12 common & avoidable marketing mistakes I see small businesses repeating.

12 common & avoidable marketing mistakes I see small businesses repeating.

Aug 2, 2016 | Marketing, Small business

How true is the old chestnut “those who do not know history are destined to repeat it”?

It is an unfortunate truth, but in a business environment where 75% of new businesses fail, and 61% of actively trading businesses have no employees, it may be understandable. The new ‘entrepreneurs’ come and go, many having no background in business for themselves, and little beyond an often significant functional skill that they think will lead customers to their door.

That strategy may have worked in the past, but no longer.

Being an employee is generally a lousy training to be an entrepreneur, of any type.

Following are a number of the most common causes of those failures I see, several on a disturbingly regular basis.

Funding ‘institutional’ advertising & promotion.

Most advertising I see is for an institution, or business, not for  the benefit of the customer and potential customer. The “buy from me, I am better” type advertising. Instead, advertisers should  think about every piece of communication as a piece of direct response advertising, something that requires and points to an action. Advertising should be just a media centric form of direct response, otherwise, why do it? Spending money on advertising without directing people to a course of action  is a waste.

Many will wail at that, and point to the need to build a brand. True. But it gets the order in which things happen back to front. You do  not build a brand just by advertising to attract customers/consumers, you build a brand by performing, delivering value to those who try you out, then come back again and again because the value is terrific, and in the process tell their friends. Advertising is just a tool to apply leverage to this process.

Not testing.

These days everything, or almost everything can be tested. Test so you can generate the maximum leverage for your activity. Any marketing activity costs a fixed amount of money, it is the maths of the responses that give you leverage. Spend $100 on an activity, and you get $150 back might seem OK, but if you got back $300, or $500, or $5,000 how much better would that be? The leverage you are generating from your activity is greater. Test for  the elements that will generate you the leverage, as adverting is just leverage applied in a different form.

Not having some sort of differentiator

Delivering value to your specific target audience that they cannot get elsewhere is essential.  Whatever is your key value, it has to be unique to somebody or you are just competing on price, and when you compete  on price, even if you win, you lose.

Not sufficiently recognising the value of their existing customers.

We all know at some level that is it easier to get more from an existing customer than it is to get a new one, but we still insist on going looking for new customers and to some degree ignoring the value still to be gained from the existing ones. Even if you bring them value for someone else that is complementary to what you can deliver, and perhaps clip the ticket, by bringing them that value you ensure you are  always on their radar, and they are receptive to any offer you make. This applies as much to heavy machinery and capital intensive industries as it does to the way Amazon flogs you more books by knowing what you have bought and looked at in the past, and comparing that to others that seem similar.

Insufficient customer research and understanding.

The clearer the understanding you have of your customers and  prospects needs, the  better able you are able to craft a compelling offer, negate objections, and solve their problems. Once you solve their problems they are yours forever, they will always have you on the short list, if  not be the only choice.

Do not have price as the only motivator to a sale. Winning the race to the bottom of the price curve, you also lose. When you use price as the motivator, as you might if you make a blue  and have a warehouse full of stock you need to flog, find some other way to add value. Provide a a guarantee, or assurance that this cut price is only available for a short time and then only to the most valued customers you have, there are many tried and true tactics . This puts a sense of urgency and exclusivity in the offer which obscures the discount as a motivator, so it does  not erode the full price that you need to be profitable when things return too normal.

Not making it easy to do business  with you.

We all know how annoying it is to be shunted from person to person, not  getting answers, we all hate it, so why do we do it to our customers?? Make it easy to do business with you. Often this requires that you give the decision making power to those at the front lines, those who have the first contact with the customer. Ensure they are sufficiently well trained and informed that they can answer all the questions that may be asked. How bloody annoying is it to ask a question, and be asked to wait while they go and get their supervisor! Make it easy, even fun to do  business with you, find ways to add that bit of extra value that others leave out, the little things make all  the difference.

Not being transparent and answering “Why‘.

‘Why does this cost more than the opposition?’… ‘Because it is hand made from rare materials, not some imitation, or it is twice as durable, so is really cheap at the price’.  Failing to communicate your ‘Why’ is a grave failure. If you have lots of inventory, and want to get rid of it quickly, as often happens in many forms of  retailing, tell them why, that this is a one time only limited to available stock offer, created  by your buying ability with your suppliers. Tell them why, is a very powerful tactic in selling.

Not being persistent 

When you have done the work, be prepared to stick with it, and not change tactics mid stream just because there is a bump in the road. Strategy is about the long term. When activities are consistent with the strategies and add to the long term, be prepared to hang in there, and not be seduced by the newest shiny thing that comes along and seems attractive, Most businesses get tired of their own marketing well before the market does, so stick. An old boss of mine used to say that consumers were just getting to see our advertising about the time we were getting sick of it, and that is so true. Stick with what works, vary the tone and tactics to keep it fresh and new as necessary, but stick to the strategy.

Lack of focus. Any sort of activity should be directed at a specific target, the more focused the better. When others see it and act on it, great, but the clearer the focus on a benefit to a target customer you have the better. This clearly requires that you have a very clear idea of the ‘where what how and why’ of your ideal customer, but without that you are just spraying messages and hoping they hit something that looks like a prospective customer, rather  when focusing on one and ensuring that you are adding value to them.

Not educating your customers.

Never sell to customers, educate them to the benefits they will see by the use of your solution to their problems and opportunities. By setting out to add value to your customers by educating them, you can earn the right to have them buy from you. The old fashioned hard sell rarely works any more.  Instead, educate, appeal to their emotions, and show them the benefits, as did Don Draper in this Man Men classic.

lack of understanding ‘lifetime customer value’.

In most markets, customers are customers more than once, so understanding the arithmetic supporting the value of your customer is crucial. If you spend 150% of the first sales value to acquire a customer who then stays on for a further couple of  sales that cost you little to get, you are way ahead. Never burn off a customer once you have them by failing to live up to expectations. Over-delivering to customers is always a great strategy, and maximises the lifetime value.

Ignoring the value of Social media.

Social media is deceptively hard to get right, and getting it wrong can be a disaster. However, every business should be leveraging the potential power of Social media, recognising the downside. The help of the 14 year old down the street can be useful, but it can also be hugely misleading, and potentially commercially dangerous.

There are many more, but these 12 are the most common marketing mistakes, but I cannot leave without adding another. Know your numbers. Failure to  understand the financial realities of a business brings more unstuck than all the rest put together.

9 point plan to create your business model

9 point plan to create your business model

Jul 18, 2016 | Governance, Management, Small business

One of the major things most small and medium businesses give little thought to, and which can have a major impact on their financial outcomes is their business model.

There has been much written over the years, huge volumes of academic and consultant driven tomes , full of jargon and long words. Mostly, the owners of small and medium sized businesses,  starved of time as they are, have not read or absorbed this stuff, and even if they have, the day to day struggle has taken over.

The options open to construct a business model vary with every business, and every set of circumstances. Trying to copy what somebody ese is doing will only go so far, the great value is in tailoring the elements to best suit your objectives,  resources and competitive circumstances.

Thinking about it in this business model framework can be enormously valuable.

Most recently, Alexander Osterwalder wrote a book called ‘Business Model Generation‘ that outlined a framework that simplifies all thing you  need to think about, without the jargon.

That framework has 9 elements

Business model canvas

Customer segments. Any successful marketing is dependent on defining your primary customer segments. These days you can go further, and in my view need to go further for SME’s, to having a detailed customer persona, perhaps several of them, to better enable the direction of marketing communication directly to the needs of very finely defined customers.

Value proposition. Defining the value you add to your target market is fundamentally important. If you cannot articulate the value, why would you reasonably expect anybody else to understand it? Value comes in many forms, simplicity, performance, design, degree of customisation, risk reduction, and many more, including the default, Price. However, if you define your value proposition in terms of price, you have already lost.

Channels. How do you communicate with your customers and potential customers, and then deliver on your value proposition? This item is a combination of the logistics and operational side of the business,  with the marketing and sales sides.

Customer relationships. What type of relationship do you have, or want to have with customers, and how might they want to deal with you. Are they intimate and personal, or automated over the web, collaborative or purely transactional? The choices will be driven by the alignment with your value proposition and customers.

Revenue streams. No business can survive without revenue, it is perhaps the only constant of business as well as the public and non profit sectors. Determining the best way for you to be paid for the successful delivery of your value proposition to your customers is a major item in the model construction. Is it purely cash, or licencing, franchising, what sort of trading terms will apply, are you seeking recurrent income as for membership?. Obviously the price you charge is a major decision, but prices should be driven by the model, and your competitive profile, not by costs, or a guess.

Key resources.  Every business requires resources of many types to grease the wheels of the business model. Defining what they are and how they interact is really fundamental, as they are the enabler of the value proposition, and without alignment to the value proposition you will have sub optimal performance. The key resources can be physical, human, intellectual, financial, whatever is required to deliver on the value proposition.

Key activities. There will also be a few key activities. Things that simply have to be done to make the business model work. Production operations if you are a manufacturing business, problem solving if you are a consulting business, and stock management if you are a retailer. They make the rest possible.

Key partnerships. These are the networks of suppliers that make the business model work. Who they are, what they contribute to the value proposition, how they how yoou choose to interact with them all make a significant difference to the manner of business model performance.

Cost structures. Finally, what are the costs incurred to operate and sustain the business model, those that are fixed, those that are variable, and how they might swing between these two. What are the economies of scale and scope that may apply under different circumstances?

 

I have used this canvas, and some of the iterations that have evolved in workshops with medium sized businesses with considerable success.

What you realise  very quickly  is that there is no right answer, and no  easy path. There are cause and effect chains that operate across the board, changing one thing always has a string of impacts. The best way to manage all this and come to some actionable conclusions is with a directed brainstorm that records the ideas and cause and effect chains, followed  by an experiment or research of some type that involves real customers.

What I call “getting out of the building”

 

 

When template business plans are useless

When template business plans are useless

Jul 4, 2016 | Change, Innovation, Marketing, Small business

In Australia, only around 5% of new businesses survive past the 5 year mark, and make money in excess of the cost of capital.

Scary, because most of them had a business plan, certainly if they ever borrowed any money from a bank, they had one that probably doubled as a door stopper.

50 pages of assumptions, rosy projections and financial outcomes delivered via by a suite of complex excel files to the wazoo. It is essential to recognise that the purpose of a business plan of the lender is to ensure that they get their money back with interest commensurate with the risk, and to weed out the dreamers. That is why banks insist on Directors personal guarantees, mortgages over personal assets, simply to ensure that you do not risk their money.

So much for business plans.

Seriously, why would you waste the time and energy?

Most start with what they think is a great product, without realising that a product is just the starting point.

You also need at least a hypothesis about who the customers are, how you will find them, what sort of prices they may pay, how do you deliver the product, what the competitive reaction might be, and on, and on, and on.

Finding a way to turn all this stuff into a business model that makes sense is challenging, but it is what turns a product idea into a business.

A traditional, templated business plan makes sense when there are a lot of knowns, there is an existing market, ruling prices, you know who and where the customers are, and how they might be reached, and there is not much going on. Then plan to deploy resources for productivity and efficiency, but this is rarely the situation with start-ups with an innovation to bring to the market.

Being an entrepreneur setting about marketing a product with few direct competitors is experimental, requiring iteration, practice, persistence, and preferably mentoring from someone who has been there, seen the traps and is able to navigate around at least some of them.

Planning for the unknown is a touch different from planning for the known.

 

 

Is the supermarket model being disrupted, and nobody is noticing?

Is the supermarket model being disrupted, and nobody is noticing?

May 11, 2016 | Branding, Governance, Leadership, retail, Small business

Business models are being disrupted all over the place.

The new centre of business models has become the customer, and the way they perceive and receive value. It was supposed to be this way in the pre-digital days, but really  was not, because the sellers held all the cards. Now however, the power has really reverted to where it should be, to those who drive the value chain by their purchase choices.

AirBnB has become the biggest single retailer of short term lodging on the planet, and they do not own a room, Uber is the biggest taxi service on the planet, and does not own a car, newspapers have been replaced as sources of news. There are many examples, and all are of business models that have arrived in the last few years with a common theme.

They have replaced the linear, sequential business models of the past, where there was always a choke point dependent on physical infrastructure that exerted control, with a model where the physical  infrastructure is simply a logistical resource to be deployed to deliver a service, the real product is information.

Information on availability, product provenance, performance, and many other factors of value to customers, including, you guessed it, price.

It is a two sided model, enabled by technology that is making the logistical control of the infrastructure redundant in the face of consumers having information at their fingertips. The competitive advantage has moved from the physical infrastructure to between the ears of employees and consumers equally.

Employees create and deliver the information that enables consumers to make decisions, which then dictate the physical logistics driven by those decisions.

Meanwhile,  the supermarket  retailer model has not changed  much.

They have huge amounts of capital invested in real estate and physical assets, it has made them  really successful, so the tendency is naturally to do more of the same, just try and do it a bit better.

They have chased, very successfully, productivity of  the assets, a financial measure of success not a sustainable measure of success with customers. As a result they are losing their customers to discounters, specialist retailers, and various direct models that offer an alternative value proposition.

It seems to me that Woolies have walked away from, or simply not understood this evolution of their business model.

Their Everyday rewards loyalty card was gathering momentum, building a picture of their customer base and their individual behaviour, critical information that would over time deliver a capacity to engage on a highly individualised basis. However, it was clearly costing a bit, so they took the short term route, and reduced the cost to them, and therefore value to their customers, gave it a new name and sat back thinking consumers would not notice.

They did, and nobody came.

Woolworths took a short term financial decision that has apparently bitten them in the bum. A bit like the ones they took that killed off Thomas Dux, and led them to misunderstand the market when they bet the back paddock on Masters. Pretty clearly someone in the top floor of the majestic head office out in the hills, can read a spreadsheet, but probably does not know what goes on inside customers heads when they are contemplating a purchase, and making a choice about the manner in which that purchase will be made.

Perhaps new CEO Brad Banducci will claw back some of the customer centric culture that gave Woolworths the wood on Coles for so long, but he better move quickly, as the momentum has shifted against them, and it will be hard to regain.

 

How to build a brand with little money

How to build a brand with little money

May 3, 2016 | Branding, Marketing, Small business

Following is an edited version of a presentation given to a group of owners of small businesses struggling with the challenges of building a brand on very limited budgets in competitive markets. This is a challenge most of my readers can relate to. It is not easy, but it can be done.

Let me know what you think.

 

brand building30 years ago I found myself marketing manager of a newly formed division of Dairy Farmers, the By-Products division, which we quickly renamed General Products, for obvious reasons. It manufactured all the products that used milk as the ingredient, but was unregulated, unlike the stuff you put on your corn flakes in the morning which was highly regulated.

It was a commercial disaster, an absolute financial basket case, and as a young bloke who had come off a pretty good run over the previous 10 years, I truly wondered what I had got myself into.

It was a nasty surprise.

The second nasty surprise was Ski yoghurt, one of the ‘gems’ of the business, and a key part of the marketing role I had taken.

Sales data, such as it was showed considerable growth for several years, However, when I looked at the market data, market share had gone from 30% or thereabouts to single figures.

Yoplait had launched into the market. New packaging format, great launch offer, 2 for 1, good advertising, and the market had exploded, leaving Ski sinking in its wake, and few at Dairy Farmers had woken up.

I started some market research to find a way through, although the Advertising budgets had been slashed when I pointed out just how bad the financial situation was. (Nobody had ever done a trading Profit & Loss on the division before. Unbelievable)

Something happened in one of the groups that caused the light bulb to go off, and I truly understood for the first time what a brand  really was.

The researcher asked the respondents in a group while I was behind the one way glass, to imagine Yoplait as a person, and that person was walking through the door: describe the person.

This question is now almost always asked, but 30 years ago, it was a relatively new idea.

Yoplait was young, hip, female, successful, educated, world at her feet. A picture most in the room could aspire to.

Ski was a 55 year old male farmer in wellies. Trustworthy, serious, reliable, but oh so boring.

My marketing problem with Ski was clear.

 

What is a brand.

 

what is a brandAt its core, a brand is something that someone cares about, and relates to, it has human dimensions.

It will never be something that everyone cares about, no brand can be all things to all people, so you have to identify those  few who will care. Then appeal to their hearts more than their minds, add value to them in some way, be very personal.

 

Coca Cola, around for 125 years, is instantly recognisable, sold everywhere, billions and billions have been spent over a long period to build the brand. There are lots of brand value list created, and Coke is almost always in the top 5 brands in the world.

Forbes Magazine in 2015 values Coke at $56 billion, (US) on revenue of $23.1 billion, and advertising of $3.5 billion.

It is a huge brand, whose primary aim in their strategic plan is to “engage with consumers in their lives”

 

 

what is a brand 2But what about this second one??

Has anyone here heard of Felix Kjellberg? Or his business Pewdipie?

A Swedish gaming satirical commentary site, hardly even a product. If you have sons under 25 who play games online, ask them!

 

If we are too measure the success of a brand by the manner in which consumers engage, then it is reasonable to look at the number of YouTube subscriptions that brand has attracted. By definition, a subscriber is someone who has specifically signed up to be sent updates by the brand because they are engaged with the brand in some way.

April 21 2016, about midday when I looked, Coca Cola had 763,133 YouTube subscribers. Not bad I thought, till I looked at Pewdipie, who had 43,421,440 subscribers, roughly 57 times Coke. An astonishing difference when Coke has been spending billions over many years with a specific objective of ‘engaging consumers’ and Pewdipie has spent a few bob on dodgy youtube videos taken with their phones.

How did Felix do it??

Well, I do not know Felix, but I can make some pretty educated guesses, and that is what the rest of this will be about.

 

a brand isFor a supplier, a brand is a commercial vehicle, a way to deliver leverage by way of price, distribution, many other factors that may be of interest to customers.

For the customer it is a way of making the decision easier, offering reassurance of performance, certainty, it is a trusted friend, and there is some level of emotional investment, even if it is just a comfortable habit.

It is really easy for marketers to go off the rails here, to see a picture of an emotional attachment that simply does not exist, They see it through their eyes, not those of the consumer. The truth is that consumers see brands as things that solve problems for them, they have preferences, sometimes very strong and exclusive ones, but in the end, in the case of consumers products like yoghurt, it is just yoghurt, not a cure for cancer, and it is not going to change the world.

The sweet spot is in the overlap between the commercial and consumer view of a brand, the  Value Proposition of the brand.

 

 

3 word summaryThese 3 words,  Leverage, Niche, and Persona are the guts of how you build a brand on a little money.

They are mutually dependent, mutually reinforcing,  and 2 out of 3 is not good enough.

 

This has always been the case in marketing, we have always talked about and tried to execute on a ‘target market’ but the tools until a very few years ago were crude, too crude to be anything other than marginally useful on a small budget.

This has changed.

We can now target with great precision using digital tools, with the resulting huge increase in the productivity of  the effort.

 

LeverageFirstly, Leverage.

Leverage is simply doing more with less.

As small business people we all know about those challenges.

We all know that face to face is the best advertising by far, when someone you know and trust recommends a brand, you are way more likely to take notice than if you hear or see an ad.

On one hand that personal recommendation delivers a lot of credibility, and leverage, but it is also very time and resource intensive, one on one costs a lot, but as noted, there are now a box full of tools to make the process possible.

When a brand is ‘remarkable’ it gets leverage from both dimensions, and a lot can be done with a little.

The tools of digital have made it easier, but the space is absolutely crowded, and people are very adept at filtering out stuff of no interest.

It does not matter how well you use the tools, if the product is not remarkable, the tools will not do you much good.

The reverse is also true, if the product is remarkable, but you do not use the tools, or use them poorly, or the wrong ones, progress will at best be slow.

In the old days, you could just stick it on the box and with enough money, buy awareness, and a sale, but that model is dead, dead, dead, which is why TV stations are all losing money.

 

remarkableRemarkable.

20 years ago a marketing thinker named Seth Godin coined the term ‘purple cow’, and it has become one of those universal phrases.

What makes your brand remarkable?

 

Remarkable has two roots:

It is different

It is something worth spreading.

Seth’s story. Driving along a country road, you see cows, lots of them, they are all the same, so you barely notice them, but if one cow was purple, you would notice, and remark, “look at that purple cow”!!

But if all cows were purple it would no longer be remarkable.

When you have seen a purple cow, and when you get to your destination, you would be telling everyone else about the purple cow you saw. An idea worth spreading.

Ask yourself, What is it about you and your product that is remarkable, and to whom is it remarkable.

Figure that out, and you have the opportunity to get the idea to spread,

 

martech toolsTools

This is a list of all the digital tools done earlier this year by Scott Brinker at chiefmartec.com.

Thousands of them, many more than  the same time last year.

Newspapers, TV, radio,  magazines, all the old media are also tools that deliver leverage.

Always did, still do.

Question is are there better ways?, and the answer for most small businesses is clearly yes!.

Small businesses do not have the resources for mass media leverage, but the digital revolution has levelled the playing field somewhat.

But the problem is deciding which ones to invest in, because it is not free!!

My advice, Stick to the simple ones, the ones that give you the most leverage. Find what works for you and double down while experimenting and learning.

 

websiteYour website

It is yours, you are the owner, the publisher, you make the rules, just like living in your own home

It is the marketing cornerstone for most small businesses.

 

 

facebookFacebook for B2C

Facebook has become an amazing monster.

Tame it, and it can be wonderful, but it lives to take your money, and is very good at it.

In effect, you can pay them to get reach, the fast way, or you can do it organically, the slow way.

The tools inside Facebook are amazing, and seductive in the extreme.

 

linkedinLinkedIn for B2B

LinkedIn is for professionals, Business to Business.

414 million users worldwide, 3.6 million in Australia (as of June 2015, so probably north of 4 mill by now) all professionals, no cat photos or Aunt fanny’s famous cake recipe.

 

4 million… Do you think there might be a few in that with whom you would like, and be able, to do some business?

how do you find the ones you need/want to speak to??

The advanced search function in LinkedIn, even in the free version offers many  ways to find a person or a business with whom you might want to start a conversation. It is amongst many tools that Linkedin provides to automate the lead generation process.

 

youtubeYouTube.

You can try and do a Pewdipie, although getting such a result again is unlikely, but you can learn from modelling what they have done. .

This is a screenshot of their current landing page on YouTube. Nothing too fancy there, but it works, really works!

 

emailEmail.

Last of the vital tools, but not least in any way is email.

Email is a digital metaphor for that chat over the back fence. It carries great potential for credibility.

To get email right, there are some tools you need, but the fundamental skill is a very old fashioned one:

Copywriting.

Go into your local newsagent, and look at the magazines on the rack, they are still surviving.

They have very specific target markets,

The front cover headlines entice you to open to page 6 to read the story, and the first thing you see is a second headline, that drags you into the story a little deeper, leading you to the checkout.

If you happen to be thinking about how to write a headline, and you got this in an email, would you open it????

Of course you would.

The challenge is to get it to you as you are thinking about copywriting

You don’t have their email??

There are a million ways to get an email address, including several free tools that do work, and the key task is to build a list of those who are willing to receive your communications.

Then there are a few ‘must haves’ to maximise the opening rate and actions taken as a result of your email.

It must be personal. Specifically targeted at them in some way

It does not sell  but does offer advice and assistance

It does have a call to action, something you want them to do as a result of reading the email.

 

 

nicheSecondly, Identify your niche.

We are no longer constrained by geography,

We no longer need to rely on snail mail and having someone’s telephone number.

 

My point is that if you can find a narrow, but deep niche, to whom you add great value, those at the bottom of the niche will love you, and it will be too dark and scary for the big guys to attack, and defensible if they do.

I bet if you wanted to form a group of left handed Lesbian lumberjacks, you could find enough of them to form a ‘community’ in fact, they are probably desperate to find some others who understand them, and would join such a community in a flash.

A couple of examples of small businesses carving out a niche.

http://au.whogivesacrap.org/ revolutionising bog paper

www. au.dollarshaveclub.com revolutionising the purchase of shavers

Both are niches that are deep and narrow, and they have first mover advantages that will make them very hard to move.

 

personaThirdly, the persona of your ideal customer.

Developing a persona of your ideal customer requires that you make choices.

It is as much about what you will not do, as it is about what you will do.

 

It is usually very hard for an SME not to chase every so called opportunity as it emerges, but when you are small, focus is essential.

Let me just make 2 more points quickly before I finish.

 

creativityWe are all familiar with the term “Guerrilla Marketing”.

It is a way of building leverage, but requires creativity, and an ability to see beyond the normal, be prepared to take a punt.

You do not need money to be creative, and when you are, it is a key component of remarkable

 

 

customer journeyYour customers journey. For every purchase, no matter how small and insignificant, Something triggers the research seeking a solution to a problem, to fill a need, even if that is something as simple as which yoghurt to buy today..

Each journey starts with an evaluation, sometimes with a few  brands or suppliers in mind. During the evaluation, new brands may come under consideration, some drop out, for a host of reasons, and understanding these reasons is a great way of being able too present information that addresses them for an ideal customer, deep down in a niche.

You have the opportunity at this point, before the decision is made, to shift and influence their thinking.

Customer journeys all have a flow, understand them

As a visual metaphor, look at your google analytics flow from your website, see how the customers go from pages to page, how long they stay, what they do.

If you apply this idea to the whole customer journey, not just on your website, you will see points that you can engage, intervene, make it easier to present them with information and  opportunities.

The task is to understand the journey, then you can engage at various points, and find ways to shape the journey. As the world has changed, so too have the customer journeys.

Technology has changed forever the journey as customers now do their own research before you know they are in the market. Unlike in the past, when the seller had the information the customers needed to make a decision, and therefore the power, the customer is absolutely now in charge.

As a final word, building a brand on a little money can be done.

It is not easy, if it was, everybody would be doing it,  but it can be done.

 

4 essential  marketing success factors.

4 essential  marketing success factors.

Apr 6, 2016 | Change, Management, Marketing, Small business

I originally studied to be an accountant, it seemed logical at the time.

My dad was sort of an accountant, taking over the family small business after he returned from the rumble in New Guinea in the ‘forties’. He was the only son, taking over the family business was the done thing, like it or not.   He was a practical, objective bloke, and ran the business by the numbers.

It seems with hindsight that I had absorbed the pain and frustrations of his small business as a kid until the market changed radically in the sixties, and the business tanked, and Dad found himself in a job he hated for the next 25 years to keep food on the table.

Now I am that unusual marketer, one that not only understands the numbers, but who has a feeling for them, and advocates loudly that the numbers are the foundation of a business. You simply must know, understand and leverage them in order to be successful.

Wrapping up  the marketing and financial management skills into one bag, there are a four elements that I regard as essential to success.

Logic and extrapolation are driven by assumptions. Accountants are black and white,  debit or credit of the ledger. It is really easy to be seduced by the numbers spat out by a spreadsheet, but they are only as good as the assumptions about all sorts of things that make them worth the paper they are on. The greater the degree of interrogation of the assumptions driving the line of logic being employed, the better. I used to annoy the daylights out of my marketing teams by insisting that when delivering a business case, they came at the projections from at least 2 entirely different perspectives as a means to test the assumptions they were using.

Weight reason greater than passion. Often I have said that there is nothing so contagious as a dose of passion, and I stick to it, passion is great, irreplaceable, but not t the expense of reason. Passion should be build on a foundation of reason.

Greatly value the intuition of experience. Some things are just not quantitative. Have you ever felt that something was ‘just right’ without being able to articulate why? When I get that feeling in a domain where I have deep experience, usually I go with it, and the intuition usually pays off.

Accept that you are  not always right. In business we are trying to be alchemist, to tell the future and allocate resources accordingly. Not easy, and no matter certain you are of the assumptions, your intuition, and the rosy picture pained  by the numbers, shit can and does happen, and you just get it wrong. Accept it, cut your losses, learn form the experience and move on.

Experience is hard won, and in some cases can be turned into the wisdom to be passed on in the effort to better serve our customers.