Communicate and Grow

A powerful way to grow your own business is by helping to grow your customers’ businesses. Communicate with them regularly to help solve their problems and they will reward you with repeat business.

Communicate to:

§  Listen – find out everything about your customer so you know how your business can help solve their problems: hold face-to-face meetings; talk regularly on the phone.

§  Inform – tell your customers what you can do for them to help make their life easier: email, text or write to them to tell them what’s new or what’s coming up; produce regular newsletters.

§  Promote – raise your profile and look professional: brand your business; produce brochures; corporate profiles; websites; set up excellent systems; write articles and news stories.

§  Celebrate – have fun with your customers and celebrate events: send Christmas cards and/or gifts; congratulatory notes; welcome cards.

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Advertorials as Advertising Alternative

When you’ve got great news to tell, you can’t do better than tell your local news media – a story in the paper is advertising money can’t buy.

The key is ‘newsworthiness’. The media is interested in stuff that’s new, different, controversial, successful. They will generally want to know if your business has just launched into an offshore market, or has developed a trail-blazing product which changes the way we do something, for example.

But if you simply want to promote awareness of your business, consider advertorials.

Say What You Want

These are articles about your business written by you (or a skilled writer). They are treated as an advertisement by the papers so you pay to have them printed, but the real benefit is that you can say what you want. Where a typical ad is short and to the point, advertorials allow you to get across more detail about your business in story form.

Most newspapers put the words ‘advertisement’ in small letters above the article, but advertorials can attract readers who might be suspicious of adverts. Articles can help endorse a product.

And, because the article is yours, you can re-use it in other papers, or even copy it for use as a brochure.

Like ordinary display advertising, the price of the advertorial is worked out on the number of column centimetres. The price is generally higher if you want the article on a particular page, although some papers offer sports and business pages without the extra loading.

Commercial Features

For new business launches, many regional papers offer ‘commercial feature pages’. The newspaper runs a feature – one or several pages – which is paid for by advertising from your own business and the subcontractors who helped in its establishment. The main part of the feature will be an article, written by a reporter who would interview you. 

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Location, Location, Location…Or Internet?

Location matters a great deal for most businesses.

Retail businesses need to be highly visible to passers-by, supermarkets need to be centrally located and have huge amounts of car parking, and wholesalers may need factory space or be close to suppliers.

On the other hand, your business might operate solely through the e-commerce capabilities of your website, perhaps to sell books or specialised equipment. In this case, the location of your business could be in the tin shed at the back of your garden – as long as you have an internet connection out there!

Computer technology is certainly changing the way many of us do business these days and location is mattering less and less.

Thankfully though, some of us still want to do business face-to-face. And as Malcolm Gladwell says in his book The Tipping Point (see quote previous page), traditional forms of social communication are critical despite the rapid changes in communications technology.

So if you want to put down some roots in an actual ‘location’, your choice depends on where your customers are likely to be and, if you are manufacturing a product, where your suppliers are. After those two factors it depends on how much you want to spend.

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Think Outward, Start Networking

§  Attitudes are changing and with it, a whole new way of doing business. You have to be outward looking if you want to survive. If not, the smart-thinking businesses will overtake you. If you haven’t already…

§  Join a networking group – ask around, or contact your local chamber of commerce or equivalent.

§  Talk to other business leaders – those who offer different services in the same market as you, and even your competitors – for instance, join forces to import in bulk – you never know what you could team up on.

§  Think about how you can help others in your group – when everyone aims to help then all businesses will benefit.

§  Don’t overlook the importance of word-of-mouth – customer referrals can be a huge part of your business.

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Seek New Business and Help Others Through Referrals

Think outward – that’s the message in business these days. 

You need to think how you can build links with other businesses and work alongside others in your marketplace to both help them and move your own business forward.

Of course, sound internal structure and systems remain critical to any business but to be really successful you need to look beyond your own realm.

To do this you’ve got to get out there and network. Lots of networking groups now operate for the purpose of bringing like-minded people together. Breakfast, drinks or dinner meetings, women’s groups, industry-specific groups – the list is long. Find out what groups meet in your town and join in.

Great things happen when people start networking – one of the most exciting is when businesses join forces to achieve something they could not have done in isolation, such as develop a new export market. In this way, everyone’s business moves forward.

Another way all businesses can benefit through networking is from referrals. Some say word-of-mouth referrals are the way to do business these days. In fact, some businesses don’t even need to advertise as most of their clients come through referrals from others

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