Something Blog

Free marketing. Is there really such a thing?

2011-04-08T10:01:00.002+01:00

Apparently so. Cross-promotion - sometimes referred to as 'third party promotion' - is not a new concept. But we are doing far more of it than we might think since the emergence of social media. Perhaps the right phrase is the new buzz term, “referral marketing”. In simple language, to me at least, it basically comes down to one company extolling the virtues of another.

It’s an activity that’s certainly alive and kicking. Just consider these examples:

We recently celebrated our 10th year in business. This coincided with our landlords, The Lansbury Estate, celebrating an even greater achievement: 30 years in business! You don't have to be Einstein to recognise the benefit for each business of some mutual mentioning in our press releases. Broader media coverage for both businesses and better ROI - all at no extra cost.

We were also delighted to be asked by The Lansbury Estate to donate a prize and special offer for promotion when they exhibited at Woking Means Business. With 45 thriving businesses operating on the estate, it was not only a great way to get more visitors to the stand, but also for tenants like us to get increased exposure at an exhibition we didn’t attend.

More recently, I was interviewed by Sally James of Brooklands Radio. We discussed what it takes to succeed in business, giving me a great opportunity to return some favours by mentioning The Lansbury Estate, and clients like superstar start up, Tidy Trays. No cost to me (or them), but still all round great promotion. And if you don't believe me, have a listen for yourself.

So sometimes good, effective marketing, can be free. It's something we should all be doing, so just ask yourself: are there any opportunities for cross-promotion I'm missing out on?

10 years on: time to say thanks

2011-03-28T15:47:00.006+01:00

Having celebrated our tenth anniversary in business last year it made Nick and I ponder the journey we’ve been on and remind ourselves of all the people who have, in their own way, made Something Big what it is today. So in true Oscar winner style (but without the tears) here are a few people we want to thank and who deserve to share in our success.

We’ll start by venturing back to my last (as my dad would call it “proper”) job in the corporate world, where I was lucky enough to work for Tim Moss. It’s fair to say I came of age working for Tim - he nutured me through a number of commercial negotiations, taught me the tricky ground rules of corporate politics and left me with some little gems of advice. One of my favourites has always been: “always give figures a manual sense check when you take them from a fancy system, spreadsheet, computer, or hi tech formula”. This one still serves our business well to this day: a logical approach to figures often makes you question even the best analysis. As our finance manager would tell you I’m renowned for my “back of a fag packet” logic.

Our second thank you goes out to our first few clients who, even though we didn't have an office in the early days, trusted us enough to come on board. Ian Anderson and Peter Kitchener were amongst our very first supporters when I left the corporate world. We’ve worked with both of them throughout the years in their various roles at different companies and we still work with them today, ten years on. Thanks guys!

A broader thank you goes to all the comments we’ve received from various business coaches, mentors, Business Link advisors and the like. It’s these comments that made us question and re- shape our business model, structure, and vision over time. A particularly painful comment suggested that our profit was “rickety” - a word that stuck in our collective throat for a long time but certainly gave us the focus we needed to sort it out!

On a more personal note a massive thank you has to go to the HUGE support we get from our team, both in the business and at home. Our Something Big team have always been a credit to us. Our first recruit is still with us today suggesting we’ve managed to get something right. We recruit carefully and then nurture and look after our staff like a family. And at home an even bigger team of support comes from mums and mum-in-laws, childminders, nurseries, au pairs, school clubs and, in my case, a hugely supportive hubby. In my case it means that when I’m at work I can be single-minded and focused on the success and development of our business, safe in the knowledge that the well-oiled machine of my domestic life is all in hand.

So, enough of this self indulgence, who do you need to thank? Your partner, your suppliers, a mentor, an old boss? Why not leave a comment on this blog to give them a bit of credit?

Has social media changed customer service for the better?

2011-03-09T14:37:00.003Z

A satisfied customer tells one person about their experience, a dissatisfied customer tells ten. Or at least that's been the marketing cliché for as long as most of us remember. Fair point, well made? You might think. But look again at those numbers. A dissatisfied customer tells ten people? Maybe. If the dissatisfied customer in question has no internet access, no mobile phone and only ever communicates with people face-to-face.

In reality though, social media has dramatically changed the way customers voice their queries, complaints and experiences. Had a bad experience with a major high street brand? Time to tell your 1843 Twitter followers. Slightly disappointed by that Michelin-starred meal? Post a review on Tripadvisor. Irritated by the ubiquity of a particular brand but with no personal experience of their services? No worries. Harnessing the anonymity of the internet you can probably just make something up (a subject that deserves more attention in itself).

Sites like Twitter, Facebook and Tripadvisor – along with their more overtly customer service-focused counterparts (e.g. ComplaintCommunity) – have helped wrestle power back in to the hands of consumers. Which means that companies like ours, and the clients we manage social media for, have to be more proactive with customer engagement.

No more sitting back, waiting for the one-to-one customer service calls to come in – conversations are already happening out there in cyberspace. It's your brand that's being talked about. And the whole wide world is watching.

Yes, this means upping your customer service game. But it's a genuine opportunity too – a real chance to give your business a more personal voice as you build relationships that stretch way beyond the five-minute customer service call.

A great example from recent personal experience: shortly after tweeting that we were on our way for a luxury weekend at Bannatyne's Charlton House Spa Hotel, the chairman replied asking whether we fancied a bottle of red or white. Well, erm, let me see....yes please! Upon arriving, we were delighted to see that he'd been true to his word. The staff did him proud and we came away wanting to tell people about our experience.

Would we have had the same level of service had it not been for Twitter? Unlikely. What made us feel special wasn't the bottle of wine per se, but the fact the chairman and staff had made a personal effort to engage with us. One-to-one contact made possible by Twitter, leapfrogging traditional barriers and making us feel like valued customers.

What's important is that for many businesses, including our own clients, social media is helping them achieve a personalized level of customer service and satisfaction above and beyond anything previously possible. It's a great way of finding out what customers want and when they want it. And it gives businesses an opportunity to add that little bit of magic – magic that begins with listening and talking to customers like real people.

That said, great relationships need to work both ways. As a customer, it's easy to focus on the occasional negative experience. We've all done it. But we shouldn't forget that companies are (usually) made up of lots of individuals working hard to give customers a great experience. Don't they occasionally deserve a bit of recognition? If they've gone out of their way to help us on Twitter, isn't it a basic human courtesy to say thanks?

In fact, perhaps it's time that old adage was rewritten. Why tell only one friend about fantastic service when you can help 1843 Twitter followers share it?

But what do you think? Has social media changed your experience of customer service? Have you got any examples of great customer service driven by social media? Leave a comment below - we're really interested to hear your thoughts on this one!

Women are doing it for themselves

2010-03-08T16:31:00.000Z

I couldn’t let a day like “International Women’s Day” go by without a mention, so today I’m prompted to question why I left a good career in the corporate world some ten years ago to work for myself instead.

Global corporate, Accenture, are in their sixth year of supporting and hosting International Women’s Day celebrations, so in that I commend them, however when I look at the theme of their last celebrations, encouraging women to “stretch themselves” as they aim for “50:50 in the board room by 2020” I can’t help wonder if they, like so many other coporates, have left it all a bit late and missed out on a whole generation of women.

For me, it was easy, I hopped off the corporate ladder as soon as I realised that I wanted to combine a challenging job with a family, so Accentures theme prompts me to ask why?

Did I fear that I wouldn’t get the flexibility of working hours I might want after maternity?
Did I take one look at the maternity policy and not think much of it?
Did I worry about how seriously I would be taken at a senior level if I went part time?
Did I know that realistically working part time would really mean fulltime job in part time hours?
Did I think I might get overlooked at the next promotional opportunity?

Sadly I’m afraid the answer was all of the above and the list could go on.

I don’t blame big corporates for not getting it quite right for women yet, I can see how difficult it might be to be flexible when you have hundreds of employees all requiring different working policies, you can’t have one rule for one and another for another. I know that HR departments across the world have been working away at making their policies more equal and available for the diverse nature of employees but it’s not as easy as pieces of paper, culture and society have to change too.

So will Accenture’s dream of 50:50 in the boardroom by 2020 come true? I truly hope so, for my daughters and all young women’s sake, but in the meantime, I fear a raft of women have started doing it for themselves instead.

So for me, today, I suggest we celebrate Women Business Owners around the world, well done for having the courage, strength, tenacity and drive to show the business world what happens when we hit a glass ceiling, we find another way out instead!

How can football grow my business?

2010-03-03T09:54:00.004Z

You may think we’re mad, but if, like us, you love football and run a small business, SME or "start up" that you’re focused on growing or launching, then read on…

In life, being passionate about something usually means you succeed in the end, probably because you throw everything you have at it, passion being half the battle.

At Something Big we’re passionate about lots of things, one being football and another being helping grow businesses through really focused marketing campaigns. So we thought it was about time to have some fun mixing the two up.

So how can football help grow my business? Well it’s simple really, we’re not the only ones who love football, why not make the most of the fact that your customers and potential customers might have a common interest with you. Soon most of the British public will be talking about football, so stop talking about your widgets just for a moment and give yourself a chance to have some fun with your customers. You never know what might if you simply engage with people.

All in all, we believe that businesses should be making the most of the World Cup, it doesn’t come very often, and is a great hook for talking to people.

If you need to launch a product, grow sales of an existing product or create a presence in a new market sector, make this the ideal time to do it. For help getting started, call us on 01932 875440 and we’ll pop round with the biscuits so we can chat you through how football is going to grow your business this year.

Is your van livery letting you down?

2010-01-29T22:41:00.002Z

Apologies but here starts a rant. I get very frustrated by poorly designed van and lorry livery. To understand my frustration all you need to do is play a simple game next time you’re stuck on a motorway, work out what companies do by what it written on the side of their lorries / vans.

Ok, so some will be easy because you’ll know the brand so I’ll let off the likes of DHL, Sainsburys, Tesco and the like but look a little closer at the rest and you’ll find countless expensively and beautifully branded vans up and down the country that give you no clue as to what they do. In fact the game becomes hugely amusing you should try it.

So why do I get so passionate about this, who cares? Well, I care, because on a daily basis I help companies squeeze extra return on their ever tighter marketing budgets and I find it irresponsible to let such a huge communication opportunity be missed by not thinking through the design of the company fleet.

The answer is simple, if you have the budget to brand you vans, then great, it’s a brilliant way to talk to potential customers so stop and think about what you want to say, in the same way you would an advert. Remember your audience in this situation have never heard of you, so tell them who you are, what you are, what you do and how to get in touch with you.

And please do away with the daft straplines that usually have the word “solutions” in them, they’re not helping!

If you need help with getting your message across why not give us a call, I promise not to rant, but it might be best to park around the corner!

Is working and managing your family a balance, a juggle, a nightmare or a well, oiled machine?

2010-01-18T18:46:00.004Z

As a mother of three and owner of a design agency, if you ask me this question, the answer may well vary according to the day of the week or even the time of the day! But I’ve learnt a lot over the past ten years so I thought I’d share a few of my mistakes and what I learnt from them.

My biggest mistake was aiming for that so called “work / life balance” the problem with this phrase is that it suggests that both work and life should balance, images of scales in my head where sometimes one side clangs down pinging the other up the air. In reality, perhaps work and life shouldn’t balance instead they should sit comfortably together. A great example of this is my “”things to do list”, having battled for years with pages of things to do lists neatly separating my domestic life from my business one, meant that life did feel like a juggle between the two. Try having ONE list, ok so organising a 5 year olds party entertainer is next to sending off that critical tender but that’s ok because then you prioritise them accordingly.

Another mistake was not admitting that I love my job, sounds simple but for some reason after having children, saying we love our jobs somehow suggests we don’t love our children, clearly not true. As if working fulltime means we’re somehow only a part time mum, again anything but, parenthood is fulltime regardless of your work commitments. And I DO love my job, having built up Something Big from the spare bedroom to a thriving, award winning, agency with a studio of designers, was every bit as hard work as nine months of being fat and giving birth (the hard way!). The business is my fourth child, it sometimes gives me sleepless nights, sometimes makes me as proud as punch and is certainly as 24/7 as my other three children, so why wouldn’t I love it, you never know one day it might even grow up and leave home then how would I keep myself busy!

One of my other common mistakes, in the early days, was to look back at my corporate days and wonder if I made the right decision. Perhaps instead of looking at your friends who don’t work and keep telling you how wonderful it was at the park that day, or those still in the corporate world who just dropped everything to deal with chicken pox, it’s better to remember the benefits you have in your life because of your choice. For me some of them are clear a) it's a very good excuse to have a cleaning lady and I always hated cleaning! b) I’m a far better mum in smaller doses and being a good mum is important to me c) I’m happy that I’m setting a great example for my children, particularly my daughter who can see that running a business and being a mum is possible, she’s only five but I can already see in her just the kind of skills you need in business so watch out world I’m creating a very focused business woman of the future!

And on a final note, my mother is often stunned at how much I fit into every 24 hours, but I remind her that a) it was her and her friends that burnt their bras in order for me to have this choice so it’s only polite to make the most of it b) she worked as I grew up and is a wonderful mum that I love to pieces so she set a good example c) men have also had to adapt to the changing world and I’m lucky enough to have a rock of a man by my side who’s not afraid of the washing machine.

I’m pretty sure I’ve still got a lot to learn on this subject so if you’ve made any mistakes or have any gems to share, please comment below or tweet me

January is International Creative Month

2010-01-13T13:02:00.006Z

According to Randall Munson this month is International Creative Month, so bring it on, I say..

So, are you a a creative person? If you're not sure, answer the following questions...

Do you have a messy desk?
MAC or PC? Do you even know what this means?
Do you find yourself loving adverts for their genius ideas, completely ignoring the product they are selling sometimes?
Do you sometimes buy things because of the way they look, their packaging or their colour instead of what they do?
Do you own anything from the Pantone range yet ?
Are you any good building things out of lego?

If you keep answering "yes" we might as well stop there, it’s clear you’re a creative genius and judging by the state of the desks at our offices, our love of Molton Browns packaging and our Pantone mugs we're a pretty creative bunch too, so looks like we'll get on well.

So how shall we celebrate this month of creatvity? How about going somewhere creative, if you haven’t already, check out a couple of our favourite haunts, The Lightbox or The Design Museum.

Or what about creating something creative, like a picture book, we love Bobsbooks, or treat yourself to a Flip (but make sure you get some cute little pink feet to go with it or it's no fun!) or download the Pantone app for your iphone or try reading something creative, Sally has a great reading list on her LinkedIN, or for some really creative thinking come and have a cuppa with us, give us a shout so we can put the kettle on and get the biscuits out (T: 01932 875440 or email getthekettleon@somethingbig.co.uk).

Why don't you post a comment or tweet us with how you got creative.

Are you beating your chest?

2009-11-18T10:26:00.003Z

Are you making sure you shout about your achievements and hard work? With all the general doom and gloom in the media isn’t it nice to read the odd thing that simply says “hey, we’re good at what we do” or “hi, we’re ran this campaign and you know what, it went really well and everyone loved it” or “come and look at this wicked thing we’ve just designed!”.

Business awards are big business these days, with over 1,200 individual awards running each year in the UK alone, so there are plenty to choose from. Find the ones that are right for you and make sure you are making the most of the opportunity to shout out a bit of a well done for all that hard work and start beating your chest.

Oh, and by the way, did I mention that Something Big is celebrating it’s recent award accolade, having just won the Best Business award for Best Marketing. Go and check us out www.bestbusinessawards.co.uk or let us help you with your next campaign so that we can help you join in the chest beating.

Should we send corporate Christmas cards this year?

2009-10-04T20:43:00.004+01:00

Well there’s so much to consider, like, is sending a traditional paper based Christmas card by snail mail the worst possible environmental faux par or is it an even worse one not to take the opportunity to thank your customers for their business, whilst supporting a worthwhile charity?

Well, if you want our opinion, sending corporate Christmas cards is one of the most important marketing and CRM activities of the calendar year.

From an environmental point of view, most cards these days are made from sustainable sources and many support the Woodland trust or other charities that rely on funds raised from the cards to carry on their great work. So our conscience is clear there.

What about e-cards? Well what about them, aren’t our inboxes unbearably clogged up already? I know from my own point of view I’d rather my clients and prospective clients had a nice branded card sitting on their desk for a few weeks rather than an irritating email that took less than a second to delete. And when it comes to choosing between email or snail mail, haven’t we’ve had enough redundancy this year? Anything to support the good old British postie will we’re sure be appreciated by their families this Christmas.

So not that we’ve decided to send cards, do they have any business benefit, what with marketing budget cuts this year is it the best use of money? Well, in our opinion it is, for many reasons, the first being that research shows that virtually 100% of Christmas cards are opened and unlike direct mail are far more likely to be opened by the addressee instead of by admin staff or PA’s who screen/throw away direct mail. And how often does direct mail get displayed for a couple of weeks right in front of your decision makers eyes, screaming out your branding and company name? The answer, never. So there you are for the cost of a Christmas card you have the most important DM campaign of the year.

And it doesn’t seem to be just us who feel this way, take a look at a couple of articles that we found on the subject. Seasons greetings ☺

Why you should still send corporate Christmas cards in a recession

What can a company Christmas card or holiday card do for your business?

Our top tips on making the most of tight marketing budgets

2009-05-27T13:17:00.016+01:00

Refine how you target your communication…
The old fashioned approach to marketing was to refine your message and then identify every route and channel you could use to get this message across, but we find this approach is now SO yesterday!

The problem with this approach is that it assumed that your entire audience was interested in exactly the same message, unfortunately todays’ consumers expect more effort than this, they expect you to know what they’re interested in and pick out the relevant information for them only so that you only communicate to them about things they care about.

So when marketing budgets are tight, this is a great place to focus your time and energy. It’s all about improving your customer profiling data, from when did they last transact to what they bought and how they like communication to come to them. The better you know your customers, the more successful your communicate with them will be and more importantly the better value for money it will become.

And don’t think that this only applies to retail, it’s just as important in the b2b market as the the b2c.

Challenge online activity over printed matter…
Online activity, be it micro sites, eDM, viral campaigns, blogging or any of the many ways to get your messages across the world wide web, there is no doubt that online can be more cost effective than print and more importantly can be more tangible in it’s measurable results. By letting your audience vote with their mouse they will tell you whether they opened it, trashed it or if they read it, what they’re interested in. With reports on open and click thru rates available within minutes of deploying emails there’s no hiding which elements of your communication got through and which didn’t.

This doesn’t mean the end of the print industry, but like everything, it has it’s time and place. Online can be great when the target audience is huge as well as for very targeted messages going to specific groups, where as print can be better when the message is very serious or when targeting very senior decision makers.

Defend your budget from cuts…
There are some things in life that never change and defending marketing budgets from financial squeezes is common even in a good economy so this is a year to defend it more than usual.

The first thing to do is think like a boy scout and “be prepared”. Have a list of activity that you believe to be “committed spend” that you’d protect like your protect your mother, have a list of activity that you can give up like a sacrificial lamb (always making sure there are some political must have’s on this list that you’ve been trying to fend off for months – this is your golden opportunity!) and use the words of others to back up your case. We found a couple of great articles spelling out why it’s important to increase your marketing efforts during challenging times to get you started:

SMEs willing to boost marketing

Brands: Keeping them thriving in a downturn

Get an objective opinion…

And when all else fails come over to Something Big, we’ll put the kettle on and get the biscuits out while you tell us all about your challenges and give you an objective opinion about where and how to save budget and focus on the areas that deliver the best chance of return on investment.