Why is it that 2/3 of small businesses fail within the first two-three years of operation?
One of the major causes for a company’s collapse is inadequate planning upfront, according to business consultant Les Ross, whom I first met this spring when he WOW-ed my SFSU advertising students with his Internet Marketing presentation.
Many students expressed their amazement at how web sites could be set up to operate on automatic pilot, maintaining customer contact and continuing to offer products and services for sale.
“Internet marketing allows the small guy to compete against the big guy — and not only compete, but outcompete — because there is no differentiation between a large business and a small one on the Web. Success is purely dependent first on the quality of the message and then on the follow-through. Product quality and customer service are essential.”
“The other remarkable thing is the ability to totally automate the entire sales and marketing process. It’s an effort to structure the system, but once in place, then it’s a process that builds on itself,” he explained.
Les has developed tools that allow a small business to grow under a structure that would easily allow its operational systems to evolve with growth. “Many small business owners put in basic systems and then when they reach a certain level, those systems cannot take them beyond that point, so the business stagnates or the owner must do a massive restructuring,” he said.
What typically is NOT planned for by many new companies?
They don’t understand their markets, according to Les.
“They run off with an idea that they think is so unique that no one has ever thought of it. And then, too late, they realize they are faced with stiff competition.”
In addition, many start-ups are inexperienced at financial planning and do not know how to identify the costs that their business will incur the first few years: “Coupled with inadequate marketing strategies, this is a recipe for disaster,” Les said.
Les is as excited as I am about marketing opportunities through social media platforms. That’s why he agreed to come speak to my class, and that’s why Les and I are starting a Social Media/Internet Marketing consulting business, which we are calling Performance Social Media.
“Some people think that you can only develop relationships face-to-face — and that you will never replace that experience. What they don’t realize is that the Internet offers opportunities to enhance your ability to offer information while you continuously build relationships.”
“With live exchanges, you have to manually follow up, and there is the danger that if you are overloaded, the necessary customer service actions for your ‘less important’ customers can be put aside.”
With an Internet marketing system, no customer ever falls through the cracks and feels ignored if you set up your system correctly to provide the information they want — it’s all on autopilot, according to Les.
Strategic thinker & Brand Specialist: Russell Volckmann
Everyone wants to work for — or own — a successful company. And we are all looking forward to a positive turn for our global economy.
The news, whether from the beleaguered mass media or the intrepid bloggers and Tweeters, continues to depress us with seemingly insurmountable challenges from foreclosures to furloughs to bankruptcies.
It should be obvious that old systems are broken, and business people must figure out how to tap new resources for strategies and tactics that will benefit everyone.
Too many companies — and industries — are wasting money, time and other valuable resources by relying on metrics, customer profiling and science, according to Russell Volckmann, a marketing professional in the Bay Area of California. Russell was one of the five participants in a panel discussion that introduced me and my 48 advertising students at San Francisco State University to the overwhelming upheaval in the world of marketing.
Russell is a strategic thinker, storyteller, and positioner, who has helped entrepreneurs, small companies, Fortune 500 firms, and global organizations tell their stories and build their brands. He is currently the Executive Producer and Creative Principal at Volckmann (& friends), now focusing entirely on branding, visual identity, brand experience.
When Russell hears the cries that “Advertising is Dead,” his first reaction is that advertisers and their agencies are lazy:
They’re not creating branded experiences and other mechanisms that connect brands to people in meaningful ways. Instead, they continue to rely on the same tired old barking ad techniques that they’ve been using for the past 50 years.
“They also continue to rely increasingly on metrics that are decreasingly relevant,” explained Russell who blogs about Brand 3.0.
Since companies use the same metrics, we get the same kind of failed ad campaigns:
We need only look at the auto companies for an example of allowing MBA numbers to drive their business into the ground.
Russel’s new agency offers an 8-point brand audit process:
Brand Research
Brand Strategy
Brand Positioning
Standards & Systems
Brand Marketing
Organization Brand Building
Brand Extension
Employee Brand Competency
In addition, Russell is Executive Creative Director at partner agency Origami Tactical Creative & Branding (Montreal-based) now, and helping spearhead the new San Francisco office.
Why is Russell doing branding and branding-related experiences instead of advertising?
In 1965, thirty-four percent of consumers could name a brand advertised on a TV show. Thirty years later, only eight percent could do so. Consumers decreasingly find ads useful, informative, relevant, or differentiating.
Did you know that only six percent of people believe an ad is generally telling the truth? With numbers like these, it is no wonder even established brands are failing.
And with evidence like Russell provides, is it any wonder that our Advertising and Marketing textbooks are “incredibly impractical” as Seth Godin wrote in his recent blog post Textbook Rant. My SFSU students, as well as industry professionals, need to study “Today 101” while organizations that want marketing success — not marketing waste — will need to work with those marketers who are continuous learners.
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Sharing and commenting is the “name of the game” in the Social Media World, so I’m re-distributing a great post I read Monday morning by Erik Qualman and including my own comments on each maxim.
Like the structure of a blog — where you read the most recent entry first — I’m starting with number 15:
15. The overall achievement of individuals and companies will be largely dependent on their social media success.
Genuine success usually comes to those who work, and work diligently. towards a worthwhile goal. Marketing on New Media, whether it is your personal brand — or a company brand — will not lead to overnight success. Even our new celebrities Susan Boyle and Adam Lambert paid “offline” dues taking lessons and performing in front of audiences before their meteoric rise to fame.
The Social Media are NOT a fad, folks. The sooner those who want to offer goods, services, and themselves to others, the sooner they need to discover the right platform(s) [i.e., Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Ning, LinkedIn, etc.] to reach the right people and then get “out there” and Do It.
Online search has revolutionized the way we hire — and get hired
14. The information exchanged in social media in relation to job searching and recruiting has rendered it unrecognizable from the information exchanged 10 years ago. Appropriate matches between employer and employee have increased as a result of an increased information flow.
My students at San Francisco State are learning this lesson on a daily basis. Those who’ve recently graduated know that so many new jobs require social media knowledge, experience, and skills. Plus prospective employers are checking LinkedIn pages for connections and endorsements and, even, personal blogs. Savvy employers are Googling prospects rather than spending much time with resumes.
And savvy job seekers, whether fresh out of college or fresh out of a job, are discovering a myriad of ways to research employers in even more depth than a company website. One great “trick” is going on LinkedIn, clicking the “Company” link on the top menu board, selecting a company of interest [e.g., Microsoft] and checking out tons of information opportunities you couldn’t find anywhere else, like “former employees” who might be able to offer great strategies for landing a job or avoiding pitfalls.
Engage in conversations that are already going on
13. If you’re a large brand, you can rest assured that there are conversations, pages, and applications constantly being developed around your brand and by the community at large. The social community is “doing” social media even if your company chooses not to.
THIS IS HUGE, especially for HUGE companies. We know that none of us can “control the message” online. I’m reminded of a student who was blasted on Yelp because a bank customer blamed her personally for his frustrations. She came to me crying because every time anyone Googled her, this nasty Yelp comment was the first thing they saw. We’ve learned that there’s no technology to erase bad comments; there’s even something called the Streisand Effect where companies have learned what happens when you try to.
What do you do instead? THIS IS EASY. You put your own good stuff online, and the nastiness is buried on page 54 of Google [or now the new soon-to-be popular search “Bing”]. As they say, the “cream rises to the top.”
12. Making multiple mistakes within social media is far better than doing nothing at all.
Picasso said, “I am always doing that which I do not know how to do in order to learn to do it.” An art instructor of mine once told the class that we all had 1,000 bad paintings in us, so we’d better get started to get those out of the way. An English professor once said that if we read everything written by Thomas Hardy, we would think he was just a hack, but it is his masterpieces that continue to be read, studied, and remembered.
11. Marketers’ jobs have changed from creating and pushing to one that requires listening, engaging, and reacting to potential and current customer needs.
For years we’ve heard that “The Customer is Always Right” but we haven’t really listened to them, and THAT is what is so powerful about online opportunities. When your customers have questions and concerns, you can shape your products and services to respond to real needs and wants RATHER THAN simply producing things and trying to manipulate people to want and acquire them.
“Content is key” is MORE than the message
10. Companies that produce great products and services rather than companies that simply rely on great messaging will be winners in a Socialnomic™ world. The social graph is the world’s largest and most powerful referral program.
Why have testimonials always been so sought after by marketers? Because people like to hear how wonderfully products and services have worked for others — and also when those products and services have NOT worked. The better mousetrap works well , people will use it, and so will their friends and neighbors.
Focusing on core strengths leads to leadership
9. Being “well-rounded” as a company or individual is less beneficial. It’s more productive to play to your core strength. This differentiates you from the competition.
Rarely is a jack-of-all-trades in the League of Superstars. We like doing what we do well: when we focus our efforts on our strengths, we build a trustworthy reputation and retain loyal followers.
8. The transparency and speed of information exchanged within social media mitigates casual schizophrenic behavior. Having a “work” personality and having a “party” personality will soon become extinct. People and companies will need to have one essence and be true to that essence.
Back “in the day” when I studied journalism, we were taught objectivity, i.e., keeping ourselves out of our stories. But just as the news”papers” themselves are disappearing, so is the way we’ve communicated with audiences. Neither preaching nor more subtle manipulation works anymore. What does is honesty, authenticity, sincerity, and friends helping friends.
Figure out which platforms work best for your community
7. The most successful social media and mobile applications are those that allow users to brag, compete, or look cool by passing it on.
Today’s social media landscape is burgeoning with a vast variety of platforms to share opinions, insights, and graphic contributions — the most useful will become the most popular, and the most popular will become the most powerful. Experimenting with many of them will help you figure out which are most likely to build your community of engaged customers, clients, and friends.
6. With the increasing popularity of e-books, there will be new digital media placement opportunities for brands. This is very similar to product placement in movies, only this is for books, and the placements are clickable and measurable.
A great feature of new technology is the opportunity to modernize the tried-and-true: longer stories and lessons are being published online in the form of e-books, which offer readers an additional layer of credibility but with the ultimate in ease-of-use. When businesses find appropriate ways to sponsor these applications, the ROI will be evident.
Fun and games is more than fun and games
5. Successful social media marketers will function more like entertainment companies, publishers, or party planners rather than as traditional advertisers.
Tradition in marketing has meant treating customers in an “impersonal” way that just won’t work anymore. As entertainment options increase — and our ability to discover and access them online grows — our expectations are necessitating new traditions. We audience members are putting ourselves “out there” with our likes and dislikes broadcast on Facebook, Twitter, etc. All of this will make it easier for “producers” to create appealing, targeted, winning communication strategies. As one commenter to Erik’s post put it, “Every company will be a media company.”
4. The old adage that you can only have two of these — cheap, quick, or quality — doesn’t hold true within social media. It’s possible to have all three.
We don’t have to pay to play, so the online world is accessible to all with an available computer. Information is readily obtainable and often in “real time.” Thus quality is never compromised because of cost or speed.
3. Social media’s ability to quickly disseminate information among friends and peers helps eliminate different people performing the same tasks (multiple individual redundancies), whether it’s researching the best vacation spot or smart phone. This results in a more efficient society.
No one likes wasting time, so online searching avoids the delay and frustration of waiting for postal delivery, a return phone call, or even getting past the button-pressing in a phone tree. Businesses can send personalized messages to a community — thus eliminating the waste of mass marketing and the expense of one-on-one promotion.
Quality goods and services lead to great word of mouth
2. Consumers are looking to peers for recommendations on products, services, health issues, and more via social media. Only companies that produce products and services of great value will be part of these conversations; mediocrity will quickly be eliminated.
Society as a whole will be improved as we help one another create and discover the highest quality products and services.
1. Successful marketers will be more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy; listen first, sell second.
Everything in this revolutionary world of Social Media Marketing begins with improving (a) the way we listen to one another and (b) the means to do it.
Let’s re-visit #15 and more fully comprehend that business growth and success in the future will be tied to mastery of opportunities offered in our Brave New World of Social Media
Why is it that 2/3 of small businesses fail within the first two-three years of operation?
