part0013

Naturally, for any business to thrive, it needs customers. They hold the ultimate power over us in what we pay ourselves and our employees, and whether we remain open for business, or not. It’s vital, therefore, that we provide great products, services and experiences in order to attract, retain and develop customers. Of course, this sounds all too obvious, but you’d be surprised at the number of business owners I meet who spend time scratching their heads wondering if the customer really is at the centre of their business, and if so, are they entitled to get what they ask for? In such cases, I have to wonder to myself if people like this really understand anything about marketing at all.

The term ‘marketing’ covers a huge myriad of approaches with seemingly a similar amount of job functions to support them. No wonder it can be confusing, especially when first considering what’s really meant by ‘creating a brand with lifetime values’. In my view, it’s too easy to muddy our marketing waters, and so, in this chapter, I want to begin by addressing the real basics that underpin marketing and to focus on creating leads and opportunities. These are simply the most important elements that your business needs to turn its attention to first. It’s not about creating that super-brand known up and down the country, it’s about wanting to get to the next stage in creating opportunities to bolster your sales pipeline that will ultimately lead to more sales. That’s what’s important to small businesses in the first instance – knowing where the supply chains exist and how the business can fill the gaps. This is especially important if the business is aiming to scale up and create more leads. Relying mainly on referrals is less likely to achieve the outcome you want. Therefore, so that your business can compete with the large corporates, make your mark and open that tap of quality leads which then flow into your business. Size does matter but, in your case, being a small business does actually work in your favour. You need to bring on your ‘inner guerrilla’.

As a small business, you have the distinct advantage that you can respond and pivot far more quickly than any of the corporate giants. I know this from our own experience, a relatively small marine business competing against giants. They’ve got the money, the power and the reach to run rings around us and stamp us into the dirt, if they wanted to. But because they’re so vast and encumbered by long chains of command, responding to market conditions is like trying to turn on a floating sixpence an oil tanker going full steam ahead. It’s virtually impossible, unless you have six to twelve months to spare. Where we have the edge is that in using ‘guerrilla tactics’, we can respond to market conditions at full thrust and, like a jet ski in comparison, change direction quickly and disrupt the waters by creating maximum impact. Our very size allows, invites even, adaptability which in turn alters the marketplace at the same time, made all the more possible through the regular, defined and disciplined meetups with our teams that I outlined in the previous chapter. It’s why the last item on our weekly sales agenda is always ‘marketing intel’. Our team is populated with growth mind-set talent: each regularly listens to podcasts, reads news feeds and researches the market within their specialism. We therefore receive a huge influx of marketing intel into the business. This allows us to pivot almost instantly and to chase new leads. With the onset of social media and online channels through which we can now connect, it’s more possible than ever to gain immediate access to this market intel and to monitor campaign data analytics and ROI as they develop in real time. Understanding which online channel is right for your business is key, whether you are aiming for organic growth via search engines, paid-for campaigns using Google and Facebook, or acting as a result of interactions following a blog or post article on LinkedIn, etc. It will require some investment of both time and money, but the good news is that it needn’t be a huge amount. The main point is that you need to remain focused and proactive.

Since I began my business, the marketing emphasis has shifted from the ‘push’ approach where you encourage customers in through deals and offers to ‘buy, buy, buy’, to one that now needs to pull them in. Customers want more value, and they enjoy reading great content and information so that they can build up trust between them and your brand. Make no mistake, customers will more than likely want to carry out their own online research into your business as well as its products and/or services before they buy from you for the first time. Never before has the presence of your ‘social proof’ been so important in marketing terms, so it’s up to you to provide as much information and content as you can in order to establish any kind of meaningful relationship that will then convert into a sale. Give them information so that they can make the right decision along with the social proof that you’re working with the right people. They want to consume your guides, ebooks, case studies and testimonials.

If that’s making you pull your hair out because it’s another item to add to your to-do list, then don’t lose sight of why you need to do it; it’s because you want to increase the visibility of your business so that it can grow and scale up. Even if you don’t yet have your own marketing department, it’ll be worth the effort and minimal expense required to take these steps. For example, we use LinkedIn and find it very effective in reaching out to B2B leads through posting a combination of outsourced and in-house-generated content. This is an excellent way of leveraging your brand. If you provide interesting and insightful content, you’ll begin to create a following and establish trust that will eventually create more leads from people viewing re-posted video content, blogs or articles, or even as a result of you commenting on other thought leaders’ posts.

I was staggered recently to learn that my own LinkedIn followers are now in excess of 24,000, but that has been the result of constantly creating valuable content to the market in all forms, which I’ve then posted on the platform. Yes, it takes a lot of patience over time, but only ten minutes a day to build that amount and, to be truthful, for a while I wasn’t seeing any results from it. Until, that is, I noticed that I was receiving more and more likes, followed by comments starting to creep in. The one thing I didn’t do was give up: I kept posting my content. Then, almost as if from nowhere, the tide turned and I was engulfed in a wave of enquiries as people began to engage with me, pulled towards me because they viewed me as a leader in my field of expertise. I can confidently say that at the time of publication I receive at least ten new leads per week via my feed, fifty-two weeks of the year. That converts to at least a five-figure sum in revenue on a monthly basis. As a channel for attracting marketing leads LinkedIn is becoming more and more powerful and can’t be ignored. Feel free to take a look at my profile, here:

Like many businesses, we’ve created our own Facebook page. Although Facebook is a more consumer-facing platform, it still remains the biggest of the social media channels online. It’s an ideal place for us to post video footage from which we attract a surprising number of B2B leads. As with LinkedIn, the typical Facebook user is looking for interesting and engaging content, much of which we repurpose from one platform to another. Facebook’s mass market reach means that almost anyone who uses the internet will have their own personal page, and that includes potentially new business leads for us too. The main advantage is that we can reach people through their interests and hobbies, and on Facebook that’s a much larger audience. Its advertising model is incredibly sophisticated and allows us to target very specific people though identifying job titles and interests, and this represents an amazing opportunity for us to reach those leads. No matter what your business sector is, thinking creatively about your target leads will allow you to segment your own efforts.

In addition to our Facebook page we also created a presence on its platform called ‘The Drone Community’. This acts as the top of our funnel for people who want to train as drone pilots. The intention is to build a group as big as we possibly can from which we can then filter those wanting to take part in our courses and lifetime learning. It’s another one of our proactive efforts to extend our reach into leads that we can pull towards us, and even though we are a B2B operation, it’s surprising how many of the regular consumers we reach then convert into customers looking to purchase a £20,000 drone for their business. We place a huge importance on getting our research just right so that we can aim for powerful targeting. Our ROI is a staggering 20:1 – for every £1 we spend we take £20 in sales.

One search engine that’s often overlooked by marketers happens to be the second biggest in the world: YouTube. It’s the place to showcase your video content. For our business, doing this was one of the best decisions we ever made. In my opinion, it’s the ideal channel for a small business to post evergreen material that never dates. For example, some of the most watched videos are of plumbers or DIY merchants showing how to fix a problem with the kitchen sink using their tools. Want to know how to seal a bath? Then there’s a YouTube expert to show you, and what’s more, you can click on their link and order the parts for overnight delivery. These videos represent high value to the viewer and we’ve followed their lead by creating useful, informative content on how to best use a drone, instead of one of us droning on (pardon the pun) about how great the industry is. For example, the response to the following video we posted was phenomenal from a lead generation perspective.

Who sends direct mail now? We do, but why? The short answer to that is, nobody expects it any more. You’d be surprised, however, just how disruptive this dinosaur can still be. In fact, until recently (in our marine business) we still used the good old fax shot, once the epitome of new communications technology but long considered to be dead in the water. That’s great news for us, because so many businesses we target still retain a fax line and a machine. It’s perhaps one of the most disruptive means of reaching potential new customers I can think of. Imagine this: a lead you’ve been trying to reach receives in their inbox dozens, if not hundreds, of prospecting emails per week (that’s if they’re not already filtered into spam and junk mail) and the likelihood is that yours will be one of the many that is deleted or left unread. A fax, on the other hand, once sent, can often still get printed and ultimately land on the desk of the prospect. For novelty factor alone it’s an attention grabber. Obviously, fax machines are effectively dead and long gone in the vast majority of industries since the adoption of email, but it still might be worth your time and effort checking whether your potential leads still maintain a fax (for example, solicitors, shipping companies, etc). In fact, one of our biggest ROIs resulted from a fax shot campaign in 2015 and I believe the fax machine in our old business still hasn’t been sent for recycling.

In my experience, the time, effort and costs related to attending exhibitions as an exhibitor have never really provided a satisfactory ROI. For a small business looking to scale, it’s an expensive option and while your brand might experience the ‘halo effect’ in creating a lovely glow, it’s not a marketing route I recommend. Instead, we moved into trialling a number of demonstration days in which we invite our customer base to visit us, either at our office, or at a hotel facility that we hire out at a fraction of the cost compared to exhibiting. These have been highly effective marketing events during which we control the agenda for our captive audience, and demonstrate our products while we have their 100% attention. What works for us is that we create an event for pre-positive leads which has an exclusive feel about it. The fact people actually turn up means we know they want to engage with us and our products, and that they fully appreciate the lengths we go to in order to look after them on the day (including tempting and tasty refreshments).