by admin | Jan 17, 2011 | Blog, Design
Brand Design is a team effort – like making movies. Many people should be credited with the creation.
The design of a brand requires serious research and understanding of your customer and prospect needs, examination of what is being offered by your competitors and how those offers are being communicated. Business owners need to answer these questions and provide them in an executable brief to their designers.
This is the job of your marketing people (in a small business it is the owner) or their marketing agency or consultant. 
by admin | Jan 13, 2011 | Blog
Reaching your target audience with your message remains the most expensive cost of doing business today. Those that do it whilst building their brand are turning this expense into an investment. An investment into the positive perceptions their customers and prospects will retain about their products or services in their hearts and minds.
The internet, application of technology to the science of marketing (email, CRM, etc), media fragmentation and the advent of Social Media have all contributed to lowering the cost of marketing communication, especially for SME’s. It is now easier than ever to reach your target audience, but more challenging to get your message understood, which is why clarity and creativity in marketing are a necessity for your business survival.
by admin | Jan 13, 2011 | Blog, Promotion, Strategy
Reaching your target audience with your message remains the most expensive cost of doing business today. Those that do it whilst building their brand are turning this expense into an investment. An investment into the positive perceptions their customers and prospects will retain about their products or services in their hearts and minds.
The internet, application of technology to the science of marketing (email, CRM, etc), media fragmentation and the advent of Social Media have all contributed to lowering the cost of marketing communication, especially for SME’s. It is now easier than ever to reach your target audience, but more challenging to get your message understood, which is why clarity and creativity in marketing are a necessity for your business survival.
by admin | Jan 10, 2011 | Blog, Strategy
Since ‘The Secret’ unveiled itself on our newly purchased flat screens and sent punters into bookshops to wish away their credit card balance, bloated from the aforementioned brown goods, it seems that the world of Small Business has been increasingly shrouded in secrets and conspiracies! Daily I am bombarded by email, direct mail, print advertisements that are all promising to reveal the secrets of… well just about everything: ‘zero budget marketing secrets’, ‘free media exposure secrets’, ‘sales secrets for those that hate cold calling’, and the list goes on. It certainly looks like the marketing secrets have outlived the buzz created by Rhonda Byrne’s version of the Law of Attraction.
The high price of secrets:
1. The cost of marketing secrets is much greater than the admission to the seminar or workshop. Greater than the cost of the webinar, podcast, or down loadable PDF! The cost is your time, time you will never get back.
2. The best case scenario is that you have learned something new on the subject of marketing and have been inspired to implement your new found knowledge. And here is the problem: IMPLEMENTATION. Knowing what to do, and the ability to do it – is not one and the same! I have a problem with members of the marketing fraternity promoting “band-aid one-size fits-all solutions” and lulling their audience, the buyers of the so called secrets, into a false sense of ‘marketing ability’.
3. As a SME business owner, your time is your most valuable resource. Money comes in a close second! Should you be spending both on trying to implement something that you are not an expert in? Would you go to a plumber to get a dental filling, or a hairdresser for legal advice? Yet, so many small business owners try to develop and then implement their own marketing (communication) strategy only to waste their hard earned cash.
So who’s selling secrets and are they helping?
Many marketing practitioners have been seduced by the premise of on-line sales: CD’s, PDF’s and e-classes, rather than working one-on-one solving individual marketing challenges for their clients.
On the surface, it may seem that this is a valid approach. Lower the cost of the service by making it a product and help more business people learn how to promote their business, in the process selling more of your own product by touting these ‘marketing secrets’. Unfortunately, if this was the case, the standard of marketing communication amongst SME’s would be much, much higher. It isn’t. Just open the local paper, look in your mailbox or jump on the web and see for yourself.
The World Is Full Of Secrets but Marketing Is Not One of Them!
Another problem with so called ‘Marketing Secrets’ is that they’re not really secrets and are known by all Marketing graduates, are available from every Marketing textbook, from a plethora of websites, and from professional Marketing publications. Knowing this, I would feel a little cheated if I was a business owner investing money and time trying to learn new and effective ways of finding, attracting and retaining customers, when the information is readily available. What is not available inside these secrets is the unique solution to your business challenges.
When it comes to SME businesses, it seems that the whole art and science of marketing has been reduced to “tips” which is no different to the so called marketing secrets when they both advocate and imply “band aid solutions.”
Marketing is marketing!
Small Business Marketing is based on the same marketing principles as Big Business Marketing, or at least it should be! Marketing is about SATISFYING WANTS. Marketing is about understanding human psychology and behavior, yet the result we regularly see is SME Marketing advice simplified to the point where it loses much of its usefulness.
The Secret Is Out – Marketing Needs a Makeover!
There has never been a more exciting and challenging time to be a marketer. The demand for professional marketers is greater than ever but so is the pressure to produce quantifiable results. One day every business will have a marketing advisor to assist them to plan for the future, just like they have an accountant today to report on their past!
Today, marketing is in trouble because of the lack of a common marketing language and of course the resulting metrics. Can you imagine if this was the case with a profession like engineering or medicine? Blood pressure measured differently by different doctors? Hmmm.
Until marketing professionals develop a common language and appropriate metrics, they will struggle to attain respect and to educate clients. So where do we all go from here?
But firstly we need to understand how we got here in the first place:
Marketing as a science is still largely misunderstood by SME business owners. Marketing principles are not applied with diligence or rigor and results are not measured.
Professional marketers with the knowledge and experience that is required to deliver a successful outcomes or at the very least a systematic process that will improve the possibility of optimal outcomes do not practice their profession in the small business arena. The vast majority of professional marketers work with large companies or advertising agencies to look after these companies as clients.
The few marketing professionals with the experience necessary to apply generally proven marketing principles to the needs of small business are faced with the never-ending challenge of business development which includes the very labor-intensive task of client education and the minuscule fees that most small business owners are willing (and able) to pay for professional advice –the very advice that can make or break their own business.
Advice for Marketers:
Surely there are many ways each of us can differentiate our services without having to do it through making up new names for the processes we follow to achieve results for our clients. Start speaking in plain English and stop hiding behind jargon. Ban the brand pillars, brand onions, and every type of ‘Brand Geometric Figure’ you can imagine! More to the point start using your creativity and imagination to sell more for your clients. Isn’t that the same advice many of us have been giving I.T., Financial and Legal industries that are full of jargon! Let’s all practice what we preach.
Advice for Business Owners:
- Educate yourself by reading reputable marketing texts and journals.
- Put a stop to ‘Hope Marketing’ or in plain terms – insanity! Doing the same things over and over yet hoping for a different result.
- Become a better marketer by truly understanding your customers and satisfying their needs more effectively than your competitors:
- Stop selling the same product / service at the same price through the same distribution channels as your competitors
- Start thinking in terms of solutions rather than products or services
- Understand that the price of the product or service is more than the dollar cost of the item. It is all of the opportunity costs associated with obtaining this product, like the drive to the store which costs both time and money
- Start thinking about how you can make your customer’s experience more interesting, enjoyable, convenient…
- Once you get your marketing mix above right, begin communicating your uniqueness to your customers and prospects. Consistently, frequently, concisely and clearly.
- In the long run the only long term competitive advantage that your business has is the perception your customers have about your brand. This relationship is created through effective communication. Your competitors can and will copy everything else! This is why marketers and advertisers focus extensively on this thing we call CREATIVE in order to be noticed, to be remembered and to be trusted!
- Finally, focus on what makes you an expert and when it comes to promoting your business enlist a true marketing professional who has the appropriate qualifications and experience to assist you in your marketing journey.
by admin | Jan 7, 2011 | Blog, Promotion
A 2008 PwC survey, “Private Business Barometer IV” paints a depressing yet realistic picture of the Australian small business state of play – about 92% considered cutting their marketing budget. Gregory Will, partner at PwC, rightly points out that these are the very areas that are the source of most small businesses’ competitive advantage. 3 years on and nothing much has changed!
The reality seems to be that we’ve gone from riding on a sheep’s back to acting like them at a time when we need leaders, not followers!
You can call farmers “battlers”, but not the majority of SME business owners – their droughts are mostly self inflicted. The following is a statistic I found on the CPA Australia website – 3 years ago – and it estimated that one in three new small businesses in Australia fail in their first year of operation, 2 out of 4 by the end of the second year, and 3 out of 4 by the fifth year, with only approximately 8% of small businesses succeeding beyond five years.
Failure to plan is a plan for failure
Conducting a business without a formalised plan is much like trying to drive a car to an unknown destination without a map. Yet the estimates are that only 3% to 5% of Australian small businesses starting from scratch prepare a business and marketing plan; that is, know that their business is feasible and have a formal plan to steer that business towards success. Based on the fact that a Feasibility Study, a SWOT Analysis and a Marketing Plan are a part of any Business Plan, I suggest that approximately 70% of all business failures and almost 100% of lack of business growth are due to inadequate Marketing.
Peter Drucker, the grandfather of modern management said business is about 2 things and 2 things only – innovation and marketing! A number of studies conducted since WWII showed something that marketers have known all along – keep marketing through the downturn. The following quote is from Professional Marketing, Oct-Dec 2008 – article titled “All Hands On Deck”: “…companies that increased marketing spend (relative to market size) during a recession, increased their return on capital employed by 5% in the recovery, compared to a 1% decline for the budget cutters”
Most businesses are either ignorant or choose to ignore the empirical evidence for maintaining or even increasing marketing investment in a weak economy
– Competitors tend to cut spending, creating opportunities
– Maintaining promotional spend will sustain or even grow market share
– Stealing share of mind is a bargain during a recession
– Consumers don’t “go away” during a recession, they become more conservative
For most SME’s marketing is an expense and not an investment.
Most SME business owners do not understand the meaning of marketing or branding let alone have any basic understanding of advertising principles to effectively and efficiently reach their target audience. Much of the SME marketing efforts are wasted anyway – just open your local paper, look into your mailbox and see the standard or the lack of it in SME marketing communication. Only a few weeks ago the ABS released a frightening statistic that 66% of Australian businesses do not have a website!
Attitudes have to change
“Ego and advanced ignorance have killed many a business, and continue to do so. …ignorance is acceptable because it means we don’t know. Advanced ignorance, however, is ‘knowing we don’t know’ and doing nothing about it! It’s deadly….there’s information readily available on every conceivable issue relevant to growing a healthier business, but it’s far easier not to seek anything at all.” Says Brett Lowe of Business Planning Works.
There are businesses still around today, that perceive customer service to be a “Thank You” on the invoice
A study of 460 B2B organizations that employed 100+ people, conducted by Strike Force Sales, found that only 6% of Australian companies pick up the phone and respond to a web generated sales inquiry with a phone call. The MD of the company, Chris Moriarty brings this reality home with another statistic that shows 46% of the time auto-response emails are never followed up.
In the last 5 years, I have met hundreds of SME proprietors and completed over 70 SME marketing projects. I have discussed the SME challenges with colleagues and other consulting professionals and have to say that there are glimmers of hope. These generally lie with the younger more entrepreneurial SME business owners who have grown up on the ‘brand rich media diet’.
There is plenty of professional help out there, admitting you need it, is the hard part…
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