Week of scams and unwanted calls

This has been a week for scams and unwanted calls. It started with the common annoyance of a phone call from a company which I did not know asking about my energy bills. I questioned why they were calling me, since I am on the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) list and should not receive unsolicited calls, at which the caller just hung up. Short but disruptive.

Then there was a second caller saying they were from Car Claims and suggesting that I could claim compensation for a recent accident. I asked to speak to their supervisor to complain about the call, but was told that I could only call them on another number. The caller then coolly gave me an 0900 number which he said was free to call. I am pretty sure it would have cost me to try out. But it was the first time I have had this type of response.

The third episode involved a US company, Hamilton & Pricehouse, phoning me about some shares that I own They claimed to have an investor who wanted to make a hostile takeover and was willing to buy the shares at a price several times more than the quoted value. Although suspicious (if something sounds too good to be true, it nearly always is) I could not work out what the scam was and ended up discussing the offer for a while and giving out my email address to receive their information.

The information sent was just a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for me to sign and send back, together with a request that I send details of my share holdings e.g. copy of certificate. The NDA would bind me but placed no restrictions on them and the share details could be used to defraud me. I also checked the website of the company whose shares were involved and it highlighted that this practice of unsolicited calls was going on and recommended a call to the UK's ActionFraud. So I have not sent back the NDA despite two phone calls from Hamilton & Pricehouse to chase it up, and I am waiting a call back from ActionFraud, so I can report what has happened. Also I hope to understand if it is a scam and how it works, so that I can be even more on my guard in future.

For jobs be aware of social media rather than beware

For some time now there have been stories about people, particularly youngsters, being identified in embarrassing social media entries ( videos on YouTube, pictures on Facebook or Flickr, blog posts on WordPress or Blogger, tweets on Twitter) which causes problems with their employers or, if they are still teenagers, could cause problems when they come to look for their first job. My wife and I have been telling our children for a while that they need to careful what they publish even when they are young, since it might come to the surface and count against them in five or ten years time.

But this article in imedia made me think again. It talks about employers starting to look at Klout scores and favouring those who score highly. Those who are active and engaged on social media are demonstrating their ability to communicate and to influence others, which can be important characteristics for some jobs such as marketing. This leads to the conclusion that it might be useful to be active in social media to give yourself an edge when applying for jobs.

Also the fear of embarrassing incidents from the past being visible on social media and being a major disadvantage in finding employment may reduce over time. We have all had embarrassing episodes in our past, but until recently they have only been seen by a few people. Yet the younger generation are growing up with a more open idea of what can or should be shared. In a few years, those hiring may well think it as normal that the embarrassing incidents can be viewed online as we now think it is normal that they happened at all.

So instead of telling people to beware of their social media profile and to keep it low, we should be telling people to be aware of their profile and raise it in the right way

First step provides momentum

The idea for MovingMarketing (as described on this blog on Monday http://rogerstonemarketing.blogspot.com/2012/01/movingmarketing.html) has been pinging around in my brain for a few months now and I have even started an alpha test producing a video for a company I know. But the distractions of other projects and a Christmas break have slowed my progress.

On Monday I pushed other projects to the side and registered domain names, Facebook and Twitter accounts. Small steps but they helped make me much more focused on rolling out the service quickly and effectively.

It's amazing how commitments (money, public announcements, telling family and friends or even just writing down your intentions) however small can create momentum and a positive force to move forward

MovingMarketing

MovingMarketing is a new project I have been planning for a while. Its focus is to provide all businesses, but particularly small businesses (SMEs) with a simple method of producing and publishing videos (and also podcasts) that promote their brand, views, product and services.

What will set my service apart from the many existing video production services which nowadays are affordable for small businesses is combination of guidelines for how to produce messages which have impact together with tools for producing videos (and podcasts) as well as for promoting them.

And of course, the use of social media to engage and involve customers will be a key element, as will the ability to harness the power and connnectivity of mobile devices.

There will be great deal more detail in future posts

Reducing time spent drifting

It is easy to get carried away on emails, responding to unimportant mails, reading interesting articles and generally wasting time.

To help me reduce the time I spend on this and to free up more time for the important tasks, I have started to use the stopwatch feature on my phone to highlight how much time I am spending on different tasks.

Before I start a new task I intend to decide how long I should spend on it, though it is important to remain flexible if important tasks take longer than expected. Let them crowd out the unimportant (but often addictive tasks) rather than the other way round

(Image from www.freeimages.co.uk)

Bring out the FAB benefits

Reading a new business plan today reminded me of the importance of differentiating between Features, Advantages and Benefits (FAB) and putting far more weight on benefits than features or advantages.

So what is the difference between features, advantages and benefits?

· Features describe what a product or service does e.g. searches through a million pieces of data a second, sends a repair person within 4 hours, utilises 25 years of industry experience

· Advantages tell you why the offering is better than other solutions e.g. speeds up your data processing, offers a quick response in case of breakdown, provides advice taking into account knowledge of what works

· Benefits are the ways that the product solves real customer problems e.g. “We now save time and money finding the right information quickly”, “The cost of downtime is reduced”, “We are beating our targets by adopting tested solutions”

Features of your own product or services are dear to your heart and seem fantastic and really cool , because you have usually spent months or years developing them and working out ways to do more, more quickly, more efficiently than has ever been done before. But they can be just dry facts to customers who have their own perspective.

You are only going to sell your offering if it solves some of the needs of the customer – or ideally, if it reduces or eliminates some pain they are suffering. So you need to set out, in your marketing material and in your sales pitches, the benefits that will come from buying from you.

The best way to show this is to use the words of actual customers. You should constantly be checking what customers like most about your product. Sometimes you will be amazed that some simple feature (for example a simple prompt to remind them of the next action) has far more value than some sophisticated capability. But if you are trying to in more customers in the same market, what your existing customers find most attractive is likely to be what will convince prospects to become new customers.

If you are a start up with no customers or are entering a new market, then you may not have relevant quotes from existing customers but you should test out your offering on some friendly potential customers and you can gain their reaction. In the very early stages of developing a new offering or addressing a new market, you can even put yourself in the shoes of the customers you are trying to help and think what they would most like.

I have talked about features then about benefits but jumped over advantages. Advantages can be a good stepping stone to working out the benefits, helping you think about what useful work your product or service can do for a customer.

You may want to list the features somewhere in your marketing material, especially for any technical readers, and setting out the advantages may help you tell the story of what you are offering. But talking about the benefits using the actual words of customers is the most important part of your description. The prospect must believe that it will solve their problems, make them work better and make them feel better.

Building your community

One of today's greatest marketing challenges is building the community around the company, brand or product that you are marketing. It no longer works to keep your company distant from your customers and expect them to be loyal because of they have purchased from you in the past or because today's products lead the market. Tomorrow's customers will be looking for something else and will want their supplier to listen to their changing requirements and to adapt their products and services accordingly. Good marketers will always have been listening to customers and asking for feedback as they test new ideas. But there is less and less room to hide for companies that do not connect with the market.

Social media provides us with the tools to connect and discuss. But how do we get the enough of our customers and prospects to engage in conversations and to comment on our website, blog, Facebook page or YouTube channel?

The good news is that a small core of followers can make for a lively debate. Ning's recent POV research showed that 20 people engaged in conversation with your company and with each other brings a reasonable level of activity and encourages others to participate more. If you take the rule of thumb that 1% of visitors become engaged advocates, you are looking for 2000 to visit your sites. Of these, 20 will then become excited enough to share regularly their enthusiasm, concerns and suggestions and form the foundations of a lively community.

Of course, you have to demonstrate that you are willing to listen to them and take notice of their views as well as producing content to interest them. But engaging the community feels like an achievable goal for all companies on this basis.

Remarkable or reliable?

Yesterday I attended a webinar run by myPRGenie and given by Deb McAlister-Holland of Distribion. The topic was "Get heard and get your content to go viral" and Deb gave us some really useful advice to publish content and promote it so that your audience will pass it on.

Much of the advice was around using the right tools, planning what you are going to say as well as when and how, preparing the content and delivering it in the right way. She had lots of tips on topics such as the tools to use and the timing of messages - I suggest you follow Deb's Distributed Marketing blog where you can learn from her experience.

Then today I watched one of Seth Godin's TED presentations about standing out and being remarkable. For a while I wondered what Deb McAlister-Holland was doing that was outstanding since her output is certainly being remarked upon. Eventually I realised that through her hard work and dedication, she was consistently producing really interesting topics and making sure it was always presented in a way that drew people in. There is no one gimmick or element that on its own makes her stand out, but putting all her good ideas into practice makes her stand out.