Jul 2, 2014 | Customers, Management, Marketing, Small business
Marketing technology is rapidly taking over from the hit and miss, ad hoc research, customer and prospect management, and performance measurement practices that have dominated to date. This is a particularly critical evolution for small businesses who are generally already behind as the game started.
As time passes, this marketing capability gap, and hence ability to compete with their larger, better resourced competitors is becoming increasingly compromised.
Simple things like having a website, are still beyond many small businesses. Often they give the task of “knocking up” a website to their 15 year old kids or the summer intern, think the job done, and wonder why business does not walk in the door.
According to the ABS, 60% of Australian enterprises of less than 5 employees do not even have a website. The penetration in Agriculture is particularly low, yet Ag is being touted as one of the saviors of the economy post mining boom!
There is clearly a disconnect between economic forecasters sitting in ivory towers, looking at survey data and the reality out in the boonies. Many small businesses in Ag do not have a website, or any digital connectivity for all the same reasons their city brothers do not, but also have the added challenge that access to the web is crap, they can often make a cup of tea while the home page of a searched site launches.
Digital competence is learned, the more you play with it, the more curious you are, the better you get at it. This is counter intuitive to the average 55 year old farmer, who manages risk in a long term, and very organised manner.
Small businesses have wonderful opportunities to compete delivered by technology, the gap created by the economies of scale available to their larger competitors are now increasingly obsolete due to technology, but a new form of gap has emerged, the digital capability gap, that is proving difficult for many to jump.
SME’s often just need some encouragement, a dose of curiosity, and access, then the gap can be rapidly filled.
Jun 24, 2014 | Change, Communication, Management, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
I asked that question a week or so ago of a group of SME’s, most of whom did not have any digital presence.
None said their businesses would survive without a phone. Why is it then that they think they can survive without a website and social media presence? These tools are as integral to success as the phone, but like the phone, need to be used well, as they are just a tool.
Last week (July 19, 2014) the ABS released a report “Summary of IT use and innovation in Australian Business”
web presence by size
Web presence by industry
Businesses with 4 or less employees 35% penetration, 19 or less employees, 60% penetration, overall about 50% of enterprises have no web presence.
Lowest web penetration is, obviously in industries with many SME’s, agriculture, transport, and distribution.
It is a report that highlights the paucity of digital capability amongst SME’s, which are the backbone of the Australian economy, and back up previous reports by Sensis and others pointing out the shortfall.
The building of digital capability by SME’s is not just necessary to compete, it is vital for survival.
Social media use
The pattern is repeated in social media, but is more pronounced, most SME’s do not even use the simplest forms to market their business.
I remain “gobbsmacked” that so many still seem not to have got the message,
That is where your customers are!!!
But what opportunities there are for improvement and leverage, it just takes a bit of energy and time.
Jun 23, 2014 | Governance, Leadership, Management
http://tobytripp.github.io/meeting-ticker/
Meetings are supposed to be a place where work gets done, accountabilities exercised options articulated and examined, decisions made, and outcomes reported. However, often they become just a reason to have another meeting.
Whilst the public sector comes in for some pretty harsh criticism, they are not alone.
Last week I found myself in a meeting called by a prospective client so I felt it sensible to attend and contribute.
No agenda, minutes of the previous meeting were supplied as we walked into the room, no definitive objective, just another bloody meeting.
To amuse myself, I tried to calculate the cost of the thing, thousands, and found myself thinking about the waste, and how to fix it, and only came up with the same stuff I have written about before. Serendipitously, later in the day, my inbox “plinked” with a lovely little cartoon from Hugh MacLeod that does his usual great job of nailing the topic with a few words and lines, and links.
The infographic in one link is terrific, and the meeting clock is wonderful, I will use it regularly from here on in when I see wasted resources being directed towards massaging someone’s ego, or “busywork” being done by having another bloody meeting.
Jun 5, 2014 | Governance, Management
JSF F-35 Lightening
I am not a car nut, but as a young bloke, I used to fix my own cars. There was not much you could not do without a reasonable set of Sidchromes, a block and tackle, mechanical manual, and a jack.
No longer.
My kids would no more set out to fix their own cars as fly, it is simply too complex. On the other hand, they have mastered the art of managing complexity by just knowing how to use stuff, and call for expert help when things go wrong.
Life is becoming incredibly complex, almost everything we do has dimensions that we cannot hope to understand and interact with, so we outsource. We ask the experts, take advice, seek guidance from those with the domain expertise we do not have. This is a healthy process, except when having asked the experts, we disregard their advice because it is inconsistent with some pre determined position, or expressed opinion.
Ego getting in the way.
We see it all the time in politics, expert advice disregarded by those who sought it to inform their decision making.
Last week Liberal backbencher Dennis Jensen, with a Phd in materials science, and a background in applied research, and so with some credibility on matters scientific had the balls to criticise Government. In a very worthwhile speech made to an almost empty Parliament he reflected on the apparent lack of uderstanding of how science works and the management of R&D priorities using the JSF project as a case in point as he had intimate knowledge of the decision making processes applied.
Economies are complex, and the competing demands on a finite pool of funds challenging to manage, but is that not why we employ experts? Why then disregard their advice in such a wholesale fashion as appeared to happen here?
Better stop thinking and get back to where the real action is, whichever crappy reality show is currently topping the ratings.
May 28, 2014 | Alliance management, Collaboration, Leadership, Small business
Mojowire.net.au
Tonight is the first Origin game of 2014, and so I expect to hear lots of people using sporting analogies over the next few weeks, particularly football.
Sporting analogies abound in business, “A team of champions does not make a champion team”
How many time have you heard that?
As management layers are removed, and the management culture evolves rapidly towards recognising the value of teams in a commercial context, we often use the sporting team as the foundation of the commercial team .
Familiarity, known skills, interpersonal relationships, all that stuff gets considered as a team is put together. Sometimes of course, in the real world teams are put together with whoever is to hand, has some spare time, is at the water cooler too often.
We confuse this simplified sporting stuff, useful in its own context, with the key components of a commercial team faced with commercial challenges.
In that case, you need a range of technical and domain skills, a questioning mentality, and a willingness to try things, and usually some diversity, some new or unusual blood being injected to create a sense of discomfort that always precedes game changing ideas and insights.
Unlike sporting events, which last for a hour, more or less, commercial challenges are way longer term, when the micro interaction is important more as a learning event than a game breaker.
May 14, 2014 | Branding, Management, Sales
expertflyfishingand camping.com
Creating a lead is a whole world of work and pain for many business people, followed by another, converting the lead into a transaction.
Too often I see the process followed as an aggressive “close at all costs” mentality. That approach rarely ever worked well for anything beyond one off transactions, and is even less effective now that digital communication has revolutionised the way we create, conduct and nurture relationships.
People like to buy from those they like and trust, basic human nature.
It follows therefore, that to make sales, you need to demonstrate that you are both likable and trustworthy, as well as being in a position to address the customers need and deliver value at least as well as alternatives.
Following is a three stage process:
- Humanise you marketing, you are selling to people, not “organisations”, people!
- Track relationships. Have a metric, and visual device that articulates the existing relationships with people, such as the one following.
3. Explicitly set out to build relationships, recognising that sales will follow, rather than the other way around. Having a visual representation of the state of a relationship, and an objective of moving up the pyramid, by understanding and acting on the drivers of a relationship will deliver mutual benefit, and a return on effort.
Each relationship, whatever its status, is an individual thing. It will have a range of parameters that will direct its development. How we met, what we look like, how we conduct ourselves, the mutual stories we have, how authentic we are, how consistent as are in the engagement and interaction, and the degree to which we are proactive, and generous in that engagement, and so on.
Managing the inputs to those parameters is a foundation of marketing success that was not possible just 20 years ago because we did not have the tools, but now we have, so there is no excuse.
