You can’t please all the people all the time

03Jun By Phil Kingsland

In my work helping businesses large and small with their digital marketing, our work together often ends up helping the business understand their full customer journey. For many businesses this leads to the realisation that they’re trying to serve everyone with a perfect solution, which they invariably fail to manage.

This often manifests itself in the marketing and communications material of such companies. Businesses have a product that can be used in many ways by different people to meet their differing needs. This leads to the desire to tell everyone all the features, so the core message gets lost or becomes so garbled that it appeals to no-one. It might feel counter-intuitive but targeting your message more tightly, so you’ll only appeal to a small section of your audience is the way to begin to engage them. You’ll be talking their language and solving their problems and you’ll be able to be very clear how you do it and what the benefits of your approach are.

In today’s social media, always on environment it’s even more important to remember that this approach needs to be followed. Be focused on who you want to reach out to. Be specific about what you can do for them and why you are the best option.

A simple start point for reviewing your marketing strategy

30MarMarch 30, 2015 By Phil Kingsland

“We’re focused on delivering customer value”, it’s a statement uttered by many, yet I wonder whether those making such utterances do so, just because they think it’s something they should say? Sometimes we need to get out, talk to people and really get to grips with what our customers actually want and whether that’s what we’re actually delivering.

How do you do this?

Simple, ask your customers:

Why do you choose our product / service?
What do we get right?
What could we do better?
What should we stop doing?
What would make you go to a competitor instead of us? (Do you already use a competitor?)
What don’t you like about what we do?

And listen to their answers. Don’t just rely on what you think you heard or what you wanted to hear. Listen to it all. Take it in and ask yourself – are we really meeting their needs?

If you are, then great, keep on trucking.

If not then maybe it’s time to take a root and branch look at what you’re doing and how to improve things.

Doesn’t feel much like a marketing strategy yet? Well, it’s time for honesty – your marketing is built on your product / service quality, reputation, desirability and ultimately what your customers think of you. If those things aren’t right and understood then no amount of “marketing” is going to build a loyal and loving fanbase. So get out there – ask questions and make sure you’re on the right track.

Only then should you start thinking about how you’re going to raise awareness and increase those leads that will grow your business.

7 quick digital marketing wins for engineering companies

10FebFebruary 26, 2015 By Phil Kingsland

We lead busy lives, so we often need reminding of the simple things, that have a big impact, never more so than when it comes to digital marketing. It’s worth taking 5 minutes to check you’ve not forgotten some of these:

Put on your customers shoes – remember what you offer your customers is likely only a small part of their business, and they’ll have different issues to you that keep them awake at night. Think about how you can add value to solving their problems, not just how you can sell them more stuff.
Ask your customers where they hang out – it’s no use chatting into the ether on Facebook, if your clients hang out on Twitter.
Know your numbers – if you’re not measuring what’s working, how can you improve your outcomes? Always, set up a simple set of metrics to see what’s working well for you and what happens when you modify things.
If you are measuring things like your website activity using a tool like Google analytics, are you taking action from the information you receive? If you’re reporting on the activity and doing nothing with it, then you’re missing an opportunity. It’s lovely to know you’re popular (if you are!), but it’s better to take action on that popularity and turn it into business.
If you have a blog – when was the last time you updated it? Your visitors will look at your blog, and get an immediate impression of how interested you are in your clients. If you don’t update your blog, because you don’t think anyone’s reading your blog, then take it off your site – better not to have one than have one which was last updated over a year and a half ago. If you can’t think about what to write – go back to my first point and write about the things keeping your customers up at night
Are there any ways you could be re-purposing the content you have in one place, such as your blog, and putting it out more widely. Submit a variation to the story to another site as a guest post or hook your story into a relevant event that’s in the news and highlighting it to a journalist?
And finally, how easy is it to get hold of you? Is your phone number clear on your website? Do you make it clear that people can pick up the phone and talk to a real person for support? Do you have a personal email address on your website or an impersonal info@…?

These are just a few simple things to review, no matter where you’re at with your digital journey and they apply not only to engineering companies, but pretty much any business out there that’s seeking to make more of its online presence.

Don’t think you can do all that in 5 minutes? Select one, do that and do the one a day over the next 7 days. Let me know how you get on.

A secret of content marketing – getting back on the bike

08JanFebruary 26, 2015 By Phil Kingsland

2014 was the year that the phrase “Content Marketing” took off (well, in marketing circles at least!). Of course, if you believe much of the hype it’s a new way of marketing, it’s never been done before, it’s the only way to get leads, etc. In fact, the reality is rather different: content marketing has been around for a long time.

Good marketing, ergo good content marketing, focuses on the audience and engaging them in a topic that is relevant, timely, has an impact on them and through their medium of choice. The reason that content marketing has been coined as a phrase is that the opportunity for content creation has been massively amplified over the last few years as the nature of the way people consume content has changed and the ability to easily publish content has changed. Yet, even in the days before there was such a simple and direct way to engage your audience, the approach remained the same: provide a timely, compelling story built around the need of your audience and find the best way to get it in front of them. “Gobbing off”, as a colleague of mine once put it, didn’t work any better then than it does now.

One of the biggest challenges with content marketing today, is cutting through all the noise. With ease of publication, has come increase in volume – exponential increase in volume. So, how do you increase your cut through? Well, actually it all goes back to where good marketing started – step into your audience’s shoes, find out where they hang out, create content that is relevant to them, make it emotionally engaging, make it focused on their need. Then and only then, only once you have established connection and need, link it back to your offering.

And, while you’re at it, recognise that all of this takes time. There are no shortcuts. You need to take time and be consistent in getting your content out there, which is a hard thing to do. So, we often see people fall off the bike – they don’t get responses quickly enough, it’s not a core part of the business, they just can’t find the energy, they don’t have the commitment to the programme, so they stop producing content. And that’s ok – there’s no need to beat yourself up over it if you take a break from producing content. What’s important is to recognise when this has happened (no matter how long the time has been) and then get back on the bike and start producing again. No-one will judge you for starting again and who knows, the effort may pay off sooner than you think.

The web or the Internet – does your audience care?

17MarFebruary 25, 2015 By Phil Kingsland

Last week you may have seen a raft of articles celebrating the fact that it’s 25 years since Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the web. If you’re a reader of some of the more technical media, you may also have noticed a number of commentators bemoaning the fact that that several media outlets committed the heinous crime of calling the web the Internet.

The bottom line is that many people use the words web and Internet interchangeably. They simply don’t care that one’s the pipes and the other’s the way you navigate. To your average Joe it’s all the same thing.

And the media outlets that didn’t get it right know this. They know their audience well enough to know that, despite the fact that Sir Tim was part of the marvelous opening ceremony for London 2012, most of those watching don’t make a distinction between the web and the Internet. They know that it’s too technical. In the same way that they know that people don’t care how their latest mobile phone works, or the technical reasons behind the different HD formats of their televisions. What they do know is that a Briton invented a part of one of the most significant technological shifts of the last century and that’s what matters to their readers.

Which is of course the same reason that the media outlets who bemoaned the crime also wrote about the fact they got it wrong – they know their readership do care.

It’s all about writing for your audience. Something it’s easy to forget about when we get caught up in the excitement of our products or services. So remember, whether you care about calling it the web or the Internet, it’s what your readers care about that matters more.

When does little data become big data?

12MarFebruary 25, 2015 By Phil Kingsland

We’ve all heard lots about big data recently, but what relevance is it to you and your business?

1. Data for data’s sake

The first thing to know about data is that what ever its size, data is a tool. On it’s own not much use. It’s the insights that can be derived from the data that matter. Insights that tell us about the past, give indicators of the present situation, and ultimately enable prediction of the future.

Data for data’s sake is pointless. Data that is used for insight is golddust.

2. Where’s my data?

Data can come in many forms from many sources. Every business has data about its customers, suppliers, staff, products, and much more (even if it’s only stored in one person’s head). The first challenge is to recognize where the data lies, then how to access it and draw it together and ultimately to derive knowledge and wisdom from the information held in the data, so you can make decisions and take action.

2. Analysis paralysis

Getting the balance right with data is important. Insight provided by one set of questions, often leads to further questions, which leads to further questions… Once you begin to understand one aspect of your customers’ buying patterns, you very quickly want to understand more. And here’ lies the temptation of big data – the desire to want ever more data, so you can make the best possible decisions ever with 100% certainty. This can lead to analysis paralysis, the ever-increasing desire for data leading to indecision and inaction. So, apply your resources appropriately. Don’t get stuck in the rut of data collection. Get enough, make the decision, move on.

3. So, when does little data become BIG data? – Does size really matter?

I expect you’ll realize by now that, in my opinion, this is not the important question. Yes, it matters what computing power you need. Yes, it matters, what data sources you are drawing together. Yes, it makes a difference to the tools you need to process the data. But no, it doesn’t matter how big your data is, as long as you are deriving knowledge and wisdom from it.

And that can be done with very small datasets as well as very big ones.

4. First steps with BIG data

Often the first sensible steps with big data are to practice on little data sets. Understand what you can learn from the data you have. Make decisions based on the knowledge you gain. It’s the decisions you make that will drive your business forward, not the mountain of data.

Want to talk more about making choices based on data? Get in touch.

Get found

11NovFebruary 25, 2015 By Phil Kingsland

I bought something online today. It cost me 6 pence, it cost 99 pence to have it delivered and it gave me value of about £20. I was chuffed, because something else I’d previously purchased now worked properly.

The remarkable thing about this activity, for me, was the simplicity of it. Not only that, but it’s the way such transactions have become a part of everyday life and our expectations of service have risen so fast.

The part I was looking for didn’t, to my knowledge, have a name. It was a small metal ring that would allow a lampshade I’d bought to fit onto the light mounting in our living room.

So, what to search for in Google? I have to admit I wasn’t sure but I knew that I could refine my search if I wasn’t hitting the exact spot. So I typed in my problem rather than trying to come up with a name for this strange object. “Lampshade hole too big”. Surely this can’t work I thought, but no, lo and behold at position 2 there was the answer to my problem and it was clear even from the short excerpt of text that appeared alongside the response – this was what I was searching for!

It was, of course, only a short hop, skip and a jump to review it more fully, decide to buy and within a few clicks it was being packaged and posted to me.

Now, I know there are many who feel that some of the online behemoth stores are not for them – they kill the high street, they work their employees too hard, etc. – and I know they’re not perfect, but the simplicity of what I had just done struck me as something many businesses can learn from.

What’s to learn then?

If you want to get found think about what people might search for. That includes the phrases people may use, because they don’t all use the corporate language you do, even consider descriptions of the problem the customer may want to solve. Describe your product or service offering clearly and make sure you optimise how your page will appear in search. Make the purchase and delivery process simple.

It’s not easy, and I know you might not sell widgets like this, but if there are others out there doing it, then it becomes the standard which we will all need to meet.

Digital marketing, it’s part of the mix

01OctFebruary 25, 2015 By Phil Kingsland

“What’s our digital marketing strategy?” – one of the most popular refrains from Boards around the country for the last couple of years. Leaving the marketing team grappling with the task of coaxing the Board into understanding that a strategy isolated from the rest of the marketing strategy, or worse, from the whole business strategy is probably not the way to save the company!

No, not only does digital run across the whole company (think: marketing, customer service, internal and external communications) but within marketing its simply one part of the toolkit for executing the overall marketing strategy. It should be thought through at the same time as all the other components of a campaign, it should be evaluated on its efficacy and returns, the same as any other marketing activity.

Don’t get me wrong – we’ll still see digital only campaigns. But they’ll come from an informed view of what is the best approach and be chosen because they get the right results, not just because we have to “do digital”.