Those early days excitedly finding out what to do and the tricks and tools to use. It really helped having another newby at the start of the journey.

Besides, I was advising clients that they need to get into Social media. However wasn’t doing it myself. That was daft! I’d been watching on the sidelines for over a year - rather sceptical to be honest.

To my surprise I really got into tweeting…

• I learnt loads of stuff that’s relevant to my business and to my clients. Broadened my exposure to information, opinions and views.
• I’ve made some amazing contacts - people who’ve added real value to my business and to me personally.
• I’ve reinforced connections with people in the real world, and re-established old connections I should never have lost.
• I’ve had really useful advice of loads of tools and office equipment. I have even found new suppliers that I’m really happy with - thanks to recommendations via twitter - from trusted contacts I hasten to add.
• I’ve had some great sales leads and projects that fall into my sweetspot. Real dream projects. Doubt they’d have materialised if it wasn’t for my conversations.
• It has given me a chance to eye up the competition - and to be honest I’ve been very impressed with the quality of some I’ve stumbled across. Some may prove to be useful allies in time.
• It’s inspired me to improve my game
• I’m having a ball - learning, connecting, sharing …

It was a shock to find I’d been listed on Twitter Grader.We’re made the No 23 spot - so loads of room for improvement. But, I’m delighted nevertheless… didn’t think we’d even make it onto the radar.

Got a twitter account? Try Twitter Grader for yourself.

It allows you to take a window snapshot of your page - as seen. However, snapshot facility doesn’t capture the tweets.

A clever little idea that’s generating loads of web traffic…

AARDMAAN IS Parade

The good news is that they’re fun to do. And, when you get them right, they’re incredibly powerful.

So, what is a value proposition?

In brief, a customer value proposition a statement that sets out what you do as a business - covering the elements that are critical to your customers. The aim is to set you apart from competitors in the customer’s mind - so that they choose your offer over that of a competitors.

Why do you need a value proposition? in brief, it helps …

• Your customers and prospects understand what you do
• Your employees to be on the same page
• To create a competitive differentiator
• Find more customers
• Win more business
• Retain customers for longer
• Stakeholders to understand how they can add value
• Build a foundation for profitable business …

How to create highly effective customer value propositions:

1. Keep your value proposition brief

2. Outline your business ‘big picture’:

• Who your market is - segment you’re targeting
• Customer needs, wants or challenges
• What your product / service does for them - the benefits
• The uniqueness of your offering
• Why your offer is better than the competition’s offer

3. Use to create a value statement and even shorter ‘elevator pitch’

4. Create multiple value propositions:

• for every segment, product, service, brand and offer

5. Tailor each value proposition to your business and to your audience

6. Share and share again with your market and stakeholders:

• employees, investors, customers, supply chain …
• adapt to the audience each time you do
• explain their role in the customer value process

7. Use to align business operations and deliverables

So, how does this apply to our customers - and how and what we sell to people. How we motivate our customers. What are the things that drive our customers.

According to Dan Pink, there are three major motivators that drive productivity and a sense personal satisfaction. They are:

• autonomy - the desire to be self directed
• mastery - the urge to get better at stuff
• purpose - doing good and contributing

Apply this to B2B customer relationships. Do we enable our customers to have more autonomy in doing their work? Do we enable our customers to master new skills and techniques? Do we enable our customers to have a sense of purpose?

Do we help our customer organisations to enable their people to be more productive by giving them the tools, knowledge and insight that enables these things to happen.

It is not just about selling stuff - it is about enabling stuff.

The irony is that if we give stuff away, enable customers to be autonomous and enable them to have purpose in their lives - they will become more productive and more profitable. Isn’t that what we should do - enable customers to be more successful - and live fulfilled and purposeful lives.

Are you driven by profit?
An interesting point is that if the “profit motive becomes unhinged from the purpose motive - bad things happen - such as bad service.” We all know organisations that seem to have lost its spark. It may just be that they’re trying to motivate through reward.

Are you driven by purpose?
Just think about all those profit and sales targets - do they enable people to really offer customers the best service, the best products … customer-aligned differentiated offers that customers value?

Do your customers buy into your purpose?
If organisations have purpose, the people that work for them are motivated! Their customers see it, feel it - and most customers will love it …  customers buy into that purpose too. Why? Because supporting your purpose - gives them a sense of purpose too.

Get this right - and you’ll have a powerful differentiator …

Here are three fundamental reasons why your marketing strategy may not be working properly:

1. Decide Business Direction

If you don’t have a succinct and clear business vision, strategy or objective. And, if you can’t articulate your business objective and strategy easily - you won’t be able to create a succcessful marketing strategy.

Before you start work on your marketing strategy, make sure you know what your business objective and strategy is. Your marketing strategy won’t work if your marketing strategy isn’t aligned with your business objectives and strategy.

If people in your business do not know (or can’t articulate) what the business objective and strategy is - you’ll need to go back to the drawing board.

2. Focus on Business Strategy

You haven’t settled on one business strategy, preferring to hedge your bets and try a number of strategies. These strategies may be conflicting, or weaken a potential position of strength.

According to Porter’s 1983 generic strategies, businesses only have four strategic options. Either 1. Focus, 2. Cost Leadership, 3. Differentiation - or the worst position, 4. Stuck the Middle.

If people in your business, or your customers are confused about your focus - then you need to review your business strategy. Decide what your strategy should be. Holding the middle ground is not a viable option.

3. Communicate with Your People

Your people need to buy into the business strategy and marketing strategy. If they don’t agree with the strategy, or don’t know here the business is headed - you need to work to get your people on board.

Marketing is not just the function of the marketing department. Everyone in the organisation needs to pull together to serve the needs of the customer and understand the importance of being customer-driven.

Getting people involved in the marketing strategy process from day one, will help overcome resistance issues further down the line. Particularly the people who need to implement the marketing and business plans.

If you want to motivate your people - give them the opportunity to contribute to planning the future direction of the company, and share in the achievement too.

In summary: To succeed you need to be decisive about where the business is headed and how you are going to get there, what your strategic focus is going to be, and make sure you take your people with you on the journey. Three simple steps: Decide, Focus, and Communicate.

Not knowing who your customer is - costs.

Not sure who your customers are? Ask various departments in your organisation to define who they think your customers are: sales, operations, services, customer services, manufacturing, logistics, finance and accounting functions - and not forgetting marketing. How do you think they view your customers - and how would they describe you customers?

Take note of how your people describe your customers.

Do they describe the customer in terms of personal demographics such as age, position, and status.  Or in terms of the type of business, size of organisation, geographical location, and so forth. If your people have different perceptions about who the customer is they will treat the customer differently. The result is that your customer won’t have a consistent experience of your organisation. Take this a step further. The way you define your customers becomes the way you segment your market.

If your customer definition isn’t right - think of the consequences.

If every project your business initiates: new product development, new service delivery vehicles, sales promotions, marketing campaigns - is based on an incorrect perception of who your market is - what would the cost be to your business. Not only in terms of your operational, marketing, sales, R&D resources, but also the customer opportunities wasted.

What’s the cost to your business of not knowing who your customers are?

Decided to check out a website that I worked on last year. A comparison site. Wrote all the words and SEO metadata > scrutinised every word to the nth degree. Toiled over every keyword, phrase, sentence, paragraph and page. Wordsmithed every letter and syllable. Can’t say who sadly … but can talk about the results.

Needless to say - really chuffed that the site achieved an astounding 93.3% customer focus score. In a world where a score of 70% is seen as excellent!

• Your Customer Focus Rate:  93.33% 
• Your Self Focus Rate: 6.67%
• You speak about your customers about 14 times as often as you speak about yourself. Excellent!

That was the aim - to make the site totally customer-focussed. The only page “I”, “we”, “us” “and “our” is mentioned is on the About page!

Amazing result … especially when compared with:

confused.com
Your Customer Focus Rate: 42.86%
Your Self Focus Rate: 57.14%
You speak about yourself almost as often as you speak about your customers. Might you improve that?

comparethemarket.com
Your Customer Focus Rate: 70.37%
Your Self Focus Rate: 29.63%
You speak about your customers about 2 times as often as you speak about yourself. Excellent!

beatthatquote.com
Your Customer Focus Rate: 46.43%
Your Self Focus Rate: 53.57%
You speak about yourself almost as often as you speak about your customers. Might you improve that?

moneysupermarket.com
Your Customer Focus Rate: 56.76%
Your Self Focus Rate: 43.24%
You speak about yourself almost as often as you speak about your customers. Might you improve that?

Check your site’s customer focus here.

Want to improve your website “wewe” score? Give us a shout …

Telling tall stories is a serious business. April Fools can be very good for business. However, it has to be exceptionally done well. And needs to follow the simple rules of communication.

Your Apil Fools’ campaign needs to:

• Reflect your brand image
• Resonate with your existing audience
• Reach and engage a new (relevant) audience
• Go viral

Branding. Really good campaigns reinforce the brand and help people to make a stronger connection with your company, your values and ethos. Google always do exceptional April Fools campaigns. Will this year go down as one of the most memorable? You decide.

Exisiting audience. Your existing audience needs to identify with your campaign. In fact, they need to love it. Feel they are part of the tribe - and in on the joke. What you really want them to do is to pass the message on. Predictably, Google has one again unleashed a glut of April Fools today. April Fools is not just fun - it is a serious business strategy.

TechCruch have done a great round-up of the best technology April Fools - and have rated each A, B, C, D  - with Crunchpad kit given an A++. And, Google Search renamed as Topeka - rated a D-! It works. They’re drawing a lot of traffic to their site. Their Bit.ly click-through alone was over 5000 - at last count. So who are the winners? Those that do the jokes - or those reporting on the jokes?

New audience. Want to reach a new audience? Break into new markets? Raise your profile amongst a group where you are less known? Target your campaign to appeal directly to them! And if you’re not known, how about making a crazy offer. Laptops Direct have a long history of doing spoof videos - on the edge of good taste. However, does help them to reach audiences they probably wouldn’t reach … and in their own words “reinforces our brand”! And, as always their videos do have viral-appeal …

Viral. If your well-thought-through campaign just sits on your website, you will have spent a lot of marketing dollar with little effect. Learn from the pros. And, you don’t need huge budgets! You just need some clever ideas. People are hungry great April Fools - so that they can show they are in on the joke. Just make your message is where your audience is - and let them forward it on.

Health Warning: A bit too risky? There is a fine line to tread. Your joke can backfire and alienate the audience you’re so desperately trying to win over. Do a straw poll and test your “industry joke” before you unleash it on the world. If people who should get it - get it, think it is hilariously funny, and would be willing to forward your April Fools - you’re onto a winner. If not, think again.

Now is not too early to start thinking about next years campaign … if you dare

Have a great April Fools Day

Designed to be a quick and easy way for you to find articles and information related to B2B marketing, copywriting, email marketing, powerpoint presentations, innovation, organisational structure, social media and creativity. Also useful for yours truly to find information and useful articles marketing later - if the truth be told. 

Here’s the top twelve tweets for March:

1. Are you creatively anti-creative? Check out this Anti-Creativity Checklist: http://ow.ly/1qsPZY

2. Top 10 Presentation Sins - 3 weeks PowerPoint experience: http://bit.ly/aMujW5

3. Fascinating graphs - Infographic on The Current State of Twitter: http://bit.ly/d4v4q5

4. BBC reveals 10 dotcoms that have dotgone: boo, GXL, clickmango ++ http://bit.ly/a3DZKz

5. Fancy a go a creating your own Social Network? http://ow.ly/1kTkk

6. 8 Social Media Trends for 2010: search, mobile, video, user-generated content +: http://bit.ly/cwVA2T

7. 10 Amazing Life Lessons You Can Learn From Albert Einstein - Power of Imagination: http://tinyurl.com/ycs2zas

8. Are companies getting smarter with email marketing? http://bit.ly/8Z7Qvn

9. B2B Marketers: 6 lessons from B2B University - 1. prospects in charge 2. its all about content 3..: http://bit.ly/cKqPNg

10. How are organisations planning for digital beyond marketing? http://bit.ly/9rC4yM

11. Print is still beautiful - even in a digital age - people still love the way books smell, feel and look: http://bit.ly/95zSlj

12. C?O: Time to rethink the C-suite. Chief Meaning Officer. Chief Divergence Officer. Where’s your C-club headed? http://bit.ly/ca2HMz

Hope you found those intriguing, obscure and thought-provoking!? Useful would be good …

John Bennett of Bennet Engineering congratulating Gabriel Donkoh

The successful completion of the project was celebrated with a game or skittles at the Beacon pub in Loughborough this week …

MBA students who took part in 2010 LATi case study project

Congratulations to the MBA students from the University of Leicester School of Management: Sharukh Kotwal, Parag Doshi, Tushar Khera, Avani Doshi, Ken Muira, Gabriel Donkoh, and Ginelle Roberts. Their customer case studies have been approved by a number of stakeholders and published - in record time.

Thanks to all who helped to make the 2010 LATi case study project a huge success:

Pauline Graham of LATi for organising, project managing and sponsoring the project.

Gillian Hunter of AARDMAAN who trained and mentored the students and managed the project

Jim McEwen of Crayfish Design for designing the case study templates and creating finished layouts

Professor Steven Brown of the University of Leicester for enthusiastic support of the project

LATi members who were provided valuable time, input and support to the project:

3M of Loughborough

Susan Hallam of Hallam Internet - hallam.biz

Andy Massarano of  Truelog - truelog.co.uk

John Bennett of Bennett Engineering - beneng.co.uk

Patrick Eaton of bd3T -  bd3T.com

Andrew Bowler of LICL - loughborough-innovation.com

Iain Thornton of Campbell Scientific - campbellsci.co.uk

Triton Technology - triton-technology.co.uk

And last, but not least, thanks to LATi for initiating and sponsoring the case study project - for a second year running. We couldn’t do it without you …