Selling to small businesses- figuring out how to break through the noise.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2806134

by bapter • 15 years ago

6 8 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

So many of us have developed technologies targeting small businesses. We need to figure out how to break through the noise. Here are a couple resources I have found on the subject: http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/selling-ux-to-small-business/

http://www.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/columnist/strauss/2008-03-10-selling-to-small-business_N.htm

http://sellingsb.blogspot.com/

My partners and I are trying to find the best methods of selling our $10/month service (http://www.getonsocial.com) to small business owners. We would definitely like to hear from anyone with insight on this matter.

hluska• 15 years ago

In my experience, small business owners are a hard nut to crack - marketing to them feels a whole lot like mass marketing. And mass marketing feels an awful lot like playing roulette.

Something you might want to think about is turning your existing customers into your sales people via an extremely generous affiliate program (though don't call it an affiliate program - the name makes me cringe).

glimcat• 15 years ago

Two problems, IMO.

One, there are a bloody lot of social media services out there now. Why you? You've got a pretty page, but you don't answer that.

Two, "simply reply to our daily emails" doesn't sound very simple. You should give a more specific understanding of what this entails.

There is a lot of potential for value-add by this sort of service so it's something small business could be interested in, but I think you need to improve the pitch.

That big graphic with the Twitter and Facebook icons isn't really contributing anything proportional to the space it's consuming. Can you put something there that addresses these problems? Perhaps an illustration of the email queries.

bapter2• 15 years ago

I completely agree we need to improve the pitch and our goal is to be able to up-sell on more services. We are working on a video right now that will explain the value of having a presence on social media and how our service will prompt them to post on their pages more. That will replace graphic on our homepage. Thanks for your feedback. What are you working on?

revorad• 15 years ago

Small businesses is too vague a classification. You need to define your target market a bit more specifically.

trussi• 15 years ago

It's a really tough to sell a one-size-fits-all one-trick pony.

I would highly recommend segmenting your market and really narrowing it down. Pick one niche of SMB and custom-tailor your product to them. The more you can narrow this down, the better (by geography, # of employees, revenue, industry, years in business, age of owners, etc).

The reason for narrowing down the market is so that you can really understand your customer. You need to know their business inside and out. It's those minor nuances between similar market segments where the juicy opportunities are.

For instance, realtors in a primarily tourist areas are quite different from realtors in primarily middle class, white suburban areas. The home buyers are very different, which require different approaches on the realtors' part.

Once you pick your niche (say < 40 room mom-and-pop hotels in summer vacation destinations in the southwest), then figure out what other functionality you can add into your existing functionality that creates some synergy.

For instance, if they use (i.e. pay money for) an email manager (like constant contact), then figure out how to tie your social media manager into an email manager.

This is a much easier sell: 'You already pay $10/mo for Constant Contact. It doesn't allow Social Media management. Our product costs the same, has all the functionality you use in Constant Contact. Plus it manages your social media for you'.

The hook is an existing product they pay money for. Then replace that product with your product by adding some new sizzle.

bapter2• 15 years ago

This is great feedback, thank you.

Mz• 15 years ago

http://www.getonsocial.com/about

Some suggestions for your About page:

Rename your example. "Bill the Business Owner" was misread by me. I read "Bill" as a verb (send a bill) rather than a name. Also, put your "solution" anecdote last, not first. And rewrite all three examples. Your "solution" anecdote should be shorter than the other two, not longer. It should be shorter to help convey that this will be a time saver and convenience. The other two should make the reader feel frustrated at having to slog through the effort to read them. Your "solution" anecdote should then be short and sweet and give a sense of relief - like "that's it? I can do that! That would be easy and well worth a measly $10/month to avoid all that frustration." Also, I would suggest you put up a FAQ or something to try to educate potential customers about why social should matter to their small business. You seem to assume your customers already know that. Dumb assumption.

And I am a tad leery of the "cheap solutions for small business!" space. If that line sums up your business model, I suggest you think again. Generally speaking, as a small business, you really can't afford to compete on price. You need to compete on value, on the idea that it is well worth a few extra bucks. Underselling the competition is a good way for a small business to starve.

However, the real reason I worry about this approach is the mentality it implies to me. It sounds kind of like a charity mentality. And that's a really good way to starve. Assuming that people don't really have the money to spare and you are some good guy for trying to help them is really missing the mark (and also a good way to starve -- have I mentioned fail, go bankrupt, and all that?).

I read a Money magazine article some years back about a woman who started two part time seasonal businesses in order to quit her job and be home with her child. One of them was like taxes/accounting services for small businesses. The businesses were bleeding the family dry and they were only surviving at all due to her husband's high income. After working all day, she was too tired to cook so they were spending $20k/year on restaurant meals. Since her actual goal was to be home with her child, the family would have been better off all around if she had given up the silliness of trying to have these two businesses and just did the homemaker thing and, by god, cooked. The advisers didn't have the balls to say "Quit this shit and be a homemaker!" Instead, they advised her on how to tweak the business so they weren't bleeding so badly. This article was probably published 15 to 20 years ago. If you can find it, I would highly recommend you read it. Her desire to serve small businesses was misguided (out of "idealism") and helping her fail. Her business model was not really viable at all, no matter how much tweaking happened.

Don't get me wrong, there are more small businesses than large and they are the engine that drives job growth in the U.S., so there is definitely money to be made marketing services to small businesses. But there is something about your remarks and attitude which just screams "we think small businesses are charity cases and we are trying to provide a service out of charitable intentions rather than a real business model". If that is not your actual mindset, you have a lot of work to do to communicate better. If it is your actual mindset, you need to do some soul searching and determine if this is realistic at all and, if it is, figure out what needs to be done seriously differently to give it any hope of success.

Peace and good luck.

damoncali• 15 years ago

Double your price. $10 doesn't leave a lot of room for marketing cost.

Selling to small businesses- figuring out how to break through the noise.

Related Stories