Expert Advice - Building Success

Hi, how do you do. I'm Senseii Serge Sognonvi. I'm the owner and instructor of Urban Martial Arts.

I'm Carmen Sognonvi, and I'm the GM and co-owner of Urban Martial Arts

Urban Martial Arts is a Martial Arts School that’s based in Ditmus Park and we've been open for about 2-1/2 years. We offer karate classes, mixed martial arts classes, and cardio kick-boxing classes to kids, teens and adults. My husband Serge has been doing martial arts his whole life, and it’s always been a passion of his. Before I opened this school, I was working in corporate America for about 10 years. We got to a certain point in our lives where we really thought that we want to do something different. Once I started my own business, I can see the connection with people, I didn’t see any kind of connection with people working in corporate America.

We've been actually really lucky in that we became pretty successful really early on. I would credit a lot of our success to the fact that we had a lot of really great mentors. So we were fortunate to know other martial Arts business owners who were really successful at what they did. And so they were able to give us a lot of guidance and that really cut our learning curve by a great deal.

Hi I'm Dane Carlson of the business opportunities weblog. Every day I write about ideas and opportunities for small businesses. I really like small businesses, I'm really into small businesses. Some people watch birds…I watch small businesses. I like to see what makes them tick, what makes them unique. The theme of this episode is maximizing your ROI. ROI is return on investment. It’s the ratio between what you’ve spent on something and what you’ve earned on it. All small businesses have a limited amount of money and as such they need to make that money go as far as possible.

I'm here today to talk to Serge and Carmen Sognonvi, owners of Urban Martial Arts, about how they maximize their marketing dollar. "So, what kinds of marketing are you doing?" "We are doing a combination of online and offline so definitely we do a lot of flyers. Its simple, basic, that's always been very effective. In the last 6 months, we've been really investing more in online marketing. We recently just redid our website, we've set up our facebook and Twitter accounts." "What kind of marketing has had the most success for you?" "We definitely have received a lot of new students finding out about the school through flyers, but increasingly I'm finding our facebook ads are really effective because you can target people in a very exact way, and also by interest. So we're finding that's really effective."

"Have you tried other kinds of marketing that didn't work?" "I think that there are things that we've tried that haven’t worked really well. And I think a lot of it has to do with a learning curve for us, sort of figuring out what's the best way to adapt to us. I think for us it's really more about learning."

"So how are you determining whether or not something is working?" "We started with more of a shotgun approach and have been narrowing it down from there. I don't think I would completely abandon anything. I think that very often, just because something doesn't work, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's not good for your business. It could mean that it wasn't applied in the right way. So I think there is still room for growth." "And finally would you say that we need to focus our marketing energies on the things that are making the greatest return?" "Yes, absolutely I think that when you are a small business especially, every dollar needs to count."

"All small businesses have a limited amount of time and money. They need to maximize the ways they use those by choosing the marketing method that has the greatest return, the greatest ROI." "One thing that other business owners can learn from our experience is that is don't just find other mentors that also happen to be in your same industry, you also want to learn from people who are at the top of their game. Whatever advice they give you, you have to try it out, see how it works for your business. If it's not working that well, don't be afraid to tweak it because every business is different, every market is different, so you really have to adapt common practices in your industry to your specific business. The cookie cutter approach doesn’t always work.

I'm Sandra de Ovando and the name of my company is Ovando. Growing up in Mexico City, I used to garden with my mother. I grew up with nature around me and I developed a big passion for flowers. I love flowers.

My name is Scott Belsky and I'm the founder of Behance. We're focused on helping you organize the creative role that entrepreneurs and small businesses that have an idea and want to make them happen. So welcome to Ovando. This is a great florist in downtown west village Manhattan area and they have a wonderful brand and a consistent aesthetic. When you get a piece from Ovando, you know it's from them." "Consistency of performance. That is really the true customer magnet."

"Sandra, I want to talk a little bit about consistency. I'm curious because you obviously have a number of brochures as a business, blog, website, all sorts of ways of communicating and showcasing who you are as a business and what you do. What grounds that? What informs all those decisions and keeps it all connected?" "I think it's the store here where we are on Bleeker Street. It's all really where it starts. We use the store really as a marketing piece. It's first hand and people really get to see it and touch it and experience it. We make sure that everything is beautifully displayed, only the best flowers, and we make sure that everything done in terms of marketing and how we present ourselves to the customers is connected, coherent and consistent. " "So I would imagine that word of mouth is an extremely powerful marketing force for your business." "Yes." "What other ways have you chosen to get the word out and where are you planning to go in terms of other channels for marketing." "In addition to the website, there is now so many avenues online with social media and the blogsphere. One of the things that's very important for me is that each time we send an email, it's not always about getting business, it's not always about selling something. Sometimes it's about teaching them something, or sharing good news." "And I think that’s a great point, that you don't need to use every channel that's available to you to reach your customers, that you can choose what represents your brand best." "Our motto is simple, not simplistic. So every time we're making a decision for the business for marketing, it's very simple, it's very strong, it's very bold. We're lucky because a lot of people see our arrangements and say 'Oh, that's Ovando' ..that's hard to do." "Right, so then similarly, they should see communication or any sort of marketing program that you are doing and say 'That's Ovando.'"

"How about freshness and keeping it fresh?" "One of the new initiatives that we now have is the flower classes. A lot of people are intrigued by 'how is it that we do the arrangments'. I do believe it is very important that we share how we're doing and what we're doing with our customers. It's really a great way of staying connected."

"Sandra, so we talked a lot about how you approach marketing. And I want to touch upon the keys that you've kept in mind as your business has become very successful. One, certainly being, selecting which channels you actually use. I think it's a great approach to market across channels. The 2nd point was consistency. How do you make sure your message is consistent across. If I am a customer, and I come across a newsletter or a blog or something else, the message should always feel the same. And then the 3rd point which we talked a little bit about was the freshness. It sounds like there is news in your business, and these pieces of news you want to push through the channels just to keep it fresh and to keep people engaged. " "Absolutely."

"I was struck by Sandra's point today about the difference between simple and simplistic. I think that is the same approach that she's trying to take to the various marketing channels. She's thinking about how to use the website, how to use the blog, what other forms of social media she might use in the future to make sure that people get a better sense of that approach."

"For me really, the only secret is staying true to yourself and working hard."

Hi, I'm Eric Modell owner of Seal & Co. in summit NJ. All I ever wanted to do my whole life was go into the family business. And then when they made the decision to close the business and rent out the property, that was my golden opportunity to kind of take the ball and run with it. We have an all inclusivce children's boutique – we sell clothing, furniture, bedding, lighting, artwork, tons of decorative accessories, gifts, toys and books. Everything for children."

Hi I'm Dane Carlson of the business opportunities weblog. Every day I write about small business ideas. Today I'm here with Eric Modell, owner of Seal & Co., a children’s boutique in Summit NJ. Seal & Co. has really refined their strategy to include their customers. Today's them e is evaluating your performance. That means figuring out what's working and what's not working. These days, it's easier than ever for small businesses to track all kinds of things. Unfortunately, sometimes it's difficult to tell what they need to track."

"You need to have a strong sales tool behind you. It's a little bit labor intensive but everything is coded with its own SKU, everything is put into the computer, you can track the sale of every single different items. And I think many stores, certainly mom and pop stores that are kind of like me, don't really do that."

"Well, hey, I thank you for letting me stop inside your store." "Thank you for coming." "I've been inside a number of children's stores and this is not one that my wife would have to drag me to."

"Social interaction? Seems to be just like a whole other part of your marketing. That's just like a whole other method of building word of mouth marketing?" "That's exactly right. We're selling an experience here. There's a lot of different places where you can buy similar products. I mean, we're very proud of our assortment. We feel it's very unique. There are a lot of items that you can get elsewhere, but the reason why people come in here is the outstanding customer service."

"Tell me again what kinds of marketing you do?" "We do direct mail and email marketing. The best tool that we have for marketing is our point of sale computer system. Every time somebody makes a purchase, we capture their customer information and we market primarily based upon that. We have about 10,000 people in our database so our marketing is primarily directed at them. We know they've come to our store before, we know they love to shop with us, and our goal is to bring them back. We call that our preferred customer program. Once you've purchased something and you are in our computer ,we have a history of that forever. "Somebody comes into the store and buys something, what else do you put into the system?" "We track what they buy and how the merchandise is selling. WE track all the different vendor names, classifications, sizes, colors, how many things we sold, how quickly they sold. In retail, the best way to feel good about your business and your success is how many dollars are you bringing in?" "When you evaluate your marketing, are there specific groups or types of marketing that are better than others?" "Most definitely. Direct mail is clearly the most expensive vs. email, which is virtually free. But when it comes down to it, in 4 years of business, we have over 10,000 names so if I can get the people that were here in 2007, I'm much better off marketing to them than I am marketing to someone I never even met before just because I bought a list. We bought lists before, and they don't seem to be as effective as marketing to your customer base. You know you could buy lists until the cows come home but it's really people who have already told us they're interested in us that come in, love the store, and have bought something from us. Now we can say 'please come back' whether it's mailing them something directly or just shooting them an email or posting on facebook – it's giving them a reason to come back once we have their contact information."

"Are you a risk taker?" "I think anyone who is in business today is a risk taker. Every time a buy a new product, I'm taking a risk. If I go out on a limb and buy something for my store that's not really my taste and hope for the best that it's going to sell." "So you are evaluating the stores performance on things other than just sales?" "Most definitely. You can evaluate performance just by your eyesight. When you walk by a table…this rack is empty. What was here? It must have been great. And then when you put something else on it that's not so great on the rack and it sells then you know that's a good rack, that's a prime spot. You've evaluated it."

"Success means to me being happy with what I do, enjoying waking up in the morning and coming to work, satisfying a customer. The best thing about retail is that people leave smiling, more important than how much money is going into the register that people come in, find things they like and leave happy. There's no greater reward than that."

My name is Yehuda Klein. I am the owner of Oh! Nuts. We are right now on 13th Avenue and 50th Street, at the heart of the biggest Jewish community in New York. I started with a very, very small retail outlet. I actually started with a milk crate. I guess it's in the family. My father was always in business, my mother was always in business, you know... We have it in the blood.

Customer service is the most important part of our business. My name is Ari Tahover and I do the internet marketing for Oh! Nuts. When customers come to Ohnuts.com, we try to create an experience of trust. We have created a program for reviews that makes the customer feel like we're really interested in knowing what he's saying and that we really work with it. We get the feedback faster from the web than we get from the stores. In the store, sometimes it's very hectic and there's no one there to answer emails, give the right service. Now I make sure every online order goes out right from the warehouse.

I'm Anita Campbell and I run an online business called Small Business Trends. I've been in business all of my adult life. You really can’t be in business unless you understand technology and really know how to use it. The theme today is about strengthening existing relationships with your customers. It's about developing customer loyalty so those customers come back to you again and again. When they think about who they want to go to that carries the product they want to buy, they think of your business first before they think of your competitor.

Hi, Mr Klein. Thank you very much for having us in your store today. Thank you so much. So one of your most intriguing things to me is the name of your business – Oh! Nuts – which makes you smile. I always get laughs. I’m happy about it. So that brings people in and I assume that makes people remember you well, but what would you really say is the most important thing about your business? Nobody has the amount and variety that we have. We try constantly to be there, to make unique products that we only have on the website that are made special for us. So how do people hear about these unique items? It is word of mouth, are they searching online, is it a combination? It's a combination. A lot of the people in the stores, they don't know what they can get. They go out of town, they can only get it online. Some of it is word of mouth. Some of it is advertising. All different kinds of angles of media.

So tell us about how you use Facebook for example. I noticed you have special promotions on Facebook. We involve the customers, we ask them questions which product they like, we bring them into the process and people feel a unique connection to the product. It's a real context, a real closeness to the company that the people have. They love it. And I assume you are on sites where people can write reviews about your products, so would you say that developing customer rapport and loyalty online is important to your business? Yes. We used to rely on a person coming in and saying it looks good and they'd leave the store and you don't know what's happening. But now you get real data on what's really happening. And how fast do you get that data in? Instantly, instantly.

So do you monitor customer reviews online? Yes, that is something we've added. After 20 days when an order has gone out, an email goes out telling them they should review the product and that's very, very helpful. So you are getting all this feedback from emails you send out, and social sites, and orders on the web and in the end, it's all to serve customers. Is that right? Yes that's right, everything is to serve customers. People go online a lot more, don't they, to give reviews on social sites? Yes, we get so many reviews. There so much information out there you just have to get it to the right channels to get it to work. You have a CRM or customer relationship management database project underway, is that something you consider important to your business? Yes, now it's one of the most important tools I can have. It's real data and real inventory and that's a very great tool and I don't think I can go any further without having it. I think the average consumer, the average single buyer, doesn't give much thought to technology for this kind of business and that's the way it should be in your business. If you have all of this working in the background, working like a well oiled machine, it lets the customer focus on what's important to them. Then you are doing your job as a retailer really well. There's no way I could do what I do now without the technology. The real challenge is how to bring all the real data that's out there in real time and do the right thing with it. The first time I opened and someone said you are going to sell nuts and candy and make a real living? You'll never make it. But he has been proved wrong.

Hi, I'm Tom Roman. And I own Quality 1st Basement Systems. We're a basement waterproofing and foundation repair company. The waterproofing business is riddled with not such great contractors and we really try to take care of the customer and do a good job.

I'm Anita Campbell and I run an online business called Small Business Trends. We're here at this business because even in a down economy, when so many businesses are struggling, when so many consumers are struggling, this is a business that is still acquiring customers. When you really think it through, it's just great customer service, being there when you are needed. I've done a number of surveys and the vast majority of small businesses get their business through referrals and word of mouth. You do a good job for someone and they spread the word.

Well thanks for inviting us on site here. Where are we? Tell us what we're doing here. We're on a job site out in Staten Island NY and we're working downstairs in the basement installing waterproofing. What kind of follow up do you do after a job like this? On this job, the foreman will meet with the homeowner at the end of the job and he'll go over the whole job with them, explain the system, how it works. And then from there we’ll send out a customer survey, find out what it really looks like after we finish the work, and we usually do a follow up call too after we've finished the work. We want to make sure everything is working right that first week. Having a satisfied customer like that will lead to good word of mouth, right? Absolutely.

And how important is word of mouth to your business? It's huge. We are members of Angie’s list. We pride ourselves on getting good postings there. We were very fortunate to win the service contractor award for Angie's list two years in a row and I think we're on track to win it a 3rd time. So we’re very proud of it. We also do blogging. And other people blog about us. So when people write something online, is there someone monitoring what's being said online about your company? Yeah, we have our IT guys who stay on top of it. If we recognize the person we try to contact them, the homeowner, and find out if they do have an issue, and what it is and most of the time we can help them correct it.

Now how important is it, the quality of the products you use when you're waterproofing a basement, let's say. The quality of our products is head and shoulder above what any other waterproofing companies are putting in. You are really representing high quality and technologically advanced products? Yes, I think that's why we get most of our customers. When they see what we have to offer, it's clear that we're the best choice.

Tell us about generating leads online and how you take those leads and deal with them in the real world. We have a lot of inquiries and we have one person in the office who's responsible for "turnover" we call it, turning it over from inquiry to appointment. To our credit, we have a 90% turnover rate. You are getting 90% of the inquiries you get over the net turned into an appointment? Yes. What is your sell through rate? I’d say about 40-50% of the appointments we go on order, which in our business is quite high. So the customers are the key to the success? If we make a customer happy, they'll be our customer for life. And that's what we want. We don't want to be a one trick pony or anything. We come in and we stay with them.

So it sounds like a key to your success has been high quality, technologically advanced products, is that right? Yes, that's correct. It's definitely been easier doing business when you have good stuff to sell them. Another key to success is, during the sales call, to take the time to listen to customers questions fully and giving them a lot of information. How important is that to you? That's one of the largest reasons why we're so successful. We listen to what they really need and build them a system around what they need to get done. Another key to success and acquiring new customers is getting positive word of mouth. We definitely strive to get as much positive word of mouth through either Angie's list or blogging or customer feedback. A happy customer is going to refer us to other people. I like this business because it's the type of business that America runs on, it's the kind of small business that keeps the country chugging along. We've grown in a bad economy and we've continued to grow. And we have high hopes for the future.

My name is Abe Mostafa and we're here at Jimbo's Hamburger Place on 1st avenue between 54th and 55th street. The history of this place? It's been around since the 50's. The original owner was Jimbo from Arkansas. And after that my father's boss Gus, he owned the place. My father was here as a dishwasher and Gus ran into a few problems where he didn't want the business and my father – God bless my father – he figured out a way to save enough money to take it over and he's owned it for just about 30 years now. It's a pretty simple philosophy that we have – through customer service, treating the customers right, like they're at home, and cooking good food. It's one of the things that we hope sets us apart.

I'm Scott Belsky, founder of Behance, a company focused on organizing the creative world, using lots of content to help small businesses and other creative entities, people on teams with ideas, make them actually happen. So here we are at Jimbo's and one of the things I'm excited about is that this is a business that's gone through transition. You have an older generation that's passed the business on to a newer generation who's more aware of how we're living our life in the digital world and what the potential opportunities are. My father's very old school and we've never spent a dollar on any kind of advertising or anything. It's always been that you ask someone in the neighborhood where to eat, they say go to Jimbo's. Now I'm trying to get more into things like Facebook and Twitter because now we see the value in having the customer's feedback in these websites.

The theme for today is how the small business is navigating the digital world. I think every small business has a community that they want to engage. You need to think about what your presence is in the digital world you live in. Often times a business is run the same way, year after year, and it's hard to do anything differently. In fact, there's risk in anything associated with making any change. It's an opportunity for any business willing to start thinking about these things.

Thanks for having me in today. Thanks for coming. Can you tell me a little bit about the story... Like how long have you been working here? When did you really start? Really start working here? As soon as I could count money. Then I would work the register. I'd run deliveries. Learn how to work the grill. And it just kind of developed little by little until I wanted to takeover and now there’s an opportunity for me to do that and here I am. What kinds of things have you guys done before for marketing in general? Internet marketing? It's been a blessing. We haven't had to do much. We relied on that word of mouth where somebody knew the neighborhood, and they wanted a place to eat, and they'd always recommend Jimbo's for a burger. Now it's a little bit more difficult. I mean, the word of mouth is still there but I think people are getting their information differently.

You're in a great position where you don't need to be perceived as a better product because people already love the product. The need is to make sure that more people know about what your product is. For example, if I just posted on Facebook or Twitter that I just had this fantastic hamburger and I told people exactly where it was, even gave the exact location, that would probably be a great thing for this business. Absolutely. That would be fantastic. We want that sort of hype, that buzz, about the business. If they're going to tell all their friends, then that's great. The second part is thinking about now where are the people that we want to reach? I know one of the things you were thinking about is having a website. I would almost argue that it would be more valuable for you to have some sort of presence on Facebook where people could tell you and become friends. Yes, that's one things are customers have an attachment to the place, so if we had a following on Facebook, they'd have an attachment to it, they could post whatever they want like pictures, or stories. So increased traffic, increased familiarity with the brand, and make sure the success you have is already amplified. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. That's exactly what we're trying to do.

So tell me, have you thought about where your customers are in the digital world right now, where they are hanging out, what kind of schools and applications they use? Most of our customers have been coming here for 20-30 years so I wouldn't expect most of them to be Facebook or Twitter users but at the same time I feel like there's a whole market that we're not getting into, we're not tapped into that world. And that's one of the mistakes that businesses sometimes make is that they focus on the customers that have been with them the longest but they don't focus on the next generation of customers that are going to use them in the next several years. So these are all the kind of tools you can use to connect the real world with the digital world without interfering with the customers who have been coming in for 30 years and don't care for that. Right, right.

The first key to navigating the digital world is to think about the needs of your business. It's an analysis of sorts. Figuring out, gee what do I want to do? Do I want to strengthen relationships with existing customers? Do you want to make sure you're getting more feedback so you can really amplify the success that you are already having? The second key is to understand where your customers are, find out what sites they frequent, you don’t necessarily expect them all to come to your website. You know, build it and they will come, does not apply to the digital world. The 3rd key is making sure that you are communicating in a way that the message is appropriate to where they are at. This allows you to leverage what other people are saying about your brand, not what you are saying about your brand. Thinking about the mentality of each of the people at each of the places to spread the word... You are right.

What's really exciting to me about a small business navigating the digital world is they can take what already works and make it much better. And the returns on that are just immeasurable. That's the opportunity that a small business like this faces in digital media. I would love nothing more than to search Jimbo's on Twitter let's say and see" Oh, I had the best burger at Jimbo's" and stuff like that. That's success to us. Come on down and grab a burger.