Technology, Marketing, Business process, Sales, Admin, Leadership, Employee engagement, they all add up to make your business what it is and they also all add up to making your sales message and repeat sales strong. They are all therefore part of your B2B marketing strategy.

It isn’t just a message as a message not backed up by the business simply leads to a brand gap where the dream sold by the marketing isn’t reflected in the product/service the client receives.

It isn’t social media, posters or a good website. It is all of those things and so much more.

For years these business processes have been seen as separate, different. In today’s world they are the same, inextricably linked all part of selling and conveying a strong reasoning for a client to do business, continue buying business and referring you to others for their business.
Marketing is the dream explaining to a client why you. Business process, employees and strong leadership will encourage them to continue working with you. Technology will help you harvest and keep in contact with many.

If you do all of things well then when you are asked to be referred clients will happily take the risk of introducing you to one of their contacts as they know they will get a great experience and the feedback will be positive. Those clients will enjoy working with you, continue to work with you and the whole process starts again.

In the last ten years NOT fulfilling your marketing message could be ignored. Today it is the cornerstone of any good business. For instance why is Apple one of the biggest ad best companies in the world? They have got their brand totally aligned. Brilliant product, easy to use that delivers. Go into an Apple shp and it feels like you have walked into an Ipod. Open their instructions and they are easy and simple to grasp. Speak to one of their employees and you will gget a feeling of being helped not sold too. There are others Google, John Lewis’s, MacDonalds, Innocent drinks. They all have one thing in common. The brand/business delivers what it promises. However to do this they have got their brand mastered and know what kind of employees they are after and how they fit into their brand strategy.

Is your message and business aligned? Maybe time for a rethink?

Therefore ALL purchases have to have both otherwise they fall at one step or another particularly in today’s tough economic climate.

It isn’t enough to simply have we’re nice, we have great testimonials, we do our job or isn’t this pretty. Everyone has that and can back it up with great case studies that show how jolly clever they were. How the client wanted this and we gave them that. How our ROI figures are so spectacular.

Companies now need to not only show their abilities off but also need to back them up with strong logical arguments that speak to a small and defined target market. The past efforts of mass marketing aiming at all and anyone are over. I want and expect to be spoken to directly with information that speaks to me in my terms about my issues. This typically (from what we have seen) requires a rethink from companies about who they are targeting and why they would want to do business with them.

If you don’t do this you will end up with a message that speaks to everyone and at the same time no-one. Remember emotionally I need to understand why I would buy but more important back it up with hard facts that build a message.

If you do this (again from what we have seen) you will be well ahead of the game.

The issue for business is that during the last decade when there was money (all be it debt) they didn’t need to stand out or be different. They typically needed to exist and the business would come to them. There was enough to go around. Now however people are thinking before they buy and asking where the value for money is within the transaction. A simple way to see this is people going into retail shops finding the item they wish to buy and then buying it online cheaper. Of course the shop can’t compete on price. They have wages, rent, rates, electricity etc. to pay however the shopper doesn’t care; they simply want the best deal. If it is cheaper, then it is less of a risk.

This means that businesses that have no real differential and over the years are being crunched on price. Why? Because if they have nothing different to say, they are the same as any other company offering the same service. Therefore they are a commodity like any other. Therefore price is the only way a customer can compare and there is always someone else who will do it cheaper. Therefore even companies that do offer a better service or product have to match prices of companies that haven’t.

The ONLY way out of this downward price spiral is to tell the market WHY you are so different, create a REAL Unique Selling Point (Unique being the key word) and explain to their marketplace that if they want what is unique about their business, then they obviously pay extra.

IF companies don’t do this, and do it quickly, then they are in my opinion, a dead man walking as there is simply too much competition and not enough business to go around. They will either need to strip their process and service down and offer a price based business model where they are the cheapest or they will have to explain to the buyer why they aren’t.

Professional, nice, helpful, on budget, on time, DON’T count by the way. They are expected. Let’s face it how many businesses would you work with who weren’t professional, nice, helpful and did the job on time and for the price quoted?

The business world has changed, maybe forever. Therefore all the old models are dead and a new structure must be created.

It will take and effort to impact your business and make these changes however as has happened previously when the world has had a recession or depression the strong survive and the weak fall by the wayside.

The only question you need to ask is; Which one will you be?

I know that ROI is Return On Investment, I equally know that it is the mantra of businesses and marketing companies worldwide. Equally however I also know that in effect it means nothing. From an internal perspective it is useful when it is backed up by figures and helps a business understand what is working and what isn’t. But from a marketing process it really means very little.

Look at it like this; What exactly does 2300% ROI mean? Does it mean that for every £1 spent £2300 was returned? Was that profit? Saved time? Turnover? Was the client’s time and effort landing the business accounted for in the math? Or was it how much the agency were paid and the total turnover generated taken away from each other? Was the media cost included? That leads me to another question why are ROI’s always perfectly round numbers? Is it impossible to return an unrounded ROI figure?

Now I’m not being all pious about this. Two years ago you would have to come to my company website and seen ROI all over the place. Big letters, small letters graphically enhanced letters with a glow behind, every way we could shout ROI at potential clients we would. Then we realised that it actually didn’t mean anything. Whenever we were asked what it meant we found it very difficult to justify or prove that the figure was what it was. But we like everyone else was drawn to the ROI mantra.

In our mind we needed to stand out and be different. Yes everything is about return however in my mind people like
facts so much more. That’s why we now show the pounds, shillings and pence we added to a client’s bottom line. We call our pages results NOT case studies. Our clients sign off the results and only then do we produce and put a result
live.

As this is the foundation of our business moving forward we will also only work with a client that will help us create results pages as we need them to grow and continue the growth of our business.

So are you working with ROI? Is there a better way of saying it? Can you look at the bottom line? Is someone selling you ROI and telling you how jolly good they are? Ask them to break down the figure, go on just for a laugh.

In the end business is business not ROI. It is money won, sales generated, good balance sheets, pipelines, sales and marketing processes, profit, loss, plus many other indicators if a business is doing well.

ROI is the old model that everyone has, smoke and mirrors, supported by lovely testimonials and case studies that no one reads.

The new model is reality.  Cold hard facts backed up by more cold hard facts.

Maybe that’s why our company phone never stops ringing?

So how do you mange to convince more companies to do business with you and not your competition? One way (there are quite a few but they have to be kept for future blogs) is using something we have called impact marketing.

The advent of online marketing has meant that owners and decision makers in businesses can see if their spend is worthwhile through analytics, and reports and make very quick decisions to continue or refine. The problem now is they almost want the same luxury when they employ a company.

So they need assurances, or as best as you can that you will do what you have said and that you are good at what you do.

Usually, or should I say previously this has been provided through testimonials which has now morphed into video testimonials and case studies. However this isn’t enough they want more.

What they want to see now is impact and returns. Don’t tell me how good you are tell me what you have done.

Since we did this to our own case studies (were just getting round to doing the videos) we have seen a marked increase in businesses finding and approaching us to help them re-brand, market, design etc. We had the information we had simply very brilliantly hidden it within the content.

So how do you do it?

Work out what you think you achieved for a client in real terms. I.e. added half a million to their bottom line in a year as in our case. Then ask the client to sign off this fact and or any others. This then becomes the title of your case study. You then follow this up with bullet headers as to how you achieved it. Then you can put all your nice fluffy stuff and how they love you with testimonials etc.

The main thing is the viewer (potential client) immediately sees what you have done and more to the point what impact it had. They can then easily decide whether this is something they would also like. Like I said this is only a small part of the deal but it does work.

This also mean that when you start discussing price there is far less likelihood of the conversation becoming a cost issue as they know what they want when it comes to real money returns.

The only issue behind this is of course that you must have done something worth shouting about.

Good luck.

A huge amount of these so called ‘experts’ seem to be focusing on social media as it is the buzz word, however the explosion has happened across and in all industries. Now everyone is an expert, running seminars, webinars offering downloadable books on how to’s and not to’s, buy my DVD set, read my blog, follow me on twitter.

The world is FULL of experts. So how do you stand out above the noise? Equally how do you recognise an ‘expert’ from someone who really knows what they are talking about? And probably a good question is; why should you listen to me? How do you stand out from all the other experts?

Good content is key. If you write good stuff then people will often pop back in to read what you have to say. However I’m sure that there are many people with lots to say who never get heard. So good content is only really applicable when you have an audience. Therefore you need to attract an audience in the first place before you can keep them.

Creating headlines that work and catch people’s attention, saying something that is confrontational, hit a nerve or resound with your target market therefore are key. For instance my headline could have read ‘how to become and spot an expert’, however how many people would read it? Would you? The moment I make it more confrontational people may read it. So stand up and be counted. Shout from the roof tops, be clever, funny, different but whatever you do don’t create a headline that just moulds into the already mounting pile of ‘stuff’ out there.

Interesting stat I heard the other day. There is more information created every two days than was created by man (and woman) up to and including 2003! Mad. So remember what you are writing takes time and effort the least you should do is make it attractive so people read it and most importantly, stand out. You’ll not please all of the people all of the time but then do you want to? If people disagree with what you have said so be it, at least they have read it!

Think about your target market what issues they have and what might appeal to them. Then create an article and a headline that will attract those people to read it. Simples.

How do you spot and expert from an ex pert? Linked in, testimonials, case studies, website. Have they done it before and how many times have they done it before? For instance I am constantly being told by senior executives that there are hundreds of social media gurus, who have never done a social media campaign and yet wish to tell my clients how to do one. Business colleagues tell me that when they look under the person or companies skin there is nothing there. So check them out.

Everyone can write information that you don’t know and can also copy and paste from other peoples documents. You’ll never know. If you did then you wouldn’t be reading the documents you’d be doing it for yourself and writing them! So check their references and speak to their clients both past and present. This way you’ll get a good idea if they are worth employing and if what they are saying has any credence. At least this way you have some sort of history to work from and will be taking less of a risk. So the million dollar question;

Why should you listen to me? No idea. Maybe it is my 26 years of working in the advertising and marketing world? Maybe it is because I have over 20% of my connections on linked in giving me a glowing reference. Maybe it is because I speak off the cuff, straight to the point and want to help? Whatever it is please feel free to comment, kick me, call me, test me, whatever you would like to do.

Am I an expert? Who knows. Maybe ask my clients.