This marketing email from Tom Tom amused me, primarily because of the choice of image of a skier teetering on the edge of cliff.
Whilst this email is in fact advertising speed camera alerts, if you compare the image of the skier with the image from The Telegraph showing the BMW of a driver who was facing a dangerous driving charge having blindly followed his sat nav to the edge of a cliff in West Yorkshire until it was teetering on the edge, I’m sure you will be able to spot the unfortunate similarities.
The joys of image selection! Always something to bear in mind.
Becoming aware of how areas within your business communicate with your customers is vital if you want to convey a consistent message about your brand/business.
The difficulty is that your customers don’t just read the words you write, or hear what you say about your business. They tend to read a whole lot more into every single interaction with your business. Both consciously and unconsciously. They even read things into the interactions they don’t have, or the things you don’t do.
Some examples…
Shabby carpet in a reception area.
Customer perception: Maybe your business isn’t doing very well if you can’t afford a new carpet.
Taking a long time to answer the phone.
Customer perception: Maybe you don’t actually want my business.
Old fashioned branding.
Customer perception: Maybe you are just an old fashioned company delivering out-of-date solutions.
Becoming aware of what your business is saying about itself can be hard when you’re so close to it, but with some outside help you can train yourself into noticing again. Try interacting with your business as if you were a customer – how does it make you feel? What would you be thinking if you saw or experienced those things in another business? Ask your friends, family, colleagues and customers what they think about your business. Listen to their honest opinions. Then aim to change the things you can.
Being confident that your business is communicating what you want to communicate is a great place to be. Don’t let your business undermine what it is you really want to say!
As cool things go, a flying car is certainly one of them! If you’ve got the cash to splash, then this should certainly be on your list…
Being able to fly and drive certainly opens up your options for commuting! Think of the time saving – that’s got to be worth something!
Church of the Customer picked up the flying car a while back and suggested it was prime material for word-of-mouth marketing: it’s a great idea and if people know about it, they’re likely to talk about it. People want to talk about cool stuff to their friends, family, colleagues, anyone who will listen. However, people can’t talk about your idea if they don’t know about it and if the channels for communication aren’t easily available, and that’s what Church of the Customer picked up as the problem with the flying car. The company who had the idea (Terrafugia) weren’t making it easy for people to connect and share their excitement about this great product. Ben McConnell (who wrote the original blog) also suggested videos, social media, Twitter etc. to increase participation and help generate word of mouth.
The flying car company now at least have some videos.
In Ben’s most recent post, ‘The flying car flies’ (which includes the first video above) he suggested a multi-media fest, including videos on the front page, to help get people excited and to create a buzz; along with the code to embed the videos to help us bloggers!
However, I’d go one step further.
To create a real buzz you need a real sense of participation. At $194,000 anticipated retail price (when it goes on the market) that’s going to be out of reach for most of us and therefore limit the sense of being involved.
If however Terrafugia were to offer 5 lucky winners the chance to go for a drive/flight in the flying car by entering a special competition, then I’d be excited (especially if they flew me over to America for the prize – I’m based in the UK!).
Then, if they then offered me an extra chance to win for every one of my friends who also entered the competition, I’d happily suggest they entered – for my sake as well as theirs!
At very little cost to them, they could generate huge marketing and PR opportunities.
Within a short space of time you would have generated a buzz and a sense of participation far beyond what could be generated by YouTube and social media assistance alone. Combine the social media, YouTube and an exciting competition and you’d get something that was greater than the sum of its parts!
ps. If you’re a member of Terrafugia and you’re reading this, you can sign me (and all my friends) up for the competition!
The Google AdWords concept is very simple: connect a customer who is looking for something with a company that is selling something. The better the match, the happier both parties are.
But for people who are less familiar with Adwords and the technology behind them, this concept can sometimes be quite hard to visualise and understand.
Last week, I was attending an initial meeting with a client to explore whether they would like me to update their Google Adwords campaign and drew a brief sketch to take with me explaining how Google Adwords works as a marketing concept. They loved the sketch and we found that it really unlocked the concept in a way that just wouldn’t have happened with words. So, I thought I’d share the pictures with you here…
(To view the full size image, just click on the picture. Depending on your browser settings, you might need to click on the picture a second time to get it full screen width.)
I’ve had a number of conversations with businesses regarding the ’social media phenomenon’; the general feeling is that they should be on Facebook and the like because it’s the ‘in thing to do’ but really, they’re not sure why!
It’s still all about customers
At the end of the day, it was and always has been about customers. A business can’t survive without them. It needs ways of engaging and connecting with both existing and potential business.
Social media doesn’t change this basic business principle. Social media provides a new communication channel for customer-to-customer and business-to-customer.
Therefore, the same rules still apply…
1. Go where your customers go
All social media sites have ‘contexts’. They generally have a defined purpose; function; knowledge focus; or social context. Understand this and you’ll have your answer to whether you should be involved in any particular social media site for your business.
For example, if a social media site has a primarily American social context but you are in the UK selling to the UK market, then it won’t help you much!
Similarly, if it is a car support site and you sell gardening equipment, then that’s not a good start.
Just do a bit of research and then use your common sense.
Here is a list of over 400 social media sites to get you started. It has some categorisation but you’ll need to do a bit more work to identify those that are appropriate for your company or charity.
2. Appropriate communication
Appropriate communication will depend on many factors. It will depend on your business type; on whether it is business-to-consumer or business-to-business; and on how it is appropriate for you to relate to, and communicate with, your customers.
For example, if you tend to have a more formal business-to-business relationship with your customers, Facebook may be the wrong context; you could come across overly familiar and customers may not wish to share at that personal level with you.
However, if you sell to consumers, Facebook may be just the right communication channel. People represent themselves on Facebook (not their employer as they would in B2B) so if they care about your product or service they may well sign up to be associated with you or any groups you create.
It’s a whole new world
Social media may seem daunting at first, but the first step is to give it a go. Sign up for something and start learning. The more you do this the more natural it will become. Before you know it you’ll feel right at home!
Choose ‘Except from this domain’ [5] and ‘Entire site’ [6].
Voila! You have your list.
You can also export as this list as a TSV file [7].
If you sign up for a free Yahoo account you’ll also get additional tracking features.
What do I do with the list?
There are various things you can do with this list; it is essentially free market intelligence!
By allowing you to understand who is interested in your site, the list can help you to better tailor the content of your site to those people/organisations.
You might find that there new opportunities to explore if some of the links surprise you.
Use the list to check your market positioning and check that you are described accurately by those linking to you.
Do the same check with your competitors, which might provide you with an interesting comparison. If they’re ahead of you online, it may be a way of getting new ideas of how to develop your organisation and website.
Tips kindly provided by Hugo Russell from iCentrum at their Social Media Drivetime event.
There has been a lot of talk recently about businesses having to fight to survive, but is this really the right approach in this current economic climate? Is it ever the right approach whatever the economic climate?
Fighting to survive
Often ‘fighting to survive’ is understood as working in the same way as usual, only harder. Working harder, selling more, but without fundamental change to the way in which this is done. And, in the current economic climate, whilst trying to do all this on a cost-cutting budget.
Sadly for many businesses this doesn’t work and the approach actually damages the business rather than helping it. Fighting to survive, without change, releases very little, if any, untapped potential within the business.
The Darwinian Approach explains why this is the case.
The weakest businesses in a marketplace struggle to survive. Even without a changing environment, we still see natural selection in action: the weakest businesses die or are killed by predators/competitors.
An unchanging business in a changing environment dies.Businesses operate in an always changing environment. Most of the time businesses can get away with slow evolution, or in a strong market, not evolving at all. However, when a market changes rapidly it often isn’t enough to do that. Nor is it enough to just fight by doing the same things as the business has always done.
So, how can we use the Darwinian approach to create a new strategy for survival?
Survival of the fittest:building a strong business. A business is the sum of its parts: its people; its processes; its product/services; its culture; its financial position; its marketing; its customers etc.. The business needs to be strong to survive. Some are already strong; but all can be stronger.
Design your business for evolution and change. A strong business is always growing, always developing and always moving forwards – in every area. If a business isn’t doing this, it’s going backwards. This is often about the culture of the corporation, and about the leadership who drives the movement. There does need to be someone in the centre who has the authority and ability to sponsor change – without that there is no permission for the organisation to change. It is about designing and building an organisation with the cabability to change. If this isn’t happening already, change is possible: it won’t be an easy journey but it is vital for survival.
Understand the changing environment. Awareness of what is going on around you and enough distance and awareness to make intelligent decisions about how it will effect your business is critical. It requires looking ahead and around, then taking space to think, consider and understand. Only then can you respond.
Respond: strategy and implementation. Strategy can be developed only from taking a holistic view internally and externally and deciding on a waypoint (it’s not a destination as you never actually stop journeying). Implementation comes from understanding the implications of that strategy and planning your journey, being ready to react and revise along the way. Without effective implementation there is no movement or change.
In the present economic climate, as markets change in unprecedented ways, adaptation of businesses to the environment is vital. Without adaptation, re-positioning, understanding the changing environment and reacting accordingly, businesses will struggle to survive. Business evolution is paramount.
As businesses are starting to report a slowdown in sales and a weakening in their financial position, there has been a lot in the news about a serious recession pending for the UK, especially after the report from the British Chambers of Commerce.
So, how should you respond? Do you know how you can make your business stronger and more competitive and therefore better able to deal with a recession? Markets shrink in a recession so where there were lots of people wanting and willing/able to pay for your product or service before, there are now less people able to purchase what you have to offer. That means you are going to have to change your strategy to win the remaining customers and fight off your competitors.
Here are 5 steps to prepare your business for a recession…
Plan for the future
Don’t just meander along hoping for the best – plan! Your business will work best if you know where you are trying to go and what you are trying to achieve in the next 3-5 years. It doesn’t have to be a long, detailed or ‘impressive’ strategy, but it does require thought!
Draw up an action plan on how to get there
You will need decide on short, medium and long term actions out of the strategy you drew up. These are specific actionable things that you can start working on, starting immediately. There will be both big things that you can do to improve (break these down into manageable parts) and also lots of little things. Don’t forget to prioritise.
Forecast your money
Prepare a 3-year financial forecast or get someone to do it for you (like your accountant). Add in your costs and expected benefits from the action plan above. Even with a positive economy businesses often over-estimate sales, so be careful. Try cutting your revenue in half and see what it looks like; how would respond if that actually happened? Try cutting it in half again. Keep updating it monthly so you can see where you are against your plan. This will give you early warning of when you might run into problems. If things get really tight, then move from a monthly cashflow forecast to a weekly one, and watch your money like a hawk. When you see a problem do something about it in advance – don’t just wait for it to hit you!
Spend time working on your business not in it
In order to implement your plan you will need to starting working on your business. It’s the difference between say, restoring and renovating a house and just cleaning it. It can be hard work and uncomfortable knocking walls out, getting a plasterer in etc. but you end up with a much better house at the end of it. Don’t fall into the trap of just doing continual maintenance work when actually there is significant change that needs to happen. Don’t get me wrong, maintenance is important but it won’t significantly push your business forward. Your business needs to be the best it can be in every area. If you don’t have time to do this, then you either need to make time or find someone to work with you to implement the action plan.
Don’t stop marketing, just do it better
As things start looking tight many companies start to reduce their marketing budgets. Proceed with caution on this one. You should do a separate 12-month marketing plan that links into both your strategy and your general business action plan. You might not know how effective your current marketing actually is; measuring its effectiveness can be hard but certainly not impossible. Marketing shouldn’t just be seen as a cost – it should bring in more business in monetary terms over the year than you spend on it. It is worth noting there are no silver bullets when it comes to marketing; it is about a consistent, focused approach in line with your branding and strategy (hence the plan!). By all means, put your marketing effort under the microscope and work to make it more effective, but don’t just cut it to cut costs; there is a real danger that you’ll end up cutting yourself off from your life blood – your customers!
Though it would seem that there are difficult times ahead, don’t panic and don’t give up. Times like these can actually be a real opportunity. Whilst you might worry about what is just around the corner, the fact that you are looking at what you can do about it now puts you in a much stronger position than most. This could be your opportunity to build a stronger, more resilient organisation and to outshine and outperform your competitors.
