Marketing is an investment.

With spectacular returns.

Don't ever stop marketing.

Cut marketing and sales will fall too.

Marketing drives sales [I'd argue nothing else does], so be in no doubt that if you want the latter, you'll have to work hard on the former.

If your marketing is not working, you're doing it wrong. That doesn't mean stop marketing, it means stop doing the wrong marketing — go and ask people who know what you should be doing*, listen to them, and start doing the right marketing.

Not all of it will pay off today — much will take weeks, months and even years to filter down the funnel and into your company’s sales gas tank. But that doesn't mean it’s not working.

The original Mad Man, ad guru, David Ogilvy said, “Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand.”

Marketing is like any investment strategy — you need to have short, medium and long-term goals, and you'll do different things for each.

From your salary you save a little money for the weekend on the fizz, you save a little money for your summer holiday, and you put away a little for your pension. Stop doing any of them and the future starts looking dull at best, and scary at worst.

If you want to go out on the razzle this weekend you need to do a deal today, but if you want a luxurious retirement you'll need to put in years of faith and perseverance building an amazing brand.

*people who know what your marketing should be and to whom you should listen:

1. your customers. 2. your staff (possibly not the marketing team) 3. the last resort, consultants….

The Vidal Sassoon principle.

Make your customers look good and you'll look great.

Sixties’ celebrity hairdresser Vidal Sassoon knew this very well and used it brilliantly for years.

“If you don’t look good, we don’t look good” was his winning strapline for several decades.

Vidal built an international brand out of nothing more than his customers’ great hair. The shampoos and conditioners came much later; to begin with all Sassoon made was other people feel great.

He knew instinctively that one of the secrets to a great reputation, and to building a great service brand — large or small — is to make your customers’ feel good. Empower them to shine, and then highlight their joy.

Everyone knows the power of a product to make you feel good. A great pair of jeans makes you feel like Steve McQueen. A great guitar makes you feel like Hendrix. Even a great perfume makes you smell like Marilyn Munroe (in bed).

Sassoon had no physical product, but he knew that his customers walked out of his salon taller, with a more confident spring in their step and they loved him for that. And boy did they tell their friends. He knew that if you can enable people to fly and to soar — because of what you have done for them — you'll take off too.

A lot of B2B service companies struggle to illustrate their services and communicate their skills because there is nothing to actually see.

Software and digital companies have ridden this wobbly train for years because they don't make anything tangible, or anything that you can physically hold either, but their products can create infinite galaxies of possibilities. They've connected disparate tribes and far flung continents but their real successes have been to bring people closer together. Which is indeed an amazing thing.

The very best digital marketing shows people doing amazing things and almost leaves the brand unspoken (think both Google’s and Facebook’s recent TV campaigns). You have deeper and richer friendships because you use Facebook.

No actual, physical ‘thing’, just a feeling. A good feeling.

You don't have to be a megabrand to harness this, in fact many small or medium-sized businesses and B2B companies can do it better and with more honesty. They can often get closer to the customer’s real experience and can show how they solve real life business problems.

The very best sales and marketing tools are real case studies. They say, ‘Here are some of our customers, just like you, using our stuff and doing amazing things. If you use our stuff you can do amazing things too’. Look how good we all feel.

Maybe you might do fire safety inspections for ice rinks, but your work allows future Olympians to learn to skate in safety. So show them, carving up the rink. Tell their stories.

You might just be tax accountants, but one of your best customers has invented electric cars that are selling like hot cakes. You've helped them to account for their growth so plug in to their rise and go with them.

Show how your people enabled their people, and tell the world how you played a small part in their success.

Sassoon showed that shining a light on your customers’ achievements and their successes reflects back on you brilliantly. Help people to do what they do better, faster, cheaper or just more easily and they'll be happy to sing your praise.

Make your customers look good and you'll look great.

Why isn't social media working for my company?

Because you are a broadcaster.  Here are six simple steps to fix it.

The vast majority of companies are still getting social media badly wrong. Nearly every company LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook feed I see are sporadic and soulless broadcasts of boredom, sending out endless yawn streams.

The first hard truth is that very few people are interested in your corporate news and events and they almost certainly don't want it in their timelines. If you are honest, do you? Even on LinkedIn?

The second hard truth is that — for various reasons — most people won't see your posts anyway. Unless you are paying (advertising) your transmissions will either get lost in the fast-scrolling noise and confusion, or ignored by the algorithms that choose what we all see.

All is not lost. It’s time to stop transmitting and time to start being social. Here are six simple steps to make sure that your social media voice is heard.

1. Give it to someone sociable.

They don't have to be in the marketing team, but they do need to be friendly, easy-going and preferably a pretty prolific user themselves, so all of these tips will be instinctive anyway. They don't have to be a garrulous extrovert, just a natural conversationalist.

Never outsource your social media unless you are the kind of company that outsources all essential customer services and support (clue: it’s the same thing/just as important).

NB: It’s probably an almost full-time job.

2. Be human.

Your social media should be real exchanges between real people. Do I need to roll out the ‘people do business with people’ cliche? Yes, sadly I do. Your company is full of people interacting with customers, so your social media should do the same.

When a client a comes for a meeting do you start pronouncing about the white paper you've written or do you greet them and ask how their journey was? So do that more.

Facelessness is not attractive, it’s a bit scary, so talk in the first person and act like it too. Name people, quote them, praise them, thank them, show their pictures.

3. Join the conversation.

This is the most important tip and the best way of making sure that your audience hears you. Talk to them directly. Say something to individuals that demands a response (nicely). Ask questions, comment on their posts, give praise if you like their posts, retweet their tweets, share their posts and say thank you if they share your posts. People notice and like good manners. They will reciprocate.

Have a look at your posts and tweets. How many are conversations and how many one-way broadcasts? Are you talking to people or talking AT them? If less than half are chat, you are doing it wrong. 75% or more should be human interactions.

NB: It’s probably an almost full-time job.

4. Talk to your industry influencers

Exactly the same as #3, but with the kind of people who can amplify your voice. Strike up a conversation with business leaders in your sector and even people who work for your competition. Journalists and influential industry thinkers are all usually delighted to answer questions and to respond to thoughtful comments. Once they get to know you, they may comment on your posts and even share them, which is how you bypass the algorithms’ censorship.

NB. Never argue or squabble in public. If you disagree strongly, take it out of a public forum. Keep your social media as places of politeness and civility.

5. Share other people’s stuff.

Even your competitors’ posts. Perhaps especially your competitors’ posts. If they’ve shared something useful or interesting, pass it on and acknowledge the source. That is a very classy, confident and generous thing to do and everyone likes generous, confident, classy people don’t we?

There’s so much dross and junk flowing through our social streams, that we appreciate an inspired curator to sift out the rubbish and show us the gold. I bet that you can name the handful of people who post interesting stuff in your timelines — and those that are boring dullards. So be the first guy.

6. Listen first.

Listen and reply, listen and respond, listen and share, listen and comment, post an article you've read based on that, listen and reply, listen and respond, listen and share, listen and comment, post a relevant article, listen and reply, listen and respond, listen and share, listen and comment, post your own thing, answer questions, reply to comments. Have a break. Listen and reply, listen and respond, listen and share, listen and comment….. [repeat daily]

What good will doing all that do?

Firstly, it will help get your company’s voice heard without leaving it to chance. It’ll help establish your credibility and expertise, and that’s valuable brand recognition baby.

Secondly it will make you more human, more likeable and ultimately more trustworthy. If your customers like and trust your company’s humans you have, rather obviously, brand trust — which can't be bought.

And finally those two things open up a channel where customers feel comfortable asking you the vital commercial questions like ‘can I have some of what you're selling please?’ Brand loyalty anyone?

There’s a growing understanding that all good marketing has to be a thoughtful series of many lightweight interactions over time.

Social media is the perfect medium for that so it is still a very potent business tool for businesses of all sizes, but it’s a customer contact tool, not an advertising broadcaster.

Advertising is not Marketing.

So stop shouting and start a conversation.

I don't think many people in the big tech corporations understand that Advertising is not Marketing.

Advertising is only a small part of the brand-building and sales process for most companies, so when networks like Facebook spend all their time trying to find new ways to deliver ads — at the expense of facilitating real conversations — it winds me up a treat.

Last week I had a brief Twitter conversation with the respected tech journalist Ian Betteridge, who had written a piece for PC Pro, “Facebook wants to redefine the future of business communications.” I felt that it was a bit too gushing, and as is often the case with the technology world, focussed on tools that might suit a handful of global mega-brands, but that will be out of reach for of 90% of normal companies.

Ian pointed me to an excellent article by Paul Adams (former Global Head of Brand Design at Facebook) that rationalised Facebook’s new tools and approach very eloquently. The tile is a perfect synopsis:

“The future of advertising: Many, lightweight interactions over time”.

He’s absolutely right, and he makes lots of great points, but I would playfully suggest that he’s several years behind. That’s been good social media practice since the last decade, and it’s been a golden rule of PR for several decades. He’s refining the point, of course, and adding some very interesting tech-powered angles for Facebook and advertising generally, but the philosophy is far from new. I think that advertising might just finally be catching up.

I've quoted him before, but former Disney CEO Michael Eisner, was right on the money when he said (in the 90's) that:

“A brand is a living entity — and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures.”

For me, advertising has always been the big, brash, loud and shouty part of marketing, soaking up the lion’s share of budgets, attention and kudos for success — but it’s always been entirely one way. Advertising has nearly always been a powerful transmitter, set to broadcast far and wide, but with little or no capacity to receive and vitally, to listen.

And most people don't like to be shouted at. They want to be listened to and to have a conversation.

A Sales Director I used to work with neatly described advertising as ‘air cover’ for his sales team troops. You will struggle to win a big war without the shock and awe of mighty airpower, but the battles are always really won, man to man in short sharp exchanges. Hundreds of lightweight interactions indeed, but they sure as hell weren't advertising exchanges.

His sales team also knew that you’d never get a sale with your first ‘touch’. It’s one of those truisms that regularly get posted around LinkedIn, that it can take up to eight touches to get a sale. The customer sees an ad, reads an article online, reads a review, watches a YouTube video, connects with an account manager on LinkedIn, sees an ad on the tube, reads another article, hears a mention on the radio, visits your stand at a show, Googles all your competitors’ websites…. before giving you a call to discuss a purchase. Advertising plays its part, it may even start the process, but it’s only one small cog in the machine.

I've written before about my experience of the role of digital tools in the B2B sales process, and I think that this, from a couple of years ago, when I was at tech company Novatech, is still very relevant:

“ My company is a business IT supplier with a powerful e-commerce website that turns over tens of millions, but last year we grew over 70% in the direct sales part of the business. That’s the bit where ambitious sales humans call put-upon IT managing humans and together they banter and haggle and bitch and moan and share stories of goals, stroppy wives, fast cars, missing shipments, excellent service and deals are done. The sales team use digital tools like email, IM, social media and website monitoring to oil the wheels of commerce and to fan the flames, but the real deals are cut between people. Mano y mano.”

And this is why I no longer think that Facebook is a worthwhile place for small and medium sized companies (anyone who isn't an FMCG/Tech multinational) to spend their time and effort. They don’t really understand the difference between broadcast ads and intimate conversations.

It used to be a great place to listen to your customers; to get to know them; to share lolz and to have relaxed and helpful conversations. For a while it looked like a great place to have hundreds of valuable ‘lightweight interactions’ that would be a dynamic part of the brand-building process. But not anymore.

Facebook is deconstructing itself as a social media network and unbundling its services. Its purchase of Instagram and WhatsApp are part of this strategy to own all the essential tools for every exchange we make, so the separation of Messenger was always going to be a prime target for ads sooner rather than later.

What they are aiming for now is to make Messenger a very direct way to communicate with customers — for example with delivery information and simple follow-up purchases — to replace email or texts. Which sounds great and answers my main point. But it’s well worth reading Ian’s article, because it he does report several rather key caveats that all centre on the Big Blue’s intentions to target you with more and better ads in every way they can think of.

When Messenger was part of the main Facebook page/app, it felt like a very personal communications channel and people I talk to still see it as far more intimate than even texting. I suspect that most would have been horrified to be contacted by ParcelForce via Messenger. I know I would.

Facebook’s real modus operandi is to sell advertising, not to provide a free brand-building tool, so this should be no surprise, but that’s why I caution against seeing Messenger as a killer tool for business. Theoretically it checks the lightweight interaction/conversation box (if your customers choose to hear from you), but Facebook still just want to use it to serve you ads really.

Most SME companies don’t have big enough ad budgets to make any of this really work for them, and the brands I have personally engaged with most hardly use advertising at all. But they do all do lightweight interactions very well.

For them and for me, advertising is just one part of a complex and delicate marketing process and for many people it’s often the part that feels the most bullying and most obtrusive.

Ultimately I haven’t seen anything from Facebook yet that says that they will help your company with anything other than the ‘air cover’. My advice to any brand is to look carefully at the tools you use and to make sure that you're not just shouting with air power. Better to send in the infantry for a chat.

The Eric Morecambe syndrome

“Playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”

[NB: if this bit of old school comedy gold has passed you by, it can still be found here]

Playing all the right notes in the wrong order is an increasingly common syndrome that afflicts the vast majority of companies trying to use digital tools for B2B sales and marketing.

The symptoms are prolific social media activity with very little commercial effect, disillusioned marketing teams and in severe cases, bored and even irritated customers.

Sufferers have usually diligently drawn up a digital strategy and a content calendar and are busy writing blogs and white papers. They're regularly posting on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and are sending weekly newsletters and podcasts out into the digital ether. But very little is coming back. Conversations are one-sided and conversions are non-existent.

All the right notes are there, but because they are playing them in the proverbial wrong order it makes everything sound out of tune. No one wants to listen to dischord. Bum notes fall flat with any audience.

Everyone will be able to identify Eric Morecambe syndrome businesses in their timelines. Those that are self-centred and never shut-up. Those that have a inappropriate sense of humour or try too hard and just end up looking like a politician in a backwards baseball cap. And worst of all, companies that are just plain boring.

One of the hard truths for management to accept is that no one cares about the things companies care about, especially on social media.

The cure for Eric Morecambe syndrome is not always easy medicine to take. It’s hard to look yourself in the corporate eye and say “we're boring and no one wants to hang out with us”.

ur doin it wrong

It’s a long road to recovery because the cure is to add a regular and healthy doses of human. You have to stop talking like an excel spreadsheet, spouting corporate boredom and commercial guff, and start behaving like the kind of person you'd like to spend your free time with.

What do you like reading on your Facebook timeline? I bet it’s not corporate solutions whitepapers. What kind of links do you click on from LinkedIn or Twitter? Whose newsletters do you always open and read? Who regularly posts articles that you then share? Work that out then start doing the same.

My wise former colleague Jerry Hughes had the tonic perfectly distilled: “Just be awesome”.

On my social feeds I don't care that you had a great time at a trade show, or that you've launched a new kind of filter for your air conditioning solutions service. No white papers, tweets, surveys or podcasts about air conditioning will make me give a damn.

I do care, however, that Gareth, the air-con guy posted a really interesting article on LinkedIn that I then shared with my followers too. It had nothing to do with air conditioning or filters. He was just an interesting bloke to chat with and the article was popular with my network, so he helped me to look good. He was just a good, likeable, human being quietly awesome.

When I need air-con, I will call Gareth. He’s probably awesome at air con too.

Recently, I was asked to help a specialist generator company who couldn't work out why their prolific digital and social output wasn’t having the desired effect on sales. Or in fact any effect.

The very obvious problem that they had missed was that there were no humans to be seen, or heard, anywhere. From their website and newsletters to their tweets and LinkedIn pages there were no stories about people, no quotes from people, no opinions, no conversations, no recommendations, not even any pictures of humans. It was all products, prices, promotions and pronouncements.

I did find one picture on their website of the back of a high-vized and be-helmeted engineer, but he was just a blur in the background behind a crisply focussed generator. It was all deeply soulless.

This is not what they do!

This is what they do!

The cure for the generator company’s Eric Morecambe syndrome was a simple but drastic full amputation of their old digital and social media policy. The post-op rehabilitation is much trickier because it’s required a complete change of culture, attitude and expectation in the sales and marketing team. It is taking time to find and encourage the natural story-tellers and to create a genuine human voice that the whole team can use.

They are only just beginning to understand that using these incredible tools is not enough. For the tools to work you have to use them like a likeable human. No one wants to hear about generators on Twitter or Instagram. They want to hear from Dave the interesting generator guy who occasionally shares wry Dilbert cartoons. That’s how awesome starts.

Of course as Eric Morecambe proved, if you're a very likeable human it is very endearing to play all the right notes in the wrong order. It doesn't matter how often you've seen the gag, that’s deep and hilarious awesome.

A good bit of business can be very bad for business.

Patagonia killed their multi-million dollar shoe business to protect their brand. Which is quite a lesson.

I wanted to buy a pair of strong walking shoes last week. I'm hard on my shoes and I wanted a pair that would last and I wanted to buy from a company I could trust. So I went to Patagonia’s website to seek out a pair of cragmaster approach shoes that I’d looked at last summer.

There are no shoes on the website. No hiking boots, no walking boots and no sandals. There are specialist boots for wading when you’re fishing, but that’s it. I was nonplussed. When I’d last looked late last year, there were hundreds of styles and models for every kind of outdoor pursuit. But no more. And repeated searches brought up nothing but the river-boots.

So I filled in the contact form with a brief ‘dude where’s the shoes?’ message. Shortly afterwards I got a personal (non-automated) response from a named member of staff.

“As you know from our mission statement: “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.” We are committed to provide customers only the best quality. However our shoe business has not lived up to our standards, thus we will cease the production of shoes for now. There is a chance that we may revisit the shoe business in the future.”

What an insanely courageous decision that must have been. I was deeply impressed, especially since a little light digging online revealed that Patagonia’s footwear was profitable, popular and well-regarded by the outdoor press. It was clear that plans for 2015 models and designs were well advanced. There was a full pipeline.

The factors and details that drove this pretty momentous volte face are actually not that important, what matters is that — once again — Patagonia put their ‘purpose’ way ahead of profit. They recognized that what might be a good bit of business was actually not great for business. We all use the phrase ‘customer experience’ far too easily, but Patagonia’s customers hold the company in extremely high regard and will hold the company to account if their experience does not meet expectations.

What the footwear thing shows is that Patagonia held themselves to account too and they nixed a problem before it became a major issue. At stake was Patagonia’s good name and that’s an irreplaceable and supremely precious asset, so despite the million dollar reduction in turnover this year, it was probably a very wise move.

Yes but it’s ruddy Patagonia isn't it? Their corporate courage is unmatched and the Patagonia brand promise is almost unique which means that the power, scale and scope of their business ethics are very hard for any other business to match. They're a mad west-coast hippy-led law unto themselves aren't they?

Or are they? All they did was look at the pros and cons, weighed them in the balance and made a sensible business decision.

I've experienced both sides of this in much smaller businesses where big changes can be the difference between breaking even, or not. More than once I've been part of noisy meetings to argue if what we were doing was a good bit of business (made some much-needed dough) that would be bad for business (caused loads of problems down the line and damaged our credibility).

Once we took a scary and tricky decision to kill a popular service that made a small profit, because it was growing to be a financial burden and a distraction from what we were really good at doing. It turned out to be the right decision and sales and profits rose with the clarity of purpose — and improved use of resources.

Once I watched helplessly as senior managers persisted with selling a bad, cheap product because they knew that they'd sell a load of stock and hit profit targets. Those targets were not affected by the the fact that 30% of the products came back from dissatisfied customers because the suppliers credited our company, so there was no immediate financial loss.

Those managers didn't understand why I (as head of brand) was getting so worked up. We had sold a couple of thousand, which meant at least 300+ unhappy customers that we knew about, and countless more that we probably didn’t. A couple of thousand pounds profit cost us 400 or more people who'd never buy from us again.

Patagonia are a very important company precisely because they are setting attainable standards that the rest of us can — and must follow. If a bit of business is profitable but bad for your brand then you have to kill it before it gets going.

Your customers can only think better of you if you say ‘sorry it wasn't good enough for us so it’s definitely not good enough for you’.

I was disappointed not to be able to buy the shoes, but very happy with the reason why.

The product of a thousand small gestures.

Your brand is a promise, and great brands are promises well kept.

For a business to flourish and to grow, people need to trust you. Your customers and just as importantly, your staff, need to trust that you know what you are doing; that you are committed to doing it with unmatched excellence and expertise, and that you’ll do everything in your power to look after them.

Trust means knowing that you’ll share successes and work together to improve everything you do. Trust means knowing that you’ll fix problems quickly and without fuss, and that you’ll do your best to understand them as individuals (not just as data points or drones).

Trust is about keeping your promises. That’s what your brand is. It’s not your logo or your typeface; they’re just visual signposts like quality kite marks.

Everyone in your organisation from the MD up to the cleaner needs to understand the promises that you are making and how you keep them. The whole team has to buy into it 100%. The very best brands are ones that come from within — they’re rarely hatched in agency brainstorms.

Far sharper minds than mine have defined brands and they’re all right to some degree. I don’t know who originally said, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room”, but it’s a good line. Here are some of my other favourites:

“A brand is a living entity — and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures.” [Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner]

“What some companies fail to see is that that from their customers’ viewpoint, their products, services and brands are viewed as one entity”[Richard Branson]

“Your brand is created out of customer contact and the experience your customers have of you”. [Stelios Haji-Ioannou, Founder of EasyJet]

The original Mad Man David Ogilvy said, “Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand.”

There’s no doubt that creating a great brand takes a long time and a lot of work, but that doesn't mean starting from scratch. If you have had any kind of success in the past it was because somebody liked what you did, so chances are that you've already got a great brand (what do your customers say about you when you’re not in the room?), you just need to remind yourself what it is.

It might be wise to ask your customers, and most definitely your staff, what they think you promise because they’ll probably know in a flash. Promises are usually simple and easy to remember.

The beautiful thing is that a great brand is very simple too. When anyone asks me to define a brand I say that a brand is a promise and great brands are promises well kept.

“Most ‘social networks’ are not really that social any more.”

“They are content distribution networks.” @garyvee

I really enjoy @GaryVee’s posts and I admire his unquenchable desire for the hustle. Not many people can match his relentless New Yorker dynamism, but he is one of those guys you have to pay close attention to. He spits out valuable pearls of entrepreneurial wisdom with amazing frequency.

His post ‘Google + is not dead’ came with a bundle of important points that are worth expanding on a bit.

“There is a small niche group of people that I respect immensely who have been early adopters of Google+ since the start, and I want to make sure I am meeting them on the platform they have chosen to be on.”

Yup, me too. But more importantly, where else are there great communities of people you respect — like your customers and prospective clients? Where do they hang out (digitally)?

One of the hard lessons I learned at my previous company was never to neglect your own forums — if you were lucky enough to have one. We had a thriving community of tech-heads on our own in-house forum, but we let it wither, without giving them the attention they deserved. At the time we had good reasons for concentrating our efforts and resources elsewhere, but some of the forum community were valuable and loyal customers and we probably lost most of them to the competition.

One of our major competitors in the gaming PC sector made their forums the centrepiece of their sales and marketing. They were pretty wild and anarchic communities, but as Gary points out, their loyalty was unbreakable.

Too many B2B companies often mistakenly go looking for customers in the obvious places like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, when there’s probably a specialist forum or platform for your industry.

If you’re in the UK education technology business then you should be spending a lot of time with the Edugeek community. Small but smart companies who specialise in selling computers to schools, like VeryPc have made them a crucial part of the way they talk to, and support, their customers.

The international IT pro community that is Spiceworks started as a bit of collaborative inventory software but their forum morphed into a leviathan that now boasts over 6 million members. If you have anything to do with professional hardware you’d be mad not to join in.

“I want to make sure I am meeting them on the platform they have chosen to be on.”

Birds of a feather flock together, so there’s most probably a community for your sector — no matter how niche it is. In fact the more niche, the more likely that there’s a community somewhere that would welcome the right kind of (gentle, natural and helpful) attention. Don’t rush in with the hard sell. Listen first. And carefully.

Gary also makes another great point: “And let’s not forget that most “social networks” are not really that social any more. They are content distribution networks.”

Facebook is intent on becoming a new kind of publisher and a powerful ‘traffic driver’ (see here and here for example) and seems less concerned now with being a really social network. I have written before that I don’t believe that focussing attention on your own Facebook page and posts is a good idea anymore — especially if you are in a B2B market. Your customers probably don’t want to see you there.

The point Gary is making is one that I wholeheartedly concur with and it’s worth repeating again. Facebook is still a very powerful amplifier for any company or organisation, but nearly always that will come from someone else posting your stuff, or writing about you. So, as usual, create great stuff — everywhere you can — and let your friends and fans do the rest.

Gary sums it all up perfectly. “You don’t give up on anything if you have an audience there. Don’t abandon it. If it exists and there is value for you in it, use it. It’s worth your time. It builds equity, communities, and lifelong customers. I promise.”

Go looking in the corners, the quiet places and in the nooks and crannies. In your industry’s niches you’ll find probably a highly receptive audience.

As a footnote it’s worth pointing out the obvious about Google +. It’s hard-wired into Google search algorithms so a post on + probably does a huge amount for your search rankings. Google are still rewarding loyalty.

Blogger is another big community that Google are letting wither, but posts on blogs hosted on Blogspot/Blogger still rate very highly in search results.

“nothing is ever dead till it straight up does not exist any more.”

Well worth a close read. Thanks Gary

Die stockshots. Die.

“Who is the girl who answers your phones?”

I don’t like stockshots. Stockshots lie. They are a big fat corporate fib that no one really believes. They’re not real and they are not telling the truth about your organisation and I refuse to use them. Does that girl really answer your phones for a living or does she sashay down catwalks for Models 1?

Of course that’s a deliberately provocative paragraph and there are lots of ‘yes buts’. If your brand relies on aspiration like fashion or phones, it’s probably wise to make sure that the person wearing/holding your stuff is easy on the eye. That’s partly because usual or ordinary looking people actually stand out and distract from the product, and partly because we've been brainwashed by over a hundred years of advertising, that we want to wear and use what the beautiful people use and wear.

But that’s arse really. ‘People buy from people’ is a cliche because it’s absolutely true. When you’re selling a human product like a service, or you are claiming any kind of authenticity about your work, then yes it damn well does matter if your pictures fib. Doubly so if you’re a B2B company, selling to other businesses. Why? Because it’s all about trust dummy.

My word is my bond, but my brochure is all piffle and piss.

Who the hell are these people and what on God’s good earth are they doing?

They’re sure as hell not having a meeting like any I’ve endured. Why is he presenting so close behind their backs? Wouldn’t it be much more comfortable if he was in front of them? And what’s that graph all about? Or is it art? Is he explaining the nuance of an abstract expressionist painting? “It’s a bit Miro. Quite Mondrian. Ultimately it’s derivative and ….”

It’s tosh and no one relates to it, no one believes it and it doesn't help in anyway to sell your stuff. You’re deceiving people rather than winning their trust.

This one was thrillingly titled “business successful meeting office colleagues have”. It sounds like it was translated into Japanese and then back again by a Google Translator algorithm. And that’s what it looks like too. It’s mangled and doesn't really make sense. I could probably work out what you're trying to imply about your successful team, but it’s visual gibberish.

No one but American senators wear ties like that now do they?

They are real people, yes, but they don’t work at your office and they are not having a business successful meeting for your company. So what are they doing gurning away on your website? What are they doing for your brand?

Stockshots are expensive too and if you use more than a handful they’re far more expensive than a half decent photographer. With a photographer you get two very important things: 1. To keep and own all the shots and 2. Truth.

The very best decision I made at my former company, Novatech, was to hireJoe our in-house photographer. We’d used the talented Paul Hames, who proved that amazing imagery was possible despite our utilitarian premises, but when we needed to expand our creative team we went looking for a graphic designer.

It was another Paul, our head designer, who actually chose Joe and it was down to his photographic portfolio rather than his InDesign skills. Joe was NME’s live photographer of the year and his collection of snarling punks and sweaty stage divers was undoubtedly brilliant, but there weren’t many people building computers.

What Paul rightly spotted was that Joe could give us our own visual identity that would be far more effective than logos, and that it would be compellingly real. We sold computers, but mainly to businesses and schools. For our customers the relationship with their account manager and the knowledge that the hardware was assembled and supported in Hampshire was the key selling point.

The guts of our PCs were the same as everyone else’s but our people were ours and they were why our customers bought from us.

So Joe showed that.

Sure, you shouldn’t put the teenage apprentice with chronic acne front and centre, but I do want my technology assembled by someone who look likes they know what they’re doing, and they don’t often look like Naomi Campbell. No one does.

Of course it’s not necessary to hire an in-house photographer. There are so many talented professionals out there who not only make stockshots totally unnecessary, but also a waste of money. You might think that your offices and your staff aren't attractive enough, but as my photographer friend Paul Hames pithily explained. “You can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter”.

It’s very simple really. Sure you should have a shave and comb your hair, but be yourself. Let people see behind the scenes. Let them see how you tick.

Be real. People like it much better that way.

ALL THE GOOD PHOTOS ARE BY JOE WATSON @ VISIONINCISION

“Find out who you are, and then be it on purpose.”

The wisdom of Dolly and Douglas.

“Find out who you are, and then be it on purpose”

I’m a big fan of a pithy one-liner and I was surprised and delighted that I’d never seen this wonderful bit of wisdom from Dolly Parton. It makes perfect sense with her ‘it takes a lot of money to look this cheap’ schtick, but it’s also a great life motto. So of course it’s a great command for companies too.

Everyone prefers it when you don’t try to be something that you’re not, and when you just relax and be yourself. But defining yourself is one of those radically important things that far too many organisations and businesses neglect to do with the necessary level of commitment. It’s at the very heart of carving out a great brand that people want to buy into, and to trust.

Don’t think for a minute that this is fluffy marketing twaddle — this is a seriously hard-nosed commercial imperative. The first thing financiers assess when they look to buy a company is the value of the brand. If you don’t know your brand down to the last penny, what price will anyone else pay for it?

I’ve recently got to know Neal the founder of Lovehoney, the UK’s biggest and best supplier of adult toys, who told me in no uncertain terms how much he valued defining their brand. He admitted that they paid a lot to do a comprehensive review, but that it was the best money that they’d spent. He explained that the results of the initial customer surveys had not only surprised and delighted them but had given them a shot in the arm that increased sales too.

Their customers were nearly all married couples who thought thatLovehoney brought pleasure and fun to their marriages, revitalising their sex lives and — crucially — making them very, very happy. Everyone is happier when they are having good sex.

Neal explained that this made everyone in the office very happy too. The change in the team’s perception of what they did (and who they were) shifted from being mildly embarrassed to being super-proud. They didn’t just sell sex toys, they reinvigorated marriages and spread joy and fulfillment. The whole process helped the company to feel excited and motivated and that helped productivity and spiked sales.

Once you know who you are, you can really cut loose and BE who you are. The Lovehoney brand work informed everything from website and product designs to advertising campaigns and customer services, and all for the better. They now proudly call themselves the Sexual Happiness People. That’s who they are on purpose.

The Cornish surf apparel company Finisterre have always had a pretty good grip on what they did, and why, but it was only when they honed in on their who they were that they really accelerated. They couldn’t and didn’t want to compete with the huge Aussie, Hawaiian and Californian surf brands, soaked in sun, tans and palm trees. Their people surfed in perpetually cold water and cold water surfers is who they are.

Finisterre defined the category — which had existed, but never been named — and in a stroke spoke straight to a huge population of Northern European water babies, raised on freezing beaches and on icy seas. Cold water surfingis their thing and although megabrands like Volvo and H&M are now riding their wave (so to speak), it’s a party wave and Finisterre are the only ones who are really ‘being it on purpose’.

I’ve been searching in vain for a half-remembered Douglas Adams quote, but the essence was, “He went off to India to find himself. Unfortunately, he forgot to exchange addresses and lost touch with himself again almost immediately. This time forever.”

You’d be surprised how many companies struggle to give a short, truthful and non-jargon-filled answer to the question ‘what do you do?’ That’s the corporate way of saying ‘who are you?’ You might just be an an accountancy practice (“we’re accountants” does work) but your not just doing other people’s sums, you’re giving them financial peace of mind.

There’s no point planning an ad campaign, a PR push or a sales drive if you don’t know who you are, as a company or as an organisation. They will all ultimately fall short because none of it will ring true. You can’t be you.

“Man, know thyself” was the challenge of ancient Greek philosophers because, frankly, you’d never get anything done of value or worth if you didn't get to grips with your own identity first.

So thank you Dolly, for summing up so beautifully everything that I do for a living. That’s helped me to define what DirtMeetsTheWater does.

We help you to find out who you are, and we make sure that you can be it on purpose. Most wonderfully.

A rich digital tapestry really matters.

Put your eggs in every basket you can.

Every January, for the last few years, the lovely people a Valuable Contenthave been kind enough to ask me for my predictions for the important marketing trends in the coming year. I enjoy this kind of crystal ball gazing, mainly because it reminds me what I myself need to concentrate on, but also because it gives me the chance to highlight some great things that the people I admire are doing.

This year I wrote: “In 2015 having a great digital reputation is going to become even more important. Having a rich tapestry of films, conversations and articles across numerous platforms and publications will be essential to building a strong brand and for sales.

The key trick, however, will be sharing useful information and great entertainment that is not your own. Marketing teams have to become curators of interesting and intelligent content, so understanding your customers’ tastes will be vital. Harnessing the dark-sharing style of “saw this and thought you’d enjoy it” will be a killer skill. Very few will do it well, but those that do will be the year’s winners.”

I’m going to write more about the importance of being a curator another time, (The masters are Hiut Denim) but the secret of a rich tapestry is in the variety of platforms you use to tell your stories. It’s no longer enough to just have a great website or a great blog. Anyone can be great on their own turf and on their own subject (and that’s of course essential too), you’ve got to be seen and heard in lots of unexpected places.

At my former company, Novatech, we used most of the usual platforms, but we also went wider and started using things like Spotify.

Initially the idea was to help with a graduate recruitment drive, but our regular playlists — crowd sourced each week on a different theme from the Novatech team — became really popular with our newsletter subscribers and customers. It was of course intentional (?!), but it allowed friends and fans to see behind the scenes and into our culture, and showed that we weren’t just tech-head geeks. Our Spotify channel added another dimension to the way people perceived Novatech and our brand. [NB: I recommend theSuperhero playlist and the far gentler Sweet and lowdown]

Like most companies we also experimented with Tumblr, Instagram,LinkedIn and other networks, but valuable as those all were, they were our property. It’s the foundation of all PR that you need to be seen and quoted in other people’s publications and that’s doubly true online.

We encouraged the sales teams to get involved in discussions in forums and on social media where their prospects spent their time. As a B2B PC manufacturer Novatech always had good coverage in the tech media, but it was branching out into management, accountancy, legal, design, architecture and engineering titles that really helped our sales teams.

These are old networking skills and it’s not a new idea to spread yourself wide, but too many organisations still misguidedly believe that simply posting regularly on Facebook and Twitter is a strong social media policy. If the analogy that social media is like a pub is true, then it follows that limiting yourself to one popular network is like standing in the corner of a very busy Wetherspoons on a Friday night yelling about your services. No one will hear you, and if they do you’ll sound a bit sad and you’ll probably just annoy them. Unlike.

I also added a footnote to my Valuable Content predictions, because there’s another important reason why focussing too much on one social channel isn’t a good idea.

“PS: Unless you’re a megabrand your Facebook page will become a ghost town. Facebook’s management have admitted that less than 10% of your followers will see your posts, so you might as well concentrate on generating and curating great content elsewhere. If your customers share your content on their Facebook timelines, it will still have huge amplification, but don’t look to your own page for traffic and conversations. The Facebook behemoth is only interested in your advertising spend now.”

At Novatech we noticed some time back that our Facebook posts weren’t having the impact that they once had, but if you sprinkled in a few ad dollars they magically spiked — and then some. Stop the ad spend and they dropped off again. That’s not surprising. Possibly advertising works, but actually in revenue terms that just wasn’t true. The ad-driven traffic was pretty superficial (and often strangely foreign considering we didn’t ship to SE Asia). Unsurprisingly, organically generated engagement was far, far more effective, but it was dropping off badly without ad support.

We guesstimated from the analytics that less that 5% of our followers were seeing our posts. Stretching the analogy a bit, it’s like we were in that crowded pub. It’s chock full of our kind of people, but most of our friends had no idea that we were hidden away in the corner amiably sipping a pint and Wetherspoons weren’t about to tell them. Why would they when the big alcohol companies were paying them to shout about their presence?

Here’s the rub. Facebook is too big for most organisations to be effectively heard above the din. Remember Bebo? MySpace? Napster? These were huge communities for a while, but for various reasons they aren’t anymore. Facebook was once a great to hang out if you were a smart organisation — but they’ve grown and evolved and they’re not really interested in your organisation now.

So whilst you should maintain your Facebook page (you never know if you’ll meet someone good in a corner, even of a Wetherspoons), but head out to some smaller bars, cafes and restaurants. Go to the working men’s clubs, the cricket club, the gym and of course hang out on the beach. That’s where you’ll find the best people.

As a footnote, I should clarify that Facebook is still a very powerful amplifier for any company or organisation, but nearly always that will come from someone else posting your stuff, or writing about you. So, as usual, create great stuff — everywhere you can — and let your friends and fans do the rest.

Besides, as a wise wag once said “social media is where people go to waste time. Brands need to be respectful of that”.

The original Valuable Content article with much more sage advice, from wiser heads, is here: http://www.valuablecontent.co.uk/marketing-trends-for-2015-predictions-from-those-who-know/