Housekeeping - Audit your business

Ideally once a year you should do an audit of your business.

Be critical and ask questions such as:

• Is the business on track financially?
• Are you achieving your objectives that you intended?
• Is there parts of the business which need focus?
• Are there opportunities which you haven't been able to capitalise on?
• What is holding your business back?
• Do you have the skills to take the business to the next level?
• Should you sell some or all the business?

Finally make sure you ask are you enjoying what you are doing?

This should be a frank and open discussion with your staff and business colleagues and will involve reviewing feedback from customers and other people.

Your should also include in this your personal friends and partner.

With this information make a decision about where you are going and where you want to be in a year, two years or more.

We have been doing this at Rainbow Tourism as we realised we need to focus on our core gay and lesbian business and also need further funds to make it grow. We have decided as part of this review to sell a large number of domains which were used in previous businesses and also sell the Pink Pages.

These decisions are never easy as you can always see the potential but ultimately you have to make a decision of where to focus ones energy.

So when did you last do a business audit?

Making Connections

I have just been at the IGLTA convention in Las Vegas and one of the key outcomes is the importance of making connections with your target market.

While there is a cost to coming to conventions one of the big benefits is that you can meet a lot of people face to face. Knowing someone personally makes a huge difference when you are wanting to engage in a business relationship.

This means for the gay and lesbian travel market you need to join organisations such as IGLTA, find local gay and lesbian community groups which you can support and find ways to connect with the local gay and lesbian community.

For example if you were in my home city of Sydney you might consider joining the following organisations:

IGLTA - International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association
GALTA - Gay and Lesbian Tourism Australia
SGLBA - Sydney Gay and Lesbian Business Association

You should then consider supporting a gay and lesbian community group. To make sponsorship effective you have to have a clear understanding of what you want from the organisation you are sponsoring and what you can offer to the organisation so it is a win/win situation for both organisations.

You should also consider obtaining some assistance with the market - there are pitfalls and by seeking help you can avoid some expensive mistakes - so if you are wanting to engage with the gay and lesbian traveller contact people who can offer you a marketing plan. RainbowTourism.com is one company which can assist you in this area so please feel free to contact us.

How to deal with complaints

Having lodged two complaints with businesses and had two extremely different experiences I thought I would share my experiences and make some comments and ideas on how to resolve complaints.

Complaint 1 - Email complaint lodged in January 2008 about bad customer service. To date the company involved has not responded - not even an automated response. I have actually contacted them twice by phone, submitted a further complaint but to date no response. Interesting on their website they claim they will acknowledge all complaints within seven days and attempt to resolve all complaints within 30 days.

Interesting when I have called and finally managed to get to a live person they have been helpful but ultimately unable to actually do anything.

The end result is that as a customer I am now looking for alternative suppliers, plus we will be lodging a financial claim against the company and will not be recommending them to any person I deal with.

Complaint 2 - A duplicate charge was made by the company in error. An email was sent to the company, an automated response was immediately received which included details of a tracking number. Within 24 hours an email was received advising the problem had been resolved.

So you have a complaint what do you do:

If you are in error, acknowledge the error and fix the problem. Give a deadline when it will be fixed and stick to it. If for any reason you can't resolve it in a timely fashion then contact the customer - ideally via a phone call - and discuss an appropriate means to resolve the issue. It really is all about communication - if in doubt of what to do talk to the customer.

If you believe you are not in error then the situation is trickier. First of all if a customer has complained then the customer believes there is an issue. Generally in these cases it is better to actually contact the customer and see if you can identify the root cause of the issue. e.g. they may feel that the way the accommodation description is on the website is not correct, etc. Ask questions about what outcome do they want? What do they want? Please tell me about your experience? Try to keep questions open and listen to what is been said and also not been said. You may not be able to resolve the issue immediately and in some cases you may not be able to resolve the issue but please do take the time to ask.

Surveys

One of the best comments on developing a survey was in a recent email I received.

Step 1 - Start at the end.

Think about the following questions first:

• What will you do with the survey results
• Why do you need this information
• When are you going to use it

With this basic questions answered you can then make a survey which is concise and designed to obtain the results you need at that point in time to improve your business.

If you need assistance in designing a survey then contact us.

Idrive - Back up your files

What would you do if you lost your computer records, do you have a backup plan?

Idrive - www.idrive.com is a great product which provides 2GB storage as a free backup service with a reasonable price plan for higher volumes.

It is extremely simple to setup and the best thing is you can access files remotely from your backup.

It is something worth considering - the alternatives generally don't offer as much security as an online system.

I would be interested if you have other online back up options which are as good. Then post a comment below.

Conversation Marketing

I stumbled on an interesting new blog today - Conversation Marketing

Two interesting posts are:

The Internet Marketing Unlist: 49 Things You Probably Are Doing But Shouldn't

Read the whole post but the best ones are:

• Having a flash intro to your site - so useless
• Requiring registration for checkout - I have seen this on travel booking sites - it is painful and doesn't help the customer - offer the choice if you want but don't make it compulsory.
• Ignore me. If I fill out the 'customer support' form on your site, answer me.
  

and

The Internet Marketing List: 59 Things You Should Be Doing But Probably Aren't

There are some good ideas in both these lists.

Check them out and also let us know of other interesting blogs.

You can contact us if you want assistance or a review of your travel online marketing or for good sound SEO

DIY Research Mistakes

Another interesting blog - Five DIY research mistakes that can lead to disaster - which highlights some common errors.

So what are the common mistakes:

1. You load the dice to get the answer you’re looking for
2. Right questions, wrong people
3. Right questions, wrong environment
4. Failing to corroborate the evidence
5. Good evidence, bad decisions

These research mistakes are most likely to occur where you are entering into a market which has limited public data and you are trying to identify a niche market.

An example is the gay and lesbian travel market where RainbowTourism.com markets. While there is some research a lot of the research is self selecting i.e. it captures a "visible" part of the market who read a certain magazine. The research in this area also tends to be biased towards gay men and to North America. However the good news is the internet means this research is getting broader.

The other lesson is that even with the best research you should test the market to see what works. The good thing with the internet is you can test different ads, web pages, etc to see which gives you the best click through and buy rate. The cost isn't huge but it does need to be trialled over different periods to see what works/doesn't work.