A Bunch of Stuff I Know About Small Business Communications

Background: This is the content of a presentation I am making tonight for one of my favourite networking groups in St Catharines. I like this group a lot because A) it's growing, B) it's full of interesting people and C) I can ride my bike to the meetings.

Since they had nothing but a ratty ass business card and a Xeroxed flyer, they needed just about everything. So we started and slowly but surely built them a brand, starting with a strategy that reflected their positioning in their marketplace and their specific desire to educate the public and the trades they dealt with on the importance of metal recycling in today’s world.
In the first three years their business analysis told them that they were tracking at a business growth rate of about 22%. This added profitability which they attributed to a combination of communication and direct sales, gave them the confidence to expand their operation from their Mississauga base to Oakville.
This was a considerable capital expenditure, but they were confident in their ability to keep growing their business so they made the leap.
Last year, after three years in Oakville their business growth rate overall held at around 20%, despite a huge drop in metal prices.

And three years after expanding, they were confident enough in their business and their brand to expand yet again and develop a retail operation, which we called Peel MetalMart.
All through this process they never questioned my charges for anything, because they got that it was an investment that was making them money that they would not have made without making the investment.

3. You’re not going anywhere without a strategy.
Jerry Goodis (The Gerry Goodis Agency)

Most entrepreneurs and small business owners carry around their marketing plans in their head. And getting it out of their head is more or less like trying to get blood out of a stone.
They don’t understand communications strategy. And because they have never been through the process, they have no appreciation for just how important and fundamental this document is.
A well thought out communications strategy talks in detail about your business objectives so anyone who is working on your business will be able to understand just what its about,
It talks about your target audience so anyone working on your business will know who they are talking to, and have a pretty good idea of the most effective ways to reach them.
It defines your main benefit which is your USP or Unique Selling Proposition which is the thing that separates you from your competition
It delineates your benefit support which are all the reasons why someone would believe that main benefit is for real.
Finally, it summarizes the character of your brand, which is key in terms of defining the tone and manner of your communications.
This is all critically important to any creative person working on your communication. And it’s just as important for you as a business owner because going through the process of developing a communication strategy will help you immeasurably in terms of how you present and sell to your clients or customers. Strategy is the communications method that moves your your business forward. Without that method there really is only madness.

4. There is no such thing as ‘old school’ and ‘new school’ when it comes to communication.
Me again.

While it’s true that about 87% of the Canadian population are connected to the internet, it’s also true that a very high percentage of them of them do not respond to or have blockers in place to screen out internet advertising.
Where this nets out is an ROI that often does not justify the initial expenditure. Which, of course, makes no sense at all, unless you are doing it to set some sort of base line, which a lot of companies have done lately.
The main reason that digital gets all the attention that it does is because over the past several years, especially in the US, the digital marketing industry has been colluding with the major advertising agency groups, providing financial kickbacks as incentive for these agencies to keep recommending digital advertising across a wide spectrum to their clients. The agencies do this despite the fact that the effective reach and the ROI on this investment is extremely low to non-existent.
About 3 months ago, the world’s largest advertiser, Procter and Gamble, reduced their digital marketing budget by about 75%, citing lack of performance. Since then several other companies have done the same.
Advertisers are no longer blindly trusting digital marketers to anywhere near the extent they have in the past. Mainly because once they start tracking their results over a long enough period to give them a decent reading, they find that people simply don’t care enough about this medium to make it profitable for them to use it.
This is a key stat from an article I read recently on ROI capability in digitial media.
"50% of B2B marketing executives find it difficult to attribute marketing activity directly to revenue results as a means to justify budgets".
http://www.cmo.com/features/articles/2015/1/6/15_stats_marketing_ROI.html#gs.cC4up_
Where is the money that's moving out of digital marketing going?  Well, a lot of itis  are going back to the the other side of the divide. To direct marketing and trade advertising, identifying working on identifying new trade show opportunities and strengthening and sharpening media buys in print, television and radio.
Don’t get me wrong here. I have nothing against digital marketing as an option for certain types of businesses. In fact I wholeheartedly support the marketing that people like Brandon and my friend Barb Munshaw in Ottawa do for local businesses on Facebook and other social media sites, because it’s one of the very few areas where certain types of businesses can do very well.
So the lesson here is that as your business grows, someone will invariably come along and dangle digital marketing in front of you like a bright shiny bauble. And if what they are saying computes in your lizard brain to sounding too good to be true, then it probably is.

5. Your contact list is worth its weight in gold
Me

In any area of communication, knowing who you want to reach and how to reach them is the key to actually doing that successfully.
All communication activity is based on, and to a great extent shaped by, the target audience you want to reach.
I am fond of telling people that literally nothing about communications has changed since about 1960 other than the tools you have at your disposal and the ability that many people have to use them.
At the end of the day, the single most important thing you can do for your business in my opinion is to build and maintain a permission based contact list.
In digital marketing, email is far and away the most effective medium for driving traffic to either your web site or your location.
In trade show marketing you need to constantly be researching shows that you can attend where you can have direct access to people in your target audience. Yep another list.
Direct marketing, which is still one of the most effective communication tools at your disposal, with returns that most companies can track from 5 to 15%, is as dependent on your contact list as it is the quality of the pieces you send out.
In conventional media like television and and radio, it's knowing which programs and or times of day your customers are likely to be tuned in.
In public relations, the online and 3 D-publications you should be submitting articles to is another critical list. And any articles you create to support your business should also be blogged out on your web site and on a list of blog sites where you feel potential customers might be lurking.
In communication, the most dangerous thing you can do is put all your eggs in one basket. It’s very important to maintain a presence in all the media that your research tells you are viable for your business.

6. The best kinds of communication people to deal with are those who have experience on both sides of the digital divide.
Me

Many digital marketers will be the first to tell you that they know very little about marketing in conventional media. That’s because many of them were still mastering the art of using a fork and a spoon when these conventional media were the only media.
People who grew up in the advertising business and made the transition to digital when it started to become a viable medium have a decided advantage here. Because they have a perspective on both sides of this so called Digital Divide.
My first digital project was probably about 10-12 years ago when I was hired by the first digital agency I had ever heard of, called Armantus, to write dedicated emails for Fidelity investments.
My client Andrew Keyes asked me if I had any digital marketing experience. I told him that other than my own blogging, I did not. And he said, great. You can write and you don’t have any preconceptions about digital marketing so this makes you very teachable. You would not believe the number of people who think they have this shit all figured out but don’t.
So he taught me. And this leads to another point.

7. Industry specific experience is over-rated.
Me again, and every good creative director I have eve known

A lot of businesses look for creative suppliers who have ‘related experience’. And in certain areas, such as medical, pharmaceutical and some types of high technology marketing that’s probably a good thing to look for.
But generally speaking what you should be looking for is people who are intelligent and skillful enough to get where you are coming from and to simplify your messages. These are people who can put themselves in the shoes and mindset of the customer and talk to them in language they understand and feel comfortable with.
In most cases, this is not about related experience, but simply the ability to communicate effectively based on a set of parameters defined by a strategy. And this brings me to the last point.

8. Trust trumps everything when it comes to making communication relationships work.

Me and Robert Wright

A lot of you already know this because you have had to put your trust somewhere in order to get your business off the ground. So you have to be every bit as comfortable with the people you hire to help you with your communication.
How you determine your comfort level is not something that’s easily definable. It’s simply a feeling that’s made of up confidence, respect and intuition. If you touch all those bases when you’re considering hiring anyone you’ll be better off than you would just reading a resume and taking a chance.
So there you have it. I know a lot more but these are the basics. Not coincidentally, a lot of this stuff is contained and explained in more depth in my ebook. Small Business Communications For The Real World, (see link below)
If you would like a link to this post to have for reference, just email me at the address on my card and I will send it to you.
Thanks for listening and good luck going forward.

9. Related Posts

https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/10-ways-to-ensure-your-communications-materials-are-giving-good-roi

https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/10-things-that-can-hurt-your-business-and-you-probably-don-t-even-know-you-re-doing-them

https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/advertising-copy-vs-digital-content-tomato-vs-tamato

https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/rebranding-an-excellent-construction-management-company

https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/building-an-industrial-brand-from-the-business-owner-s-perspective

https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/the-elements-most-often-lacking-in-a-company-s-marketing-materials-how-many-of-them-are-lacking-in-yours

https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/what-every-small-business-needs-to-know-about-communications-strategy

https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/what-every-small-business-needs-to-know-about-mission-statements

Download my free ebook Small Business Communication For The Real World here:
 https://onwordsandupwords.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/small-business-communications-for-the-real-world/

If your business has reached the point where talking to an experienced  communication professional would be the preferred option to banging your head against the wall or whatever, lets talk.
All my profile and contact information can be accessed here:

https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/this-post-is-my-about-page



All content & visual material Copyright  2017 Jim Murray

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