and doesn’t work. You’ll learn to identify concerns and adapt to new situations. Most important, you’ll learn to take failure in stride and keep moving forward.
In the 21st century, you have advantages that very few sellers 50 years ago could’ve imagined. With so much business information online, cold calls are a lot warmer than they used to be! No seller can afford to ignore this resource. Intensive research is central to the selling process.
Step 3: First Contact
Your first contact with prospects should make a positive impression, attract their interest and gather information that will help you make the sale. Asking questions is crucial at this stage, both to confirm your research findings and to communicate your interest in your prospect’s issues.
Inexperienced salespeople often get nervous and talk too much. Avoid this mistake by listening 80 percent of the time and talking 20 percent of the time.
One of the best things you can do during your initial contact is to take notes. Not only will this help you remember what you learned, but it will also communicate that you’re serious, attentive and interested in what prospects have to say.
Step 4: Make the Presentation
After listening to your customers’ needs and problems, begin by framing a concept of your product. Remember: Buyers often buy the concept of a product, rather than the product itself.
What should a professional sales presentation look and sound like? Use OHD 6-17 to explain.
Step 5: Overcome Objections
Good sellers expect objections and are ready to respond to them calmly and honestly. Follow these steps:
Ask probing questions to isolate the underlying reasons for the objection.
Acknowledge the objection to show you understand the customer’s issues.
Explore the problem with questions.
Respond to the objection by recommending a solution.
Example: If someone challenges the price of your organic jam, don’t say, “Berries are really expensive right now. We have to charge enough to cover our costs.” Instead, focus on positives: “We use local, organic berries from Creekside Farm, and we make our jam by hand in small batches. That’s why it tastes so much better than other brands.” The former explanation may be true, but it probably won’t get customers to open their wallets. When you explain your price, never apologize for it; always focus on the value and benefits the product delivers.
Step 6: Close the Deal
Use OHD 6-18 to introduce common closing techniques. Consider doing some role-playing here to help students develop the language that goes along with each technique.
Step 7: Reflect and Adapt
Always go back over sales efforts and think about what worked, what didn’t and what you learned. This is crucial to improving your selling abilities.
Step 8: Follow Up
After making a sale, get back to your customer and say, “Thanks for your business!” If there are any problems, address them promptly. A satisfied customer is your best source for new business.
Creating a Sales Plan
A good sales plan sets ambitious but attainable targets, and then breaks them down by areas, markets and team members. This is a moving target, so revisit your plan often!
Also, be sure to assign staff to maintaining existing customer relationships. In most cases, the path to higher revenues begins with your existing customer base.
Generating Leads
If your goal is to increase new customers by 10 percent over the next six months, you will need to generate a steady stream of leads in each of those months. Typically, your initial number will be based on your conversion rate. For example, if 25 out of 100 leads convert to a sale, that’s your baseline for estimating the minimum number of leads you’ll need to generate each month.
Suppose you want to earn an extra $2,500 next month, and your average customer spends $50. Simply divide the desired revenue by the average revenue per customer: 2,500 ÷ 50 = 50.
Thus, you need 50 customers to generate your target revenue. To calculate the number of leads you need, divide your desired number of customers by your conversion rate of 25 percent: 50 ÷ 0.25 = 200. Here, 200 leads is the minimum you will need to meet your goal.
Also, consider how long leads take to generate sales. This will help you to arrive at realistic sales targets and to consider ways of speeding up your selling cycle.
Customer Management
It’s a basic fact of business that loyal customers are more profitable than new ones. This is an example of the 80/20 Rule: 80 percent of your sales come from 20 percent of your customers.
Suppose a customer goes to a deli and pays $2 for a bagel. If she doesn’t return, her business is worth $2 to the deli. But if she returns three times a week for a year, her business is worth $312.
EXERCISE: Read the responses to the questions you posed during the Class Opener. Ask students to rank the answers in order of importance to them as customers. Keep track of the ranking on the board. Then, show OHD 6-19 and see if the same items are on both lists. Discuss.
It used to be that a business could earn regular customers by being the only game in town. Now that customers can buy online from all over the world, customer loyalty is more meaningful than ever. Use OHD 6-20 to go over some benefits of earning customer loyalty. Then, use OHD 6-21 to go over the elements of a good customer service plan.
Customer Service Strategies
Successful businesspeople have a very accurate profile of their customers, and they make it their business to know when that profile changes. Once you understand what the customer needs, you can put processes in place to deliver it. That’s the essence of a customer orientation.
Creating a customer-centered business
To make sure your business delivers consistently excellent service:
Take the lead. As the owner of your business, you are its public face. Your ongoing involvement is central to building a strong personal relationship with your customers.
Be friendly and helpful. Always project confidence, enthusiasm and friendliness when dealing with the public. Give out positive feelings and you’re likely to get them in return.
Help customers help themselves. Good customer service doesn’t always mean serving a customer personally and directly. In some cases, it means getting out of their way.
Engage your employees. Your staff is the first line of direct contact your business has with its customers, so every employee should embody your customer service policy.
Follow up on the point about employees with the customer service essentials on OHD 6-22.
Managing communications
When it comes to communicating with a business, the main thing today’s customers want is options. That might mean a phone call on one day, an email on another, and a tweet on a third.
This omnichannel approach to buying means you must have all communication channels open and available. It also means you need to integrate, process and share data from all these channels. Businesses that don’t train their teams to meet these standards and to evolve with them will be increasingly isolated in years to come.
Managing and using customer data
To consistently deliver great service, plot out every point at which customers interact with your company, from calling your receptionist to accepting deliveries from drivers. This will improve your performance and help employees see how customer service roles interlock.
After mapping points of contact with your customers, map how customer information flows through your business. Your goal should be to centralize and link all these forms of communication. The logical solution is a central database that tracks:
Responses to promotional campaigns
Questions and suggestions
Requests for promotional packets, newsletters and catalogs
Order placement and fulfillment data
Demographics and psychographics
Account information
Web data and analytics
After-sale praise and complaints
Monitoring satisfaction
Your employees are your best resource for information-gathering. Customer surveys and questionnaires can be valuable, but it’s even more important to train your employees to gather customer data on a daily basis, and devise a reliable way of storing and sharing it.
Online business reviews
Although business owners often complain about online reviews, it’s important to remember that consumers were criticizing businesses long before online reviews existed. The only difference today is the visibility of these complaints: “Out of sight, out of mind” is no longer an option!
For entrepreneurs who are committed to customer service, this is a much better state of affairs, because it takes a lot of the guesswork out of designing customer service strategies. When you think about it, it’s a little strange that so many business owners will go to huge lengths to collect customer surveys and questionnaires, while resenting or ignoring online reviews!
Looking at reviews of your business will give you crucial insights into what customers want. If you’ve made a serious commitment to quality and service, positive comments will probably balance or even directly contradict negative ones. Furthermore, studies suggest that consumers have more trust for businesses that don’t hide bad reviews.
Resolving Customer Problems
At some point, you’ll face a customer who has a problem. Whether this ends in a good or bad outcome is usually up to you. Remember: Customers who complain are giving you a second chance to get it right. Use OHD 6-23 to show the steps involved in resolving complaints.
Step 1: Listen. Remember the earlier discussion of what customers want? Listening carefully will help you understand which expectation you haven’t met.
Step 2: Recognize the customer’s feelings. It’s not enough just to listen when someone is making a complaint. You must also offer a response that recognizes the customer’s feelings.
Step 3: Apologize. Unhappy customers often want nothing more than an apology, so offering a straightforward, sincere apology may resolve the conflict.
Step 4: Thank the customer for bringing the problem to your attention. Customers who complain are doing you a favor. Studies show that customers who complain represent only about 4 percent of unhappy customers. The others walked away silently!
Step 5: Explain your solution. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking of your customers as opponents. The future of your business depends on keeping them happy!
Once you’ve come up with a complaint resolution policy, train your employees carefully. It’s good for complaint resolution to be flexible, so that employees have the authority to solve problems in creative ways. But this casual approach is almost always the result of careful training.
Guest Speaker
Salesperson, Online Business Owner or Web Designer
Prepare some questions you’d like your guest speaker to address in 20 minutes of talking, plus 10 minutes of questions. Give them to your guest well in advance.
Suggestions—Salesperson
In your opinion, what are the main reasons customers don’t buy?
What’s the best way to keep track of sales prospects? What information is most important?
What are some common selling mistakes you see small-business owners making?
What type of sales training have you found to be effective?
What closing techniques work best?
Suggestions—Online business owner or Web designer
What are the most crucial features for a website to have? What are the most overrated features?
How can you use information gathered by websites to improve marketing?
What’s the best way to promote a website?
Do local business directories help small businesses?
Work Period
NOTE: This is the last session before we start working on the financial plan, so it’s very important for students to finish their assignments from Sessions 3, 4 and 5 (especially the ones relating to costs). If your class is falling behind, use this work period to help them get caught up. If necessary, consider eliminating the guest speaker segment and using the extra time to help students complete any unfinished worksheets. Otherwise, they’re likely to be totally lost in the upcoming sessions! Also, remind them to bring calculators to the next class.
Optional Discussion: Advertising and the Internet (30 mins.)
If you don’t need to use this work period to help your class catch up on previous assignments, consider asking your guest speaker to stay and continue with a detailed workshop on online media options, rates, effectiveness, terminology, best practices, costs and pitfalls.
Homework Review—Session 5
Address any questions about Section IV, Part C. Look carefully at your class’s progress to date, offer help and advice as needed, and encourage students to catch up on all previous assignments before Session 7. Again, worksheets relating to costs are required for the next two sessions, so emphasize the importance of completing this material before the next class.
Workbook Preview—Session 6
Note that there’s no specific Writing Your Business Plan section for the e-commerce and online marketing material. After students have researched e-commerce options and costs, they should go through the workbook and update it as needed to reflect what they’ve learned. Emphasize the importance of researching all costs and—if necessary—updating sales forecasts.
Assignment Review—Session 7
Have students look at the Assignment for Session 7 at the bottom of the Session 6 Student Outline. Stress the importance of reading the Session 7 text before the next class.
Use OHD 1-14 to show the second half of the NxLeveL® Business Plan Outline, so that students understand how this assignment fits into Section IV, Part D. Use the NxLeveL® sample business plans to show how this section can be written.
Overheads for Session 6
OHD	6-1	Online vs. Offline Buying
OHD	6-2	E-Commerce Considerations
OHD	6-3	Building Your Own Site: Pros and Cons
OHD	6-4	Platforms and Portals: Pros and Cons
OHD	6-5	Designers and Developers: Pros and Cons
OHD	6-6	Site Planning Issues
OHD	6-7	Site Design Tips
OHD	6-8	Site Organization
OHD	6-9	Online Merchandising
OHD	6-10	Making the Sale
OHD	6-11	Content Marketing Tips
OHD	6-12	Rules for Social Media
OHD	6-13	Search Engine Optimization
OHD	6-14	Traits of Successful Sellers
OHD	6-15	Understanding Buyers
OHD	6-16	Eight Steps to Sales Success
OHD	6-17	Sales Presentation Tips
OHD	6-18	Common Closing Techniques
OHD	6-19	What Customers Want
OHD	6-20	The Benefits of Customer Loyalty
OHD	6-21	Your Customer Service Plan
OHD	6-22	Customer Service Essentials
OHD	6-23	Resolving Customer Problems
Suggested Supplemental Materials for Session 6
Sample social media policy for a well-known business
YouTube videos on direct selling and sales management
Current articles on social media and mobile marketing
Current SEO recommendations from an acknowledged authority (e.g., Google)
Current articles on omnichannel customer service
List of reputable classes or books on direct selling techniques
Sample customer service statements or policies
You have the option of finding reputable articles and publications for use in class, or suggesting that students search them out on their own and share what they find with the rest of the class. Keep track of supplemental materials you used by making notes below. (This will be helpful if you choose to teach this course again.)
Supplemental materials used for Session 6
Notes