My last post about businessmums prompted a comment which went along the lines of “If you’re haring around all day long, don’t you run the risk of your clients thinking you’re too busy to ensure they’re receiving the best standard of work from you?”

And of course that is a real risk to which I can only reply – through consistent professionalism, flexibility and most importantly – results, my clients come to know and trust me with the marketing of their organisation, regardless of whatever else is going on in my little world. I give them a face, a personality and a voice on which to pin that trust. Along with strong references and tangible results, these provide a strong basis for an ongoing, constructive relationship.

The point I want to try and reinforce today is that increasingly, many clients look for suppliers based on their relationship with them, not how many offices they have, how long they’ve been in business and so on. This means that marketers and business owners need to focus heavily not just on writing standard “All about us” text for websites (and I could argue against that too), but getting out into the social media world and forging beneficial relationships with potential and actual customers.

A good example of this is given by Christine Peel at Ovenu valeting service. Christine lives at the other end of our vast county of Northumberland but I hadn’t heard of her until we started communicating on Twitter. Over the course of several months we, along with our fellow Twitterers, discussed business, economics, cats and the health benefits of chocolate on a daily basis. Such was the relationship we built up that when I decided my shambles of an oven needed cleaning, I went straight to Christine, without passing Go….ogle.

When she arrived, she was no stranger despite the fact we’d never actually met. She knew I trusted her to do a great job – and she didn’t let me down. After my oven was sparkling, we chatted over coffee & biscuits and she informed me that Twitter had been a vital source of customers for her organisation. Located in a rural area of Northumberland, it would otherwise have been difficult for her to physically network, difficult for her to target and definitely much more expensive to execute marketing activity.

Christine has understood, embraced and utilised the power of social media to build up what is now a thriving business. I’m fully aware that she has a hectic life but through our online relationship, I also knew that she’d do a damned good job.

For more information about Christine and Ovenu, visit her website at http://www.ovenunorthumberlandcentral.net/ or follow her on Twitter @OvenuOvenValet

"On her way back to the car after a successful client meeting, Tabitha wracked her brains to remember where she'd left the baby"

You know it’s funny – when I first started up in business a few years ago, I had just had my daughter, now 7.  Great idea, eh?

I initially thought I’d had an epiphany.  I couldn’t leave her to attend breakfast meetings and I was fairly convinced her nursery wouldn’t be too chuffed with the comment “I’ll pick her up sometime when I’ve finished work.  Not sure when that’ll be, but if I’m not back by 7pm, if you can just pop her sleepsuit on”.  So, it seemed obvious – work from home (sadly we weren’t able to survive on one wage for the duration), spend time with the babe and bring in money at the same time.

Cut to two months later.  Said babe resolutely refuses to sit in her playpen quietly and let mummy make an important client phone call (good for her).  Aforementioned mummy is constantly stressed, knackered and frankly, isn’t being a good mummy.

I was having an identity crisis you see.  I thought that to be considered for client projects, I should ideally be dressed daily in a power suit (sans baby sick) and heels.  I should be in a busy office resembling something on Wall Street.  I should be available 24/7 and be constantly “on”.

I was pretty sure clients weren’t looking for someone whose main achievement of the day was ditching the dressing gown.  They didn’t want to discuss branding with alternating gurgling/babbling in the background.  They didn’t want a mummy, they wanted another faceless corporate firm, right?

Wrong.  Now, almost eight years later, the babe is coming to the end of her primary school “career” (for fans of Planes, Trains & Automobiles) and my own career is certainly less stressful – but it certainly has its moments.

I’ve learned a few things myself.  Such as:

• Clients are often struggling parents too
• Most of us are living a daily battle trying to balance family life and work.  And most of us feel we’re failing
• Clients are looking for someone who “gets” them, who understands what their challenges are and can help them feel that they’ve achieved something
• They don’t want another faceless corporate firm.  They want a human with which to build a relationship based on trust

In the last few days, I’ve been approached by several businesspeople who say they “get” me and like my honesty.  What have I got that corporates haven’t?  Simply this – what I say is what I honestly feel.  Despite the training and the years of experience, I’m just me.  I’ll have good days and off days.  I invest not only hours but a little part of me in each and every client.  I’ll chat to someone who’s had a disappointment at work and make them feel better.  I might suggest something useful which I can’t do but I know someone who can.  I don’t “do” office hours but will make sure something gets done to deadline.

So you see – being a businessmum has its advantages after all…

Hands up if this sounds familiar to any of you..

2.30am – woken by daughter who has had nightmare.  Climb into her bed.

6.30am – woken by cat demanding breakfast & litter tray

7.45am – realise you’ve run out of school uniform.  Dryer goes into overdrive

8.15am – prepare breakfast, yell at daughter to stop watching TV to get ready

8.30am – yell at daughter because she’s still not ready.  Remember her uniform is still in the dryer.

8.55am – screech to halt outside school

9am – quick cuppa then realise you’re already 15 minutes behind work schedule

10am – post arrives, inevitably bringing with it letters/bills which need urgent action.

11am – now an hour behind schedule.  Start work.

11.30am – friend/relative telephones for a chat.  Gets sniffy if you suggest you’re busy

11.45am – parcel delivery driver gives you parcel as neighbour not in

1pm – just over an hour of work completed & tummy demands food

1.30pm – finally settle down for some serious work

2.55pm – realise dishes haven’t been touched, beds still not made & house looks a wreck

3pm – off again to pick up daughter who needs taking to ballet/art/music/riding/swimming class

6pm – back home, having missed several phone calls.  Start tea.

7.30pm – tea finished, bath given & daughter into bed.  Story time

9pm – after drink given, numerous trips to toilet & incessant chatting, daughter finally falls asleep.  Time for work!

9.30pm – realise brain stopped working several hours ago and about to fall asleep on the keyboard.  Dishes still not done & house has more dust than a hoover bag.  Off to bed vowing early start in the morning.

And so it continues….

Only another parent working from home can understand how difficult and tiring it can be.  A complete lack of structure, uncooperation from the rest of the universe and never knowing when you’ll next be paid can make for a very stressful life.  You can be left feeling a failure in all areas.

So, fellow homeworking parents, I want to do something about it.  Not just post tips, advice (hah!) etc on here but to set up our very own hashtag on Twitter too, so any one of our group working at 11.30pm can take comfort from knowing that there’s somebody else at that exact same minute, feeling absolutely shattered but working to deadline. Scheduled prompts throughout the day – eg “Ok it’s 11.30am & we have 5 minutes.  Whip the hoover out & whizz it round the living room!  Back here in 10 with a cuppa”.  Or perhaps “It’s 2.30 guys – start wrapping it up, ready for school run”.

Does that sound supportive or do you have any ideas?  Let’s get this up and running – what about a buddy system with someone who works late into the night too or lives in your area?

Love to have your feedback!

Cx

I’m currently working with a brilliant Polish designer on the launch of her new label, Manifattura Donna.  Dominika’s shirts ooze femininity, mixed with professionalism and control – no mean feat.

Take a look at www.manifatturadonna.com or drop me a line if you’d like further info.

http://www.fashionmonitor.com/news/inner.aspx?id=11196

I completely understand this. PR is considered more credible than advertising and can certainly be far cheaper. However, it is only these things if you truly do have news to tell the media’s target audience.

In order to stand the best chance of having your release accepted, here’s a brief list of do’s and don’ts to help you build a strong relationship with key journalists and editors in your industry.

Do make sure your product or service, if not yet launched, is ready to bring to market

Do have good PR shots to include with your release. Key individuals and the focus of the release is best.

Do research the names and emails of your key media people.

Do structure your press release correctly.

Do include a spokesperson’s name, job title and contact details.

And finally, do make sure you have news to tell. A new Facebook page, a discount or offering the lowest prices are not news!

Do not send out a blanket email to all journalists beginning “Dear Sirs” (unless you’re advised to contact a generic email address).

A courteous follow up email is fine but don’t hound editors regularly by phone.

Don’t be over familiar with an editor you don’t know.

Don’t declare yourself unavailable if a journalist phones to follow up your release. Bend over backwards to give them what they need. Quickly.

I believe it’s the same the world over.

Due to the harsh winter we had before and during Christmas, several of our pipes froze and burst. In one particularly dramatic episode during which I was on my own in our utility room when water started pouring through the now steaming light fittings, I finally went into meltdown.

As my husband has been clinically proven to be allergic to organising any form of maintenance to the house, I despondently rang for a local plumber, confident that he MIGHT turn up in a few days. Right enough, he sounded less than enthusiastic and was typically vague.

Imagine my surprise the next morning when said plumber phoned and said he was on his way. He duly arrived, having been picked up in someone’s 4×4 (3 feet of snow) and spent the next few hours locating and fixing all the bursts, finally quoting what was an extremely reasonable price. We were so delighted we drove him straight to the cashpoint, our faith in tradesmen restored.

Fast forward to March and we suddenly began to smell damp in our bathrooms which was quickly followed by soggy carpets. Husband bravely volunteered to fix the problem and did so – for several days. Yesterday unfortunately, I espied a rather jaunty toadstool in the corner of the bathroom, behind the toilet. I know I wasn’t hallucinating as it wasn’t one of those fetching red and white toadstools and did not have the benefit of a gnome sitting astride it with a fishing rod.

This was quickly followed yesterday evening by a nocturnal visit to the ensuite, where I discovered my bathroom had in fact been replaced by a swamp. I plodged back to the bedroom and voiced my concern. Husband immediately allayed my fears by mumbling “I hope it hasn’t seeped through the kitchen ceiling”. Result – 3 hours’ sleep.

This morning saw me once again on the phone to aforementioned plumber. Sadly this time I can’t get an answer, he hasn’t listed his mobile and has no answerphone. Which brings me to my point (you knew I’d get there eventually) – do tradesmen, the pillars of every community, actually need to do any marketing?

There are very few industries or companies who can get away with doing virtually no marketing whatsoever. It seems that every single tradesperson, whether they be plumber, joiner or electrician, is absolutely run off their feet with business at any time of year and couldn’t possibly cope with any more.

But is that any reason to treat potential and actual clients so abysmally? We all hear dreadful stories about shoddy work, no-shows, extended tea breaks and extortionate prices. Of course some tradespeople, like my beloved plumber, are exceptions (I hope) to the rule. However, I think it is disgraceful that we customers have simply been forced to accept whatever is thrown at us, simply because we have no choice.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing for a local tradesperson to have a professional website which can easily be found on Google, highlighting the following competitor differentiations and service offerings?

• My customer service charter states that I will return your call within 1 hour and visit your premises within 24 hours.

• If I am not available, leave a message on my answerphone and I will return your call within 1 hour.

• If I am not able to fix your problem on the first visit, the second visit will be charged at half price.

• I will notify you of the approximate date and time I will arrive, to within 1 hour. If I fail to show up in that time, the job will be charged at half price

• You will be given a fixed quotation on arrival, before I begin work. If you are not satisfied with the price, you are free to source another tradesperson.

Can you imagine what something like this would do for the repuation of that person? An excellent review from a client is the best marketing there is. Tradespeople would do well to remember that. You never know, the day may well come when they regret acting so unprofessionally.

You can imagine how annoying it is to arrive at this realisation, after 15 years of studying, constant examinations, seminars, learning curves, 18 hour days, considerable sums of money and office politics.

But there it is.

What do you need to be a marketer?  Simply this:

The desire to learn.  Constantly.

The willingness to admit you’re not always right (always a toughie).

The desire to find out what people want, and what they’re currently not getting.

A passion for working tooth and nail to give it to them and exceeding their expectations – a delighted customer makes it all worthwhile.

The overwhelming determination to not offer them anything you feel in your heart of hearts is rubbish or substandard, whether it be a product or service.

And then of course all you need is to continue to find out about how marketing techniques work, trial them and measure to see which is best for your customer base.

Finally – last but absolutely not least, you need to be a “people” person.  Communicate constantly with actual and potential clients to ensure you’re continuing to delight them.

And that’s really about it!  Nothing ground breaking, nothing startling and no jargon needed.

So why many businesses are more concerned about flogging products and offering a less than satisfactory service is beyond me.

What are your experiences of great and appalling service?

Being the responsible home-based consultant that I am, all my client work is saved offsite at a website based storage solution system – you never know, as they say.

Unfortunately, I have tried to also save my emails (as pst files) to such a site, with no success.  Requests for information and help have fallen on deaf ears by the organisation, and I have been unable to track down such a supplier – they love large businesses it seems, but not sole traders.

Which leads me to wonder – with the thousands of home workers across the globe (numbers which of course will increase over the next few years), how are they archiving their emails safely?  I suspect many will simply pop them onto a stick which rests in a desk drawer – not great news if there’s a fire or flood.  Worse still, some may not be archiving them at all.

Do you know of any such websites who will archive emails for sole traders?  Please do let me know before I resort to saving them to a stick and running round to my neighbour’s each night for storage.

I’ve just sat through an interesting webinar, hosted by the CIM and Storm creative agency and would like to share a few stats with you, courtesy of CIM/Mintel.

From a survey among business owners/CEOs, a large proportion of their marketing budget is currently spent on:

PR (10%)

CRM (9.6%)

Email (9.5%)

Traditional advertising (not online) 9.4%

They consider that they achieve the best ROI from CRM, Email and PR, with the worst returns given by traditional advertising, sponsorship and direct mail.

The CIM was quick to emphasise that traditional marketing techniques should not be ditched in favour of digital marketing however, as of course your target markets will no doubt all prefer to be communicated with in a different way.

Even though of course, this does not perhaps tally up with the statistics above.

It also stressed several times that in order to run an integrated communications campaign, you as a business owner, need to employ a “proper” creative agency.

Which is where I disagree.

My client list, past and present, stands at around 200.  All of them are small businesses or sole traders.  Of this number, around 5% have told me that they have indeed used agencies in the past but felt that they were not provided either with the results they were looking for, or value for money.

Anyone can be creative, given the motivation and resources to be so.  Creativity is gained from knowing an industry, the target audience, clarity of goals and several passionate people, bouncing ideas off each other.  This costs nothing, which I know you’re going to tell me, is about the marketing budget you have available!

Of course, in order to be effective, that creativity needs to be balanced with proper research, clear objectives and the knowledge of what makes your audience tick.  Which is, after all, the whole ethos of marketing.

Unfortunately, due to resource constraints, I am often asked to carry out individual marketing activities for organisations which may or may not see significant immediate results.  Do bear in mind that sales activities are VERY different from marketing campaigns.  If you’re hoping to place an ad in the local newspaper and subsequently see sales of your unique organic catfood catapult by 200% in a week, you’re likely to be disappointed.

An experienced marketer will start at grass roots level, helping you to develop your brand.  Looking at the size of your market, your customers’ profile and buying behaviour, your brand message and competitor differentiation is vital BEFORE you bring your product or service to market.

The whole point of this exercise is to clarify:

a.  what your business is and how it can bring about benefits to your target audience (ie why they should buy)

b.  how you do all this much better than your competitors (and why customers should buy)

You must have these answers clear in your own mind before you start communicating them to your target audience.  If you’re not clear and convinced, how can they be?

Once this is all in place, it will then become clear as to which marketing techniques are likely to be most effective, with some organisations wisely choosing to trial them first.  It is unlikely that one technique will “fit all” and so it is vital that you run several integrated activities consistently over a period of time in order for your brand to become recognised and trusted, for you to build up relationships with your clients and potential clients – thus encouraging brand loyalty and maintain competitive advantage.

All too often, new clients come to me, having spent a small fortune getting their product or service ready to bring to market, only to have next to no budget left and no fixed marketing plan, only a vague idea of a particular tactic they’d like to use.

Remember that your offering will only be successful if the right people get to know about it and are convinced that it’s the one for them.  This will not happen overnight, so be sure to put both some planning time and budget aside, to ensure that your marketing communications will be effective and allow you to achieve a significant ROI.

To that end, many business owners’ instinct is to simply put adverts in newspapers or even ads in local shop windows.

It’s my job to explain how time has moved on; how the public are fed up with unintelligent, untargeted marketing, and how the marketplace is more competitive than ever.

As a small business owner, it is vital  that you know your target audience inside out.  “Anyone who loves music” or “anyone who has a bank account” simply doesn’t cut it. You need to know what makes them tick, what they are happy to spend their money on, what their perceptions are of your industry and what their aspirations are. 

Ultimately, people spend money on things that will make them feel good.  A great example of this recently was during the recession, when chocolate sales soared!  A bank could make customers feel that their money is in safe hands and that they are in fact even making money.  An electrician could make customers feel secure that should anything go wrong, he’d be on hand immediately to solve their problems.  A jeweller could guarantee their clients that their pieces will make them look a million dollars.

It’s no different with b2b.

When writing web copy, I’m often asked to write standard pages – “About Us”  “Our Company”  “What We Do”.  As a member of the public, I can categorically state – WE DON’T GIVE A TOSS!

If I’m looking for a riding school for example, I will take it for granted that the instructors are qualified (I’ll check for the BHS symbol) and that they are experienced, too.  These are not USPs (Unique Selling Points) so sure, give it a couple of lines as a mention, but dig deeper to explain why customers should come to you, rather than the guy down the road, who may be considerably cheaper.

EMPATHISE with your potential customer.  EXPLAIN the common challenges they’re facing or the needs they may have.  DETAIL why you can meet these needs better than the guy down the road.  OUTLINE why you offer fantastic added value service, which no-one else offers.

Regardless of your industry, simply convince your potential customer that you’re invested in them or their business and offer them some possible solutions.

You’ll find that you will be much better received than if you’d made a simple cold call, selling your products or services.

And finally – work hard at your marketing.  It’s now cheaper than ever to market effectively but it will take time and effort.  Focus on SEO for your website (you DO have a website, right?), write and distribute some online articles, engage in social media conversations, release regular e-newsletters and set up your own blog.

By focusing your attentions online, you can not only attract the attention of the plumber in the next town, but a corporation in China.

I’d be interested to hear your small business marketing stories – what worked and what didn’t for you?  Do you know why?