Focusing on several important aspects of Leadership, The Gloucestershire Growth Hub has organised a free two day workshop series featuring an outstanding line up of speakers, all experts in their field and they want to pass on what they know to you. 

Come along and learn from the best in the business. For Free.

The event, takes place on November 23-24 and will look specifically at the Four Cornerstones of Leadership, giving you practical tools and techniques to get your growth strategy on track for 2022 and beyond.

We’ll be digging deep with expert speakers and collaborative working to uncover successful leadership strategies on key themes:

• Resilience – Peter Milligan
• People – Elaine Warwicker
• Innovation – Dr David Dawson
• Marketing Strategy – Ben Kinnaird

Places are free, but limited. You can come in person and they’ll even treat you to lunch, or you can join online from the comfort of your office or kitchen table.

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This post, on the Bromsgrove Speakers Club website, has some useful advice when presenting in public but they can also be used when presenting on video. Via David Wike.

Before we start, we need to acknowledge that there are barriers to effective verbal communication. A downbeat voice, not engaging with the audience and not appearing to be sincere in what we say, will prevent us from being an effective and persuasive presenter.

Increased consumer protection poses a unique set of challenges for marketers.

Brands and marketers must look beyond typical third-party data, like general demographics or the time users spend on a page, and understand the specific interests and objectives of their customers. The next generation of marketing will run on an intentional brand-to-consumer relationship where collaboration—likely in the form of sharing data and incentives between parties—will drive purchasing power. Consumers want relationships with the brands they prefer, but many companies don’t focus on building this type of loyalty. If marketers strategise and embrace these changes in data privacy, they can cultivate better customer relationships and brand loyalty.

By MarketingTech

The cookie is on the way out, and no, I don’t mean the dessert. Third-party data collection— “cookies” to most— lost their allure because consumers are skeptical and privacy laws are increasing.

The ICO recorded an average of 13,925 reports of nuisance calls, texts and emails received each month across the UK.

“This is not to say that all reports of nuisance contact have malicious undertones, but it is certainly something that end-users and business decision-makers must be aware of, particularly as the remote working climate has increased the cyber threat facing businesses.”

By MarketingTech

Make sure your marketing doesn’t fall into this category and that there is value in the contact you make to your customers.

Find a way to personalise the consumer journey without the need for unauthenticated device and browser IDs

It’s time to rebuild the modern-day ecosystem to transact on people-based identity and to move away from the third-party cookie. It’s time to build an ecosystem that is rooted in consumer trust and puts the consumer first. And, in a trusted ecosystem, this trust is expressed through a privacy-focused, transparent authentication experience.

By MarketingTech

Provide authentic value by offering a clear and fair exchange of information.

A new code of practice aimed at raising standards, smoothing relationships between industry participants, and delivering transparency for consumers.

Jill Dougan, ISBA executive committee chair and customer director, British Gas Energy said: “As marketing continues to evolve, it is vital we keep pace with new marketing channels and ensure they are being used honestly and authentically. Influencer marketing is a great way to reach and engage with customers but until now there has not been a common code that everyone involved adheres to.

By Asa Hiken

A valuable tool to anyone involved in influencer marketing.

Coca-Cola is inviting the world to celebrate the real magic of humanity in its first new global re-brand platform.

“Coca-Cola is refreshing the brand platform for its Coke trademark, as well as altering its logo design and launching a global campaign to support the revamp, according to a company blog post. This is the first brand refresh for Coke in five years.”

By Asa Hiken

It’s important to make a personal connection between your product and consumer.

After Christmas was effectively cancelled for many people last year, it’s predicted that consumers are planning to make up for it in 2021.

“This Christmas is set to be very different from the last, so to execute effective advertising campaigns brands must plan to peak at the right times, when consumers are most engaged with relevant content.

By Steve Hemsley

It’s never too early to get your festive marketing strategy in place.

A creative idea one NYC restaurant owner had to benefit from the capacity restrictions earlier this year.

‘The 35 percent capacity rule only applies to actual people. There are no stipulations at all about wax people, which is why, according to a press release, the “iconic steakhouse” has partnered with Madame Tussauds to “fill empty seats” with wax replicas of celebrities. “Diners are invited to toast with Jon Hamm at the bar, enjoy a moment of elegance with Audrey Hepburn, or share a laugh with Jimmy Fallon,” explains the press release, promising an “an unforgettable dining experience.” I believe this. I would never forget this dining experience, not in my waking life or in my dreams.’

Creative thinking at its best and a great opportunity for some PR.

‘Has it all gone too far? Are we losing the human connection? Consumers and brands are still figuring it all out, but when it comes to how businesses approach their relationships with customers, Houston, we have a problem. 

Customer experience, after all, is made up of a variety of touchpoints and interactions that a consumer has with a brand—its products, services, employees, even its cultural values—across multiple channels over the course of the relationship. Almost all of it is driven by emotion and how the customer feels about the experience. A PwC survey of 15,000 consumers found that one in three customers will leave a brand they love after just one bad experience.’

Marketing Dive, Hey marketing execs: People are human, not data points

We mustn’t forget how incredibly important it is to make the effort to personalise content and have that human touch when engaging our customer base.

Youtube have launched Youtube Shorts; a blog post from the tech giant reads:

‘Every month, 2 billion viewers come to YouTube to laugh, learn and connect. Creators have built entire businesses on YouTube, and we want to enable the next generation of mobile creators to also grow a community on YouTube with Shorts.”‘

‘User-generated short videos were born on YouTube starting with our first upload, a short 18-second video called ‘Me at the zoo.’ As technology advances, creators and artists can now take advantage of the incredible power of smartphones to easily create and publish high-quality content wherever they are in the world,” the YouTube post added.’

This is the first launch of the software and I’m excited to see how Youtube Shorts develops over the coming months. It will be interesting to see how businesses will start using more candid videography to promote their businesses.

Forrester’s report emerges alongside the ongoing debate on balancing the role of short-term direct response activity and long-term brand-building. Increasingly, the tendency to use short-term online metrics as primary performance measures will have implications for long-term brand success, as Mark Ritson’s recent article warns, with brand building techniques historically more intangible to measure and challenging to link to conversion.

‘If you look for returns from your marketing on a 12 month or shorter time scale, you will inevitably undervalue long-term brand building and move too much of your marketing investment into shorter-term tactical fare. This will result in superior ROI initially, but two very different stories will emerge over the next five years.’

Marketing Week, How the value of marketing has taken centre stage

The next 12 months is going to be interesting as marketers will held more accountable to justify and prove short and long-term effects of their campaigns.

Janine Sullivan, a freelance illustrator who attended my Growth Hub Video Strategy workshop recently, loved my presentation so much she drew out some of the slides. It’s so funky and ‘remarkable’ I had to share it.

‘I loved your presentation and the slides were all very positive hence why I drew them.’

Janine even created a video of her work using Giffy, perfectly demonstrating some of my ideas about repurposing content and creating something remarkable that people will be compelled to share.

‘I just wanted to say thank you for such an informative and helpful workshop.
…Your workshop was so positive I wanted to encapsulate it in a video.’

If you like Janine’s style checkout her Depop Shop where you can buy various accoutrements based on her drawings. My favourites are the ones of her whippet.

Stats from McKinsey on the changes and what this means for the future of online sales. Via Jonathan Pollinger.

More than three quarters of buyers and sellers say they now prefer digital self-serve and remote human engagement over face-to-face interactions—a sentiment that has steadily intensified even after lockdowns have ended.

Safety is one reason, of course. But self-serve and remote interactions have made it easier for buyers to get information, place orders, and arrange service, and customers have enjoyed that speed and convenience. Only about 20 percent of B2B buyers say they hope to return to in-person sales, even in sectors where field-sales models have traditionally dominated, such as pharma and medical products.

I enjoy in-person contact for connecting and relationship building but buying online is almost always easier especially for repeat purchases. Also where it reduces the need for travel I’m all for it.

I guested on Benjamin Catley-Richardson podcast about a failure in my business past and a challenge that I’m currently facing. As he mentions at the end we could have talked for hours, and we often do. A great person to have a coffee with.

From Jacob Kaplan-Moss on just doing the hard work.

‘The secret is mundane, but to me it’s thrilling. The card choice is a force. But choice from those dozens of boxes of tea really is a free choice, and the choice of tea bag within that box is also a free choice. There’s no sleight-of-hand: the magician doesn’t touch the tea boxes or the teabag that the volunteer chooses. The card really is inside of that sealed tea packet.

The trick is all in the preparation. Before the trick, the magician buys dozens of boxes of tea, opens every single one, unwraps each tea packet. Puts a Three of Clubs into each packet. Reseals the packet. Puts the packets back in the box. Re-seals each box. And repeats this hundreds of times. This takes hours — days, even.

The only “trick” is that this preparation seems so boring, so impossibly tedious, that when we see the effect we can’t imagine that anyone would do something so tedious just for this simple effect.’

I’m lazy and if I can get a chance to automate or simplify a task I’ll take it but sometimes there is magic in just doing the hard work.

For example when working on a new website we often need to copy of blog content. If there is a simple way to export the posts to the new site I’ll take it but if the site doesn’t provide this and there aren’t many posts (say less than 25) then it’s often quicker to copy and past between the two sites.

3rd party cookies are dead, so Google has been cooking up their replacement, Federated Learning of Cohorts or FLoC for short. Read more about FloC in this article from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

‘If you have been assigned a FLoC ID, it means that your browser has processed your browsing history and assigned you to a group of “a few thousand” similar users. The FLoC ID is the label for your behavioral group. This numeric label is not meaningful on its own. However, large advertisers (like Google) and websites (like… Google) will be able to analyze traffic from millions of users to figure out what the members of a particular FLoC have in common. Those actors may use your FLoC ID to infer your interests, demographics, or past behavior.’

As a marketer I find a few tracking metrics such as which web pages have the most visits and where (broadly speaking) people came from highly useful but I don’t want to get lost in the data and would rather focusing on making great content and working with clients. And as an advertiser It’s great to refine your spend to only show ads to people who will be most interested. But I don’t agree that we need pervasive tracking to achieve this.

Some of the best advertising that has influenced me, has been from places of trust such as podcasts I love or blog I read daily. If a company wants to get in front of more people they might be better to tie into content providers with the right audience rather than target individuals on any platform with hyper personalised automated ads. The problem is that social media platforms have inserted themselves in between us and the content and are now charging rent.

The recording of my webinar for Bath Digital Festival 2020. Here’s the original event blurb

‘Ben will share how to develop a bulletproof content strategy to boost your social media activity and help you get found online through search engine optimisation.

    You’ll learn:
    – A basic strategy you can adapt
    – How to focus on what’s important
    – Tips for generating ideas and making time around work
    – SEO techniques that could get you onto page one’

Fiona Scott from totalswindon.com asking me about our future. N.B. Original post removed so I’m pasting the full original here.

What does Christmas 2020 mean for you in your business? I usually have a rush of project enquiries as we move into December. It seems to be a convenient deadline as people get everything squared away before they break for the holidays, but it’s not a crucial sales time for us.
Personally, I look forward to the Christmas break. I relish the peace from email in the week before and after Christmas. I often use the time to clear the decks to prepare for the new year.

January to March is a crucial time for us as people are buzzing with new ideas and enthusiasm for marketing their business after the Christmas holidays. So I have to be ready to manage the enquiries and work at that time. 

I’m not concerned about COVID-19 restrictions and potential lockdowns as we work online exclusively and have done for the last ten years. However, I have been adapting to Zoom networking online, so this will be an area I need to improve on.

Outside of my Marketing Club’s monthly webinars, I’m looking to run online Website SEO and Website planning events. These topics work well with live demonstrations where I can have fun with the audience. No dates are planned yet but keep an eye on my website for details.

Rather Inventive Marketing is actually 11 on the first of December. I really cannot believe we’ve been running for some long!
At the start of the first lockdown, we offered free membership of our Marketing Club to any charity forever. Next year I’d like to support charities directly with free consultancy and am looking for charities in the Cotswolds that would like help with their website or marketing.

The biggest challenge has been to not to be complacent about the future. I’ve been fortunate to get through this year in a financially stable position, but things could have been drastically different. 
I’m also very much aware that 2020 has been a metaphorical kick to not wait for good things to happen. I just have to put in the hard work.

I feel positive for Rather Inventive but I know that charities and shops will have many challenges over this Christmas.
I can only hope that through this adversity, we’ll see innovation and be able to move beyond this world-changing year in better shape and working together.

Suzanne Scacca at Smashing Magazine on why it’s crucial to help your customers truly test out your app by helping get their data in it.

They’ll be more confident in their decision.
With complete and accurate data transferred into your software, users actually see how valuable it is soon after signing up. This leaves little room for second-guessing their decision, which leads to greater satisfaction overall with the product, and ultimately more money for your business.

We’re currently working with a client who is building a web app where the end user needs to input their live data to truly evaluate the software. It’s a stumbling block, as inputting the data is time consuming and not a job the customer would relish doing. Worse yet, is that the data is often from paper records or needs to be collected in an audit.

To get around this we’ve discussed providing an initial import of a small sub set of data for evaluation along with a personal tour of the software. Then if the customer subscribes to a paid plan the full data set can be added for free. If they have incomplete records then a low cost physical audit can be used to collect the remaining data.

This initial investment into your customer will pay you back quickly with fewer abandoned trials but it can also increase the likelihood of being referred to others.

Paul Boag on Twitter

Hick’s law states that there is a predictable increase in the time it takes somebody to decide, as the number of options goes up. Yet we regularly bombard users with options on our websites.

Keeping options simple and straightforward on your website rarely works against you. In fact, I believe you are doing your customer a favour by reducing the need for weighing up options before proceeding with a transaction.

Paul’s, tweet reminds me of a post Lou wrote (back in 2015!) called Drowning in Choice.

Barry Schwartz in his book The Paradox of Choice, says that at the point where the effort to make an informed decision overtakes the benefit of having a choice, then “choice no longer liberates but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannise.”

Carrie Webster writing for Smashing Magazine.

‘Whether it is a website, a software application or a smartphone app, it’s about first designing the structure of how your information is organized, and then translating this into a logical navigation hierarchy that makes sense to the users who will be accessing it. In this world where we can sometimes feel as though we are drowning in data, information architecture provides us with a logical way of organizing this data to make it easier to locate.’

Content structure is a core part of my web design process and in a large part informs the visual design of the website.

In my early design days I used to draw out the site using dummy text or images in illustrator, get the design signed off by the client then build the HTML and shoehorn in the content. We’d always get it to work but there was a lot of refactoring the design to fit. It’s completely backward when you think about it but it’s how most of the industry worked.

If you think content structure on a website is important (and you really should) then after you’ve read Carrie’s article you should also check out the book Content Design by Sarah Richards. It’s an easy read and explains why designing your content will have the biggest impact on your site visitor. Her experience is informed, in part, by her time at GOV.UK.

From mid October you can list your products in the Google Shopping tab for free.

‘Today we announced that we’re bringing free listings to the Shopping tab in countries across Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Just as we don’t charge sites to be part of the Google Search index, listings for participating retailers are eligible to appear in these results at no cost to them. Paid listings will continue to appear in ad slots and will operate in the same way as Shopping ads do today.’

I’m glad they’ve made this change. This used to be the norm for the product feed until they made it ad supported only.

Jason Fried’s forward to Bob Mesta’s new book ‘Demand Side Sales 101‘ has a few great sales tips. I cannot wait to read the Bob’s book as I’m an avid follower of JOTB.

‘It wasn’t until my manager encouraged me to shut up, watch, and listen. Give people space, observe what they’re interested in, keep an eye on their behavior, and be genuinely curious about what they wanted for themselves, not what I wanted for them. Essentially, stop selling and start listening.’

This can work in any relationship or negotiation. It’s something we all find hard, me included. Here’s another nugget

‘They didn’t care about the precise weight, or that this brand shaved 0.5oz off the model this year compared to last. They didn’t care what the color was called, only that they liked it (or didn’t). The tech- nical qualities weren’t important – in fact, they were irrelevant.’

Don’t focus on the features, focus on the benefit to your customer. It the case of shoes it could be how they make them feel not what they can do.

Listening is a crucial attribute of a successful sales person. If you listen well, your potential customer will always tell you what they want and how you can sell it to them.

Part of the business recovery workshop series by Start And Grow Enterprise

The pandemic has moved us to new ways of doing things. We’re having to adapt and change to meet the needs of our customers, which now include meeting the social distancing requirements. So how can you make the most of the online tools that are available to both market and sell your business virtually?

In this webinar, I will share some great ideas on using online tools such as Social Media, Video and Augmented Reality (AR) to connect with your customers so you come out of this stronger together.

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