In the Zone

Whether you’re running a sales meeting, a product demo, or a training class, it can be hard to translate in-person presentation skills to an online event. But with travel budgets shrinking and the constant need for increased productivity, online meetings are a must for connecting with far-flung colleagues, customers, and partners in a cost-effective and efficient way.

We asked Christine Olivas, Marketing Communications Manager at iLinc, to share some tips on how to run a great web-based meeting and what you need to know to get started.

BuyerZone: People may be familiar with the basics of preparing for a face to face meeting – making sure the room is prepared, organizing slides or notes, etc. What’s the online equivalent? How should someone prepare to run a great web conference?

Christine Olivas: There are three main areas to focus on – and two of them are similar to what you’d do for an in-person event, translated to the virtual world.

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As much as “holiday creep” is an annoyance, the answer is yes: if you want to book a hotel, function room, bar, restaurant, or other popular location for your winter holiday party, it’s time to start making some phone calls.

Event planners report that many businesses are waiting a little longer to book their holiday parties this year – but you can bet that by late October or early November, bookings will start to pick up. Get ahead of the curve and you’ll find that you have more leverage for getting a good deal.

Everything’s negotiable…

And we mean everything. As companies large and small attempt to deal with the still-faltering economy, restaurants and bars know that holiday party budgets aren’t likely to have a lot of give in them, so you’ll find that many will be willing to work with you to find something that fits your budget.

Here are a few areas to negotiate:

• Food choices. Get more and/or better snacks for the same price.
  

  A good spread is key -- but don't overpay!

• Room fees. Most restaurants and bars will waive room fees if you so much as ask – they make their money on the catering.
• Alcohol prices. The location may offer a discount if you let them pick a couple of brands of wine or beer to serve; if you’re going for an open bar you may be able to get soft drinks included for free.
• Per-server costs. If the location is staffing your party with waiters to pass food or bartenders, consider those costs negotiable.
• Times. The venue may offer a private room until 10 pm, wanting to open it to the public after that. If you have a late-night crowd, ask if you can extend private hours.

… if you’re willing to walk away

Of course, negotiating is easier if you’re willing to look at other locations. If you simply must have a location, because it’s the hot spot in town or because that’s where your company party has been held for 15 years, you may find it harder to get the venue to give any ground.

It’s always worth shopping around. Call two or three places and get detailed proposals before committing to a single location – you can always use details from one proposal to help get a better deal out of another venue.

Plenty of experts will tell you that aggressive marketing spending makes sense in a recession – but there’s a chicken and egg situation you’ll have to address. If business is slow, you don’t have the money to aggressively launch new marketing campaigns; if you don’t launch new marketing campaigns, it’s hard to get business to pick up.

Putting that problem aside, now is a good time to get started. Consumer confidence is starting to pick up and there are signs that the Federal stimulus is helping the economy towards a slow recovery.

So if it’s time to start new marketing efforts but you don’t have extra budget to throw around, what do you do? Here are a few low- and even no-cost marketing tactics you can apply right now.

1. Amp up an existing marketing program

A good way to get started is to pick a marketing program you currently run or have run in the past and take a fresh look at it. Think creatively about what you could do if you spent 10% more on that program: not just more ads or direct mail pieces, but some new edge, offer, or gimmick.

An example the experts at MarketingSherpa caught recently was OfficeMax’s paper-bag insert into the Sunday papers. Sure, that cost them more than their typical Sunday newspaper flyer – but it stands out as a fun, creative piece.

Pick a mail piece, trade show, newspaper ad, online campaign – any single marketing activity – and come up with a creative way to spruce it up, make it stand out, or enhance its performance.

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I’ve had customers tell me they “found me on Google” – but it doesn’t sound like they were at my website. How do I find out what’s going on? Where else am I appearing?

There are plenty of directories out there that will include your listing without notifying you. Most often, they include basic listings for many businesses, then charge for “premium” listings that include more information or appear higher in the results.

However, the chances are good that you’ve been found through Google’s local search results. These are popping up for more and more search terms, but especially for queries that include a city, town, or state. Take a look:

The results labeled A, B, and C – as well as more listings on the next page – are based on a combination of information that Google finds on the larger web and details that have been entered into their Local Business Center.

The LBC lets you provide a pretty good set of details about your business: hours, payment options, photos, videos, additional details that you define, even coupons for visitors to print and bring with them. The best part about it? Including all of that information is free.

You may be wondering why you have to duplicate information that’s already on your regular web site. The answer is simply that these local listings almost always show up at the top or near the top of the search results, while your web site isn’t guaranteed to be there.

Keep in mind that Google isn’t the only search engine in town. Here (again) is how to claim your local listing in Microsoft’s new Bing search engine. And here’s a great writeup of how to claim your listing on Yahoo!. Don’t worry if you’re not a flower shop – the instructions work for any business. On the other hand, keep in mind that Yahoo’s pending integration with Bing may do away with those listings.

Another example of a directory you should make sure you’re listed in is BuyerZone’s own Local Directory. Our directory is an easy way to find the B2B suppliers your company needs — and if you’re not already listed, we’ve made it easy to add your business.  Even if you are already listed, editing your listing lets you add company details and product descriptions that can help you stand out from your competition.

Finally, before you start working on your local listings, take a look at these tips on enhancing your local listings. The title says “Google” but the advice applies to all 3 major search engines.

For most consumers, gift cards are a routine part of the retail landscape. They’ve steadily increased their coverage, from big chain retailers to smaller businesses in many industries. We recently talked to Dan Battista, Vice President of Sales at ProfitPoint, about how small businesses are using gift cards and the best ways to maximize an investment in a gift card program.

BuyerZone: What are the basic types of gift card programs?

Dan Battista: At its core, whether the retailer runs it themselves or a third party runs it, any gift card program has a few basic components. There are the custom cards themselves, then the ability to track value on those cards. In one way or another, the system lets merchants provide customers with stored value cards to use in future.

There are two different types of programs. Open loop programs can be used anywhere, like prepaid credit or debit cards. Closed loop programs can only be loaded and redeemed at the one retailer and tend to be more effective for merchants.

Even within closed loop programs, each one is different – some have more limited capabilities, only allowing basic loading and redeeming of dollar values. Other programs differentiate themselves with additional support and assistance they provide to the merchant: web-based reporting, the ability to load and redeem value without the card being present, or 800 numbers or web sites to conveniently check balances. Those types of features start to differentiate better programs from the pack.

Another example is the loyalty card. Better gift card programs also have the capability to run and manage a loyalty program. A loyalty program gives you the opportunity to reward good customers, encourage them to visit more often, and entice them to spend more when they visit you. In the best systems, it’s a two pronged attack: the gift card program attracts new customers who may not have visited before, while the loyalty program encourages customers to visit more often and spend more when they do.

BZ: What are the biggest benefits of gift cards for merchants?

DB: One of the biggest benefits in my mind is that gift card programs enable your best customers to refer friends and family very easily. When customers give a gift card for a holiday or birthday present, or if other businesses distribute gift cards to employees, they’re providing a stamp of approval for your business – and that referral brings in new customers.

Word of mouth via gift cards is a very cost effective way to attract new business – and it’s also word of mouth the easy way for customers. Whoever purchases the gift card doesn’t need to go into a lot of detail about the appeal of the business to make their recommendation.

Another major benefit is that gift cards easily deliver positive and significant ROI thanks to unredeemed cards. Of course you want people to redeem the cards – but somewhere between 10% and 20% of prepaid gift cards never get redeemed.  The percentage tends to be higher in smaller businesses with fewer locations, as opposed to chains or franchises. That 1 in 10 or 1 in 5 tends to pay for the costs of the program.  Also, when using gift cards, customers tend to spend 20% to 40% more than they would have otherwise.

BZ: When should small businesses consider a gift card program?

DB: There isn’t really a threshold before a business should consider a gift or loyalty card system. Gift card systems are affordable, robust, easy to use, and easy to implement – even for the smallest businesses. Most systems don’t require additional expensive equipment.

In fact, brand new businesses are some of the best candidates for gift card systems. Take a restaurant that’s just opened its doors: every customer is a new customer. You only get a couple of opportunities to earn their loyalty, so they should have a loyalty card system in place to reward those new customers and turn them into regular customers. They can also load gift cards with a small value and distribute them to new customers as they come in.

BZ: Gift cards have an obvious market in retail companies. What other industries use gift cards, and how?

DB: Gift cards don’t have to be pigeonholed for specific industries. It’s true, restaurants, retailers, and salons and spas are the most likely users. But we see our customer base vary widely, from those traditional customers to colleges and universities, hospitality and hotels, and even B2B industries.

An example: a customer of ours is in B2B sales: he sells paint to contractors. He goes to a trade show early in the season every year – this trade show sets the tone for the year, both for him and for his competitors. To stand out, he set up a gift card program and encouraged contractors to prepay for paint for the year – offering the prepaid paint at a discount. He had a great amount of success with the program and now uses it every year. It might be the last place you’d expect a gift card system, but it really helps his relationship with customers. In addition, all the prepayment has really helped his cash flow, helping him launch some new products that previously had too high a barrier to entry.

I’ve also seen event-driven programs for charity events. One customer distributed gift cards through direct mail to potential attendees of a charity auction. They didn’t say what the value on each card was, just a range: most cards were $5 or $10, but some carried $50 or $100, and one had a $500 balance. To find out how much their card was worth, recipients had to go to the auction. It’s easy to do, and brings more value to event: folks who come to the event are happy to spend money anyway, to help the cause, but the intrigue gets more of them to attend.

BZ: What’s the minimum investment to get started?

DB: It’s really very small, depending on how much functionality you want and what you want to accomplish. Getting started entails setting the program up, getting access for merchant to process transactions, and designing and printing cards. All that can be done for as little as a few hundred dollars in some cases. And even typical startup costs aren’t that much more: a typical one location merchant can expect to pay $300 to $500, depending on the components they select.

The best route to a great ROI is to put in place everything you need to be successful, even if it costs a little extra at the beginning.

BZ: What can gift card users do to get the most ROI on their purchase?

DB: This is really important to consider: the more aggressive they are with the program, the more successful they’ll be. The worst situation we see is when a merchant buys a set of custom cards, puts them in a drawer below the register, and waits for customers to ask about buying gift cards. It doesn’t work!

To get good returns the cards have to be displayed prominently. The gift card supplier should supply point of purchase displays to make the cards obvious and available – that’s just a must-do. Since you load value at the time of purchase, you don’t have to worry about theft of prominently displayed cards – with no value loaded, they’re just pieces of plastic.

Merchants can help customers get in the habit of using gift cards by implementing a gift card with purchase program. A customer spends $50? Give them a $5 or $10 card for their next purchase and require them to spend at least $50 to use the card.  Another good way to be aggressive is to offer the cards at discount: 10% off a gift card of $50 or more, for example.

BZ: How does a great gift card system differ from a mediocre system?

DB: There are a couple of ways. One is the support you receive from the provider. Look for a provider that sets you up with the right program, teaches you how to use it fully, provides guidance and suggestions for marketing the cards, and is available for support throughout the relationship. From a merchant’s point of view, there’s a big difference between that and a provider who sets you up and then is never heard from again or isn’t available to work with

In addition, the tools that are available with the program are important. Reporting is one – robust reporting enables you to track the overall success of your program. You want to make sure you receive point of purchase materials and signage. And finally the cards themselves should be high quality, custom cards.

BZ: What security concerns do gift cards create?

DB: The security risks are less than you might think. A gift card program really tracks stored values – it doesn’t actually carry the dollar value on the card. Good systems let you attach demographic information to the card, so if card is lost or stolen, the customer can call and request a new card. With the right system, closing out and replacing a lost card is very easy.

The system should also include risk or fraud detection as part of its reporting. These features will flag any unusual activity that occurs, whether by customers or staff members. That helps take the guesswork away from merchant and eliminates any issues that might arise.

ProfitPoint, Inc. is the leading provider of stored value solutions for the mass merchant marketplace. They specialize in the design and implementation of custom Gift and Loyalty Card Programs and support their programs with all forms of non-cash payment processing products including Credit Card Processing and Merchant Cash Advance.