It’s interesting to see how various small businesses are marketing at the moment. I have a long standing client who’s work has just about dried up (luckily he has some other irons in his fire.) He has decided to stop marketing as his clients and prospects are just not interested in commissioning work at the moment He has a point. Others are finding that their business is still growing and will do for the next year. Marketing spend has, in fact, increased.

But what do you do if you’re clients are just not in the mood to spend money with you? Do you keep marketing or save some money whilst you can? Depends, but I guess you can potentially do more harm to your brand profile if you stop than if you continue!!! Oh and someone else might be creeping in the back door whilst you’re not looking……!!

Over the next few days, perhaps a week or so, I’m going to pick a word at random and post my thoughts on that word and it’s application/relevance to small business in today’s sophisticated, complex and rapidly changing world. I hope it helps small business owners reflect on their business and stimulates some thoughts. Today’s word is ‘ESSENTIAL.’ Told you it was random.

It’s a word used seldom other than by authors in the title of their latest book on improving your business. You’ve seen it… the essential guide to this, the essential rules for that (I know i’ve done it). Well perhaps those books are very useful, they help us prioritise, they condense the abundance of things we have to do into a quick way of dealing with the obvious….but they are changing! The essentials used to be great products, they are a given now. The essentials used to be a well established business, it doesn’t matter any more, the essentials used to be having premises well located, in most cases who gives a damn about that any more. Our priorities have changed substantially, it’s all got a bit human again!

It’s clear how things are panning out…. great customer experiences. I’ve written a lot about this but it’s essential. According to Colin Shaw in his book ‘The DNA of Customer Experience’ 95% of business leaders believe customer experience is the next competitive battleground. It’s no longer good enough to have a great products or a great idea. Engaging, involving and having conversations with your customers is the next phase.

And, ensuring your people are doing meaningful work they are committed to. In fact, I would as far to say your people want to be part of something that matters, where they are energised, free and inspired by what you do. It’s about skill and behaviour not authority and they want to be led not managed.

As I said it’s all got a little human. What’s ‘essential’ in our small business has fundamentally changed. Moving towards a more human to human experience is something small businesses are in a great position to take advantage of. I’m not so sure our corporate competitors have that.

So how to combine your offline and online marketing campaigns? Using the web is not just another channel to market, it’s not something you stick on the end as an after thought nor is it something you ‘play’ with, it’s a lot more sophisticated than that.

Offline and online campaigns need to fit your marketing objectives, they should be synchronised, intergral and totally complement each other. Using the web though allows you to create a business that is more customer led, where the customer participates in your business, gets involved in dynamic conversation with you. It provides you with the ability to gain feedback from customers, respond better to requests and have a constant dialogue.

You can never over communicate with your customers but you can bombard them with crap. The web and your website should be designed and built so that the customer ultimately drives your business. Consider how your website can support your offline activity and how offline activity can drive people to your site.

There are no quick fixes but by looking at other sites perhaps we can learn a thing or two. Some great examples; Easyjet, Ebay, Tango, Harley Davidson and Firebox. 

I like this article/post by Kevin Kelly author of ‘Cool Tools.’

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.02/bigquestions.html?pg=3#questions

Once you’ve read it, try and answer this…..have your biggest questions in your small business been answered yet? If not what’s stopping us?

Why? You don’t have all the answers! It’s just as important to recruit, reward and have trouble makers on your team as well as trouble shooters. Engage with not only the reliable people who keep your business ticking over but with the people who are going to radically change it too!

However….. remember to be courageous enough to get rid of those that expend large amounts of energy maintaining the status quo!

Just a small request…come on cafe owners, hoteliers, restaurants, railway stations, airports and any others places of the like, get to grips with it! You should be providing wireless internet access free of charge in today’s market place. It’s expected like air conditioning in cars, winter holidays with sun, coffee in your cappuccino, cheese on your pizza and towels in your hotel bedroom.

It costs little, provides great customer experience and in some cases may even be a competitive advantage, for a short while anyway! 

You don’t watch a boring television program do you? You don’t listen to a mediocre seminar, do you? Or at least you don’t pass it on to others. No one can hardly hear you shouting from the rooftops about going to see something you struggled to stay awake in. Nor do you pass on a tedious email. You don’t rave to your friends about the latest meal you had at a restaurant if it’s just bored the pants off you either! If it’s lousy, or even average, we don’t shout or create a noise about it. And you certainly don’t post on DIGG the eye shutting, snoozing blog comment you read earlier, (present one excepted of course!)

What we do make a noise about is those positive things that make you jump up and down. The products or services that get you excited, that are interesting, that are a little out of the ordinary. Those are the things that make you rush and tell your friends that you’ve just had an amazing experience at the latest car wash! It takes something special to make a customer an advocate (someone who tells everyone about you without an incentive from you.) 

What makes you an advocate? Was it something stable, dull even reliable? Chances are it wasn’t. How would someone describe the experience they have with your business? Engaging? Energetic? Important? Simple? Influential? Sincere? Weird? Exuberant? Human?

I’ve just come across these eight videos on the Orange website. They include Hiro Harjani, Angus Thirlwell, James Murray, Wilfred Emmanuel Jones, Will King and a few more. They are all talking about starting and running their own business. Useful, interesting and worth the time to watch….good stuff Orange. Link is below:

www.business.orange.co.uk/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Business&c=OUKPage&cid=1044136938032

I’ve cut and paste an interesting article by Tom Peters that’s shown below. Good point and very true. When was the last time we made our people feel valued?… (I’m talking about more than a pat on the back here and so is he!)

100 WAYS TO SUCCEED/MAKE MONEY
by  Tom Peters

---------------
100 Ways to Succeed/Make Money by Tom Peters. Copyright 2008

by Tom Peters. Licensed under Creative Commons

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.Click here to view 

the license
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/legalcode

—————

100 WAYS TO SUCCEED #74:
C(I) > C(E)

This one waltzed into my life when I was speaking to GE Energy 

sales folks earlier this year. I've long said that "forming relations 

inside our own company is almost as important as the external ones." 

While it may not be at Universal, it struck me that in many cases 

"C(I)"--our Internal customers--are in fact...MORE IMPORTANT...

than C(E)--our external customers. In the GE case, systems sales, 

often to "foreigners," the salesperson (my GE informant who's a very 

successful salesperson) wants "an...UNFAIR SHARE"...of a host 

of insiders' time--engineers, logistics folks, the risk-assessment

staff, and even lawyers. Lots of GE dudes are selling lots of 

stuff--and need, yesterday, lots and lots and lots of Inside Help. 

I (salesperson) want to be at the front of the queue for the 

harried risk-assessment staffers time & attention; I want to be 

head of the queue and getting an unfair share of the engineers', 

who must customize the product, time and imagination and attention.

Hence my full set of "internal [customer] relationships” could end up 

being more important, even far more important, than my "external 

[customer] relations.” The applications of this idea range way 

beyond enormous GE systems sales. I, as a professional services 

person at the "client interface," want an unfair share--and 

posthaste--of the Graphics Department's attention when a hastily 

scheduled Presentation looms. As a junior purchasing staffer, I 

want an unfair share of the Legal Staff's time as I prepare even 

a medium-sized contract. As a White House staffer many moons ago, 

I wanted the various Gatekeepers to put my memo to the VP or P or 

Secretary of State at the front of an infinitely long cue of stuff 

from people who waaaaaay outranked me.

So, what have you done lately for your all-important "portfolio" of
internal...CUSTOMERS????? I(I) + C(I) > I(E) + C(E). My Investment in
Internal Customers must frequently outstrip my Investment in External
Customers. Think about it. Clearly. Precisely. E.g., when was the last 

time you took a C(I) to lunch or dinner? Or brought Flowers to the 

Legal Department after they'd done you even a wee favor?

Is a brand a product, a service, a company or even a person? Is it a logo, a marketing strategy or an attitude or a culture? It’s a question often asked and it’s perhaps understandable why so many small business owners get so frustrated by the lack of a clear definition by the marketing specialists themselves.

It’s an elusive concept, if it’s a concept at all? Naomi Klein in her book ‘No Logo’ provides the most appropriate interpretation of brand as ‘the core meaning of the modern corporation.’ Meaning is the main word here…meaning!!!! I think we can assume she includes small businesses. Brand is something we cannot ignore and should be looking for ideas from. Manchester United, Madonna, Sony, Fairtrade, Mini, VW Camper vans are all strong brands, constantly changing and adapting to market trends.

For me branding is a devolution and communication of your companies core values through an identity, a culture, company assets, specific products/services and through your people. It’s something that is coherent but necessarily consistent and it means something to your customers and employees. What brand does clearly do though is that it encompasses the key point; it’s not what you do, it’s actually how you do it that matters.