Tech For Start Up Britain Week: “Guerilla Shopkeeping - Fight in a Global Online Marketplace” by Moonfruit and Paypal.
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 11:19AM Moonfruit, Paypal and Start Up Britain joined forces in impressive style to produce Wednesday’s “Guerilla Shopkeeping - Fight in a Global Online Marketplace” Event.
The online blurb for the event promised to help Small Businesses reinvent their identity. However, when the proceedings kicked off, it fast became apparent that the event’s purpose was not to coerce SMEs into revolutionising their brand image. Instead, the “Guerilla Shopkeeping” event gave attendees a plethora of tips on how to refine how they operate, how to better interact with their client-base, and how to optimise their digital shopfront.
Therefore, the event encouraged the development of existing organisations into a better version of themselves. This approach, in my humble opinion, is a better operating method for a business with a future than total reinvention and revolution.
After a short introduction from Paypal, Emma Jones took to the stage. Emma, co-founder of Start Up Britian, is an incredibly adept and ever-captivating talker, and she got the afternoon off to a brilliant start.
Emma gave a piece of advice that was, perhaps, the piece of intelligence that the attending SME owner-managers and entrepreneurs should hold most dear to them: Focus on your niche.
Focusing on a niche is most beneficial for small businesses in particular because, for a start, it keeps your costs low and it defines your marketing approach.
Emma explained that if you only focus on what you’re brilliant at - for example, building Drawbridges in the Welwyn Garden City area - then you only have to spend money on the raw materials and collateral costs incurred by the construction of drawbridges.
Furthermore, staying true to your niche is useful as it defines your marketplace. To continue with the same universally-applicable metaphor-enterprise: there only a certain amount of clients who will need a Drawbridge built in the Welwyn Garden City area. If you’re the business that’s building them, those clients-in-need will come to you, if your marketing strategy targets them.
An important thing to remember whilst you are exploiting your niche is that you don’t have to be a jack of all trades. A great soundbite of Emma’s - which rhymes and scans, either by happy accident or manufacture - is: do what you do best, and outsource the rest.
Spend your time making your product or providing your service, if your business requires another job doing then get someone else in to do it. Let’s be honest, they will probably be better at it, as it’s their niche! So, focus on building the drawbridges, and outsource your Drawbridge-related Sales, Social Media and Delivery to someone else, for instance.
To summarise all of the above: “Niches don’t restrict your business, they specialise it.”
After Emma’s truly impressive advice, Wendy Tan-White and Joe White took their place on the podium to talk about the new Shopbuilder platform offered by their business, Moonfruit.
Wendy and Joe occupy a sought-after piece of ‘Tech Week’ real-estate: The ethical high-ground. Wendy gave a great presentation that was punctuated by interesting facts and statistics about the engagement of entrepreneurs with digital selling, before her husband Joe explained how smart and easy-to-use the Shopitize service is. (And it is smart and easy to use, I was sitting next to a freelance web-designer at the event and he leant over and said to me, jokingly perhaps, ‘I think I’m out of a Job!’)
The point is that the event didn’t turn into a sales-pitch. The Shopbuilder service was of course afforded adequate oxygen, but noone in attendance had to to stifle a splutter because something was being too vehemently rammed down their throats.
Wendy discussed that as well as core content, and effective SME-shop-website requires good branding and to be available, usable and locatable across all channels. Branding is not just attractive design, but needs an injection of your business’ personality and identity. The channels that need to be considered are regular web, search, mobile, social media, and email.
As well as the core info that is necessary on your website - products, services, location, contact - Wendy listed other options that add value, which included blogs, guides, FAQs, infographics and testimonials. She also mentioned that the best kind of content that you can hope for is user-generated. It’s free, and other users are likely to trust and respect external testimony.
It was only after Wendy had provided the audience with a ballast of practical information that Joe explained how Moonfruit’s Shopbuilding service worked. His presentation did not last long, and he managed to build several integral parts of a website in front of our eyes and listed items on the site. I think that tells you all you need to know.
Take a look around Moonfruit here: http://www.moonfruit.com/
Thank you again to Start Up Britain, and thank you to Moonfruit and Paypal for putting on such an informative and beneficial event.
ClubWorkspace 
Reader Comments (3)
Super news. I just discovered your blog and China Wholesale to tell you that I have for sure enjoyed wholesale designer watches your blog posts. I have became a subscriber to your RSS feed and I hope you will write a new post again in near future. I am wondering if I have to subscribe to comments RSS feed as well. Any helpful wholesale Hello Kitty Watches happening in comments to blog posts?
One of the most renowned SEO Company India, Profit By Search is an ethically driven SEO company which not only provides your business with cost effective SEO Services but also armed with our organic search engine optimization techniques make your site appear on top searches of popular search engines.
Great information you shared here. thanks for easing my work. if you are interested to buy best Ink Toners and cartridges online in u.k than visit Ink toners