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So, exactly how do you market your green credentials?
July 21, 2010
In the first of a three part series, Fiona Humberstone explores the concept of a ‘Green business’
When was the last time you stopped and considered how effectively you market your business’s green credentials? Many of us are so busy trying to get from one day to the next and see out the downturn that marketing our companies’ green credentials has slipped waaaaaaay down the agenda. But should it have done?
I’m mid-way through a series of seminars I’ve been asked to run for Gatwick Diamond businesses on Marketing Your Green credentials. And preparing for and running the workshops has been an interesting exercise. I wonder whether I’ve given enough thought to how I market Flourish’s green credentials, and whether it’s something that matters at the moment? Are consumers as concerned about green as they are about price at the moment? Can you leverage value and loyalty from being green?
Do our clients even understand what being green means? On Twitter there was a little confusion when I asked my followers: “How do you market a sustainable business?” The responses were varied, and interesting. It appears that the buzz-word, sustainable, means different things to different people. And many simply weren’t sure what it meant at all!
So, is sustainability about reducing resources, the impact of your business on the environment, is it about sourcing locally, creating a business that will be around in 30 years? Is it about the way you treat your staff? Or is it about being socially responsible: about putting as much back into the local economy as possible and adding value where you can?
The truth is it’s probably all of the above. When I asked my first lot of delegates what sustainability meant to their business, one group came up with the answer “You need to be seen to be being green”. And at a truly cynical level, we can all “greenwash” our companies and pay lip service to the environment, but that’s something that both consumers and journalists will see through very quickly.
As Elizabeth Cairns said, you need to put green at the very heart of your business and communicate that with passion. Which leads me on to asking you the question: Just what shade of green is your business? Are you green to the core? Is the setup of your business focused around reducing the impact of your activities on the environment, sourcing responsibly, treating your staff well and working in the community? Is green at the heart of your business? Or is it on the perimeter? Have you felt as though you “ought to do something” and switched your paper buying from normal to recycled? Neither answer is right or wrong, but how you market your green credentials will very much depend on how much it matters to your business.
Dragons' Den digest: Week One
July 15, 2010
The new series of Dragons' Den began last night. As well as tweeting along to the episode, we will provide a Dragons' Den digest each week.
Quote of the Episode: "You win the worst invention ever brought into Dragons’ Den today” Peter Jones
Idea 1
Product: Flowsignals - light up traffic signs
Investment sought: '£50,000 for 10per cent’
Handling: Struggled to make a case for the product and appeared not to have conducted sufficient research into if the product was needed. Muddled.
Outcome: Having invested £24,000 of his own money, Flowsignals walked away with no interest from the Dragons
Verdict: Pitch poor
Idea 2
Product: Pebble Bed Vineyard - own your own vineyard
Investment sought: ‘£60,000 for 20 per cent’
Handling: Nervy start was not a problem. Business plan interogation from Deborah Meaden highlighted a number of flaws in return on investment. Entrepreneur knew his sums but they didn't add up. Duncan saw a way to make it pay.
Outcome: Accepts an offer of £60,000 for 40 per cent from Duncan
Verdict: Pitch perfect
Idea 3
Product: Dhamaka Events/Flex FX Productions - Bollywood dance events
Investment sought: ‘£200,000 for 30 per cent shares’
Handling: An excellent pitch and dance demonstration. Both well rehearsed. Handling of the Dragons was cagey. Not open enough about the business plan and frustrated all Dragons.
Outcome: No takers
Verdict: Pitch poor
Idea 4
Product: Worthenshaw's - healthy frozen food desserts
Investment sought:‘£65,000 for 15 per cent equity stake’
Handling: Confident with her research and had done a lot of leg work to get to advanced stages with Tesco. Passionate.
Outcome: £100,000 for 40 per cent from Theo was declined in favour of a joint deal with Duncan and Peter to the tune of £65,000 for 30 per cent
Verdict: Pitch perfect
- You can replay the episode on the BBC's Dragons' Den microsite
What did you think of the episode?
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What shape is your marketing budget?
June 30, 2010
The questions I most often get asked about marketing budgets are:
- How much should I spend as a percentage of turnover?
- Should I benchmark against competitors?
- How much shall I spend on each discipline (PR, DM, Events, Ads, etc.)?
All totally reasonable questions… but what you should be asking is: what shape should my marketing budget be? Seriously, it is the most important question there is on the budgeting front. So, let me tell you what I mean.
A decent marketing programme is centred on a sales funnel, onto which you’ve mapped the decision making process for your target audience. (see previous posts Making Marketing Pay, and What to Say When).
Fig1: Chart to show the influence of marketing spend across the sales funnel
From this you can put together a programme of activity that moves a person from awareness to a sale. Each marketing technique has a different level of influence at each stage of this process. You need to determine the level of influence at each stage, then apportion this across the funnel.
There are a few ways to decide the amount of influence each technique has:
- Workshop with the sales and marketing team to agree the apportionment
- Surveys or focus groups amongst new customers to get them to assess what they saw at each stage (this can be tricky, as people often post-rationalise decision-making, meaning that emotional triggers are downplayed)
- A best guess (hey, we’ve all got to start somewhere)
- A combination of all of the above.
From this exercise you now have a powerful tool for designing programmes and allocating budget. Now analyse your budget in the same way:
- Split your spend into each technique
- Apportion this spend as per the influence amount you’ve worked out for that technique (for example, if you worked out that PR has 40% influence at awareness, 10 per cent at interest, etc. your spend on PR should be tabulated to reflect that)
- You now have an actual shape for your budget
Compare your actual budget shape to the ideal budget shape you’ve established to maintain a free-flowing sales funnel. This allows you assess where you’re spending too much or too little, and to adjust your spend according to the funnel requirements.
Now, if you have a budget cut, or find a pot of cash, you again have a powerful tool to decide how to adjust your spending. The crucial factor here is to maintain the shape. So, rather than cutting a project that happens to be the right level of spend, you can cut evenly across the funnel ensuring that you’re not leaving any gaps.
- Article originally appeared on Clear-Thought.co.uk
Emergency Budget — a little Wordle in your ear
June 22, 2010
We knew it would be painful. We had seen “The first cut is the deepest” trotted out more times than a prize pig. But was it really ever going to be all that bad from a small business perspective?
Yes, VAT will go up to 20 per cent in January and cuts to business support have been outlined. But if you are one of the UK’s small businesses, there are some useful measures in place to ensure that you are part of the growth of the nation.
George Osborne said “Britain is open for business” on more than one occasion and with small business tax being cut to 20 per cent from next April and the employers’ National Insurance threshold increasing to £21 above inflation, there are reasons to be cheerful.
The Wordle above shows that “public” and “spending” featured prominently in the Chancellor’s speech, and that he studiously avoided the word “cuts” - even though he mentioned frequently the “billions” that need to be shaved off the national debt.
Pride of place is occupied by the word “tax”. Obviously, without taxation, the Government wouldn’t get close to recouping the billions that are required to get the economy on an even keel.
“Government”, “people”, “country” and “public” share a near equal billing, which is indicative of the “We are in it together” rhetoric that featured heavily during the election campaign. With such unequivocal fiscal measures taken today, the Government is keen to stress that the burden is to be shared among us all.
Ten signs that you could do with strategic marketing advice
June 21, 2010
There are hundreds of potential marketing advisors for a small business owner. From design agencies, PR specialists, telemarketers, SEO experts, social media bods, media planners, and on, and on. It’s difficult to know who to talk, when and why.
Here are ten signs that you could do with some proper strategic marketing input:
- You’re not 100% sure where new business actually comes from – how do they find your site? What prompts them to pick up the phone, etc?
- You’ve done some work with an agency, but you weren’t too chuffed with the output – what was the brief?
- You get lots of leads, but they don’t seem to convert – what is the sales journey, and how well supported is it with powerful marketing content?
- You get enquiries for work that you don’t really like doing – is your business clear about what it does best?
- You’re always screwed down on price – does your brand and messaging set your business apart?
- When asked what your business does, your people all say something different – is your team clear on what you’re about?
- You rarely get repeat business or referrals – is your customer marketing and networking strategy creating advocates for your business?
- If one big customer left you’d be in trouble – is your business over reliant on one customer, or one market?
- You’ve tried telemarketing, PR, advertising or another tactic and it hasn’t delivered – do you have an integrated plan with momentum that all fits together and ties into your sales process?
- You’ve read the books and been to some courses – do you know that you need to give marketing some attention, but never quite get around to it when you’re back at the office?
These are all real scenarios that we’ve heard from small business owners in the last 18 months. Small businesses often make do with a ‘marketing-come-reception’ set-up, working with the marketing suppliers run by friends of friends, or the people down the road. And, there’s nothing wrong with that…if you know exactly what you’re doing on the marketing front. If you have an effective strategy clearly mapped-out, and a good grasp of the interplay of the key marketing tactics, you can indeed put together a top notch freelance team to deliver against your sales and marketing objectives. If, however, you’re feeling your way through the discipline, working it out as you go, then you’ll probably find that each supplier you speak to seems to sound pretty sensible.
You may struggle to find your way through all the ‘good ideas’ that they come up with to configure a watertight marketing operation that supports every step of your sales funnel.
In larger organisations it’s the job of the marketing director to pull all this together. Coming in on salaries upwards of £65k, most small business owners we meet simply can’t afford to have a hard-hitting marketing director on their team. So, what do you do? If you find yourself nodding in recognition at any of the statements above, it would be sensible to find yourself a strategic marketing partner who can be your marketing brain – working out what you need to say, to whom, when and through what channel.
- Article originally appeared on Clear-Thought.co.uk
Seven killer facts you ignore at your peril if you want to stay in business
June 14, 2010
- If you don’t deliver a good product or service you won’t succeed for long. No matter how good your marketing or advertising, you can’t sell rubbish indefinitely. Think of any business that’s gone down the drain.
- The customer you already have will always make about 3 – 5 times more money for you than an identical prospect – so pay more attention to them than anyone else
- Advertising is not the only, and often by no means the best, way to build a brand. In fact it can cost you a fortune without achieving anything if you don’t have more money than God.
- Most mergers and acquisitions end in chaos, misery and unemployment for the poor employees — and don’t create value. That is, the two firms together end up worth less than they were separate.
- All available research suggests that recommendation from others – word of mouth – is the chief reason why people buy. So if you don’t have a customer-get-a-customer or viral marketing programme, you’re mad.
- Instead of worrying about talking to your prospects and customers too often, you’re better off thinking of reasons and interesting ways to talk to them more. One of my clients e-mails prospects as often as twice a week successfully. We mail our own list even more frequently. Very few unsubscribe.
- Never assume because someone doesn’t buy they’re not interested. They have many things on their mind besides you. Keep communicating till it doesn’t pay.
Drayton Bird is a renowned direct marketing teacher, speaker and author. Find out more about him on his profile.
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