Do as I say and as I do!

I’m always telling my clients that blogging is a great, informal way to communicate with their stakeholders. I also try to ensure that for those businesses reliant on natural ranking, a blog forms an integral part of their web site. But while these things work well for clients, it has very much been a case of do as I say not as I do!

And yet so much happens every day in my world of advising on business and marketing strategy around greater Manchester that I need to be more focussed and keep sharing it! Last week was a good case in point. On Monday the activity was target marketing. My client has previously taken a very unspecific approach to target sectors and never had the patience to drill down into sectors and target the prospects where there is complete synergy between my clients competitive positioning and the absolute needs of the newly identified market niche.

Why bother was their question. My answer was that in today’s communications environment, if our marketing messages are not appropriate, intelligent and compelling, we run the twin risks of being ignored or being outsmarted by the competitor who understands that successful marketing communications is about the audience not the sender. Why do so few people get that in Business 2 Business – it’s a basic?

Last Wednesday we were further back up the strategic marketing chain. A client in central Manchester has had a great new idea to develop an additional service offering from his company. I think innovation is about the most exciting thing going. As we challenged his idea it just kept being reinforced. So now we have the opportunity to develop intelligent and compelling market entry strategies and help his business to add another successful service string to its bow.