By Natalie Hunte

We have already established your need for Marketing Research, and we understand that research (on some level) is not “out of reach” for any small business. Marketing Research is a necessary tool for the growth of your company!

Marketing Research can reveal:

·         The effect that certain market (and other) trends are having on your customers and your sales e.g. the impact of the recent budget and the uncertainty in the international markets.

·         How and why customers purchase your products/services.

·         The level of satisfaction of your customers.

Types of Research:

They are two main types of research:

• Secondary (looking at the broader picture)
• Primary (getting specific)

One advantage of secondary research is that the data is already collected and compiled, and is just waiting for you to use it.  For example, one can gather census information through the Barbados Statistical Service.

• Demographical & Statistical data - this information is a general picture of the population.  However, the data is raw and you will need to extract and calculate what is important for your needs. 
• A Day Club for Seniors can use this type of data to get a picture of the amount of individuals set to retire in 2011, and those individuals over the age of 60-65 in a particular socio economic background to assist in building a marketing strategy.

Primary research is fine-tuned research seeking to answer a specific question, i.e. should we move to another location?

• Interaction with customers - the best research is to talk directly to the source, and solicit feedback. This can be conducted casually, by getting to know your customers while they shop, or requesting their feedback through a comment box (offer incentives to increase effectiveness). 
• Online resources – social Media, online polls, blogs, forums, and other companies’ websites.
•  Qualitative Methods – offers insight into customer behaviours through focus groups or one –on–one interview.
• Quantitative Methods – surveys and questionnaires directly questioning the target market.

With that information in hand, choose your marketing research weapon and use it in your battle to thrive, and not just exist in the market.

Natalie Hunte is an Independent Consultant specializing in Basic Marketing Research. She manages a small consultancy – CANOPY Solutions where the aim is to assist clients with strategic decisions through the Art of Marketing Research.

Tel: 826-1018

canopysolutions@gmail.com

By Kathy-Ann Fletcher

I am surrounded by female entrepreneurs everyday in the art and marketing worlds, my mom and consider myself a budding one as well. Therefore it does not surprise me to read that worldwide female entrepreneurship is on the rise.

Countries like the UK are experience what are reported as phenomenal increase in female entrepreneurship while in some circles the lack of female entrepreneurs is being lamented. However, upon reading, researching and observing I am of the firm belief that there is no such lack, neither is it a  recent phenomenon.

For centuries, women have been developing innovative solutions to our problems and running successful business. From shipping magnates who in the 17^th century flourished in this male dominated world to the creator of Barbie and Ken, women have a rich history in entrepreneurship. In several cases, the female was the pioneer in the industry as we see with Lillian Vernon the Queen of the Mail order Catalogue.

Just like every other entrepreneur, women take risks to get themselves and their families and communities better lives. Madame C.J Walker came from unprivileged circumstances to become the first black female millionaire. She used this fortune to empower other women in business.

In the Caribbean, we have a strong tradition of female entrepreneurs such as the visionary who took the bold step of purchasing a former plantation and turning it into what is now a successful dairy farm operating by the fifth generation of her family.

It is great to see that this worldwide trend of female entrepreneurship is carried on in Barbados with young and experienced trailblazers. From young ladies with a passion for beauty to visionary with a flair for design, female entrepreneurs are stepping up to the plate and taking risks.

Entrepreneurship now and then knows no gender. Where there is a lack in female entrepreneurs that is where we have put the limitations on ourselves. As I consider the example of those who went before me, I am inspired by the ability to persevere in the face of daunting situations to dominate male centric industries. 

Kathy-Ann is a marketing executive with Crimson-Jade Consulting Inc with a passion for communications and strategic planning.

By Corey Graham 2.0

The business of finding new markets and conquering them can be a resource intensive exercise, without a lot of time, money or energy. It is going to be an uphill battle.

So you want to enter a new market and conquer it. Alrite, it’s this simple - Find a need ...and fill it.

It sounds simple, but you need to keep this clearly in focus. Entrepreneurs often burst into a new market being a little cocky and a lot optimistic. Sometimes they get lucky and it works out. Other times they find out that they didn't quite understand the need they were attempting to fill. It’s not a total failure though because they can evolve their product of service to fill that need. There are other times when our human habits can bring many an entrepreneur to his or her knees. The customers might think your product is great and they would love to have it, however they are comfortable with what they have. They are comfortable and they are not willing to switch their habits. This translates into no sales for you. It might be described as an idea whose time has not yet come. These are all real considerations when you are attempting to find new markets and conquer them.

A tactic I truly believe in is that of joint venture. More than anything else joint ventures can help to mitigate the risk of failure in attacking a new market. Ideally you want to partner with another organization who is already serving your market well with another product. The benefit here is that they will have a good relationship with your potential customers already and you can use their goodwill to push your product. You can also learn get alot of “market research” directly from that organization as they already have intimate relationships with your target market. Alternatively you can partner with an organization, who is also new to the market also but they can add a complimentary aspect to your product or service that makes your offering all the more compelling. This can go a long way in convincing your potential customers to try out your new product.

A tip for the road would be to listen to those who you are serving. Many times persons get too caught up in looking at their competition and not listening to the people rooting for them. These persons who are interested in your success can help you evolve your product to conquer the market.

Entering a new market and conquering it is a big ask but it can be an exhilarating and exciting ride.

By Corey Graham 2.0

Deal making is always an interesting challenge, no matter the level of business you are conducting. The key thing in making a deal is having a clear understanding of your business. This sounds simple, but it is challenging to always have a clear picture of what stage your business is and where your marketing is going.

Imagine you are in the middle of your office trying to meet a demanding deadline and someone is asking your make the final decision on some special deal. We agree it’s not easy.

Every deal you enter into is really to help you get another important piece of the puzzle for your business. I think there is no one size fits all when it comes to wheeling and dealing. Each business has special requirements. It is easy for entrepreneurs to get carried away in dialog about some new opportunity. In no time they will be playing with the thought of making a new deal. Talking ideas and visions of the future is what entrepreneurs do! Sometimes though, all the business needs is to do more of the same. Stick with the game plan and you will come out on top.

You might want to fancy your business like a formula 1 car. You get into it, start the ignition and off to your destination at break neck speed, barely slowing down enough to take the corners. The thing that makes a Formula 1 car special, is its near perfect balance between weight and power. You can't just fit another mirror on a formula 1 car because it was a “sweet deal”. That mirror will disrupt your balance.

It's key that as you go about building your business, you evaluate every deal against your near perfect balance between resources & demand. It is your job as an entrepreneur to fit the pieces together in an optimal way.

You want your business to get to a certain destination and in a certain time. You've got to fit the parts together in the right way.

As a result you have got the measure each deal against that weight vs power balance. You should be careful when getting involved in any exclusive deals. Exclusive means its along with you for almost your entire journey.  Are you sure it’s not going to create any drag on lap 3? Will that grind you to a halt? These are some serious questions you have to ask yourself before jumping into and exclusive deal.

Nothing is wrong with starting with a short term contract so you get to test drive the deal. Get feedback and then move forward.

Happy Driving!

 By Corey Graham 2.0

· Stephen Covey & The 7 habits of Highly Effective people - http://www.franklincovey.com/

· David Allen & The Getting Things done philosophy GTD. – www.davidco.com  

Stephen Covey's system deals primarily with establishing priorities while David Allen’s system is concerned with getting things done in the midst of a crisis or chaotic situation.

Interestingly enough I must make mention of Bob and the guys at Rexwireless.com for marrying these technologies into one application for your blackberry called ToDoMatrix, which I have written about in this post. You might also find Alertmatrix to be an interesting companion to ToDoMatrix.

Another thing that business owners tend to complain about is lack of focus or being called away from the task at hand. I learnt a very simple process. It's quite simple - time yourself!

Timing yourself also allows you to make sense of this elusive thing we call time. When you are able to look at a spreadsheet that shows how you are performing in terms of time on your tasks, it empowers you to plan your time better for future projects

It makes time into another resource in your business you need to manage. You will find that all the creative ideas start to emerge on how you can double up your tasks. While you wait on one process to complete, you can get another one started.

You might want to listen to podcasts on your Industry while you are on the road. Maybe you can use your time in the bank line to send those emails you seem never to get the time to send off. These ideas are some simple tactics that can lift a big load off your shoulders.

The key is it all starts with timing the processes in your business and then measuring that against the big picture for your business.

P.S. This took me 2 hours to write including all the editing and rewriting to make my points clear and looking back into some of the theories deciding if to include them or not. 

Add 10 minutes for dotting the initial ideas, that's 2 hours 10 minutes. You know the weird thing? This is probably how long it takes you to write an in-depth email. Well could be easily 40 minutes. The question is do you set aside 40 minutes to write your in-depth emails? 

Corey Graham 2.0 is a Social Media Maven and entrepreneur. He is a blogger with CoreyKGraham.me/bizblog and Director of Connections & Chief Conversationalist at DrenalinProductions.biz. Also he is co-founder and partner of GramStep, a networking group and support system for entrepreneurs.

By Corey Graham 2.0

What a question! There are a lot of tricks to the trade and tactics people use to get quick followers. However they all have to be based on the core values of finding friends we all know. Some of them might abuse it, but it’s pretty much based on the same principles. I break these down as -

- Get attention and show your valuable.
- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. (The Golden Rule)

If you want real humans following you, rather than fake accounts or spam generated accounts, you have to be golden.

Here are some tips for growing your followers the practical way. Oh and let me be blunt, this will take time! Even if you find some time saving tactics. It will still take time and energy to get done.

Final thing before I get directly into the practical advice. Think about an entertainer local or international that's really loved. Actually it could be anyone you notice who tends to have lots of friends and people around them.
Ask yourself, what makes people want to be around them?

While you chew on that, let me throw the practical advice at you.

Keep the Golden Rule in mind - do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Engage people - This is pretty simple follow people on twitter. Ask questions to specific people, esp. your key customers. How do you feel when a company you love asks your opinion publicly?

Sharable content - Create content that people can and are willing to share at the click of a button.

Keeping it updated - Make sure people can trust to have the latest information from your social media.

Get listed - place your url wherever is appropriate. Your Email signature and your directory is a good place to start.

Network - Just like you would at a cocktail party, go and meet the people you think would be interested in what you are doing.

Good luck with growing your followers. Be Golden.

Corey Graham 2.0 - Blogger At CoreyKGraham.me/bizblog and Director of Connections & Chief Conversationalist at DrenalinProductions.biz

By Natalie Hunte

At school,  Mathematics was never my favorite subject. I do not consider myself an “expert” in the field of Marketing Research, however,  I love Marketing! I remember that I was sold since my first Marketing class – “Marketing 101”. I knew immediately that Marketing was to be my career path, and I have been a “practitioner” ever since. Whether it was my day job, or just offering free advice to anyone who needed it, or would listen, Marketing is my passion.

This blog will not be one that bores you with unusable data that is not related to your needs, and there definitely will not be any reference to advanced levels of Math or Statistics that are associated with Research. Rather I will offer a basic introduction and approach to you as an entrepreneur. I will attempt to guide you towards incorporating easy Marketing Research tools that if properly used, will enhance the probability of success in your business.

At my company CANOPY Solutions we offer support and advice similar to that which you will learn about in this blog. All of my conclusions are firmly rooted with sound Marketing Research principles. After all, how can my clients accomplish great success with their brands/products if I do not have scientific methods as the foundation to a conclusion?  Good Marketing, and Marketing Research is really the basis of any product’s success, and this is the premise on which I approach each client and each project.  

As one of my professors simply put it – “Marketing is satisfying a need that exists, or creating a need and then satisfying it”.   Marketing is about the general buying and selling i.e. getting the good/service from the producer/store into the hands of the customer or consumer. However, in Marketing Research one must get their ‘hands dirty’ as you probe into finding out what makes your customers (prospective/current) purchase/not purchase your product or service.  Marketing Research gives the you the upper hand by providing the data needed, for the purpose of making changes or to fine-tune your product. The ultimate goal is to make your customers happy, buy more products and inform others who will also buy products. ($$$)

So let us begin. What is Marketing Research? 

Natalie Hunte is an Independent Consultant specializing in Basic Marketing Research. 

She manages a small consultancy – CANOPY Solutions where the aim is to assist clients with strategic decisions through the Art of Marketing Research. 

Tel: 826-1018

canopysolutions@gmail.com

By Omar Best-Delice

The case of ‘They will be no one to do what I do if I take a break’ or even ‘this is a crucial time for my business’. No disputing that your organization may be at that crucial stage where it needs your undivided regular attention, but this will not be so during most stages of the enterprise’s life. A mark of a good leader and a potentially successful enterprise is reflected in the people that work with and below the leader. If your organization cannot exist without you for a week or two, what hope do you have of it succeeding should you suddenly, unexpectedly fall ill?  

If your organization cannot survive without you for a short while you may not be doing as good a job as you think in a few crucial aspects of management, primarily; hiring, training, delegation, employee empowerment and succession planning.

Organizations also Need Downtime

An organization is a collection of people and processes around those people. The same way people with their limited attention spans take time out to do something different to refresh themselves, couldn’t the same thing be applied to the enterprise?

Google’s 20% time is a great example of this. Employees get to spend one work day each week doing something completely unrelated to their daily activities. They get to put the ‘what if’ factor to work, exploring projects and possibilities they normally would never get the time to follow through on. That day has been found to be a boon to creativity and therefore beneficial to the individual employees and to the company as a whole.

The Lesson of Downtime

The lesson going forward is that at the individual level, at the level of the entrepreneurial leader and at the full organizational level, at some point sessions, whether structured or spontaneous, should be scheduled as a regular part of the organization’s life. The benefits of such time spent are intangible but positively impact on internal planning, motivation, creativity and innovation.

Making money online is something that is an ever green topic. Usually it might be referred to as “monetisation”. There are several interesting and fun projects online including Facebook where a relevant and pertinent question they face is “how do you make money?” It’s important to keep an open mind in your approach to making money online as the internet is a constantly evolving environment.

In the mean time, here are 5 practical ways to make money online

1. Sell Products Online  - E-Commerce

The simplest and most obvious one is to sell a product via an online store. You can set up a store on your website and sell from there. It sounds simple but it’s more difficult than meets the eye. You have to consider things like taking payments in different currencies, delivery, fulfilment of orders, warehousing, managing inventory, customer service and the list goes on. One way around some of these challenges is by selling what is called “info products” or software that can be downloaded online. This way you reduce the challenges of tracking inventory and warehousing. Info products include things like books, instructional videos or webinars.

The other obvious way of making money online is through advertising. Usually you would create a following of some kind via a publication or a mailing list and someone else would pay you to run their ad based on your audience. The primary difficulty here is in creating the kind of audience, that you can convince someone to pay for. Ad networks like Google Adsense and Adbrite also help you in acquiring ads where advertisers pay for who clicks.

3. Affiliate marketing

This is a popular but lesser known option for making money online. It might also be referred to as referral marketing. The concept here is that you get paid per referral you send in. This is actually a very profitable for some people. Essentially they spend their day finding ways to refer persons online to programs such as Amazon Affiliates and Click bank,

4. Offer your services professional in online market place

There are websites which create an online market place for professional services. You have people who want to hire and people who want to be hired in one place. Some of the interesting online marketplaces for services are Guru.com, Elance.com and 99designs.com.

This is actually pretty new to me, but I recently learnt of Amazon Mechanical Turks. It is also an online market place for services, however these services might not be professional. They can include simple things like filling out multiple choice surveys and even doing TV reviews. It’s a great way to get paid possibly for one of your hobbies like TV.

By Marita Greenidge

You’ve been spending lots of money on marketing but for some reason sales are not coming in the door. Why, oh why is your marketing not working? You’ve tried newspaper ads, online ads, you are even trying that “new age” social media stuff, yet nothing!

Don’t despair! You might be making a few mistakes that with some correction will show an improvement to your bottom line.

Here are a few common mistakes entrepreneurs make when it comes to marketing:

You forget marketing is done to drive sales

You therefore spend way too much time (and money) on the aesthetic aspects of your promotional material than you do on ensuring that material is useful. A fancy flash introduction may look really cool but oftentimes it takes too long to load. Your customers don’t want to wait; they want the information right now. The time your site takes to load, they probably disappeared to another site. Potential sale lost.

With printed brochures one can easily neglect content and focus on eye-catching design. Your brochure is meant to inform the customer, not decorate someone’s table or counter. You want a solid call to action with contact details and an explanation of the benefits your product offers. Your goal is to encourage a sale. (As a side note on brochures, many persons tend to make the mistake of listing product features without a clear link to the benefits for the customer. The customer always wants to know “what’s in it for me?” Don’t forget to answer that question.)

You forgot to define your target market

Locals or tourists, business professionals or doctors, older or younger, sports enthusiasts or gardeners? Who does your product most benefit and what are they reading or watching? If you sell hip, chic, trendy shoes then you probably don’t want to place an ad on 900 AM no matter how cheap the rates are. If you intend to cater to the tourist market then your ad would be better placed on barbados.org or in the Nation Explore magazine than in the regular daily paper. If you’re selling art you probably want to get on Corrie Scott’s blog and online magazine. The idea here is to get your promotional material where your target market has a higher probability of seeing you.

You thought social media was the way to go but forgot it meant being social

Social media is great for building relationships which go a long way in encouraging repeat purchases. You heard this so you set up a Facebook & Twitter page. Unfortunately you forgot that someone needed to monitor the pages and interact regularly with fans and followers. You also forgot that posting interesting stuff frequently could keep fans and followers constantly coming back for more. You lament that you don’t get the big deal with Facebook and Twitter; it’s not working for you.

Facebook and Twitter are great ways to get customer insight for product development. If I were an artist considering launching a new suite of digital reproductions, my fans could let me know if I were on the right track with the pieces chosen. If I were a spice producer, I could give away free recipes that used my spices. When users made the dishes I’d encourage them to share their experience with other fans to incite more sales!

These are just a few reasons you may not be getting the bang for your marketing bucks. Hope this helps place you on a path to rapid sales generation. If not, see me for a consult :-).