A New Year means a new start with new ideas, dreams and goals and as such it’s a great time of new opportunities for your business to reach new customers. So what are you going to do to market your business in 2013?

Online digital marketing in particular provides you with lots of possibilities, but to be effective with whatever you do it’s important to follow three golden rules so that your marketing doesn’t miss the mark and you maximise its results in 2013:

Understand your target market

Image courtesy of jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A big mistake businesses often make with their marketing is to use a scatter gun approach, in other words, if you spray your marketing message as wide as possible you are bound to hit something. The problem with that strategy is that the percentage return is small and a lot of marketing money is wasted.

A lot of traditional offline marketing (e.g. billboards, general magazines) can be that way too, but online digital marketing helps you to be more targeted and by using analytics you can much more easily measure success.

You need to get inside the head of the people or businesses you are trying to reach. Who are they? Where do they hang out? What makes them tick? What are the problems and challenges they face that you can help them solve?

Capture their attention

Image courtesy of dream designs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Once a customer arrives at your website you need to ensure they buy and don’t bounce! “Bounce rate”, as defined by Google, is “the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.”

People are time-starved and so will quickly decide (typically in less than 8 seconds) whether or not to stay on your website. They surf and don’t stroll! Web marketing is all about capturing your customer’s attention. Does your website do that? What could you do to make it better?

When they arrive at your website, what will a customer find and will they understand? Is your website written for your customers in words that they will understand or is it full of jargon?

It’s important to realise that when someone searches online for the products or services you sell and arrives at your website, they are not really interested in you, but whether or not you can fix their problem. You need to:

• Avoid long sentences and paragraphs – use more bullet points instead
• Use strong photographs or images where possible. They help enhance the flow of a page and draw the reader in
• Consider using video – a picture speaks a thousand words. A short promotional video can say thousands more

Call them to action

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Having targeted your website for the people or businesses you want to reach and captured their attention, make sure they know what to do next.

If you run an ecommerce website that sells directly online then the strongest call to action you can make is a “Buy Now” button. For other sites, the call to action will be different, but it still should be as immediate.

Whether you want your customer to fill in a web form (web forms are more ‘immediate’ calls to action than offering an email address) or picking up the phone to call you, make sure that next action is clear.

So at the start of this New Year what will you do? What are the ideas, dreams and goals you have for your business? Will your marketing take you there?

If you could do with chatting your ideas through or just need some more inspiration to get you moving on how to improve your online marketing, then contact us here or call us on 01202 532522.

If you want to get ahead, you better get Cracking!

As great as Social Media is for sharing amongst friends and contacts, if you want to extend your reach beyond that, it’s vital you spend some time and effort making your blog content Search Engine Friendly.

Before you post your blog article, come up with a list of keywords from within your text, then make sure these keywords are used in strong keyword phrases. Use words or phrases that will stand out like a headline.

Another approach is to make a list of keyword phrases from within your industry, then build your article around these. Next, use best search engine optimization practices to give you a better chance of getting the most out of your keywords.

When doing this consider:

• Correct placement in the Article
• Keyword density
• Keyword emphasis

Another under used technique when writing blog articles is to do keyword research in  advance. Doing this tells you what people in your sector are searching for, giving you the opportunity to target your content to their needs.

Keyword research before writing your blog articles is a great technique that will get more readers visiting your blog and clicking through to your website.

Even after your blog post is published, it’s good to remember you can continue to optimise the blog page with the comments you make in reply to others. Continue to attract search engines back by using specific keyword phrases within your comments, remembering to not overuse them.

Demographic Bidding is a feature that helps you target your ads to specific age groups (such as ages 18-24), by gender, or to combinations of both. Demographic bidding can be used whether you are using contextual or placement targeting also with both CPC (cost-per-click) and CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) bidding and reach can be refined based on users’ gender and age on certain sites in the Google content network, for users who provide that information about themselves.

Users of partner sites won’t be identified through Demographic Bidding as AdWords receives the data in anonymous and aggregate form from participating sites.

Demographic bidding lets you display your ad campaigns on thousands of websites, that’s nothing new, however demographic bidding gives you the option to have your ads only seen by men, women or both in a specific age group of your choice. If you add in the ability to choose to run ads only on specific websites, ones relevant to the types of customers you want to reach – and if you are a business that serves a local community, then just run those ads to people in your area, this becomes a really powerful marketing tool.

Overall, demographic bidding gives you more control over who sees your ads. Combine this with the measuring tools available in your Adwords account and ad performance testing for specific demographics will help you adjust your bid modifiers and restricts to reach the right audiences.

Demographic Bidding will help you to get a better ROI.

This list is then tailored to suit the individual requirements of different projects.

Preproduction (before the shoot)

Write script and have it approved

Make sure shoot locations are available and/or reserved

Check all batteries are charged

Have equipment available and reserved

Make a plan for recording sound

Notify actors and presenters being used in the video

Production (shooting Video)

Bring all necessary gear to the shoot

Use a tripod and make sure it is level

Make sure camera settings are correct

Make shots as stable as possible when not using a tripod

Use headphones when recording audio in camera or to audio recorder

Shoot establishing/incidental shots and environment

Get wide, medium, and close-up shots of actor/presenter saying their lines

Minimise zooming in and out when actor/presenter is talking

Keep the subject of each shot in sharp focus

Put all batteries on charge after shoot

Tidy away all equipment so it is ready for the next job

Post-Production (editing)

Create graphics, logos, intro and credits for the finished project

Keep footage organized and name appropriately for easy search

Make sure audio levels are consistent

Use only essential footage/audio in the final edit

Make sure any titles included are correct and look professional

Watch for flash frames (black frames caused by gaps between clips)

Make sure you use standard export settings for finished video

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Now all that’s left to do is decide how you want to distribute your spangly new marketing video…

Games Chairman, Lord Sebastian Coe said, “The spirit of these Olympic Games will inspire a generation”. The genuine hope is that it will, but what was it that inspired this generation of Olympians and what can we learn from the stories they have told about their journey to success? For today’s generation of people in business, is there anything the Olympic athletes can teach us so that we can be, as their motto says, faster, higher, stronger?

You need to have a dream

London 2012 saw US swimmer, Michael Phelps, become the most decorated Olympian of all time with 22 medals, 18 of which were gold.

The BBC’s swimming presenter, Sharron Davies, asked Phelps, “When you started out your career all those years ago, did you ever see this? Was this what you were dreaming of?”

Phelps’ replied, “I dreamt of being the greatest, and Bob (Bowman, his coach since 11 years old) and I have worked together to become that. We’ve been able to do everything we have ever wanted.

Double gold-winner at 10,000 and 5,000 meters, Mo Farah, said, “When you have a vision and you have a dream, you dig in more.”

It’s important to have a clear idea of what you do well (which should be what you enjoy doing well) and set your sights to be the best that you can. Having and maintaining a clear vision motivates you and those around you who share that vision. Motivation gives you energy and helps you to reach beyond the ordinary.

You need to plan your course

Whilst it’s very important to know where you are heading, how are you going to get there? What can you do to be better at what you do?

The GB cycling team had an incredibly successful Games, winning an amazing 12 medals, 8 of which were gold. David Brailsford, Performance Director for British Cycling told how they work on a system of what they call marginal gains.

“The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by 1%, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together. We really figure out what it takes to win whatever it is we want to win. We then prioritise because you know you cannot win everything.”

Of course it takes talent to be successful, but by improving what you do – even if only marginally on a few things – you improve your chances of being successful.

You need a good team

Whilst it is the athletes that win the prize, no athlete can ever be successful by just their efforts alone. They need people around them to support, guide and encourage them.

Team GB’s, long jump gold medal winner, Greg Rutherford had considered retiring after failing at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and repeated injury problems. After winning gold at London 2012 he said, “I think I am very fortunate to have a fantastic team and fantastic family around me.”

So many of Team GB’s winning athletes testified to the difference the crowd made to their performance. Ed Clancy, who won bronze in the Men’s Cycling Omnium event said, “I felt really rubbish until the crowd started cheering, but then it was like a light switch had been turned on.”

Where do you draw your support from? Who guides and challenges you? Who cheers you on when the going gets tough? In business, especially if you are on your own, it’s hard to stay on track and it’s easy to be discouraged, so you need support and you must avoid becoming isolated. Maybe you can join a local learning and support network or find someone you trust who’s been successful in business to guide and encourage you.

You need to believe, work hard and not give up!

The margin between the medals is often be a very small one. It’s been said that often the most disappointed athletes are those that win silver, just missing out on gold, and fourth, missing a medal by just one place.

At 36 years old, Kath Grainger entered the London 2012 Olympics as the most decorated British woman of rowing. But despite winning six world titles, for more than a decade the prize of Olympic gold had eluded her, instead winning a trilogy of silvers.

It would have been easier to retire and look back on a fantastic career, despite never winning gold. However, Kath Grainger, described by Anna Watkin, her partner in the women’s double sculls, as the ‘life and soul’ of the British women rowers , has a self-belief and determination that rowed her and Anna on to gold.

Anna Watkins said, “You don’t get a medal just for believing”. For champion athletes it is that ability to believe and to act on that belief that sets them apart, a determination to persevere and not give up that carries them over the line ahead of their opponents.

When we fail (as all champions do) or negative thoughts or opinions stand in our way, it is how we respond that can make the difference between winning and losing.

For six races in sailing’s Finn class, Team GB’s Ben Ainslie could not beat Dane Jonas Hogh-Christensen. He was trailing in the standings and in danger of missing gold, but Ben was not ready to accept defeat. Ainslie was angered when Hogh-Christensen and Dutchman Pieter-Jan Postma teamed up against him saying he had hit a mark, forcing him to do a penalty turn. “They’ve made a big mistake,” Ainslie said, “They’ve made me angry and you don’t want to make me angry.”

Ainslie could have been defeated by the negative, but instead he used the energy of his anger to turn it into a positive which then became the spur to him winning his fourth Olympic gold.

How do you deal with defeat and demotivating negative thoughts or opinions? Do they take the wind out of your sails causing you to give up or do you look at the clouds and find a shift in the wind that gets you moving forward again?

Be extraordinary

The final word goes to Samantha Murray, winner of the silver medal in the last event of the Games, the Modern Pentathlon. Four years ago, Samantha was doing her A Levels and although competing at that time in the event, she was well short of international level.

“Honestly, if you have a goal – if there’s anything you want to achieve in life – don’t let anybody get in your way because you can do it. There are so many people and so many things that will feel like they are trying to set you back. But honestly, find the path that you want to take in life and follow it and stick to it because if I can do it, and I’m a normal girl, anyone can do anything they want to do.”

The “Inspiring a Generation” Games has been inspiring and we have been in awe of the great champions like Mo Farah, Jess Ennis, Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps. But most of all, perhaps London 2012 will be remembered as a story of many stories about ordinary people doing extraordinary things – not just the stories of the world’s best athletes but also of the people behind the scenes like their families and coaches, and by people like the Games Makers that helped to make the Games such a success.

Has the “Inspiring a Generation” Games inspired you?

Are you disappointed in the lack of response you received from website visitors?

Is trying to understand ‘Internet Marketing’ and the options available confusing to you?

There are some common misconceptions held by website owners. Changing these ideas and using proven solutions will help you improve your Internet strategy and bring in customers more effectively.

1. You have a brilliant website, but nobody knows about it:
It’s simple; you need to drive people toward your website. The only way to do that is to market your website as part of your ‘Internet Marketing’ strategy. Try not to fall in the trap of thinking the design of your website has a link with how many people visit your site, this is a mistake commonly made with Internet Marketing. The quality of the content on the site and how it helps visitors has far more to do with driving traffic to your site than how it looks.

2. Your website is all about you:
This is possibly the biggest mistake made by website owners. Unfortunately this is not the case, visitors are only interested in what you can do for them. If your website is worded to focus on solving their problems rather than how good your service is, then it will dramatically change the performance of your site. Many websites are written by sales people and don’t give away any useful information to visitors. If your site is written

this way visitors will more likely move on to the next site to find their answers.

3. Getting visits to convert to Enquires/Sales:
You need to think about what you want people to do when they visit your site. Do you need them to buy something from the site or do you focus on getting their contact details, so that you or your sales team can follow up?

A big move in Internet Marketing is the shift from sites that sell products or a business, to sites that want to build ongoing relationships with their customers. This has become known as ‘Permission Marketing’, acquiring a customer’s permission to communicate with them. If you’re using your site to get customers’ contact details, they will need a compelling reason to offer those details. Possibly the best way to do that is to offer something ‘free’ in exchange e.g. a newsletter or free sample of a product, but it needs to have value. Follow that up with a good email campaign and a proportion of those people will convert into customers.

If you are interested in getting sales when potential customers visit your site, then it’s a combination of the written content, images or video that explains and shows the benefits of the product that will possibly guarantee the purchase.

Things to look into:

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Being listed in what are called organic search results costs nothing other than the time involved to make sure each page on your website is optimised for search engines. Try to identify what words or phrases people use to search for the products or services you sell and make sure those words/phrases are represented in the pages of your site. If you only market to customers that are local to you then make sure you include the name of your local area when you optimise each page. You can find out more about SEO in our post on Search Engine Optimisation.

Pay Per Click (PPC)
Using Google AdWords, you only pay for the visitors that click through to your website making it one of the most cost effective advertising solutions available. Beware though as your ads need to be written clearly and targeted at the correct audience so that costs don’t get out of control.

Video Search
YouTube is now the second most popular search engine in the world and Google also uses video content in its regular search results. Obviously, the only way to be listed in YouTube is by using video, but it is well worth considering as video content is more and more sought after and the cost of producing video has fallen.

Get into the Testing Habit
Don’t forget to test and experiment, find out what works for your website. Always use analytics to measure the results from your different strategies. Google’s own analytics tool is free to use and is being improved all the time. The results may astound you.

Imagine though that this day, you drive past the field of cows and you notice that in the middle of the herd of brown cows was a purple cow**. This day you wouldn’t drive on by. Instead, you would stop the car, everyone would get out and start tweeting, facebooking and +1ing, they would take photos and post them online. Before long #purplecow would be trending worldwide.

The problem is wherever you go in business today there are plenty of fields of brown cows. Just like the story of the first car journey as you browse online you will see some ‘interesting for a moment’ things, but you’ve soon forgotten them.

For your own business you know that marketing is important, particularly online, but how can you be distinctive? How you can stop being seen as just another brown cow? Is it possible that you have a purple cow in your business just waiting to be discovered?

A couple of weeks ago a purple cow ran past our front door. It wasn’t there for long, blink and you would have missed it, but it was so remarkable that thousands of people stood outside with us and watched and cheered as an aluminium alloy stick with a flame on top was carried past.

The Olympic Torch Relay has captured attention in the UK for the last two months as millions of people across the nation have come out to line the streets to see it go by. The truth though is that the people didn’t come out to see a stick, they had come to witness a story and watch mostly ordinary people being part of it.

Everybody loves a good story and a story told well goes beyond communicating facts to engaging and influencing us at an emotional level. But whilst you may feel that what your business does is pretty unremarkable just like that field of brown cows, the truth is we all have a purple cow story we can tell.

You may have a particular product that solves a problem in a unique way. Or maybe you run a service-based business that provides extra special service. I’m sure if you think about it for a while there are all manner of things that you do that you can turn from being brown to purple, but how can you do that effectively?

You need to tell a story.

In today’s busy and competitive online world, video is perfect for story-telling and is one of the best investments you can make for marketing your business.

Here’s why…

• A video on your website helps to differentiate what you do from your competitors. It helps to show off your purple cow.
• Video is more effective at engaging visitors to your website. Web marketers talk about the 8-second rule which is the length of time you have to convince a visitor to stay on your site before they click away. Video helps you to do that as people are more likely to watch a 30-60 second video than spend a few seconds reading and scanning a web page.
• Video is an excellent way for your customers to get to know you and understand how you can help them. Video helps to give your website and your business personality. People buy from people they know, like, and trust. Online video helps you to show that.
• Online video when optimised correctly gives you a far higher chance than text of helping your site rank well in search engines. Getting a first-page Google result is harder than ever, but as more of page 1 has been given over to “blended” search results – displaying videos and images towards the top of the page – you have an opportunity using video to be there.
• After Google, YouTube is now the world’s second largest search engine. The only way to be seen on YouTube is through video.

Video isn’t just a passing trend. Video is here to stay. Video can help you to harness the power of story-telling in your business marketing.

#browncow or #purplecow. Which will you choose?

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**Adapted from “Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable” by Seth Godin.

Cracking Media work with businesses and organisations to help promote their products and services online through video. You can see some samples here.

If you would like some help finding your purple cow or to discuss ideas for marketing your business using online video, please email info@crackingmedia.com or give us a call on 01202 532522.

There’s a monster roaming. He’s out to spoil your fun as a web consumer and is determined to make it harder for UK and EU businesses to prosper online. But it’s not the cute and cuddly puppet character from Sesame Street.

In May 2011, a new e-Privacy Directive – (un)popularly known the ‘EU Cookie Law’ – came into effect addressing a number of privacy issues and included requirements for websites to ask visitors for ‘consent’ to use most cookies.

Cookies are small text files used for remembering information that are saved by your browser on to your computer or mobile device. Cookies are not viruses and they cannot scan your system or search your computer for private information. They are a long-standing web technology that is mostly used to enhance the way websites work for the benefit of both website owners and visitors.

Over 90% of websites in the EU use cookies, but the EU has taken the view that they represent a privacy threat resulting in a directive that may be well intentioned but is ill thought. Unfortunately, the EU’s ‘Cookie Monster’ is likely to have a negative impact across the EU for both web users and businesses, whilst the rest of the world is allowed to carry on unhindered. Is this ‘sledgehammer to crack a nut’ really what the EU needs in the midst of a global recession? Wouldn’t it have been better to work with online business leaders across the EU to better understand any privacy issues that cookies present and frame legislation that helps EU consumers and businesses rather than hinders?

All EU member state countries are required to implement the directive in their territory. In the UK, the government decided to delay enforcement until May 26th 2012 because nobody (including the UK government) was ready. Since May 2011, the UK regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), has been publishing updates to try to clarify the grey areas of the legislation and how they will seek to enforce it.

How will the EU Cookie Law affect my website?

That largely depends on the type of cookies your website uses as not all cookies are equal.

If you run an eCommerce site it is very likely that you will use cookies to record the products a visitor puts into your site’s shopping basket. Such cookies are deemed as ‘strictly necessary’ for the site to function and as such are allowed without the need for consent by the new legislation. Another example of this type of cookie, would be if your visitors are required to login to your site.

Perhaps the most common type of cookie used on websites today is a tracking cookie. Briefly, these are used to record information about each website visit, such as the search term the visitor used to arrive at the site, which pages they have looked at and how long they have been there etc. They are used extensively to provide website owners with statistics about their site and inform them how they can improve the navigation and use of their site for visitors and optimise it to be found via search engines.

Tracking cookies do not fall into the ‘strictly necessary’ category (even though they are necessary for the full reporting capabilities of applications like Google Analytics) and as such, under the new law, the website owner is required to obtain ‘consent’ from the website visitor to store these cookies on the device they are using. The same is true of social icons, such as ‘Like’ buttons for Facebook or the number of tweets of an article on Twitter.

The above are called ‘first-party’ cookies in that they are stored by the browser on behalf of the website being visited. There are other types of cookies called ‘third-party’ because they are stored on behalf of a third-party, for example by advertisers recording clicks on adverts to help them understand a visitor’s interests and provide the visitor with more targeted advertising. ‘Consent’ is also required if using these on your site.

What do I have to do to comply with the new law?

The EU law says that sites must provide “clear and comprehensive information” about the use of cookies. It says that your website must (1) tell visitors that your site uses cookies, (2) explain what the cookies do and (3) obtain the visitors’ consent to store a cookie on their device. Failure to comply with these requirements could result in a fine of up to £500,000 – although in practice it is likely that only the worst and most persistent offenders would be fined so heavily.

It is the word ‘consent’ that has been the subject of a lot of debate and at the time of writing it is still not clear what qualifies as sufficient consent. For example, is it enough to inform a website visitor that your site uses cookies, tell them what they are and instruct them how they can, if they want to, block them (such as by adjusting settings on their browser)? If the website visitor chooses not to follow that instruction does that ‘imply’ consent?

What you must not do, despite the confusion over consent, is do nothing. There are a variety of different methods of obtaining consent being suggested some of which may adversely affect traffic to your website or the collection of visitor statistics (as with Google Analytics). It may be, in the longer term, that there is an easing of the legislation and that it is made more practical for websites to implement, but the main thing you need to do now is follow the legislation regarding providing clear and comprehensive information. We will be doing that ourselves in the next few days, but if you are unsure about how to implement these requirements on your website, then you should consult your website support company. Ultimately though, it is up to the website owner to ensure that they comply with this legislation.

To date, the ICO have stated that websites that are ‘moving towards compliance’ will not be targeted. In an interview with E-Consultancy last month, Dave Evans, the ICO’s group manager for business and industry said, “If people listen to our advice and are prepared to take steps towards compliance there shouldn’t be a problem. However, if businesses deliberately stop short of total compliance, then there is a risk.”

As the May 26th deadline approaches and passes there will inevitably be more information provided and further developments on how websites need to comply. We will aim to update our blog with further information as it becomes available.

If you require more information in the meantime, please add your questions below and we will try to help or contact us on 01202 532522 or email info@crackingmedia.com.

Most of all – don’t get eaten by the Cookie Monster!

Prior to the late 19th century, most pictures of galloping horses showed the horse with both of their front legs extended forward and both their hind legs extended to the rear. To our eyes today those pictures look old-fashioned, but to most of the people of the day, that was how they thought a horse galloped. They didn’t know any better. That was until a man called Eadweard Muybridge proved otherwise.

Muybridge, born Edward James Muggeridge on 9th April 1830 (whose 182nd birthday was celebrated recently on Google’s home page with an animation of a horse galloping), was an English photographer known for his pioneering work showing how animals run by using multiple cameras to capture motion. He famously invented the Zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that predated perforated film strip still used in cinematography.

It seems that Muybridge had a bit of an identity crisis as he changed his names several times in his career only settling on the name Eadweard Muybridge in the 1870s when he became more widely known for his work with Leland Stanford, an American businessman and race-horse owner. Stanford asserted that all four of a horse’s hooves are off the ground at the same time during the trot and took it upon himself, with Muybridge’s help, to prove it scientifically.

Muybridge arranged a series of large glass-plated cameras in a line, each one connected to a thread stretched across the path a horse would run through. As each thread was passed by the horse’s front legs, it triggered the camera’s shutter and took a photograph. The photos were copied onto a disc as silhouettes and viewed in Muybridge’s Zoopraxiscope.

Later, in another series of photographs taken called The Horse in Motion, Muybridge showed how a horse gallops and is airborne, not with fore and hind legs off of the ground and fully extended as illustrated in the day, but rather when all the hooves are tucked under the horse as it switches between pulling with the front legs to pushing with the back legs.

So Eadward Muybridge, despite the change of spelling of his name, proved he was no Mug(geridge)! The series of photos Muybridge captured and displayed in his Zoopraxiscope are one of the earliest forms of videography.

Muybridge’s moving images settled the argument about how a horse gallops in just 11 images displayed in a sequence which took less than one second to capture.

A single still image can tell a story, but a series of still images, displayed in a sequence, can tell you more of the story. Muybridge’s series of still images explained to the people of the day and told the true story about how a horse gallops.

Today’s video cameras capture 25 still images per second (or 30 if you are in the USA). Video is the perfect method for telling a story and is being used increasingly by businesses today to tell true stories about their products or services. It works especially well when that story is difficult to explain or understand (as with Muybridge’s, The Horse in Motion), or when people want to see in action what you can do for them rather than have it told to them in words or single pictures. You can see some examples below.

Muybridge helped to settle the argument about how a horse gallops in less than one second – although it took him several years to perfect his invention to do it. Today, using video, you have the opportunity to tell the story about your business’s products and services and demonstrate what you do in a clear and concise way too. You will need more than a second of video to do so, but between 30 seconds and 2 minutes should be ideal.

It’s true that a picture is worth a thousand words. But how many more is a video worth?

Cracking Media produce videos that are worth thousands of words. Call us today for a free, no obligation consultation of how we can work together with you to tell your business story.

So, I am joking – right? No I’m not. I really mean it. Working for customers is extremely bad for your business.

But before you go off and tell others that Cracking Media are Crack Pots – wait a moment…

It is true that customers can be a real pain – we have all had customers like that.

It is also true that you should never work for any customer, BUT we do wholeheartedly recommend that you should work with your customers. So not for but with!

The difference in the two statements above is a subtle but important one.

You will have heard people say of a sales person that he/she could sell snow to the Eskimos. It’s as if we should be impressed at how brilliant the person is at sales. But did anyone ask the Eskimo if he needed any snow? The fact is, he didn’t!

But that’s the same thing that happens when you are so obsessed with the things you can do for a customer – because selling a solution is really the focus of your attention – that you fail to understand the problem your customer needs solving.

Many companies have great products or services, but are really poor at listening to their customer. Rather than taking the time to fully understand the problem their customer needs solving, they impose a solution on them. This often results in the customer spending lots of money and the company they employ solving very little. In fact, in some cases, the solution has solved nothing and ended up costing the customer even more. They were sold snow but didn’t need any!

Finding the right solution for your customer comes about when there is a marriage of expertise. Your customer is an expert at what they do and so will understand their business better than you do. You are of course an expert at what you do – your customer wouldn’t expect anything less – but the key to providing a successful solution for your customer is to work with them not for them.

That means listening to your customer – the expert on their business.
That means taking time to understand the problems they need solving.
That means working with your customer to work out how you can best help them.

It sounds simple, but many businesses fail their customers because they get carried away with finding and imposing a solution without ever really understanding the problem.

That doesn’t mean you should be passive in your relationship with your customer. Listening and understanding the problems your customer needs solving is an active role but it is only part of your role. As an expert in the products or services you provide you must also be an educator. It is your responsibility to give your customer advice and direction whilst remembering that although the customer isn’t always right, they are always the customer.

So, if you want to be successful at solving problems for your customers then start working with them.

And if you are a customer looking for a business to solve your problem, make sure you find a business that will listen to you and work with you, not for you.