Off the Edge : Marketing

Information is cheap these days - usually FREE in fact! Whatever you want to do you can find someone who has written a blog, created a video, launched a website, devised a programme all about it. No doubt your inbox, like mine, is full of free guides/white papers giving me the inside track on how to ... (you fill in the blank).

Why is everyone giving away such valuable information? Surely once they've told you how it's done you don't need them anymore?

Well, no. They clearly do want you to need them. So what is going on?

I attended a business conference last week and the most lasting message I took from it was this: in the internet age, information is free so the value is in implementation.

So it doesn't matter if you can download Jamie Oliver's recipes for free - he can still charge a premium price for that same dish to be cooked and brought to your table. By sharing his creativity, knowledge and expertise he builds visibility and credibility - and creates demand for a seemingly endless range of products branded Jamie Oliver. (Is anyone else getting a bit tired of him? He's even in the garden centre these days - there's no escape!)

The fact is that knowing what/how to do something isn't the only reason we don't do it, we may lack the time, the inclination or the confidence to have a go. Knowing what to do is not the same as being able to do it. Maybe you could learn how but what else would suffer while you were doing that? Maybe you could find the time but are you better off financially by concentrating on serving your customers?

All the information in the world is useless unless it's acted on. It's only through implementation that you can truly make a difference!

What can you give for free?

I often meet people concerned that they are giving away too much - particular in service industries. They worry that if they tell their potential clients how something should be done then they won't be needed any more. Of course not every discussion will necessarily convert into serious business, but those clients may not have had the budget to buy anyway.

Think about how you can use this approach in marketing your business. What can you offer that helps demonstrate how knowledgeable you are and positions you as the 'go to' person in your area of expertise? It doesn't matter whether you are a gardener, lawyer, water treatment specialist or retailer, you have information and expertise to share. Don't be afraid to be helpful, and don't begrudge helping people because you never know which of those frogs you kiss are going to turn out to be princes!

Consistent and persistent

And then put this strategy to work in all the channels of communication you use: face to face, on your website, on social media. Be consistent and keep those communications going - persist in sending out the message that you know your stuff. When the time is right and your target audience realises they are never getting round to implementing it themselves they need to know it's you they need and where they can find you! 

Make FREE part of your strategy and plan how you are going to guide your contacts towards using you for implementation.

There is no putting the genie back in the bottle - the internet has brought easy access to information to all of us and you are unlikely to actually have any secret insider knowledge that you can hold onto. So if you can't beat them - join them!

Sharon Wilding is a Chartered Marketer with many years experience in marketing for businesses large and small. As a lecturer and a practioner she aims to help small businesses use theory in practical ways to improve performance. You can connect with Sharon on Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

We've all seen those adverts that for one reason or another just take off. They capture the imagination of a huge number of people. Go viral on the internet. Are written about in the papers. They get a huge amount of coverage and generate massive awareness for the brand or company concerned. We would all like to be able to produce that amazing viral campaign.

 A recent example is the Old Spice campaign. Now I have been known to use the odd dab of aftershave in my time,  I'm no stranger to the duty free shop at the airport. I haven't noticed too much Old Spice being shifted in recent years. Old Spice was what my dad wore in the 70s. The team at Old Spice decided to spice (sorry) things up a bit with a tongue-in-cheek Youtube campaign supported by social media. I'm sure you saw it but in case you didn't here's one of the ads:

The results? Well at the time sales saw a sharp spike. Up 55% over three months and 107% for the main month of the ad. Pretty conclusive in the short term at least.

Another example that you may well have heard of is the "Will it blend" campaign. This one was developed for Blendtec who make, wait for it, blenders. The campaign revolved around using a Blendtec blender to blend unlikely objects such as glow sticks, pool cues and iPads. They extended the campaign by asking followers to suggest things to blend.

Here is an example of one of the Youtube ads:

Funny. Cool. But did it work? Well Blendtec have claimed an 800% increase in sales since introducing the campaign. They accompanied the campaign with a big push to increase retail distribution and the campaign certainly helped them achieve that.

These examples are great but can smaller organisations produce videos that go viral? More importantly can they drive more business as a result?

Here are some examples of smaller businesses that have gone out there with some relatively inexpensive campaigns that have certainly captured attention. I'm not sure though that they always got the sort of attention they expected.

I'm not convinced this would encourage me to take my vehicle to Arlen... 

 Would this one have you racing to Ryan Lee's practice?

Finally here's one that I think gets it about right. Humour and irreverence, but with a clear value proposition and a message that survives the treatment.

This video cost $4,500 and was posted in March last year. In the first 48 hours after posting the video 12,000 people had signed up. In November the company which I understand consisted of one man - the star of the ad, announced that it had attracted a $9.8m venture capital investment.

What do you think? Could your product or service go viral?

Some people claim to find marketing a bit of a mystery - assuming it takes some special powers of creativity and wizardry to make it work. Others believe it's a bit of fluff - not entirely necessary in their business world. But, I can't say often enough, all businesses are doing marketing - you wouldn't have a business if you didn't have an offer to a customer that you were charging for - the question is how much better could you be doing it? And does it require inspiration or perspiration?

Many businesses are short on time and are looking for the great marketing idea that will bring in loads of business with the least effort.  Unfortunately good marketing is rarely achieved without hard work.  The bottom line is that inspiration or creativity in marketing is of no use without the hard work and application to put it into practice - hence the perspiration! Ultimately it will be the more boring sounding 'marketing systems and processes' that will bring you results - not the flash in the pan big idea.

In approaching the marketing for your business there are 3 critical things that you must get in place to have any chance of success - barring pure luck of course!

1.  Know your customer

Without customers you have no market, and all customers are not created equal. Understanding as much as you can about the particular group, or segment, of people that you are targeting with your product or service is where you must start. What problems are they facing that you can solve for them? What do they need? How do they behave? Where do they live?  How many of them are there? What options do they have? With this understanding you can make decisions and judge the likelihood of your inspirational ideas producing the desired results.

2.  Make a plan

Dull though you may find it, you will not get the great results you hope for without a plan. Hoping is not enough! A key element of the plan, particularly difficult for many clients, is setting a budget for their marketing up front. What is reasonable or affordable for you to be investing if your target is to make £100,000 or even a £million? Knowing the budget you have, and the goal you are aiming at, are critical factors in making choices and decisions about which marketing activities you then detail in your plan. It doesn't matter if your plan is only a page long - just make sure you have one and that you refer to it often.

3.  Test, measure, adapt

No matter how many years experience you have in marketing there are few dead certs when it comes to delivering success. What works today may not work tomorrow, what works for one company doesn't deliver for another.  It is impossible to control all of the factors that influence that elusive purchase decision, so you must gather information, look at what it is telling you and act promptly to stop what isn't working and do more of what is. Marketing is not something you can do once every few weeks - you need to be on top of it all the time: building your reputation, generating awareness, interest and ultimately sales.

Sorry to have to break it to you - there is no magic wand in marketing, but getting the fundamentals right through hard work and perspiration means that you create the right environment for your inspiration and creativity to flourish.

Adapted from a blog first published in 2009.

Sharon Wilding is a Chartered Marketer with many years experience in marketing for businesses large and small. As a lecturer and a practioner she aims to help small businesses use theory in practical ways to improve performance. You can connect with Sharon on Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Welcome to part 2 of our introduction to CRM.

In part 1 I explained what CRM (customer relationship management) is and that a CRM system is a software system which helps businesses manage their customer/prospect relationships. I also talked about some of the common challenges that face smaller businesses and explained that a CRM system can help overcome them. There will be more about HOW they do that as we go through the series but this time I'm going to give an overview of the the typical elements of a CRM system.

There are a few things to bear in mind as we go through this:

• There are many systems out there and they all have their own take on the problem and their own solutions to it
• Different systems may be particularly strong in some areas and weaker in others
• Many systems have started with a core capability which is strong and added ever-increasing functionality. Sometimes this functionality would be considered poor compared to dedicated systems. A common example is email marketing. Many of the CRM systems include an email marketing capability but it is often less powerful than stand alone versions

OK, enough of the introduction lets get cracking. 

Main Elements of a Typical CRM System

A typical CRM system supports three key areas of the business:

• Marketing
• Sales
• Service

To do this effectively they have some core elements of functionality:

• Contact management
• Workflow
• Collaboration
• Reporting

Let's look at briefly at each of these components.

Marketing

Most CRM systems will help you define and record the results from marketing campaigns so that you can see which campaigns generated which enquiries, prospects and sales. They will allow you to see where leads/prospects/sales resulted from multiple contacts. They will help identify which activities generate what kind of business. They do all this in a clear and quantitative way - as long as you take the time to input the data.

Most have in-built email marketing capabilities with link-tracking so that if you send an email with a link back to your site, they will track which recipients clicked the link (i.e., demonstrated some interest in your offer). They will also allow you to tailor future offers to these people based on what they have shown an interest in previously. It has to be said that often the email marketing capability is not as fully featured as you would find in a stand alone system but the benefit of managing all the activity within one system is that you do not have to have multiple databases.

The upshot is that you will have clear and unambiguous data on the effectiveness of campaigns and be able to tailor campaigns to the known interests of your prospects.

Sales

Most businesses have an idea of their funnel. How people go from being part of the market, to becoming leads, then prospects, to clients. They may also have a set number of stages they may go through. Each sales process will be different but it might go something like:

1. Enquiry
2. Initial discussion
3. Proposal
4. Negotiation
5. Win/lose

All CRM systems will allow you to create leads, accounts, opportunities, sales. They will allow you to define your own sales process and record the number and value of leads/prospects at each stage. They will show which employees generated the lead/prospect/sale.  This allows you to easily see what your pipeline looks like, how long your sales cycle is, who generates and converts which leads, etc., etc..

For each account you can see all the activity, the calls, emails, tasks etc associated with them and record quotes, invoices contracts in the system so that everything is there to be seen (and acted upon) by the sales team.

Many systems include the ability to use the system to help with forecasting and quoting making these activities simpler, quicker and more accurate.

Service

Often an add-on to CRM systems, customer support modules extend the capability of the CRM to ensure that the good work in marketing and sales is carried on through into customer service.

The service capabilities will support problem/fault recording, service workflows and case histories. Where appropriate they can interface into the company's telephone system to route incoming calls to the right service people, and provide online fault reporting and management, saving service people's time.

Some have the capability to interface with social media channels to provide service via twitter and other social media channels. They can also interface with knowledge bases and support forums.

You can see from this description why the service modules are often a bolt on - they aren't appropriate to many smaller businesses. Even without these modules it's easier to manage service to customers using the contact management functionality of a CRM (see below).

Contact Management

A key part of the fundamental capability of CRM systems. This is the capability to store information on individual contacts, associate them with organisations, and record all interactions with them - calls, emails, meetings etc., as well as opportunities that arise. The information that can be recorded may range from discussions about an upcoming tender to the fact that it's her daughters birthday next week.

The contact management capability allows the user to set up calls, meetings, actions and reminders to ensure action and follow-up.

Workflow

I've mentioned workflow a few times already but most CRM systems allow you to configure them to suit the way your business works. You can define the steps in the sales process that you use, you can define what should happen and who should respond when someone enquires and the system makes sure it happens. Sometimes processes can be automated completely. For example, let's assume that whenever a new client signs a deal he receives a welcome letter, the system can be automated to make this happen once an opportunity has been closed. 11 months after a deal has been closed the client could be sent an automated email to invite him to buy an extended warranty. Workflows can apply to any process from marketing to customer service.

Collaboration

CRM systems allow teams to collaborate effectively to ensure that things happen when the should. A lead captured by Sally can be assigned through the system to Julie because she has specialist knowledge about the prospect's industry for example. No sticky notes involved. Julie will receive notification to call or email the prospect to progress the lead and when she does she'll have all the details of the initial inquiry available to ensure that she does a professional job.

Your CRM systems might also offer mobile access to ensure that road warriors as well as desk jockeys can use the most up-to-date information. Additionally most systems will integrate with common email and calendar applications such as Outlook so that emails can be captured, meetings synchronised etc.

Reporting

The in-built reporting engines of CRM systems give simple up-to-the-minute reporting on all the activities being managed. The business owner can see  how much has been sold this month, what's in the pipeline and at what stage in the process. He can see which marketing campaigns have worked best, which sales people have sold most, how many complaints there have been and how many have been cleared.  All with the click of a mouse.

I realise that much of the above sounds like a sales pitch for CRM systems, and speaking as a marketer I guess it is. There's really no substitute for having a good handle on how your business works when it comes to interfacing with customers. Where would you be without them?

Next time I'll look in a bit more detail about how all this functionality can be used by small businesses and how they can save time, effort and money.

I know some of you are using CRM systems already so if you think I've missed anything please leave a comment and share.

Jim Hunt is a professional marketer with many years experience in building businesses large and small. As a speaker, trainer and practitioner he aims to explain marketing theory clearly and show how it can be applied in practice to deliver better results from your marketing investment. You can connect with Jim on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

We often talk about how important it is to offer good customer service, but of course, we all know of companies that thrive without doing their best.

I had a very traumatic experience this week contacting Three to cancel a mobile contract and try to keep the number. I knew it was going to be nasty - it took me over a week to get the contract sorted in the first place, 12 months ago. So when my son told me he'd bought a new phone and I should cancel the old SIM (but could he keep the number) I was already nervous and put off making the call for a couple of weeks. That meant Three were earning money for nothing every day my fear caused me to delay!

Eventually I took the plunge and made the call. At least 10 options on the keypad later I found that the cancellation department wasn't open in the evening. So I had to put it off still further. No worries, lunchtime the next day I tried again. Well, the ensuing conversation was highly amusing to the family but not to me. A normally polite and articulate person, I was soon shouting "no, no, no, no," to an irritating operator who came up with increasing crazy options to avoid me cancelling and to enable us to keep the number. In fact I told him he was crazy several times too. 

30 minutes later I had successfully changed to a pay as you go contract so that I can phone again in 30 days time to change the number. Why do we put up with it?

Well, choice of network is down to my son as he has to pay the bill and Three offer an impossible to resist deal of all you can eat data. Essential to a teenager today. 

So while it would be a lie to say excellent customer customer service is always essential, what is really happening is we are trading off our expectation of service for the better deal. In doing so Three are attracting the most price sensitive, and potentially demanding and awkward, customers. 

Ryanair work on a similar model. The deal they offer is very low price - but don't you dare presume to complain, they're not interested! Some customers will opt out, others will grin and bear it, and some will fight them all the way!

Excellent customer service may not be essential to success if you are Three or Ryanair, but building a successful business competing on price alone is nigh on impossible for a small business. To compete on price you need to be the lowest cost provider, and as a small business you just don't have the economies of scale.

That means you need to offer a level of service that will attract the calibre of customer who appreciates what you are offering and is prepared to pay a fair price for the value you deliver. Offer a lower grade of service - and you will get the customers you deserve!

Sharon Wilding is a Chartered Marketer with many years experience in marketing for businesses large and small. As a lecturer and a practioner she aims to help small businesses use theory in practical ways to improve performance. You can connect with Sharon on Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

We've been working with one of our clients to implement a CRM system. The potential of this step is transformational for the business concerned. I'm confident that the benefits they will see, in quite a short time, will be truly amazing. They will be a more organised, streamlined, responsive and professional looking business and I believe they will see significant ROI on the relatively modest investment.

The impact of what we're doing will be so great that I thought we should share some of the learning with our blog readers. There's a fair amount to say so this will be a short series of blog articles - if I get time I'll pull it together into a white paper that you can download.

If what I've said so far sounds like hyperbole and "marketing spin" I urge you to stick with me and read the series. If you still think so then I haven't explained it well enough! I'd like to make some important points right up front: I'm not a CRM expert; I don't sell CRM systems (although on the basis of my recent experience perhaps I might!); I am not au fait with all the systems on the market. I'm a marketer who has experience of implementing and using CRM systems so I have an understanding of how they can help small businesses.

Ok lets start at the beginning....

What is CRM?

I did a web search on this term and found literally thousands of articles. The problem with them is that they either talk in detail about IT systems or they talk at the 30,000 feet, airy fairy, motherhood and apple pie level.

Here's my take. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is about trying to maintain and grow professional, effective and insightful relationships with prospects and clients as a business develops.

Many of the learned articles about CRM give the example of the corner shop where the proprietor knows all the customers, their buying habits, credit worthiness, propensity to buy more, etc., etc. The proprietor can have a personal relationship with most if not all his customers. He knows the good ones from the bad ones and he can treat them personally. As the business expands and he opens more and bigger stores this kind of intimacy with his customer becomes harder and harder to maintain. CRM is about helping the business maintain that intimate relationship with the increasing customer base as the business expands so that the business continues to know who its best customers are, which customers might be interested in new products, which might be attracted by which promotions, etc.

A CRM sytstem is a software tool that helps the business maintain good and effective customer relationships as it grows.

This description is OK as far as it goes but it fails to highlight some of the important functions of a CRM system that I have observed create significant benefit in practice.

The functions are more around the internal operation of the business. Most smaller businesses that I have come across have grown from one or two man bands. These businesses have lacked formal "systems" in the broadest sense and as they grow they continue in the same vein:

• They hold customer and prospect details as Outlook contacts or in spreadsheets
• They buy solutions to specific problems e.g. accounting, that aren't easy to interrogate and derive 
• useful information from
• Spreadsheets proliferate like viruses, each holding different types of data analysed for different purposes.
• Yellow sticky notes litter the offices like confetti
• There is no real clarity about where leads, prospects and customers come from
• Inbound calls are not handled uniformly, data such as names, phone numbers, email addresses etc. aren't checked or captured
• There is not a clear understanding across the team about the status of individual pieces of work so if the person dealing with it isn't around no one else can help
• Production of quotes, proposals etc is a highly manual process
• Things fall down the cracks because everyone has too much to do and everything takes longer to do than it should

Does any of this sound familiar?

Forget the touchy-feely stuff about maintaining and building customer relationships for a minute just think about the operational benefits of having a single organised way of:

• Storing customer and prospect data
• Recording and maintaining customer actions so that everyone could see the latest status
• Recording details of all important contacts with customers and prospects
• Seeing who has and who hasn't followed-up on that call or that meeting
• Seeing how many proposals/quotes you have out, how much they're worth and what stage in the sales cycle they are
• Seeing which marketing activity generated new leads and which didn't

The list goes on.

To finish this first blog on CRM here are a couple of examples from real life discussions we've had recently that show the kind of issue businesses have everyday that a CRM could help address:

Company A has a head office and a number of sales people out on the road. They target a very specific sector in which there are a large but finite number of prospects. They have no standard way of recording prospects and no information available to the sales team about whether a particular prospect has been contacted before, by whom and what the outcome was. If a salesman is thinking of targeting a new prospect he first must phone/email round all the other sales people to check whether there has been any contact before.

Company B offers a one year warranty on some of its products. 11 months after a sale it wants to mail out an offer on extended warranties to a subset of its customers. Production of a mailing list requires reconciliation of data in two different systems and the intelligence of one of the
operational managers (and about two weeks of elapsed time).

Company C receives an order from an existing customer which is processed and goods dispatched. A conversation between two members of staff reveal that the customer has still not paid for a previous order and was supposed to be on the STOP list.

Company D spends £5000/year on advertising in magazines but doesn't know how much business it generates as a result.

If any of these scenarios sound familiar or you can think of others in the same vein look out for the next installment of The Purple Edge Guide to CRM!

Jim Hunt is a professional marketer with many years experience in building businesses large and small. As a speaker, trainer and practitioner he aims to explain marketing theory clearly and show how it can be applied in practice to deliver better results from your marketing investment. You can connect with Jim on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Have you heard of nudge theory? It's based on the idea the we are mostly lazy, are easily embarrassed and like to fit in. Sound fair?

The Government has been using these techniques to change our behaviours for the better in such areas as paying our taxes, turning up for appointments and making healthier choices. Have you felt the nudge? And can you take any lessons from this approach into your own business?

Apparently the 2008 book 'Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness' by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein is now required reading for the coalition front bench. Perhaps we should all follow suit.

If you start with the assumption that your customers are lazy what can you do to make it easier for them to buy from you?

One example you can follow is the Ronseal 'it does what it says on the tin' technique. I've spoken to a number of companies recently that make it very hard for anyone to understand what they actually do. They hide behind a clever Latin name or a smart slogan that just leaves people baffled. Why should we work that hard to find out what you do or to follow your message?

So how does it work?

• When the DVLA started sending out letters with the clear statement "Pay your tax or lose your car" the number of people paying up doubled - and tripled when a photo of their car was added, making it more personal! 
• Take up of incentives for loft insulation increased when policymakers realised that what was stopping people was they were too lazy to clear their lofts. The answer? Provide a (charged for) loft clearing service. Uptake increased three times.
• A police force persuaded car owners to put their cars in their garages and reduce car thefts by providing skips for people to dump the rubbish out of their garages into - free of charge. 

It's not just that we like our lives made easier, we also like to fit in with social norms. Hence it is more effective to tell people how many others have already kept their appointments or are choosing a healthier option, than it is to take a negative approach and focus on how many appointments have been missed or bad choices made. All that does is tell us it's OK to do bad because you're not alone!

What's stopping your customers doing more business with you?

We are all too close to our own businesses to really answer this question honestly ourselves. But you could ask your customers directly, or get an independent, objective view. 

Starting with the premise that you are offering a great product or service that really solves a problem for your target customers, then what else could you do to make yourself easier to do business with? Can you:

• be more clear and direct about what you do?
• remove a barrier by doing a bit more of the job that the customer doesn't want to do?
• give some extra service or take something away rather than leave them to do it themselves?
• provide evidence that customers are making the right choice going for you (8 out of 10 cat owners ...)

Improve your conversion

When you've worked hard to generate interest in your offering it makes sense to ensure you work just as hard at converting that interest into a sale, and repeat sales too.

The lesson from nudge theory is that it might only take a little prompt, a change of wording, a text message, to tip the balance in your favour.  

MAKE IT EASY - is it really that simple?

Sharon Wilding is a Chartered Marketer with many years experience in marketing for businesses large and small. As a lecturer and a practioner she aims to help small businesses use theory in practical ways to improve performance. You can connect with Sharon on Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

As often happens to me things in my life came together this week causing me to think even more deeply about how we market and how we use the tools and information available to us to try to market more effectively.

I was on LinkedIn today, I wasn't cyberloafing right, this was background research, when I came across an interesting article that described a conversation between three marketers. Two were advocates of "Big Data". The other was a John Hegarty a founder of ad agency Bartle, Bogle Hegarty. Big Data marketing is a term used to describe the use of large amounts of data captured about individual consumers based on their buying behaviour to microsegment in order to target very specific messages to individuals. Hegarty amusingly derided the Big Data approach. One of the data heads had been talking about the power of being able to know who a person is and so send them very personalised content.  

Hegarty reposted "To those brands that say 'I understand you' I say 'F*** off, you don't understand me. Mind your own business, I don't want to be understood by you. I don't understand myself sometimes… and it can be fun.'"

Later I got an email from Eddie Bauer, an American clothing chain which I used regularly when I was in the States and still do occasionally these days even though I rarely leave Kent. The interesting thing about the email was that it was promoting their new range of women's jeans. This is not the first email they've sent me promoting women's clothes. In fact I get them regularly. I also get emails promoting their regular sales which I'd describe as unisex. I never get emails specifically about men's clothes.....

I have never bought women's clothes from Eddie Bauer (I buy all my dresses from Evans) so there's no reason for them to target me based on my buying behaviour. So something has gone screwy somewhere in the database I suggest. They clearly don't know me as well as they think they do.

Thirdly, I had an exciting email exchange with a Spanish estate agent from Wales - it's probably a long story but I've been disinclined to ask. We have a client who is another Spanish estate agent (from Sheffield this time) and about a week ago I was doing some research. I searched for property for sale in an area I know quite well, it's where my two sisters live in Andalucia. I found a villa just up the road from big sis which looked like a steal so out of curiosity (and to support my research you understand) I filled out a web form to request details of the property. Within the hour Welsh woman was on the phone. I gave her my cover story of being interested in property in Spain to rent out to holiday makers and she promised to send me some information. Sure enough she did. Lot's of it.

It only occurred to me yesterday that she hadn't sent the information on the villa that I'd requested via the web form so I dropped her a quick note as a reminder. Her response shocked me. She said that the villa needed work on it and it wasn't as good a rental prospect as others she had so she decided not to send the details.

I have to say Sharon didn't think this was as big an issue as I did but I couldn't believe that she presumed to know better than I whether I wanted to see the details. I might have had completely different reasons for wanting them, as in fact I did. She couldn't see that on the basis of a 5 minute conversation she did not know me, she didn't know all my interests, and she was no judge of what I'd want. 

OK in retrospect maybe I over reacted and I should have cut her some slack but I did enjoy writing the snotty email back.

Anyway, what these three things tell me is that although as marketers we stress the importance of understanding our customers and our target markets we really need to exercise great care with how we use our understanding. People are complex, multi-dimensional creatures. They are contextual, contrary and they confound us. 

It's great to collect data and use it to drive marketing decisions but use it with care. If you know from their behaviour that they may be interested in X then I would encourage you to talk to them about X but don't assume that this means that they can't be interested in Y.

Never make assumptions about people, never discount them, never presume to know them and always check your data. it might result in a lost opportunity or worse a really snotty email.

Jim Hunt is a professional marketer with many years experience in building businesses large and small. As a speaker, trainer and practitioner he aims to explain marketing theory clearly and show how it can be applied in practice to deliver better results from your marketing investment. You can connect with Jim on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Guest blog this week by Patricia Barclay of Bonaccord Ecosse Limited, a law firm offering general corporate and commercial support to businesses of all sizes from sole traders to multinationals.

Patricia regularly gives talks on marketing related issues including intellectual property and trademarks and is happy to take your enquiries if you're interested in finding out more about protecting your business.

For small businesses it can be tricky to stand out from the crowd. You are unlikely to offer a totally unique product or service, and its hard (and definitely not recommended if you want to make a living) to compete on price alone when you don't have the economies of scale of the bigger guys.

The biggest opportunity you have to differentiate yourself from the competition is service, or more accurately 'customer experience'.

It was one of those regular 'moan-ins over a drink' that made me want to revisit this subject in the blog this week. You know, the one where your friend complains that they can't find anyone to do their work. You might recognise and sympathise with these kind of comments:

• "If its a recession how come no-one wants my job?"
• "I've asked 6 people round and only half of them have turned up."
• "I'm still waiting for the quotes - why do they waste their time, and mine?"

Aim for excellent customer experience

Providing a good customer experience starts with the very first contact a potential customer makes with your organisation, and doesn't end until their relationship with you ends. That means that, as part of your marketing planning, you need to pay attention to every aspect of the interactions you have:

• Providing reliable means to contact you
• Responding promptly and politely to enquiries
• Keeping promises
• Being proactive rather than having to be chased
• Paying attention to detail at every stage of the service delivery
• Confirming satisfaction
• Invoicing promptly
• Keeping in touch

In fact, to stand out from the crowd, you've got to be looking for ways to provide 'excellent' customer experience at every stage, not just good! How can you demonstrate that you can 'go the extra mile' not just do enough?

Your people are your brand

People and personal relationships offer the biggest opportunity to differentiate. If people like you and want to do business with you then you've got a headstart, and it's great if dealing with people comes naturally to you. If not then you need to work on it and surround yourself with excellent people people. If you have staff you need to train them (and empower them) to deliver the best customer experience too.

You and your people are your brand and will be much more memorable than a logo any day!

If you struggle to deliver the best customer service as your business grows then why not look at intelligent outsourcing to make it work. I was speaking with a very small business this week that delivered a response within 5 minutes during the working day 95% of the time by using a telephone answer service linked to email and text alerts.

And a virtual personal assistant service can make the admin side of your business work much more smoothly.

Don't waste your opportunities

The bottom line is that if you are concentrating on getting opportunities through your promotions (be that referrals or advertising) you don't want to screw them up by being unable to turn them into profitable business!

What's your biggest bug-bear on customer experience? Or do you have some great tips for providing excellent customer experience? I'd like to collect examples to feature in future blogs if you'd be happy to share.

Sharon Wilding is a Chartered Marketer with many years experience in marketing for businesses large and small. As a lecturer and a practioner she aims to help small businesses use theory in practical ways to improve performance. You can connect with Sharon on Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.