The generosity of my sponsor enabled me to support two charities – Ovacome and The Cystic Fibrosis Trust. It showed me just how easy it can be for a business person to lend their powerful support to charity without having to go on sponsored marathons or to bungee jump off a bridge.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that any initiatives to support a charity are fantastic. It’s just that sitting in a bath of beans or abseiling down Battersea power station [something that a friend of mine did recently] does not press my particular buttons.

In the event or rather I should say at the event, I sold 101 books raising £101 for Ovacome and £101 for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. Thanks to the generosity of my guests these figures will be further boosted by the money donated in the collection boxes.

And here’s the thing.

I didn’t have to do anything special or out of the ordinary to raise this money and to raise awareness of two important charities in desperate need of funds. It was straightforward and painless. I learnt a lesson. I realised the potential we have as business owners to develop our socially responsible policies without having to put ourselves out too much or physically test ourselves to the limit. So let’s all get going!

If you raise money for charity through your business, I’d love to know what you do. Reveal all!

'Back to Basics - now that's got a good ring to it.'

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of training a group of business people at the British Library in London.  It was my very first Ultimate Marketing on a Shoestring workshop.  Although it touched on social media and whether the attending businesses should be getting stuck in, or simply exploring it with a considered view, the purpose of the workshop was to ensure that the attendees were focusing on being brilliant at the basics.

What do I mean by this?

The basics means… having a decent, professionally designed logo and accompanying letterhead and business cards that are not advertising vista print.  It means having a website that has not been created by your neighbour’s son who’s making a few quid in his spare time knocking out cheap websites.  It means having a relevant positioning statement – being fully congruent with the benefits that you deliver, the audiences you deliver these benefits to, and demonstrating your understanding of their different needs.  And, it means auditing your marketing on a regular basis.  What are you spending, what sort of return are you getting and have you unwittingly fallen into a comfort zone of, say, networking because you enjoy a good natter.

It also means understanding that people rarely make the decision to do business with you at the very first asking, so trying to coerce them with just one communication is unlikely to work, whereas establishing a programme of communications is more likely to lead some of your audience to a sale.

There are many advantages to being brilliant at the basics.

If you know who you want to communicate with and why, and you are putting your best foot forward with an attractive, professionally designed image, you are more likely to be given an audience with your audience and you are less likely to become disenchanted with the marketing and sales process, something which can lead to you spending money in panic.

So, before you get into a lather about the next marketing miracle that is going to somehow transform your business, make sure that you have covered the basics, and that you are brilliant at them.

Listening to Marc Bolland, I said. BOLLAND!

I was listening to Marc Bolland, Chief Executive of M&S a couple of days ago explaining the reasons behind M&S’s sales growth.   Apparently, M&S shoppers are trading up – moving to the next price point on a wide range of goods.  But what I really took away from Marc’s explanation was a fantastic quote which inspired me to write this blog.

He said… “if you want to buy once, you have to buy well.”  And boy did that get me thinking.  Because we all like a bargain don’t we?  The delicious feeling we experience when buying something we really wanted for less than the price we anticipated paying for it.

But when it comes to buying professional services, does the same thinking apply?  Do we still want a bargain or, has our focus shifted to the pursuit of being on the receiving end of exceptional value instead? Because the two are different aren’t they?  You can often be willing to buy expensive as opposed to cheap as chips because you’re confident of deriving real value for the service you are investing in.  For example, I don’t think any of my clients wants a ‘cheap as chips’ marketer.  They want a marketer that can deliver a return on their investment with the appropriate experience and qualifications. Thankfully, with just one or two exceptions, I have never had to justify the fees I charge and, if I entered into that debate, I would question whether the client was indeed right for me, let alone whether I was right for them.

It’s our responsibility as service providers to unashamedly and clearly demonstrate how and where we deliver exceptional value instead of trying to justify what we charge for our expertise or, dropping our prices because we believe that price is the main motivator.  If you haven’t sat down and thought this through, perhaps now is a good time to do so.

'So, tell me just a little bit more about your buying habits .... and nobody gets hurt!

Why You Must Get up Close to the Heart Beat of Your Prospects…

A few days ago I found myself in a motor home park in Eastbourne, interviewing motor home owners to find out their thoughts on air suspension.  Now I grant you it’s not a very sexy subject, but for a motor home owner the mere thought of air suspension is enough to whip them into a positive frenzy.  Eight hours later and after interviewing several motor home owners, I knew exactly why they wanted to buy air suspension, the problems they encounter when driving a vehicle without said suspension, why they love motor homing and the various organisations they belong to.

As you may have guessed, I am going to be mounting a marketing campaign aimed at motor home owners, communicating the virtues of air suspension to them.

Why pray tell would I go to all of this trouble when whizzing through a few websites about motor home owners and, visiting motor home forums would tell me all I need to know?

They wouldn’t.  Because nothing, absolutely nothing beats getting up close to the heartbeat of both your existing customers and, those customers yet to buy from you. You can guess from a distance what their needs are and, you may be right or, you may flounder at the first hurdle with irrelevant brilliance.

Your campaigns may swim or, they may sink.  But you won’t get those precious nuggets of feedback that you only get if you are sat in front of that person, asking a few incisive questions, sitting back and really listening.

If you want to create exquisite, relevant and stunningly successful campaigns on a shoestring budget it may be time to step out from behind a computer screen and get right in front of your audience.

'Where's my Battenberg?!'

A few weeks ago, I was with a client who orders a very nice buffet lunch each time I visit; a much welcomed refreshment break in an otherwise fast-paced day. On this occasion, at the appointed time the caterer arrived with platters of freshly made goodies.  That is, all except for one important platter – the home-made cakes were missing!

The caterer told us in a very matter of fact way that he had forgotten to bring the home-made cakes.  He then went on to explain that we were the last call of his day and despite our gentle protestations (we impressed upon him how much we enjoyed the home-made cakes and how it was the favourite part of the buffet for one of the directors in particular) he was not moved.

Now even though we were the last call on his route and popping back to his headquarters to collect the cake would have taken no more than 20 minutes, he told us there was nothing more he could do other than give a credit on the next order.  The next order!  Not this order, the next order I tell you.

I was speechless and my client was distinctly unimpressed.

Hot on the heels of this act of unremarkable generosity, he then had the temerity to ask my client if she would continue to support his business because “times are tough.”

Never has the saying “brand reality is defined by the customers view”, been more apt.

What would you have done in this situation had you been the caterer?

'Right, now to unleash my brilliant plan .....'

It’s often when your back is against the wall that your Eureka moments occur. It may be that you’ve been digging deep to find a solution to a long standing business problem or, have been searching for inspiration to launch a new product or service but until those grey clouds blotted out the sun, you were struggling for the answer.

That’s not to say you’re not capable of great ideas in the good times too; it’s just that when the money is rolling in and you’ve got customers beating a path to your door, you naturally invest your energies in servicing and delivery sometimes at the expense of innovation or improvement.  Of course the big brands like Apple do both.  Continuous improvement and innovation runs parallel to delivering the ultimate customer experience.

But for many small businesses with limited resources, the old but apt saying “necessity is the mother of invention” holds more than a grain of truth.

In the last few weeks, I have met several business people that have supported this.  One woman, a baker of beautiful celebration cakes was forced to rethink her business offering when demand started to dry up.  She decided that to augment her income and, reach out to a new market that she would bake cupcakes, cleverly launching a Cupcake Friday service in her village.  She now has a burgeoning order book, delivering freshly made cupcakes to local businesses that are more than happy to eschew the supermarket in favour of a product altogether more scrumptious than anything Mr Kipling could muster and, with the icing on the top (pardon the pun I couldn’t resist it) being their support of another local business.  Another woman and a client of mine, Nicola Sales realised that when the recession bit deep and hard into her recruitment business she had two choices.  She could shut up shop and dive under the duvet or, download her creative juices.  She came up with the idea of launching a range of online recruitment services that would give the online job boards a serious competitor.  It worked and, her business is now thriving again.

Do you identify with this?

How have you improved your business when your back has been up against the wall?

'I say, what's a gorgeous creature like you doing in a place like this?'

Charm.  It’s the missing ingredient in so many sales communications.  Sales letters, e-mails, websites, flyers; you name it they are all waiting to be liberally dosed with charm.

We are all so busy nowadays aren’t we? Sending e-mails that are abbreviated to the point that they render the message insipid and characterless.  And what about Twitter? We let our impetuous nature get the better of us, cramming text talk into 140 characters because we can’t be bothered to spend a little time composing a nicely balanced message with fully rounded words.

What we don’t realise is that by resorting to these fast and furious measures we are unwittingly turning off the people we’re trying to woo.

As you would expect from a wordsmith I never give any sales communication a mere cursory glance before deleting or shredding it. I go the whole hog, devouring each sentence and mulling over its purpose.   More often than not, the sales communication may have some positive parts, but it falls flat on its face.  What has happened?  Usually, a blunt, inappropriate or insincere message has rendered the entire communication a charmless exercise.   Instead of piquing my interest sufficiently to respond, it has only served to fuel my ire.

I received such a communication this morning, a triumph of charmless over charm.

It was an e-mail from a local restaurant telling me that I was a highly valued customer, and to thank me for my loyalty there was a voucher that I could redeem at my next visit which they hoped would be sooner rather than later.

There were a couple of things that were grating about this e-mail.  Firstly, I haven’t been to the restaurant in donkey’s years so if I constitute a highly valued customer, God help them.  Secondly, the PS at the end of the e-mail encouraged me to send the voucher on to anybody that I knew (with a pulse and a heartbeat) so they could take advantage of the special offer too.

Oh no!  You were having me on. I am not that special after all.

They would have been much better off acknowledging the fact that I had not visited for a while but there were many positive reasons for me to come back, not least a voucher.  Why not inspire me to put on my best dress and sashay through those doors by describing a couple of scrumptious dishes, adding a little customer testimonial and reminding me of what I have been missing?

Alas, they were far too busy to sit down and give some serious consideration to the genuine messages that would inspire lapsed customers to walk through their doors again and so had trotted out a few hackneyed clichés…

If you want to inspire people to do business with you, don’t spare the horses when it comes to lavishing your marketing messages with charm.

'Change the record, mate.'

You know those tedious few minutes just before your plane takes off and you’re (hopefully) heading towards a week or two of sunburn and siestas?  Yes, I’m talking about those ubiquitous safety instructions from the cabin crew. We’re told to stop what we are doing and to give them our full attention as they painstakingly explain what we must do (apart from descend into hysteria) in the event of the plane dropping from the skies.  Well, I do confess that most of the time I switch off whilst these instructions are being given out. The format is so predictable and formulaic and I’ve heard them several times before. Besides, what good is a whistle when you’re floating in the middle of the sea?

This was not the case when I recently took a plane to Lanzarote, however. This time I was transfixed from beginning to end.

And it was because Thomson Travel had the ingenious idea of using a video of a rather captivating little girl called Chloe, who must have been about six years old, to run through the safety routine for us. If you’ve seen this video, you’ll know exactly what I mean.  Chloe has the most gorgeous Irish accent, she looks incredibly sweet and she delivers the instructions with charm and confidence.  I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and neither could the other passengers. And the net effect was that I, and I suspect everyone else too, really did pay attention to the instructions this time.  Yet they were exactly the same instructions and exactly the same script that I had heard so many times before.

The only difference was that this time it was Chloe and her friends who were delivering the message.

And the business lesson from this?

Instead of jettisoning what we currently offer in favour of a shiny new version, it’s a good idea to identify whether an improvement in our presentation is actually what is needed.  For example, something as straightforward as delivering a new and unexpected 60-second introduction at our networking group could grab the attention of the attendees. Maybe re-packaging our free introductory meeting as a 50-minute business health check could be just the ticket to overcome any inertia and to encourage hot prospects and customers to be more receptive to our message.  I have encountered a number of small businesses that have abandoned good products and services when in fact a more relevant and inspiring approach was all that was needed.

Approach the ‘Delete’ button with caution… there may be life in that old dog yet.

'Dear Sir, Just a quick letter to let you know that nobody writes letters any more!'

I received an invitation to a networking event a couple of weeks ago.  The highlight of the event was an author promoting his latest book with the compelling message that traditional marketing is dead.  The invitation went on to extol the virtues of the online universe in an evangelical and uncompromising manner.  Apparently, if we are not all downing our traditional marketing tools – you know, those that may have generated us thousands of pounds worth of business to date – and fleeing to the promised land emblazoned with social media tags and blogging galore, we are doomed.

Forget the fact that your current marketing may be working,  it’s over,  finished!

Cancel your magazine advertising that has so far paid for itself in spades; scrap your networking membership even though you’ve made some really great contacts; forget the exhibition that raked you in all that business last year; tear up the press release you’re about to send to your local paper.  None of it counts.  It’s  not trendy.  It’s time to get up close and personal with your keyboard, ear pressed closely to the Google heartbeat.

After I had conducted a rather childish rant at my inbox, I sat back and thought about the invitation that had given rise to such an escalation in my blood pressure.

Firstly, the irony must have been lost on this particular author.  His talk was not  being promoted on a web seminar,  he was displaying his wares at a networking event.  Let’s face it business networking is one of the most traditional marketing activities around.  Secondly, the author had written a paper based book, another traditional communication.  I wondered what kind of response there would have been to a web seminar instead. With the amount of clutter and noise currently swimming around the Internet, it could have easily been lost.   No matter, that’s not the point of this blog.  The point of this blog is to send an uncompromising message that traditional marketing is alive, it’s kicking and it’s serving the needs of millions of small businesses.

Traditional marketing has of course found new friends to play with. Social media, blogging and online activity have come to the table and we are definitely the better for it.  Like all new friends, it’s going to take some time for the relationships to form. We may initially spurn the hand of friendship, or conversely proclaim our undying love, plunging in with gay abandon only to get our fingers burnt. Back to the drawing board!

For some small businesses, this broader palette of choice will be most welcomed; an opportunity to enhance and blend their marketing more carefully and to build relationships more gradually online.  For others, it’s a case of business as usual but ‘let’s keep our eye on the social media story’ as it unfolds.

Now you may be thinking… ‘well yes Dee but you would say that, as a marketer of the old school wouldn’t you?’ But I too like the shiny new shoes of social media.  I am writing a blog for instance! But what I do know from experience and from working with small businesses every single day is that the message being pushed by the author is downright dangerous.

'Hey boss, somebody calling themselves a customer says they're looking for something called service'

“We’re no worse than any of the major retailers on the high street.”

This was the jaw dropping response from the Managing Director of the fashion chain Pilot to Channel 4′s fashion guru Mary Portas after being shown secretly filmed footage of his staff in one of his stores doing anything but delivering great customer service.  Had it been revealed by an ordinary consultant, I’m sure he would have defended the indefensible and drawn a line under the experience, continuing to bask in his belief that the only thing that matters to Pilot customers is the budget priced fashion clothing on offer.

I found the whole spectacle intriguing and quite shocking.

The secret footage revealed two employees discussing throwing a sickie; one of them using expletives loud enough for the camera to pick up.  The crowning glory was when one girl suggested helping a customer and the other told her not to bother.  Customers moved around the store like zombies being studiously ignored by the sales assistants.  Those customers that were interviewed by the camera crew were underwhelmed by their Pilot experience.  They were ripe for defection.

So why on earth would the Managing Director of Pilot want to preserve the status quo in the face of the evidence? It should have made him weep with despair and immediately order an intense programme of customer care training.

In fact he was subscribing to the theory that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, and so chose to ignore the evidence in front of his eyes because the business he was running was a  profitable one.  He was also lulling himself into a false sense of security by believing he was no better nor worse than most of the high street retailers, including the big boys.

If the irreducible minimum is good enough for them, it was good enough for him.

He may be able to get away with this attitude for a while longer.  But what happens when a smarter kid on the block emerges?  One that offers similar fashion linesbut is also obsessed with delivering the ultimate customer experience?

You may be able to get away with this laissez-faire when you are bankrolling big numbers, but complacency has its limits.  The danger is that customers will move away when attracted by the bright lights of a newer, more polished player.

But even if this doesn’t happen, what is so wrong in training staff to be champions of fantastic customer care?  In business, is making money all that matters and hang the customer?