E-Biz Booster Blog

You might have heard this statement very often when people are talking about their ideas, their products, their customers, …

You try to argue with them and they say,

“But I know …”

My response in such a conversation is usually something like these:

“Okay, show me!”

“Can you prove it?”

“Have you tested it?”

The last one is a very significant one for businesses and marketeers. So many of you rely on assumptions rather than facts.

It is easier, cheaper, and quicker to test ideas and concepts than most of you believe.

Stop wasting your time and money guessing.

Start testing, now!

Biased by my professional background and current playing field focused on online marketing I am particularly fond of testing

• market viability
• marketing messages
• product ideas

with direct response marketing practices.

In fact I think a lot of—especially smaller businesses—test a lot implicitly by just doing rather than putting items on a to do list or agenda for a meeting.

But still most businesses do not test enough!

The ultimate decision maker is the market, not a director, not a manager. (I am assuming fair play, no tricking, no monopoly.)

My position here is not necessarily innovative, creative in first place. It's listening and responding. There is room for innovation and creation but it usually isn't your cash flow star right away.

• Where does the money come from?
• How do you increase the ROI of your marketing efforts?

Continuous testing is the answer.

Making it a habit pays off big time.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: I think, I will write more articles about testing in the near future.

Image source: Based on The orange bicycle DKNY.Com Guerilla marketing scheme, ©2008 by rollingrck/flickr. Modifications ©2009 by John W. Furst - Some rights reserved. - CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Social media is the big buzz. We've been swept up in the currents of Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter. We can allow the currents to carry us to new connections, new business, and massive reach and visibility. Or we can get caught in the riptides that pull our reputation under.

The biggest mistake in social media is not realizing that social media is a presentation. That's right.

Success in social media follows the rules of effective presentation skills.

Mistake one: No purpose or focus. What is your objective? Why are you using social media? What are you trying to accomplish? To make new contacts? To promote yourself or your business? To research? To reach new markets? To establish yourself as a thought leader? To find a job?

Mistake two: No strategy How will you use social media? How often? Which forms? Frequent communication is better than an occasional posting.

Mistake three: Speaking to the wrong audience Who is your audience? Are you simply collecting names or are you more targeted? Linkedin is more business-like and professional. Facebook is more social and casual. For example, if you're serious about job hunting you'll want to use linkedin as well as Facebook.

Mistake four: Projecting the wrong image. I've read posts about working on a boring project for a client. Maybe you know your client isn't one of your connections. But what about the people who referred you? What are you saying to them? People tend to let their guard down more easily on Facebook. It's inappropriate to talk about a nasty divorce, problem kids, or drunken driving. This is not a private conversation. Worse yet, is to use another's name in a survey. Ex. "Do you think Jane Doe is good looking?" People fail to realize that they are always on stage. Mistakes after a live presentation can be forgotten. In social media, your blunders live forever on the internet.

Mistake five: No real message. What do you plan to say? How will you say it? What is the style and tone of your communication? Nobody is really interested that you're watching TV. This kind of banter is content free. Provide value and you'll attract more followers. New blog entries, an interesting statistic, a link to an article or even a thought-provoking quote or book reference will make you more interesting.

Mistake six: Hard selling: Nobody likes a presenter who sells from the platform. It's no different in social media. If every post is an ad for your products and services you'll soon be disconnected. Let people know about your accomplishments but don't tell them to buy.

Mistake seven: Not building relationships. Many people put up a profile and never visit the site. Maximize your presence by updating your profile to let people know what you're doing. Ask questions. Answer questions to establish your expertise. Invite people to connect with you and then stay in touch. Be a resource. Connect others. A good presenter knows how to create a relationship with the audience.

Nothing will ever replace face-to-face communication. But meeting in person can be time consuming. Social media can be a phenomenal platform to build a reputation and to communicate with the world.

Just be sure you know how to present yourself, your message and your value.

Have a nice beautiful Sunday!

This will be a very short blog post but (hopefully) will keep you busy for a long while.

This information could severely impact entrepreneurs' chances (yours) for immense success in business.

But why should you listen to two crazy guys, one with a Viking helmet, one in front of the pyramids?

The answer is quite simple: “Both of them are already at a stage in life where they can do whatever they wish to do. And they have big fun running their businesses.” Sounds like a great role model for me.



Listen to there looooong mastermind call:

• Listen
• Take notes
• Learn
• Model
• Harvest the fruits

And of course:

• ENJOY!
• Did I say, “It’s FREE!”
• And leave a comment for me, please.

Get their proven answers to questions like:

• Part 1 – Why you leave so much money on the table
• Part 2 – Should you compete in Big Markets or Niche Markets?
• Part 3 – Should You focus on ONE Business or seek Multiple Streams of Income?
• Part 4 – How much is it costing you to be COOL to your customers even when (especially when) they’re WRONG…?

• Part 5 – The Wisdom and Rambo and Andy Dufrane.
• Part 6 – The Action to Acquire Method — How to get ANYTHING you want.
• Part 7 – The Honest To GOD Truth about Automated Money-Getting.
• Part 8 – The Value of “LIVE”

Now, without further ado:

• Andy Jenkins' 10 Hour Mastermind with John Reese (Part 1) (↑)
  
  
• Playback – How to get ANYTHING you want…(with no pants) (Part 2) (↑)

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: Leave a comment here! How do you like this kind of info from me?

Oh yeah,

Seth Godin (↑) finally started tweeting or twittering as some call it.

You do not believe me, then check this out.

“The reason they want you to fit in…
is that once you do, then they can ignore you.”

83 characters
by Seth Godin on 2009-11-18 (↑)

Certainly a statement that leaves room for interpretation.

So here is mine.



Many large organization try to mold everything and everyone. It seems that small business organizations can change more quickly, and they have to.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: Now we have to teach Mr. Godin the twitter interface since this short piece of text was still posted on his blog.

After writing about regulations of business practices on the Internet in the USA and in Europe yesterday, one of my readers, James, asked the following question in the comments:



Let me repeat my first answer.



Makes kind of sense, doesn't it. However, I wanted to know for sure and started some correspondence with lawyers, browsed government help sites for international trade issues, and news a bit.

Separate Website For Each Jurisdiction

The best solution would be to have a website for each jurisdiction and comply with the local standards there to the letter. That's actually what Amazon, Ebay, Paypal, and many international brands are doing (the really big businesses).

Too much effort for the little business probably, especially when starting out.

On the other hand one can be at a big advantage when offering a sought after product in the purchaser's native language in that national market. It's also interesting from the standpoint of SEO as it can be much easier to dominate a smaller, national market nice (should use country level domain, e.g., .de, .es, .uk, …).

Two thoughts (without proof):

• Clickbank (world largest market place for digital products) reports growing sales of information products in foreign languages like Spanish, German, and French.
  
  
• Ever thought about developing a product and licensing a foreign language version to someone else who will deal with all the local legal issues?
  Think about it.

Fully Comply With Either One Jurisdiction

Consumer protection laws on both sides of the Atlantic kick in as soon as consumers file complaints. Therefore, some businesses focus on implementing the regulations where they have most of their customers.

Of course, this can get you in trouble locally.

For example: The legislation on how to handle shipping cost in case of a customer return is more relaxed in the USA than it is in Europe. Or anti-spam laws are more rigorous in Europe as well, even in business to business scenarios.

You better comply with the rules of the government that you have to pay taxes to as they can get to you quickly. But you shouldn't screw your oversea customers as well.

By the way:

If your non-compliance, earnings, (possible fraud triggering criminal charges) are big enough the US- or any European government will hunt you down, no matter where you are. A simple non compliance with a disclosure requirement for example can be interpreted as being a criminal fraud.

One internationally operating lawyer I corresponded with pointed at a case of a UK citizen who was extradited from Australia where he lived at the time to the USA. He pleaded guilty for having violated US e-commerce laws and is serving a five year term in a US federal prison. Not funny at all.

I didn't ask how big this fish was, but does it really matter?

Coming back to my initial statement:

“An ethical business should treat its customers as they can be expected to be treated as they are usually treated where thy live.”

You might not like those new regulations, they even might hurt your sales in the short run, … but only if you continue to do business on the fringe.

Don't risk violating the law in any country especially if you are making a nice full time income or more. Which brings me to in my opinion good a solution for small to medium businesses.

Hybrid Website Serving A Good Legal Mix

The major goal here is to optimally protect the business from a legal standpoint of view in both jurisdictions.

This is certainly not achieved by picking which regulations to comply with at random. An expert is required to balance the risk of getting prosecuted in any jurisdiction versus the customer experience.

Closing

The first job of your lawyer is to protect your business from governments and from not so honest customers respectively prospects.

Customer experience is the job of your business.

If your goal is to provide superior customer experience, I don't think that you will have problems with any legislation (in most cases) if you exercise due diligence.


Yours
John W. Furst
Not a lawyer: This article reflects my personal
opinion is not any form of legal advice.

Due to the latest announcement of changes in regulations for advertisers in the USA, a lot of people talk, write, and speculate about that subject.

Situation In The USA

I published my opinion about an hour ago as a separate note:

• Time To Double Check Your Advertising? - FTC Changes Guidelines Effective Dec 1, 2009

The core elements can be summarized as follow:

• Disclose the use of affiliate links on your sites and in your social media profiles.
• Disclose any form of relationship when writing about commercial products and services. Even if you only got a free sample worth $0.99
• Monitor your affiliates and publishers for compliance with the new regulations.
• Always tell the truth.
• Think twice before showing specific results in testimonials.
• Last but not least don't use fake blogs with made up reviews and those kind of things.

You may want to read my entire note.

Situation In The European Union

Let's not forget, the Internet is more or less a medium without national borders.

I mean to say, it is likely that any website targeted to US consumers will effect some of the 500 million consumers in the European union as well.

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