May 22, 2014 | Change, Governance, Marketing, Small business
The future prediction business has so far failed to find a sustainable business model, apart from the fun stuff in the tent with the funny lady with the cards and crystal ball.
About the only serious people who still profess to be able to predict the future with any accuracy are politicians, and we all know how that usually turns out. The rest of us set about controlling what we can control, and preparing for the unexpected from the things we cannot.
By contrast, with some effort, staying on the leading edge is possible for all enterprises. Information is now so freely available, and consulting services whose stock in trade is “leading edge” whatever you want, so ubiquitous, you can stay in front of most if not all of your competition, and be aware of changes occurring so you are in the best position to leverage them.
Small and medium sized companies are best placed in this game of staying current, should they be prepared to make the commitment to do so.
Smaller companies can try stuff out, see if it adds value, and deploy in the time that their larger competitors take to organise the conference call to test if there may be a good idea in here somewhere. The only hurdle is that it does consume scarce resources, but when you see that consumption as an investment, the payoff can be huge.
In the marketing space, my hometown, the cost of testing has fallen so dramatically over the last decade that there is no longer any valid excuse not to be testing extensively.
So get on with it, apart from being strategically and competitively sensible, being at the front is where the fun is.
May 20, 2014 | Change, Communication, Leadership, Marketing, Small business
“Serendipity” . Luck that takes the form of finding valuable or pleasant things that are not looked for. Websters Dictionary.
My old Dad used to say “Son, the harder I work, the luckier I get” and it has usually worked out that way.
It follows then that if you combine the definition of Serendipity and Dads old chestnut, Serendipity can be managed.
How you ask!
- Recognise that Serendipity is a state of mind rather than a quantitative outcome, and should be managed that way.
- It requires a management culture that has everyone working together, “alignment of strategy and activity” as a popular management article would probably purr. A utopian notion, but doable.
- Ensure there is “spare” time allocated to staff to pursue ideas, contribute to collaborative activities, and look for improvements. Personnel whose performance measures are quantitative box ticking exercises are unlikely to risk compromising their KPI’s by allocating time to potentially serendipitous pursuits.
- Provide the forums for casual and social interaction. This can be done in all sorts of ways from the way the offices are designed to organising staff picnics.
- Encourage the behaviours you are seeking by publicly recognising it when it happens. Financial and organisational rewards are of little value, but is the social rewards that really count.
- Trust and respect are critical components of productive collaboration. Neither can allocated, both need to be earned. “Ideo“, the creative agency has it nailed, one of their core values is “Make others successful”. When everyone works to make others successful, trust and respect follow, and the culture tends to expel anyone who does not work with that culture and its behaviours.
The great benefit if success in these endeavours is that it will make your place a great place to work, and that ends up attracting the best talent, attracting interesting, challenging and rewarding customers, and making good money. A virtuous circle.
That’s how.
May 19, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Marketing, Small business
Imagehaven, Innovation by design
On several occasions last week I found myself frustrated that I could not find a piece of information I needed on a website, I knew it had to be there somewhere, it is just that someone had effectively if inadvertently hidden it. GGGRRRRR
Over the years I have asked many people, individually and in audiences, what for them constitutes the perfect website.
There have been many answers, but there are always three that recur almost every time:
- Simple, clear, and quick to navigate.
- The information needed is on the site.
- We know what to do next.
How easy is that?, yet how often do we find ourselves searching a site, getting frustrated before we move onto the next likely one in the search list.
Usually it appears that the confusion and clutter comes from a few common sources. Designers try and put all the information up front, rather than creating a hierarchy of information that reflects the way people search, they let their “designer” genes run riot with the result that there is simply too much “design”, or that the original design has been added to over time like a house that goes through a series of renovations and extensions and ends up just being a collection of rooms.
It is really just a question of thought being put into the design. The combination of white space, written information, graphics, and calls to action (CTA). There are many “rules” of design around, this article by Zoe Sadokierski from UTS offers some of the perspective of history, that can be usefully applied to website design, but a bit of common sense goes a long way.
Next time you set out to design a site, consider these three simple rules, or you could just call the gurus at Imagehaven.
May 6, 2014 | Change, Management, Marketing, retail, Small business
Courtesy High McLeod @ Gaping Void
Retail has changed, very quickly and in a fundamental way, but not for everyone.
Retailers, the blokes with the bricks and mortar still hold sway in most markets, but to varying degrees, and can continue to do so if they are as smart as they have been in the past.
Consumers no longer have to go down to the store to buy much of their stuff, their store increasingly is in the palm of their hand. That is fine for cameras, refrigerators, and perhaps baked beans in a can, but not so good for fresh produce, meat, fruit & veg, and dairy, categories that are driving the profitability of supermarket retailers.
If we know anything, we know new models will come to light.
In the past, producers needed retailers to break down their bulk product, whether it be jeans, baked beans or refrigerators, and sell to consumers, but now consumers can go direct. So, it is not just the retailers who face change, it is the producers.
Held to ransom for years by retail that in effect sold them retail real estate while selling to the consumers, suppliers have some leverage back, and a few of them are game enough to love it.
The question both needs to answer is how they can best meet the needs of the newly empowered by information, consumer, who does not really care who supplies them the product, it is just about the convenience, choice, delivery and price of a transaction.
Looked at from this perspective, the retailer has a role to play in the relationships consumers have with brands, and suppliers, but they must make their money from a different model, one that relies on the manner in which they “touch” the sales process, rather than being the one solely in charge.
Sales leads that come from social media and the web are still just as likely to generate a sale in a physical retailer as they are on the web, and given that web sales are still a small proportion of total sales, using the web should be a seen as an opportunity, a bonus, not a threat, as Tesco in Korea has demonstrated.
It is perhaps telling of the times that the ACCC is mounting a case against Coles for beating up on its suppliers to improve its earnings. Nothing new there, but Coles management has an obligation to maximise earnings for shareholders.
The horse has bolted.
SME’s in the Australian food supply chain are now a rare breed, killed off my the high $A, retailer housebrand strategies, the scale of multinational competition, and poor management. The two retailers seem to have realised that without local supply, their long term options are limited, and so seem to be softening their short term demands in recognition that the sustainability of the food production value chain is in their interests.
PS Earlier today, after the initial publication of this post, I became aware that Big Sister Foods had been put in the hands of the administrators. While Big Sister is an Aussie company, part of that small club of natives, it spent 20 years as a part of Reckitt & Coleman in the 70’s and 80’s. Sadly I am not surprised, as their current website is about the worst I have ever seen, perhaps indicative of the declining state of the business.
Apr 29, 2014 | Communication, Customers, Sales, Small business
Successful selling
Regularly I find myself on the receiving end of a pitch of some sort, as do all in business. We all buy and sell on a daily basis, and whilst there are easily recognisable and specialised functions that buy and sell on behalf of our organisations, we nevertheless are “pitchers”, and “pitchees” every day.
It seems that one of the impacts of digital communication has been to help us forget, or perhaps brush over some of the foundation sales skills honed over the millennia of human activity, so here they are again:
- Listen rather than speak. Asking questions, listening to the responses, and then asking the follow up questions has always been, and will always be the best sales strategy.
- Benefits not features. When you are speaking, talk about the benefits of your offering to the “pitchee” rather than reciting the features. Customers are really only interested in what value a product is to them, not what the range of features may be, so focus on value to them by demonstrating how your product makes their life easier, more efficient, and more productive.
- Deliver useful insights, knowledge, and intelligence. Being of value to a customer is more than just flogging product, it is also about articulating the context in which the product will be used to add value. Clearly however, there is a line here with confidentiality, any potential customer who hears what their competitors may be doing from you will never trust you again to keep their confidence, but the best sales people are always able to deliver solutions to problems they have collaborated to articulate.
Easy to say, often hard to do.
Apr 22, 2014 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Small business, Social Media
These days with the ubiquity of mobile and social, almost everyone is a media channel.
Recognising this simple fact changes the formula for media success. In the old days, the formula used so successfully by mass marketers was:
Money X mass media = Sales.
This used to work, no longer, now that media has fragmented into thousands of pieces, and individuals have a personal menu of media consumption based on their interests, time, and competing priorities in their lives. The formula marketers now have to use is something like:
Time X tailored and personalised media = a chance for a sale.
Much more uncertain.
In this context, spending some time considering the productivity of the investment being made in social media, and you are making them, even if it is just the employee who spends some of your time checking their facebook timeline, would be useful.
Following is a framework you might like to think about. The reality is that it is little different from a normal Marketing Audit, is it just that we are focussing on social and the content that fuels engagement.
Social media competitive analysis.
- What are we doing?
- What are direct competitors doing?
- What are the successful Social media attention grabbers doing?
- What kind of content are our competitors producing and distributing?
- How, where and when are they distributing?
- How are competitive strategies performing? A. In keeping their customers engaged, and, B. In attracting other customers, including ours
- Where do we have opportunities?
- Where are we under-performing?
- What can we do to restructure our activities within existing capabilities?
- What capabilities do we need/should be developed?
Content plan
- Determine the behavioural and “tone” of the intended audience
- Indentify what type of content should be developed
- Source and develop the content
- Create a content calendar
- Develop a set of performance metrics
- Build in the expectation of continuous A/B testing, tweaking testing, tweaking….
- Build a list of users, and track their use of and engagement with your content, being prepared to personalise
- Leverage the list, but ensure that the communication is always personal, and appropriate to the current situation of the prospect.
Repeat all above, again.
Content marketing has become all the rage, there are so called gurus out there selling new brands of snake-oil, and many are extraordinarily good at parting you with your money. However, the simple and fundamental truth of marketing remains: you must add value to your customers lives. Failure to do that results in just having a big bag of fancy hot air, not much use to anyone, no matter how fancy the plan.
Oh, and one last thing about plans that I bang on relentlessly to my clients: You get only 1 point out of 10 for the plan, the other 9 are reserved for implementation.
For a “How to” of an audit of the technical detail on your site, this post of Neil Patels is a terrific start.
I would value your feedback on how you undertake a content audit, so let me know.
