I went to an interesting round table yesterday about public sector and charities engaging with business (and vice versa). One specific comment in particular raised was the need to speak in a relevant language to “the other side” and how to begin a conversation in the first place.

Simple fact though is that many companies simply fail to start conversations in the first place, which can lead to the question at the head of this post.

With Blogs, email, Twitter, etc. there is no excuse for SMEs to not engage with their clients and the world in general. And then there is the telephone…

What if, as a small business marketer or sales person, you committed to contact one person each day, just for a catchup maybe, or to listen to what’s happening with them.

And, to make it easier; make that call with no sales angle. Just a simple catchup and chat.

It’d be interesting to see the results over a month.

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So, for me wanting an specific Apple product, I have to ‘reward’ a telecoms company for poor customer service and poor product knowledge. Does that make sense? Of course not. It’s a contractual grudge purchase.

No doubt, when this contract ends and Vodafone et al. get their hands on the iPhone, O2 will lose customers. And, off course, they’ve taken full advantage of the exclusivity and tied people in for up to 24 months.

But, for all the fancy Sean Bean adverts on TV, is it a great marketing to have such poor customer service?

Recently when trying to buy our second iPhone, my business partner got told different information on three occasions about what was needed when purchasing. Although I already had a business account for my phone, we had to prove the business again.

After the third visit, I took my computer so we could clarify figures and print off a Purchase Order there and then. They wouldn’t let us. Conversely, the nearby iStore let me print it, even though I wasn’t buying (although I have in the past).

When we asked about the new iPhone, the O2 guy denied there was a new one coming out… a week before it was announced.

So, who am I going to moan about and who am I going to champion? And I know I won’t be alone.

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To me, they both sell a product that has a market: A market that may not have even been there five years ago. I’m not saying these two are both good business models – they are just different.

Selling to the market

Last week, I spoke with a commercial litho printer about his workload and current trading. We spoke about how he could leverage a platform like Twitter by repackaging his traditional product. Rather than one-off jobbing, why not take a risk and sell space on four-colour print-runs, or even auction them? It doesn’t play to his current business model, but it plays to the marketing platform and could create a new stream of revenue.

Sometimes you just have to redefine your market… or THE market.

Look at how Apple redefined the way we buy music and how they are changing the mobile phone market rapidly with a device which is so customisable that the phone part is becoming rather small.

Or what about Easyjet and Ryan Air? Love them or hate them, they have changed the way people buy flights by selling at a very low cost and then adding supplements, rather than an “all in” cost.

My own challenges

When I take a look at my own business I can see the changes coming… and coming. What I can also see is that the the guys that were the new different five years ago are still that same different now, so it also gives me hope in terms of my own flexibility.

Some examples please Craig:

• When we first started The Escape 12 years ago, 70% of our revenue was print. It’s now about 10%
• Cost of entry into the design business allows for thousands of freelancers with a lot less overheads. The web gives them the opportunity to market just as hard as our business. These guys are competition not to be overlooked.
• In 2006, we spent six months developing an e-commerce solution. You can download Open Source products for free that do the same thing. These will constantly improve, so do I need the extra development cost or people who can develop within this solution?
• Three years ago SEO was a bit of an unknown. Now, there’s even a dummies guide.

I could go on but I guess you get the point.

Me, I always remind myself that sometimes the safest bet may seem the riskiest at the time.

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Larger companies and consumer products/services probably need to lead from the brand, but in the world of small business B2B, people buy people, so I tend to advocate the use of personal profiles for the individuals.

But, here comes a dichotomy for me. With my personal brand online, such as this Blog and my Twitter profile, my personal traits have a tendency to rear their heads… I can sometimes be blunt, impatient and defensive. Questions is, if I suppress these, am I not being genuine?

My problem (and this may be a good thing) is that I don’t. If someone asks a question, I may choose to offer an opinion in my field of expertise, even if it’s not what they want to hear. If I am battling for a cause, I will stand my ground and debate.

When everyone has a voice online, you are bound to get clashes due to styles of engagement. For instance, I hate people selling on Twitter. And, sometimes, even if they think they are doing nothing wrong, the sales person shines through, it’s in their nature: Like the serial networkers of BNI and Ecadamy, et al. It may work for them, but it certainly does not float my boat and the guard goes up.

Although they are closely linked, marketing is not sales, and I think this point sometimes loses it’s way online. In a social environment, do people want to be sold to?

I once overheard an ‘old school’ gentleman say something at a gathering and although the context is different, it sticks with me. “They are not our kind of people” he told someone about another family (it wasn’t a bigoted remark BTW).

With the number of people on the social media channels, you will obviously get people you like and people you don’t like and perhaps the less vanilla you are the more likelihood you will engage with the people who really ‘get’ you.

Of course, a great part of the whole social media machine is control… you just switch off the ones you don’t connect with. And, if the boot is on the other foot and I am not your bag, I’m sure you will be switching me off too.

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My main playground for trialling these sites is our beauty product shop.

As you can see from the pie chart below, I am now attracting most of my sales through brand specific feeder websites.

I am also becoming more aggressive (defensive) with the salon on a local strategy with a foray into geographical reference sites. The first one is this site for a beauty salon in Blackwater.

Specificity is essential (and sometimes hard) with this approach, but in terms of creating a legacy for sustinable marketing, I still believe it’s money well spent.

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It’s an interesting incentive, as is the intention of Destination Basingstoke, the organisation looking to promote the town and I am actually quite proud to be involved.

My Basingstoke

Having lived in Basingstoke all my life I am now raising a family and running a business here and have seen the town develop into something very different from my childhood of the 70s and 80s. The thing that gets my goat, and why I am keen to actively promote Basingstoke is that the town that is often derided is the Basingstoke of my childhood, not the one I live in now 30 years later. When I look at this video of Basingstoke town centre in the sixties, I understand why. But, it’s not the town I live in in 2009. What if we did the same for Milton Keynes, Manchester, some parts of London, or even Dubai?

Image Problem

Of course, Basingstoke is not alone. I could quite easily sneer at other towns with the same image problem, such as Crawley and Slough, but to be fair, I’ve never visited either, so I can’t comment. But, having been involved with the Destination Basingstoke project earlier in the year, I was actually amazed at some of the statistics available and astonished that we still have this image problem. For business, living and leisure, the marketing proposition for Basingstoke is actually quite compelling.

Of course, being that much older now, I can also see the bigger picture. The job situation, economic stability, healthcare, etc. Stuff I would take for granted ten years ago, but not now with a business and young family.

Every town has it’s problems and some of them may even be irreversible and like all marketing propositions, towns should perhaps be trying a little bit harder to differentiate themselves, and this is why I was attracted to this project. On a personal note, I could cite selfish reasons for my family and business but  I would also suggest element of civic pride (for want of a better phrase).

Local Pride

I have a friend in a Welsh town where young men would fight over local pride, with generations of family growing up in the area. Basingstoke doesn’t have that being an London overspill town of the 1960s. Many people I speak to who lived in the area before that time, aren’t impressed with the ‘progress’ and to be fair, some earlier planning in the seventies wasn’t that clever. And, perhaps newer residents are just apathetic.

But, there is somewhat of a necessity for civic pride in this new millennium. Localisation of trade, especially for small businesses, versus global  competition – we need to be clever and compete on different terms than 100 years ago for business and residents. Why Basingstoke when I have all this other choice?

Summary

It’s early days for this project and I know that it will take time – probably a lot of time – but it is doable. What’s more, I have found that there are more crazy people like me who feel that they want to promote the town they live in – even people born elsewhere. I commend these people, no matter how much piss taking commences because of it,however small their contribution, because they will be the ones to shape this town and leave some sort of legacy.

I know for me, I’d much rather build on my own identity as a Basingstoke citizen, than to pretend otherwise. As Ian Brown used to say:

“It’s not where you are from, it’s where you’re at.”

Picture Credit: Fred Fish

*NB. I am involved with Destination Basingstoke, the marketing organisation behind the Basingstoke Ambassadors scheme. This in turn had followed a two year relationship with the organistiona, which recently involved the commercial delivery of the website by The Escape (my day job) as a precursor to my involvement.

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Anyway, I came across a great Blog post by Scot of Birddog about a B2B ‘entrepreneur’ dismissing social marketing online and I had to laugh. Not only at Scot’s engaging writing style (I like it a lot – even the tone and the fruity language), but at the idiocy of an entrepreneur for dismissing certain routes of marketing that have evolved, thanks to the web.

Okay, so social media marketing is new, it’s different. And, a lot of people (especially marketers and business owners) are struggling with the concept that you can’t shout any more. It’s not a new concept though. Seth Godin’s been talking about Permission Marketing for ten years now and I am sure there were people before that. Interruption marketing and advertising just doesn’t deliver what it used to.

I can only guess that the same people who have problems with the evolution now are similar to the people who had problems when TV came along?

Technology – The Game Changer

Technology has changed so much about interaction and business in general. Ask my mum, and she’ll tell you how bad that is: That ‘we don’t interact with each other like we used to’. I tell her how I had a conversation with someone in Canada today via video conferencing and how I have actually done business on the ‘waste of time’ that Twitter and Facebook is.

Every business needs to adapt to technology especially as people have more control than ever to do things themselves. Ask my Accountant.

Marketing What?

In defence of the Entrepreneur in the post, I can only guess that he must have been in the meeting because he is successful with, or without, marketing. Some people get along just fine without actively creating marketing campaigns and brands, so who am I to question?

Twist that on it’s head and this is where social marketing becomes a bit of a ball-ache for me in terms of activity – There must a business model behind the marketing.

Many CEOs and Entrepreneurs (and I used the term lightly) on Twitter are typing in their bedrooms creating small revenues if they are lucky – it’s kind of obvious. The more someone shouts about their entrepreneurial prowess, the more I tend to doubt them. They are marketing when they have nothing of value to sell. What’s more, it’s in a very crowded and noisy space – ‘Social’ media marketing is becoming like interruption marketing – an advertising medium. With one exception – the punter can switch you off in a click.

We all need to start somewhere, I know that myself, But, to leverage social marketing to actually grow revenue (and I’m not talking about some get rich quick scheme that has worked for one person and doesn’t for everyone else that ‘buys’ into it) – that is the trick. To market and to sell your business proposition without pissing people off – it’s a fine balance.

[As I am writing this, my email has pinged to tell me Adstand is now following me on Twitter - thanks for backing up my argument and no I won't be following you back.]

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I  was impressed with the seminar, which covered economic cycles and what businesses can learn from the markets, and, although I hadn’t heard of Darren Shirlaw before, he seemed to know his stuff and his presentation was genuinely engaging and thought provoking.

I’d love to repeat details of the seminar, but it’s not my gig and I wouldn’t do it justice, but suffice to say, I learned a few new tricks about macro economics – or at least, another viewpoint.

I was introduced to the Economic Clock – this is the diagram of the Economic Clock that Darren Shirlaw used and there’s an overview of what it is and how it works. Coupled with Darren’s analysis of financial charts during recessionary times, the case for growth opportunity now seemed very compelling.

Darren discussed recessions, and his demonstration of charts showed me, if anything, that the current economic slowdown in not on as a large a scale as I had imagined it was. I take with a pinch of salt many of his comments relating to past charts and how they repeat themselves because I think it’s easy to use past data with hindsight, but the current movement of the market does show a sign of a bounce-back, and I can only point to Darren’s compelling argument about the next five years.

What did I learn?

• I came away very buoyed up about the next 2-3 years and am already looking towards expanding one of my smaller retail businesses to take advantage. This isn’t just based on the seminar, but the fact that the business is already doing well despite the doom and gloom.
• The advice towards changing a marketing proposition during tough times is not new to me, but it’s still a great point that many businesses overlook. Here’s my take on that.
• It was confirmed to me [again] how important it is (as a business owner) to interact with other businesses for a wider viewpoint of the economy, and sharing business ideas in general.

I was sceptical about the whole Shirlaws business consultancy thing if I’m honest, but they certainly seem geared up to deliver results.

Would I recommend them? In the words of Darren Shirlaw, “I can’t give you any advice” but if you are looking for ideas to invigorate your business, it could be a good investment.

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I’m not political but I have to agree with David Cameron in his response to the budget when he said, “As of today, any claim they [Labour] have ever made to economic competence is dead, over, finished.” (Times)

It Wasn’t Me

It seems that the way the Government see it, they are not to blame. It’s the world recession to blame for the UK recession. But, I find myself wondering why we seem to be one of the worst hit with one of the largest comparative debts that will take a predicted decade to pay off.

As a small business owner with a staff of 15, I have seen red tape ‘invisibly’ take control of our company procedures, costing thousands of pounds a year. I have seen protection for workers (which is a good thing) but I have seen little in the way of encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship that I can relate to despite any so-called Government incentives. Therefore, why should I make any effort to grow my business in this country, especially now the economy is global and I can reach most of it with a click?

Back in 1997, I was all for social change, and “New Labour” seemed incredibly refreshing to me. Recently though, I feel like I have walked onto the set of Life On Mars with Gene Hunt and I’m back in the seventies, where there is disgruntlement and apathy all around.

Budget and Small Business

There is nothing in the budget for me to think that anything has changed for the better. There is help for loss-making companies or companies being encouraged to invest. As for the strategic investment fund, I doubt that will emerge any quicker than the money the Government ordered the banks to plough into the economy earlier in the year.

What about the company that is working very hard and making a profit, albeit smaller than previous years? Where’s our incentives and rewards?

I’m no economic guru but this recession has been coming for a good few years. Things can not grow for ever, history tells is this. But we chose to ignore it. We decided not to save for a rainy day and now the country is in a bit of a mess.We’ve sold all the family silver and the coffers are empty, but, as a nation, we just seem to be scouting around for the pennies behind the sofa.

Sorry, But It Is Competitive

I still think many people in the UK live in the view that Britannia still rules the waves. The fact that we hardly make any ships at all any more says it all.

We aren’t just competing with each other on a local scale any more and the people with money can set up anywhere.

We should be encouraged to be more competitive and incentivised to make it happen in the UK, otherwise the slide of UK PLC and Ltd will continue.

It makes me mad to hear stories of children in schools encouraged not to be competitive. It makes me wonder for our future. Where are the next Bransons and Sugars coming from? That said, by glamourising idiots on shows like The Apprentice, we aren’t exactly doing ourselves any favours there either, but that’s another story.

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I am talking about the ego that makes us buy Calvin Klein jeans instead of Tesco Cherokee, an Audi instead of a Fiesta, a Mac instead of an old PC… the comparison list is endless and very subjective (these are just examples).

Online platforms like Facebook and Twitter have allowed us to flex our ego. Example. Last night I saw someone write some poetry in their status. Within minutes, someone had referenced the piece. Ego on both counts I suggest.

I know I’ve done it, and, I know that 9 times out of ten, I use Google to help me respond in an intelligent way.

This Blog… all about ego.

The thing is, especially in the western business world, ego drives more decisions that hard-edged business nous. How many deals are won or lost because of ego? I have lost clients because I knew more than them and didn’t hide it enough. I have also not dealt with people because of my own ego.

We’re a funny bunch, aren’t we?

Bearing in mind we all have different drivers and levels of ego (in context) my current thinking is that we can use leverage ego to some respect when marketing.

Think about your clients. Why do they use you? Do you get any sense of how they feel because they align themselves with your brand, product or service? If you do, repackage it and try it with someone else.

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