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.

First Impressions - be a Receptionist

We form impressions of people in the first few seconds that we meet them and it takes a lot to overturn first impressions. The same is true of our impressions of companies - the first few seconds are very important. This is why the receptionist has such an important role in a company. Very often she or he is the first person in the company that a visitor will meet face to face and the friendliness and professionalism displayed will form a major part of the visitor's impression of the company.

Yesterday I was reminded that everyone has the role of receptionist from time to time - the first person seen by a visitor - and so we all need to make sure we are giving a good impression of the organisation we are representing. In my case yesterday I was manning the barriers where the road was closed for the carnival street market in our local village, Mayfield. So I was the first person many visitors to our village met.

It rained heavily for a while so I was wet and I was at the barrier for over three hours, often with periods where no-one new needed help or directions. So at times it was difficult to stay as helpful as possible to people asking about parking or how to get round the closed portion of the road. My respect increased for receptionists who have greet visitors all day every day however they are feeling.

In any organisation we need to work out how we can support those who are meeting and greeting visitors (as their regular job or just from time to time), remind them of their critical role and structure their work to help them make that vital great first impression.

Porous to Pitch

Yesterday I attended a very interesting workshop run by Business Link South East - "Your Games, Your Business" about business opportunities (and concerns) arising from the London Olympic Games in 2012. It showed how many opportunities there were for business and how the games, although based in London, would have an effect that spread widely across the UK, particularly with games venues outside London, training camps for competitors, visitors not all staying in London and the torch relay round the country.

As well as food for thought on business opportunities, I also picked up one phrase I really liked, from Rob Lewtas of UKTI (UK Trade and Investment) when he talked about making people "porous to pitch".

It highlights the fact that whenever you are pitching to people, trying to sell products, services or your own talents, you need to do your best to ensure that they are in a receptive mood. If your audience is distracted or bored, then even the best arguments and most convincing benefits will have difficulty persuading them.

To make people "porous to pitch" you need to use timing, tone and listening

• timing: if someone is hurried, give them brief details, explain that you would like to speak to them at some more convenient time and book a better time when they will be more relaxed and you can do your message justice. Similarly if the location is making someone uncomfortable, find a better place and time
• tone: when meeting someone in an informally, such as a networking meeting, do not go into a hard sell but explain briefly but enthusiastically your offering. You can even talk business in a purely social setting if it fits well into the conversation, but do not push it or you will turn people off (make them 'impermeable to message'). Also some conversation on a shared interest or some light-hearted talk can make your audience more receptive
  
• listening: ask what their needs are in the areas where you have products or services to offer. What they say will help you make your pitch relevant to them and so make them more receptive to it. How they say it will help you work out the first two points: whether the timing is right and what tone to adopt

We all ought to practice our techniques for making our audience "porous to pitch" since this is as important as the message itself in marketing and selling

Look for the communicators, not the geeks

I have just read an article by Melonie Gallegos in iMedia Connection on "9 social media questions you're afraid to ask". There are lots of good points in it, but one thing that I disagree with in the "What if I don't have the resources to do it?" section. Melonie talks about what to do if there is not enough resource in the marketing department to undertake social media. She suggests seeking out geeks in the organisation and recruiting them to help, while I say - don't search out the geeks to help you, search out the communicators!

Geeks love technology but they are often some of the worst people at communicating. On the other hand there are lots of people in most organisations who are already great communicators. They may be anyone from receptionists to project managers to HR specialists but they will stand out because you can see how well they engage people offline. It is far easier to train them in social media than it is to train most geeks to engage the people with whom they have online discussions.

Natural communicators can be given some brief instructions on the use of social media if necessary, but they are probably Facebook savvy anyway. Also they will need some guidance on brand guidelines of what to say and what not to say about the company. Then you can give them the opportunity to engage with customers, prospects, suppliers and anyone else who is communicating with the company on social media.

One other thing that they will need, as will anyone who uses social media on behalf of an organisation - the channel to be able to pass on key feedback, suggestions,questions and complaints to the appropriate department and the authority to ensure they receive answers which they can pass on. Social media is worse that useless, it is counter-productive, if input from received is not acknowledged and answered in a reasonable and timely manner.

Organisations have untapped talent in different departments that can be channeled to provide great resources for effective social media.

Reality behind the "Social Media" hype

A friend of mine has recently retired from his full-time sales job but wants to do some part-time consultancy work helping companies with specific sales projects or sales training. "I am talking to my contacts" he told me, "I hear that this is called networking". For him networking was jargon that described what he would do naturally, including nowadays using email and some online tools like Linkedin to help.

The term "Social Media" is in much the same position - jargon that is only vaguely understood by the majority but which describes an activity that everyone knows how to do (converse) although using some powerful new tools to hold conversations more widely, quicker and more easily.

It is the marketer's job to explain this to businesses who are interested in finding out more. There are four important points that should always be made:

1. Social media is about engaging with others: prospects, customers, suppliers, influencers, affiliates and others. Engagement involves a two-way conversation. If an organisation is not prepared to listen and respond, then it should not expect to gain much from participating.
   
2. It is not a panacea for all your problems. You have to spend time and effort listening and then you may hear about issues and views that are difficult or embarrassing. But it is always better to confront these than have them simmering in the background. If a dissatisfied customer does not get a good response from you then she or he will almost always tells others about your poor service (on average nine other people). But research shows a customer whose complaint is handled well will become more satisfied and a greater advocate of your brand
3. Social media is important for businesses - Comscore's latest report shows that social media accounts for one out of every six minutes spent online in US and other countries are catching up fast. Key sites include Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo! & Tumblr (with Google+ likely to join them once it is on full release).
4. Because it takes time to participate properly on each site, organisations should choose the sites on which they participate carefully to ensure that they have the resources to contribute and respond. It is better to be only on one social media site but post your news and thoughts there regularly, responding quickly to comments and commenting on other people's interesting posts, rather than trying to cover all the major sites and not keeping up on any of them.

Social media strategy is an important part of any marketing strategy and needs to set out clear goals for using social media as well as a good understanding of the tools to use to participate and to measure results.

Why is the Network Effect overlooked in the Mobile World?

The rise of the social network has seen rapid changes with first one networking software becoming dominant and then another. MySpace was once the leader, then YouTube and now Facebook seems all powerful. With the benefit of perspective we can expect something else to come and replace Facebook sooner or later.

All of the leaders have benefited from the "network effect" which makes a network become more and more attractive as its numbers grow. Metcalfe's Law states that the value of a network increases with the square of the number of members. So the first software that implements a "must have" new feature and by good execution builds up a reasonable number of members benefits from the bandwagon effect - everyone wants to join that particular network, because of the number of connections they can make as soon as they join, and it is very difficult for a competitor to build their own network to usurp the number one position. The bigger the number one, the more it dominates and weakens the competitors.

But in the mobile world, operators are regularly categorised as just "dumb pipes" despite the fact that they have the benefits of large networks - the millions of subscribers with whom they have not just a relationship, but a billing relationship They may not have exploited the relationship fully in the past. But as social networking becomes mobile with more and more people using their mobile phones to share information, news, likes, photos and videos with their friends, they are in a position to exploit their connections.

In our increasingly globalised communities we also have to remember not just the hype about the latest smartphone and what it can do on fast networks, but also the billions of users, particularly in Asia and Africa, who are still on featurephones and just starting to have the capability to do simple mobile networking. The network effect of those billions will dwarf the existing networks and this gives mobile operators have a huge advantage they can exploit.

Vodafone's interview in GSMA's Mobile Business Briefing, published today, shows they understand this potential.

It is also something well understood by FlyTXT, the mobile marketing and advertising company in which I am an investor, whose software allows operators to manage targeted communications to different user groups with pinpoint accuracy.