Team Briefing

• quality
• identity
• emotional associations
• logos
• slogans
• reputation
• values
• recognition
• consistency
• mission
• unique
• luxury
• reliability
• customer experience
• aesthetics
• design
• exclusivity
• comfort
• differentiating

That’s quite a tough ask of anything.  Delivering on that agenda kind of begs the question  – are you giving and getting all that from your brand? Actually – not all brands set out to position themselves as exclusive or luxury – and many, like the low cost supermarkets and value brands have done extremely well in the recent recession.  The problems emerge when there is a mismatch of perception, the brand promise, customer or employee expectations and what the experience is – and that was what our workshop boiled down to.

In this two part series I want to talk about how we engage with brands, where they add value and importantly, how organisations can use them to engage with their customers and employees. In this first part we address some definitions and a little bit of the mechanics.

To begin with, there is nothing fluffy about the role of design, logos and the aesthetic elements of branding – far from it.  That doesn’t mean we all do this well though – here are a few tips and ideas that may help you to explore your own brand and see where there is room for improvement.

What’s in a name – or a logo?

Logos are used to identify your product, organisation, initiative or service from others.  Done well they can immediately differentiate you via the use of a mark, flag, symbol or signature that can suggest differences in quality, price point, emphasis, values and many other things – all from their appearance and design. Logos have meaning derived from the quality of the entity they symbolise, and not the other way around. Logos don’t need to literally describe all that a company is or does but their job is to make it memorable and recognisable.  It’s a bit like knowing someone’s name and using it with other people – once they have made the association between the two, simply using the name conjures up the identity of the person with out requiring any further explanation.  However, logos depend upon quite widespread exposure to create the intended association within and without the organisation.  It is familiarity that allows logos and branding to achieve its purpose. The logo is the corporate identity and brand all wrapped up into one identifiable mark. This mark is the avatar and symbol of the business as a whole.

What is identity?

In design terms, identity is all the visual devices (including logos) used within an organisation. Often, these are produced in a set of corporate guidelines or style guide, designed to ensure consistency.   The purpose of the guidelines is to ensure coherence, consistency and integrity of the brand which helps to ensure it will be recognisable.  Here are some of the things that typically are included in a style guide:

• Overview of the organisation – e.g. provide some context for users about the organisation’s mission, purpose and values
• Information about logos and use of colour, reproduction in black and white
• Font styles and sizes to be used in different situations
• Page and presentation layouts for internal and external use, on their own or in relation to others; measurements, margins and spacing
• Tone of voice
• Photographic guides
• Templates for layout demonstrating use of master artwork

Many visual devices that make up identity apart from the logo including:

• Letterheads, business cards, etc.
• Marketing communications and collateral (e.g. prospectus, annual report, brochures, web pages)
• Products & Packaging
• Uniforms / dress codes (clothing worn by employees)
• Interior & exterior signs and office design elements
• Anything visual that represents the business e.g. vans, livery flags

All of these things make up an identity and should support the brand as a whole.

So what is branding?

Much has been written on the ‘brand’ and it has become big business for ad agencies over the years who promoted it as a strategy required for success.  The brand is effectively shaped and interpreted by the perceptions of the audience and in that way it can be said that actually all organisations have a corporate image – whether deliberate, well designed, coherent, effective, value adding, accidental or not!

Designers don’t “make” brands but their work can influence the foundation of yours.

You might almost say that a brand is the ‘corporate image’ and as such everything an organisation produces, owns and does should reflect its values and aims as a whole. This notion of consistency and integrity is a core challenge and a driver of engagement with the brand.  Many well known organisations have been extremely successful in projecting and controlling their corporate image.  Widespread audience research suggests that their public perception reflects the image they are trying create and live up to.  Other disastrous examples demonstrate the importance of the brand and public perception. Witness the Gerald Ratner gaff that wiped £500m off the value of Ratners jewellers with his speech in the early nineties:

Gerald Ratner – Crap Branding?!?

The best brands succeed in creating an emotional attachment – but the emotion intended is not usually anger, disappointment or embarrassment!

In the next part we look at how branding works in relationship to engagement with customers and employees.

Liz Moody

In small owner-managed businesses and start-ups, people often don’t mind pitching in and working hard. Issues like  whose job is it to? or which customers or markets are pretty clear. As for direction -  you work hard and long hours because every new customer and product sold is a win – you’ll take them all. Successes are pretty evident, and motivating – so you can sustain long hours and crazy schedules for some time without too much structure or the need for complicated systems. Things like communication can happen pretty easily.  Over time though, the need for a little more focus and specialisation becomes sensible if not inevitable.  Why?  Because we can’t be everywhere when we need to be; we can’t be good at everything and we can’t sustain the required attention and energy for prolonged periods of time because, quite simply – organisationally it gets too complex (if that isn’t a contradiction in terms!) and we’ll never have any more than 24 hours in a day.

There comes a stage in every growing organisation’s life when managers/owners need to start putting more structure around “how we do things around here”.  Becoming more effective and more efficient – more strategic and more focussed, more systematic and more skillful at these three things

1. doing the business  – manufacturing products, delivering services, fulfilling orders
2. managing the business – managing the money in and out; understanding profitability; directing, communicating with and training staff;  premises, suppliers, partners, the taxman etc.
3. getting the business – generating leads, bids, converting leads, getting repeat business, up-selling, cross-selling and securing contracts

Usually, we have a preference for one or at most two of these three areas and for many founders they love #1.  Getting the business suits some of us too – we can get immediate feedback for what we do in terms of orders, sales or wins – and that is gratifying.  It is in #2 that most small or new businesses fall down, in my opinion. It is harder to see the results of doing these things in terms that immediately hit the bottom line – and yet they can and they do.  I think the trouble with the activities in these roles is that you often cannot appreciate their value until they are not done – or not done well.  For example – if you don’t make your tax returns, you’ll still have to pay them and may well have a late payment penalty slapped on top.  If you don’t communicate effectively with customers and staff, you are relying on them to know what to do, when and how and this may not coincide with what you know is needed. Pretty soon you are going to have to resolve problems like duplicated effort, service failures, misdirections, rework – for the lack of clear instructions, or procedures.  You get the picture.

A long while ago now I was fortunate to meet a guy who introduced me to the work and philosophy of Ernesto Sirolli.  You can listen to what he has to say here:

Ernesto Sirolli Talks

I immediately was struck by the good sense of this charismatic Italian economic development specialist whose life work has been reviving communities, rejuvenating small business and leveraging networks and connections.  In many ways he was an inspiration for the direction I wanted to take Neontics in.  He understands that for many business owners and leaders, it is difficult to ask for help, that the help given is often not what they really need, and that changing how we work is hard.  It means giving up things we like do for things we sometimes must do.  It means entrusting things precious to us (our ideas, customers) and private to us (our fears, dreams and frailties).

Neontics can work with you in any one of these three areas of running a successful organisation to support individuals and teams who want to improve their business results.   Imagine what you can do with passionate people on your side, pulling in the same direction, achieving your and their goals.  And think about where you are now? Where is the gap?  Contact us to help you close the gap.

Data Alchemy

Obviously in a digital age, data is everywhere but for many non-specialist marketers it may not be obvious why it is essential.  In fact, a whole industry has grown up through the availability of data and the software that allows businesses to create databases, analyse and pull the data for targeted campaigns and customer relationship management. But what practical use does it have? One marketing fundamental that requires data is segmentation, and all good marketing is based on this.  Segmentation is the difference between mass spamming and targeted, effective efficient marketing. It’s so important that I’ll come back to that in another blog.  For now, I’ll refer to some insights that Mr Zarella revealed as a result of his mining data on Twitter use, aided and abetted by some funky software.

Data “alchemy” happens when we create insight from disparate bits of data – elemental facts about our customers, the marketplace and our business model.

For example:

Mr J Smith purchases product “a”   Mr John Smith purchases product “b” Mr and Mrs J A Smith purchase product “c”  – these are simply elemental facts that in themselves don’t allow us to do much. However when you can combine data with other data – say the address of one customer and the d.o.b. match -  you then know that you are dealing with the same individual. This is Information. 

Combine the first with the second and first of all you know you have a valuable customer in the Smith and armed with this, you can decide what to do. This is Insight and insight is knowledge.

That is the value of data to a business.  Knowledge allows you to make strategies and decide on tactics. Without it, your marketing is of the random, scatter gun approach that led to the situation whereby people used to accept that half their marketing worked – but they didn’t know which half!  A lot of expensive mistakes ensued.

A shed-load of data becomes available from all parts of a business – hence the term data warehouse which refers to the numerous depositary systems and databases that take feeds from data input from sales, finance, marketing, service etc.   The CRM and enterprise wide systems introduced during the nineties and noughties all sought to provide the holy grail of a single customer view (SCV) for businesses, one unique identifier that holds the key to calculating the current and lifetime value of your customers.  Of course, most long-standing organisations never make the investment to achieve this. For many of them, linking up their disparate operating systems, and creating ways for them to talk to each other has led them to huge investment in data projects and software installations that have tied them up in knots for years without yet yielding the promised ROI.

Start-ups Have An Advantage

While many start-ups I am sure are busy concentrating on bringing in new customers, they don’t necessarily appreciate the value of this exercise beyond list building.  My advice, for what it’s worth is to take your database seriously and build your CRM strategy from the outset. Armed with the insight they bring, you can really drive up the effectiveness and profitability of your marketing.

Data & Social Media – 7 Top Tips

In the rest of the blog I’m going to share how Dan Zarella has mined data from Twitter to provide some really interesting insights into making social media, more specifically Twitter more effective.  Right up front, he makes the point that you really have to be all over it -  in it, on it and on top of it to get any benefit and this where most small and growing businesses fall down.  This is also where Neontics can help you.  If you want specialist support to create and implement your marketing strategy and make the art and science of social media work, please get in touch by emailing Liz@neontics.com

Tip #1 Table Stakes

Whatever you do you must get this one right.  Twitter allows you to provide three pieces of biographical data telling people who you are, showing a picture of yourself and then a short 160 character statement describing you and what you do – this is the bare minimum, the table stakes to getting it to to work for you. Don’t leave these blank and do put some thought into what you say about yourself. It’s a really good discipline. Completing the profile thoughtfully and carefully can help you to recruit followers. (and for most of us it is about creating followers)

Tip #2 Make a good first impression

Based on Zarella’s analysis he determined that the most followed sites sound positive and authoritative in how they describe themselves.  They appear to have something of added value for followers.  They tell people why they should listen to you. Perhaps you have specialist skills, expertise, experience or something to sell that they want.  If you’re a best-selling author tell people that.

Tip #3 More is More

When it comes to being read and noticed you want your followers engaging in conversation but also sharing content in a viral way.  From his analysis of accounts it seems that the first magic number is to get over 1000 followers and then to be aiming for at least 22 tweets a day!  That’s a sizeable commitment for a small business owner who probably has to be doing the business, running the business and getting the next load of business in.  But according to Dan, anything less is going to be drowned out. So in this instance more is better – you simply cannot over-tweet it seems!  So the question is – who in your firm is going to do that?

Tip #4 What is there to say?

The aim is to broadcast a lot of interesting content. This means researching your audience, the kind of content they are interested in, generating some of it yourself to add value and raise awareness and interest in your particular expertise, and then broadcasting it.  Pressing publish or tweet is the easy bit. Having the energy and ideas to keep generating ideas is a bit harder – especially if it isn’t really your forte. This may be where some external support comes in.

Tip #5 But Then Less is More

There is no marketing benefit, in terms of increasing your reach and spread, by concentrating on being in conversation. So while replying to messages is well and good – perhaps it supports customer relationships – but in itself, it doesn’t grow your business.   For this you are better off focussing on sharing interesting content that your audience wants to read.  The accounts that appear to generate are those that post 60-80% links (i.e. Tweeting and sharing links to interesting content) get more retweets so more spread of your name and content.  But be careful as once you approach 90% links you have to be careful not to get into the territory of spamming people.

Tip # 6 And About 120 is About Right

The maximum number of characters allowed is 140 – but think about it, if you are trying to get retweeted, then you should allow space for people to add in their own comment too.

Tip #7 But How Should I Say It?

If you are writing to be re-tweeted, then including at least one @……  ensures that one person will probably read it an potentially retweet.  Also including a hashtag or “#”means that people not currently following you can find you if they are searching for information on which you are writing or you are writing on what is trending. And going back to tip 3, links whether they are embedded photos, video, or an article you want to share can provide something of interest and value.

Finally – in social media, capturing attention in a short space of time, when we are already bombarded by data and information from all points is dependent upon our being interesting or different.  So the tried and tested communications formula of being in the right place at the right time (see above), crafty well crafted and often provocative headlines help differentiate you from the rest.

If you liked this post, please share it.  There I asked nicely – please do it NOW!

The USP Theory

With a new to world product or service proposition then the conventional marketing wisdom stresses the importance of having a Unique Selling Proposition (USP).  The USP theory goes way back to 1961 when Rosser Reaves introduced the concept in his  book, “Reality in Advertising”.  Reaves talked about three conditions that must be met for advertising a USP:

• Must be a proposition which means you “Get these benefits when you buy this product”
• The proposition must be unique – something your competitors don’t, can’t or won’t offer
• The proposition must be what your prospects want – or certainly enough to buy it

Introducing AIDA

So when a product is truly “new to the world”, the marketing challenge is to first get it known about, then get people to try it and buy it.  One theory that covers this strategy is AIDA (see recent blog on Art & Science of Marketing I). AIDA (which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) effectively models the sequence in which tactics move your target audience through the stages of the buying.  In other words, as a start up you have no Awareness and so your initial marketing strategy should tackle this and then eventually move prospective customers through to Action (ideally purchase)! The question is how you might achieve that? One route is by persuading customers that what you have is something that will make life better, easier, more fun or give them more status or desirability and, as the model suggests, if this coincides with what they are looking for, this will lead to a sale.  In other words, the benefits of your product or service should be couched in terms of whatever it is that your customer perceives to be of value to them.

Competing For Time, Attention and Wallet

The trouble is, most businesses are not monopolies, and rarely operate in a vacuum.  Even if no-one (for now) has the same great idea as you do, you are still competing for a share of your customer’s time, attention and wallet. Whatever problem or gap you identify has an existing solution of sorts. And, even if yours is the best one in town it will only be for as long as it takes for the rest to catch up.

When an idea is truly ground-breaking, it takes a lot of time, effort and usually money, to establish it in the mainstream market. There is an inevitable time lag to make your first sale and even longer to get into profit. This is especially significant as an upstart start-up in competition for sales and seeking to displace the incumbent providers and suppliers.  In this situation not only is there a ton of work to be done to get noticed and recognised but there is also a lot of resistance and inertia to overcome because, well simply put, people have no reason to change supplier unless it is worth their while to do so.

Patience for the Long Game

In many ways, it doesn’t matter how great you think your product is, there are many reasons why people still won’t buy.  Even when they are aware of you (and this takes a long time to happen) and acknowledge that you have a product with something of value to offer, (again lots of work to be done to reinforce benefits and features here), you may still find that the time is not right to buy.  Perhaps their existing tool still does the job sufficiently well, for now. If the replacement cost seems high to them, and they need time to save for it, your marketing effort has to ensure that you are there are the right time, in the right place with the right offer to be successful.

Changing habits takes time, and the other issue of overcoming lack of confidence or appreciation  for the novel does too for everyone but the early adopters in any market.  Here marketing needs to reinforce and reassure, providing proof and evidence to set out a vision for how the change will enhance the buyer’s life.

The Buying Chain

Just to complicate things further, we are seldom dealing only with one decision maker.  For example you’ve probably heard that men are the most frequent buyers of women’s perfume.  Most I imagine are buying it as a gift :0)  Many products are bought by one person but intended for the use of another.  Further, the purchase may be influenced by the views of yet another person.   Take the example of a toy:  User is the child, purchaser Granny, final decision on appropriateness, the parent!  So your marketing has to have appeal to all links in the buying chain.

Oh and in a business to business marketplace, the complexity of the buyer decision-making chain is on another level.  Organisations may have several people that need persuasion and incentives to change product and supplier.   The people who hold the budget, the people who use the product, the ones who procure it and the people who will install and maintain it and so on….  Nobody said it would be easy!

And Nothing Lasts Forever

So the first stage in your marketing strategy is to understand who your buyers are, who you are competing against, who and what it is that you are trying to displace and on what criteria your customers buy. Once you have a clear view on this (usually requiring some serious research on your part) you are ready to move on.

So Why Choose You?

Next you have to create real reasons for buyers to choose you. Usually this means people need  a reason to change suppliers.   Again you need first to make them aware of you and your product,  how you/they compare with alternatives and thereby convincing arguments for prospective buyers that it is in their interest to buy from you. This is often where the USP comes into play.  99% of the time you will be competing with something or someone else – either a direct or indirect competitor. Understanding your prospective customers and competitors, and designing a competitive strategy requires the ability for customers to differentiate between alternatives.

But is a Unique Selling Point enough? The fact is, very few products or services are unique for long. Nothing lasts forever.  Positioning your business for growth and a bigger, or different marketplace, requires stepping up to some further challenges.

Protecting Your Unique Position

Most products and solutions are modifications or upgrades at best, and many are “me too’s”, the idea having been copied by another company who may or may not do it better.  The sad fact is that being unique is not always a guarantee of success.  It is often the second market entrant that makes the most money since in an ideal world, the first has already broken the ground, worked to raise awareness, made a first attempt at convincing early adopters to try and has identified where the early interest comes from.  Followers don’t have the same costs and barriers to overcome and some may even understand customers better or have a greater share of the existing market to leverage.  So “uniqueness” has to be supported by other sound marketing principles and strategies. And often this is where the strength of branding is leveraged.

Compelling Brands

If you have been successful in penetrating and maintaining the awareness of customers, the chances are that by now you will also be firmly on the radar of existing competitors or incumbents.  If they perceive you as a viable threat, they are highly unlikely to willingly give up market share without a fight. Their response might take many forms ranging from launching a communications campaign or strong rebuttal of your claims to be unique, to a full blooded rival or copy cat version of your product or service.  The more successful you are, the more likely they are to invest in replicating what they see as the winning features of your product or service for themselves.  Or if the opportunity is seen to be great, it may quickly suck in new competitors to take the innovation and competition further yet, into other new products, suppliers or solutions.   So how do you remain ‘differentiated’ in this hostile environment?  Well if a product is not “unique” in terms of its features perhaps it can be through branding.

Brand(abilities)

Brands are more than logos.  They may have started out as burnt on emblems on the underside of cows, but the concept extends far wider than cattle and ranches now! Brands are a mark of distinction (still) and an emblem of quality.  The best ones confer a promise and an expectation of quality in line with what the customer pays for. Premium brands charge and make a lot of money by building a proposition that is seen as enhancing and adding value to the consumer.  They can command high prices because they create exclusivity, desirability, durability, reliability and so on. (More on this in other blogs).  The reputation of a brand is built on the entire experience customers have of it and their perceptions are influenced by all the ways in which they interact with it.  This means not only the product, but  distributors, suppliers, service agents, sales, after sales and marketing promotions, employees and the whole shebang!

Creating Your Unique Brand

I read somewhere that the wonder of music is that there are only twelve notes.  So no matter who you are, these same dozen notes are all you have to work with. The fact is though that they can produce many unique variations through how they are combined and composed.  The same is true with people and their companies. Human beings and founders are made from the same elemental building blocks and substances but in what we value personally, and what we stand for, how we work and what that says about us, we are all unique.  The values and attitudes we hold, also determine what we expect from others and these in turn effect how we relate to them and vice versa. People affiliate with brand values – or they don’t according to how they fit with their own values and sense of self. That is why when you start a business, how you work and who you recruit is important.  The culture you create is in line with your particular values and how the people in the business behave, from the leaders down reveals a lot about what is important to that organisation.

Many huge global companies were founded by one or two individuals whose values still shape the brand.  A huge list of the biggest brands and charitable causes were for example, founded by Quakers.  Interestingly, Quakers were barred from working in many professions, including the law and the military. As a result they made their way in trade and commerce and other spheres spawning such household names as Kraft, Cadbury, Fry’s, Reckitts etc. Their sound working principles were founded around a sense of community which helped many of them survive through a lot of change as this entailed attending to the welfare of their workforce.

Healthy organisations are built on authentic values and the resulting culture, or “way things are done in the business” is very apparent for all to see.  It attracts the kind of employees that can operate happily in that culture because they feel comfortable in it and engaged in what it does, understand their role and how they are asked to go about it. Partners, employees, customers and investors sense when a culture is a genuine one and know that over time, the real facets of a culture come through.  When the going gets tough, the authentic values(as opposed to the merely espoused or aspirational ones), guide our decisions and actions.   While you can try to replicate the systems, processes, products and service touches that you think give competitors an edge over you, if it doesn’t reflect your authentic values and style, the facade will crack if not sooner, then later.

You ARE The “U”

So as a founder of a new business what does this mean for you?  The first thing is to be absolutely clear about what your own ethos is, the things you value and stand for and build your culture and your brand around those.  Ensure that people whom you recruit share similar values and that the work they are expected to do has meaning and relevance both for them and your organisation and that they can do that in such a way as it is in complete accord with your and their values.  Make how you work apparent for all to see and ensure that customers experience your brand as you intend it.  A product feature is hard to copy but an authentic brand, based on strong values is much harder to emulate.  The only thing that remains unique over time is YOU!

“It’s impossible to know how to get where you want to go, if you don’t know where you are starting from“  anon

Surprisingly few small businesses ever actually set formal objectives for sales and marketing.  They may well say they want growth, perhaps more sales, but actually they often don’t stop to quantify either.  And more than that, they don’t have a very clear picture of where their current business comes from, what marketing works for them and what does not. Understanding these measurements is critically important as they allow you to more confidently concentrate your marketing efforts on activities that provide a return and therefore make your marketing budget go further.  Without the statements of intent and measures of success that well set objectives provide, it’s not surprising that many people are reluctant to commit money to marketing.  You can waste a lot of money employing specialist (or more usually for small businesses non-specialist) marketing help, if you don’t have this as part of a proper, sustainable marketing system.

So how and where do you start?

Every business plan should have a hierarchy of objectives with the broadest, overarching corporate objectives at the top and gradually getting more specific for each area of the business it covers.  To get to specific marketing communication objectives, here are some of the questions to ask and answer to do the necessary analysis of what your business looks like now.

1. What revenue is the business planning to achieve? Or to put this another way, what income do you require in total?  What do you want to achieve by product, or if more appropriate, market, or even sales person?
2. Typically, what is the value of your average sale, project or transaction? You should also understand how many units are sold per order or contract.
3. Looking at what sales and marketing activity you do now.  The whole point of it is to generate leads that will eventually – sooner rather than later -  convert to sales.  So how many emails, mailings, sales visits etc. does it take to make a sale? This gives you a conversion rate of leads generated to sales closed.  What’s interesting about this measure is that you begin to understand where in the process you need to pay most attention.  If it is early on, then you need to address your marketing communications – perhaps the targeting, the key messages etc.  Towards the end of the process then you may have an issue with the pricing or the sales process.
4. Following on from the above, what does that sales and marketing activity cost?   Once you   understand each of these you are in a position to set some measures of success for what your marketing has to achieve.  You may also be shocked to see either how little or how much time you are spending on marketing and how effective it is, currently.  This should help you to decide whether you should bring in an expert.

Lead Generation – Do the Math!

There are numerous ways to generate leads and having done analysis along the lines of the above, you are in a good position to understand which ones are more effective and efficient use of your time.  You know your sales, you know your costs, so from this, it is possible to calculate how many leads you need your marketing communications to generate.  If you understand your conversion rate, you also have an idea of how many contacts you need to make to convert that to leads. It’s mathematics – the science in the art and science of marketing.  And once you know how many contacts you need, you can start to develop your prospect database.  And so on….

These are some of the key marketing metrics that any new and growing business needs to understand. If you’d like to understand more about how to make your marketing more effective, take the plunge, do the math! Get in touch with Liz@neontics.com

There Are No Shortcuts

That’s the trouble really – if you are going to be involved in it, it makes sense to use them well and there are no shortcuts – it takes time and effort over a sustained period of time.  It is interesting that many clients or prospective clients I meet have the impression that social media is free and therefore it is attractive to them.  Sure the accounts may be free but in reality, integrating and really using them to any effect takes time – and time is money, whether you are paying someone directly to manage your marketing communications, or doing it yourself. Think of it this way – if you are spending time on LinkedIn, Facebook or tweeting, there is something else you aren’t doing. That’s what the economists call an “opportunity cost”.

It’s A Question of Commitment

A lot of advice is around about how to use these channels and indeed LinkedIn have produced some best practice tips that you can check out here. However, the main tip is that you have to be active on a regular basis, to benefit. Since the busiest times for LinkedIn are mornings and around noon, Monday to Friday, if you want to catch attention this means potentially planning to be active everyday of the working week. Are you able to commit to that?

In a sense it’s a case of damned if you don’t and if you do but not properly! By having accounts and not making regular use of them, you are potentially putting people off your business.  What does it say about you to have a Twitter account with 4 tweets and 2 followers?  Either you are very new in the game – but people can see how long your account has been active; or you don’t have much to say.  What is the story you are telling?  Some recent research provides interesting findings. For example, when asked:
“What does it say about a brand if they are not involved with sites like Facebook or Twitter?” respondents said :
“It’s EXPECTED that a company have some digital face – whether it’s on FB or Twitter I don’t know – but they need a strong electronic presence or you doubt their relevance in today’s marketplace.” Female 50-54
“Either they are not interested in the demographic that frequents Facebook and Twitter or they are unaware of the opportunity to get more exposure in a more interactive method.” Male 35-39
“It shows they are not really with it or in tune with the new ways to communicate with customers.” Female 18-24.
“If they’re not on Facebook or Twitter, then they aren’t in touch with the “electronic” people.” Female 55-59

Of course you may tell yourself that those demographics are not your target market (at least not now?) but you know that’s just an excuse not to do anything.  In my experience, it is better to work one channel well than several badly.  It is however even better if you can integrate them all within your marketing system so that they create a virtuous circle of recruiting followers, spreading information, sharing, collecting insight and data and a basis for recommendation and referrals.  So how do we do that?

Leading To Action

Models of marketing communications theory describe a process of leading prospective customers through the buying process by focusing on content and communication that moves them from a state of “unawareness” through to “action”.

• “Unaware”  they don’t know you or your products

• “Aware”  they know who you are, have heard of you

• “Interest” you are on their radar and there is an increased commitment to hearing from you

• “Desire” you are tapping into the right messages and their motivation to buy

• and finally “Action” at which point, they are ready to buy from you.

It’s actually a question of engagement. How do you boost engagement with your followers?
The answer is not rocket science but is a matter of making each marketing channel work for you. Ensuring that you promote your LinkedIn page on your website, through your Twitter account and Facebook page, directing and pointing readers to each of these helps increase traffic and so awareness and followers.

Customer comments and reviews you receive and put on your website, can be linked to from Facebook, directing people to the landing page and vice versa directing people from your LinkedIn page to your website.  Potential customers these days are far more persuaded by what real customers say and think of you than they are by your marketing spiel. And it goes without saying that you need to have a prominently displayed button to enable people to sign up to each of your channels, on your website and your social media pages, making it as easy as possible.

It’s Really Just Good Marketing

Most of what follows relates to specific facilities on LinkedIn but much of it can also be applied to Facebook or Twitter and it really is just a good scientific approach to marketing.  As part of your normal scanning of competitors ( you do that right?), LinkedIn can be very useful and convenient to see not only what competitor companies are doing but also their (and potentially your) customers. Who is active in their company?  What is their background and what groups are they in, what discussions are they participating in?  Of course if you can link in to them then do but developing a relationship with them then depends on you hitting the right buttons and appealing to their interests.
So what are your customers or those with a similar company or role profile spending time talking about?  What are the topics and discussions that they are engaged in?  For example, LinkedIn groups have managers, and manager’s choices to show topics that are getting the most attention. Apart from participating in the discussion yourself to raise your profile, you can tell a lot about the ideas and subject matter to include in your own stream. Using the search facility helps you to search by topic to see what’s going on and you can see what level of response you get from people to your comment and use this as an indication of interest to what you might add to your own company stream.
The group profiles are rich in information about demographics, job titles, geographical location and so on. This profile of your potential target market can be used to refine your messages, channels and campaign targeting.  Examining the trends (via Activity and the archive links on LinkedIn) you may see patterns in the topics and level of interest that suggest seasonality, which can help you to time your campaigns and plan your messages.

Timing Is Everything

As was said above, the peak times for LinkedIn are in the morning and at mid-day but that doesn’t mean to say that these are the only times that you should plan to post.  Of course other people will be checking in at other times, and even in other time zones, so it is worth tracking what works and when your target audience is active.  And of course there are tools that can be helpful in scheduling your posts for you – so you can write and then schedule to post them later. This helps you to maintain your presence without making you a slave to the process. Or in “always on” mode.

Be A Stand Out

The name of the game is creating interaction and as part of that you need to deploy tactics that help you to stand out from the crowd.  Using images, generating responses through competitions and polls and questions can help.
When you read or write something interesting, make sure you share it through links or updates that you specifically target towards groups or categories of followers.  If you have posted something on your own blog, you can get a lot of feedback from seeing who clicks through to read it, what else they look at on your site, and ideally any comments they leave.  The more targeted you are, the more likely you are to create followers who are of the right quality.  Better to have fewer good leads than many inactive, disinterested ones.
Of course there are many more paid for features that you can utilise once you are in the swing of it. There are no shortcuts – it takes time, effort a mix of the art and science of marketing. However if you persist and follow these principles for long enough, the stats suggest that you will be successful.  And if you don’t personally have the time to do it yourself, why not talk to us at Neontics?  We’d be happy to help you out.

As your business grows, you hopefully do a good job, providing great goods and excellent service for customers which can pay off if as a result they recommend, refer and give you repeat business. In this way your turnover and orders grow and at some point, you hit the decision about how to grow by extending your operations to meet the demand. In other blogs and content we discuss the issue of bringing in new staff, and perhaps you have to take a decision about premises. This article is focused on going beyond the organic growth described above to apply the art and the science of good marketing and a robust customer development system.

Focus On What You Do Best

For any business to succeed you need to balance time and resources in each of these three types of activity:

1. Doing the business (making and delivering the products and services that it sells)
2. Managing the business (operating the finances, managing staff, planning, retaining existing customers, administration, supplier contracts etc.)
3. Getting new business (networking, marketing, sales calls, researching and building relationships with customers, new product development etc.)

When you started out, perhaps you did all of this for yourself, gradually bringing on more people to support you. It is a crucial decision to bring on board staff. What role(s) do you need them to fulfill? What skills and experience can they bring? Ideally, everyone would be great at each of these three areas above, and would understand instinctively just how much time is required on each activity to ensure the business performs optimally. The reality is that even if you have all the skills available to you, most businesses seldom allocate the time to each of these areas in the best way. As the company grows, it becomes harder and harder to focus enough time on them all and to do them all well. First off, you need to take a long hard look at yourself and acknowledge not just what you are good at, what you enjoy most, but also from a commercial perspective, what it makes sense for you to spend your time on. In other words, can anyone else do aspects of what you are doing more effectively or even more cheaply than you?

Getting The Biggest Bang for Your Buck on Marketing

In my experience, many small business owners balk at the idea of paying someone else to market their business. They see it as a slice right off the bottom line, a cost with no corresponding income. And actually, the way that many businesses operate, this is true. That is where an integrated marketing system can help. It ensures that you are optimising your internal resources in the most effective way and deploying external expertise cost effectively. A marketing system does this by:

• providing a framework in which full-time staff can operate more effectively.
• providing clear roles and expectations of time required for internal staff.
• ensuring that marketing is evaluated for its effectiveness and so spend is optimised and return is maximised.
• presenting a more professional, consistent and persistent view of your company to the market place and your existing customers.
• differentiating you from the majority of other SMEs in your area and market place.

Ask An Expert

An external specialist marketing organisation can add to the above benefits by:

• utilising their expertise, specialist skills and tools as well as purchasing power, as you need them, without adding to your headcount.
• keeping your marketing spend within range of your acceptable budget.
• supplementing your internal staff resource and ensuring you are paying them to fulfil their other roles well as opposed to having them half-heartedly doing marketing type activities.
• complimenting your internal staff with the opportunity for them to learn and develop their skills and knowledge and involvement with growing the business.
• being accountable for their results (if you are asking your unqualified staff to deliver marketing, are you also making them accountable for results? If you are not, who is responsible for establishing whether your marketing works or not?)

Marketing is an investment, not a nice to have. If you are treating it as the former, like any other investment you want to understand how it is performing. If it is something that someone picks up occasionally, and its effectiveness is not measured, I’m willing to bet that you are wasting your money.

Marketing Challenges Facing Owner Managed Businesses

The main challenge for most owner managed businesses is in differentiating themselves from other providers of the same products and services, in their chosen market place. This can be for a number of reasons:

• lack of a recognised brand.
• lack of a unique proposition or position in the market place.
• lack of awareness.
• lack of a voice in the market place.
• lack of feedback on what is happening in the marketplace.
• lack of consistent effort and investment to identify and build any of the above

The Art and Science of Marketing

Marketing is a mix of art and science. It takes not only planning but also implementation and evaluation. The world is littered with thick marketing plans gathering dust but never implemented. While they contain great ideas they lack that crucial attribute – implementation! Marketing plans that get implemented are characterised by being able to match the opportunities that exist in the marketplace, to the strengths and resources available to the plan’s owner. In other words, the strategy is fit for purpose, the objectives are achievable, if challenging, and the tactics are within the capability of the organisation for whom the plan was written. This means that they should have people with the right skills, knowledge, information, time, budget, tools, and authority to carry out the plan.

Who’s In Your Market?

Then there is the science of marketing – it isn’t purely about being soft and fluffy and image conscious. In fact a lot of it is numerically based beginning with segmentation (more of this another blog!). Each segment (group of customers with similar traits) has its own particular profile, characteristics, size and value to an organisation. But generally speaking, for any organisation, at any given time, the market is made up of:

• suspects (people who have never bought from you but could do as they resemble your customers in some respect).
• prospects (people who could well buy from you – they may have made an enquiry, buy from a competitor, or have the attributes of your existing customers, and you have the ability to contact them).
• customers (who have purchased at least once from you).
• loyal customers (who have repeatedly purchased from you).
• customer advocates (who are enthusiastic supporters of your product and company).

This is sometimes known as the ladder of loyalty.

The science of marketing begins by identifying each of these segments from your market or database, understanding their value to your business before deciding where and how best to target them and implementing strategies to reach and develop them effectively. As you know from your own experience as a customer, it is quite insulting to be treated like one of the anonymous herd, especially if you are a regular customer and it is almost as bad when organisations make incorrect assumptions about you and your loyalty to them. So these dimensions of marketing are important.

There is an element of trial and error to marketing and this requires evaluation of what is done, what is spent and how prospective and actual customers respond to it.

Cutting Through The Noise

If that is the science then the art of marketing is to create the strategies, key messages, associations, images and means of being seen, heard and contacted by potential customers that separate you from other suppliers and competitors. Doing this is increasingly difficult in a world where we are bombarded by data and information, messages and communication from all around. The ability to differentiate yourself from similar suppliers is a crucial feature of modern marketing, as a means to cut through the noise.

As marketing has become increasingly sophisticated, so have consumers to the point that they are often skeptical and no longer persuaded by most marketing pronouncements and claims made by manufacturers and advertisers. The focus has shifted towards not only newer media, but also towards peer recommendation and content that provides value to customers. The balance has moved from spending money on outbound marketing to stimulating inbound contact from prospects.

It’s A Matter of Time (and money)

Having worked for global corporations, SMEs, voluntary and owner managed organisations, I can safely say that they all would like more marketing resource – time, people and budgets. Whether those resources are organised to specialise in product lines or markets, brands, communication or research, by marketing channel or customer relationship status, there will never be as much of them as we would like! However, the real question is how much you can afford?

For any small business trying to grow, one thing is for sure, the growth will not come until there is emphasis, energy and effort put into it. Ensuring that these three “e’s” are directed in the best way comes down to creating an effective marketing system that integrates the effort of your resources and ensures they work in a complimentary way.

How Neontics can help

Neontics Ltd offers support aimed at businesses with ambitions to grow their customer base more profitably AND who recognise they need to invest in more resources to provide focussed time, money and expertise to achieve it. Email Liz for a no obligations chat about how we could help your business.