Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Are Homepreneurs the key to UK growth?

A new report suggests homepreneurs hold the key to economic growth. Hold on a minute, home what?  Homepreneurs. It was a new term for me and seems to have been coined to describe people who run an enterprise from home.

The report from Enterprise Nation numbers UK homepreneurs as 2.9 million contributing some £300 billion a year to the UK economy. So not just a bunch of eBay traders selling odds and ends from the home computer then? Interestingly the main occupations or entreprenuresare construction and services. And there are big differences between what I would call the building trades and the professional services offered by creatives, business services and consultants. Whereas the trades tend to operate locally while service providers are just as likely to sell services nationally and internationally.

Working from home, I have spoken with various building trade entrepreneurs such as builders, painters, plumbers, central heating engineers and landscape gardeners. Running their small businesses has many common features between their businesses and mine. Marketing is typically via 'word of mouth' with a web site as a reference resource for what we would call case studies and endorsements. Most do not advertise at all but rely pretty much on recommendations. Few employ staff and those who do seem to find management of employees a major headache. A typical scenario is a local tradesman who has a mobile phone book full of specialists that can be called in as needed and accounts at local wholesalers to buy products and materials at discount terms. Professionals such as accountants similarly work alone and get new business from their clients recommending to others.

When we set up Technical Marketing Ltd some 15 years ago, the Internet had become the enabling technology that allowed us to work without staff and and use a our own network of self employed specialists such as graphic designers, photographers, programmers, printers and many more. The business model is not encumbered by employment legislation, time spent on managing staff and organising employees. Instead we issue a design brief and request for pricing to our supplier and on acceptance issue Purchase Orders on a commercial basis. We had not thought of ourselves as homepreneurs, but  I  guess that's what we were!

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Are online advertisements following you around?

Remarketing is probably responsible for the spooky way advertisements for things you have been looking at keep appearing wherever you go on the web.

Look at some options for holidays for example - flights, car hire, hotels - and the chances are that next time you browse online, advertisements for these specific services are shown to you. Not just generic content but flights to the particular airport you were researching. They are probably there due to Google Dynamic Remarketing which allows advertisers to slew their advertising dollars to find people who have already visited your web site and in effect put their hand up that they are in the market for your products or services. I  worked for a company where the financial director was fond of the quotation attributed to a John Wanamaker - "Half the money I  spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I  don't know which half." Dynamic Remarketing takes the guessing out by providing templates to show advertisements to people who already have been to your web site. So you slew advertising dollars to people who know you, have looked at your products, but may not have taken the desired step of actually buying the stuff. Or they may be existing customers who have consumed the product they bought from you before and are ready to buy a replacement.

Of course for b-2-b marketers, customers of high ticket items, or items of major capital investment may only have a need or indeed funding for a major piece of kit once every few years. The engineers who specified the original equipment may have moved on, or even retired when it comes to replacing major plant after say ten years. And of course unless your marketing communications has kept in touch with the company in the intervening years, your brand might no longer have any top of the mind awareness amongst the new specifying team. Remarketing could be used to keep the brand in front of them.

However the ethics of remarking have been called into question along with privacy issues that seem to allow advertisers to stalk prospects by kind of following them around the Internet. Individuals can tighten up their privacy settings and not accept cookies, but few actually bother. Then of course there is the subliminal effect of frequently being exposed to personally targeted messages - a technique not allowed in advertising. Your mind clocks all these ads and contributes to building top of the mind awareness for the brand.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

In search of excellence

Back in the early eighties, Peters and Waterman's best selling business book rapidly emerged as the new bible for how to excel in business.

When In Search of Excellence was published in 1982 the new managing director of Thorn Electrical Industries decided that the core theme that excellent companies succeed, was a culture the company should adopt. It was a time soon after the sort of retirement of founder Sir Jules Thorn when the old culture his 'hands on' approach had created, now left something of a gap where it was thought Peter's and Waterman's observations were just what was needed.

Thorn must have helped propel their book into the best seller list, since one day copies turned up on every managers desk with the instruction to read and absorb the key message. The book had 8 ideas which it was argued were the common threads that showed up in the most successful companies. It has to be said, Sir Jules own style which involved by-passing managers and talking directly to factory operatives, office clerks and researchers to get the real feel of what was going on had became legend. People at Thorn House arriving late might find JT  sitting at their desk and having to explain their tardiness was scary. Such tactics gave rise to a wealth of stories he happily encouraged and no doubt many had few a threads of truth, but it kept everyone on their toes.

To give just one personal example. One summer I was working as an apprentice in the lighting laboratories conducting measurements on a light fitting being developed for a major high street retailer. I  should explain everyone who worked in the labs wore a white coat, freshly laundered and starched each week and with a policy of recruiting many graduates with doctorates, the place was known affectionately as the 'hospital'. It was as much a marketing ploy as a scientific one that allowed customers to see products in development and question the scientists and engineers directly. Except I was merely a student apprentice, on this occasion alone in the lab making hundreds of measurements. Suddenly into this quiet backwater swept the diminutive Sir Jules who I  had never met, followed by Marcus Sieff head of his family business - Marks & Spencer - and an entourage of suits. Sir Jules barked a request for the manager and I  explained he was elsewhere on an important mission expecting the party to leave and return later. Instead Sir Jules asked my name and proceeded to introduce me to his guests as one of the company's top researchers. And so it was I  had to make an impromptu presentation which fortunately seemed to go down well. I was aware that my manger had by now reappeared in the lab his face a picture of horror and concern, not doubt wondering what I  was telling a very important client. Happily it ended well but it wasn't long before I  traded white coat for a suit and joined the marketing department.

Interestingly the differentiation through excellence advocated by Peters and Waterman soon started to lose its gloss when it was pointed out that several of the companies held up as success stories had actually achieved very modest results and some had even gone bust! The new culture was quietly forgotten and the books found their way to charity shops.

Wednesday, October 08, 2014

Not everything is what it seems - advertising in disguise

Between display advertising and PR  is a shadowy place occupied by paid for content in disguise.

What's that all about then? In a simpler world advertising is clearly identifiable in no small part because the advertiser wants the message to stand out from the surrounding editorial content. The space is paid for and consumers of the media whether it be in print, television or online recognise and can distinguish the advertising slot and that this is someone selling stuff and presenting the content to their best advantage.

PR works on the premise of persuading the editor that the story being pitched is of interest to the readership because it is news and relevant. Getting a story published within the editorial pages benefits the manufacturer whose products are featured with the apparent independent endorsement of a trusted publication. In b-2-b typically we are talking about printed media which is a mixture of editorial content and various forms of advertising i.e. content approved by the editor and advertising placed by the Advertising  Manager. The latter not deemed to influence the editorial in any way.

However, because of the value of what is perceived as independent endorsement conferred by appearing on editorial pages 'advertorial' content has for many years proved attractive to camouflage advertising as news. Some journals actually mark such pages as 'Advertising Feature' but by matching layout, font and editorial house style, many readers will accept advertorial as being part of the editorial content and therefore unbiased. Particularly in the online world this has evolved into 'native advertising' which Wikipedia describes as where "the advertiser attempts to gain attention by providing content in the context of the user's experience. Native ad formats match both the form and function of the user experience in which they are placed." Because it is not a banner ad, appears less intrusive than advertising it is argued people are more likely to click on the link. It is referred to as native advertising because it looks like the other native content and importantly in the style and format the reader is expecting to see for the particular media.

Thursday, October 02, 2014

Social media - Facebook revisited

Recent blogs have looked at my experiments with social media for b-2-b . Now we come to Facebook.

I set up a Facebook account in February 2009 - so over 5 years ago. At that time it was a personal account and creating a page for business was the only way to have company information published on the platform. Inconvenient and mixed up with pictures of babies, horses, dogs and cats - so not a promising start.

What is it?
Good question.Wikipedia simply describes it as a "social media network." Founded in February 2004, it was initially contained in the university space before being opened up to everyone over 13 in September 2006.

How is it used?
Initially for social messaging - mainly gossip, but of late I  seem to see a weird mix of stuff. From individuals usually passing on video links, allegedly amusing pictures, long drawn out jokes and amazingly private announcements. From businesses - unsubtle advertising.

What does it do?
It reaches vast numbers - think billion plus world wide. So it offers an alternate advertising model in so far as target audiences can be identified by the personal information they have revealed about themselves, their interests, location etc. It seems to have evolved as a billion page web site for user generated content. 

Does it work?
Unlike Twitter (news headlines), YouTube (video demos etc) and Blogs (news from company insiders) Facebook's rationale is like all things to all people but does it deliver? There are some enquiries from Facebook, but in the b-2-b world I have not really seen any business getting loads of new customers. I long ago gave up the experiment of using Facebook as a useful marketing tool. At best it raises brand awareness, but whether this works for the target audience is hard to determine.