In an age of faceless internet transactions and computerized phone menus, is looking your customer in the eye before offering an old fashioned handshake a dying art? Some customers would argue it’s no longer needed, while others wish for the days when an old school touch was not only offered but expected.

Your customers come in both varieties, so how do you keep them coming back? 

At a minimum you’ll need a quality product that meets their needs at an affordable price, but that is just the beginning. 

Despite the demands of modern life, many old school touches are still quite effective. Your customers want to feel valued, they want to be catered to and they want doing business with you to be quick and convenient.

As with fine food, presentation is critical. It doesn’t matter how delicious the meal is if the food is haphazardly slopped onto the plate and slapped down in front of them. Presentation counts, even if your company motto is ‘down home cookin’ or ‘just like Mom used to make’. You’re not Mom, after all. You’re an entrepreneur trying to attract their business. 

“You have to be where your customers are.”

That phrase used to mean making sure you had a store in high traffic areas such as malls, or placing your billboard strategically close to a major highway.  It meant advertising during popular TV shows and in high profile magazines.  In the 21st century, your website is your store, your TV advertisement, your billboard and your magazine ad all rolled into one.  Being where your customers are now often means being online (but don’t discount offline strategies too).  Increasingly, they’re wherever their Smartphone or tablet is.

StatCounter, a Dublin-based web analytics company, reported that in December of 2013, the amount of worldwide Internet traffic from mobile users topped 20 percent for the first time.  As the capacities of mobile devices continue to expand, that number will likely increase. 

As online usage habits change, many companies are lagging behind in making their sites mobile friendly, much to the annoyance of Smartphone and tablet users.

Forget old-school, dried up advertising methods!

Andrew Davis, best-selling author and former television producer, believes he has a better way for you to spend your advertising or marketing budget.

His idea is quite simple: create great content and engage your audience. Then use that content to leverage sales. Content brands build relationships. Relationships build trust. Trust drives revenue. It’s an approach Sesame Street and Walt Disney have used for years to drive millions in product sales, and Andrew believes it can work for small businesses too.

He has a five-step approach that’s already producing some great results for small online businesses.

What's your business plan?

In 1845, a British expedition commanded by Sir John Franklin boldly set out in search of the Northwest Passage, a fabled sea route around the top of North America. The expedition was plagued by logistical problems from the very start.

The crew had little experience with the arctic. Other than Franklin, few among the officers were arctic veterans. Disregarding the advice of the native Inuit, crewmen were outfitted in uniforms far better suited to winters in Southern England. 

In May, the expedition set sail from England never to return. Studies over the years have concluded that hypothermia, starvation and lead poisoning, along with inadequate clothing and supplies, lead to its demise.

While few of us have our hearts set on being arctic explorers, the fate of the Franklin Expedition serves of a poignant example of the importance of proper planning. It has been said that if you don’t know how to get there, it doesn’t matter what road you take.

It is just about the middle of November as I look my office window at the turning and falling leaves realizing that the first half of the second month of the last quarter of 2013 is just about history and that got me to thinking: how have I been doing on my Q4 plan?

How are you doing on your Q4 plan?

The first question is “Did you make a Q4 plan?” That is, did you sit down and look at your 2013 goals and see how you measure up to those goals?

If you think you don’t need a niche for your product or service, think again. In a recent Wall Street Journal article about the fashion industry, I read about a couple of guys who started a very, very niched business. No, they aren’t fashion designers. Previously in jobs that were peripheral to the fashion industry, they saw a need that fashion brands had and figured out a pretty slick way to meet that need.

James Nord and Rich Tong founded Fohr Card and launched it in January 2013. It’s a database of fashion bloggers who have successfully engaged their readers (see my earlier blog post about engagement) to the point where they have significant and measurable influence in their market. These bloggers sign up to be included in Fohr Card’s database, signing over the login information so Fohr Card can collect actual, real time data on their influence using social media and other statistics.

Brand companies like Juicy Couture, Samsung, and Kate Spade pay handsomely ($1000/month) for access to this measurable data. Prior to Fohr Card, they had to rely on bloggers volunteering their stats, and trust that the bloggers stats were true.

I was reading the September 5th issue of the Wall Street Journal and came across an article on how Procter & Gamble have been introducing premium versions of their products, some at significant (greater then 50%) price increases over their normal counterparts. That lead me to thinking, do you have a premium product or service? If P&G can sell a premium version of paper towels at higher prices, you can certainly do it in your business!

There are many reasons and strategies for having a premium level of your products and services, but the biggest is that there are always some buyers that want the premium package no matter what. If you don't offer them one,  they will be disappointed. So give them what they really want! Premium products should not cost nearly as much as the increase in price, that is they have a higher profit margin. Do you think that P&Gs Bounty DuraTowel actually costs 20% more to make, equal to the 20% more it is priced? You can count on not.

Another strategy is to use the super-premium level as a way to compel your prospects to take the level you really want them to take, next level down.

“All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room alone,” according to brilliant mathematician and scientist Blaise Pascal.

As a child prodigy who showed innate genius in 17th-century mathematics, Pascal was allowed by his father to sit as a silent on-looker in the presence of the great mathematicians of the time. This so inspired him that he went on, at the tender age of 16, to develop his famous 'Pascal's theorem', earning recognition from the famed mathematician Descartes.

So, what's the point? The point is you.

Getting online customers to your website is one of the most important ingredients for growing your business, and when it comes to search engines, Google has the vast majority of the market share.  If customers don’t know about you or can’t find a convenient way to reach you through the Web, selling your product or service becomes that much harder. 

Google+ (Google Plus) is one of the fastest growing social networking sites available in today’s market.  While it pales in comparison to the vastness of Facebook, Google+ is tightly tied to the Google search engine.  Google+ has ‘+1’ votes, similar to Facebook’s Likes.  Those votes let Google know that what you’re sharing is being read. Google+ profiles and pages can have a significant impact on search rankings.

Google+ separates itself from other social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter by offering increased SEO or Search Engine Optimization.  Posts are crawled and indexed almost immediately, resulting in a greater likelihood of your page appearing at the top of Google search results when a potential customer begins researching a product or service. 

With the sheer variety of resources available online are many ways to get the word out about your product or service. Your official website, though a critical part of your online marketing strategy, is just one of many. Social media sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn, have become an increasing part of modern life. Smart entrepreneurs adapt. 

According to Facebook internal estimates, the number of pages for small and medium sized businesses is close to 25 million. And there are over 750 million Facebook users daily.

With such a large environment, businesses have found that their sites and posts tend to get lost in the newsfeeds that users see. Since Facebook is a forum for people to share bits of their daily lives, the decorum tends to be a bit more informal. The professional appearance that companies use on official websites doesn’t always translate well into Facebook. 

Many experts on social media recommend a more personal approach for a Facebook page. Rather than telling potential followers about what a great company you started, tell them the hardships you went through trying to found it, and why you did. Instead of posting about your company’s great relationship with the community, post a story about a community event you or one of your employees participated in. Celebrating company moments can help potential customers feel like they’re dealing with real people, not a company logo. 

In a competitive market, sometimes it’s the little things that make the difference between merely satisfying a customer’s needs and thrilling them so much that they’re bragging to their friends about your products. In other words, you want them to say: “Wow!”

According to Scott Martineau, Senior Vice President of Product Strategy at Infusionsoft and author of Conquer the Chaos: How to Grow a Small Business without Growing Crazy, there are four steps to wowing your customers.

• Step 1 - Create a culture of Wow! Customer service starts at ground zero. You need to talk about it from day one. You need to emphasize and teach it to your employees at every opportunity, and when you’re evaluating new employees, you should look for people who love to serve. Wherever possible add incentives for employees to go above and beyond. In a crowded field of competing companies, people will remember the small, personal touches far more than they will another advertising campaign.

For many creative people, ‘process’is almost a dirty word. Flexibility and spontaneity are swept into a mindless void of dull and boring routine. Do the same thing over and over again, all day, every day. 

An organized process doesn’t have to be some gremlin lurking in the dark. In fact, it can keep the gremlins from knocking at the door of your business. By developing a system, routine tasks can be done quickly and smoothly, freeing up valuable time and energy for more important things. It can also save your business some money.

Consider the case of a major film production. Expensive actors are already on the set, props and scenery have been built, and the production crew is ready to shoot. Time is money, and every second counts. One of the major reasons films go over budget is inefficient use of time on the set. Since a skilled production crew is often paid by the hour, the last thing a director wants is a costly delay or even worse, having to shoot the scene again months later. 

It’s time to step up on my soapbox and rant a little about a topic that keeps rearing its ugly head lately. Maybe you’ve tripped over it too?

Business etiquette. I know, I know, you’re probably groaning and thinking - Really?? Yes really.

Here are a few examples of what I mean:

Do you answer an email or call from a prospect or client or vendor in a timely way? Or put it off and ignore it for whatever reason?

Do they respond to you or do they ignore you?

Ever contact a prospect after a lengthy valuable consultation only to have them vanish into the ether?

As a young girl, I was always attracted to stories. If an article in a book, magazine, newspaper, or mail piece began with a story, I was immediately engaged. If I was engaged enough, I would keep reading that article after the introductory story ended.

I’m not so young anymore but I’m still more likely to be engaged by a story in something I’m reading than something that just jumps in from the get-go. If I’m engaged, I’m more likely to buy. And as a business owner, that’s the bottom line, isn’t it?

Blogging is rampant. Many blogs are treated by the bloggers as a visible place to spill their opinions. But sprinkled in amongst the gazillion bloggers out there are a relative few really good bloggers.

We are very, very sloppy with language.

Consider the word “can’t”.  People use it often, casually, and, mostly, inaccurately.

As in: I just can’t seem to lose weight. Actually, barring a genuine medical disorder, the odds against somewhere in the 25,000 to 1 range, anybody can, in fact, lose weight. There’s no mystery to it whatsoever. Reduce calorie, fat, and empty carb intake, add exercise. The accurate word replacing can’t here would be choose. I just seem to choose not to lose weight. I choose to remain fat, ugly, unhealthy.