It’s easy to get stuck in a cycle of movement and we can all be forgiven for thinking that our business is changing, doing new stuff and improving results, when in fact, it’s not. You’re just going round in circles, embedded in what I call ‘revolving door’ syndrome.

Take a look at the new Bailey’s advert http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjW4iFuO-WU They have added a ‘coffee’ alternative to their product range under the pretense that it’s product development but it just feels like a desperate attempt to compete with new entrants to the market. Its false, this isn’t change, it’s just messing about.

Many companies are guilty of ‘re arranging the deck chairs on the Titantic.’ Look carefully at you business, as each month and year passes, are you just revolving or are you truly evolving?

It really is okay to use certain words even if a number are overused and overhyped. A few people I was on a course with yesterday mentioned a few cliches they hate; innovative, unique and community to name but a few. These words including creative, ideas, engaging, diverse, vibrant, inspirational and social are great explanatory words.

Use these words but present them in context. The reason people get bored with them is because we haven’t done our job and made them tangible. There is nothing wrong with using the phrase cutting edge’ if you are. The problem occurs when you are not. Use the word landmark or the best only if you have independent testimony to back that up. If you took all of these fabulous words away, what would we have left? Mundane, flat, uninspiring words.

People will often say that your brand is like Marmite, they either love it or hate it. Your retort should always be, as long as people don’t find us indifferent. These ARE times for ’sticking your head above the parapet’ and ’sticking out like a sore thumb’ as long as it’s for something exceptional of course.

Being in an indifferent position is fundamentally a difficult place to be. Customers don’t see you and therefore ignore you. It becomes inherently difficult to build any traction on the customer loyalty front. Many companies initiate the worst action with poor consequences by trying to buy customers through traditional marketing tactics. That only gets you bad profits which you can’t sustain over the long term.

Better have a smaller list of customers who love what you do, promote what you do and buy more of what you do again and again. Rather than the ‘yeah whatever’ group that aren’t listening. Those that hate you…..well that’s just life!!!

I presented a seminar this week in Cornwall for www.mervynsmallwood.co.uk on customer loyalty and social media. It struck me that, like yesterday’s post, some new things are going to be challenging for business but we don’t need to panic about social media. Not just yet anyway. There is time to sit down, relax and just watch/observe.

My top five tips of what you need to be doing if you are looking at your marketing strategy in the next few months. Social media will be at the forefront of that so:

1. Read this book www.ducttapemarketing.com/socialmediaforbusiness.pdf

2. Research and play with social media, it’s meant to be fun.

3. Get yourself booked onto www.alikeminds.org in February 2010.

4. Find a social media ‘guru’ and pick their brains.

5. Read this blog and others www.thebrandbuilder.blogspot.com/

Don’t panic, social media is here to stay. You don’t need to jump on the bandwagon just yet. It’s more important to make sure you know what you’re doing and want to achieve. Spend 3 months getting your head round it. Play with www.twitter.com Start to engage with people. Follow people you like, follow people you hate. Understand the language, how it’s changing the way we do business, then launch yourself into it.

Social media is not a spectator sport so be prepared for that. You are not going to lose out by waiting a few months. In fact, you are going to be in a better position to manage the process and ensure your business makes the right decisions rather than hundreds of decisions.

I don’t think we are under any illusions here. Moving from a pre dominant offline marketing strategy to an online one is going to be tough. Not least because we have to go back to the drawing board and start again, forgetting almost everything we have been taught about marketing.

That’s not a bad idea though is it? Structurally things are shifting and essentially we have to move from a transactional relationship with our customers to one of engagement. In 2007, Forrester offered the definition of ‘engagement’ which included four elements; involvement, interaction, initimacy and influence. Now there’s a start. For me ‘influence’ is probably the most significant and exciting. Scott Gould has posted a fab article that’s a must read on influencers and translators. Catch it here at http://scottgould.me/influencers-and-translators/

There are three challenges here. Design a strategy that incorporates the four elements and embeds them in the culture of the organisation. Secondly, that those elements are implemented at every stage of the customer process and, thirdly, that you measure them to ensure it translates into meaning for you and your customers.

Tom Peters, is a bit of a hero of mine. I’ve read his stuff ever since an ex boss got me a copy of “In Search of Excellence” for my 21st birthday….boy was that a long time ago!!

Tom’s still got it! Read his blog here www.tompeters.com Recently, for old times sake, I read a couple of his old books. In reality, it was to go over old ground to see how much we had listened and possibly progressed. My word was he making sense. Stuff we still haven’t got our heads around but, maybe now, with the advent of social media, we can see the first rays of light. Some of Tom’s nuggets:

- “Humanise the relationship with our customers.”
- “People can smell emotional commitment from a mile away.”
- “Competitive businesses must lead their customers.”
- “Hire curious people – the gumption to do something exciting, something extraordinary, something that breaks the mould.”
- “Bringing clients into the process early makes them co-conspiritors in the creation adventure, which often edges them towards embracing exciting (and risky) ventures that promise a wow-scale payoff.”

If you are reading some leading edge books and are starting to play with social media, these phrases will sound all too familiar. Times are changing and for good. Whole sweeps of business models are broken. Lots of what we learnt at college, university or, that course we went on last week are outdated and outmoded.

The walls are breaking down; in many cases the opposite of what we have been taught is now the way of doing business. Shifting sands yes, troubled times yes, exciting times yes and, opportunist times, you bet!

Yep little old me, because of the web, social media and technology has a voice. I perhaps have a lot to thank Tim Berners-Lee for! I have a voice that can not only be heard around the world but its one a few people are interested in listening too. How cool is that? Not only that, but it allows me to converse with the likes of Tom Peters, Seth Godin, Patrick Dixon, Colin Shaw and Trey Pennington.

Ten years ago this would have been impossible. I’d have had to go the traditional route, through a publisher, or, turned up to the ‘guru gigs’ and been that annoying person who hands out business cards to everyone and anyone.

I look around me a lot, it’s the fascinating part of my job, being able to observe. I spot a lot of people who have lost their own voice and thereby, to some degree, their individuality. They’ve adopted their corporate BS speak hook line and sinker which is as attractive as a fish wife in a small tin room.

This ‘groundswell’ of change in how we communicate can be seen as a threat or an opportunity. Small businesses have the distinct of advantage of seeing it only as an opportunity. They tend to be set up for this change far better than corporate businesses. They tend to have more intimate relationships with their customers and staff, so making the jump is more like a hop and a skip really.

Some time ago John McMahon from www.forum21.co.uk professed that there were nine competitive advantages ranging from production cost to marketing to R & D. I still think he is right but those nine can be honed down into two differentiating factors; the price you charge and doing something definably different/innovative.

Realistically, if you’re in the price sensitive market, price in some ways is all you’ve got and we know where that leads. More price reductions, more price promotions, more sales deals, less margins. People want quality but have low expectations of customer service. Let’s be honest, if I go into Primark, I’m not that bothered about having a meaningful, long term relationship with the people in there. I want my t-shirt for £1 and then I want to leave.

If you’re delivering something different and innovative, now that’s a different ball game all together. Expectations from the start are critically higher. We demand undivided attention if we are buying a premium product. We desire a mutually respectful relationship that’s full of trust. Our motivations to purchase are just as much about the product as the service and its emotional too. The focus has got to be the unrelenting exceptional customer experience.

Or, you can just be in that very vulnerable, very competitive place, the middle like Next, River Island, Debenhams and Marks and Spencer where you have to look good, be good and deliver a good price too. In fact, you have to hit both competitive advantages simultaneously, continuously, everyday! Now that’s difficult.

Well not quite literally! In the past we have imposed ourselves on our customers through advertising, selling and ‘interruption’ marketing tactics. Are we now entering an era of invitation only? I’m not talking about ‘if your names not down, you’re not getting in’ but is the web not enabling us to communicate the true us, targeted effectively to those that are listening?

Should our marketing now be about communicating distinguishing information that exposes our grace, humility and expertise? Our customers can find us easier than we can find them nowadays. We don’t need vast amounts of info in our head when we can get the answer via a few clicks. If we have a clearly definable presence on the web, that’s highly focused, is that all we need? If we have that high profile and what we talk about is intriguing enough, interesting and based on an honest relationship, perhaps it will be inviting enough!

Businesses all over the world are reinventing their strategic models and considering new ways to deliver success. Some of the most innovative are doing it from the start. Take www.threadless.com A company started in 2000 by two young entrepreneurs. Setting up a t-shirt business could have been one of the most ‘me too’ projects ever undertaken but Jake Nicholl and Jacob DeHart have delivered a return on investment most of us would break a leg for.

The business is simple. The site sells t-shirts. People submit t-shirt designs, others vote on which one is best and the winner gets free t-shirts for the winning design. The successful t-shirts are sold for between £10 and $25. In 2006 Threadless turned over $17 million. They don’t have or need a marketing budget as their business works via word of mouth. And, all growth is driven by an online strategy.

Right from the start in 2000, they recognised that one t-shirt is very much like another t-shirt. So instead of focusing their creativity and imagination on the product, they focused their action on the relationship with the customer, fan or, what is rapidly becoming known as the ‘crowd.’ They literally built a system that could deliver that.

Not one of their products has been a flop. By using followers/customers to vote on the best designs and rate new designs, Threadless have effectively exploited technology to build an unrivalled relationship with people and turn market research on it’s head. The cost in cash terms, very little and they get a higher validity rating on their research.

Threadless has allowed its customers to create the product, to contribute to the designs, to be involved in the product selection process and to have a voice. In some ways, many of us are busting a gut trying to grow our businesses using old school models when the answer to doing something differently is right there under our nose.