There are lots of businesses that do not bother with marketing. They leave communication to chance. Is this a good thing? Who cares if your business communicates well? Does it have any bearing on your fortunes? Can you live without marketing? Most companies wrestle with these issues at some point in their development. What happens if you choose not to communicate adequately? Nothing disastrous, you might reasonably conclude. However, as your business grows, so will its reputation, and a reputation is a fragile bundle of opinions that could have a significant bearing on your success. The problem is that if you decide to say nothing, customers will simply draw their own conclusions. Their view of your business may be accurate and well informed, but then again it might not. So it is better to design it in a style that suits your needs rather than leave it to chance.

MARKETING MATTERS

All of your effort so far could prove irrelevant if you don’t bother to tell anybody about your business and what it has to offer. Your business is going to develop a reputation whether you like it or not, and this is likely to be determined by:

• How you behave personally
• How you tell people you behave
• How you tell your people to behave (if you have them)
• How your products deliver

It all starts with you. You need to tell anyone who will listen what type of business you are. That’s half the battle. Then tell your staff (if you have them). They need to behave in a way that is appropriate to what you stand for, and what you believe to be right. They can only do this if they are told what is expected of them. And, of course, you need to behave that way yourself.

How much should you spend on sales and marketing? First, we need to examine the distinction between sales and marketing. In the purest sense, sales are purely financial transactions, and in theory they can occur in the absence of marketing. Equally, marketing can generate a lot of activity publicizing products and services, but not actually lead to any sales. In this respect, they can be viewed as separate items, but in most companies they are not. The two disciplines are generally regarded as indivisible – marketing should always lead to sales, and sales usually needs the help of marketing. Most organizations therefore now combine the two things. Much has been written about appropriate marketing investment levels. As a rough rule of thumb, mature companies that embrace marketing as a discipline spend 8–13% of their turnover on it. They don’t do this for fun, but for hard-nosed commercial reasons that have been proven to improve their fortunes. Most modern companies have concluded that there is essentially no difference between marketing and sales. As such, they believe that to have ‘no marketing’ is to abdicate from sales altogether. The answer for small businesses may be quite different. There is a huge difference between paid-for marketing and free marketing. Your most powerful weapon in the early days is you. You need to get out and about and promote what you do vigorously. To start with, you may not have to spend any money on marketing at all.

Start by saying hello to everyone who could help. It is extraordinary the number of people who haven’t even bothered to let everyone know what they do for a living. This is one of the most powerful forms of marketing, and yet many leave it out completely. Word of mouth is free, and much more persuasive than any marketing you might pay for. Everybody you meet could be a potential customer, but that isn’t the main point. Far more important is the fact that, even if they don’t want what you have to offer, they might know someone who does. Creating a buzz around what you do is important, and it needn’t cost anything.

The same goes for when you need help in the early days. Don’t be afraid to ask for small favours from people to get you going. This applies to marketing as much as to painting the walls of your first office or shop. Do you have any contacts who could help spread the word about what you do? Would they mind if you promoted your business on their premises? Think broadly about the possibilities – the chances are, they will say yes. And don’t forget to return the favour when they need one from you.

CRUCIAL SALES AND MARKETING INSIGHTS

You should plan a sales and marketing strategy first. This is the big picture, and should not be confused with the tactics, the activity itself or particular initiatives. Your overall approach needs to be considered before you get into detail, and when starting a business there are a number of crucial insights that can be gleaned from the huge amount written on the subject. Important lessons include:

THE VALUE OF PRE-MARKETING

Pre-marketing is another helpful idea for priming the sales pump. One of the most frequent problems with marketing is that people leave it far too late. Of course, it depends on the nature of what your business is selling, but often people need time to think about what they might need from you. Particularly if your products are premium-priced, they won’t necessarily make a snap decision based on 30 seconds of chat from you or a colleague. If you can acknowledge this early on, then you can build that consideration time into your plan. Impulse purchases are fine, but higher value and low frequency items need thought. Pre-marketing means letting people know what you can do for them, or provide them with, long before you actually want their custom. In the early days you may find this difficult because you want the sale quickly, but it doesn’t take long for you to build a pipeline of interest that could materialize at some later point in the future. Start this process now, and your efforts will be less desperate later. Once you have prepared your strategy, you can get into the detail of what the specific tactics are that you plan to enact. Here are some ideas:

To summarize, marketing is simply the regular explanation of what you do to anyone who will listen. It can be free, and if you can keep it that way, then so much the better. Keep going again and again with new ideas. There is no point in your business being beautifully run on the one hand and the world’s best kept secret on the other. Spread the word. Let the world know.

DESIGNING A CONTACT STRATEGY

So having turned your mind to marketing matters, investigated a number of important insights for your business, and considered the pre-marketing element, you need to move on to designing a contact strategy. Your contact strategy is your lifeblood. It all starts with your initial contact list. Here you need to write down everyone you know with whom you could possibly do business, and with whom you could get in touch. Ideally, it should only include the name of the person, the company and the date you last made contact with them. Don’t be tempted to add other information – it will only distract you from the simple matter of contacting them. If you really do feel that you need more information, then note it somewhere else. Do not be tempted to enhance the list with extraneous detail. It has no bearing on the likelihood of you making the call, organizing a meeting, or achieving the thing that needs to be done – it only blurs your ability to get on with the task in hand. Every time you speak to someone or meet up with them, write the date down and move their details to the top of the list. This becomes your ready-made recall system.

After a suitable period of time has elapsed, draw a Pester Line at a certain date when you believe it is appropriate to call again. If you do it more than once a month, you are probably pestering, but the appropriate frequency will depend on the nature of your business. Every six months is likely to be ideal in a service business where you are involved in one or two projects a year. But if you leave it a year, many of your contacts will have left the company or changed their job description. Work out a frequency of contact that suits the nature of your business, and adjust it if it doesn’t seem to be working.

The number of people on your contact list needs constant scrutiny. If there are more than 500 at the outset, you are most likely fooling yourself or spreading yourself too thinly. It is much better to have a smaller number of viable, genuine prospects than a huge list full of people you don’t really know. Keep a constant eye on your frequency of contact. If you overdo it, after a period of receiving your (perhaps unwanted) solicitations, you will begin to tarnish your reputation (in other words, you will have overstepped the Pester Line). Or you will simply dissipate too much of your time on people who aren’t interested in what you have to offer.

On the other hand, if there are less than 100 contacts on the list at the outset, your business may not be viable. You need a decent universe against which to apply the normal laws of probability. If you are absolutely charmed, it is possible that you could sustain a living on five customers who give you precisely the amount of work that you want exactly when you need it. That’s very unlikely, although it might just be feasible in a service industry where you have an established reputation that provides a ready-made flow of work. Much more likely is a selection of potential customers who don’t actually give you work despite regular promises; work which does eventually arrive but much later than you expected; projects that turn out to be much smaller than anticipated when they do eventually arrive, and so on. If you sell a product, you may to a certain degree be at the whim of various market forces, a series of random factors, and the possible effectiveness of whatever offers and promotions you decide to run. Therefore, it is better if you can generate your own pipeline to even out all these variations.

REVIEWING YOUR MARKETING

Your new business hit list is an essential system. This is the list that you generate once your contact list has taken shape. You need to think carefully and very broadly about anyone who could have a bearing on the success of your business. This is not a cynical exercise in exploitation. It is merely casting the net as wide as possible to make the most of the potential contacts that you have. Reviewing this list needs to become part of your system. Constantly review it to see if you could be generating new opportunities. Refine your thinking regularly by asking direct questions:

• Where are you likely to have most success?
• Why is a certain approach not working?
• What new approach might work?
• How can you apply one set of skills to another market?
• Have you overlooked an obvious source of business?
• What type of work do you enjoy most?
• Where do you make the best margin?
• Which examples of previous work are most impressive?

Now start getting the list into some sort of priority order. Put the hottest prospects at the top and revise the order when things change. Keep the numbers manageable. Any less than ten prospects on your hit list and you may not achieve the progress you want. More than 50 and you might faze yourself and do nothing, rather like facing a plate with too much food on it. If you have trouble tackling a list of this size, break it down into manageable chunks that suit you – groups of six or ten perhaps. Try colour-coding them so that you can distinguish one set from the other. If your first system doesn’t work, simply admit it and invent a new one. Remember, the system is entirely for your own convenience. Just make it work for you.

Keep inventing new ideas for contacting prospective customers. You need to be vigilant about issues and trends. Pick up on articles in the trade press. Track movements of people and ideas. It works well when you ring up and say that you have noticed something relevant to them and have a suggestion. It shows that you are on the ball, and makes it easier to get work. If you are selling products, keep re-analyzing their appeal to your customer base.

• What is ‘in’ at the moment?
• Do your products fit that mood?
• Can you extend your range?
• What if you run a promotion?
• What if you alter your pricing?
• How about some local marketing?
• Are your marketing materials out of date or looking a little tired?
• Are there any seasonal events that you should be capitalizing on?

Just because someone didn’t buy your first suggestion doesn’t mean they won’t buy your second. Things change all the time. Bright ideas appropriately suggested are always interesting to people. Keep coming up with new ones. Every time you contact someone, move them to your contact list. The definition of a contact is a meeting or a proper phone conversation. At bare minimum you will have explained who you are, provided your details and discussed the possibility of work at some point in the future. Never have someone on your contact list who should be on your new business hit list. They are not a genuine contact until you have spoken to them properly or met them and discussed at least the vague possibility of them becoming a customer.

You should aim for 50 percent repeat business within three years. You should expect your customers to be pleased with what you offer so you should expect further custom in due course. If you are selling products, there is still a service element to what you do, and your objective must be to have your customers coming back. Even accounting for the random availability of projects, seasonal factors and the cyclical nature of certain markets, you should always aspire to get more business from at least half of your existing customers. You should also track satisfied customers when they move house, move to new jobs or have a change of circumstances. Whatever has happened, they will be confronted by a whole new set of issues, many of which you may be able to address. In a service business in particular, it is important to go and have a coffee with people when they move. It is flattering for them, it gives you a flavour of their new set-up, and there is always something new to discuss.

DESCRIBING WHAT YOU DO

You won’t have a business unless you let people know who you are, where you are, and what you do. You need to know where to find your customers, and how to communicate with them. You need to become adept at describing what you do, preferably in less than 30 seconds. Potential customers may not be interested in listening for more than a minute. This is true at an interview, a drinks party, in the pub, at the squash club – anywhere, in fact. After that, they become bored. You need to come across in a lucid, enthusiastic way. Start by writing down what you do in no more than three sentences. Now read it out loud. Does it sound daft? If so, rewrite it. Try again. Does it sound like a cliché? Does it sound like all the other claims you read in corporate brochures? If so, change it. Make it fun and engaging. Do it with some pride and a lot of energy. Now you can use it for face-to-face conversations, telephone calls and all your written work. Also bear in mind that this should evolve constantly to keep pace with the manner in which your business develops. Broadly speaking, no one cares what you do to earn a living. It’s your job to express it clearly so everyone can understand and, ideally, to make it interesting and appealing. If you can’t, why should anyone else bother to try to understand it?

When drawing together your marketing materials, do introduce some character into the manner in which you describe your company and your products. Interesting things start to happen when you do. Most modern markets have a tremendous amount of competition, so it is extremely likely that there is another business somewhere that offers pretty much the same as yours. If this is true, then prospective customers may be confronted with competitors offering similar goods, location, price, delivery times, and so on, to yours. With all these factors being roughly equal, they may well make their decision based on the brand character that you and your company choose to emanate. This is where your marketing comes into its own.

The proposition you developed in Chapter 2 forms the basis of how to describe your business. Combined with your personal character, it will become the cornerstone of your marketing materials. There should be good consistency between all the elements – website, logo, brochures, leaflets, packaging, mailings, and so on. Ideally, a customer should be able to look at any of these and recognize a clear similarity of style, or family feel. This usually happens when you view all the elements as different manifestations of one central thought, rather than a haphazard collection of items all conceived at different times. Bear in mind that in the early days things will probably change quite rapidly and so should the manner in which you describe what you do. The chances are that your marketing materials will become obsolete pretty quickly. So update them. It doesn’t have to be an expensive exercise if you stick to the basics and concentrate on the elements that work well in your market. At an appropriate moment, do pause to consider:

• What do you think of the materials?
• Do they accurately represent what you do these days?
• Which initiatives worked and which didn’t?
• What can you learn from that?
• Do you use some elements more than others?
• Has the emphasis of your business changed?
• Is there any point in producing something new?

So, shortly after launch you should consider rewriting your marketing materials. What you said about your business two months ago might not be how you would phrase it now. Equally, just because a marketing initiative didn’t work before doesn’t mean it won’t work now. If your business develops fast, your existing material is probably out of date, so re-examine it. Many businesses send out one launch mailing and then sit back thinking that they have ‘done marketing’. The market is changing all the time. People come and go. Products and tastes change. You can never conclusively prove that something that didn’t work before won’t work now. Choose your medium carefully. You may decide to use different media for different messages. Whatever you do, don’t just fire off an email to all your contacts and assume that the business will roll in. As well as materials, don’t forget the power of talking. It is your job to stay very close to them and the markets in which you operate. When you have some new ideas that you want to test, talk to your customers. Ask them:

• What else could I do for you?
• Did you realize that what I do for you is only a fraction of what I do for some of my other customers?
• What are the main things preoccupying you at the moment that I could help with?
• Would you like me to investigate something new for you?
• Are you dissatisfied with any suppliers who provide similar services to me?
• Do you know any other potential customers who might want to use my services or products?
• What could I do better?

Ask open-ended questions and pay attention to their responses. The new selling opportunities are usually lurking in the answers given. Let your customers talk. In many instances, they will invent new ideas and opportunities for you on the spot. Occasionally drop in new ideas. Offer to develop a thought into a proposal. Suggest that you do a little development work on a subject and follow up to see if it is worth proceeding. In the modern business world they call this being proactive. In truth it is simply having ideas and getting things done.

SUCCESSFUL ONLINE MARKETING

Harnessing the powerful potential of social media is another important marketing tool at your disposal. First, it is important to understand the ‘new rules’. The knack to social media marketing is to forget the old rules of traditional marketing and think the opposite. Social media is about engaging in grown-up dialogue with your customers and potential clients, not simply churning out promotional messages. That means having a conversation, listening hard, being open and transparent, being authentic, and being generous with your expertise and knowledge. It does not mean broadcasting, shouting the loudest, being secretive about your company’s workings, bragging or being mean and competitive.

Now consider your online strategy. Although social media marketing shouldn’t feel overly promotional, it does serve a very important commercial purpose. Like all marketing, therefore, it should be embarked upon in a strategic way and with a clear plan in mind. Before diving in it is important to ask yourself some basic questions:

• With whom do I want to communicate?
• How do I want to come across?
• What do I want to achieve from my activity?
• What resources do I have?

Before embarking on social media marketing, you should take some time to review the functionality of your website. This is a primary sales tool. Consider online appointment making programmes, merchandise sales, newsletter, and blog feed subscription tools – all of which will help with data capture. You might also want to create a blog. Your blog is a place to show off your personality and expertise in a dynamic, modern way. Wordpress, Blogger and Typepad are all very user-friendly and make it easy to set up a blog, which you can link from your website. Bear in mind that people are likely to remember just 10% of what they read but 50% of what they see and hear, so you can use video podcasts to demonstrate your products. Don’t worry if these are not professionally shot, because home-style video content gives the impression of honesty and authenticity.

Consider setting up a company page on Facebook and using new features such as the ‘Like’ function to increase your brand awareness. Include photos, videos, customer feedback and your blog feed if you have them. You can also set up on LinkedIn. Up until recently only personal profiles could be set up on this site, but now it allows company profiles with a new ‘Follow us’ function. Also investigate the ‘Groups’ function to expand your business network and identify potential new product partners, business alliances and affiliations. Twitter is another possibility. The fact that updates on Twitter are restricted to 140 characters does not mean that they should purely be about what you had for your lunch today. Take time to understand Twitter: how to use @links, Retweets (RTs), trending topics and #hashtags. If you do use this medium, make sure you vary your tweets – share your own articles from your blog, share breaking news, Retweet others, give the odd personal update, ask for volunteer mystery shoppers, and offer some promotions. With all of this, you will soon find your number of followers increasing.

With all online initiatives, it is important to be realistic. The beauty of social media marketing is that most of it is free. It does, however, require a big time commitment to get it right. Before you start, consider how much time you can commit and keep within your capabilities. Better to have a small, select online presence done well, than abandoned Twitter sites, barren Facebook pages, and blog posts last updated years ago. If you can set aside an hour a day though, they might just prove to be the most productive hours of the week.

EFFECTIVE SALES MEETINGS AND NETWORKING

Remember that in general people give business to those whom they like meeting. The purpose of a meeting is to establish a relationship, to propose something, or to agree something. Don’t set up meetings for the sake of it. Always ask yourself: ‘What’s the point?’ Be sharp and lively, and establish a reputation as a person with whom a meeting is always a pleasure. You want your customers to be saying: ‘Whenever I have a meeting with you I get something out of it.’

When you start out, you do actually need to meet quite a lot of people. This is because the law of averages dictates that you need a reasonable critical mass of contacts to make any business work. In the early days, the shape of your business will not be sharply defined (no matter how rigorous you were in the planning stages), so you need to stay open-minded. Moreover, bear in mind that every meeting you have involves a judgement of character as well as an assessment of someone’s technical skills. The more people you communicate with, the more experience you will have of working out whether you will get on well with them, and whether they will be relevant to your aspirations for your business.

Once you have met a number of people, you can refine your approach into some proper networking. This is not a cynical process whereby you extract all the benefits from people and give them nothing back. In some quarters, the very word ‘networking’ has as bad a reputation as ‘sales’. But properly executed networking should benefit everyone. There is a difference between meeting a lot of people and networking. In the early days, you need to meet lots of people and stay open-minded. When you have built up some experience of their capabilities and aspirations, you can network. This will involve keeping in contact with those who could benefit from your skills and vice versa, at a frequency that is appropriate to your line of work and how busy they are. You keep in touch, help them out, suggest things and, ideally, do business together. Everyone wins.

If you are in a service business with a small number of significant customers, take them to lunch and insist on paying. It could be lunch. It could be breakfast, dinner, the races or even just a drink. The thing is that social surroundings promote a totally different mood than those of a meeting room, many of which appear to be designed precisely to reduce the chances of meetings being enjoyable. Suggesting a social get-together is a constructive, magnanimous thing to do. It says that you are broad-minded, that you are interested in other aspects of your customers than just their money, and that you can afford it.

In this way, you will be engineering a situation in which you can show your generosity, your interest in the client and, quite possibly, the degree to which you are on the ball with your suggestions of places to go and things to do. What do you talk about when you meet up? A bit of business, certainly. But mainly simply ask short, open-ended questions and then listen. You’ll be amazed what comes up. People will talk when they are put at ease. They will talk about their families and relationships, their concerns, their feelings about their job, sport, hobbies, current affairs – pretty much anything. Of course, there are some bores in the world, but in the main there are interesting things to learn and discuss. The more ideas you have, the smarter you will appear, not because you are faking it but because it will be true. It’s all part of honing good communication skills.

So marketing does matter, but it doesn’t have to be daunting or complicated, particularly for small businesses. Stick to home truths about what your business can offer, and try a series of short, fast initiatives. Learn from their effect, and gradually build up your experience of what works in your market.