It's nice to be important...

...But it's More important to be nice!

Generally speaking I avoid cliches like the plague, but in this case I'll make an exception.

It was my birthday the other day - 42 years old/young etc and anyhow, I was in a good mood as a result. I'm driving down the road and I spot a young woman cycling along the Bicester - Thame road in the hissing rain. For the next 2 miles I wrestle with the dilemma, do I assuage my conscience and risk being branded an abductor by asking her if she needs a lift or do I avoid any potential misunderstandings and keep on truckin'.

Sod it! I am not going to let my fear of embarrassing myself prevent me from doing something nice, so I perform a perfectly legal and safe handbrake turn (kidding), I spin around and dash back to her assistance. My luck was in, she knew the Gorilla Van and worked for one of my clients. My conscience was clear, and we parted ways shortly afterwards, both a little happier.

The reason for the story is that I felt good, she left with a better perception of our business (which will hopefully reverberate around their company) and it cost me nothing.

This blog is all about free marketing advice, so herewith follows the lesson:

We got our heads together this morning (I try to do an hours social media marketing each day!) and brainstormed the reasons people choose one supplier over another and we came up with four P's of the selection process:

• Price - always a major if not the only selection factor
• Professionalism - similarly important, clients want a product or service that they trust.
• Proximity - how near are you to your prospects, this might reflect a desire to buy locally or simply a need for convenience.
• Peace of mind - in a lot of cases, clients will stick with an encumbent simply because they know that they can deliver - noone ever got fired by sticking with the same agency!
• Personalities - do they like you, your people and your company?

The top four P's are undeniably important, but if you have a well-made, competitively priced product that is available in the right location for your prospects and they have no prior long-standing relationship, the only thing that is very variable is the last one - personalities.

Despite the fact that we market ourselves like mad, most of our business comes from referrals, clients and friends who like us, who recommend us to their colleagues, friends etc.

We recently won a piece of business (website design) in a pitch against four other agencies amongst whom we wouldn't have been the cheapest. Simply because he, Clint the client, thought we were nicer (although I'm sure the bar in the office helped his decision).

It's not just about winning over clients, suppliers can also be teriffic sources of business in your network so be as nice to them as you are to your clients, plus of course it helps to get involved with your local community and be nice to them too. Being nice is usually free (the community one may occasionally need a sponsorship/donation fund) and being nice always makes you feel better.

But don't be too nice!

Employing this tactic is a double edged sword. Regrettably there are people out there who will take advantage of you, so work out when and where to draw the line.

If you are nice, blog about it, put it in your newsletter, post it on your linkedIn profile, be proud of your good deeds, but don't brag about them.

Ho hum, back to work then eh!

If marketing is a pain, you're doing it right

I run a design/marketing agency... Not very well perhaps, but we get by! Most of our clients are well-meaning, enthusiastic business professionals who seem to regard marketing as an essential but pain-inducing and expensive aspect to their business lives!

I suspect that the reason that most people generally don't enjoy marketing is because they feel that it is a case of pouring money into a seemingly never-ending pot, with little or no ROI! The problem is, as we see it, that businesses have been utilising outmoded forms of marketing to get their message across!

Ask someone you know to read a newspaper/magazine. Then ask them to tell you the names and services/product of brands that advertised in that publication. Quiz them to ensure that they actually saw the advert or if they imagined that they saw the advert. Now walk outside your office and tell someone - anyone, what you do (hopefully you have your elevator pitch prepared and ready). Now consider the effort vs price equation of both forms of getting your message across.

We believe that in a B2B communication environment actually talking to people, engaging them in dialogue is the best way to get someones attention!

The same principle can be applied to direct mail. Watch someone sort their mail at their desk in the morning. Generally speaking they will form two piles - one to read and one to glance at on the way to the bin. It is easy to get your message into the first pile, regrettably it doesn't involve: a mail merge, 10,000 addresses from a list factory and a ppi/frank. What it involves is a handwritten letter to a researched contact with a genuinely interesting subject and a definable benefit. It is in a handwritten envelope with a stamp on it - there's no guarantees in this business but the recipient has to be pretty cynical not to read it. Then of course for it to be truly effective, the sender follows-up the letter with a phone call.

Both getting out there and talking with your client base and handwriting letters are the more difficult way of doing things. People generally plumb for the advertising and mass mailouts because they fervently hope that they will bring in business - and it feels like you're doing something - right?

Here's what you could do...

Take your mailing database, sort it roughly into good leads at the top and bad leads at the bottom (by location, size of business, recency of data, etc...) Now throw away (or file for a sunsequent campaign) the bottom 90%. If there is still a lot of data throw away another 90%. If you spend your marketing budget on these people, you are far more likely to generate a good ROI.

Ask an impartial, hopefully alert, professional/client to look at your business and to come-up with what they like about it, what is quirky, different, cost-effective, stand-out about your business and frame your approach accordingly.

Most people we meet have a skewed impression of their brand's usp!

If you are really dedicated, split your remaining database into thirds and try a different approach with each. Try a "fun" tongue-in-cheek approach, a cold, commercial approach and something in the middle - you might be surprised by which one converts the most leads.

Finally at the end of the campaign, divide the cost of the entire campaign, including postage, your time, print costs, printer ink, envelopes, design time etc. By the number of good leads it generated and you will know the cost per lead.

Divide the number of conversions by the number of leads and you have a conversion ratio.

Note down these facts so that you can subsequently gauge the effectiveness of future campaigns.

If this all sounds like too much pain, ask a really switched-on agency to help you with it, but be wary of companies that actively encourage you to go the mass-market route.

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It was a little bit too easy!

You know in the action movies when they storm the castle/fortress/terrorist lair and none of the leading characters gets injured, yet there is still 40 minutes to go in the film... Movie enthusiasts like me are sitting there waiting for the trap to be sprung!

I hate to be a harbinger of doom, but what if this is where we are at right now!

A client, just walked in - we had an appointment but it was supposed to be to discuss the way ahead for his marketing. Instead he calmly informed me that he was going into receivership. Frrriissnnntttgneeeearrrrgh! We have yet to reconcile the account so needless to say I am currently mildly cheesed-off! On the bright side we are good for the next three months so we will survive but what it has done is crystallise a thought that has been fermenting in my sub-conscious!

January was crap, February was crapper and the less said about March the better, but since then, we have seen some positives. Fearless souls have talked about the green shoots of progress - and this includes me, but what if we were all mistaken?

I am the first person to advocate a PMA when it comes to our approach to a recession, but recently I have been asking myself "was that it, did we just experience a recession?" Surely not! I do vaguely remember the seventies/early eighties and they were pretty bloomin' awful. Sure, these past few months have been uncomfortable and yes, friends have been made redundant, house prices have fallen and business has been harder to come by, but were our parents really that soft? Come on, it hasn't been that bad!

I have a horrible, looming feeling that perhaps, all we had was a tremour (PS I love analogies) and there could quite well be the actual quake just building-up to strike. I hate to be the first to say this, but to go back to my movie analogy, what if we have all walked into a horrible, massive trap!

The first three months of this year seriously weakened a lot of businesses, subsequently things have improved, partly because companies have streamlined, made staff redundant and stretched available capital to ensure that they stay in the black. It is a fragile position to be in and all it needs is for one pipeline project to fail, one client to go under and the entire paradigm changes.

I don't want to name names but certain major national airlines are in deep umbaala, to my certain knowledge two significant agencies from my field are on the ropes, the banks are still not lending and there is a kind of hushed hopeful silence.

So how does this affect your marketing?

Blimey! I'm not sure to be honest! Certainly you have to get out there to let people know that you are still there, still successful and still delivering what they need at a competitive price. But part of me wants to advise you that there is a slight possibility that the worst is yet to come, so don't be buying that champagne to celebrate the end of the recession too soon!

Disclaimer
• I am not an economist
• I do not walk in clever circles
• I don't even at this point have any blog readers
• No one of any standing has confirmed my perspective
• I do not have my finger on the zeitgeist
• I do not have proof that the banks are directly responsible for this situation - but I think they are!

The irony of this last point is that like cockroaches, the reality is that having eaten-up all the available government money, the banks might be the only business to survive - bollocks to that!

Writing a blog with no followers is a bit like dictating a message for yourself... Cathartic but nonetheless pointless.

Have a nice day!

Is black the new green?

... Or are you buying with your head or your heart?

This blog is about marketing decisions that entrepreneurs and business managers need to make - usually without the benefit of a six or even five figure marketing budget!

Todays blog is a moral issue one but one that nonetheless impacts directly on marketing decision-making - specifically budget allocation.

Are clients/customers buying products to satisfy their morals or their bank manager? Now that the overdraft is a thing of the past all accounts need (generally speaking) to stay in the black - those little extra perks that we offered ourselves knowing that they might take us into the red until the end of the month are remaining on the shelves - or at least that's how I see it!

Someone recently asked me if I thought that it was a valid marketing budget spend to offset their carbon footprint. This question put me in a right dilemma... My heart said yes, for sure, we should be putting our money where our mouth is and promoting the sustainability aspects of our businesses wherever we can.

But my head said no... Could I look him in the eye and with my hand on my heart say that the expense in time and money to calculate and subsequently offset their carbon footprint would make people choose his services Gnneeeaarrrrrgh! No, I couldn't.

It's not that I don't think it should, I just don't think it would - and I could be wrong.

So I told him to calculate how much he would have had to spend (ballpark) and invest that in sustainable practices at his office. Buy office bikes, set-up a car share scheme, with benefits and come-up with an office environmental policy that the staff would enjoy adhering to. Then post this prominently on his website and to talk/blog about his activity!

I'm not sure what he'll do to be honest, but time will tell.

For those cynics out there, imagining me sitting in my ivory tower dispensing eco advice to my clients, I try to live by my own advice...

Hence I am hauling my unfit 41 year-old body onto a Freecycle acquired bicycle (literally a free cycle) twice a day - here's the maths bit...

A brand new 2.5 litre VW Transporter emits 219 g/km CO2 - (this is for a diesel, but I couldn't get lpg figures for a 15 yr old van) - assuming a daily commute of 4 km that's 876 grams of CO2 per day, which equals 4.4 kilos per week - which is nuts!

Anyhow the point is that simply offsetting your footprint and believing that you have done your bit is crazy - "guilt free profligacy!" companies and clients should stop buying from people who "say" green and buy from people who "do" green.

Here endeth the lesson...