Newsletters and Blogs - Who Cares?
I had a great discussion today with a person who was interested in the work that Small Fish has done with newsletters, such as this one, and blogs. He was trying to figure out whether it’s something he should invest in to help his business.
In my experience, these tools are best used for maintaining general awareness, and passing along non-critical information. You’re generally talking with a large group – whether it’s 30 or 3000 – so you don’t have the chance to customize the message to the reader. No, I’m NOT talking about planting the recipient’s name in the text of the message; everyone now knows that’s artificial.
If you’re talking about general messages to a broad audience, then it’s similar to having articles in a newspaper or an actual newsletter. People may or may not read what you wrote. They’ll probably skim and even miss some critical content.
Blogs, at least, offer some opportunity for back-and-forth conversation. But this can be quite random. If you have a close-knit community with common shared interests and goals, the conversation will probably be useful. Otherwise, well, it may or may not have value for people. In the worst case, it can even drive readers away.
Should you invest in newsletters and blogs for your business? Yes, if:
- Your target audience keeps in touch using email and social media.
- You have something interesting and new to say about every week or so.
- You don’t assume the readers will read even most of your content.
I’m not a fan of using these mechanisms to try to push people into purchasing immediately – in my experience, that quickly becomes tiring. I try lots of newsletters, and it’s not uncommon for me to get bored of reading sales pitches, and just unsubscribe. I rarely purchase anything because of a pitch delivered through my e-mail.
A final word: Don’t assume that the number of subscribers you have in your list is anywhere near the number of actual readers. Many people will delete the email without reading it if you’ve become boring, or will just declare your address to be spam so they’ll never see it again. If you want to know how many actual readers you have, it’s great to ask them for a little interaction. Make it easy, entertaining, and valuable, and you’ll have some people click through.
Happy marketing!
Carl Dierschow
Small Fish Business Coaching Fort Collins
www.smallfish.us
Look At The Big Picture
Whenever I start a coaching engagement, I walk my client through an end-to-end assessment of the current state of the business. This is a necessary investment to develop a clear picture, which then helps to create a great business strategy. It’s not uncommon for this to be the most thorough assessment that’s been done since the business was created or purchased – and sometimes, it’s never been done at all.
It’s amazing what you can find out if you just look.
There’s always surprises. Perhaps it’s some marketing investments that stopped yielding value a couple of years ago. Or decisions which were made but never communicated to employees. Maybe there’s some product lines which yield the lion’s share of profits, while others are entirely unprofitable.
Each of those MIGHT not be a problem. By digging into these areas with my clients, though, we can decide if there’s some actions to be taken. Better communication. Repositioning of products. Shifting investments to more effective forms of marketing.
My clients can be the smartest people around – that’s not the issue. It’s that they get so immersed in the day-to-day running of the business that they haven’t taken much time to stand back.
Stop. Look. Listen.
Oh yes, and Think. That’s where a business coach really helps.
Carl Dierschow
Small Fish Business Coaching Fort Collins
www.smallfish.us
Opportunities That Just Appear
I’ve talked to a couple of people this week who described business opportunities that just fell into their laps, seemingly out of nowhere. This can be tough for a business owner to think through. You’re busy with the day-to-day work, yet you’re supposed to be looking ahead to the future of the company. And these kinds of opportunities never seem to have enough data attached to them, so you can feel like you’re fishing around a lot.
Being Small Fish, we ought to talk about this.
First, realize that the real creative opportunities will almost never have much data behind them. Think about it: If there’s data, that means that other people are ahead of you, generating that data. Which means it’s not going to be as creative or blue-sky as you might have hoped. Beware of proposals which seem to be well fleshed-out but also claim that “nobody has thought of this before.” It’s unlikely to be both, unless there’s some guy who’s been devoting the last three years of his life to this, toiling away in his garage.
Balancing these distractions against your day-to-day work in the business can be tough. It’s not uncommon for clients to use my coaching sessions to talk about big opportunities, because it’s an hour which they can dedicated to working ON the business rather than IN the business. Plus, it’s helpful to get another person’s perspective, someone who won’t be either overly enthusiastic, or overly critical. You just talk through the idea, and see where it goes.
There can be a danger in spending TOO much time chasing new ideas. I encourage my clients to create a “time budget” for working on the innovative business ideas, in the same way that Google pays its employees to spend 20% of their time working on things outside their assigned jobs. I don’t know if 20% is the right ratio for you, but 2% is probably on the low end, and 50% would mean that you might be losing touch with making your CURRENT business successful. Especially if you’re chasing multiple ideas, rather than dedicating that time to pushing one idea through to fruition.
Finally, I’ve found it very useful to create a simple set of criteria that you can use to judge ideas and opportunities that just appear:
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Does it seem to have alignment with our current business, would it help it?
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Would our current customers be shocked if we went this direction?
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What’s the investment of time and money to get this off the ground? Then multiply it by 5 or 10, for what it will take to see success.
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How do we know that the market need exists for this?
This kind of list can be quite helpful in quickly deciding whether to spend more attention on the idea – and it’s quite OK to base your answers on intuition and gut feel.
Carl Dierschow
Small Fish Business Coaching Fort Collins
www.smallfish.us
Positive Imagery
I had a great discussion today with a person in the financial industry. He’s constantly connecting with potential clients to help them with planning their life savings around key events and life changes. Of course, many people are worried about whether they’ll ever be able to retire, given how the recession has savaged their investments.
We talked about the idea of attracting people through the use of positive imagery, rather than trying to feed on their fear and insecurity. It’s an important decision, because when people are enthused about the future, they’re much more likely to want to work with you, and to spend money to achieve their dreams. When they’re scared, people tend to hunker down and not move.
But it can be a subtle distinction. When I asked my friend about the value he gives to his clients, he expressed it in two ways: (1) I want to keep people from jumping off the ledge, and (2) I help them keep on the rails.
Let’s think about this for a moment. Clearly the first one is a strongly negative image of those stories of people jumping off of skyscrapers during the Depression. Never mind that the stories have pretty much proven false – the image remains, and it’s one of stark fear.
The second image sounds positive, but in fact the phrase people commonly use is “going off the rails.” So “staying on the rails” mentally changes into “not going off the rails,” not heading for some great railroad disaster. That’s the image people will form from this phrase.
I’m not suggesting that we go totally the other direction – that the role of the financial planner is to give the client milk and honey, cute dancing bears, and rainbows. It might work for Disney, but it’s not a meaningful image for this kind of business. So how do we develop something realistic?
Ask the customers who have received your absolute best value: Why do you continue to do business with us?
In this case, great answers might be:
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You give me the comfort of knowing that I’ll be able to live out the rest of my life making contributions and having fun.
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I like knowing that I won’t have to financially depend on my kids, that we’ll be financially independent.
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I appreciate having someone to talk to about these tough issues who knows what they’re doing.
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I’m able to sleep at night, even when the stock market goes down.
These statements are personal, meaningful, and even emotional.
You could argue that some of these still have a negative component, but you can choose whether you include that. Is it enough to just say “I help you be able to sleep at night”? I know a person who uses the great phrase, “You and your spouse are going to have to find something else to fight about, because we’ll just remove that source of conflict.” Delivered with a sense of humor, this goes a great way toward helping people to dream of peace in their marriage, something that most people are striving for year after year.
Help make that dream real, and you’ve captured their inspiration.
Carl Dierschow
Small Fish Business Coaching Fort Collins
www.smallfish.us
