Basic Online Strategy for Small Business

So what does the term ‘Digital Marketing Strategy’ mean for an SME?


The digital marketing industry is awash with acronyms, jargon and technical sound bites that must feel akin to a foreign language to even the most savvy of SME leaders.


It is very easy to get engulfed by the tsunami of marketing options available in today’s ever evolving and trending digital marketing space, so here’s a bit of clarity – what does it mean for your Small Business – what should and shouldn’t you be doing, and where do you invest your precious marketing budget?


Basically, I’m going to tell you to spend it on your website first and foremost. As with anything – ‘First Impressions Count’, and more so online than anywhere else. Your website is the face of your business that people will engage with however they have been driven there, via on or offline channels, so it’s of utmost importance that it is either:


1. providing a solution to their problem
2. telling them the answer to their question
3. providing the product for which they are looking


It must be immediately RELEVANT, otherwise they will bounce back away and click on another link in their search results. You will normally only get one shot at engaging that customer, so make sure you use it.
You must get the basic’s right before you invest further time and budget in Pay-Per-Click Advertising, Social Media outreach or any other marketing effort that may drive customers to your website.
Your site must be built for Search, so ensure the person or agency that you employ to build your site has proven SEO credentials and ask them to specify how their proposed technical and information architectures for your site delivers Natural Search (also called SEO) equity.


As an SME, you need your website to do 3 core things:


• Get Found
• Get Chosen
• Get Used


It’s important to understand that your target Consumer has the following action points in their online journey:


• Find
• Choose
• Engage
• Interact: Purchase/Enquire/Revisit


These actions need to be mirrored by your website using 4 products:


• Search
• Design
• Functionality
• CRM



Your investment as an SME is in the Find, Choose and Engage requirement which your selected Agency/website builder should address with core products of Search (natural initially, followed by paid-for), Design and Development, as well as the top-spin product of CRM, which generates the repeat revenue.


So basically, your Digital Strategy as an SME is that which delivers on the 3 core requirements (Get Found, Get Chosen, Get Used), addressing the 4 core consumer action points (Find, Choose, Engage, Interact), using the 4 core products (Search, Design, Dev, CRM/Consultancy).


Get that bit right, and your future spend on the larger pool of digital marketing channels will be optimised. Get it wrong, and it may be wasted.

What has happened to LinkedIN Etiquette?

I spend a lot of valuable time on LinkedIN – I was an early adopter and barely a day has gone past in the 4 or so years that I’ve had a user profile that I haven’t logged in for one reason or another.

I use LinkedIN for business – I am a hiring manager and comfortable networker, and the functionality helps to keep me up to date and in touch with an ever widening group of contacts. I am not an open networker, I have fought for the integrity of my network and it delivers value back to me daily. The role of LinkedIN allows me to ring fence my Facebook Account –as a rule, I do not accept ‘friend’ invites to my Facebook account from people who are in my business network – my Facebook network is less that 10% of the size of my LinkedIN network.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I respect the social territory-based networking that linkedIN enables – it’s empowering and enriching to watch the career progression of people you have worked with previously.

However, there is one facet of LinkedIN that never fails to irk me; the endorsement process. In fact, it’s not linkedIN itself that irks me, it’s peoples use/misuse of it. In the ‘early’ days, people were respectful and humble over their request for an endorsement – they either rang and asked personally, or made the time to find you face-to-face or at the very least scribe a personal request.

A personal reference is a very valuable commodity – it can influence your equity value to a new employer and make you stand above another candidate who has like-for-like on-paper experience. It can also influence a buyer’s decision to contact you for business services over another supplier who has less definitive recommendations – it’s a powerful reputation building device.

Of course, generally speaking, the more senior/influential the person who is recommending you, the greater the value of that endorsement.

So why is it that the last 5 endorsement requests that I have received, from otherwise talented relationship builders with whom I have worked directly (so know personally and have mentored), have been via the generic LinkedIN scripted request template, with no personalisation or effort?

I have found myself archiving these messages and feeling disappointment in the people who have sent them – I thought better of them. I may be being precious, but I happen to find it disrespectful – why should I spent 20 mins of my day crafting a personalised recommendation for someone who hasn’t even bothered to contact me personally?

I’m fascinated about the thought process from the requestor – what is the decision making path that has lead them to act like that – do they have a sense of entitlement that overrides their basic standards of etiquette? Are they embarrassed to ask, so take the pot-shot easy option to see if I have nothing better to do with my day than spend it helping them in their career for not even a courtesy phone call? Or is it that they took a cheap and nasty route and just spammed their whole network to see if someone, anyone, would oblige?

Anyone who has worked for, or with, me knows how I work – I always make myself available when people need help, support or advice, I consider it part of my responsibility as a senior bod and I get a lot of satisfaction out of it.

So am I a victim of my own accessibility – people now take it for granted and assume a right to have that helping hand without having to impart basic manners to the process? I’m not sure – I tweeted about this last night to see if I was the only person who got upset about receiving non-personalised endorsement requests, and I was glad to see that I’m not – for example, the reply from @martin_thomas: “No, they're a bit like spam. Non specific, non personal”.

What an uncomfortable concept – I’m being spammed by a small minority of my own carefully built network of people I have invested belief, mentoring and support in. That surely has to come full circle back to me somehow.

So I guess it’s shame on me....or is it only shame on me if I actually then still write the endorsement?

Commerciality in Creative Companies.

Commercial savvy is not just about T&C’s – it’s also about internal process/lack of. Creative and Tech environments are naturally populated by people who love to explore – be-it a new piece of software, a new tool, or a new creative concept. If work is not scoped and managed properly, this exploration can become an expensive indulgence that, whilst on one hand it can be captured and shared where knowledge-sharing policies are embraced and active, on the other hand it often it results in non-billable time generation – not great in an industry that’s revenues are largely generated via billable time. A balance has to be struck – the tech and creative teams thrive on exploration – that’s what drives innovation, great work and a collaborative working environment, so it’s important that this exploration is not suffocated. At the same time however, boundaries have to be set in order to also protect the margin on the project. This is most easily achieved by effective team leadership – instilling a sense of commercial responsibility into the stakeholders on a given project, but it also needs to be part of the culture of the department/Company – there are several positive ways of applying this, both in terms of relationship management and workflow process evolution. Importantly, the value of creative output must never be underestimated and must be effectively relayed to the Client – an increasing challenge in the current world of procurement disciplines!

Dear Scotthall Watford BMW

Dear Dealer Principal

I collected my 'new' approved used BMW car from you last night. It cost me a lot of money.

It's my 6th BMW.

It's my 3rd BMW from Scotthall BMW Watford.
There won't Be a 4th.

Here's why:

As of the day of purchase (27th Feb), you had it for 2 full weeks 'in preparation' to your 'exacting standards'.

It's a black car and I collected it in the dark.
But even I saw the dent in the rear bumper.

It's fully loaded.
But the 'electric' wing mirror doesn't work.

I asked for it to be debadged. You even wrote that request down.
But you didn't do it.

You have given out all of your keyrings to customers who bought new '10' plate cars last week.
So I didn't get one (yes, the small things count too).

Collecting a new car should be a highlight of my year - it's one of the reasons I work so hard every day.
This time it wasn't.

I think you should know how disappointing this is.

Shoddy Service, Mr BMW.

Regards
Paula Jago.

Is Twitter the secret of life?

I love Twitter - it takes a while to get into it, but I now cannot imagine life with out it. I am a working mother - I am out of the house for long hours and when I'm not at work I try to ring fence my time to commit to my family. I spend a lot of my time 'alone', and by that I mean without Hubby there - he's my best friend and the time we spend together is generally accompanied by a flow of comment, observation and mutually enjoyed sarcasm - we laugh a lot. When he's not there with me, I miss being able to share my witticisms with him....so now I tweet them instead - it's like a purging ritual.

I also use twitter to record the random joy of having a 5 year old and his evolving & maturing comment on life and things in general. The observations of a 5 years old are unique - a cataclysmic naivety married with increasing levels of articulation. Add the fact that he has hearing difficulties and this results in often hilarious misquotes and very random output on an almost hourly basis.

So, in truth, I find Twitter comforting, it's a new buddy that just listens to my ramblings, allows me to delete them later if I slipped into withering comment mode, and importantly, allows me to re-live small but important events in the life of my son and as a family unit. Life moves so fast, it's easy to forget the funny bits, and surely those are the bits that need to be captured in order to live a life of positive thinking, which, by the way, I happen to believe is the secret of life.

Was Woolies brought down by 8 year olds?

I wonder where today’s youth are nicking pick & mix and small pieces of stationery from now that Woolworths has shut? Petty theft is a part of growing up – the acquisition of small-value consequential objects driven by a variety of hormonal, social and (anti) authoritative issues. I can remember lifting a blue and white rubber (eraser, not the other kind) when I was about 8 – a daring, petrifying, adrenaline pumping act of irresistible law-defying insanity. In fact, I effectively doubled my risk the next day by taking it back to Woolies and sneaking it back out of the very sleeve that had previously acted as the getaway vehicle.

Woolworths may have respected this nod to growing up’s rite of passage, in the hope that this relatively small loss leader would instil a lifelong guilt-indexed sense of brand loyalty as those 8 year olds became cash-rich twenty-something’s, and then parents themselves – trekking through life with a deferred payback clause buried deep in their sub-conscience. Quite a risk really, considering this lacklustre attitude towards loss-prevention could have the alternative effect of encouraging lifelong shoplifting habits in generations of mainstream society who got addicted to the adrenaline of theft and as a result didn’t grow out of the 8 year old boundary-pushing mindset.

It’s too late to ask the powers that be at the now defunct Woolworths Board whether this was a strategic business decision or just a failure to secure the long tail of stock-drip. In fact, it would be interesting to know if, with that long tail potentially lasting the entire stretch of Woolies commercial existence, whether this was in fact contributory their eventual demise?!

If so, I’m very glad I took the risk of returning my ill-gotten loot – I wouldn’t want to think I had been a part of the downfall of a High Street great, about whom my Granddad always said; “if you can’t buy it in Woolworths, it’s not worth havin’”.

All change - again!

The Marketing Industry has recently changed in response to the prevailing economic downturn in ways that could not have been envisaged as little as 12 months ago. Two major things have changed – one being the way that work is awarded, briefed and budgeted for by Clients. The other is the nature of that work and the weight of inclusion of different channels. In the same way that the Search arena revolutionised the way that brands approach digital marketing channels 5 years ago, Social Media is currently having a progressively important impact on not just digital channels, but on the whole mix – through the line.
The ATL Vs BTL discussion has been an industry favourite for several years now, but one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that there will be no line in the future – and once agencies truly embrace this and start to change their models, everyone will benefit, especially Clients.