Monthly Archives: May 2012

Problems Facing New Businesses

Published May 31, 2012 | By John Mitchell

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Last updated on April 13th, 2015 at 02:03 pm

My partner set up a new business less than a year ago and the whole exercise has opened my eyes to just what new businesses have to put up with nowdays – Forest Software has been trading for over 30 years and I am sure that all that time ago there were not so many pitfalls for the unwary new business owner.

These dangers include :-

“Energy brokers” that trick small businesses into changing power suppliers and entering into contracts that can leave the businesses a lot worse off than they would have been.
SEO firms that ring up out of the blue and tell businesses that they have a special relationship with Google and promise to get websites to the top of the search engines (despite Google telling you themselves that this is not possible).
“telecoms consultants” who ring and tell you that BT is a lot more expensive than you need pay.
Firms offering unsolicited loans to small businesses, seemingly without needing to put up any security.
Credit card processing firms that promise you that their rates are less than all their competitors

Continue reading →

Posted in Business advice | 1 Comment

Targeting Mailshots

Published May 13, 2012 | By John Mitchell

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Last updated on April 13th, 2015 at 02:04 pm

This blog post aims to explore the reasons that you, as a business, should think carefully about how you are going to target any mail shots that you are sending out.

I live in rural North Wales and have recently managed to upgrade from ADSL to ADSL 2+ in order to improve the broadband speed that I get at home. This has improved the broadband speed from around 1mbps to just under 2mbps.

Imagine my surprise and “delight” when I got a letter from BT telling me that was headed “Supercharge your broadband speed with BT Infinity”. The letter went on to tell me that BT’s fibre optic broadband is four times faster than the UK average and telling me that they invited me to try out the BT speed-checker and offering me a deal to switch to BT Infinity for just £9 a month for the first 3 months.

I visited the BT speed-checker and entered my phone number only for the BT website to tell me that BT Infinity was not available on my phone line and that my expected speed was 2mbps on the ADSL line I already had. Continue reading →

Posted in Business advice, Marketing | 1 Comment