Early on in a B2B organization’s growth, you probably had one or two key customers. Your business was geared solely and completely to focusing on those customers. You focused like a laser beam on their needs, their wants, and their requirements.

However, as we develop more customers and grow our business, we can begin to develop a tendency to focus  inwardly rather than that laser like outward focus on our customers. You can recognize this tendency when people’s job descriptions become so specific on tasks, that there is no mention  of how those tasks affect, improve, or alter the satisfaction of your customer base.

I freely admit, many of these ideas I mention below blur the line between marketing and IT (which is why both those functions should be joined at the hip) but as many growing businesses don’t have full time marketing staff, lets look at some ways that IT can help fill in the gap.

1) Actively monitor what people are saying about you, and about your competitors. Setting up tools such as Google alerts, or Twitter search will alert you to conversations that are happening. These conversations could give you insights on improvements to your offerings that competitors don’t have, or even highlight a prospect who is dissatisfied with a competitive product. Funneling this information through the appropriate parts of your business could be as simple as an e-mail.

2) Actively monitor how people are using, or hoping to use, products such as yours. To do this, ensure that you have set up analytic software on your Web Site, and secondly, using tools such as Google’s Ad-Words key word tool, look at the search queries that people use when looking for tools or solutions in your space.

As an example, in my organizations product space, I was able to identify that the term E-Mail was often used in conjunction with the keywords I was looking at. I can translate little piece of data that into;

Show me products in this space that can send E-Mail for me.

This shows me that having our solutions E-Mail enabled (they are) is something that we should call more attention to in our marketing and Web Site content.

3) For your existing customers, If they order from you every month, is re-ordering a round of faxes and telephone calls? or can IT create a system that allows these orders to be created easily and electronically?

4) Actively record and report on all issues that come in to you via telephone or e-mail. Data that is too often ignored! but if 10 calls a week are about the same concern or issue; what are you waiting for?

The SMB Takeawy

Nothing magical about the above ideas, they boil down to one thing; listening, and responding to what your customer needs.

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This post is the next in an intermittent series looking at your web site from a marketing perspective -  When you are not a marketing person!

I introduced this series with this post titled; IT -  In Marketing?,  this is the next post on helping smaller businesses to improve their Web sites at little to no expense.

This series has been looking at real world improvements that don’t require major work or extensive help from experts. Stuff that can be typically done by a smaller business either by themselves, or in some cases just basic tech staff assistance.

In the last post I identified and fixed an issue with how our Web Site is found on the Internet.

For this next stage, I wanted to start working on two more (very) common errors for smaller businesses;

1) You created your Web Site, but then have not updated it in years

2) Your Web Site does not have a Site Map (Full definition of what a Site Map is, and does from Wikipedia)  to improve how people can navigate around your Web Site, and secondly, to assist the Search Engines to index all of the content on your Web Site. NOTE: Two Site Maps are actually required, one human readable and one machine readable, for search engine indexing spiders. I will go into the machine readable type in a later post

Search Engine Spiders!

To get this started, I asked our Web Site Developer to create the human readable Web Code for the Site Map, and the Web Code for a spot where I could add new content in the form of press release type News articles.

I will be looking at improving the core content on each page of the Web Site, but I wanted to get these ‘News’ pieces ready to go first as we have been pretty bad at demonstrating what we have already done successfully for our customers.

Once that framework was created, I wrote our first News content, formatted it and placed it in the container that the Web Developer had created for me.

Keyword Alert: Container or Template!

Don’t forget, my goal is NOT to have to go to developer staff each and every time I need to get each new piece of content added to the site, so I asked that they create a template that basically says; Insert new content here!

I still had to format the content the way that I wished, but did not have to write any ‘code’ to get it working.

So now we have a new site map and some new content on the Web Site. The machine readable Site Map is also there, but it is a little different and worth its own post. It will be a little while before the next search engine visit to index the new stuff, but I will keep watching!

There will be more to come, so stay tuned by getting updates with the RSS icon on the Home Page!

Photo credit scoobymoo via flickr

This post has been on the to-do list for months, but a recent conversation with the president of a small business declared to me that it was time to git ‘r done!

This SMB Exec has been working on a new and improved Web Site.

Actually they have been working on it for a very, very long time. And even though this new Web Site is not even live yet, he is already planning to redo all the design.

So, How Long Will That New, New Web Site Take?

I don’t know – plain and simple

So what we have here is a new Web Site that no one has seen. And no one will see until it reaches its ‘2.0′ version.

What’s Next Version 3.0?

Now the historical part, Mark Gould at Enlightened Tradition pointed me to John Gruber’s blog.

The article deals deals primarily with the R&D and design stage of product development (Apples’ iPhone in this case) But it i is a valid concern for all parts of IT, including SMB Web Sites;

Start with something simple and build it, grow it, improve it, steadily over time. Evolve it.

The SMB Takeaway

Get it out there, build on it, improve it.

But there is no point in trying to wait for that one vague future day that everything is perfect. It won’t happen

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Just a few weeks ago I wrote: Hiring SME IT Leaders; Results or Skills?

Johanna Rothman wrote: People Are Not Tools and says it much better than I did.

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Photo Credit cloois via flickr

My car went into the shop for its first service last week. Along with the usual maintenance items, I asked the dealership to check out a little gremlin in how the transmission was shifting gears.

They upgraded the software!

Yup. Software.

The software that controls the engine management system.

As you might have guessed, when I told some friends that my car had to go in for a software upgrade, that drew a few chuckles!

The point of this story?

Technology is embedded in what we do. On both a personal as well as a business level.

We can look nostalgically back at the old days, but what we do with tech will keep marching on. We need to adapt our businesses. We need to ensure that we are leveraging and managing that technology as much as we can. It is simple;

If we don’t in our businesses, another business will.

We can look at 20 years into the past. Can we look 20 years into the future?

Can we know what that will be like?

I can’t. 20 years ago, could we predict cars with GPS, in cabin DVD, Blutooth, adaptive lane control. etc etc?

The only thing I can say for sure is that it will be different. And unless we want to join the lines of buggy whip makers, we will have to keep adjusting, keep changing.

This post was inspired by Frank Reed

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Image Credit purpleslog via flickr

I previously wrote about some of the due diligence questions to look at on looking at hosted, on-line backups.

Michael Krigsman at ZDnet has some personal observations from experience on that very topic.

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Photo Credit gwen via flickr

In the “old days”, circa 10 years ago, to avoid E-Mail SPAM you bought anti-spam software and your IT staff would spend hours tweaking the rules that the software used to decide what to block (and what not to block).

These filtering rules got pretty complex, as spammers quickly learned not to use a pure word. You probably have seen SPAM emails with misspellings this in the title; Viagra, V1@gr@, vi@6ra .. you get the idea.

The trick was to build filters that would catch as much of that crap as possible, but without stopping the legitimate e-mail.

Today?

Anti-spam tools now are mature and can be contracted out to service providers for about 2 bucks per person per month. These tools are now mathematically driven and rarely (but still occasionally!) block legitimate e-mail.

The point is; there is no excuse any more for your staff to wade through through hundreds of SPAM emails looking for the few that are not SPAM.

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Thanks to Jim and Ian, Canadian Business Magazines entrepreneur supplement PROFIT published another article by me on asking the pointed questions that ensure you are getting the most value out of your IT Staff or suppliers

The column is for growing business owners, ‘C’ level execs and managers, and briefly covers;

* How quickly can we fix breakdowns?

* What’s our long-term plan?

* How are we managing our tech spending?

* What will we do if a tech disaster strikes?

* How are we using technology to boost productivity?

The full column is here!

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Marketing expert Seth Godin has a brief  rant post regarding his frustration at being unable to contact the sales teams at several organizations via an e-mail address.

After searching for that type of product or service, he found the web sites of some businesses that met his criteria. Next step, Mr. Godin starts looking for some pricing information, and…. was having difficulty finding a way to contact the business sales team to get that information!

Yes, as a SME, your Web Site must have the Contact page within 1 click of every page, and I am going to assume that your business would not give Mr. Godin that same problem. I know that your Contact Us page clearly  gives your sales@ e-mail address, your phone number, the works.

What I wanted to expand upon a little, is  how you can ensure that those critical e-mails coming from people who actually found your Web Site actually get monitored by more than one person.

Which of these methods do you currently do?

If you are like many businesses in the SME space, these critical functional e-mail addresses usually work as follows;

* Someone is assigned to manually check an e-mail in box for sales@yourcompany.com. (probably others such as HR@, info@ too)

* Or perhaps one individual has an e-mail alias (secondary address) for this functional sales@ account.

The Problem?

Those methods both require humans and are prone to error.

First; an individual is assigned to do the e-mail check. If that individual is sick one day – will someone know to take on that task? Or will that sales request languish until the one person responsible returns?

Secondly, in the second example, where the e-mail is assigned as an alias, again human intervention is required. Does someone check that e-mail if that individual is sick, or on vacation? How about if that individual leaves your business? that alias must be transferred to somebody else. If you forget to do that, any e-mail saying; ..we need your product tomorrow! is gone to that great computer in the sky.

The Other Option: The Distribution List

Using Distribution Lists is a far more effective, less error prone method of dealing with those critical  sales@yourcompany.com and other functional (eg. HR@, info@) e-mail addresses.

This does assume that you are using an e-mail platform that supports creating these distribution lists. (some Web Only E-Mail programs may not) But rather than relying on one individual to look for these important e-mails, create a a Distribution List (the exact steps will vary depending on your e-mail platform) then assign two or more individuals to that distribution list. In this case all team members assigned to the list will receive that critical e-mail.

With some mail servers, you can even have a central copy of that e-mail stored in a common public folder before the distribution list sends copies to all memebers of the list. This gives you a permanent copy of that e-mail.

The SMB Takeaway

I know you have great people, but if one individual has been checking that sales email address for years, I guarantee that it will be easy to forget that a plan B must exist if that individual is away.

That individual can still be the primary person to act on all email coming in through your distribution list, but since the backup individual automatically gets a copy – they cannot forget that they are that human backup!

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I know – broken record again.

Excellent example here of the verbal diarrhea that too many SMB’s consider content on their Web Sites.

“I understand being vague, but I have no idea what this Company does. At some point you have to say what you do.”

Follow the link to see an excellent sample of Web Site gibberish.

Here is what you won’t see;

* Any attempt to engage, entertain, or a call to action

* Any attempt to identify my pain, my problem and how you can help

How do you introduce yourself at a luncheon with your local Chamber of Commerce?

If it is two paragraphs of verbal diarrhea, sorry to hear about that.

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Photo Credit cindy47452 via flickr