15 March 2017 | Sas Soubhi
There is no magic wand to wave to achieve business growth. In a cluttered and fiercely competitive market place getting noticed is getting increasingly harder, especially in a business environment where the same regular, repeat buzz phrases seem to dominate the landscape.
So where can we start to differentiate our business?
Well it may be a lot simpler and closer to home than you think, as more and more businesses are turning to the human interaction side of their work, which is leading to this burgeoning genre of Human Interest Marketing. Get this right and you immediately enhance your marketability, get the word of mouth chins wagging and improve your reputation. These key components form the perfect platform for generating future revenue growth.
Applying a structured and ordered approach though needs discipline, doggedness and a compulsive passion for detail. We have summarised the pathway to human interest marketing as “climbing the ladder to enlightened business growth” and the visual below summarises the ascent.
The first rung of the ladder is actually base camp/Terra Firma. As before any ropes, pick axes or oxygen masks are called into action, a clear understanding of your business vision, mission and market positioning is crucial. Key questions like…why you are in business, what you want to be famous for and the legacy you want to leave behind are the key considerations and tools necessary to be best equipped for your marketing expedition. A natural fallout of this annual exercise is the creation of a business strategy and plan which will need periodic review, during and after each stage of the climb.
The next stage can be labelled “The Ascent of Man!” as this is now going to forge the human side of your business story. Regularly mining your business for client stories, team stories, charity events and community news is vital to reflect the true DNA of your service offering. What is mission critical here is the resonance of your personality through your brand, your tone of voice and positioning yourself as a thought leader in your industry sector.
The more visual the better, consider videos of your company and video testimonials from your clients. The phrase “a good painting is better than a long speech” was initially attributable to Napoleon and is clearly something that a great deal of modern politicians have forgotten! In the absence of brushes and easels though, as a minimum the use of a mobile device to record client selfies goes a long way to cultivate that human portrait. As confidence grows, consider engaging professional story tellers or film makers to record key moments in your business’ timeline.
Now let all the tactical elements kick-in!
Our digital age dictates that the first rung has to be Your Website. This clearly needs to to reflect your business vision, your company profile, the key people inside your business, as well as your clients, your pricing, your products and your publicity. This covers the basics but don’t forget that all important personality echo. Bounce your ideas and promote your thoughts and opinions like sonar waves cutting through the ether, by writing regular blogs, case studies and stories pertaining to your industry sector.
The blog is the raw material for the cannon and uploading this on to your website lights the fuse. The next stage is to share these thoughts through the appropriate and usual social media channels and a concerted blitz, through your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram contacts is an essential next step on our upward trajectory.
Depending on the maturity of your database and more over the newsworthiness of your blogs, and stories, these can now be distilled into a newsletter and sent out to your regular tribe. Think about doing this at least every 1- 2 months as a minimum and use software, that can provide information about how your tribe perceives you.
As a final step and applying Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we approach self actualisation and this is as close as our ladder gets to an identity crisis by believing it is now a pyramid! Think about optimising your search engine ranking through a structured programme of SEO work. Implicit within this is the offering of quality articles which followers can download and represents a new gateway to increasing your tribe members via data capture. With time this will increase your search volumes within your chosen location and demographic and can go a long way to define your niche, which creates a further point of differentiation.
So there we have it, now we’ve reached the summit where to next…we systematise this and try to self–perpetuate, by creating a seasonal activities calendar and learn from and repeat theses processes.
As with all good human-interest stories though, be mindful that in biological systems this steady state is rarely reached, as all pathways will ultimately leads back to how well you manage your “discipline, doggedness and passion for detail!”
