Are entrepreneurs born or made? — Bryan

Entrepreneurs are always made.

People don’t come out of the womb knowing how to pitch, to sell, to design. One may make the case that some folks seem to want to be entrepreneurs more than others.  But that may be because they learn, sooner than others, what entrepreneurs do.  In a larger sense . . . no one “is” any profession or skill. That’s a convenient fiction. No one is a writer or is a salesman.  People write and sell.  You can master entrepreneurship by caring enough to acquire and master the skills you need to build businesses.  Get to work

How can you detach yourself from a venture? How to you evaluate a business that you’ve been emotionally attached to? — Keith

Actually, we have a great article about that. You can find it here.  But the short answer is that lots of entrepreneurs start businesses because they have “missions” they are passionate about.

Perhaps they want to bring clean water to villages. Perhaps they want to open the world of computers to senior citizens.  Maybe they want to teach people to dance.

Sometimes their vision of how to achieve that objective is so narrow and so flawed, they have a hard time of making a business of it.  When this happens they start a business and it fails to thrive.

The Market is a great educator.

The visionary entrepreneur has to realize that businesses are ephemeral.  They come and go. Your commitment to your mission can go on as long as you like.

Within that context, any business you create to support your mission is ephemeral.  You can reformulate an existing business in a new way, or close an existing business in order to start a new one based on a different financial model.  For those with very philanthropic objectives, you may even consider creating a social enterprise, cooperative or charity . . . .

Or perhaps you will find that the best way to achieve your mission is not starting an enterprise, but joining an existing one that is doing what you’d like to do.

I think you’ll find, given this perspective, it’s easy to let go of a business. It’s like letting go of business cards you don’t use anymore, or dropping that fax number you no longer need.  If it’s the work you really care about . . . you probably don’t have to give that up just cause a given business proves unfeasible.

Is the reason for focusing on internet based businesses because that’s where the future is or because it’s the type of venture the Cambridge set are likely to be ‘into’ and as such is the best fit for the attendees. — Martin

Well, actually, neither of those reasons are why we focus on the Internet.

Basically, folks who have a business need customers.  Very broadly speaking, there are two ways to get them.

• You can call people and knock on their doors and try to tell them about your product.
• You can put your product where people who are looking for it are likely to find it.

The second option, sometimes called “in-bound marketing” is very cheap and cost effective, and the Internet is the cheapest “in-bound” marketing solution around.  If you do your job right, you can put your product where people who want to buy what you sell can find it.

So . . . we focus on how to put your products and services on the Internet.  In most cases it is the cheapest and fastest way for many of our entrepreneurs to get access to hundreds, thousands or millions of customers.  The Build Your Business Now toolkit that we built to support the course explains how ot create the simple site you need in just a few hours.

Market segment analysis. Instead of searching on Google, are there any specific places to retrieve this type of information? — Katherine

Well, we think you’ll be happier looking on Google (and perhaps other search engines) for information on market segments because getting the data there is fast and easy and you know it is timely.

For most businesses, the easiest to reach market of “ready to buy” customers are those who are looking for your service on Google because they are ready to buy.  If someone goes to Google and types in “Dog Grooming”, chances are its not an academic search.  They actually want a Dog Groomer.  If some customers search for “Sidcup Dog Groomers” others search for “Chislehurst Dog Groomer” and still others search for “Organic Dog Groomers South East”, that’s a person who is almost certainly ready to buy.

You can also look at sites that you think offer competing services and see how Google sees them from a keyword standpoint.  Go to http://www.google.com/sktool/ and http://www.google.com/trends to explore your market segments and related keywords.

Pricing: how much is it worth to them? … I recognize that the price of a product should be set to what a person will pay, not set to what they say they might be willing to pay. There could potentially be a large gap between how different entities value a product or service. Apart from asking prospects, apart from only looking at competitors’ pricing, what other tips would you suggest for setting price? (coming from the perspective of an internet based, B2B SaaS model with a product attempting to resegment an existing market with a niche strategy) – Steve

Pricing is always a matter of trial and error and you’ll almost always leave some money on the table. If you check out the Build Your Business Now Toolkit that was distributed after the class, you’ll see some practical advice and steps for figuring out price.

Basically you have to identify your target markets, see what they are paying for competing solutions, and price yourself in that zone.  If there are no real competing solutions, you have to look at what NOT having your solution costs them.  Using those two “ballparking” procedures will usually get you in your zone pricewise for each market segment . . . and then the issue is making sure each segment sees the right pricing.

Related posts:

1. Practical Q&A With Doug Richard: Mentoring, Recruiting & Seeing Opportunities
2. Starting a Business: The 3 Things I Really Believe
3. Start Here! STARTING & GROWING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS

And nothing happens.

Except, perhaps, that your sales fall off a bit because you’ve spent so much time creating and marketing your website that you’ve neglected to make the contacts you usually use to generate business.

Take heart. Making your website do what it is supposed to do doesn’t cost much and doesn’t take long. You just need some practical advice on how to make it work right.

Start by Making it Easy to Place Orders

Having a website doesn’t mean you no longer have to market and sell your products. What it does mean is that you can have an order taker standing around 24/7 to take people’s money.

If your objective is actually to close sales online, the process of ordering your products and services online has to be effortless for your customers. If they go to your site knowing what they want, they should be able to find it in two clicks and they should be able to order it in one more.

If this is not how your website is working, then you have found a key reason why your sales are not what they should be.

Sometimes the problem is your page design. It spends more time talking about you and your team than getting people to the products and services they want to buy. Having articles and blogs online does help bring people to your site, and can keep them there until they decide to shop, but a sluggish or confusing ordering process “unsells” people. It is so easy to get online commerce right these days that most folks have no confidence in people who get it wrong.

How do you make placing orders though your site easy?

Paypal makes it easy to create “Buy Now” buttons for any product on any page on your site. People trust PayPal. The PayPal checkout process is quick, secure, and predictable. If you have under ten simple products to sell on your site, just stick Buy Now buttons on your pages and you should see sales go up. If your products require people to pick sizes, choose colors, select shipping options, or specify other parameters, Buy Now buttons probably aren’t the best choice.

Online ecommerce solutions like Yahoo Stores, Pro Stores or EventBrite, make creating full featured catalogs of products and services easy. You can be online in minutes with these online store solutions, even if you nothing about HTML or programming. These tools handle size, color, shipping and most other purchase options quite handily.

Open source catalog solutions like Magento work well for people who just believe, very strongly, that they have to host their catalog on their own servers. You can install them in a matter of hours, add your products and services to them, and start taking sales in under a couple of days. You can customize their look and feel completely.

It almost never makes sense for a small business to create a custom online sales solution when there are so many that can be had for next to nothing, that customers already trust, and which are so easy to customize. Your time will be better spent driving traffic to your fully functional site.

Marketing & Selling Products Online

Once you can take orders for your products and services on your site, you can begin pouring customers onto the site to take orders from.

If you have been taking orders for your products offline with some frequency, then you already know who your customers are, why they buy your products and where they can be found. You can tell your existing pool of customers your website address and you’ve effectively given them an order taker they can turn to at any time to get your products and services.

When you want to get new customers via the internet, your understanding of who your customers are and why they buy your products will remain, for the most part, unchanged. You will just need to determine where your customers lurk online.

If your products and services are delivered to local populations, then you may find tools like Google’s Local Business Center useful. It lets you geographically locate your business in Google Maps, so that when people in your geographical area search Google for “florist”, “plant nursery”, “child care center” or “computer repair” a link to your business pops up along with a pointer to your location on a map. This gets them to your page where they can place an order.

If your products and services are, by and large, location independent then you will use other mechanisms to drive traffic to your site. You may decide to:

• Place ads on Google and other search engines that will display when potential customers are searching for the products and services you provide.
• Use Search Engine Optimization techniques (SEO) to get more links to your business high in the normal listings for your target keywords.
• Place advertisements on the websites that your customers go to for news or entertainment.
• Advertise in print magazines or newspapers that your customer read.
• Work to have articles and blogs written about your product or service by writers that your customers read.

If, after several weeks, you find that your website is not helping your company earn more, the cause is almost invariably one of the following:

• Your site makes it hard to place an order.
• Something about your site makes customers doubt that you can fulfill their order (inaccurate information, misspellings, unattractive layout or design, etc.)
• Your site doesn’t provide the information customers need in order to decide to buy.
• The wrong people are visiting your site because your marketing is funneling the wrong people there.
• No one is visiting your site because your online marketing is ineffective or non-existent.

If your website is equipped with a page counter or Google analytics toolset that lets you track how many people are coming to your site, what pages they look at, when and if they click the order button then you should be able to discern which of these issues is effecting your online sales.

A methodical approach to resolving these problems will result in increased revenue for your site.

Closing Sales Online

In designing and developing a functional website to sell your products it pays to take a very analytical, very practical, very limited approach to deployment.

Start with ensuring that purchase of a product is a matter of a few clicks, that customer’s you’ve met in the real world feel comfortable buying through your online interface, then work on driving more traffic to your site so more customers can be closed. Make sure it is very easy for people to ask you questions about your products and services, and that you request feedback on the order process after every sale. Your online customers are the best people to provide you with advice and guidance on how to sell more online.

Related posts:

1. An Entrepreneur’s Quick Guide to First Investors: Family & Friends
2. Google PageRank & Search Engine Optimization
3. An Entrepreneur’s Guide to SEO Through Press Releases

I launched my first commercially profitable website in 1996 when the Internet first started to “go big”, so I find many of the things currently touted as “new” are really “new again”.  In the 1990′s there was huge pressure to get your sites listed in the search engines, to have people link to your site from forums, and to create content that was “sticky”. Flash forward to today, the chatter is all about social media, search engine optimization, and viral marketing . . .

Don’t get me wrong. It is obvious that the Internet is evolving.  But I am struck by what seems to be a universal constant when it comes to marketing a great business well.

Marketing is never the job of a few in a business these days.  It has to be everyone’s job. Why? Because every person that works for an enterprise talks to hundreds of people, if not thousands every year, in a variety of media.  Without unity of vision and clarity of message, your company dissolves into a shapeless puddle of messages. By trying to be everything to everybody it becomes nothing special for anybody.

As we are getting our ducks in a row for the upcoming Start Here classes as well as several future courses and some really big plans for an exceptional summer, School for Startups has become a hive of communication activity.

Every single soul, and there are a lot of us now, is on the front lines interfacing directly with customers, sponsors, the media, event guests, featured entrepreneurs.  There’s this complex “square dance” where three or four of us are working on an email blast, five or six of us are posting content on the site, some of us are sending big press releases out, some team members are working with Doug on television and radio events.  We are all in constant communication with one another and the outside world . . . across media, day in and day out.

And recently it has hit me that we really must speak with One Voice.

Because efficient as we are, and as well known as we are getting in entrepreneurial communities across the UK, we are still a very small business. We don’t have the bandwidth or resources to send a flurry of imprecise marketing messages out.  We have to be needle sharp in what we say about who we are so our message finds our customers.

We must make it clear that “We teach entrepreneurs how to start and grow stronger, more profitable businesses“. Every operation we undertake is to forward that goal. Every strategic relationship we start is toward that end.

Every communication we have with an outsider must communicate that vision. Every message we put out on Twitter, Facebook and Linked In say must say the same thing. That core value must be at the heart of every blog article, every course, every interview.

To steal a phrase from Doug . . . we must become a “wall of sound” when it comes to delivering that message.

We face real challenges as we work for unity of marketing communication:

• Every new person who comes into the business has to go through the process of finding out that our company helps our entrepreneurs create better, more profitable businesses.  They have to learn that we aren’t just another training business teaching whatever course pays best.
• Specific language for our unified marketing message, and the “flavors” that support specific courses and initiatives have to be developed and communicated internally almost constantly to everyone.
• Sometimes the apparent distance between a specific undertaking and our core business objective seems very wide.  For example, why does Doug Richard, founder of School for Startups, assume an active “voice” in UK politics. Because one of the most important ways School for Startups can help our entrepreneurs found stronger, more profitable businesses is to help foster an economic environment that supports business rather than inhibits it.

Building a unified wall of sound that emanates from every person in a company is something I never hear people talk about, and yet that “unity of message” is something I’ve seen in every successful startup I’ve ever worked for or with.

It was certainly a key feature in Doug’s ITAL Business Computer Systems and Visual Software, and is true of School for Startups as well. Maybe the first people you really, truly have to sell on your business . . . is the people who work with you.

Related posts:

1. The Naked Business: What We Get Right
2. Doug Richard’s 7 Virtues of a Sound Business
3. The Naked Business: Why we never ever get anything done at all

“O2 recently came on board as our big business supporter. I for one think that their superb business strap line, “we’re better, connected” reflects our beliefs about early stage businesses. Their financial backing will allow us to connect with a new generation of businesses through a major expansion of accelerated business training for entrepreneurs online.” — Doug Richard

Simon Devonshire, Head of Small Business Marketing at O2, is a guest on today’s blog.

Schools for Startups is an impressive initiative which will no doubt motivate and inspire entrepreneurs. Doug is an especially talented and thought provoking presenter and business coach. The content of his lectures is about helping businesses to grow which I believe is relevant to all businesses. Doug makes a phenomenal difference to the thinking and performance of small businesses and we’re proud to be on board to support the creation of additional online training programmes targeting entrepreneurs.

We know that access to good quality training can be difficult and expensive for new businesses who are just getting off the ground. That’s why it’s so great to see School for Startups filling the gap.  Enterprise creation is so important for the recovery of the UK economy, and small business sits at the heart of entrepreneurialism. Being able to access expert training and advice for free online at a time that suits them can only help young enterprises continue to flourish.

But it’s not all about O2 & School for Startups sharing our support and experiences. It’s a two-way relationship. We want to learn from entrepreneurs and help our business customers to grow their business. More small businesses do business with O2 than any other network. If we are to continue to be there to support them every step of the way, we need to make sure we understand the ongoing challenges they face in the ever changing modern business environment.

One thing O2 well understands is that entrepreneurs and small businesses absolutely rely on flexible communications technologies.

Many businesses these days launch and run for years in a ‘virtual office’. Owners, key employees and strategic partners spread across the UK. When customers call, they need to feel the coherence and cohesion of a traditional brick and mortar business even when one doesn’t exist.  Web hosting, e-commerce, cellular internet connectivity, broadband wireless, various forms of VOIP, small businesses now require the kinds of service and support that was available only to multinational corporations less than a decade ago.

Doug Richard’s pragmatic advice on launching ‘ultralight’ businesses with little or no outside funding is, we believe, founded on bedrock of a telecommunications company that provides a truly tremendous number of ‘just in time’ services for entrepreneurs.  O2 and School for Startups share a single vision for  entrepreneurs in the UK.  Speed, agility, flexibility, insight, value . . .  Like O2, School for Startups is determined to give them the tools they need.

We look forward to the opportunities that this partnership will bring for us to work more closely with startups and are committed to supporting Doug in championing entrepreneurs and new business in the UK.

– Simon Devonshire

We mention in passing . . . O2 has launched a ‘Joined Up’ communications service, which extends beyond its core mobile offering. The new services provide businesses with one single converged solution for their telecoms requirements spanning mobile, fixed line, data, broadband communications, equipment and professional consultancy.  It gives businesses of all sizes an opportunity to outsource their telecoms, ICT and consultancy needs to just one provider, reducing the amount of time spent handling and managing systems and communications services, which are not core to their business.  Find out more.

Related posts:

1. Naked Business: Building a Wall of Sound
2. Press Release-Doug Richard to Teach UK Entrepreneurs How to Start and Grow a Business at Newcastle University on February 3
3. The Naked Business: What We Get Right

LOW COST FAST GROWTH MARKETING

DATE: THURSDAY 25TH FEBRUARY 2010

LOCATION: UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON, UCL ADVANCES, ENGINEERING FRONT BUILDING

Doug Richard, serial entrepreneur and original BBC2 Dragon, moves ahead with his ambitious plan to fast-track fledging entrepreneurs and business owners onto the road of success. Due to popular demand Doug and the School for Startups team are holding their much esteemed “Low Cost Fast Growth Marketing” for growing businesses master-class in London this February, located at the outstanding University College London. School for Startups is the UK’s premier provider of business training and tuition. The seminars are designed to be fully interactive, incorporating ‘live’ on the day delegate case studies, video examples, lectures, interactive discussions and Q&A; sessions. Doug’s goal is to teach participants the questions they need to ask themselves and equip them to find the right answers. Doug is a humorously entertaining host and will leave you feeling inspired and refuelled!

Event Details

In this seminar serial entrepreneur and investor Doug Richard digs deep into advanced online marketing tactics: the essential lessons that every entrepreneur needs to understand. Finding fast growth, effective and affordable channels to reach customers is critical to any business; but especially so for growing businesses during a recession.

Doug demonstrates how the Internet has levelled the playing-field between your business and your largest competitors and why there has never before been an opportunity like that which exists for today’s businesses.

At Low Cost Fast Growth Marketing you will learn:

• Using Thought Leadership to drive Social Media
• PR in the 21st Century
• Blogs, Conversations and Gossip: Key Tools for 2010
• No Cost Video
• How SEO is changing and what to do about it

Event Information

* Registrations Starts: 14:00hrs
* Event Starts: 15:00hrs
* In conjunction with University College London

Who should attend?

• Owners & managers of growing businesses
• Marketing and media professionals
• Business, Marketing and MA students

What’s included?

• 5 hours of business tuition with one of the UK’s leading entrepreneurs
• Access to online resources and materials, including membership of VentureNavigator (see details below)
• 12 month’s free subscription to Doug’s monthly newsletter
• Accreditation as a Graduate of School for Startups (web-badge)

TICKET INFORMATION

* Online bookings policy – We only accept online bookings with a credit or debit card. Unfortunately we do not issue invoices for future payment or allow attendees to pay on the day. Anyone who has not paid for their ticket in full before the event will not be granted access.
* Refunds and changes to ticket details policy – Unfortunately we cannot offer refunds or change the name on the booking once tickets have been booked.

For more information see our full Terms and Conditions

MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE

We are confident that you will be completely satisfied by this event. If you are not completely satisfied with the event, we will issue a 100% refund, no questions asked. Requests for refunds must be made via email within 24hrs of the event taking place.

Related posts:

1. Low Cost Fast Growth Marketing Roundup
2. Start Here! STARTING & GROWING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS
3. Zero Budget Marketing for Startups: Sold out and Buzzing

As entrepreneurs we so often feel rather guilty that we love our businesses and it’s offerings so much.  Most of us could get a “real job” if looked long enough and searched hard enough.  New businesses suck up so much time, and so many personal resources, we really do have to ask ourselves over and over again if it is right to be investing ourselves this way.  This question becomes particularly pressing when we have a family to care for and support. Well, this year’s Christmas present from me to you is . . .

You Have Permission to Be Obsessed

One of the reasons that I work with entrepreneurs is that I just like them so much.  Most often they are like new parents with babies just home from the hospital or five-year-olds just starting school. Their businesses are shiny new and just a little nebulous, and the proud parents can’t stop talking about them even when they can’t figure out exactly what to say.  Sometimes it seems to me like these little nascent ventures are dressed up in all the wrong clothes, and some have big ears but I find their progenitors charming anyway.

In the heart of all good startups is some insight into human need, human desire, or human capacity for enjoyment.  A new set of tools for helping kids learn math more quickly speaks to years of helping children struggle through mountains of equations.  A book with a built in tape-recorder that parents can read a story into, speaks to children who sometimes have a parent that can’t read them to sleep.  A print shop that works twenty-four hours speaks to exciting last minute business preparations, a new website dedicated to marketing family B&B’s worldwide speaks to charming vacations abroad.

By and large every passionate entrepreneur I meet has a venture clutched to his chest that just wants to do something good.  And I, like everyone else I know, can see that passion and it always makes me expect something wonderful.  I wonder . . . “What is this guy so excited about?”

Why Your Passion Sells So Very Well

If you’ve ever seen the Pieta in Rome or Michaelangelo’s David, you can’t help but be overwhelmed by their perfection.  Eternal stone smoothed and sanded by a master over thousands of hours . . . to create something larger than life and yet just a human instant. Nothing left undone. Not one atom out of place.

A good startup gives me that sense, even when its still just represented by an elegant little website, a few hundred customers, and a few thousand in revenue.  Though the business is still a work in progress, I can see the master at work.

I can see that whoever is making this thing has an understanding of the product, the service, the solution he is trying to present.  He knows who he is trying to help. He knows, or thinks he knows, exactly what they need.  He’s working hard to make this thing the very best of its kind through sheer sweat and effort of will.

I’m not a big fan of working hard.  But I am a big fan of thinking hard.  And good startups, good small businesses, seem elegant and well considered because the people working on them really believe they have nothing better to do than make this thing they’ve envisioned become something wonderful in the real world.

If I ask them, they will talk for two hours about all the ways they’ve tried reaching out to their customers.  They will tell me twenty misconceptions they had about their product or service that they’ve recently addressed.  They will describe in harrowing detail all they plan to do.  And before long I’ll feel like a party guest forced to page through book after book of holiday snapshots.

And I’ll be happy too . . .

Because I’ll have found one of my entrepreneurs.  The guy with the good idea who just wait to bring his baby to life. I’ll do my best to tell that guy, and all the folks I can find who are like him, whatever I can tell them that might help them on their way.  I want to see their businesses grow up as much as they do.

So Here’s Your Gift for the Year Ahead

Its OK to be a little crazy about your business, to talk about it at parties and to spend just a little too long every night working to make it just that little bit better.  Because that’s what makes it good.

If you stay true to a vision that seeks to help people, to amuse or educate them to the very best of your considerable ability, you are putting something priceless into your products and services.  You are giving it something that I and others most in a position to help you will recognize as remarkable.

I hope you enjoy your gift and the exciting year ahead, and that I’ll see you at School for Startups online for face to face event sometime soon.  We offer new ones every month and you can always find us at www.schoolforstartups.co.uk.

Related posts:

1. The Secret of Flexible Labour: How to Hire a Little Bit of a Person
2. The Dirty Secret of Credit For Small Business: the Failure of the EFG Scheme
3. SXSW. Love it. Hate it.

(Press Release) – Oct 20, 2009 – Doug Richard, Dragons’ Den investor, serial entrepreneur and founder of School for Startups (S4S), will lecture small businesses and startups on 13 November 2009 at a free one day “Six Rules for Startups” event in Colchester. The course, a £95 value, will be delivered free through the University of Essex with funding from the Government’s Economic Challenge Investment Fund (ECIF). Entrepreneurs can reserve a seat at www.schoolforstartups.co.uk.

(London, England) — Doug Richard, Dragons’ Den investor and serial entrepreneur will deliver his “Six Rules for Startups” course to new entrepreneurs and small business owners on 13 November 2009 at  The Weston Homes Community Stadium,  Essex.

Attendees will receive practical instruction in how to develop great products and services, identify paying customers efficiently, market their offerings well at very low cost, effectively eliminate their competition, and build a great team.

The Six Rules for Startups course has a normal value of £95, but will be offered free to anyone living or working in Essex or Suffolk via the University of Essex under a program funded by the Economic Challenge Investment Fund (ECIF). Seating is limited.  To sign up, visit www.schoolforstartups.co.uk.

“As I’ve stated more than once, I intend to make everyone in the UK an Entrepreneur.” said Doug Richard, speaking about the event.  “Our research shows that the toughest thing for most entrepreneurs is just getting started.  They don’t know how to start a good business from the ground up. Our training addresses that issue directly.  Those who attend this event will leave with a very solid understanding of exactly how to build a profitable business fast.  Those entrepreneurs with existing businesses struggling in the new economy will master low-cost or no-cost marketing techniques that will increase their profit while reducing their cost.”

Students who attended the very successful October 10 “Six Rules for Startups” event, also hosted by the University of Essex, said:

• “I like Doug’s clear specific manner of assisting the audience’s questions and answers. He enabled me to see things clearer without the fluff. A great presenter with warm charisma. I have to add looks much younger and more handsome than on TV. Thanks for a great day.” –  Amanda Jane Dowsett
• “An excellent course, extremely well presented and very down to earth.  A most enjoyable day.” — Ian Kettlewell
• “Great course, enjoyable and information was well presented and genuinely helpful.” — Oliver Williams
• “I really enjoyed the style of presentation and the opportunity for interaction.” — Iain Allan
• “I thought the presentation was great just wanted to say thank you very much. It has helped me clarify a lot.” — Abilene Leach
• “Please keep this fantastic school going. The most practical, useful advice I have ever received. The Doug Richards’ combo of clever communication skills and entrepreneurial knowledge is very, very impressive…”  — Stephen Neale

Dr Janice Pittis, Director of the Research and Enterprise Office for the University of Essex says “Responding rapidly to the needs of employers and individuals (including graduates) during the economic downturn, the University of Essex has rolled out a programme of skills-related training across Essex and Suffolk. We are developing new online resources to help people maximise their skills and increase both profitability and employability. The programme runs until the end of September 2010 with funding from the Government’s Economic Challenge Investment Fund (ECIF).”

About the University of Essex
The University of Essex is one of the UK’s leading academic institutions. Founded in 1964 when it opened its doors to a cohort of just 122 students at Wivenhoe Park in Colchester, the University has grown in both reputation and size, developing a worldwide reputation for top quality teaching and research.

About Doug Richard:
Doug Richard, an original Dragons’ Den investor, and successful serial entrepreneur, received an honorary Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion for his work promoting, developing and helping entrepreneurs in May 2006. In May 2008 Richard published his investigation into the British government’s support of small businesses, The Richard Report.  For more information on Doug Richard, visit School for Startups at  www.schoolforstartups.co.uk. You can follow Richard on Twitter at @s4startups, @s4tv and @DouglasRichard.

Contact:
Nicola Coleman
School for Startups
+44 (0) 7702 313 226

http://www.schoolforstartups.co.uk

info@www.schoolforstartups.co.uk

# # #

School for Startups was started by Doug Richard in 2008 to provide accelerated instruction to entrepreneurs. Visit our site at www.schoolforstartups.co.uk. Follow us on Twitter @s4startups.

Related posts:

1. University of Essex
2. Press Release-Doug Richard to Teach UK Entrepreneurs How to Start and Grow a Business at Newcastle University on February 3
3. Newcastle University Business School

Today is the day when we charge ahead and try out our new School for Startups service, S4Stv. This afternoon at 6PM we will be broadcasting live across the web from the Conference Centre at the British Library in front of an audience of a couple of hundred people.

This will come at the end of an afternoon-long live event where we will have been doing a deep-dive on Public Relations and Search Engine Marketing. But don’t worry if you miss the event, we will be releasing 2 x 30 minute shows over the coming month capturing the heart of the day. They will be available on the S4Stv site at SchoolforStartups.co.uk.

In fact, in the next few weeks you will see us making quite a few changes beginning with a whole new website that let’s us really drive alot of new material out very quickly. We will also be launching an ambitious event seminar around the country, new partnerships, and a flood of on-demand shows, short clips, podcasts, editorials, how-to’s and of course our live web-streamed surgeries where we try to help young companies in real time on stage.

Related posts:

1. How to Turn PR into cold hard cash sales (advice for consumer businesses)
2. Entrepreneurs Guide to Understanding Why We Buy What We Buy. Understanding Consumers.
3. Perfect Your Pitch with Doug Richard on June 21, 6:30 – 8PM! Join Us Online or Face to Face

A few weeks ago I touched on the notion that a press release is not always for the press; that sometimes it is more useful as an SEO tool.

But public relations is not really about press releases at all. It is about relationships and stories.

I don’t know how many times I have had arguments with new entrepreneneurs about the foolishness of hiring a dedicated PR person internally. Oh I understand the motivation: the person will work full-time on the company’s account, they will reall get to know the product, it’s alot cheaper etc. etc.

But this mi-understands why we hire PR people in the first place: it is to gain access to their access. By having multiple accounts they have multiple reasons to engage their circle of journalists. The journalists themselves won’t necessarily know why they’re calling because it may be from a current customer or a new one. But it permits the PR person to remain fresh and to keep the relationships fresh. Equally, they can gain access for a new, small company on the back of their prior relationships with older more established clients.

But equally, they have other key advantages. If you choose the right one, you are not merely getting someone who delivers your latest story to a select group of journalists, they may bring much much more to the table. The greatest PR folk of all time invented great stories. They created the conditions, events, moments, or confrontations that were inherently newsworthy. It is an all too rare talent and most people cannot do it effectively.

Great PR people are also very commercial and understand that, in some publications, the opportunity exists to create direct selling opportunities. In fact one of the best practitioners of the art will be joining me this Friday afternoon at the British Library to come up on stage and talk about how she has repeatedly been able to get consumer products, especially kid’s products, including web-sites where no product was involved; full pages and even magazine covers dedicated to selling her clients’ products.

She and her team are one of the top consumer facing teams in the country and, as part of my effort to expand entrepreneurs thinking about how PR can be strategic and far more creative, she is going to tell all at my advanced seminar on marketing. It starts at 1PM at the British Library (here’s the link: http://s4sfastgrowthmarketing.eventbrite.com) and it has some other kick-ass guests and our first ever live web broadcast at the end (but more about that later.)

So if you are interested in PR, if you want to understand how you can use it to get page space for no money, if you want to hear from the best consumer PR artist in the UK, come Friday.

Doug

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Edward Bernays, Freud's nephew and the master of spin

Every entrepreneur has read articles advocating the use of press releases to build business.  We are always told to write a very targeted press release, send it to a carefully selected set of writers, editors and radio hosts, and hope they reprint it or find a way to mention your product or service on the air.

These days that advice has gaping holes in it.  It does not address a profound change in the way the publishing industry has changed or the new way in which most people find the things they buy.

Pay Attention, This is (mildly) Technical . . .

Marketing is no longer about interrupting people while they are being entertained or informed. TV ads, newspaper ads, radio ads are all interruptions. Marketing is more and more about interception. Grabbing people on their way to the product or service they are looking for.

Good marketing is about getting the right product or service in front of the people who will want to buy that product.  A 2006 Media Consumption Study indicated that 54% of Europeans use the internet every week, and 45% are online every day. 78% of European internet users shop online.  US internet demographics are in line with these figures.  So if you have a product or a service you want to sell, a whole bunch of your customers online.  Search engines, like Google.com and Yahoo.com, are where most people who start searching for products and services look first. So if you want to intercept your potential customer you need to be on top of the organic search engine rankings. The secret here is that the press release is no longer a release for the press…

Here is my step by step method to use the press release to move your   product or service up the search engines rankings exactly where your customers will look to find them. (We’ll talk about other things you can do some other day)

How to…

First, as always, identify ten search phrases that your customers will probably enter when they are ready to buy your products or services. Things like “London Travel” or “iPhone SMS Applet” are good examples.

Write a press release about your product, your service or your company.  It must be newsworthy.  If you’ve won an award, or donated something to a local charity, or hired someone new, you have something to write about.

Make sure at least one link in the press release points to your website.

Give your press release a title. The very best titles will pair your product or service with the name of something or someone your target market will find interesting.  For example: “London Travel Company Donates One Million Pounds to the Prince Trust” or if you don’t happen to have a million quid sitting around “iPhone Applet Sends Groups SMS Messages to All Phones Free”.

Submit your press release through an Internet Press Release service that gives news to news.google.com and news.yahoo.com.  Many services submit to these news services, including www.prweb.com. (There are others that specialize in the UK) These services have human editors which determine newsworthiness, so writing spam and calling it a press release is not an option.

Wash.Rinse. Repeat.

Repeat this process 1-3 times a week for six months to ensure you have great placement on the search engines for the keywords you care the most about.

Why does this work?

Hundreds of thousands of websites and blogs use the RSS Feeds to post news articles from news.yahoo.com, news.google.com and other news aggregators for their users to read.  This a free, passive way for these sites to get fresh content so their website doesn’t go stale when they don’t have time to update it.

These RSS feeds are configured to search for search terms like “Prince Charles”, “London Travel” “iPhone Applet” or “SMS Messages”. So if your press releases contain these terms it gets picked up by those sites. (Check out: http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/answer.py?answer=40796&ctx=sibling)

Millions of users set up “agents” that forward links to news articles with specific terms as well. News articles with these terms get forwarded to users who may forward the message to others. (Check out: http://www.google.com/alerts?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=%22london+travel%22&t=1&source=news&cd=2)

Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Alta Vista determine where your page appears in the listings based upon how many other pages link to them. So running fifty to a hundred press releases in a year that create thousands or tens of thousands of links is a very fast way to build a long term “home” for your website at the top of almost all search engines for the keywords you care the most about.

Press Releases for the Press Are Still Important

Writing a small number of press releases that you send directly to writers, editors and radio hosts has value in that a recommendation coming from a trusted source has a great deal of value.  But, even these professionals will search Google and Yahoo to learn more about you. Appearing high in any keyword search for your type of product or service increases your perceived status.

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