I was traveling from Nakuru to Nanyuki.At a small town midway, I saw ...more]]> For your information BPO is meant to mean Business Process Outsourcing. In simple terms, its where a business outsources part of its non core business process whether in production, operations or marketing to other specialty companies.

I was traveling from Nakuru to Nanyuki.At a small town midway, I saw a young man waving at me. Some instincts told me to stop and hear his story. However being in business, I have realized that money come with people and I have learnt to listen to them. As I halted, he came running and asked me if I could offer a lift to his wife and child. With a child, I couldn’t deny. We chatted along the way and one thing really struck me. She said that she used to run a business with her husband until the post election crisis messed them up. To cut the story short, she was looking for kshs 1,500 to start a business. “1,500?” I asked surprisingly. “Hiyo ata ni mingi. Ningepata 1,000, niko mbele” She replied.

Now, Kshs 1,500 to me is small. Its part of what I use in a day. But to her, its her whole business, her life and that of her family. Now, 90% of that money was to go to buying stocks for resale. I remembered a close relative who owns a bottled water company and had an idea of providing stocks to youths to be able to run businesses without much hassles of capital.

Some years ago, I was traveling and working in India and I came across the vast business of BPO. Its quite eminent and the big companies are doing a great job in lifting up small and medium businesses by outsourcing part of their processes to them. Some case studies are quite amazing since they integrate well with the corporate responsibility concept in Business. There is this milk company that used to outsource its package assembly to an NGO that supports destitute women. Win win, the company gets the packages done and the women get an income. Another polish company used disabled people to assemble watches. And somewhere near home, in south africa, a company that manufactures winding radios has outsourced its assembly to a special civil group and prisoners.

If companies could come up with policies that allows them to outsource part of their business to small businesses, I guess the economy and the society could gain enormously. My passenger woman made me realize that is only that the big businesses would provide products to the small juakali businesses, the issue of capital would not arise. However, as a businessman, I understand the implications that would arise if I would offer the woman products on credit. First, there is no trust, I barely know her and if she goes away with the products, I wouldn’t know where to get her. Second, her business is a survival business and its run informally making its continuity doubtful. Third, the magnititude of the business doesn’t guarantee family needs uninterruptions in business. If an emergency occurred, the woman doesn’t have an insurance for medical emergencies or any savings or investments. So the most probable thing she will do is to use the borrowed stock money. However she shrugged the latter saying “In juakali business, God is usually with us and big emergency do not occur”

I had goods worth over Kshs 100,000. And I usually give credit for goods worth as little as 1500. If this woman gets and sell these goods in a day and gets a 20% margin. She takes home Kshs 300. If she eats Kshs 150 and reinvests Kshs 150, it will take her 10 days to raise the capital. For micro finance, they provide the 1,500. What I am suggesting is that these small entrepreneurs could get interest free capital inform of stock from manufacturing business. The business could outsource the retail to them. But due to the intricacies involved, the companies wouldn’t trust them. That’s why we should see the civil society and community mid sized traders take initiatives to organize these small entrepreneurs and guarantee them upon the big enterprises. Since they know the juakali entrepreneurs, it would be easy to track and monitor them. In an organized way, I believe that my concept would work. It has actually worked.

The Internet is a global data communications system. It is a hardware and software infrastructure that provides connectivity ...more]]> The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used, interchangeably, in everyday speech without much distinction. However, the Internet and the Web are not one and the same.

The Internet is a global data communications system. It is a hardware and software infrastructure that provides connectivity between computers. The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP). It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, and other technologies.

In contrast, the Web is one of the services communicated via the Internet. It is a collection of interconnected documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. The Internet carry these vast array of information resources and services, most notably the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support electronic mail (e-mail), in addition to popular services such as online chat, file transfer and file sharing, online gaming, and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and person-to-person communication via voice and video.

Uses of Internet

Fibre optic brings forth cheap and fast internet to East Africa. With this, then we can get to see what’s in store for you. There are different uses of internet for individuals and organizations.

Internet for personal use

Internet has been popular for personal use. Most of the individuals use internet to do the following:

• E-mailing like yahoo and Gmail.

• Music and internet radio and TV

• Movies and video streaming like in Youtube and voodoo.

• Shopping at Ebay or Amazon

• Image and photo browsing

• Social networking like Facebook and twitter

• Instant messaging and chatting

• Internet telephony like Skype, Google voice and Yahoo voice

• Online gaming

Internet for Business

Communication

E-mail: Electronic mails are the most popular use of internet. Currently majority of internet users login in to send and receive e-mails. There are many e-mail service providers both paid and free. Due to its popularity, it has become the most effective form of marketing for small and medium businesses in Kenya. This is a must for everyone. Encourage your family and friends to open e-mails. Pioneers for free e-mail services are Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail.

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) started from an optional two-way voice chat provided by some of the instant messaging systems that started around the year 2000. The benefit of VoIP is that it can be free or cost much less than a normal telephone call, because the Internet carries that voice traffic. VoIP is surely a cheap solution for long distance call. Yahoo voice, Google voice and Skype dominate free voip providers.

Teleconferencing: Most organizations are embarking video or tele conferencing. This is where you can hold a meeting online where you could see and talk to each other from the comfort of our offices, homes or even on holidays. A good example is Webex.

Marketing (E-Marketing): Reputable companies are establishing their online presence by developing their company websites. The websites are stuffed with information about the company’s profile, the latest news about the company, partners, and the company’s product line. Businesses have taken advantage of internet to reach the mass market. They use their websites for profiling, to advertise, list in directory, buy advertisement spaces in high traffic sites and even use e-mails to reach both existing and prospective customers. Bizkenya.com is a one of the web development providers for small and medium organizations in Kenya.

Transactions (E-commerce)- E-commerce is a term that has been used widely in internet world. E-commerce basically means buying and selling through internet. Businesses have managed to establish online catalogues and created shopping carts where potential customers can see their products’ information, decide to buy, select, pay for them and even get delivered instantly. This makes the business process short and easy. E-bay, Amazon and Paypal fall under this category.

Human resource management (E-HRM)- Businesses has embraced the online recruitment systems. They are now putting forms online so that prospective employees can list their resumes and even give feedback. The HRM has advanced to include employee management systems and intranets to ease the information flow and increase efficiency. Check out our own myjobseye.

Customer Relations (E-CRM)- E-CRM (online customer relationship management) is a system that ensures that the customers’ information is kept updated, accessed easily and efficiently in a database and their communication is enhanced. These systems can be web or computer based and run through branches and subsidiaries. For instance Sugarcrm

Operations: Organizations have been establishing intranets to enhance smooth operations and interconnectivity between departments, branches and divisions. This enhances harmonized and efficient communication and information flow. Intranets are like editable websites but restricted for use within a closed network.

Accounting: Accounting and finance were the first disciplines in business to get automated, due to their dependence on figures. In internet and web, most of the accounting systems nowadays are web dependent to embrace interconnectivity and remote accessibility. Enterprise Resource Planners (ERP) are slowly taking over the accounting and administration processes.

Entrepreneurship: Business people and professionals are also not left out. They are using internet to network, make business and even seal deals. Online profiles are used to tap for opportunities. Great recommendations are Linkedin and Bizkenya

OTHER USES

Education (E-learning): With the advent and popularity of the internet, easy access to high speed internet connection and affordability, attaining higher education has been made easier than ever for those who want and need it. This is called Online Education. Just like traditional methods of learning, online education and online degrees are now widely accepted. They’re recognized as genuine educational qualifications. A simple search online will reveal a lot of online learning programs.

Researching: Individuals, academia, business, governments and not for profits are relying on internet to seek for information. These research endeavors provide information necessary in making decisions or establishing conclusive outcome for implementation. Companies like Google and Wikipedia are pioneers in research and information searching.

E-Banking: Most of the banks are using internet and web to make banking easy. With an e-bank account, you can check balance, transfer funds, print statements, order for chequebooks, pay bills and many more. Most Kenyan banks like Equity, CBA and NIC does e-banking.

CONCLUSION: SCENARIO

This is what we would see some years to come: An accountant sitting at home in Nakuru can audit the books of a company based in Uganda, on a server situated in a Australia that is remotely maintained by IT specialists in India. These accounts could have been created by home-working bookkeepers, in Bungoma, based on information e-mailed to them from offices in Nairobi, Kigali, Dar es Salaam and Johannesburg. Concurrently, a field worker in Juba can send field data and GPS video streams to his boss in Nairobi and telecasted and presented live by the Executive Director on an international conference to London. These and many are the scenarios that we will see in just a couple of years to come. Take time and establish what you would like internet to do for you. Then Consult. And Outsource.

E-mail marketing or Electronic Mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mails as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. ...more]]> INTRODUCTION

E-mail marketing or Electronic Mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mails as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to: Sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers and to encourage Customer loyalty and repeat business; Sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately; and sending e-mails over the Internet, for the purpose of informing or educating.

ADVANTAGES

• A mailing list provides the ability to distribute information to a wide range of specific, potential customers at a relatively low cost.
• Compared to other media investments such as  direct mail or printed  newsletter e-mail is less expensive.
• An exact  return on investments can be tracked (“track to basket”) and has proven to be high when done properly. E-mail marketing is often reported as second only to  search marketing as the most effective online marketing tactic.
• The delivery time for an e-mail message is short (i.e., seconds or minutes) as compared to a mailed advertisement (i.e., one or more days).
• An advertiser is able to “push” the message to its audience, as opposed to  website-based advertising, which relies on a customer to visit that website.
• E-mail messages are easy to track. An advertiser can  track users via  autoresponders,  web bugs, bounce messages unsubscribe requests,  read receipts, click through, etc. These mechanisms can be used to measure  open rates, positive or negative responses, and to correlate sales with marketing.
• Advertisers can generate repeat business affordably and automatically.
• Advertisers can reach substantial numbers of e-mail subscribers who have opted in (i.e., consented) to receive e-mail communications on subjects of interest to them.
• Over half of  internet users check or send e-mail on a typical day.
• Specific types of interaction with messages can trigger (1) other messages to be delivered automatically, or (2) other events, such as updating the profile of the recipient to indicate a specific interest category.
• E-mail marketing is paper-free (i.e., “green”).
• Tracking and response metrics enables tuning and optimisation of the E-mail marketing channel by a process of testing different variants and calculation of statistically significant results.
• E-mail is popular with digital products marketers.

DISADVATAGES

• Many companies use e-mail marketing to communicate with existing customers, but many other companies send unsolicited bulk e-mail, also known as spam.
• The sheer volume of spam has led some users to mistake legitimate commercial e-mail for spam. This situation arises when a user receives e-mail from a mailing list to which he/she subscribes. Additional confusion arises when both legitimate and spam messages have a similar appearance, as when messages include  HTML and graphics.
• One effective technique used by established email marketing companies is to require what is known as the “double opt-in” method of requiring a potential recipient to manually confirm their request for information by clicking a unique link which includes a unique identification code to confirm that the owner of the recipient email address has indeed requested the information.

E-MAIL MARKETING TOOLS

E-mail delivery

You need to have a medium to use to send emails. Depending on the size of your addressbook and the frequency, you can choose which program to use to send emails.

If you will be sending less than 500 emails per day, then a normal email account is enough. POP3 accounts have various email sending limits. They are those that limit in hourly basis (200 emails per hour) and those that limit per day (the highest being 2000 per day). Check with your web host to know your sending limits. Otherwise your account will be blocked if you exceed the limits. Free mailing platforms also have varied limits. Gmail has the highest with 500 emails, then yahoo at 200 sent in batches of 50 and hotmail at 200 per day.

If you intend to send more than 500 emails per day, it’s the time you need to solicit commercial programs.or mailing lists programs. There are various commercial and open source programs that you can use to develop an emailing platform. The most common ones are constant contact, sendblaster, phplist, mailman, pommo. weber etc. These mailing lists have a capacity to deliver even about 100,000 emails per day. However, it has to depend on the mailing server you are using. It should not have email sending limits.

Email creation

The emails to be sent needs to be formatted. There are two modes of sending emails; text or html.

Text emails are just words which are simply formatted. You cannot include images when sending with this format. The format is simple, light and easy to send. You can send these emails in large batches. They are actually like the normal emails we send hence they end up right into the inbox (not junk folder)

HTML emails are emails which are highly formatted. Sometime you will see them look like websites. They include text formatting, images and graphics and even other media like videos and music. They are smart and presentable. These emails are heavy and complicated. They take time to send and might load the server. Its recommended to send them in small batches. Since these mails are the one used by advertisers in spams, they are often filtered to the junk folder by email clients.

Address Book management

You will need to have valid email address to send the emails to. Organizations and individuals gather addresses into the addressbook from the customers, friends and family. The size of your address book determines the platform and format to use.

Small organizations can use normal emails since their addressbook are small whereas large organizations can purchase commercial solutions that don’t limit their capabilities.

Its important you have an addressbook that can be able to group of filter addresses by groups. This ensures that you can be able to send specific emails to niche groups. It enhance effective communication and targeted marketing.

EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGIES

There are several ways of doing email marketing depending on what you want relied over internet. Most organizations will use email marketing to do the following:

Customer Relationship Management: It can be used when an organization want to relay important information about a product or service to their existing customers like product enhancement, service reminders, product safety, service improvement etc.

E-Newsletters: Organizations can be sending regular newsletters to their subscribers. These newsletters will provide information within and without the organization. It could also be information about a certain service or industry. E-newsletter is refered to as a gentleman spam. Its both informative, educative and also commercial since you can slot advertisement slots in the newsletter.

Announcements and Alerts: Mailing lists are also use for announcements. Most organizations have announcements to make to their customers. To make it personal and quick, they send emails to each and every one of them. For instance, an internet service provider will send an email to its 10,000 subscribers list to tell then of a potential virus circulating in the internet.

Sales: The times of knocking on people’s doors to solicit for business are gone. People are using the internet to do cold calling. Internet is very effective because you can contact thousands of people in one hour what you could do to only one person in door to door selling. Organizations are using email marketing to generate sales leads. With effective follow-up, they eventually become business.

The Basis of Web Marketing is a website. It’s a must for it to run on a website. Whether yours or not. Before choosing the right web marketing strategy, I advice that you must have a website. This acts as a source of ...more]]> Introduction to Web Marketing

The Basis of Web Marketing is a website. It’s a must for it to run on a website. Whether yours or not. Before choosing the right web marketing strategy, I advice that you must have a website. This acts as a source of information about your products and services and also the contact and transaction place for your potential clients.

Web marketing is an outcome of the electronic wave that is sweeping the globe. It has been successfully harnessed and this has resulted in various advantages like online buying and selling of goods as well as the generation of business leads.

Web Marketing Strategies.

There are various strategies that you can adopt for Web marketing:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): In this kind of marketing, the website is made more search engine friendly so that when a specific keyword or search is typed by the user, the site will make it into the top search results. This type of Internet marketing is more appropriate method to attract the potential customers. SEO is done in two ways:

(a) Creating meta tags for use in the headings and taglines. These tags describe the site. Since search engines recognizes the titles first, the metas are indexed and become the cornerstone of the site. When the site is queried by search requests, the titles are queried first before going to the pages and posts.

(b) You can also make user friendly and meta-based pages and posts. For example, a page like http://www.bizkenya.com/3189.html is not seo friendly. But http://www.bizkenya.com/web-design is seo friendly. If one search web design, he will get the latter than the former (Though the pages have the same content)

2. Pay-Per-Click: Under this category, the advertiser pays the search engine certain amount to get the address of his website featured separately if a keywords relating to his industry of sector is typed in. The most popular pay per click engines are Adsense and Adwords (owned by Google), Yahoo, MSN, and recently Facebook started their Pay per click.

Google AdSense is a program that allows you to generate revenue by placing other people’s text or image ads on your website and in turn have your ad appear on the pages of sites related to your product or service. You can filter out your competitor’s ad so it does not appear on your Website. AdSense puts your ad all over the Web and creates links back to your site which increases your ranking in the search engines. These are not pop up ads that open a box or new screen while you are trying to read the text of a Website. Web page, the hyped up ad remains and may be hard to close. Pop up ads are annoying and along with spamming, they are the worst marketing schemes available.

3. Affiliate Marketing: It is a kind of marketing wherein a company hires other companies or websites known as affiliates and entrusts them with the responsibility of marketing the product. The affiliates are paid commission. The affiliates can host a website in which it may display the banners or logos of the company. If the visitor clicks on this banner, they are redirected to the sponsor’s site. The affiliate is paid a commission.

You can join a two tier affiliate program and recruit front line affiliates. Earn commissions every time they make a sale. Apart from being an Affiliate, You can also sell your own products which you have created through affiliate marketing programs. As you recruit affiliates they can market your products for you and make you more money.

4. Online Auctions: Online auctions are just as the auctions that take place in the real world. Items are put up for sale and the seller quotes the minimum price. Interested buyers then start quoting their price. And the item is sold to the highest bidder. The buyers in case of online auction can be form any part of the world

5. Banner advertising: Here banners of the advertiser are displayed on the website. The advertisers pay a certain amount of money to get the banner displayed on the website for a certain period of time. The banners are usually visually appealing to attract the potential customers. The respond it will get depends upon the website it has been displayed. Again there is no guarantee that the prospective customers will view it.

Banner Ads are usually animated, colorful graphics that go horizontally across the top of a Web page or vertically on the left or right side of a page. Both ads link to another Website and entice the visitor to leave the page they are on to see what the other site has to offer. These are losing popularity because people don’t enjoy being distracted by the movement. Ads that don’t move or talk are more effective.

6. Directory Listings: It is a service wherein sites are placed in special categories in a directory. Such kind of service can be free or fee based.

Online city guides or industry directories such as Yellow Pages feature businesses in a particular area. For example, if someone in Nairobi is looking for a toy store, they may use the search engine to browse the online guide and find all the toy stores within a 10 mile radius of their locality. In addition to the general listing which are many times free, you may purchase an ad for a related page.

The listing can be made in yellow pages or directories such as Yahoo. www.Bizkenya.com also have a directory where you could list your business for free.

7. Online magazines/Newsletters offer ad space for a fee (depending upon the magazine’s popularity and traffic) and may appear for the duration of the current issue of the magazine. By selecting a magazine that relates to your product you are able to direct your ad to your target market rather than to a generic audience. You can take out a classified ad in an ezine. An excellent way for you to get the word out about your products is by publishing e-newsletters which have very targeted readers. If you publish an ezine some of these people could end up subscribing to yours.

8. Website Lead Generation provides you with qualified leads at a set price per lead. These are generated by telemarketing companies who do cold calling to find potential clients for you. Lead Generation Services guarantee a particular level of ROI (return on investment) and frees your staff of marketing efforts.

9. Blogging and social bookmarks your articles. This is a great way to drive traffic to your blog and serve as search engine bait for additional traffic. Establish a blog of have your site linked to a blog. This ensures that there is resourceful information about your area of expertise. When people are looking for solutions online, they find them in resources (which you have submitted in your blogs) and then buy your products and services as a remedy. Provision of information online is a good way of advertising your expertise. When people realize you are an expert, they would like to do business with you. Then when you write these articles, you can bookmark them and share them in social networks like facebook.com, twitter.com, linkedin.com etc Also, write and submit articles to article directories. In every article you write include a resource box that contains a link back to your website. Do massive article marketing and brand yourself as an expert in your area of writing.

10. Participation in discussion forums & other blogs. You should ensure that you submit relevant posts to forums and blogs of the same area. If you are in web design sector, you should be hang out in forums and sites that discuss the same. In your signature file include a link back to your website where people can learn more about you. Of course since they will be impressed.

11. Web Products Catalogue/Page: You should ensure that your products and services page in your website is the best. It should be precise, with adequate information and legible. It should have a link to the Contact Page incase the reader would like to get in touch quite easily. When developing the product page, consider the 4 P’s of Marketing. Product, Place, Price and Promotion. The Product details should be precise and clear. They should describe the product or service and highlight on the values and benefits. The Price should be indicated and where not possible, there should be a link to a Quotation request form. The Place is important and hence the page should show where products/services are accessible. Once I went online and found a very good pocket PC. The features and prices were right but it was only available for shipping in USA. Indicate your market area to capture the audience and also stop wasting time for the readers who cannot access your products. Finally, on Promotion, is the page well done? The way the products have been aligned, photos and text harmony and the page formatting. The presentation of the products and services online matters a lot.

12. Trade Linking is a unique marketing tactic. It’s a scratch, I scratch you. People who own websites and links usually trade links with other Internet marketers and do reciprocal linking. Each link trade gives you a back link to your site and potential visitors from it. This helps the people in the network to market each other. In the recent blogging systems like wordpress and bloggers, you will find options to activate this feature. They are referred to as Pingbacks and trackbacks. They link together posts from different websites with similar information.

2.0 Advantage of Web Marketing

1. No Geographical Limitation: Since the Internet has no geographical constraints; it is good tool for marketing. One can advertise the products on the web to attract the potential customers. One need not be physically present to deal with the client.

2. Global Market: Before the advent of the Internet, for procuring a business, one had to visit abroad, hunt for buyers and then finalize the deal. This proved a major hindrance for small and medium sized companies as it meant having huge financial capacity. Web marketing has become a great boom, as one need not travel anywhere for getting and meeting the prospective customers.

3. Cost-effectiveness: Internet marketing is proving to be a cost-effective option as compared to traditional methods of marketing such as print, and the audio/video medium. One only has to have access to the net in order to start up with Internet marketing. One also saves on traveling cost that is incurred if trade fairs and trade shows are attended.

4. Availability – 24 hours: Internet marketing can be done for 24x7x365. If a company maintains a website, this website can be viewed by customers any time during the day. For e.g. an e-store maintained by an electronics manufacturer. The prospective buyers can visit the site as per their convenience and will browse the product gallery. They can also go through the description of the product and gather more information related to the same.

5. Display of full information: In the traditional world of print and audiovisual, there is a limit to how much information can be passed on to a customer. In print the restriction is in the form of the size of the ad (Unless you want to shell out a huge amount!). In radio and TV ads one has the restriction, which is measured in seconds. These restrictions cannot be ignored. If a company is having a diverse product line, a website can be a more proper medium of conveying the information to the reader.

6. Referencing: You can be able to bookmark a site that you find interesting for future referencing. This makes it easier for e-marketing to generate future sales through a single marketing initiative.

7. Increasing the returns on investment on a website: Web marketing increases the return on investment on the website. If the website is able to attract more customers and increases the sale volume, the website owner will be able to recover the expenses incurred on developing and maintaining the website.

8. Discovery of new markets: Many times it so happens that a particular market remains untapped by the seller due to his lack of awareness or due to geographical hostility. Under such circumstances, web marketing can serve as a great tool in tapping such markets. Since Internet has no geographical boundaries, it is easier for the buyer or the supplier to know and contact each other. This has led to the discovery of new markets. If customers from untapped markets come to the seller he will become aware of the existence of a new market for his products.

CONCLUSION

Web marketing is thus a new age marketing that provides the sellers with never seen before kind of opportunities. Since it is online, it is much cheaper than traditional methods of marketing and can be done by even a small-scale enterprise.

Most web marketing strategies lack personal interaction with the potential client. You must convey your message with words and pictures to sell your product. Therefore, your website needs to have a call to action. Ask the customer to buy your product or hire you. At the very least ask the visitor to click on a link and get more information. Make sure you have an easy payment system in place to handle credit card purchases. A frustrated customer will take their online business elsewhere. No matter what online marketing strategy you use, make sure it produces enough sales to cover the ad costs and make a profit. I wish you well in your business.