Marketing Plan for SMB on shoe string budget (part 1)

Marketing has always scared me. I envisioned graphic artists and copy editors PR companies and money, money, money!!!
How can a small company like ours afford to compete with the big companies? What is the best approach? Who should we market to? How should we market our products and services? What is the most effective way to market? Can we afford to market? Can we afford NOT to market? So again, we are going to the drawing board.
Let us start at the beginning: Who are we targeting? Businesses that need to print labels. (New industries, new markets) Chemical manufacturers (established base.) Complementary companies - Companies that already service the industries we are targeting.
Our goal is to team with them, offering customers a more complete solution. Vendors - Hardware or software companies that will let us sell their products as part of our package. It surprised us when we realized that we needed to market our abilities to companies that were not potential customers in the traditional sense of the word. What is our message?
Our basic message is the same to all targets: We want to communicate to them our experience in label printing. Our capabilities: software design, need assessment, designing solutions that work, implementing solutions, working with in a budget, Project management, technical support and maybe the most important of all: our work ethics: Superb customer service and support. Education. And finally our basic belief that one size does NOT FIT ALL.

Planning for a better future in the middle of economic crisis

Every day seem to bring another story of failure. Another big company is going under. Thousands of employees are laid off. Trying to plan for a better future in this environment is very hard. We were going to do our plan in 2 days, but it was difficult to put our hearts and minds into it. Eventually we did come with a plan this week. It builds on our assessment. Another criteria that we added to it - it has to be cost effective and cheap. Return on Investment (ROI) has to be quick. So here is a short summary of our plan.

Mission Statement: Find new ways to approach new customers, new markets and still continue to provide excellent service and products to our base - chemical companies. Do all of it in a short time frame (2 months) with minimum expenses utilizing all of our assets.

Diversification:
a. Transfer - Apply our knowledge and experience to other industries. Expanding our products and services accordingly.
b. Identify and Target new markets - Shift our concentration. We have worked in the past with companies that use warehouses and need to keep track of inventory. They have a need to print labels with barcodes from their existing databases and warehouse/inventory software programs. They also need the hardware to go along with it, such as barcode printers and scanners. This is a perfect fit.
For that matter anyone needing labels with product information will be a good fit. Expand our offering through cooperation with complementing companies:
a. Approach manufacturers of hardware and software that serve warehouses and track inventory. Thus, expanding what we have to offer.
b. Team with companies that already service the industries we are identifying. We can help each other by referring customers to each other, working together to provide customers with a complete solution.
c. Modify DrumWizard UPM to easily integrate with other software to enable sophisticated label printing requirements. This can come in two basic flavors: as an add-on or as an approved external program that can be called through a command line.
d. Marketing - In the past, companies approached us. Now, we have to let companies know who we were and what we could do for them. Time line: 2 months Side note: Marketing will require a whole other plan.

Going to India

I am going to India tomorrow morning. I always wanted to go there. I am fascinated by its history and people. I cannot wait to go. Scheduled some meeting with software development companies. I am not sure that we want to do it, but I do want to know what options we have. I was told to be sure to take toilet paper with me, as they do not use that over there.... First culture shock before I even left.

Going Green - It makes sense and we are expanding

We got excited about our success in recycling and reducing paper waste. We now started looking at more things we could do. The next thing on our agenda was cardboard boxes. We receive packages all the time. We like to keep original packaging of our expensive equipment. We had a room that was full of boxes. The regular brown boxes were usually tossed.
We took this in small steps. We started with our boxes for the expensive equipment. We decided to keep boxes of equipment that was still under warranty. That reduced the amount of boxes by about 80%. The rest of the boxes were assessed to determine if they could be reused. We ship packages ourselves. Usually we need small boxes as most of the equipment we ship is relatively small - barcode scanners, small thermal printers, rolls of labels, etc. We do not have a need for the big boxes. The ones that could not be reused were marked for recycling. We gained a room. Now as we get boxes they are either kept, reused or recycled. A small community center in our area is collecting the boxes. They sell them and using the money to pay for special programs for the kids they serve. Again, we saved money (we do not buy boxes any more and benefited our community.

SMB Planning in Bad Economy - Counting our blessings (assets)

Well it has been a week since we decided to assess our current situation. Putting on paper the assessment was a very interesting process. We had to take a step back and look at everything with a fresh set of eyes. We played a little role playing game: The rules - explain to someone who does not know anything about our company:
1. Who we are
2. What we do
3. What we have to offer I am sharing with you a summary of this assessment.

Our Base - About 80% of our business is devoted to serving Chemical manufacturing Plants. The software our principal owner helped developed almost 15 years ago for the production of chemical hazardous labels was our main line. Over the years we have constantly improved on it and expanded it based on our customers' request and needs.
Assets -

1. Software: We have two main software packages:

• DrumWizard Suite - a full featured software that includes a product manager, print manager and very sophisticated label design we integrated in (Nice Label Pro).

• DrumWizard UPM (Universal Print Manager), it is very similar in nature. The difference is that The UPM connects directly to a company's own data source. Of course we have it as a stand alone or enterprise level.
• Variety of small barcodes and label applications we created for small businesses.
  

2. Experience: Vast experience in labeling needs, planning, assessments, designing solutions, integration and implementation..

• Knowledge of industry, business processes, software, databases, hardware,
• Reputation: we have great reputation among our current customers and vendors we work with. (I think that this was one of the most important assets we have. We just never thought of it in terms of asset.)
  

3. Loyal customer base: our customers include companies such as General Electric, AirProducts, Shell Canada and others like them. (This is not an endorsement from any corporations, but we do have letters of recommendations from them and others.)

4. Good relationship with vendors: Example is NiceLabel. We have worked with them almost since they started marketing in the U.S. . We have integrated their software into ours to the satisfaction of many customers.

5. Excellent employees - our employees are loyal and are totally buying into our plan.

6. Financial resources: Good relationship with banker (although we do not trust anything to do with the bank.) Access to several small credit lines. Now it is "off to see the wizard" - taking the assessment and turning it into a workable plan.

Why it is good to be a Small Business in Bad Economy

Seeing the big guys go to beg in Washington fills me with both anger and frustration. Our bottom line probably just looks like one little line item in their balance sheet. Yet, here we are - we the small business owners, are not begging for the government to save us. While the big business and investment bankers are figuring out how to get money from the government, we are sitting here thinking how we can improve business to serve our customers better.
The big advantage to being a small business is our ability to work quickly and adapt very fast to new situations. We do not have to devote hours to office politics and getting through committees and other cut throat practices. We are noticing a slow down. Companies are taking longer than usual to make purchasing decisions. The story is the same: budgets were cut or frozen mid-year.
The six million dollar question is: what can we do about it? Our plan is simple: assess our current situation, come up with a plan and execute.
Time Line: Assessment - 1 week Plan: 2 days Preparation to implement: 2 months Execution:On-going.

IKE - the storm from hell

IKE - the storm from hell Two weeks, two &!#$% weeks without electricity. Never in my life did I think that living in the 4th largest city in the USA will feel like living in a third world country. The night of the storm was scary. At 10:00pm we lost power. Transformers were blowing all around us in crazy green and blue colors. It was like an eerie fireworks display. The next morning, we came out to assess the damage. My car had a new hood ornament in the shape of the tree that used to be on the side of the house. The street was blocked by trees and brunches. The neighbors came out. We all tried to figure out we needed to be done next. It was Saturday, so we assumed that we will probably be without electricity for a day or two. We were prepared for that. Everyone put their hands together and we started to clear our street. Three hours later, our entire neighborhood was clean. Piles of trees were nearly packed in front of our houses; the streets were free of any major derbies, other than the electrical polls that landed in the middle of the street. We set up a barbecue block party that evening. We were hopeful. The weather was nice and cool. That was what we call in “techie” the demo version, Microsoft style. By Tuesday, we still had not electricity, no grocery stores, no gas stations and no one at work. The ice trucks did not come on time – as was promised by FEMA, but in true Texan spirit, our Mayor and County Judge contacted a local grocery store chain, and they brought in the ice. They brought us MRI’s that needed to be microwaved?!?! We had one old fashion phone; you know that one that does not need electricity to work. Our cell phones did not work either not even for texting. We were disconnected from the world. The local TV stations, along with several local radio stations broadcasted as if they were radio stations. The anchors at the TV station kept reminding their reporters that no one can see anything, and they have to describe everything. The National news apparently stopped reporting about our situation after about four days. On the fourth day, they started bringing generators to town. And here we were, with one computer on, no internet, no email, no fax, just one phone line, and no cable. I had to explain to our customers that we have to do computer work to candle light. On the other hand, we truly enjoyed the spirit of the community around us. Everyone was helping, and sharing. Even at the darkest moments that is always something good that helps bring the light on.