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.

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

Next Page »