Apr 23, 2015 | Branding, Marketing, Small business, Uncategorized
Albert Einstein would have made a great marketer.
He made a number of statements that are highly applicable, but one that sticks in mind is:
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, no simpler”
Marketing is simple in concept, but becoming ever more complication in the execution.
The huge array of choices to be made at every stage is enough to scare many people away, so their marketing remains sub optimal.
There are only four components, all are critical, and all interact with each other creating the huge mass of choice confronting us, but in its simplest form, it really is pretty easy to understand.
- The message. What is said
- The medium. Where it appears
- The mechanism. How it gets there
- The sweet spot in the middle. The customer.
Albert also said “if I had an hour to solve a life and death problem, I would spend the first 50 minutes defining the problem. The rest is just maths”.
Marketing is just the same, define the outcome you are seeking, the problem you are solving, and the game is over, you can go to lunch in peace.
See, now you know.
Simple to say, hard to do.
Apr 21, 2015 | Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
I hate you
Small businesses are all aware of the power of Social Media, usually want to play, and mostly get it wrong. Following are the 11 Mistakes I have most often seen over the last few years. This is despite facebook being around since 2004, Twitter since 2006, and the others mostly 5 or 6 years, so you can’t really say this stuff is new anymore.
The application of Digital technology to marketing is the greatest innovation since Guttenberg put ink to paper. It offers small businesses the opportunity to be something other than bound by geographic boundaries and the economics of scale.
- You have no plan.
The last thing you want to do is overlook the first thing you should do every time you allocate some of your scarcest resources. Identify your target audience, do your research, determine your objectives, develop your content, and make your choices of the tools best suited. Then act accordingly, monitor results and improve, rinse and repeat.
- You are working solo.
Solo can be done but is really hard work. I picked up a typo in a mates newsletter a week or so ago, pointed out the page in an email, and he still could not see it. Working solo, you often miss what is right in front of you, and there are only so many things you can do yourself, so pick the ones you can do well, and are necessary, and ignore or outsource the rest.
- You think you are a writer
We are all taught to write at school, that does not make us writers. Of course, you’re not trying to be Hemingway, but quality writing makes a huge difference to the results, even in 140 characters.
- You fail to interest your audience.
Pretty obvious. We have so much blasting at us that we get little chance to impress, a fleeting second at best. Breaking through the mass of communication is critical. Best exercise I usually recommend is to haunt the shelves of your local newsagent for a while, read the headlines of the magazines. Those people know how to attract and interest an audience.
- You’re Not Being Yourself.
It is easier to outsource the blog posts and social media updates, but I recommend that you at the very least read and edit every post that goes out under your name. Authenticity is now almost a cliché, but that is why it is right. Unless you are Barak Obama, people will get annoyed that you are not writing the posts that are under your name. Social media is as much about opinions as they are facts, tell people what you think, recognising not all will agree, and perhaps even better some will dislike you and not come back, leaving a tighter group of advocates. Being a fake, bland, and opinion-less is a quick way to lose credibility and audience.
- You not consistent.
Be regular and predictable in the frequency and length of post, and keep the same style. To some extent this is inconsistent with the “be interesting” advice above, but it is a useful to be maintain the same persona. You would have trouble with a friend if they behaved inconsistently, sometimes late, sometimes early, often unpredictable and erratic. Once or twice can be fun, all the time is tiresome. Same in social media.
- You are careless.
Written communication is far more informal than it was in the past, but that is no excuse for typos, grammatical mistakes, and confusing messages. Some colloquialism and slang is OK, but a little goes a long way.
- You are not visual.
Human beings are visual animals, and visual is becoming easier by the day, so use it. There are many alternatives, stock images, your own shots, video, Instagram, vine, YouTube, and all the rest. Use it to make a point, stand out, and engage.
- You are not tracking the numbers.
This is the last, and most stupid of all, as well as being disturbingly common. The huge benefit of digital marketing is that suddenly, your efforts can be tracked, a genuine calculation of return can be made, suddenly we get to find out which half of our communication budget was being wasted before we had the numbers. if that is not enough, the free analytics are pretty comprehensive, more than most small businesses can easily use.
Apr 16, 2015 | Branding, Marketing
“True Aussie” meat products have been around for 12 months or so in export markets, and we are told of its great success, Japan is particularly pointed out, where “That True Aussie beef logo can be found on more than half of retail packs in Japan now, and growing fast.” MLA Japan spokesman.
Yesterday, the National Farmers Federation came to the party with at least public support for the idea, supporting the suggestion that the “brand” was potentially far wider than just meat.
“True Aussie” is another in the long line of group marketing initiatives based on generic branding. They are attempts to leverage the assumed clean green credentials of Australian produce created by industry bodies funded by levy. Meat, horticulture, dairy and grains have all had a shot, domestically and internationally over the 35 years of my memory of these things.
Where I wonder are all those lavishly promised outcomes, those dollars flowing back to farmers because the international consumers demand Australian produce over produce from anywhere else in the world?
However, it is a very appealing idea, which I guess is why it keeps on being wheeled out again, and again, as the panacea.
“Focus the marketing funds against the common concerns of all consumers rather than spreading it around by operators acting individually, build the value positioning of Australian produce by providing the assurance of product provenance, and promising great value for money”.
Problem is that to date, in the real world, it has not worked. Perhaps things have changed sufficiently that this time, attempt number ?? how many?
Back in 2001, running a maverick operation called Agri Chain Solutions that had been reluctantly outsourced, at the direction of the then PM Howard, from the old department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (AFFA) I commissioned a piece of research aimed at uncovering the motivations driving the decision making of those who controlled the supply chains in markets targeted by produce exporters. The results were not a surprise to anyone who had really thought about the problems facing produce exporters, but were not popular amongst the industry bodies at the time.
In summary it confirmed that those who did not sell anything, ie industry bodies, had no power in the game beyond the power to give money for promises, and when the money ran out, nothing really had changed.
Supply chains, particularly those dealing with commodities, are driven by volume, availability and price, at least they are once you get past the regulatory barriers that populate and pollute the commercial environment. If you do not own anything, if you do not have the power to change anything except by committee consensus, have no power of coercion, and if you are not commercially agile, and able to differentiate, you get taken to the cleaners.
Every time.
There is an old saying, we’ve all heard it, ‘do what you have always done, and you will get what you have always got’
Well, we are doing it again.
The digital tools we have now have potentially changed the game by giving the real opportunity for supply chain transparency, potentially turning them into demand responsive chains, but that requires real skill and commercial discipline to pull off, which is still sadly absent.
I hope that this time something I have not seen has changed that will give us the promised outcomes, I genuinely hope I am wrong, but unfortunately I suspect history is going to be repeated, and in another decade, it will roll around again.
Apr 14, 2015 | Customers, Marketing, Small business
It is all about what goes in
Unlike a funnel for petrol into your tank, sugar into your cake, or production ingredient into your ribbon mixer, in a sales funnel there is no bloody gravity!
You have to create the gravity!
You have to create the customer energy, commitment, interest, whatever it takes to move from one point to another more committed point, and eventually to a transaction.
Not easy.
Most marketers inherently hope if not believe their prospective customer is just hanging out for their product, that even if they do not yet know it, their product will be the saviour. That is not because they are misguided or simple, that is how they are trained, and those that stick with it are usually the more optimistic, and sometimes thick-skinned amongst us.
The reality is that most customers are distracted by life. Their kid is sick, their car just terminally broke down, their daughter is going out with the “wrong” bloke, or they are planning a holiday. They really do not give a flying fig about your brand new, shiny, world beating gizmo anyway, and it is just easier to be nice and not tell you to piss off, and be busy when you ring, than to be a bad guy. You just misunderstand and wonder why the order has not come in yet
This rant was motivated by another of those annoying self proclaimed experts that extol the unmatched virtues of their particular cure-all, in this case a digital funnel template. Must have scraped my email from the website, twitter, or some turd sold it to him. Now my inbox is being flooded with spam, with the writer becoming increasingly concerned at my health because I have not yet bought.
“Just do X, so easy anyone can do it, and for an investment of just $279 for my exclusive, all singing all dancing funnel and 15 minutes a day the cash will roll in”.
Bullshit.
Selling is hard work, best done by professionals who understand their market, products and customers well, and have the emotional intelligence to work with the prospect to deliver value via a transaction. It never happens just because somebody bought a template.
Sales Funnels can only be as good as the input allows, and the process facilitates. When you need someone who can do this stuff properly, call me.
Apr 13, 2015 | Collaboration, Small business
Collaboration
Small businesses have 10 strategies I have previously summarised, that they can deploy in various ways to build success with the retail gorillas. Collaboration is the 7th, and often the most challenging, as the other parties to the collaboration are not by definition, under your control.
Successful collaboration relies, when all the jargon is scraped away, on both parties recognising at all levels where the collaboration ‘touches’ each other, that their individual best interests are best served by serving the best interests of the collaboration.
Having just claimed to have scraped away the jargon, that is a mouthful. However, the idea of the ‘commons‘ must be central to any collaborative exercise.
A key component of supermarkets business model is the reduction of transaction costs. They only want to deal with large suppliers, as it reduces their supply chain costs per transaction, delivering substantial efficiencies. It therefore follows that suppliers collaborating to generate the economies of scale to enable them to play by the supermarket rules, makes sense.
The flip side of course is that supermarkets use their power to get the best deal for themselves, subjecting suppliers to an ongoing game best described by the prisoners dilemma. In effect, if you do not give them what they are currently demanding, they will find a supplier who will.
Small suppliers to supermarkets have to find ways to apply some leverage to their opportunities. Collaborating to reduce various forms of transaction and supply chain costs , and marketing, as well as pooling data and data capabilities are logical if challenging tasks.
Many produce suppliers have found ways to collaborate, but their produce is unbranded, and commoditised by retailers, so they lack the consumer leverage that is enabled by a brand.
Branded packaged goods may have some consumer leverage, but collaborating with their competitors for shelf space if not for the consumers dollar is enormously challenging, but nevertheless possible.
Digital tools now make the communication component of a collaboration, which is profoundly important, relatively easy if the will is there.
Opportunities fall in three main areas:
- Supply chain. Collaboration to buy common inputs like boxes, freight, and commodity ingredient purchases like sugar, are increasingly common, particularly in regional areas where you have a number of small suppliers close by, all subjected to distance loadings of some sort. Contract packing a complete product is increasingly being used as it removes the need for investment by the marketer, and utilises unused capacity for the packer.
- Data acquisition, management and analysis. Lots of variations here, but everyone needs data to participate, even in the most basic of category and performance reviews. Scan data acquisition is challenging as there are revenues and margins attached to both the retailers and their data wholesalers that will be protected. However, when that hurdle is run, managing data is an activity that responds well to scale as the costs are in the overheads, the marginal costs of data management are very small, and can all be outsourced. Data analysis is more challenging, but interpretations of data can be very specific. Turning data into useable market intelligence is the end game, and is not necessarily compromised by collaboration on the basic components, acquisition of raw scan data, storage and distribution of the data, and even generic information like market sizes, share movements, category drivers, and the like.
- Marketing. Collaboration in marketing efforts need to explicitly exclude any hint of price collaboration, collusion, which of course is illegal. However, there are numerous ways small businesses can collaborate in their marketing programs to compete, not only reducing their costs but also increasing their opportunity to appeal to customers. Complementary products, joint promotions of various types and locations, collaborative and complementary media placement, the list of possibilities is limited only by imagination. There are complications of packaging, product numbers, and the rest, but they can be relatively easily overcome.
The real challenge is to visualise the future, see industries and their structures in new and different ways, and to recognise the opportunities that are there, and find collaborative ways to leverage them.
