Over the last few months I have been working on a new website, The Mumpreneur Guide. Designed for mums who are serious about starting a business, the site currently offers an e-course taking you through the essentials of getting your enterprise going. In the next few months there will be a book to accompany the course. Do sign up: I'd love to get your thoughts on the course so far, and please forward the information about the course to anyone you know who wants to start a business.

 

If you have yet to buy a copy of A Guide to Promoting Your Business, why not enter the competition on Webmums this month? There are 5 copies up for grabs. Webmums is another great place to talk to other women in business and find out the latest tips on making your website work.

MumsClub.co.uk, the flourishing online community for entrepreneurial mums who work from home, is from the 1st September launching a national competition to  search for the most creative home-based business ideas for mums.  The competition is open to all mums; mums with businesses up and running, mums who are considering starting up a business, and mums who just fancy having a go at winning some of the great prizes on offer. 
 
There will also be a special prize of 12 months subscription to The Peter Jones Business Builder, an online business service for up-and-coming entrepreneurs created by Peter Jones, best known from Dragons' Den. The special prize will be awarded to an established Mumpreneur who best demonstrates how she intends to expand her business over the next 5 years.  The total prize for the whole competition is £2,600!
 
Jane Hopkins, the mumpreneur behind MumsClub says: 
"The competition is a bit of fun that aims to highlight the achievements of the growing number of mums who run businesses from home, and will hopefully inspire other mums to seriously consider fulfilling dreams of running their own business and encourage them to think up plausible business ideas. MumsClub is all about recognising the extra and demanding constraints that us mums have; we haven't got time to search the internet looking for answers, so MumsClub is here to guide mums through by providing the  essential business information and marketing tools needed to set up and build a thriving business from home."
 
A group of established mumpreneurs will judge the competition and will be on the lookout for the most creative and original business ideas.  Mums are welcome to enter as many ideas as they wish as long as their business concepts allow mum to be principally home-based to market, launch, and sell their products or services.
 
The overall winner will receive the services of a website designer who will create and host a website of their choice.   The winner will also receive a huge bundle of other prizes kindly donated by mumpreneurs; from a custom made piece of hand or foot print art, a prepaid (and loaded) MasterCard, through to a range of useful business services including a practical business planning course and a year's advertising on the MumsClub site.  Four runners-up will receive a selection of goodies from mumpreneur businesses. 
 
For full competition details and to download an entry form, mums need to go to the Mumsclub website.  Business ideas are to be no longer than 300 words each, and the competition closes on November 3rd at 23.30 pm.  The winner and runners up will be announced on 1st December 2008. 

Email newsletters are a great way of promoting your business, but do you think you can use one to sell plenty of your products and stacks of your service? If so, you'll be disappointed. This article, by Chantal Cornelius of Apple Tree, looks at why email newsletters don't sell and how you can use one properly.
 
So why don't email newsletters sell?
 
Do you use referrals, word of mouth and networking to find new clients? Good marketing relies on building relationships with your prospects to help you turn them into clients. Newsletters are the natural extension or networking and generating referrals, helping you build the trust you need. Filling your newsletter with sales pitches and offers does nothing to build relationships, as there's really nothing of use in the newsletter for your readers and they'll soon stop reading.
 
Do your clients go through a long decision making process before buying from you? Is your service or product expensive? If so, you may need to contact prospects a number of times before they are confident enough to buy from you. A newsletter allows you to keep in touch with people, encouraging them to trust you. When they do, they're more likely to buy from you. If you sell high quality, expensive products, the same applies. They won't part with their cash just because you send them one newsletter.
 
Do you offer a range of products and services, or ones that can be significantly tailored for each client? When you provide different products or services, you have a lot to explain to people. You can't expect someone to buy from your newsletter if they don't know about everything you do. A newsletter allows you to tell people what you do, a bit at a time.
 
Are your clients uncertain about the benefits of using your product or service, needing proof of your ability? Your prospects might want proof that you do what you say you can do, before they buy from you. While you may be able to offer them a free 'session', you need another way to demonstrate what you do. A newsletter is a way of doing this, but your readers won't buy just because you say you're good. You need to prove it to them over time.
 
Do your clients have other options, as well as your product or service, or think they can do it themselves? Everyone will try to do it themselves or look for a cheaper option to what you're offering. Dropping your prices and making endless offers will only damage your reputation. Instead, when your readers realise they don't have all the skills they need or they just don't have the time, they'll look for someone who can help. You can use a newsletter to show readers that you can help them and keep your name in the forefront of their minds.
 
If you answered 'yes' to most of these questions, then you can use an email newsletter to promote your business, improve your reputation and develop strong relationships with prospects and clients. If you answered 'no' to most of them, then a newsletter really isn't for you and trying to use one to sell your product or service just won't work. Try some advertising or pounding the streets wearing a sandwich board!
 
For more marketing advice visit www.AppleTreeuk.com.

 

White Ladder Press offers a great selection of Parenting books. They are the publishers of Family Friendly Working and will be bringing out What to Do When Your Child Hates School, one of my new books coming next month. To celebrate this, I have three parenting books on offer in this month's draw. To win 'Cool, Calm Parent', 'You're the Daddy' and 'Sneaky Parenting' simply email Antonia@acpr.co.uk with PARENTING BOOKS in the title to enter.

 

Stallfinder is a bit like a dating agency for stallholders and event organisers. Gail O'Brien started the website after becoming increasingly frustrated trying to find stallholders for a charity event. She explains how it works, "We have a database of UK events and a register of UK stallholders. Event organisers can use Stallfinder to search for stallholders by county, product type or distance from their own postcode. Stallholders looking to find events can search by county, event type or distance from their own postcode. We also have lots of fundraising ideas,information and advice for stallholders and event organisers plus news and featured charities. As a stallholder in the past, I'd found it difficult to find events and customers without a large advertising budget. I discussed the idea with my husband and we decided to set up a website."

Stallfinder has quickly built up a growing database of stallholders and events. Here Gail explains how she has grown the business rapidly throughout 2008, "We promote the site mainly via online networking, local press coverage, word of mouth and by directly contacting many charities and event organisers. We've appeared in local press, charity newsletters and online bulletins plus many of our event organisers and stallholders are actively promoting us. We've also built excellent relationships with many direct sales companies such as our launch partners Tish Tash Toys, Miglio, Barefoot Books and Captain Tortue who continue to promote us to their representatives. I work from home running Stallfinder and my husband helps when he can as he has a full-time job. We have 3 children so it's very much a family business."