Business

Advisory: Google Begins Booting Brands

Much has been said about marketing on Google+. Both of us have been intentionally conservative about marketing on the new network due to a statement from Google+ specifically asking business and brands to wait until it formalized its business offering. This offering is rumored to include an open API for applications and data usage. Yesterday, a confirmed report from KCET-TV in LA surfaced that Google+ community managers are enforcing the brand “no fly zone.”

To date, ABC News Radio, LAUNCH and Boing Boing have all been removed, or have voluntarily taken down their Google+ profiles. In the face of complaints about brands being unceremoniously dispatched, community managers have indicated that Google+ will focus on optimizing community interaction between people first.

Both Bonsai Interactive and Zoetica represent real brands, corporate and nonprofit. We are posting this advisory to provide clear guidance for our clients and network on how to approach Google+ during this interim phase:

1) Do not invest in formal brand marketing on Google+. As we have seen, Google+ is now policing its network and you risk losing your entire time investment. Further, until the business offering is created by Google, no one really knows how corporations and nonprofits can successfully navigate this new social network. In essence, until Google+ for business is released efforts are likely to be all for naught

2) Do experiment on Google+ and learn how the network works using your personal profile. It’s too soon to formally say that Google+ will be a significant consumer network, but with reports of 18 million followers and growing, momentum indicates the network is succeeding. Further, as demonstrated by its policing of the network, Google is clearly focused on community first. Becoming knowledgable through participation on Google+ is prudent at this point.

3) Be wary of marketing services firms and individuals who are seeking paid fees for Google+ marketing insights. Again, per the first point, no one really knows how to market on Google+. Investing financially in Google+ is not a good use of resources until finite offerings are available. Ethically speaking we would not charge our clients for advice and strategies in the face of such uncertainty.

Google+ is starting field trials with brands in the immediate future. As Google works through the kinks and formalizes its offering, it is a great time to become comfortable with the social network.

Many of our fellow bloggers are openly sharing their insights and learning together in a fashion we have not seen in years. Enjoy this time, friends. This kind of new social network launch is unprecedented.

Update 21 July 2011 11.41am: NBC News is the latest to remove their Google+ profile.

image: Sean MacEntee
image: KCET-TV?

The ROI of Employees

Over at his blog yesterday, Chris Brogan wrote about his admiration for Gary Vaynerchuk. The post sparked quite the discussion in the comments, a lot of it about ROI (return on investment).

This stemmed from a quip Gary had made to an event attendee who was asking a few times about the ROI of social media, to which Gary replied, “What’s the ROI of your mother?”

A throwaway quip, but one I thought was indicative of why so many people are confused (or afraid) when it comes to using social media for business. I said as much in the comments, and Chris Theisen raised an interesting point with his question: “Do companies actually measure whether each employee has a positive ROI on the company?”.

If they don’t, then they should.

What’s the point in running a business and employing the folks you need if you’re not measuring their impact? Questions you should be asking (and measuring) include:

Does John the sales guy bring in enough sales to cover his costs? Great, he may be bringing in $100,000 worth of sales, but if they’re to 100 different customers and I need to hire more customer service advisors to handle their queries, John’s value immediately diminishes.

Does Karen the customer service advisor upset my customers? She may be awesome in the office, but if she’s caused 10 customers to leave in the space of twelve months, and they each spend $5,000 per year, her salary of $30,000 per year is now actually $80,000 per year.

Does Peter the marketing guy piss off fellow team members and lower their morale because he thinks he’s “all that”? If so, does that stop them doing their job properly and cost me sales, or quality service for my customers? Does it make my employees want to leave, costing me more money to train new hires (not to mention losing the team spirit that had been fostered before Peter’s arrival)?

These are just three examples of where you could start looking, and measuring the impact each employee has on your business. There are many more, and some that are unique to individual businesses and industries – but they’re good starter points, and a pointer for a full organizational development analysis. This can then tell you how to make sure your employees feel as valued by you as they are valuable to you.

If you’re not already measuring the ROI of your employees, then are you really measuring the success of your business?

image: TruthOut.org

How Many Relationships Are You Building?

?When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.? ? Dale Carnegie.

When you close a deal, what?s your next step? When you sign the contract, shake the hand and file the paperwork ? what comes next? Is there a next? Or simply a next customer?

Businesses talk a lot about ROI, or return on investment. They look at the man hours, financial costs, ad spend and more to get a customer to make the purchase. Every sale has to justify the outlay. But what about the customer??What about?their ROI from?you?

A sale isn?t just about closing the deal. A sale isn?t just about dipping your pen into the inkwell again before the previous signature has dried. A sale isn?t one-way traffic of the customer into your sales lair. At least, it shouldn?t be.

Imagine you?re Joe Average. You work 60 hours a week to make ends meet. You do your time, pay your bills, feed your family and keep a roof over their heads. Everything you buy has to be fine tailored to fit the budget. You see something you want and you put aside money diligently every week to buy it.

You go to the store, or car showroom, or furniture showroom. You talk shop with the sales guy, and he?s nice. Interested in you. Wants to help you make your choice. So you do. You pay the price, say thanks and go home and wait for your new purchase to be delivered. A week later it arrives, then that?s it. End of story.

Now, imagine it a little differently.?Imagine it as a relationship.

The Relationship Behind the Sale

You go to the store, or car showroom, or furniture showroom. You talk shop with the sales guy, and he?s nice. Interested in you. Wants to help you make your choice. So you do. You pay the price, say thanks and go home and wait for your new purchase to be delivered. Within 24 hours, the sales guy calls and confirms your delivery time. A week later it arrives.

A couple of days after delivery, your sales guy calls again and asks how your new purchase is. Not customer service. Not the after-sales team, but the sales guy who sold you your new toy. He wants to make sure you?re happy and that to call if you have any issues at all. You say you will, then hang up the phone with the biggest smile on your face. Now?that?s service!

Sales guys don?t have time to follow up, they?re too busy selling? No-one offers?that kind of service? This example is unrealistic? They do, and it?s not.

Sales is Service is PR is Service is Marketing

People are emotional beings. We live by how we feel; act on how we?re acted upon; respond to how we?re treated. All our decisions are based around our emotions and how we experience a moment.

Think of any business transaction you?ve had as a customer. The best ones will remain in your mind for all the right reasons, and chances are you?ve made repeat purchases with these vendors because of your user experience. The bad ones? They remain with you too; but your business with the vendor doesn?t.

So the next time you make a sale or win a new client, try this checklist if you?re not already using any of them:

Add the details to a database and set alerts for relevant promotions. Not just every promotion you have, but ones that are?relevant to your new customer.

If you received personal details like date of birth, send a birthday gift or card.

Set up calendar reminders for regular check-ins. Nothing so frequent to annoy, but regular enough to care.

If there?s a business near your new customer they can benefit from that ties into your sale, refer them. It shows you really have their best interests at heart, not to mention builds a great business relationship with the other business.

Sales are important ? every single business needs sales to survive. But quick buck sales only last so long; they?re simply bush fires that will run their course. Relationship sales that?genuinely caress our emotions, though??That?s the money right there.

How many relationships are you building?

image: dann_z

The Butterfly Effect of Entrepreneurship

Breaking out on your own is hard. Just ask anyone that runs their own business, and you can pretty much guarantee that the one answer that will be consistent across the board is that it’s hard to be your own boss.

No guaranteed pay-check; no water-cooler conversations to split the day up; no big corporate budgets for projects and pitches.

But no-one said it would be easy. It takes hard work, commitment, lots of compromise and hard knocks to get to the point where you want to be. But the satisfaction and kick-back that you get when you get there makes all the struggle worthwhile.

One of the ?tricks? I?ve used over the years (and offer up to clients that I feel fit the need for the example) is comparing entrepreneurship to the stages of the butterfly.

The Egg

A butterfly is one of the most beautiful things that nature has ever produced. Multi-faceted, colourful, elegant and varied – all the things a great business should be. All the things your business should be.

But a butterfly isn?t born this way. It starts off as an egg – tiny and in need of food to survive.

Your business is the same. No business is born huge; no entrepreneur starts with millions. It comes from small victories and winning the scraps you need to feed yourself and those that depend on you, and keep a roof over their heads.

The egg is where it all starts, so plan ahead:

Think about what you need to do to survive the egg stage.
Have enough savings to get you through six months with no paycheck.
Grab the food around you and keep looking for more.

Eggs are fragile. Their shells can break with the right amount of pressure; so plan to avoid the fall that could crack you.

The Larva

When a butterfly egg hatches, it?s still not the butterfly that?s inside – there?s still a way to go before the beauty of the butterfly reaches its full potential. Instead, you get the larva.

You probably know the larva in its most common form of a caterpillar. This is a big change for the egg, since it now moves from chasing scraps of food to having a ferocious appetite and eating everything in its way.

Once your business has moved past the gestation period of the egg/birth, you?re hungry for more. You?re ready for bigger clients; bigger projects; bigger paydays. The thing is, your current set-up may not be ready for this. But that?s okay.

A caterpillar can go through five or six growth spurts before it?s ready to move to the next stage. Your business can be the same.

Feast on the business that will help you grow.
Stay hungry and eat what you can.
Acknowledge that growth means change, and plan for staggered growth.
Prepare yourself for the ?wrap period?, where the finish line is in sight but you?re not quite there yet.

Caterpillars shed their skin as they grow. Don?t be afraid to shed what you?ve encountered so far – new is good, and the only way to truly grow.

The Pupa

The third stage of the butterfly is where things get really interesting. As the caterpillar feasts to fill its over-sized appetite, its skin struggles to keep up. Instead of stretching, it sheds the old skin and replaces with a new one.

After five or six of these, it eventually stays inside the last skin, called the pupa. This skin envelops the caterpillar, and it?s in here that the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly takes place.

The funny thing with this stage is that it looks as if nothing is happening – the pupa attaches itself to a twig or branch, and lays pretty much motionless until the butterfly is ready to break out.

But thinking that nothing is happening will see you miss all the activity inside. The caterpillar?s body is being broken down to change to the butterfly, and all the food the caterpillar ate during its binge eating is what?s keeping the butterfly alive now, during the change. This process can take anywhere from a week to a year to happen, depending on the species.

Now think of your business. Your slow time usually comes after your early burst of activity when you?re new, as you chase clients and projects down. You use the money from that to help you grow to your next stage.

This is your own pupa stage.

Look at your business and see what you can eject, and what can grow with you.
Make sure you save enough from the early activity to see you through quiet times.
Make the changes slowly and with purpose to take you to the defining moment of your business – the identity.

Pupas are the heartbeat of life for both caterpillars and butterflies, and effect the transition from one to the other. Think of what you can achieve with your business in your pupa stage, as you get ready to unveil the complete you.

The Adult

The caterpillar is no more. The hibernation period is over. Everything the egg, then the larva and then the pupa has been working toward is finally here – the adult butterfly is born.

The pupa breaks open and the butterfly emerges. Its colour and shape is defined by the pupa stage. Now the real beauty is unleashed on the world, after taking the time to make sure it?s ready for the public gaze. Emergence; mating; and the cycle begins again.

Your business has been building up slowly, and eating what it needs to survive the early days. You?ve been working behind-the-scenes to plan your growth, and your transition from small business to medium and upward.

Now?s the time to let your business become an adult.

Emerge from the the cloud of preparation into the sunlight of opportunity.
Think of partnerships (strategic and otherwise) to mate to your goals and business.
Think of how you can continue the cycle, and the people and properties you need to make this happen.

An adult butterfly has a life cycle of around a week or two, but some can last a year and a half. Let?s say a butterfly week is equivalent to a year of a person. Think of your business?s current life cycle as a year or two, then look at refocusing again and choosing direction.

If you need to, cocoon yourself away again into your pupa, and plan for the next stage. The ever-evolving business is the one that will be ever-persistent to succeed.

And we all want that, right?

image: rondeboom
image: JarkkoS

This post originally appeared over at Beyond The Pedway, a resource centre for entrepreneurs and creative thinking. Hosted by Tim Jahn, it’s full of informative video interviews, tips and advice for starting and running your own business.

The Great Friends and Relationships Myth

There’s a lot of talk about relationships in business, and how to make business more human.

There’s also a lot of talk about how businesses need to be more like friends, and treat people the way you would your friends if you want to succeed.

Add in the view that businesses and their clients should be friends as well, and you could be forgiven for thinking you need to be either Ross or Rachel and sipping coffee in Central Perk to get anything done.

But here’s the thing – that viewpoint is a myth. Not only that, it can also be a dangerous myth.

Here’s why.

Friends Don’t Always Come With Benefits

Let’s look at the friends angle first. Can you have friends in business, or be friends with clients? For sure – you can be friends with anyone. But here’s why you shouldn’t be.

With friends, we let our guard down. If they’re going through a tough time, we support them. If they need to borrow money, we help, and let them pay it back when they can. If they need to pick our brains, we’re there for them.

But because we let our guard down, we very often don’t put it back up.

Transfer that to business, where either a client, or a supplier, or a customer, uses your service but doesn’t pay when they’re meant to. Or a supplier skims money off you left, right and centre without you knowing it. Or they talk with your competitors behind your back while you’re working on getting them airtime.

Business don’t have friendships. Businesses do what’s right for them at that given time, and rightly so – it’s why it’s called business and not high school.

If you’re friends with a business, you can put your own success and longevity at risk because you don’t want to ask too much of your friends. Unpaid invoices go unchallenged, and soon your business is struggling to pay an invoice. Once you start down that path…

Relationships Never End Well or They Wouldn’t End

The relationship angle is an interesting one, because obviously we can (and should) foster relationships in our business lives at every turn.

Relationships are the key to a long client/vendor arrangement over a one-hit-never-work-together-again one. Relationships are also the key to promoting relevant skilled resources to those that need them – say, you recommend one client to another, or an outsourcer to a client, etc.

But the key to remember is that, just like many personal examples, relationships come to an end. Girlfriends split with boyfriends, friends split with each other, families grow apart. The closer the relationship, often the harder the split is. It can turn nasty as sides are picked and grievances aired, and that’s no fun at all.

We’re currently working with a client whose previous agency always talked of their “special relationship”. Yet once the agency’s work and results were questioned, the owner went postal and demanded more money (even though they’d already skimmed the client of more than $12,000 for a project in limbo). So much for the “special relationship”.

So is it impossible to combine friendship and business relationships? No – if approached right.

Buddy Boundaries

In an ideal world, we’d all be friends together – people, businesses, ex-lovers, enemies, etc. The world would be an easier place for all if we lived on clouds and blew bubbles at each other.

But we know that life isn’t ideal.

Instead, we just need to realize that sometimes, it’s okay to not be friends. That doesn’t mean we can’t be friendly, though – similar word but a world of difference.

Respect boundaries. Appreciate that while tone and interaction can be friendly, at the end of the day you’re still in business to both make your clients and customers successful, and be successful too.

Maintain professionalism. I’ve seen some classic emails because of a “friendship” – because of the perception, professionalism goes out the window from the sender. Keep in mind that businesses are professional ventures, and don’t send a CEO an email better suited to pub talk.

Understand subtleties. While we look out for our friends unreservedly, often we can’t offer the same support to our clients, vendors, customers. Know where the cut-off point is and you know where the help can begin and end.

We all want to be friends. We all want to have the most amazing relationships. And, often, that can be the case (or a close resemblance to it).

But we also want to be successful – for our clients, our customers, ourselves and our families who depend on us to keep a roof over their head. If we confuse friendship and relationships with friendliness and professional relationships in that order, we run the danger of losing sight of crucial decisions that need to be made.

And none of us can afford to do that.

image: marie-II