May 6, 2015 | Branding, Marketing, Small business
courtesy Hugh McLeod
20 years of working with small businesses and it seems the attitudes to marketing have not changed much.
Most recognise the change in the tools. They seek to engage with social media by being “on facebook” and “Liking” a few people, having a few Apps and sharing photos on their phones, and many have a website that is little more than an electronic brochure at best. The list goes on a bit, but the reasons for this lack of recognition of the importance of marketing have a very few, but very common roots.
Founder focus. Most founders come from a specific background, engineering, accounting, bricklaying, and they are good at it, focus on it, and seek to provide service by doing it better, more often, they often see just lots of one sort of tree, rather than a forest.
Where is the money? The limited funds small businesses have are generally allocated against the specifics they understand and need to build a businesses. T
o continue the analogy, an better computer system, bigger truck to carry the building materials around, things that relate to the core reason for being in business, not this fluffy ill defined marketing stuff. Besides,” I have a website, and it does nothing for me”.
Everyone’s a marketer. Probably the deepest, darkest hole. Everyone knows a kid who can set up their devices and do a website for them, or they edited the school magazine so know how to write and edit copy, the summer intern “knows” social media, and the flaky new age couple down the road know all about the new stuff ‘happening”. God save me from pretend marketers, but they are cheap, if not free, and usually make an unholy mess.
This will sell itself. The product is so good, all we have to do is make it available. How often have I heard that old furphy?
Better do something! And the last, often literally, reason marketing pops onto the radar is a recognition that if nothing changes, the “cleaners” will arrive. “We are suffering, better do something, maybe marketing is the answer”. Too little too late, and there is often insufficient money left to make a difference.
Sad but true for way too many.
What have I missed that you have seen?
The right way to go about all this is to recognise that everyone must be in marketing from day one, weather they like it or not, it is an investment in the business, no different to the truck, or computer system necessary to deliver the service you offer.
Apr 29, 2015 | Marketing, Sales, Small business
sales rule No. 1
Shut up!!.
I have been spending a bit of time recently helping develop and implement strategy in a very interesting start-up with an innovative, and potentially extremely valuable piece of Intellectual Capital. Even after doing this stuff for so long, there is always something to learn, and being involved with this process has brought home a lesson learnt a very long time ago about what works in sales and what does not
The founder is deeply, irrationally, in love with his product.
Usually this emotional attachment to the product is seen as a great thing, but it can be a bad mistake, as potential clients rarely share the attachment.
As a result in this case, when he finally gets to talk to someone who may have the need for such a product, he delivers a passionate diatribe about all the things the product, can do, will do, can be adjusted to do, and how it evolved. Little about how it can deliver value to these potential clients, little about the potentially substantial problem successfully addressed, and little in words the potential client would use to describe his current situation.
Yawn.
Asking questions, followed by listening intently to the answer, and reflecting that answer in another follow up question is the single best sales technique there is.
The best sales people I have ever seen always do surprisingly little talking.
If you are the seller, and you do more than 30% of the talking, you have probably failed, or will fail. You will not at first know much about the potential customer, what their problems may be, how they are currently solving the problem and what they might be thinking when you show them solution, so you need to find out.
Ask questions: even confronting ones,
Why did you take this call?
How are you solving this problem now?
What would it be worth to solve this problem quickly?
How would it feel…etc. etc.
Sales however is still a numbers game.
Not everyone, no matter how well qualified, will want or see the need for your product. So, have many sales conversations in parallel, having done sufficient research on your targets that you know them sufficiently well to control the conversation, so you do not have to do the talking.
Follow up religiously, but politely and respectfully. They may not have opened your follow up email or called you back for the 3 times you called, sometimes it means you have made not piqued their interest and will make no progress, and sometimes it is just that life can get in the way.
However, do not forget that the most important resource a small business has is their time, so you need to invest yours wisely, and your prospects will thank you or not wasting theirs.
Apr 27, 2015 | Change, Governance, Marketing, Small business, Strategy
value chain arbitrage
There may be a niche in the market, but is there a market in the niche?
This question was posed to me many years ago as I pondered a new product business plan.
There was pretty clearly a niche in the market that was not well inhabited by competitors, but I was asked:
“Is this because you are just smarter than others, and had seen something they had not, or was it that they had concluded that there was no market in the niche”
Identifying a niche with no commercial potential that would deliver an ROI on the investment may be an interesting observation, one to be filed away for a look again later, but no real value now.
I have kept an eye on that niche for years, way after I left the employment I had at the time, and observe that at the time there was no return in the niche, but now, post digital marketing, there is, and it has been mined extensively and profitably by those who saw it.
The parameters of marketing have changed radically since I first identified the niche.
No longer are we constrained by geography, value chain middlemen who control key points and strangle out rents on the arbitrage value, and expensive, pot luck advertising.
Those constraints are gone, and we are left with a landscape of niches that do have a market in them, recently uncovered by the power of the digit.
Small and medium sized businesses have been delivered the means to scale their operations in ways not imagined 20 years ago.
Niches are now global.
They may be narrow, and deep, but when you find someone down there, they are there for a very good reason indeed, and are usually very receptive to offers that reflect their deep engagement with the niche.
Rich pickings for niche Small and medium players who move quickly, play well, and play smart.
Apr 23, 2015 | Branding, Marketing, Small business, Uncategorized
Albert Einstein would have made a great marketer.
He made a number of statements that are highly applicable, but one that sticks in mind is:
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, no simpler”
Marketing is simple in concept, but becoming ever more complication in the execution.
The huge array of choices to be made at every stage is enough to scare many people away, so their marketing remains sub optimal.
There are only four components, all are critical, and all interact with each other creating the huge mass of choice confronting us, but in its simplest form, it really is pretty easy to understand.
- The message. What is said
- The medium. Where it appears
- The mechanism. How it gets there
- The sweet spot in the middle. The customer.
Albert also said “if I had an hour to solve a life and death problem, I would spend the first 50 minutes defining the problem. The rest is just maths”.
Marketing is just the same, define the outcome you are seeking, the problem you are solving, and the game is over, you can go to lunch in peace.
See, now you know.
Simple to say, hard to do.
Apr 21, 2015 | Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
I hate you
Small businesses are all aware of the power of Social Media, usually want to play, and mostly get it wrong. Following are the 11 Mistakes I have most often seen over the last few years. This is despite facebook being around since 2004, Twitter since 2006, and the others mostly 5 or 6 years, so you can’t really say this stuff is new anymore.
The application of Digital technology to marketing is the greatest innovation since Guttenberg put ink to paper. It offers small businesses the opportunity to be something other than bound by geographic boundaries and the economics of scale.
- You have no plan.
The last thing you want to do is overlook the first thing you should do every time you allocate some of your scarcest resources. Identify your target audience, do your research, determine your objectives, develop your content, and make your choices of the tools best suited. Then act accordingly, monitor results and improve, rinse and repeat.
- You are working solo.
Solo can be done but is really hard work. I picked up a typo in a mates newsletter a week or so ago, pointed out the page in an email, and he still could not see it. Working solo, you often miss what is right in front of you, and there are only so many things you can do yourself, so pick the ones you can do well, and are necessary, and ignore or outsource the rest.
- You think you are a writer
We are all taught to write at school, that does not make us writers. Of course, you’re not trying to be Hemingway, but quality writing makes a huge difference to the results, even in 140 characters.
- You fail to interest your audience.
Pretty obvious. We have so much blasting at us that we get little chance to impress, a fleeting second at best. Breaking through the mass of communication is critical. Best exercise I usually recommend is to haunt the shelves of your local newsagent for a while, read the headlines of the magazines. Those people know how to attract and interest an audience.
- You’re Not Being Yourself.
It is easier to outsource the blog posts and social media updates, but I recommend that you at the very least read and edit every post that goes out under your name. Authenticity is now almost a cliché, but that is why it is right. Unless you are Barak Obama, people will get annoyed that you are not writing the posts that are under your name. Social media is as much about opinions as they are facts, tell people what you think, recognising not all will agree, and perhaps even better some will dislike you and not come back, leaving a tighter group of advocates. Being a fake, bland, and opinion-less is a quick way to lose credibility and audience.
- You not consistent.
Be regular and predictable in the frequency and length of post, and keep the same style. To some extent this is inconsistent with the “be interesting” advice above, but it is a useful to be maintain the same persona. You would have trouble with a friend if they behaved inconsistently, sometimes late, sometimes early, often unpredictable and erratic. Once or twice can be fun, all the time is tiresome. Same in social media.
- You are careless.
Written communication is far more informal than it was in the past, but that is no excuse for typos, grammatical mistakes, and confusing messages. Some colloquialism and slang is OK, but a little goes a long way.
- You are not visual.
Human beings are visual animals, and visual is becoming easier by the day, so use it. There are many alternatives, stock images, your own shots, video, Instagram, vine, YouTube, and all the rest. Use it to make a point, stand out, and engage.
- You are not tracking the numbers.
This is the last, and most stupid of all, as well as being disturbingly common. The huge benefit of digital marketing is that suddenly, your efforts can be tracked, a genuine calculation of return can be made, suddenly we get to find out which half of our communication budget was being wasted before we had the numbers. if that is not enough, the free analytics are pretty comprehensive, more than most small businesses can easily use.
Apr 16, 2015 | Branding, Marketing
“True Aussie” meat products have been around for 12 months or so in export markets, and we are told of its great success, Japan is particularly pointed out, where “That True Aussie beef logo can be found on more than half of retail packs in Japan now, and growing fast.” MLA Japan spokesman.
Yesterday, the National Farmers Federation came to the party with at least public support for the idea, supporting the suggestion that the “brand” was potentially far wider than just meat.
“True Aussie” is another in the long line of group marketing initiatives based on generic branding. They are attempts to leverage the assumed clean green credentials of Australian produce created by industry bodies funded by levy. Meat, horticulture, dairy and grains have all had a shot, domestically and internationally over the 35 years of my memory of these things.
Where I wonder are all those lavishly promised outcomes, those dollars flowing back to farmers because the international consumers demand Australian produce over produce from anywhere else in the world?
However, it is a very appealing idea, which I guess is why it keeps on being wheeled out again, and again, as the panacea.
“Focus the marketing funds against the common concerns of all consumers rather than spreading it around by operators acting individually, build the value positioning of Australian produce by providing the assurance of product provenance, and promising great value for money”.
Problem is that to date, in the real world, it has not worked. Perhaps things have changed sufficiently that this time, attempt number ?? how many?
Back in 2001, running a maverick operation called Agri Chain Solutions that had been reluctantly outsourced, at the direction of the then PM Howard, from the old department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (AFFA) I commissioned a piece of research aimed at uncovering the motivations driving the decision making of those who controlled the supply chains in markets targeted by produce exporters. The results were not a surprise to anyone who had really thought about the problems facing produce exporters, but were not popular amongst the industry bodies at the time.
In summary it confirmed that those who did not sell anything, ie industry bodies, had no power in the game beyond the power to give money for promises, and when the money ran out, nothing really had changed.
Supply chains, particularly those dealing with commodities, are driven by volume, availability and price, at least they are once you get past the regulatory barriers that populate and pollute the commercial environment. If you do not own anything, if you do not have the power to change anything except by committee consensus, have no power of coercion, and if you are not commercially agile, and able to differentiate, you get taken to the cleaners.
Every time.
There is an old saying, we’ve all heard it, ‘do what you have always done, and you will get what you have always got’
Well, we are doing it again.
The digital tools we have now have potentially changed the game by giving the real opportunity for supply chain transparency, potentially turning them into demand responsive chains, but that requires real skill and commercial discipline to pull off, which is still sadly absent.
I hope that this time something I have not seen has changed that will give us the promised outcomes, I genuinely hope I am wrong, but unfortunately I suspect history is going to be repeated, and in another decade, it will roll around again.
