Three tips to avoid losing business with sloppy web copy

February 22, 2012 by

If you’re going to invest time and money in creating a website, you’ll want to put your most stylishly clad, well-polished business foot forward. Just as we strive to present ourselves and our staff, premises, products and services to a high professional standard in the real world, so it should also be online.

Yet often this doesn’t happen.

I recently perused the website of a new adventure tourism operator and found ten grammatical and punctuation errors in their 202-word home page blurb. I was so busy mentally negotiating the non-sentences, misspellings and erroneous punctuation that I struggled to take in what they were trying to sell me. And despite all the pretty photos scrolling along the top of the screen and clear menu options, my first impression was “Huh?” followed by “They’ve really been careless with their website.”

Forced to read the home page blurb a second time to try and glean some information, I cringed to note they were trying to convince me to try one of their products (a guided alpine walk) because there was a chance I “might see a hobbit” <nudge, wink>.

Sigh. This cliché has been trundled out by too many New Zealand adventure tourism operators trying to cash in on the success of The Lord of the Rings films. Worse than that, it tells me nothing about the true magic of this scenic walk and why I wouldn’t regret paying their business to guide me on it.

Though dismayed by the scruffy and unimaginative writing on the home page, I was still curious. I clicked a few more times and had my suspicions confirmed – the written content on the other web pages was as bad as that on the home page, both technically and in terms of the lack of useful information conveyed.

“But,” I hear you say, “You’re a professional editor. The average customer won’t notice or even care about the odd comma being out of place.” And I agree to an extent – some customers won’t notice small errors. But I guarantee that all customers will quickly sense whether they find it easy to understand the information on your site and whether it tells them what they need to know or grabs their attention. And whether they consciously understand why they find poor writing harder to take in or get excited about, it could still influence them to head to another site.

So how can you put your best business foot forward online, communication-wise?

1. Get your website proof read. If you have the budget to pay a professional, great. If not, what about asking your friend who’s studying for a Masters in Literature? Or Aunty Louise who used to be an English tutor? Ask around your friends, family, colleagues or staff and offer them a meal or gift vouchers for their trouble. Even better, get two people to proof your site. The more grammatically enlightened pairs of eyes, the better.

2. When writing for the web, you only have so much space to fit your text in. So you need to focus on what makes your company’s products or services the best. If you want to sell me a guided alpine walk, don’t waffle about fictitious characters that roamed mountainous terrain in a movie shot in your region – tell me about the glacially-fed lake and rare species of bird I’ll see, and the picnic lunch of local delicacies my guide will serve me.

3. If you can say what you want to say about your products and services but in half as many words, you have a better chance of getting your message across before your potential customer clicks back to their search engine and looks at another site. People are time poor, easily distracted and want everything now. So edit, edit and then edit again. (I edited this blog seven times, for example.) Grab your potential customers with perfect prose and concise descriptions that both pre-empt their questions and showcase your business’s wow factor.

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Is customer satisfaction a good measure of small business banking success?

February 16, 2012 by

M&T Bank recently won 14 excellence awards and was recognized as one of the best small business banks in the US, in the Greenwich Associates 2011 Small Business Banking Awards.

Three of these awards were based on satisfaction measures – personal banking satisfaction, treasury management satisfaction, and overall satisfaction – and this got me thinking about other measures of success and whether there were better or more appropriate small business banking success metrics.

In my experience, quite a few banks, in the US and internationally, use some sort of customer satisfaction measure as an indication of how well they’re doing. To be fair, they probably do have some sophisticated and complex algorithm that is used to evaluate what each point of satisfaction is worth in dollar-based revenue, but it strikes me as a very vague way to measure success.

What’s wrong with satisfaction surveys?

Essentially, I am not convinced that people answer honestly and accurately when asked about their level of satisfaction. Using customer satisfaction as a measure reminds me of seminar or workshop assessments where presenters are rated on a scale of 1 to 10. I guess 8 and above is good. Or is it? Who knows?

I don’t really believe that this sort of satisfaction rating tells the presenter whether the people attending implemented the ideas successfully, or used the information learnt. It’s an arbitrary measure to keep the course going. Not many people give a low score of 1 because they may need to justify their reasons; it’s easier to give an arbitrary score of around 7 – not that good, nor that bad….

Using satisfaction as your measure of success can help marketing departments prove that their budgets are justified. It can be hard to prove that sponsoring an event, advertising in the media, signage, branding and social media activities actually makes any money. It is easier to conduct a survey of customers and ask them if they are satisfied. (Of course I would be asking the dissatisfied customers why they left… but that is another story.)

So how would I measure success?

I would measure:

  • Increases in website traffic
  • Increases in small businesses signing up to e-newsletters
  • Improvements in small business client retention
  • Reductions in the number of declined small business loans
  • Increases in the number of new small business clients

To me, these seem to be more practical ways to measure the performance of small business banking – although they are the result of happy and satisfied customers. This is what I would report on.

Interestingly, smaller banks also tend to score better on customer satisfaction surveys than the larger banks. This suggests that mimicking the smaller banks will help to improve all the measures: Thinking globally but acting locally. Actively running workshops for small businesses, getting managers to volunteer in schools, and providing free advice in enterprise centers are all ways to increase customer satisfaction and the more practical measures outlined above.

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The importance of key influencers

February 14, 2012 by

More than 40 years on from the Pentagon Papers, all eyes are still on the Washington Post. As ever, America’s foremost news-gathering organization can’t escape the glare of attention it has so unflinchingly shone on others over the years.

But it’s not what you think. Rather than being at the centre of a Supreme Court hearing or indeed anything remotely related to Oval Office tape recordings, the Post is on a growing number of peoples’ radars because, like all newspapers, it’s currently transitioning into a digital future.

As more local advertisers have migrated to the web and Post bureaus in many American cities have closed down, the Post has had to slash staff and reorganize the newsroom. Like the London Times – that now famously has a pay-wall protecting its website – many businesses are watching the Post because they too are facing a do-or-die situation in the Internet age. If the pioneers of 20th Century print journalism can finally ditch the ink and be online pioneers also, then there’s hope for other businesses struggling to adapt.

So it’s perhaps not too surprising to read – in the New York Times, admittedly – that the Post’s newsroom is a changed beast altogether. With print and web journos working side-by-side, the newsroom is littered with flat-screen monitors giving real-time updates of the most popular stories on its news site, while deadlines are defined as much by online metrics as print capacity.

However, the most interesting detail to come out of the Post’s current situation is its focus on key influencers.

Being widely read is great but for a paper like the Post that’s not enough – they need to be read by the right people, too. This is why one of the key metrics for its blogs is who’s reading them, not just how many. Put simply, if a blog doesn’t attract the numbers overall, but still registers a high percentage of hits from web locations ending in a .gov, .mil, .senate or .house address, then it’s considered a success because it means it’s being read by Washington’s power elite.

A period of transition isn’t easy on any business, least of all because of the unknown impacts change can have on the target market. But as the Post is demonstrating, if customer numbers no longer necessarily translate into sales (the Post has no pay-wall on its website), then identifying and measuring your impact with key influencers can be a real light house in the storm.

So what can you do to measure your success with key influencers?

  • Set your goals first. Think before you leap, because your goals should define who and what you measure, and the tools you employ to get that done. Are you looking to raise brand awareness generally or get across a specific message to your target market? The former might use a direct consumer survey, while the latter might measure media responses to a PR effort.
  • Accurately identify your market’s influencers. Survey customers about who they listen to and where their most powerful third-party recommendations come from. A key influencer can be anyone from a media personality to a family friend who fits a certain demographic you can target. If your business is active in online marketing, consider using social media monitoring software and text analytics to identify the social networks your customers use.
  • Connect the dots. It’s not enough to know who’s influencing your consumers; you need to know how they’re connecting with them as well. Research has shown that different influencers interact with buyers in different stages of the purchasing decision-making process. Some plant the idea through recommendation, while others – like bloggers and product-testers – are sought out for a second opinion. Divide your target market’s influencers into categories so you can then market to each in an effective way.

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The future of books

February 9, 2012 by

I love books. The look and feel of a book, the finer points of typography and layout. The scent of books, old or new.

Travelling seems incomplete without visiting the grand bookshops of the world such as Foyles in London or the Strand in New York; or magnificent Hispanic book temples such as El Ateneo in Buenos Aires (a converted theatre) and the richly decorated Livraria Lello in Porto, Portugal (check out these last two links especially for a visual treat).

Then there are the delights of discovering warmly welcoming bookstores, such as the Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, or the delightfully quirky Slightly Foxed in provincial New Zealand. These places are invariably run by ardent bibliophiles who see themselves as custodians of a valuable tradition as much as business people.

But the future does not lie in the printed books so lovingly displayed in these book meccas. The future is digital. E-books have more than doubled in sales each year over the past few years. One forecast predicts e-books will make up 20% of total book sales in 2012, rising to a whopping 75% by 2025. The forecast may well prove too conservative.

The tipping point may well happen in the field of education, with the next generation taking their textbooks to school and university on their iPads or other tablets. They will grow up with little or no need to touch a printed book, just as right now they have little or no need to stick a stamp on an envelope (time to sell your childhood stamp album before stamps become neglected relics of the past?).

E-books offer a rich new world of possibilities. What we may lose in pleasurable tangibility, we arguably more than gain in other dimensions. The convenience factor is immense. E-books are super portable, allowing you to carry a whole library of books around on your Kindle, iPad or other reader. No more lugging heavy copies of Lonely Planet for each country you visit. Download the e-book versions instead, at zero extra weight.

For companies wishing to connect with customers, the advantages of e-books are huge.

Disintermediation (cutting out the traditional publishers and other middle men involved in the distribution chain) makes distributing an e-book enticingly cheap. Whether you have 1,000 or 50,000 small business customers, you can give each customer your e-book at a fraction of a printed book’s cost.

You also gain from a much faster lead time between e-book conception and completion. You can commission an e-book for delivery in just a month or two, depending on the content and length. They can be customized to your requirements and produced in full color. You can reference and link to your products and services and quickly upgrade or replace text or pictures to keep the book current.

E-books are easy to promote via teasers in newsletters, emails, or on your website. Give them away for free to existing customers or as an incentive to prospective customers.

So you’re now a publisher! A smart e-book under your own publishing imprint and bearing your company logo becomes an important part of your branding. You can add legitimacy and prestige to the e-book by listing it for sale on worldwide bookstores such as Amazon or Apple’s iBookstore. The listed retail price will give the book perceived value in the eyes of any customers or prospects you subsequently allow to download the book for free or at a reduced price.

The next generation predominantly deals with the world through small screens: on their smartphones, tablets and laptops. E-books are ideal for this market, helping to engage even marginal readers through their multimedia richness including animations or video links, or links to interactive calculators, spreadsheets and other useful business tools and resources.

Glossaries, indexes, footnotes or endnotes become things of the past, replaced by immediate word definitions and search functions, while live links offer additional reading for those who want to drill deeper.

Readers can bookmark pages, highlight sections, make and store notes. People increasingly want quick gratification, and the e-book supplies it by being downloadable in just a minute or two.

So which e-book platform is likely to emerge the market winner? Should you aim for Kindle, Sony or iPad readers, or provide multiple e-book formats? The likely winner is a topic for a future blog but in the meantime you can gain some clues from Apple’s War on Amazon. And of course, think about commissioning your first e-book. We’d be delighted to help.

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Virtualising your environment

February 4, 2012 by

Virtualization technology, which usually relies on software that resides between the hardware and the operating system known as a bare-metal hypervisor, gives business owners the opportunity to consolidate hardware.

It also provides the flexibility to set up and tear down Operating Systems (OSs) on an ad-hoc basis, or even as part of a Continuous Integration (CI) process.

At The Small Business Company, the development team uses virtualization in the automated CI process and in nightly builds. This enables us to run fast, automated test suites over our software every time a developer commits changes, and also run our longer running tests overnight.

The hypervisor creates a layer of abstraction that isolates an OS and its associated applications from the underlying computing hardware. This effectively removes the traditional reliance of software on hardware devices and their drivers and allows us to have multiple operating systems running simultaneously on the same piece of hardware.

This does create a single point of failure though. So it pays to bear this in mind when buying hardware. Don’t skimp. Use the best hardware you can afford.

In many instances, virtual machines (VMs) can be migrated from hypervisor to hypervisor, often without downtime. This allows us to perform back-ups on the fly, and even to instantiate additional computing platforms on demand, and is great for load balancing.

There are two main categories of hypervisor: bare-metal and hosted.

Bare-metal hypervisors are installed directly onto your computer hardware. They provide an almost native performance to the guest OSs (VMs), generally losing only 3–4% of the Central Processing Unit’s cycles to the running of the hypervisor.

Bare-metal is great for consolidating a company’s collection of servers onto a single piece of hardware.

Some examples of the leading bare-metal hypervisors we have used are VMware’s ESX(i) (proprietary), Xen (FOS (Free & Open Source)), and KVM (kernel loaded VM) (FOS). ESX and XenServer are installs that reside directly on the hardware. KVM sits within a Linux kernel.

Hosted hypervisors are installed into the OS. So for example, you would install Windows or Linux, and then install the hypervisor on top but the performance is nowhere near as good as with bare-metal.

Hosted is often used by IT workers who need the flexibility to install, run and try out different OSs on their own computers without disrupting their current computing environment.

Some examples of the leading hosted hypervisors are VirtualBox (FOS), VMware’s Workstation and Server (both proprietary), Qemu (FOS), Microsoft’s Virtual Server and VirtualPC (both proprietary).

Virtualization Types

Then there is Paravirtualisation and Full Virtualization.

Paravirtualization requires that the guest OS is compiled with hooks for the hypervisor (guest OSs must know about the hypervisor).

Full Virtualization allows the guest OS to run on the hypervisor without even knowing that it is hosted. Paravirtualization yields considerable performance benefits over Full Virtualization.

Windows guests can only run on Full Virtualization, as their source is proprietary.

Hypervisors manage the guest VMs, controlling how much hardware resource they may consume. They can also manage the underlying hardware via specially designed interfaces (sometimes web based, sometimes command line).

Many VMs can be run on a hypervisor. The resource most in demand is system memory, and because RAM is cheap, this makes the proposition of virtualization an attractive one.

See my blog post for additional technical details.

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11 Tips for working with a web developer

February 2, 2012 by

Geeks, nerds, propeller heads… call them what you like but if you’re a small business owner, then chances are you’ll need to deal with a web developer at some stage to help you build or design your website. Some people can be a little uncertain where to start when talking to technical people, others undergo a personality change reminiscent of the classic Goofy cartoon when he gets behind the wheel of a car.
Here are a few tips to help you work with web developers and turn your web project into a success…

1. Don’t self-deprecate

If you can use email and browse the web, then don’t go all gun-shy in front of someone technical. Nobody gains anything from you being overly modest; in fact, you can lose credibility. Acknowledge that there’s a limit to your expertise but be confident in what you do know and move on.

2. Be clear on what you want

Your job in contracting a web developer is to outline the ‘what’ part of the site, the web developers job is to do the ‘how’ part. You need a clear idea of what you are trying to achieve and what your business wants out of the work. The developer’s job is to work out how best to achieve it.

But be realistic…

“I’ve sent you a photo of the team to include in the brochure. Rob, the guy on the right, is wearing a horrible sweater though – can you just rub his sweater out in Photoshop? And if he’s not wearing anything underneath, could you paint him a nice shirt?”

From www.ClientsFromHell.net

3. Listen to the experts

Remember you’re not only paying a web developer for their skills, but their expertise and experience too. Expect them to impart some of their knowledge, built up from their time working on other projects. Don’t treat them as work for hire, there to do whatever you want whenever you want it. Listen to what they’re telling you, ask them open-ended questions, and ask for their recommendations. Chances are they’ll come up with things you haven’t even thought of.

4. Remember you are responsible

Remember that you know your business better than a web developer does. Listen, ask questions and assess their responses but don’t forget you are responsible for the business decisions made in a project. If your ‘business rules’ determine that something should be done a particular way, then your web developer won’t know this unless you tell them.

5. Be organized

Don’t come to a meeting without any notes or not having thought about what you’re after. Put together a brief, sketch some ideas or put together some wireframe concepts. The more structured and detailed (within reason!) you make these, the better, as they will help a developer see what’s going on inside your head. The more preparation you do for your meetings, the more money you are likely to save in the long run.

Communicate.

“Send the copy to me. I probably don’t have time to comment, so if you don’t hear back, think of what I would say and rewrite it.”

From www.ClientsFromHell.net

6. Don’t think: “I’ll know it when I see it”

This is the number one way to blow your budget. If you don’t know what you want, then how is a web developer supposed to know? If they’re guessing their way through several iterations of your site, then it is going to eat up your budget pretty quickly.

7. Know some basics

It will help you and your budget if you know some basics about how the web works, what HTML is and how to work your way through at least some HTML code. At the very least, you should understand the different image files formats.

Don’t make this mistake…

“I’ve decided on the photos that I would like you to use on the website. They are attached to this email. Please send them back when you’re finished as they are my only copies. Thanks!”

From www.ClientsFromHell.net

8. Know how to work out a budget

Once you’ve agreed on the work required, ask them to break it down into tasks and give an estimate for each task. Add up the number of hours for all tasks and multiply it by their hourly rate and you’ll have your cost. Chances are you’ll be surprised at the figure but it’s probably realistic.

Now you can decide which features you don’t really need and cut these from the work. I don’t recommend negotiating how long everything is going to take. Sure, ask questions to ensure the developer has a clear understanding of what’s required but remember they’re the experts (see point 3). A good web developer should be able to work through their costs with you (congratulations, you’ve just worked out whether your developer is any good or not!)

9. Get regular feedback

Don’t call your web developer twice a day and ask “How’s progress?”, but expect to see some visual feedback over the course of the project. I wouldn’t leave it longer than two weeks before having a formal meeting where you, as the one paying the bills, should be able to see what work has been done and what is still to be done.

Even if you’re just looking at code you don’t understand, get the developer to talk you through it. This also might be a good time to review where they’re at with the budget and how many hours they’ve used up from their original estimates.

See feedback as a crucial part of the project…

“You mean WE have to give feedback on the draft, if we want you to change it? You don´t take on much responsibility in your business, do you?”

From www.ClientsFromHell.net

10. Focus on problems, not solutions

Your job is to identify problems with the work, or things that need changing. Resist the temptation to solve these issues as well – “Just move this over here and this over here and make that green and it will work.”

Let the web developer come up with the solutions; that’s what you’re paying them for. Sure, give suggestions and tell them your ideas but always give them scope to solve problems themselves.

“Can you replace all the red with blue or aqua? We want a warmer look.”

From www.ClientsFromHell.net

11. Allow for revisions

There are always some revisions you’ll want when you see what a web developer has done. Allow for revisions in your budget, or agree what the quote (you did get a quote, didn’t you?) allows for BEFORE the work begins.

And make sure you’ve done your homework (see point 5) and don’t start changing the brief at this stage.

“The image of the family walking down the beach… Let’s just retouch it so they’re facing the camera.”

From www.ClientsFromHell.net

More stories of “clients from hell” are available at www.clientsfromhell.net. Ask your web developer for more, laugh about them, but whatever you do don’t turn into the client from hell.

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Giving better small business banking advice

February 2, 2012 by

In the good old days (insert the year you remember the good old days here), a small business bank manager would spend time developing a relationship with small business owners. They’d be focused on helping small business owners grow their business, as well as providing banking services.

More recently, but before the housing bubble burst, strong market growth meant bank managers were more focused on signing up banking clients and trying to keep up with the demand for money, rather than giving advice.

But the current tighter trading conditions mean small business bank managers have to deal with business owners who are stressed. Not all small businesses are going bust but they are increasingly stressed about funding, business growth, eroded profit margins and competing in an increasingly globalized market.

I recently attended a small business owners’ forum to gauge what the latest business issues are. No one was looking to lay off staff. But they were re-evaluating their strategies, looking to make responsible cost cuts, assessing new products and services, looking to get closer to the end customer and decision maker, improving information flow and market research, and carefully considering where to spend their money.

Oh, hang on! That’s what they should do anyway, right?

Some businesses are under real financial stress but the majority of businesses simply need to focus on running a lean, agile and profitable business – something they should be focused on anyway.

As a bank manager, you can help your small business clients by asking questions to uncover the core issue for each small business and providing the right advice to assist. Or you can refer them to someone who can help if the matter is outside your area expertise.

I’ve spent the last 20 years helping small business owners and the following are the top questions I’ve used to help draw out the real issues facing small business owners. Feel free to use these next time one of your small business clients needs help.

1. What are your key competitive advantages? What do you do better than the competition?

Then enquire if their advantage is obvious. Is it clearly communicated? What else could they do to create an advantage?

2. What are you doing to increase your credibility?

Consider the key risks faced by customers. How will they lower these and develop credibility-building ideas?

3. Who are your key customers?

Make sure they understand the 20/80 rule and the importance of focusing on the top 20% of their customers. Make sure they understand their specific target market. Identify the best way to target this market.

4. Where do most of your referrals come from?

Find out what they are doing to encourage more referrals.

5. Are there any businesses you could align with?

Are there large businesses they should contact? Any smaller companies they should contact? Are they leveraging their database and networks?

6. Do you know your exact break-even sales target?

Complete a break-even analysis for them, based on existing data. Show them the sales needed to support their income aspirations.

7. Do they know that small improvements can make a large difference to the bottom line?

Calculate the changes that could occur by increasing sales leads, lead conversions or prices by 10%. Show them what they could do to get these 10% increases.

These questions, I think, are basic to being in business. Don’t forget to ask them even when times are good.

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Small business growth: focus on the health sector

January 23, 2012 by

A few years ago we worked with Microsoft in Seattle, building their Small Business Plus Program using our online e-learning content. I was having dinner with one of the Product VP’s and he made some interesting comments. The first was that the new commodity was Internet traffic. If you can get eyeballs to a web page, you don’t need to make any money, you just need millions of people visiting and then you can sell the traffic behavior on.

I wish I had listened more closely or at least taken his advice. Seemed crazy then, still seems slightly crazy now that you can make money from an intangible behavior you hope continues. If everyone suddenly decided that tweeting was silly, Twitter would be worth zero overnight.

The second comment was that he’d overheard Bill Gates at dinner discussing the next BIG growth sector, which was health. He remembered someone saying it would be great if they could microchip people to get a feed from their blood data, to provide help before anyone gets really sick. Not sure the FDA would approve that…

The point is that the health sector will continue to grow and grow. We’re all getting older, living longer, and medicine is keeping us alive longer. The US health department has projected they will spend over $1 trillion this year, which is around 18% of GDP.

So what are the lessons/opportunities? I think there are three: one for the banking sector, one for health businesses, and one for all other businesses.

First the banks. They will increasingly make lending to anyone in the medical industry easier, and they will set up medical support (or they should). If I was a bank, I would provide specific, small-business-management advice online and specialist bankers to encourage new start-ups in the health sector, and support those with high-growth potential. Some banks already do.

National Australia Bank has health banking specialists, so does the Commonwealth Bank. Cain Brothers is a specialist health sector investment banking firm in the US. But what else could the banks do?

To encourage start-ups and growth in the health sector, I would:

  • Run introductory physical workshops in local areas.
  • Offer an online small business e-learning program.
  • Develop diagnostic tools to help people self-assess where the opportunities lie.
  • Write white papers on future trends.
  • Have a specific e-newsletter every month or so and build a database of potential customers.
  • Attend and speak at health conferences.
  • Develop a ‘curriculum’ to help owners build practical business plans to guide their business (remembering most, not all, health businesses are run by health professionals, not business managers).

Now to the health businesses. If you are the owner and you are a health professional, then assuming you have a business plan in place (and maybe a succession plan) and assuming you want to grow (not everyone does), start spreading your expertise and influence. Speak at health conferences, write articles or blog posts (like this one), research upcoming contracts or subscribe to government tendering systems, attend global health events, and look to export (if not your products then your expertise in helping other professionals). You could also look into finding ways to up-sell products to your patients, or joining with other businesses such as the insurance industry. Or you could invest in retirement homes. At the very least, you should be allocating a certain amount of planning time every year to investigate future demand.

Finally, all other small businesses. The opportunity isn’t necessarily switching from being a mechanic to a dentist. You can’t change what you do but you can change your targets. The mechanic could approach the local hospital and see who services their fleet of vehicles, and if it’s a contract, when is it up for renewal and can they tender for it?

Restaurants could identify where the medical centers are in town to narrow their advertising. Medical product companies are likely to need branding or marketing advice, payroll software, catering for office parties, or anything to help them run their business on a daily basis as they grow. Maybe they just need a contractor to mow their lawns. Get a list of medical/health businesses in the area you market in, gather your staff and brainstorm how you can tap into this growing market.

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Turning the (two) wheels of opportunity and innovation

January 23, 2012 by

According to a recent article published on nzherald.co.nz, the economic value of mountain biking in Rotorua’s Whakarewarewa Forest has been estimated at a whopping five times its annual timber revenue and continues to climb faster than your average lycra-clad road whippet.

Mountain biking in Rotorua is netting $10.2 million annually, a huge chunk of which is going straight into the local economy and tourism sector. Who would have thought the humble bicycle could generate more revenue than forestry? After all, forestry is only one of New Zealand’s steadfast industries with a total worth of over $5 billion a year, equating to 3% of GDP.

Whakarewarewa is one of many forests full of mountain biking trails across New Zealand, but is fortunate enough to have a group of dedicated people (largely volunteers) who have worked the malleable soil into a work of art. The tracks suit all skill levels, with everything from meandering trials through native bush and Californian Pines to some of the most difficult (and dangerous) mountain biking in the Southern Hemisphere (Ed: if you don’t believe me, check out this video).

So how did Whakarewarewa go from being a local best-kept secret to a destination of choice for thousands of international riders each year? The answer: a great deal of hard work on the track, some intelligent marketing, and finally, several innovative business collaborations.

mountain biker hurtling down narrow bike track

Whakarewarewa trails: generally no wider than 2 feet, but up to 90 kilometers long and likely to injure in places.

First off, word of mouth started to spread like wildfire and the Whakarewarewa tracks became popular with riders from all over New Zealand keen on a weekend getaway. Then in 2007, Riderotorua.com was set up to promote the tracks on offer and it has evolved to feature a comments and rating section for each trail within the forest. The site also features a directory of local businesses, accommodation, bike shops and bike taxis. There is also redwoods.co.nz, with daily updates on the condition of the tracks and maps of the area. Within a few minutes, a rider from anywhere in the world can find out about the tracks on offer, download a map and book accommodation.

Last year, Ride Rotorua teamed up with Destination Rotorua Marketing and local businesses to produce a DVD profiling the tracks that was distributed in Australian Mountain Bike Magazine – Australia’s most popular cycling publication with a readership of over 75,000 keen mountain bikers. The accompanying article described Rotorua as having “The world’s best mountain bike trails”.

Taking advantage of Air New Zealand’s twice weekly flights between Sydney and Rotorua, the riders started pouring in – and haven’t stopped. Rotorua Airport and local businesses are looking at ways to make the process easier for international riders, such as by offering a bike assembly area at the airport where they can leave the box behind and pedal straight into town or to the forest.

There are currently plans for a second DVD this March, which will showcase the wider Rotorua and Central Park area. Local business groups are also working closely with bike companies and shops across the Tasman to try and organize product launches and events in Rotorua – with some local businesses even offering to pay the airfares.

Best of all, unlike the trees in the forest that can only be sold once, the forest trails are a sustainable investment that will keep generating a return for years to come.

There are lessons here for almost any kind of small business.

  1. Get out of your comfort zone and look for new opportunities. Who would have known mountain biking would be so popular fifteen or even ten years ago? Look outside the square for new opportunities or ways to promote your business.
  2. Join forces for maximum impact. Could you team up with another business to offer a great package deal? Could your services be listed on another business’s website (and vice versa) or on an online directory?
  3. Get creative with your marketing. Find creative ways to connect with your target market. Remember, international markets are closer than ever and only a few clicks away.
  4. Get Internet savvy. Even the smallest businesses can benefit from an online presence through a website, social media pages or by contributing to online forums.

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Small Business in the virtual world

January 18, 2012 by

Property investment, selling home-made crafts, running a restaurant, customer loyalty… Typical small business topics, you might think. But what’s interesting about these topics is that they appear in some of the biggest blockbuster games being played by millions of people around the world.

I’ve heard a lot of talk about the gamification of activities to help people learn about running a business, but adding a few meaningless tokens and points to these activities to make them more entertaining can be tricky and have mixed results. One of the biggest challenges in using interactive media to educate is how to make it fun and rewarding. With this in mind, I’m going to look at the games that people actually play on a daily basis and how these games actively engage players in small business activities.

1. Building relationships

Building and maintaining relationships is crucial for any small business owner, and it’s no different in the virtual world. Games such as The Elder Scrolls and Fable II encourage you to build relationships with retailers to get better prices for buying and selling products. In some cases, the more you buy and sell, the stronger your relationship becomes.

Relationships in virtual games

Maintaining relationships isn’t always easy, even in the virtual world.

Fable II takes the extra step by cooling relationships on the basis of you spending less time with people, so the focus isn’t just on building relationships but maintaining them too. It’s a simple yet effective way to portray trust and friendship with the people you do regular business with.

2. Buying and selling

Sourcing and buying raw materials and making them into unique, sellable products is a cornerstone of many small businesses. It’s also a common element of many role playing games. Whether it’s a set of leather armor or a rejuvenating hot stew, many games will let you create various items from scratch and sell them directly to the customer or retailer. Quite often the more time you spend doing this, your skill increases and the quality of your product goes up, along with your profit margins.

3. Running a business

One of the most obvious examples of this in gaming is The Sims franchise. It began as a simple day-to-day simulation of virtual people, but quickly evolved to include managing careers, pets, children, and just about everything else in modern suburban life.

Video games may represent your finances as giant piles of gold, but the way to achieve this wealth can mirror the real world.

One major addition to The Sims is called Open for Business, which allows you to run a business from home or out in the local shopping district. What makes this a good example is its flexibility and relative attention to detail. You can run anything from a shop to a restaurant or swimming pool, and you’re responsible for sourcing products, managing staff, managing stock levels, hygiene, customer loyalty and setting and meeting various business-related goals (think Business Plan). You may even be greeted by a mystery shopper.

4. Property investment

The Fable games allow you to buy and rent out properties, giving you a steady stream of income to fund your adventures. It may sound simple but the makers of these games added a little challenge to the process.

First you have to consider the location of these properties. If they’re in a rundown, low-socioeconomic area, you’re probably not going to make much money. Second, you need to decide on the rent. If you charge too much, you can create a knock-on effect in the local economy (and in Fable, your morality becomes corrupt, but that could be an entire philosophical debate in its own).

And finally, you need to manage the condition of your properties by weighing up the cost of repairs versus what you get back in return. You can literally buy dozens of properties in Fable III, and managing these properties almost becomes a game within a game.

There are many more examples I could include here, but they all point to one simple idea: the act of making money, growing a business and seeing it have a positive impact in these virtual worlds can be an educational and rewarding experience. Educational games don’t always need high scores or medals to give you sense of accomplishment, just the simple act of doing can be a reward in itself.

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