Is your marketing agency a 'supplier', or a 'partner'? Here are some tips on evaluating your current marketing agency, and what to consider if you're looking for a new one.

At its most fundamental, marketing is about effecting change. The challenge is educating, informing and/or entertaining your audience to be perceived as the change you want to happen.

The future of marketing is a diverse and modern combination of data analysis, technical and semantic SEO, social, and creative disciplines working together.

The problem with building widgets faster and more cheaply is that you're assuming the demand for those widgets will never wane - but that day will surely come. Today the innovation opportunity lies in the ability to address more transient customer needs.

Your business marketing is struggling because your value proposition is no longer perceived as having the same relevance with its target audience.

Marketing is everything from what you sell, to how you sell it. To say that Marketing is dead is like saying that business itself is dead.

Today - more than ever - you better make sure that your product delivers on its promise. In today's connected-customer environment where product information is so freely available, the sales division can no longer cover-up product weaknesses in the same way that it used to.

If you’re not happy with the way things are going, what fundamental, radical, extra-ordinary changes are you prepared to make to your business to change things?

When marketing your business value to customers it’s imperative to match your communication to their expectation level at the time.

You may have already seen this. It's a few weeks old already. If you haven't, then take a look at this (real) video ad for Dollar Shave Club, a subscription-based razor blade delivery service (if you can't see the video above, then click here). Not only does the ad feature the actual company CEO, Michael Dubin, as its central character. The video - which cost just $4,500 to make - was used to help secure venture capital financing from big-name companies such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Andreessen Horowitz! The results so far have been staggering. In the first ten days of launch, Dollar Shave Club signed-up 20,000 subscribers. In less than a month, their off-the-wall, built-to-be-shared video has been seen 4 million times. The company is on target to secure more than $50 million in sales in the first twelve months of trading. This is in what most people would agree is a mature industry, dominated by just 2 or 3 major players. They've done this in a commodity market space with zero marketing budget, sales staff, distributors, resellers, print or TV advertising. Regardless of how well (or otherwise) Dollar Shave Club does in the coming months and years, what would seem clear from a marketing perspective is that the big guys have been caught napping. An unknown upstart has come along and not only disrupted the established business model (i.e. sell the razors cheaply, and charge a fortune for the blades). But they've communicated their business value in a way that cannot be ignored. Dubin used to be a digital marketing director at Sports Illustrated. Clearly his experience has been put to great use. The "safe" option would have been for Dollar Shave Club to market their product along the same lines at how the other guys do it. The problem with doing that is that the audience wouldn't have noticed them. Honestly, if you covered-up the logo and tagline, could you really tell the difference between an ad from Gillette and an ad from Schick/Wilkinson Sword? That's the problem that Dollar Shave Club recognized they'd have, if they went down the road of convention. Daring To Stand Out With Your Marketing Instead, they dared to Stand Out. They realized that playing it safe was tantamount to commercial suicide: a new business model that upsets all that gone before is innovative, but that isn't always enough. By combining a new way of looking at buying razors with a bold and risky marketing campaign, Dollar Shave Club looks poised to single-handedly change marketing thinking for an industry that's been doing the same thing over and over again for more than half a century. The Best A Man Can Get? Yeah, right. You can bet that Gillette and the rest are going to be watching very closely over the next few months. This could be the iPod vs. the Walkman all over again. Update: Seems that the success of Dollar Shave Club over the past few years has been proving to be a real fly in the ointment for the competition. Not only has Gillette introduced their own version of a subscription-based model, but they've filed a lawsuit against Dollar Shave Club for patent infringement. This movie looks set to run and run. Update (July 2016): Wow. European multination Unilever has bought Dollar Shave Club for - wait for it - $1bn. That's about five times the revenue that Dollar Shave Club is expected to realize this year. Did Unilever pay too much? Probably. But the alternative was to let someone like Gillette of (heaven forbid!) P&G acquire Dollar Shave Club instead. Moral of the story? To truly succeed in today's environment, the consumer and retail giants of the past have to accept that innovation is the path forward.

Today it's about standing out, not fitting in. It's the only way that your customers can see you. So, why do so many businesses choose to blend in, rather than stand out? One word: Fear.

You can talk about what your product or service does. Or you can talk about how the product/service makes the buyer feel. Most companies talk objectively. "This is what we're selling. It does X, Y and Z. It costs this much. It comes in these sizes/colors/whatever. How many do you want?" Other companies, in contrast, talk about the feeling of owning said product or service - and they back it up in their communication. They're as much - if not more - focused on the experience the customer may have after buying the product. They spend so much time and effort on customer experience because they know that's how people buy. The Difference Between Marketing & Selling Take a look at the image below (you can click on it to make it open larger in a new window, if you like). It's a screenshot from Apple's website. It's the way that Apple want you to see their MacBook Air laptop computer. If you can't see the image below, you can click here. Now, take a look at the image below - again, you can click on it to enlarge it. As a comparison, this is a screenshot from HP's website. It's how you go about configuring and purchasing an HP laptop computer from their online store. When looking at both images, don't just compare the design of the respective pages. Consider the tone of the text. Again, if you cannot see the image below you can click here. Two totally different ways of selling a laptop computer. Is one way inherently 'better' than the other? Not at all. Specs Don't Tell The Whole Story Sure, Apple just posted their biggest quarter ever (Apple sold more iPads alone than HP sold PCs). HP sells more PCs than Apple sells PCs, but Apple makes more profit on their products than HP does. Or indeed pretty much any other tech manufacturer. Can you get a higher-specified PC for the cost of a Mac? While the so-called "Apple tax" has reduced in recent years, the answer is still a resounding 'yes'. But technical specifications like CPU clock speed, hard disk size, monitor resolution, or video RAM aren't the primary reason that the 'average' computer buyer chooses what PC they should buy. Today, pretty much any PC you buy is as fast and any other for the 95% of tasks most people use PCs. Email? Check. Organizing and editing photos? Check. Even basic video editing is now a given. Some manufacturers, such as Apple, know that. They know that, assuming a (technical) level playing field, they have to appeal to potential buyers in a different way if they're to stand out in the minds of their customers. Their answer is to focus on the customer experience. The way they talk to the customer before, during, and after the transaction. By investing more in industrial design than any competitor. By controlling the interaction with the language they use. By having a network of brick-and-mortar stores for customers to not only see the products, but having Apple staff use the same tone-of-voice and buying language. Finally, by offering a heightened level of after-sales service designed to get customers talking about their experience with their friends, family, and colleagues. Doing all of the above is playing the long game. It's also expensive. But all the evidence shows that, for Apple at least, marketing a product beats selling one hands-down. Are You Marketing, or Just Selling? How is your business promoting its value offering? Are you still talking about bits and bytes? About acronyms, minutiae and and techno-jargon that no-one but you and your staff care about? Or are you selling the experience?

The turkey leftovers been consigned to the cat, or the bin. The Christmas tree has dropped more needles than you'll find at a Kurt Cobain tribute concert. Now it's time to dig your company's marketing out of the dark ages and into the 21st Century. Your customers expect it. Albert Einstein is quoted as once saying the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Yet that's exactly what a gazillion small businesses are doing right now with regards to how they approach branding, marketing, sales, lead generation, and communications. If you didn't make your sales / marketing goals last year, what makes you think that you're going to make them this year if your plans are to do the same things? A 21st century marketing plan isn't a "copy-paste" of what you did last year. Old-School Thinking Brings Old-World Results Dear business leader, please wake up and smell the arabica. You cannot continue to sell your company's products or services in ways that Don Draper would applaud. Today's consumer (and whether you're B2B or B2C, your customer is always a consumer) is smarter, more knowledgeable, more demanding and more attractive than ever before (OK, maybe I made that last one up). The internet has put more competitors in front of customer noses than you can wave a stick at. It also means that they already know as much about your company, products, and your competitors than you do. In fact they probably know more. Buyer behavior has changed beyond recognition in just a few years, yet most companies are basing their sales and marketing tactics on assumptions that are half a century old. Organizations still focus on what they sell rather than what the customer is looking to buy. 21st Century marketing applies tools, technologies, and assumptions that are audience-focussed, rather than introspective. Small business owners need to think about being in front of the prospect at the right place, at the right time - delivering the right message, in the right context. The use of technology doesn't help at this stage. Technology should act as enabler of business strategy. Unfortunately, too often it's used as a solution to a problem that's poorly understood. So shouting about how great your company / product / service is has become about as effective as treating someone with the Ebola virus with a couple of Advil. Traditional display advertising using 1960s thought processes no longer works (if you're not a national or global consumer brand). Exhibiting at tradeshows doesn't work (unless you know what you're doing). Nor does blasting people with direct mail or email campaigns (unless your audience have allowed you to communicate with them). So, is it all doom and gloom? Were the prophets right about the future? Should we all just pack it in and go home and hide under the kitchen table? Not quite. 21st Century Marketing Builds Relevance And Reputation Companies need to accept that, while the reason people buy stuff today is pretty much the same as it's always been, the way they buy things has changed. The reason companies continue to market their products and services in ways that they always have done, is because of…Fear. Fear of the unknown. The fear that changing what they're doing will negatively impact revenue. Well, guess what? Revenue is already suffering with them doing it the old way. "But we're doing OK," I hear them say. "We're keeping our heads above water which, in this commercial climate, is already an achievement." To which I'll contend that unless you're growing, you're going backwards. Unless you're increasing market share, you're owning a smaller piece of a shrinking pie. Many companies, especially B2B organizations, have become increasingly reliant on existing customers to maintain sales figures. The problem arises when the pool of existing customers begins to diminish for whatever reason. Whether they get acquired, go under, or leave to buy from someone else, there's an attrition factor with any business reliant on revenue from existing customers. Sales from new customers are meant to counteract the attrition. But while selling to new customers is hard, it's especially hard if you're trotting-out the same old blah-blah that got existing customers to buy in the first place. Since - by and large - new customer expectations are greater than those of existing ones, adapting marketing and sales processes has to happen sooner or later. Make it a point to re-evaluate every element of your organization's customer-facing value with the goal of developing a solid, sustainable revenue capture model that's crafted for the 21st century customer. 21st Century Marketing doesn't rely on shouting as its marketing premise, but one built on interaction and dialog. (And if you need any help getting there, you know who to call - right?)

There are many who'll say that today's TV advertising is crass, blatant and bereft of creativity. Then an ad such as this comes along (click here if you can't see the ad below): I've only just been made aware of the piece, which was launched back in October 2011. Instead of doing the usual thing of boring the viewer with hyped rhetoric about how great / affordable / whatever their holiday packages are, Thomson Holidays turn the message around to it being about you, the viewer, with a simple voiceover from a young boy: "It's time you stopped, put down your phone, and hold your loved one's hand. Nice, isn't it? Those close to you: share with them a week or two, and they'll cherish it forever." They could have shouted about how great / interesting / value for money / whatever their holidays are, as pretty much every holiday company does in their advertising. They could have packed the spot with bright colors, loud music and flashing images and shoved their message down the viewer's throat. Instead, we have calm, relaxing visuals, with a soundtrack featuring a orchestral reworking of The Pixies' 1988 track "Where Is My Mind?" (the piano solo was apparently recorded by the ad's producer, Guy Farley). Advertising That Thinks Differently By thinking differently, Thomson Holidays succeeded in raising their message above the noise. The result is a poignant, moving piece of advertising that's pretty much guaranteed to tug on the emotions of anyone who's ever felt guilty about how much time they spend at work. The advertising industry is going through a bit of an internal crisis at the moment. On the one hand clients are looking for ads that stand-out from the humdrum, while ad agency bosses are under increased pressure to deliver shareholder value based on safe, tried-and-tested thinking - the absolute opposite of what we'd regard as 'creativity'. But standing-out is increasingly the only way of gaining attention. Today, pretty much the only way to elevate your business value communication above the average is to stop being average.  No-one takes notice of the average any more. If your company isn't making waves in its advertising, its messaging, its customer service, its branding, then no one can see you. In a world dominated by shades of grey, we've taken to only notice of the blacks and the whites as a way of filtering out all of the content that's competing for our attention. Unless you are clearly demonstrating to your target markets how you're different, and (therefore) why they should be buying from you as opposed to someone else, you risk being drowned-out by the sea of mediocrity. In which case, make sure you bring a tube of sunblock with you.

It's easy for small business owners to assume their audience knows more about what's on offer than they actually do. Because you're living and breathing your business every day, it's easy to overlook that fact that everyone else doesn't necessarily see all the nuts and bolts of your value offering in the same way. Let me give you an example. In your industry, would it be common practice for suppliers to provide: A complimentary 30 day trial, without customers needing to give a credit card number? Discounts for nurses / teachers / students? Free delivery and training? A 5% discount on invoices if they’re paid within 30 days? Perhaps you offer something that's part of the deal because "that's the way everyone does it" in your industry. And because it's commonplace, you don't think it's worth mentioning. Just because you know, doesn't mean that your customers know. It's not their job to guess, speculate, or presume. It may be obvious to you that prices don't include sales tax, or that installation and training is free. But perhaps your customers are unaware of such things. Moreover by not explicitly mentioning it, your customers may think that you don't offer it. Communicating the value that your business / product / service brings to your potential customer is at the heart of corporate marketing communications. However, many startups and small businesses seem to think that they just need to focus their messaging on what they do differently from the competition, rather than what they do the same. But are you sure that the things that you take for granted, are the same things what your customers take for granted? Stating The Obvious Whatever the norm is for your business space, did you know that mentioning something that would usually be taken as read can increase the likelihood that your company will be chosen over a competitor? Just because it’s a given as far as you’re concerned, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s something that your customers know to expect. Making such an assumption can be akin to leaving money on the table. As far as your customers are concerned, your business value is usually far more that the product or service you sell. It's also about the 1001 other elements to your proposition that helps create the feeling of "value" in your customers' mind, that contributes to the delivery of a positive and pleasurable buying experience. Without that 'special something', customers see you as just another vendor. The customer experience component is different for every business. It’s your product's packaging. The speed, design, and ease-of-use of your website. The 60-day returns policy, two-year warranty, and free delivery. Since these things are part of the offering, they should also be part of the value proposition you’re marketing to your customers. Sure they may be blindingly obvious to you, but it doesn't necessarily follow that they're obvious to your customers. However seemingly obvious, such items should feature in your company's communications efforts. Just because certain parts of a product/service are deemed to be conventional or standard, it doesn’t mean that they’re not part of the value statement. It may seem like you’re stating the obvious, but oftentimes your market needs such assurances. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s wrong to assume. Marketing Actions Speak Louder Than Words Most companies churn out the same tired old communications rhetoric - “We’re the best”, “Our product or service is better value”, and so on. Not only do your customers not believe such grandiose claims, but such talk works against you when you're trying to build trust. Instead of shouting about how good you are in such blatant terms, it’s far better to communicate it by implication. Demonstrate how good / different you are by what you do, and what you're seen to be doing - rather than by saying it. In business, just as in life, actions really do speak louder than words. Corporate chest-beating is great for user events, shareholder communications and internal staff meetings. But for everyone else the very fact you’re the one doing the crowing raises suspicions and reduces your credibility. If you really were that great you wouldn’t need to shout about it, would you? In contrast, if your actions and communications are presented in a way that implies you’re better, the claims of your company/product/service (even if they’re not more directly expressed) become more valid. More authentic, more believable. More accepted. Image Source

It been an absolute age since I published a guest post here, so I'm going to remedy that straight away. This week's post is from Jon Gordon, speaker and author of a number of books including The No Complaining Rule. Over to you, Jon... Smiling is important. Eye contact matters. Patience is essential. Being warm and friendly is a must. And providing a positive emotional experience for your customers is a priority. But these are not the greatest of customer service strategies. Ironically the greatest of all strategies has nothing to do with customers and everything to do with employees. The Greatest Strategy is this: Great customer service beings with being employee focused first and customer focused second. If you treat your employees well, they will treat their customers well. Too often businesses, hospitals, restaurants and organizations focus all their energy on the customer while ignoring the very employees that serve their customers. This may work in the short run but eventually employees become tired, burned out, negative and resentful. Just the other day I was speaking at a hospital and was told that they were doing patient satisfaction surveys as a way to improve nurse performance. “What about nurse satisfaction surveys,” I asked. “No we’re not doing that,” they said. The problem was clear. Measuring patient satisfaction will not make nurses more energized, positive and attentive. Patient satisfaction will go up when nurse satisfaction goes up. I have found that organizations who deliver the best service also have the best culture where employees are valued, listened to and cared for and in turn these employees value, care for and serve their customers. Best Buy, for example, started to measure the engagement of their employees and in the process saw service and profits improve. T-Mobile dramatically improved and transformed their customer service when they improved the culture in their call centers by listening to their employees. Southwest Airlines has built their success on the foundation of an employee-first culture. Of course we need to train our employees to do all the things that make for a great customer experience. There are great books on the essentials of creating a great customer experience. But most of all remember if you model great service, your people will share it. So, if you want your team to serve, serve them. If you want your people to care, care about them. If you want your team to love their work, love them. If you want your employees to be their best, give them your best. If you take care of your people they will take care of your customers.   About Jon Gordon: This post is a guest post by Jon Gordon. Jon is the Wall Street Journal and international bestselling author of a number of books including The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work and Team with Positive Energy, and his latest, The Seed: Finding Purpose and Happiness in Life and Work. Learn more at www.JonGordon.com. Follow Jon on Twitter @JonGordon11 or Facebook www.facebook.com/jongordonpage.

Back in 1995, I landed a job at a London-based systems integrations company that sold their wares into - amongst others - the printing industry. It was a transitory time, from both a technical as well as a commercial perspective. The publishing industry was coming to terms with - for example - no longer being able to charge £70 (about $110) for printing out a “proof” of a magazine page for an advertising agency or publishing company. It was also to be the beginning of the end for the newspaper advertising “Gate Keepers.” These were a group of perhaps five premedia companies that, together, pretty much had the monopoly on preparing and sending ads to the major UK newspaper publishers. Their rationale was that preparing files for newspaper printing needed specialist knowledge - their knowledge. This was back in the day when preparing a PDF file that was fit for the printing press was a lot more complex than it is today. It was before the time of industry standards such as PDF/X-1a, for example. If your company wanted to run an ad in any of the major UK newspapers, the file could only be sent to the publisher via one of the Gate Keepers. Newspapers wouldn't accept your file submission directly. It was their way, or the highway. For many years this cartel enjoyed this market monopoly. Prices could be held at an artificially-high level. Well, where else was a advertiser going to go? The Demise Of The Middleman Of course, it was just a matter of time before the Gate Keepers lost their exclusive hold on UK newspaper advertising. Technology streamlined the file creation process, ironing-out the bumps in the road that used to befall advertisers unfamiliar with the peculiarities involved in preparing files for print. Making print-ready PDFs became easier and more predictable. The print process itself got better - faster, more accurate, more predictable and more consistent. Suddenly, advertisers realized that they had the same premedia capabilities that the Gate Keepers had. The middlemen got cut out of the equation. Not so long ago, many products or services could only be purchased through intermediaries. Real estate property. Flight tickets. Computers. Books and CDs. Today it’s easy enough for anyone to buy/sell their own home, to book a flight directly with an airline, order a new laptop - or even publish their own content - without having to go through someone else. In many industries the barriers-to-entry have been broken down, though some middlemen continue to maintain their hold on the consumer. An example today is the case of car dealerships, though even here this is being disrupted by companies such as Tesla. Today, many middlemen are having a tough time. Such “Intermediary Companies” are seen as being no more than commercial parasites. They're seen as taking a cut of the sale's proceeds after having done very little - if anything - to have earned it. So, are middlemen becoming extinct? Not at all. Just like with most businesses, the good ones are growing and the bad ones are dying. Value Chain Evolution The difference between success and failure, as with many industries, lies with adding perceived value to the transaction. Yes, I can book a flight, reserve a hotel room or renew my car insurance by directly dealing with the company concerned. Or I can go onto a price-comparison website to ensure that I’m getting the best deal. The range of tariffs, plans, exclusions and penalties for a mobile phone contract is bewildering to me. I’d much rather talk to someone to explain what I’m looking for - and am happy to pay for the privilege. Research shows that having the best price is rarely the sole reason why a consumer chooses to buy from a particular vendor. Sure, price is important - and it’s probably in my top-five list of why I buy from XYZ Company. But it’s not Number One. Not even close. What’s just as important (I’d argue it being more important) is the 360-degree customer experience that the vendor builds for me. How they see every customer touchpoint as an opportunity to instil in me their values of credibility, dependability, assurance, support, human connectivity and so on. How they're more interested in solving a customer problem than simply selling them something. Creating Added-Value If your business is reliant on an 'agency' model - you're taking something that's made by someone else and selling it on - then your customers need to see the added-value that you're bring to the equation. If that's not made obvious to them, they're not going to continue to buy from you. Take a look closer to home, and how your company's brand experience is applied to your own customers. How easy do you make it for them to buy from you?  How do they feel they are treated?  How much do they trust your advice, your brand - your promise? Each and every single time that anyone in your organization has the opportunity of interacting with a customer, they have the chance of getting it right - or wrong.

Do your clients ‘get’ what you do? I don’t mean if they know what you sell. I’m guessing that they know that already. If they didn't they wouldn’t be customers, right? I'm not talking about whatever product or service your business sells. I'm talking about the reasons why they should buy from you, as opposed to the hundreds or thousands of others who, in their eyes, offer something similar to what you do. What I mean is: do your customers know your story? The reason why you’re in business? You're Not Selling What You Think You're Selling Oh, and by the way the reason as to why you're in business is not to make a profit. Making a profit is simply a result of why you're in business (well, hopefully at least). When I say 'why', I mean the passion, cause or belief that caused the creation of your organization in the first place. Let me give you an example. We launched KEXINO because we feel that companies and organizations of all sizes - from “mumpreneurs” to SMEs - should have access to next-generation marketing resources in the same way that the big guns do. Why? Because, increasingly, customers expect a certain experience when they interact with a company, and if you don’t meet that expectation it’s unlikely that the customer relationship will go much farther. The rules of that game are being controlled by behemoths like Apple, Starbucks, Nike, BMW, Coca Cola et al, meaning that “Liz and Saskia's Organic Coffee Shop” needs to play along - while adding their own twist along the way. In a nutshell, that's why we do what we do. We're waving the flag for startups and small businesses. In the same vein we created Qarto because we’ve seen that while (thanks to the internet) any business is now a global business, communicating business value in languages other than your own is often a long, slow, tedious, drawn-out process - when it no longer has to be. why of Qarto is to give companies of all sizes a way to better and more affordably communicate with their audience. See what I mean? I’m not talking about what you sell. I’m talking about why. Customers Buy (Into) What They Believe In The world’s major brands all have that compelling story that’s invisibly woven into everything that they do. Apple is about user experience, design, and not letting the hardware/software get in the way of whatever you need to do. Starbucks wants to raise the quality of the ‘average’ cup of hot brown water that’s billed as being coffee to something special and consistent. Nike’s passion is to create products that help athletes (or would-be athletes) to achieve their potential. Customers today have a wider choice of where to buy products and services than ever before - that’s a given. The luxury of all of this choice has resulted in an environment of commerce where it's no longer enough for customers to simply buy whatever it is that you have. What you choose to believe - about your brand, product, service, and even the world in general - can have an effect on whether a customer chooses you against your competitor. It's as much to do with what you stand for, as what you actually sell. Maybe more.

A great post by John Einar Sandvand ( find him on Twitter as @JohnEi ) about a word that should be banned from the vocabulary of all media companies. What's the word? "Cannibalization." Many media companies today are happy to develop the digital side to their business, but only as long as it doesn't negatively impact the revenues they generate from their traditional sales. As John points out, "What Can Become Digital, Will Become Digital."  As consumers, the immediacy and convenience that digital content delivery provides - whether that content is music, movies, newspapers, books, or whatever - is a compelling and attractive proposition to us. More importantly, even if the analog equivalent is 'better', it doesn't mean that it has a given right to co-exist. The market will decide - whether or not we like the results. Take the music industry as an example. Why did the CD all but kill off vinyl? Because with a CD you don't have the hassle of a turntable and stylus, and you don't have to get-up to flip the record over when you want to hear "side two." Similarly, MP3 files replaced CDs for many people because their reduced sound quality from an MP3 files is mitigated by convenience and immediacy of purchase: you don't have to go to the record store to buy your music. Today, streaming services such as Spotify, Google Play Music, and Apple Music are taking over the mantle once held by MP3 files. Streaming services give you the ability to listen to nearly any song or album ever produced, on any of your digital devices, in return for a small monthly fee. It's About The Media - Not The Channel It's the same with publishing. It's true that you doesn't have to be a bibliophile to be able to relate and appreciate the pleasure of touching, opening, reading (and even smelling) a freshly-printed book - or even an old tome. There's an emotional connection that bears little relation to the content contained therein. However most of us don't buy books purely to admire the bindery work, or the quality of the printing. It's about the content. Tablet devices and eBook readers allow us to access that content faster and more conveniently. Personally, if I bought a Kindle or iPad I'd buy many more books than I would otherwise. But I'll also be buying far less hard-copy books. Case in point: I currently have around 500 books in my Google Books account. I can read any of those books on my laptop, desktop computer, phone, or tablet pretty much whenever I want. In addition to those 500 books taking up zero physical space, I have the convenience of being able to read them whenever I may be in the world. It's the same with magazines: I recently changed my subscription to The Economist to the digital-only version. Not only is it more convenient for me to read the magazine on my tablet or computer, but the content is searchable - impossible to do with print-based media. In the same way as vinyl records vs CDs today, books and newspapers may well continue to co-exist with their digital brethren for the foreseeable future. However -  also as with vinyl LPs - publishers will have to console themselves with smaller sales figures than they've enjoyed in the past, as well as selling into more niche market areas. Circulation continues to grow, for example, for those free newspapers you often find given away at train and metro stations. However, such newspapers adopt a very different business model to their paid-for competition (i.e. advertising sales alone need to cover the cost of content creation, printing, distribution - as well as profit). Any content publisher today that believes digital-based offerings can be sold without negatively impacting sales of print-based content is living in a dreamworld: Their business models need to evolve in one of two ways: The building of digital-based revenues, with all that implies in terms of investments in technology, resources, process, etc. Developing the existing print-based model in new, compelling ways - which may imply a smaller, leaner organization to the one that exists today. The Evolution Of Publishing Both models are as valid as each other. But make no mistake: the publishing industry has changed and is never going to be the same again. Companies involved in its ecosystem need to find a new sustainable business value offering model in order to maintain their relevance.

In the same way as publishers, newspapers & music companies before them, film studios must change to a customer-centric model in order to survive.

Are you an 'expert'? I sure hope not. As consumers, none of us want to make the wrong decision when we're looking to buy something. None of us want to be the one that bought a Zune. We like the assurance that third-party confirmation gives as part of the buying process. Maybe we seek out reviews from trusted sources such as specialist magazines, blogs, or websites. Or perhaps we'd let untrusted opinion guide us. What do I mean by "Untrusted opinion"? In recent years buyers have grown to trust the phenomenon of the Customer Review, essentially a word-of-mouth recommendation from someone that we don't know. We often can't confirm that the submitted information is accurate, or unbiased, yet we allow it to influence our purchasing decision. Word Of Mouth has been supplemented by Word Of Mouse. What's amazing to me is that we often value the opinion of these people over and above the information from more historically-trusted sources. We'd rather believe a total stranger who may not even be real, over a brand's own content. Business Expert? There's No Such Animal In the world of business - in sales, marketing, finance, HR, and so on - what we're looking for, consciously or otherwise, is an 'expert'. Someone who can give us advice based upon what the Merriam-Webster dictionary describes as their "…having, involving, or displaying special skill or knowledge derived from training or experience." But in today's constantly-evolving commercial landscape, how can anyone truly be an "expert"? Spot The Expert How can anyone know a subject so intimately, when the subject itself and its place within our decision-making process ebbs and flows with the vagaries of taste and opinion? Early in my career I was attending a sales training class, where the person giving the training had zero time for anyone who dared to think of themselves as an expert. He described anyone who considered themselves as an 'expert', were actually more likely to be an 'ex-spurt' ex: as in 'past'. Otherwise known as a has-been. spurt: A drip under pressure. If Everyone's An "Expert", Then No-One Is The way that businesses interact with customers thanks to technology-enabled channels such as social media (and whatever else is around the corner) can often mean that what we thought was right today can turn out to be wrong tomorrow. When I think of someone who calls themselves an 'expert', I'm thinking of someone who's' "been there and done that", and can give me advice as a result. But today, "there" and "that" are in a constant state of flux. What's right today can be wrong tomorrow. How can you call yourself a master of the game if the rules of the game are constantly changing? As kids we were told "Don't meet strangers over the internet" and "Don't get into a stranger's car." Today - thanks to Uber, Lyft, etc - we literally summon strangers via the internet and get into their cars. The point is that what may have been true yesterday, may not be true today. To me, today's expert is the one who knows - and readily admits - that they don't have all the answers. They're on a journey, observing and learning as technology-enabled commerce continues to wax and wane. But they're humble and pragmatic enough to acknowledge that they're taking that journey along with the rest of us. Being Afraid To Admit Ignorance Does that inherently make their advice and opinion less relevant? Not necessarily. In fact, quite the opposite. By admitting that they don't have all the answers, and being open to adapting their existing knowledge and experience with whatever the internet has in store for all of us, does more than maintain their credibility. To me, their humility makes them more of trusted source of information than ever before. I've been involving in marketing for the past 25 years. In that time I've learned a huge amount. But I've also re-learned a ton of stuff too. I've had my fingers burned enough times to know that I don't know it all - and nor does anyone else. So, do I consider myself a marketing expert? No, not at all. But I'm still working on it.

How far does your business go in building relationships with your customers? Today, many companies have realized that they need to do more than hang a "We're Open" sign on the door to get customers to buy from them. They may even have heard that "People don't buy from companies, people buy from people." As a result, they schmooze, they cajole, they inform, they educate, they interact. To use the current parlance: They engage. If it all goes according to plan, then perhaps the customer makes the purchase. At which time, more often than not, they're shown the door and we're off playing the game all over again with someone else. But couldn't - or shouldn't - the customer relationship be more than just a way to get the sale? In some cases there is a relationship after the sale: Perhaps the customer has to pay for some kind of assistance or service following the purchase.  Or maybe there's some ongoing training/induction type sessions that last an amount of time, that maintains the client/supplier relationship. But if a business - any business - sincerely exists to offer some kind of help or solution to their customers, then shouldn't they view every single purchase as the beginning of a long-term relationship? A relationship where they are committed to offering the best customer service that they can - just because they want to? Supposing that you knew, with absolute 100% certainty, that the customer that just bought something from you today was never ever going to buy anything from you ever again. Now suppose that the very same customer came back to you to ask you for help with something or another - something that you knew would never result in a sale. Be honest for a second: How much help would you give them? Some companies get it. Unfortunately it's often the same names that we hear about again and again - such as Apple with their "Genius Bar." The Genius Bar is an area within every Apple Store staffed by trained employees to answer questions, to give advice, to offer technical and application assistance, to perform on-the-spot repairs, and so on. The Genius Bar is an opportunity for Apple to say that they want are happy customers, even if those customers never buy anything from Apple ever again. Your relationship with your customer should not end at the point of you securing the sale. In fact, perhaps the relationship you have with your customer should never end at all. Image Credit

A successful and effective social media presence isn't voodoo, or another one of the black arts. It's simply tried-and-tested marketing process applied to other channels. Perhaps, like many business owners, you're looking at this year as being an opportune time to pin your business on the social media map. A social media presence is no longer the bleeding-edge of a company's communication, awareness-building, and engagement strategy. If you are about to venture into building a social media presence for your business, may I give you a few words of warning. Many businesses spread themselves too thinly when it comes to social media. There are so many sites to choose from. Where should one start? • Traditional sites such as Facebook or Twitter? • Business-related sites such as LinkedIn, XING, or Viadeo? • Location-aware sites such as FourSquare? Which Social Media Channel? It's tempting to think that you need to be on all of them. After all, you may be missing out on attracting possible customers, right? Technically you're correct. But surely your business should already know where your customers are, when they are there, and what your organization should be communicating when they are listening? Social media doesn't abdicate your responsibility in finding and directing relevant messaging to new and existing customers. If anything, the potential it gives you allows better, more timely, and more effective communication across the channels your customers expect to see you. Channels such as Snapchat, Instagram, or Pinterest aren't going to magically make your business more attractive. Social media isn't voodoo, it's simply marketing - albeit via channels you're not as familiar with. Social media vehicles are simply other ways of getting in front of potential - and existing - customers. The process of finding, attracting, engaging, selling to and following-up with them is the same: you're just using different tools. Being (Only) Where Your Customers Expect You To Be Thinking you need to be on every social media channel is the same as thinking that you need to put an ad on every TV channel, radio station, billboard, or newspaper. After all, there may be a customer out there who'll see it, right? The problem with such thinking is that customers don't expect to see you everywhere. If you sell million-dollar database software to Fortune 500 companies, there's not a lot of point advertising your product at your local cinema. In the same way you don't tend to see many single malt scotch distilleries taking out full page ads in "Mother and Baby" magazine, do you? The second point: Don't fall into the trap of thinking that because being on a channel is free, social media marketing is somehow cheap.  If you're serious about using a particular social channel for your business, you need to create and distribute content on a regular basis. You need a content strategy so you have a plan on what you say, where you say, how often, and at what time. You should be optimizing content and messaging for each social media channel on an individual basis. You need to monitor reach, and engage accordingly. You should be participating in your audience's online conversations by contributing relevant and useful information along the way. All of that takes planning, forethought, and effort. Which costs you time and money. As social media strategy consultant Jay Baer is fond of saying: "Social media isn’t inexpensive, it’s different expensive."

Whether consciously developed or not, every company has a business model.  It’s the fabric of how the organization has been set up to generate sales, revenue and - hopefully - profit. Wikipedia defines a “business model” as being a description of “...the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value.” But business models change. And they change for a variety of reasons. Competition - No-one is doing what you’re doing. Or, perhaps, everyone else is doing what you’re doing.  Whichever way around, it results in a change in your business model. Or should do. Commoditization - The product or service that you’re selling can no longer be differentiated in the minds of your customers from similar value offerings from others.  As a result, you compete purely on price.  Time to change that business model, since there’s always - ALWAYS - someone who’ll sell it cheaper that you will. Technology - No matter how entrenched your company is within your markets, there’s the danger that a disruptive technology may enter your industry and displace the existing, established status quo.  Look at how a combination of the internet and mobile devices are killing-off printed newspapers.  Or how internet downloads and streaming media services are displacing video rental stores such as BlockBuster. The Importance Of Adapting Your Business Model Today, companies may need to change their business model many times. For example, Apple used to sell computers, software, and the odd peripheral or two. Today, while computers are still the mainstay of the company, Apple have diversified into music players, mobile devices, and content downloads. Apple make more revenue from the sum total of iPods, iPhones, iPads and iTunes than they do from Macintosh sales. If your business doesn’t create the marketspace or technology, and doesn’t have bottomless resources and expenditure, then your business is influenced by the three factors I’ve outlined. You need to continually re-evaluate your model to review its relevance.

We don't have customers - at least, we don't see them as such. Instead, we have friends that we do business with.

Everyone hates advertising. If you’re like me, the instant the TV show you’re watching goes to a commercial break you almost unconsciously reach for the remote control to change the channel. We buy set-top boxes that allow us to record the TV that we want, while at the same type removing the advertising that we don’t want. We cut the cord and bypass cable / satellite TV altogether, opting instead for (usually) subscription-based streaming services. We are even willing to pay certain websites for the sole purpose of removing the advertising from our viewing experience. Our hatred of advertising seemingly has no bounds. Advertising's Response? More Advertising The advertising industry’s response to get their product in front of our faces? They try to remove the choice - and add more advertising. They force us to watch ads at the beginning of web videos and DVD films that we can’t skip past. When we enabled pop-up window blockers in our browsers, they put the ads INSIDE the web pages themselves. But it wasn’t always like this. I remember when ad campaigns - both print and TV - were more creative, interesting and entertaining than many of the articles or shows that they served to punctuate. I remember the care and courtesy advertisers gave consumers via the quality of the advertising. When agencies would care about the message and the product as much as the entertainment value. When agencies would book Oscar-nominated directors such as David Fincher, Ridley Scott, or even Martin Scorsese. When ads were as revered as the shows they punctuated. I'll admit that there are still some great - though too rare - ads being made today (such as those from Guinness, Old Spice and of course this one). But how did we get here? How did we get to the stage where we hate most advertising? Permission-Based Marketing: The Consumer Is In Control It’s because today, as consumers, we’ve realized that it’s us who are now in control. As a result, we expect more that just being talked at by advertisers. Today, we prefer to be asked for our permission before being sold to. Coined by marketing guru Seth Godin, the term "Permission Marketing" argues that most advertising fails today because it is “interruptive.” Your audience were happy enough doing whatever they were doing before - BAM! - you've got in their way. The very act of interrupting your audience from whatever they were - watching a TV show, reading a website, etc. - has automatically put them into a defensive position. You're really going to have to struggle to win them over. In contrast to such interruptive marketing, Permission Marketing argues that to get someone’s attention you need to first get their permission. Their permission to speak to them, contact them, interrupt them. How? Maybe by giving them a free sample/trial of your product or service. Allowing them to download an eBook on a topic they're interested in. Having them subscribe to your eNewsletter, podcast, or blog that regularly dispenses pertinent, educative, and valuable content (i.e. not the same old tired sales spiel). Marketing With Their Permission Shows Respect Once you have their permission - and therefore their attention - you are on the way to establishing a relationship with your customer, and making the sale. By asking for permission, you're demonstrating to the customer that you give a stuff about them. You're showing respect. Advertising needs to evolve - in the same way as its target audience has evolved - if it is to remain relevant.

Whether it’s tradeshows, PR, social media or whatever else: today you need to be in the minds of your target market before the show starts.

You're NOT the best at what you do. If you were, you wouldn't have to say it.

Why do companies still try to con us when they cold-call? Perhaps we'd be more receptive (and polite) when receiving sales calls if the person on the other end of the phone wasn't trying to hoodwink us to listen to what they have to say. We've all been on the receiving end. The telephone rings: "Hello, my name's John and I'm calling from the International Research Institute. We're putting together a survey on (insert subject name here) and I was wondering whether you had a few minutes to answer some questions?" Being Taken For A Ride It's tempting, isn't it? John hasn't given you the impression that he's trying to get you to part with any money. John's is only preparing a survey. He's asking you, ever so politely, if you wouldn't mind taking some time out of your busy day to help him. You're a good person, so when someone asks you for help you want to oblige. Right? Which is exactly what John's betting on. Of course, in reality there is no survey. It's an elaborate lie. John isn't calling about you answering questions to help him prepare some survey - he's trying to sell you something. He's using the 'survey' ruse in the hope that you won't hang up. He doesn't care about your answers to his questions. In fact, his name probably isn't even John. After a while helping out John with his survey questions, you suddenly realize what the call is really about. You feel tricked - which is understandable, since that's exactly what's happened. Your defenses go up. Perhaps you would have been interested in the product or service John was selling if he had been honest with you at the beginning. But now that you've seen through John's façade, you're angry. Whatever the deal, whatever the offer, you don't want to know. You just want to get John off the telephone as fast as possible. So what are we left with? Clearly John's lost any chance of a sale - that's a given. You're angry that John had the audacity to think that he could fool you into parting with your money, and that he had you for a while. Not only that, you're so furious about the whole episode that it's more likely for your grandmother to win a triathlon on her first attempt than you ever buying anything from the company that John represents. From 'Suspect' To 'Prospect' Whenever a prospective customer is on the receiving end of a sales pitch, they are testing you. They are looking for an opportunity to say 'no'. They are looking for reasons not to buy - whether those reasons are based upon quality, features, price, looks, size, color or 101 other criteria. Your job, in the time they're on the phone, is to build enough credibility and trust to move them to a position where they're receptive to the idea of buying from you. In sales parlance, you're moving them from a "suspect" to a "prospect". I totally understand that telephone sales is a hard job. I've been there. I remember the days of sitting down at my desk with a strong cup of coffee in one hand, and a copy of The Yellow Pages in the other. Moreover cold-calling is getting harder. Today, we have less of an issue telling telesales reps where to go when we're the recipient of a cold call. The success rates of the average telesales campaign must be along the lines of getting struck by lightning every day for a month. As a result, call centers have to come up with ever more 'creative' ways to keep punters on the line. I empathize with all of this: cold-calling is a tough gig. But regardless of how great your product or service is, I would say that blatant dishonesty scores highly as a reason not to buy. Wouldn't you?

You've been reading all the latest business books and website articles, and you notice that your competitors and peers are embracing various social media applications as a way to get closer to their customers. The natural knee-jerk reaction? Get on the bandwagon and have your company start its own blog. Or Facebook page. Or Twitter stream. Or whatever. After a certain time, you step back and analyze how effective your 'social media strategy' has been. Guess what? It's been a flop. Why? Because your customers don't care. The reason why your campaign's a failure is because you're not saying anything that your customers haven't already heard before, from 101 other sources, who've been in the social mediasphere a lot longer than you have. So why should your customers bother? Many companies are frightened of humanizing their organization, yet that's exactly what successful blogs and social media are about: removing the anonymity. People like to interact with people, not entities. Social media allows them to do that. However, if all you do is tell your audience what you want them to hear, rather than what they want to know, you've lost the game. Social media is about your customers driving the conversation, not you. While you can control your corporate persona by double-checking every press release or direct mail communication that leaves the building; your company shouldn't (and can't) control its social media output. Today, the companies that are generally acknowledged as winning the social media game are the ones that let their staff get on with it. You need to be comfortable with letting as wide a group of people as possible from within your organization be seen as a face or voice for it. Without your control, or your approval. Just with your trust. And if you're not happy with that, then you've got a problem with your staff. Or your management. Or both. In which case, social media should be the last of your worries.

"Customer Experience" is a marketing buzzword to describe how well a business satisfies the needs of its customers before, during, and after the buying process. Clearly, to do better at Customer Experience (or "CX" if you're a skinny-jeans wearing hipster who thinks working on your MacBook at Starbucks every day makes you cool) you need to understand your customers. Like any business owner, you think you understand what makes your customers tick. You believe you understand why they buy your product or service. But have you ever, personally, gone through the buying process that your customers go through? Owning The Customer Experience Depending on your business, there may be a number of external influences that are not directly under your control. That may have a fundamental effect on how your business value is perceived by your customers. A series of hoops that your prospective customers have to jump through to get to your value offering. Perhaps your software is sold via third-parties like retailers, distributors, integrators or VARs. Perhaps your food is 'sold' by your serving staff. Perhaps your conference is promoted by direct sales personnel. Customers are a funny bunch. They make up their minds about a company based on their experience in dealing with that business in ways that most organizations may not consider. Did it take too long for someone to answer the phone, or reply to my email? Can I pay by PayPal instead of using a credit card? Did the salesperson who visited me have bad breath? Was the demo simply a canned walkthrough of the product features, rather than a tailored demonstration addressing my particular concerns? Standing In Your Own Queue Often the only sure way of knowing if your customer experience is sufficiently optimized is to pretend to be a customer yourself - standing in your own queue. What do I mean? I mean going through same set of motions a potential customer would do - also sometimes known as the buyers' journey. Calling-up the office as though you're a potential customer. Going through the steps to purchase a product from your eCommerce website (maybe changing your mind a few times along the way). Checking to see how clean the washrooms are an hour before closing time. Last year the Marketing Leadership Council conducted a study and found that 53% of customer loyalty was attributable to experiences related to the purchasing experience - i.e. not the product or service itself. We're not talking about how a particular product/service may have met their expectations. We're not even referring to pricing or company branding/positioning. Simply how the process of buying whatever it was made them feel. Here's a worthwhile exercise for every business owner, marketers, or product manager. Stand in your own queue. Take your own medicine. Have you ever actually bought your product? Have you ever bought the product of your competitor? How do the experiences compare?

Are you re-using the same old sales proposal that you’ve used for the past three years? Copying and pasting the content and simply changing some details to fit? It's important to break your business out of its routine now and again.

There are hundreds of ways of changing the game. Most established companies can’t – or won’t – do it, because they see it as upsetting the status quo and destabilizing their own business model.

Ignoring the facts that are staring you in the face is tantamount to a wilful dereliction of duty.

Research company Nielsen has recently published their Three Screen Report (you can download a PDF of it here). Even though the report just focuses on US viewer habits, it paints a very interesting picture on how we're changing the way that we view video content. According to the report, the average American watches 153 hours of television per month, compared to 3 hours watching online video. Now, ignoring the fact that an average of 4.7 hours of a day is a huge amount of TV in anyone's book, the interesting finding is that the 'online' figure has increased by a massive 53.2% over just a twelve month period. Moreover, that figure is continuing to grow. Just over 131 million Americans watch video on the internet every month - 15 million more than last year. In addition, the growth in watching online video on internet-enabled devices (such as smartphones) is up by over 52% to over 13 million, with each viewer watching on average 3.5 hours of video each month. I have written about the imminent explosion in online video before, and these figures certainly seem to support the industry's predictions. Admittedly, much of the growth in online video can be attributed to viewers watching content that was previously broadcast on TV - using services such as Hulu in the US. Much of the growth in US online viewing in the first quarter of this year was driven by large events such as President Obama's inauguration, and the SuperBowl. However, user-generated content on sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, Viddler and the like are still drawing in more than 130 million unique viewers worldwide, every month. Whatever business you're in, a percentage of that number represent prospective customers. If your business is not visible in the market spaces that your customers frequent, you're missing out on huge potential commercial opportunities.

Unless you have a truly unique product, it's difficult to compete with 'free.' Internet consumers today have grown up with the ability to access content without cost - be it news, music, films, TV or whatever. As a consequence, content providers such as film studios, record companies and newspaper and magazine publishers have suddenly found that their business model needs some serious work if they're to make money in the internet economy. It's as though the web has forced through a 'no cost' expectation before anyone has had the chance to develop a way to sustain a business from it. The publishing industry is hurting more than most. Since you can read most magazines and newspapers online for free, why should you purchase one from a newstand? Publishers have been trying for years to find a way of making money from the internet. First they tried using it as a loss-leader for their printed editions. Then they tried making certain content available to subscribers only. However, today most of them have made all their content freely available for all, and hoping that they can still make the advertising numbers that they need to survive. The problem is that they're not. Last week, News Corporation took the bit between the teeth. The head of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch, announced that his publishing titles would soon be charging for their material to address what he called a "malfunctioning" business model. The question is, are enough consumers ready to pay for something that they've enjoyed all this time for free? It's very difficult start charging for something that you have been giving away up until now. Are you a loyal-enough online reader of, say, The Times, or The Wall Street Journal to stump-up the cash? Or are you more likely to get your information elsewhere, from a source that pushes out content without any cost to you? And if you choose the 'free' route, how assured are you of the impartiality or validity of the content? Newspapers, and to a lesser extent magazines, are currently in a dead-end business model - and they all know it.Free access to content on the web will always be around - consumers have grown to expect it. The challenge for companies such as News Corp is to communicate and promote their business value in a way that their market can acknowledge in monetary terms. And their business value lies in the quality of their content, not its delivery method. After all, it's not the newspaper that contains the value. It's the journalism.

Delivering business presentations - perhaps to prospects, colleagues, partners, or investors - has become a critical aspect of business value communication. You can be a start-up or small business, or a billion-dollar multinational. Business presentations can be used as a sales tool, for training/education, or to motivate, inspire, or take action. So why are the majority of corporate presentations boring, too long and badly presented? It doesn't matter if your company/product/service/message is fantastic. If you cannot fire-up your audience through great content and delivery, then you're probably better off not using presentation software at all. While there are certainly individuals who shouldn't be getting up and speaking in public under any circumstances, I'm still firmly of the belief that the vast majority of people can carry off a stunning business presentation. It may not end up being TED Talk quality, but it'll be good enough to maintain audience interest and effectively convey the particular message. I'm going to reveal to you the single biggest improvement that you can make when planning your next business presentation: Don't use your computer. At least, not yet. Start Your Business Presentation On Paper When you need to create a presentation, the first thing that most people do is fire up their slide presentation software of choice - PowerPoint, Keynote, Prezi, whatever. This is probably the very worst thing you can do, since it imposes a format and layout for an idea that's usually still being formed and refined in your head. What's far more important at the very beginning is creating the structure of what the presentation will become. Define the goal of the presentation: what's the take-away that you want your audience to remember once you've finished? Where are they currently in terms of their knowledge of the subject? The best presentations are stories - they have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Write your story out, as an essay or even just as outline notes. Define the introduction, the main content, the summary. The Secret Of Success: Post-It™ Notes The next time that you need to put a presentation together, don't start by going to your computer and opening-up a blank slide template. Instead, take out a couple of pens, some paper - and some Post-It notes. Storyboard your presentation as if you were writing a play, or a movie. Try to craft the presentation to have a natural flow, leading the presenter and the audience to the conclusion and summary. Write or draw on the Post-Its as to how you want the message to come across. Not literally - don't write down slide titles, or bullet-points. Just the information that you want your audience to remember once the presentation is over. Taking The Presentation To Your Computer Refine and edit the Post-Its. Stick them to the wall, edit them, change their order. Refine, iterate and tweak until you have a basic skeleton of how the story needs to be told. Once you've got the basic outline to your story, only then is it time to sit in front of your computer. PowerPoint, Keynote or whatever isn't the presentation. The content is the presentation. Refining your message using analog tools keeps you focused on designing the optimal delivery of the content, rather than if the next slide should have a fade-out transition rather than a wipe right-to-left. The next time you have to deliver a message using business presentation software, try reaching for the Sharpie and Post-Its before powering-up the laptop.Ten will get you five that your presentations will be all the better for it.

(last updated: May 2018) One of the benefits of the new, tech-driven business environment is that today's startup or small business doesn't have to have all the traditional infrastructure in-house. You can outsource pretty much every part of your business - accounting, HR, project management, sales - and of course marketing. Outsourcing isn't a new idea at all. The difference today is that it works for any sized business. Many people assume that outsourcing business processes such as marketing are only for medium to large-scale organizations: Not so. The same reasons that big companies outsource apply just as well to small businesses. Even a one-person business. But outsourcing your business marketing isn't just something you should, kinda, maybe, vaguely consider. I think it's a lot more important than that. How much more important? Well, how about if I lay it out like this: Unless you're a marketing professional, marketing your startup or small business on your own is going to end in failure. There, I said it. If You Don't Outsource Your Marketing Your Business WILL fail Unless you're a marketing professional, the chances that your startup or small business will succeed without professional marketing help is small at best. Sorry, but it's true. Over the past decade we've helped more than 200 small businesses with their marketing. I'd say at least 90% of the business owners we've worked with would agree that, after working with us, they realize they actually didn't have a clue about what they needed to do. Too many business owners think they know what's required. But they can't see things clearly because they're too engrossed in the mechanics of the business. Working on the business, instead of in the business When your attention is pulled 500 different ways with all that's involved with running a business - suppliers, contracts, personnel, insurance, tax, cashflow, and the rest - you underestimate the marketing challenge. You naïvely believe if we build it, they will come. You assume that customers know why they should buy from your rather than the competition. The fact is they don't (nor, most times, do they even care). You'd be surprised how many small business owners have come to us with the base assumption that simply having customers knowing of your existence will mean they'll buy from you. Now, while that may have worked a few generations ago, that sort of thinking certainly isn't going to get you very far today. You will fail. As a small business owner, your job isn't marketing. Your role is to run the business. Your job is to close sales, to ensure delivery of the best product or service possible, to motivate staff. It's to get the best from the resources you have available, and outsource expertise and competencies that you don't have. Unless you're running a marketing agency, your job shouldn't be marketing. "But I Can't Afford To Outsource My Marketing!" The number one reason why startups and small businesses don't outsource their marketing is because they think they can't afford it. Sure, starting a small business is risky enough as it is. 50% of small businesses fail within their first five years. Anything that can be done to reduce expenses at the start has to be a good thing, right? Try using that excuse at bankruptcy court. See how far that gets you. The single biggest reason why you need to outsource your marketing: Because that's what your competition is doing. Do you think customers are going to excuse the amateurish branding, messaging, communications, and lead generation efforts? Why should they? No matter what you sell, you're not unique (no you're not!) so park your ego at the door and look at things from their side. Customer expectations are higher than they have ever been. Your entire business value position - brand, collateral, product, service, customer services - are not only being compared to your competition. The customer experience is being compared to the biggest brands in the world - because that's what customers have come to expect. It's not a question of whether you can afford to outsource your marketing. It's a question of whether you can afford not to. If your business plan can't sustain the marketing expenditure necessary to generate sufficient cashflow and revenue for the business, then you don't have a viable business. Sure, you may make enough to pay for rent, car payments and the occasional night out with your significant other. But from where I'm sitting that's not a business. That's a hobby. Outsourcing business marketing is the most cost-effective way of marketing your business You know what's more expensive than outsourcing your marketing? Trying to do it yourself. You know what's ever-so-slightly less expensive than doing it yourself? Hiring a fulltime marketing person on your payroll. Don't get me wrong: having a fulltime resource to handle your marketing can be great. But for a small business, there are two issues you should consider: No matter how great they may be or how enthusiastic they are, a fulltime marketing person is just one person. They won't know everything, and can't do as much as (even) a small agency. No matter how cheaply they'll work for you, they'll be more expensive than engaging with an outsourced marketing services provider. Don't believe me? Don't just think about their about salary. Think about how much it costs to find the right person. What about employment taxes? Social security? Unemployment? Medical insurance? 401K? Life assurance? Pension contributions? What about buying them a computer, all the software they'll need, maybe a phone? What about what happens when they're not in the office - on vacation, or off sick? Still think it's cheaper? Working with professionals who do this for a living gives you access to experience, resources, and expertise that you would never otherwise have. Marketing isn't a 'nice-to-have' any more. You will go down without it. There's a section on this site about why we think organizations should consider outsourcing, but basically what we're talking about is the ability for your company to have access to additional competence resources on a as-needed basis. Open the tap when you need help, close it when you don't. The best of both worlds. Outsourcing your marketing gives you access to top-drawer experience, experience, and advice. But you're the boss - you're in control. You're still driving the initiatives, it's just that someone else is behind the wheel.

Over at the Telco 2.0 blog there's a fascinating interview with Simon Aspinall, MD of Cisco's Internet Business Solutions Group. The essence of the interview, and the excerpt from a white paper by Cisco about their "medianet" strategy, is that the web is moving to video. Not just consumers uploading clips to sites like YouTube or Vimeo, but actually watching TV over the internet. According to Cisco, by 2012 nearly 90% of all consumer IP traffic will be video. Think about that for a second. They also say that, globally, they anticipate that the amount of data exchanged over the internet in 2012 will reach 44 Exabytes (that's 44 billion Gigabytes) - per month! That's six times greater than in 2007, and the main reason for this huge increase lies with the expected growth in video. High-speed internet connections continue to get ever more affordable. As a result of all this available bandwidth, web visitors are increasingly demanding a richer, higher-quality internet experience. Today, that means video. Not just the YouTube phenomenon, but what companies like Cisco like to call "TV over Telecom". Have you noticed how more and more TV companies now have websites where you can watch TV shows that you may have missed the first time around? That's an example of TV over Telecom. However, the future of internet TV is a lot more than catching up on last night's episode of CSI. Cisco is talking about a future of video interactivity allowing users to choose any type of content, from anywhere, and view it pre-optimized for whatever device that they happen to be in front of at the time - TV, computer, mobile phone, whatever. Depending on your business, leveraging the additional power of video messaging can help increase your market reach, differentiate your value offering, educate your target market, train your channel partners, grow your website visitor rate, and generate more leads. Video is no longer the reserve of large organizations with vast marketing departments and bottomless budgets.

Video sites such as YouTube don't just give your business a platform to market. They can pay you too.

Business process alignment means everyone working with a common business goal in mind for the benefit of customers AND employees.

Social networks offer content-driven marketers an opportunity to best position their businesses as thought-leaders.