Sir John Mayers the Spy Outed by Facebook

In the past few days, Sir John Mayers, the soon-to-be head of MI6, the British Secret Service ‘Spy’ Unit, was outed ‘big style’ by his wife, an avid Facebook user. 

Apparently, and I have to go on media reports here because his Facebook page was taken down, his wife listed private information on her Facebook page.  This included the address of their London residency, the address of her in-laws and photographs of their children. 

On Monday (6 July 2009), I was listening to LBC radio and the morning presenter Nick Ferrari.  Now, I really cannot repeat what he called Lady Mayers just in case I get sued, but he repeatedly questioned 1) whether she had used any common sense in having a Facebook page at all and 2) whether she had shown any judgement in putting so much personal information into the public domain. 

By publishing a holiday photograph of Sir John Mayers in his swim shorts along with a raft of other personal facts, Mrs Mayers made information that should have been private very public.  As the incoming spy chief, Sir John Mayers should have known better as his life, and that of his family, may have been put in danger. 

The Mayers family will now have to have extra security protection and possibly move house and change schools.  ‘So what!’ will probably be the common response of the general public but we will be left with a huge tax bill.   

Clearly in the media, the national security angle has generated much interest along with how a Facebook ‘faux pas’ can affect your personal and professional life. 

The Proper Way to Use Facebook for your business and career:

• Check your Facebook privacy settings so that you only show particular information to specific users.
• Consider setting up Groups and only a select few friends that can join with your permission. They are privy to specific information as you wish.
• If you do want to increase your profile, make sure your privacy settings allow search engine access.
• It is important to get the balance right between business and personal information on Facebook so that you do not appear to be a business robot. Remember, people buy from people so you have to be seen as human.
• If you are primarily using your account for business use, perhaps that shot of you drunk and disorderly at a party with your underwear on your head is not the best idea.
• If you want to have a personal profile, maybe set a separate one up with your real or nick name with your business account in your business or brand name.
• Unless you want to receive speculative sales calls or spam emails, it is probably best not to include your telephone number or email address.
• Create your profile so that it focuses on your business activities and includes your business web address to drive traffic to your website and your social media access points.

Excel at Customer Service

Arrrgghhh!  I hate being on the receiving end of bad customer services!   Why oh why would a company go to all the trouble, never mind cost, of getting a customer to sign on the dotted line and then treat them like an unwelcome surprise guest?

How Not To Do It

For the past two weeks, I have been trying to get my bank to return my calls and give me information that I need that will help me to grow my business.  Although I do not take this personally and see it indicative of a large business treating its customers badly, this has enraged me on so many fronts.

In a global recession, why would any business, especially a bank, not bother to get back to its customers?

My bank in particular has for many years, ran advertisements across all media, stating that they are not like other banks.  Business account holders instead have a personalised business manager.  In all honesty, I have no complaints about my business manager but the systems and procedures that the bank has. 

I spoke to the Banking Customer Services line and asked ‘what can I do to get my manager to return my calls’.  The Customer Services representative then proceeded to tell me what she could not do!  When I repeated my question, the only option left to me apart from leaving another message was to complain.  How ridiculous is that?

Customers Services as a Guerrilla Marketing Tool

So with my personal rant over, what has any of this got to do with marketing your business?  The most important point to remember, especially in the current challenging economy, is not to take your customers for granted. 

In any economy, customers/clients have the right to choose where to spend their money.  In a recession, your bottom line is just going to be affected so much more if you lose customers just because you have a hit and miss approach to customer services. 

If you are the only business offering a particular level of service, you can create a revenue generating niche for yourself.  Imagine a situation where you treat your customers well and their reward you by staying with you and spending more?

Manage Expectation About Your Level of Service

Make a commitment to your customers/clients and let them know what level of service they can expect from you regarding the products and services that you sell along with how you interact with them.  This can then become one of your marketing tools e.g. ‘next day service’, ‘we will get back to you in 24 hours’ etc. 

Get feedback from your customers - don’t just wait for a complaint before you respond to an issue.  Ask them what they want from you and then do everything that you can to make sure that you meet and exceed their expectations.

Digital Britain 2009 - A Growing UK Online Audience

In the House of Commons (London), the Labour Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw (16 June 2009) announced a plan of how the UK will develop and grow the digital landscape. This report affects all homes and businesses with or without broadband and will impact revenue generation in the future.

Currently on the list of developed nations, the UK does not have the highest broadband speeds and we are beginning to fall behind other less developed countries. Worse still, there are many communities in the UK without any access to broadband at all. This is made worse because ISPs (Internet Service Providers) are not willing to invest in the infrastructure of unprofitable areas.

In order to access a wide array of online information, streaming media and use social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook etc, we need to have fast and reliable broadband access. Many small businesses operate from home and according to the Digital Britain Report 2009, currently 2.1 million people (6% of total UK employment) contribute to the digital economy.

It is the UK Government’s intention to make sure that everyone has access to ‘next generation’ super fast broadband by 2012. The downside for UK households with fixed lines is that we will be taxed £6 a year to make this happen. The upside is the potential for growth for businesses that understand the growth potential as more and more of their target markets have online access

As an entrepreneur and business owner it is essential to identify areas that have a potential for growth. Faster and more widely available broadband will provide access to a bigger target market with a new way of promoting marketing messages. The web removes any perceived country borders which can stop business transactions from taking place. Regardless of whether you are UK based or live further a field, a better access to fast broadband in the UK will definitely open up the market place.

Take advantage of a burgeoning UK online audience and demonstrate a level of expertise in what you do - your niche. All of the following online strategies are low cost (if not free) and demonstrate how using guerrilla marketing can achieve specific online goals.

1. Make sure that you have an online presence. A UK Microsoft executive estimated that approximately 50% of UK businesses did not have one (2007). A blog is the place where you can demonstrate your knowledge and expertise but a basic website is better than nothing.
2. Demonstrate Knowledge. Write articles, press releases and blog posts that demonstrate your knowledge on a regular basis.
3. Incorporate multimedia such as audio and video onto your websites and User Generated Content (UGC) directories such as YouTube.
4. Grow your mailing list. Get people to sign up to a free ‘gift’ on your blog/website to gather email addresses. If you have a blog, users can sign up to receive RSS feeds with your latest blog posts.
5. Communicate Regularly - Send out emails about your industry, sector, products and services to you’re your mailing list.
6. Social Networking - Sign up for free Twitter and Facebook accounts, fill in your profile and take part in social media networking with your specific target audience. Give your prospects and clients a way to get to know you better.

Selling Benefits Versus Features

Many business start ups are based on a hobby or because friends and family have said ‘someone will pay good money for that!’ It makes sense to follow your dreams demonstrating your passion and hobbies are often a good way to start.
But, just because you, your friends and family love the idea, it really doesn’t mean that everyone else will also be raving fans. Nor does it mean that there will be enough people interested, never mind willing to part with their hard earned cash to generate a good enough revenue for you.

If you are just trying to earn a little extra cash, then selling your goods and services to your friends and family will work just fine. That famous phrase, of ‘selling to a warm market’ just will not work if you want to start a business if your ‘warm’ list too small.

The real work begins when you have to start selling to people and/or businesses that do not know you, are not related and have plenty of other options. Instead of just listing what your products and services are (the features) you absolutely must show what the benefits are. We are not talking about lightweight issues but the real reasons why people buy goods and services.

If you buy a car, it will have a very full list of its features. For example, the time taken to go from 0-60 miles per hour, the miles per gallon of petrol, cost to run, the materials used to construct the car, security features etc. The corresponding benefits for these features include saving money and increasing safety.

The real reasons why people are motivated to buy are varied. These ‘benefits’ that motivate a sale, help a buyer to:

• Avoid pain or gain pleasure
• Fulfil needs and/or wants
• Save time 
• Increase security and safety
• Feel and look good
• Save and/or make money
• Become successful

It’s How You Say It
Make sure that you truly understand the benefits for each of the features of your products/services and include them in all of your marketing materials. You should then find it pretty easy to answer the question ‘why should I buy your products/services’ and come up with a meaningful list that you can incorporate into your marketing materials.  That includes sales pages, newsletters, product descriptions and advertising.

Marketing Blind - How To Fail at Growing Your Business

Marketing Blind is an ideal way to fail at growing your business and throw your marketing budget down the drain.   

Many businesses consider marketing to be an additional task that they just don’t have time for. Cold calls and a couple of ads in a local newspaper or a trade magazine are easy to fit in but anything else can be considered to be a big hassle.

After all, if you use your expertise to provide great services and/or products - marketing isn’t really your job is it?  Actually, if you do not have someone to outsource your marketing to, it is your job!

Marketing isn’t just about paying for advertising, having a website or putting leaflets through thousands of letter boxes. A crucial and almost forgotten feature about marketing is having hard cold facts about where your business is now and a crystal clear vision of where you want to be in the future. Marketing then includes the process of transforming your business from where it is now to where you want it to be to achieve your business objectives.

Marketing Blind
I would guess that most of us would never consider driving to a complete unknown destination, if we had no previous knowledge about the route, without either researching the route beforehand or using a map to get from A to B.

If you go away on holiday, unless you have an impeccable memory, you will have your travel itinerary with you to make sure that you don’t miss the flight or go to the wrong hotel. So why would you treat the growth of your business in the same way as an unplanned journey?

A perfect way to ensure that you never increase your profits or get your business out of a rut is to undertake your ‘marketing blind’. That is to know nothing about the position of your business in the market that you operate in and to proceed to implement marketing strategies without any long or short term goals.

Free Marketing Audit - The Situational Analysis Tool
If you do not monitor all of your marketing activity i.e. make a list of the media tools used, the budget spent, the profile of your target market, the number/cost of leads, and number/cost of customers, and revenue generated you will never know if your activities have met any of your business goals.

The Guerrilla Marketing Manifesto ‘Situational Analysis Tool’ is available for download free of charge - http://www.entrepreneurmarketingblog.com/free-marketing-audit/. It will take you through the process of how to:

1. Review the market that you are operating in. Is it new, old, growing or in decline? Can you enter a new market or should you exit an existing one?
2. Conduct research and find out what your customers/clients think of your products and services.
3. Review the internal and external conditions that affect the successful growth of your business and its profitability.
4. Consider whether your products, services and marketing match the profile of your customers and clients. Are any changes needed?
5. Review the features and benefits of your products and services. Should you launch new products, develop existing ones or withdraw from the market?
6. Recognise the intrinsic link between pricing, value and perception with your position in the market.
7. Have a clear brand identity which is promoted through all of your marketing activities.
8. Know the strengths and weaknesses of your planned business growth activities i.e. understand where the opportunities are that can be exploited and the downfalls that should be avoided.

After a Marketing Audit - The Next Step in Marketing
So if you want your marketing to succeed and do not want to throw your budget down the drain, you cannot keep doing the same marketing activities regardless of whether they work or not. The definition of madness, or so they say, is to keep doing the same thing expecting a different result.

You must complete a marketing audit by reviewing everything that you are doing, analyse the results and set objectives and goals to be met in the future. All of this information can be fed into a long term marketing strategy where you set your business goals over a 3-5 year period. You can then develop a short term marketing plan to ensure that you keep on track with specific marketing tools to be implemented over a shorter period of time - typically a 12 month period.

Marketing is about having a vision that can be translated into action - ‘Marketing Blind’ is the antithesis this. You must only take action based on knowledge and information (your gut feeling won’t hurt either!). So, before you pick up the phone and take another call from a sales executive flogging advertising space or spend another penny on advertising that you have no idea will work, take stock of where you are now so that you can achieve your future goals

Target Audience Definition

Many businesses find it quite difficult to clearly state who their customers (current and potential) are and use a very loose description.  Why does it matter?  Because knowing who they are, what they like along with their needs and desires will feed into what you sell and how you sell it.

Magazines in particular are very good at defining who their readers are so that potential advertisers have a clear idea who reads the magazine.  Marie Claire magazine (http://www.marieclaire.co.uk) gives an overview of its readers on its rate card aimed at advertisers.      Have a look for yourself - http://www.ipcadvertising.com/resource/rz4ksj85kcxcpyz0p2rjo8li.pdf

-  68% ABC1 (this is the socio economic group)
-  Median age – 33
-  Appearance conscious
-  Spend a lot of money oh clothes, toiletries and cosmetics
-  Cannot resist expensive perfume/aftershave

Action Points

For your business, find out more about your customers/clients so that you can make sure that your products and services meet their needs and that your marketing is appropriate for that group. 

1.  For example, send a questionnaire to your customers/clients and find out more about them – how old are they, their age, gender, where they live etc.  Define who your customers are in general and/or for specific products, services or ranges. 

2.  Create a profile or a pen portrait describing who they are, their lifestyles, their social groupings, where they live, what they want out of life and the challenges that they face.

3.  For business clients, include additional factors such as sector, location, turnover, job title/function, number of employees etc

4.  Review your products and services - are they aligned with your actual and potential customers?  Make changes where necessary i.e. target your existing products/services to a new target audience or create new products/services for your existing target audience.   

5.  Examine the marketing and advertising activity that you currently use.  Do the media tools used for your advertising and marketing fit with the customer profile that you have created?  If not, research alternative media that is more suitable.

Opt In Email Marketing

Some businesses think that it is more important to have a bigger mailing list when in reality, it is the quality of the list that is most important. 

An element of quality can include spamming rather than getting permission.  The mistake that many small businesses make is to continuously send out emails without taking the time to ask the recipient if they actually want to receive them. 

Also, the source of the email addresses might not be from an authorised source and can be from unregulated direct marketing companies.  There are businesses that use dubious direct marketing methods and make spamming their business.

Put yourself in the shoes of your customers and clients, what scenario would you prefer? 

a)  To receive unsolicited information from a business that you have never heard of regarding a product or service that you have no interest in.

OR ….

b)  To ask to be sent information because you are interested in what a business has to offer or may have done business with them in the past and are interested in their future activities. 

How you choose to interact with potential and actual customers/clients has a direct correlation with the perception that they have of your business and brand.  Someone receiving spam email is less likely to open your email and if they do, will not be very responsive. 

So –

1.  Make sure that you get your email addresses from a reputable source.  The Direct Marketing Association has details of members who sell access to email lists in the UK - www.the-dma.org.uk

2.  If you use an email list that you have compiled yourself using public sources, ask the recipient to opt in to receive future emails.  Even if you have to ask more than once, just make sure that they do not receive emails on an ongoing basis if they have not explicitly agreed to it. 

3.  Make sure that you provide an option for recipients to ‘opt-out’ (stop) receiving emails from you.  Many businesses that spam do not provide any method or contact details for this to happen. 

4.  To save time, use an automated email service such as Aweber (www.aweber.com) or the UK based company Sign Up To (www.sign-up.to).   These services allow recipients to confirm their opt-in to receive further information along with clear links to opt out at any time.

Anticipating the Changing Needs of the Marketplace

It is a difficult predicament when the products and services that you successfully sold in the past suddenly become unwanted by your target market.  Many businesses keep doing the same thing but the needs of their customers have somehow changed.  This is a problem if you do not notice what is going on around you.

A booming market can disguise the fact that your share of the market is in fact in decline if you only measure your success by the revenue that your business generates.  If you have a desire to grow your business you must measure how well you are doing compared to your competitors and the size of the market as a whole.

Taking Woolworths as an example.  Most of us have childhood memories about buying something from that store – for me it was the pick and mix.  At its best, Woolworths was kind of the ‘go to’ store where it was possible to buy a range of items for the home or family.

But Woolies lost its way.  Many of its stores were unprofitable and Woolworths as a brand had no point of difference and no definable position in the market. 

Woolworth’s sold the same things as its competitors but was beaten on price by the veracious £1 stores found on every high street.  Products were often priced relatively high but Woolies could not compete with other aspirational brands.

Finally, a lack of specialism in any one area, which was key to the success of Woolies soon became one of the reasons for its failure.  Over time, an insufficient number of customers chose Woolworths as a destination point.

What Can You Do?

Spend a little time finding out what your customers and clients actually want and need and integrate it into your marketing strategy.  Don’t guess or assume – ask them.  Telephone them, send an email, send a questionnaire or use an online survey form.  Use the information that you gather to help to determine your next steps.

How Does Deflation (Negative Inflation) Affect Your Pricing Policy?

The potential of deflation has been talked about for what seems an age.  Now it has hit home with a rate of -0.4% as inflation has not dropped below zero since the 1960s (nearly 50 years).

Low mortgage interest rates have helped to take us into negative inflation.  As a consumer, you will have personally been affected by fluctuating prices – food and fuel in particular.  Likewise, your consumers and clients will also be affected, not just by the amount of money that they have in their pocket, but also by how confident and secure they feel about the future.

The Retail Price Index (RPI) measures prices of over 1400 items that includes transport, mortgage interest, food, fuel, leisure, catering, alcohol, services, clothes and shoes.  See National Statistics - http://www.statistics.gov.uk/instantfigures.asp for further details. 

Pricing as a Marketing Tool

Pricing is a crucial marketing tool and can either win or lose customers.  Pricing can help you to position your products and services in a particular market aiming it at a specific target group.  Whatever you are selling, the end user/consumer must feel that it offers value, solves a problem and that they can afford it.  If not, you will lose the sale. 

Impact of Continuously Lowering Your Prices

If you keep lowering your prices, then your potential customers and clients might put off buying from you thinking that your prices will fall again at some point in the very near future.  There is nothing wrong in lowering your prices to a level that you feel the market will tolerate.  However, you need to be aware that you can devalue your offering, and feed into the downbeat news that feeds into negative inflation. 

Add Value with Pricing Options

1. Consider putting promotional packages together (consisting of your products/ services) for set time periods and sell at a discount. 
2. In a downturn, consider maintaining your prices but offer more for the same cost.  Keeping your prices the same can demonstrate your confidence in what you do as long as you are completely in tune with what your target audience needs and wants.

The Pirate Bay Business Model

You have probably seen a tremendous amount of coverage for this Swedish based file sharing website recently.

Pirate Bay provides links for users to download videos, music, audio files, games, video and applications. The problem is that the materials that they provide access to are copyrighted and the big movie studios and record labels are not playing ball.

Even though the Pirate Bay do not host the items (save on their servers), they provide access to it. This, according to a Swedish court, has been deemed to be unacceptable – well illegal to be more accurate. The founders have been sentenced to jail time with a huge fine. Whilst the courts work through the appeals process, it’s fair to ask what has this got to do with marketing for entrepreneurs?

Apart from the obvious point of making sure that the products/services that you provide are not illegal, a few issues sprung to mind.

Copyright

The Pirate Bay quite clearly infringed the copyright of lots of companies who have substantial legal clout. In your endeavours, make sure that if you use material that does not belong to you, you correctly reference it. Don’t fall into the trap of just copying what someone else has written, take the time to interpret it and put it into your own words if need be.

Delivering What the Customer/Client Wants

The Pirate Bay team clearly found a gap in the market and delivered what people wanted at a price that they can afford. In order to succeed, you must take the time to find out what your target market wants and then deliver it in the format that they want at a price that they can afford.

Driving Traffic to Your Site with Freebies

The Pirate Bay business model is difficult to compete with as items that would normally have a price attached to them, do not cost anything at all. Aim to offer something free to potential/actual customers or clients in return for them to provide their email address or respond to research questions for example.

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