Why though, should these statistics interest us?

One reason is that every year for potentially the last decade, someone, somewhere has announced that ‘this year will be the year for the mobile web’. In each case that prophesy has proved to be false. However, with the increase in smartphone usage (up 81% to 12.8m users in May 2010) and the rise of discounted bundles, coupled with social media sites such as Facebook and Foursquare, I think 2011 may just be it.

To prepare for this marketers should, in my opinion, start to prepare their websites with mobile friendly options and add features which those mobile browsers will be able to use. Mobile internet usage will only ever increase as smartphones become more complex, browsing speeds become faster and 3G technology becomes more popular (nearly one third of mobile connections were using 3G at the end of 2009, in total there were 25.5m connections).

You will also uncover a different market on your mobile site.

For example, the Ofcom survey revealed that men are more likely than women to use their phones to access the internet with it most prevalent amongst the 15-24 age group. Likewise the older consumers are now driving the fixed broadband growth, although again, it is more men than women who are online. (8% of the male universe is aged 65+, with just 3% of females). In total, phone calls represented 57% of all mobile activity for the over 55 age group, whilst just 25% for those in the 16-24 age group. The vast majority of time for this latter group was taken up through either text messages or social networking.

However, whilst I predict that 2011 may be the ‘year of mobile web’, I am not forecasting a decline in other forms of communication. Text messaging continued to rise by 25% to 1 billion – a staggering 1,700 per person in the UK, and the TV remained the evening activity of choice. Radio audiences even rose, despite a decline in local radio.

What I believe should happen will be that finally truly integrated campaigns may start to appear, encouraging consumers to get involved across the traditional forms as well as via mobile web. Dedicated mobile landing pages for TV or radio adverts which make use of all the functionality of smartphones, differentiated offerings for the varying ages and genders, online complementing offline. If this happens, mobile web will have arrived.

Social media has totally changed the face of customer communications – that much is obvious.  Just the other day a colleague of mine mentioned that “if you have a complaint about a company, and want it rectified, the best way is to tweet your disgust”.  The smart companies now employ people to monitor the Internet, and use programmes such as SocialRadar and Viralheat to keep on top of the blogs and micro-blogs.  Google Alerts are also useful for those companies that don’t have the same budget (although inevitably it doesn’t have the same reach as the paid for versions).

However, whilst it is all very well amassing this data, on its own it is useless.  It needs to be turned into information and then acted on.  The smart companies do this – if you tweet your disgust at a company then you are now likely to receive a phone call from their customer service desk (BT are particularly good at this) who then do their best to solve it.  No longer is it necessary to write a letter, or even an e-mail, and send it off to be lost amongst the masses of other communications.

What few companies recognise though is that social media also has a part to play in managing crises.  Earlier this year Eurostar totally failed to appreciate how much damage disgruntled customers could do when they started tweeting about the poor service and the fact they were stranded in tunnels.  Toyota faced the same problem with their brake and accelerator problems, as did Maclaren pushchairs in the USA.  BP unfortunately is the latest company to joins this infamous group who have underestimated the power of customer comment, or the immediacy of action.  It is no longer sufficient to sit behind closed doors, draft a press statement and submit it to the media for publication.  More often than not, the crisis has broken before you even knew there was one.

With all the tools available to companies in the modern Web 2.0 world, social media needs to be at the heart of any crisis management strategy.  This can either be in a reassuring role or an apologising role.  Whatever role you choose though it needs to be consistent with the company’s brand messages, take the appropriate tone and be relevant to the audience.  In other words, the basics still need to be right, despite the fact that there is a temptation in this 24 hour news culture to ‘just get something out’.

Managed correctly a crisis can often be resolved, or at least ceases to be as newsworthy.  Managed incorrectly it will, like a snowball rolling down a mountain, grow larger and gain more speed whilst causing all kinds of collateral damage along the way. 

If you want to find out more about how you can do this, book onto the CIM Kent Annual Marketing Lecture in October.  Entitled “Navigating a Social Media Crisis”, Paul Charles will share some of the secrets which may have helped the communications professionals in BP, Eurostar, Toyota and Maclaren.

Last Thursday at the Kent Excellence in Business Awards (KEiBA) 2010 dinner, an occasion which recognises the best businesses in Kent, a story was told to illustrate why Denne Construction won the ‘commitment to their community’ award.  It is as follows:

“During the time that Denne were based in Canterbury, the owner one day received a knock on the door.  Opening it, he saw an elderly lady who explained that she lived next door and asked whether she was able to use his bathroom, since her one was having some work done to it.  His initial response was to explain that he was a business and questioned why he should let her use the bathroom.  She replied that she thought he may since he was her neighbour.“

This act of kindness would not have formed part of their original marketing plan, nor would it have featured in any CSR strategy.  Indeed, I doubt very much as to whether it was thought of much afterwards.   However, that elderly lady would undoubtedly have told the story to friends/family and become one of the company’s advocates.  That single act of kindness would therefore I expect have done more for their reputation locally than costly advertising and brand building campaigns.  Some form of CSR should therefore always be included in any marketing strategy which is drafted. 

Although it is a function of a business to make money, that money should not be its sole measure of success.  A successful company has to be judged on a number of different scales, one of which should be the amount it gives back to the community which it is part of.  This giving back could be in a variety of ways, for example sponsoring a local football side, allowing a community group to use its offices for meetings and events, donating old equipment to the local schools or by using produce from the local shops/businesses in its staff canteen.  As well as supporting the local community, these actions will also help with staff retention and recruitment – people want to work for companies which are seen to be ethically minded.

For me, and I imagine it was the same for the 449 other people, on Thursday night I was positive that Denne fully understood what CSR was and how their company was an integral part of the community it served.

To be successful with Marketing you need to plan.  You need to have thought about where your business is at the moment, what you want to achieve with your marketing and how you want to do it.  Plus, you need to put in place some measures so that you know how successful your efforts are.  In homage to “the 7Ps of Marketing” I call the following statement ”the 7Ps of Great Results”:

Proper Planning & Preparation Prevents P*** Poor Performance.

I should stress at this point that when I talk about “planning” I am not talking about crafting a 20 page document once a year which you then follow religiously regardless of how market conditions change.  Instead, I am talking about the thought process behind that document – the fact that you will hopefully have asked yourself some searching questions along the lines of:

• What business are you in?
• What are the external factors affecting your marketplace?
• Is there a niche which no-one else has spotted that you could be exploiting?
• What are your competitors doing?  Do you know what their plans are?
• What do consumers think of the products/services which you sell?  Is this the same as what you want them to think?
• How do your customers hear about your products? Is your marketing spend effective?
• What are your main strengths as a company?  What are your weaknesses?

The list is endless but, by asking these types of questions you can then start to formulate strategies which go someway to fulfilling the objectives you initially set.  A good discipline is to answer questions on each of the 7Ps of the Marketing Mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process and Physical Evidence).  Once you have done this you should have a rounded view of your company and marketplace, as well as gained some insight into the external environment you operate in.    Only by undergoing this process can your marketing become pro-active and be the business driver which it should be.

Once you have your plan you need to keep revisiting it to make sure it is still current.  It is no good filing it away in the “jobs completed” section and never looking at it again – market conditions may change and your plan needs to be flexible enough to adapt. 

Finally, don’t get too hung up on the facts and fall foul of “analysis paralysis”.  Remember, an imperfect plan today is much better than a perfect plan tomorrow.

Good luck and happy planning!

For those readers who’ve either never heard of the Kent 2020 Vision exhibition, or who’ve never been, it is the largest B2B show in the South-East and this year had approximately 4,000 visitors and around 1.5 miles of exhibition space containing companies from almost every sector.  The beauty of it was that everyone who was present was there to do one thing – business.  Whether this was by meeting people in the same sector, selling products or just exchanging ideas it all boiled down to the same thing.

Many people, myself included, find that networking does not come naturally.   It is however a vital business skill and therefore needs to be mastered, or at least something that you feel comfortable with.  An effective network of contacts can not only provide you or your company with new opportunities, but may also open you up to new ideas and potentially solve some problems you’ve been facing.

To network effectively though you need to be prepared to give as well as receive.   The more you are able to help any contacts you make with information or by referring them onto someone else, the more you’ll be remembered and your opinion sought.   Remember, you’re building relationships for the long term and therefore must be seen as genuine and trustworthy.

There are, as you would expect, a number of different groups committed to networking, as well as internet sites such as LinkedIn.  If you haven’t already built your profile on LinkedIn I’d recommend you do, and also while you’re at it, why not join the CIM Kent group?  Branch events are also another great place to meet likeminded individuals and the CIM also has a number of Market Interest Groups committed to professionals working in a particular sector.

Finally, don’t forget that you don’t just have to network with your peers and fellow professionals.  By networking with your customers you not only build up loyalty and mutual respect, you also get to find out what their issues are and how your products/services may need to be adapted to solve them.  That for me is the beauty of exhibitions such as Kent 2020 Vision – a lot of your customers and contacts are all in the same room, meaning that your one day out of the office is potentially more productive than the other four days in it.  As a colleague of mine once said “you’ll never find new customers by sitting in your office”.

The most obvious reason for this loyalty is that the brand in question has built up a trust with the consumer either through its promotional messages or through a previous positive experience.  Recently, when decorating a bedroom, I limited my choice of colours to one particular paint manufacturer.  This was not because I knew they’d have a colour which I liked, rather because I had used their paints before and knew that I liked their finish.  I was prepared to pay slightly more for a product I believed was superior.

However, how do we as marketers build this trust in the first place?  Whilst it may contain a voucher/points based reward scheme, your loyalty strategy should be much more than that.  To be successful it requires time, commitment and most of all consistency.  Your brand needs to have an identity which people can relate to and which remains consistent no matter how or where consumers interact with it.  Each member of staff needs to be a brand ambassador and present a uniform style when communicating.  Consumer expectations must be met and, if possible, exceeded.  Above all else though, the brand messages have to resonate with your chosen customer segments so that they become your brand advocates.

All of the above will, if done correctly, strengthen your brand in the eyes of your consumer and decrease the chances of them switching to one of your competitors.  What is more, should disaster strike and a catastrophe occur, a solid crisis management strategy which is linked to your brand strategy will help insulate you from the effects and potentially inspire greater loyalty in the future.

Our June event “Successfully Branding Your Business” focuses on how to build a brand and looks at not just the tangible aspects (such as logos, colours and straplines) but also the emotional side.   It explores brand reflections, discusses brand storytelling and will explain why branding is as much about psychology as it is about technology.  To find out more about this event, and to book, please visit the CIM website.

In my opinion, promotional gifts are an often misunderstood tool of the marketing mix.  They can, if used right reinforce an already strong brand and foster a sense of loyalty from the company’s customer base.  However, if you pick the wrong ones or do not think through the decision properly they can have the effect of undermining a brand strategy and result in a lot of wasted money.

But what constitutes a right gift I hear you ask.  How can I, on a limited budget, ensure that I find something which is appealing to my stakeholders?

As with so much of marketing, I tend to take a common sense viewpoint here.  For example, if your company operates in a technology-based marketplace and you’re trying to appeal to busy decision-makers in a business-to-business environment, then branded pencils and rubbers are potentially not the best thing to buy.  For your gift to have desk dwell time (how many of us have binned gifts that we were given but not useful the day after the exhibition?) it needs to have relevance to that person.  A little bit of novelty value also helps.  For the above example I would be looking at the every growing range of USB products or something slightly innovative which the recipient keep coming back to.

To be successful promotional gifts must be aligned to brand values – if your company stands for sustainability then purchase from the ever increasing range of sustainable gifts – but at all times the end user and dwell time needs to be considered.  Those gifts which are cheap to buy are usually cheap to look at and therefore either end up in a drawer or in the bin.  Is this where you want your promotional message to be? 

Therefore my advice would be to always look at the objective of the gift, decide who it is going to appeal to, what values it needs to uphold and make a choice from there.  It may be having evaluated the above that you decide you don’t need a give-away and that your objective can be reached some other way.

Finally, I’d be interested to hear anyone else’s experiences of promotional gifts – what ones do you retain and which ones do you throw away?

For me, I would argue that social media – as with any other channel – should be given clear objectives which can be monitored and used to determine success.  There is, in my view, limited mileage in pursuing the latest craze if you’re not 100% confident on what your business is going to get out of it and how you’re going to know whether it is succeeding.  It may be that this craze isn’t for you because, having analysed the market you’re in, it does not look to offer anything.  That’s fine; at least you considered it and you can confidently say when asked the reasons why you feel it’s not right. 

The company I currently work for needs to constantly engage with teenagers and young adults in order to promote the service (education) that we offer.  Social media therefore forms one part of my marketing strategy and it is used to monitor what is being said about us as well as converse with potential customers in a method that they are familiar with.  Part of this means exposure on Facebook, Bebo and Twitter as well as videos on YouTube and spending time each day responding to any comments which have been made.   However, other companies I’ve worked for that operate in more commoditised and B2B sectors rely on different channels and have equal success with those.  As with everything the secret to success is finding what is right for you and then repeating it over and over.

However, if you are going to embrace social media and encourage employees to promote your company online then a clear policy is needed.  Just as you need to protect your brand by limiting which companies you partner, or which images you use on your marketing literature, so you need to protect it from over enthusiastic or embittered employees online. 

For more tips on using social media for business purposes book onto the next Kent Branch event “Content is King, Conversation is Queen” on 17^th February 2010.

Until next time.

So, for 2010 my resolution is to take time to plan and reflect.  As marketers we’re taught to base all decisions on prior knowledge, to undertake a thorough situation analysis which encompasses both micro and macro factors before coming to any strategic decisions.  However, when time is short and the pressure is great how many of us decide to “fly by the seat of our pants”, to rely on gut instinct rather than a sound understanding?

But knowing this, and solving it are two different things.  My solution is to set aside at least an hour a week (maybe that elusive “lunch-hour”) every week for quiet thought and planning.  This time will be blocked out in the diary and be used to evaluate the journey so far, identify the challenges ahead and ascertain what changes need to be made to make sure that the destination is reached on-time.  Maybe it’ll include a walk into the local village, or some solitary time in the office with the door firmly closed.  However I do it my aim will be, by the end of each hour, to have a clearer understanding of the next steps and provide a sense of perspective. 

I’ll keep you updated on the progress of my resolution in future blogs.  In the meantime though I’d be interested in your New Year’s Resolution(s) and how you are going to, or already do, create time to plan and reflect?

Until next time.

I have been busy working in my new role and travelling to and from …

Tomorrow I am looking forward to a talk in pay per click, which should be good…

Also looking forward to viewing more houses, as I am (for the fourth time) looking for a property to buy. Which reminds me what great marketing goes into those house detail terms – “need of updating”, “internal viewing is a must”..anyone else got any good ones…