Knowledge

about things that you dont know

The world to some people is divided into two- things that you know, and things that you dont know.
however, an interesting and useful distinction comes to mind: there are things I'm aware that I dont know, while there are other things that I dont know, and i'm not even aware of.

why is this distinction important, and why so for small businesses?

Psychological reasearch shows that people remember more information when they have a theory in mind. what they remember are both information that confirms the theory, but also information that contradicts the theory.

but what don't you remember? information that has no relevance to the theories you hold.

What i'm suggesting to managers of SMB's - encourage fact based theory building. when you have a theory, that is based on facts, this will help you advance.

the following is a useful real-life example from the Electronics Components Company (Elimec) I work for:

fact 1: from a survey of a sample of our customers, we discovered that a larger than normal percent of people do not answer a question about our website
fact 2: google analytics can show a list of companies that entered the site

now, without a theory these two facts may seem unrelated, especially when they are surrounded by a huge number of facts that assault your sensesevery day.
but theorizing about fact 1, can lead to interesting idea regarding fact 2.

the theory about fact 1: some of our customers do not use the internet to search for us, at least not directly through our website.

the idea about fact 2: comparing the list of companies that entered our website with the list of our customers, may lead to identifying which companies do not reach our website.

ok, but what can be done with companies that do not enter the site? well, easy enough, now you have a list of companies you need to reach otherwise - more meetings, conferences, direct mail.

Bottom Line:
Measure->Theorize->Integrate->Act

Search Engine Optimization and the small business

The acronym 'SEO' still doesnt mean a lot here to small businesses in Israel.
But i believe this is going to change. Why? A new anti-spam law just came into effect on 1.12
declaring that from now on, every spam mailer could be sued without the need to prove damages.

Talkbacks were furious from both sides:
Pro-Spam: people from small business "talkbacked" with frustration about the loss of customers, about how the state is killing the small business and leaving spcae only for the giants.
they also promised that phonecalls will replace the mails making this law regretable.
Anti-Spam: aside from "you can shove your spam mails where the sun dont shine..", arguments were raised that small businesses are actually the casualties of the spam, because they either waste money on expensive anti-spam software, ot waste their employees' time.

But what about targeted adword campaigns (SEM) and Optimizing your site for search engines (SEO)? it seems like most SMB's do not yet fully comprehend what they can get for their money.
I believe that this new anti-spam law coupled with the global economic crisis can be a turning point driving SMB's to the web to advertise.

Can Google and the rest of thesearch engines benefit from this situation? Oh yes.
But will they? it remains to be seen.

Wishful Marketing Vs. Core Business Enlargment

Surprise



A few days back, I discovered an interesting phenomenon.

But before I tell you about it, I wish to ask you a question.



{did you know? a psychological bias called "hindsight bias" causes
people to find any "fact" they are first confronted with as obvious,
even if the "facts" are contradicting. A good way to prevent this,
is to pose the information as questions and then show that there
is more than just one obvious answer}

What would you expect would be the link between the total sales of salesmen and the number of emails they send?

What I discovered was a reverse link (or negative correlation). The more sales, the less emails.

I was surprised. does this mean that good salesmen make more phone calls and less emails? or maybe they just ask their secretaries to write emails for them?
Another explanation, that has more "stamina" is that maybe the good salesman manages to focus better than others

I don't have an answer. maybe one of you knows a research about it?

anyhow, it brings me to the next issue: what needs to be focused on in your marketing strategy- new areas in which you aren't strong (which i'll refer to as wishful marketing) or the areas in which you are strong - trying to focus on the core business?

There are arguments to both sides:

New areas are where the biggest potential to grow exists, percentage-wise. It is much more exciting, new customers involved etc. focusing attention on new areas may uncover huge fields where the company may advance to, and even change the whole focus of the company. It is rumored thatonly one company lasted in the stock market for more than 2 centuries - this company constantly changed.

On the other hand, in areas in which you are strong, there is a good chance that you do something right- your product / service is better/cheaper etc. So maybe your marketing just needs to emphasize the areas in which you are already doing your core business.

This is not a theoretical question: it should define how much and which trade shows you go to, who do you target with your advertising campaigns, who do you visit more often, how you build your website and many other questions.

Join the IT crowd

change

it has been quite a turn for me. maybe "turn" isn't exactly the right term to describe the process of changing from Second degree in Organizational Psychology to working as an IT Analyst in a small business. While studying for my M.Sc. I was asked to make some changes to the website of Elimec, a small Electronic components business . I was glad to have the chance to put into practice some of my human factors so I took on the mission with enthusiasm.


doing what you know best

So, I rolled up my sleeves and started to define all the changes i knew the site had to undergo in order to become a user friendly, Search engine hospitable, and customer oriented site.
The list wasn't short, believe me... the site was almost a textbook example of how to build a user hostile, search engine intimdating and customer neck breaking site:
a flash homepage left search engines with their mouth open ;
site appearance was quite raw
and content was last updated just after king arthur managed to pull excalibur out of stone.

I then met with the guy who had built the old site, and asked him how much would the changes cost. his answer took me by surprise. what he asked was a lot more than i had expected for these changes.


Rock Climbing

I'm not really a rock climber. I took a rock climbing course in thailand a few years back, and surprisingly, this course taught me some things that no other university ever did. here are some of the lessons learned:
a. if you dont have a rope to hold you when you begin climbing- you dont have a chance to learn.
b. the view is nice when you get up, but it gets nicer if you have someone to share it with.
c. sometimes, the best way to get up, is to give up your current position, go a bit down, and then climb again.


Scrap it all

So i decided to check for another company to build us a website. I did what now seems to me remarkably smart, but at the time was just the first thing that came to my mind: I googled website building and made inquiries with the top companies on google's organic (=non paid) results.
after a meeting with the leading company in google, I was already persuaded; building a new website, that had more options than i even hoped for had cost just a little more than making all the changes to the old website.
at the time, what i thought was "hey, these guys seem more professional, they have more and bigger customers, and they offer even more options than i had thought about".
what i did not realise was that my choice was a good one for a totally different reason: a company that manages to be at the top of google's result must know what it is doing.

bottom lines:

{Psycholgical point}

• The tendency to do what you know best sometimes interferes with seeing the big picture.
• Sometimes you need to take one step back, in order to go further on. you can choose to hold on to an uncomfortable position you achieved, at the risk of getting stuck or falling down in the end.

{IT points}

• If your website doesnt really work, sometimes building a new one is a better idea than making changes to your current website, even for a small business budget.
• If the main focus of your site is to get more traffic and exposure for your company, a good way to start is to see what website building company can do for themsleves what they are supposed to do for you - get to the first page in google .