Using business directories to find new customers and suppliers

This seems to be a gradual progression between directory websites, and websites that allow you to list your business, but also do something useful for you.

Directory sites allow you to have links to your website; some offer this for free whereas others charge.

I take the view that really this is such a basic service that it should really be free. Companies that do charge, do so because are very high in Google’s rankings and advertisers are tying to piggy-back on this success.

So directory websites are less about people finding you in their directory, than getting Google to recognise your existence and show you in searches.

The situation now is very like the situation that business directory books were in the 1880s when Kelly’s was the best known, but there were many others as well.

Kelly’s was generally paid for by subscription, whereas the others were paid for by advertising. Businesses took the most cost-effective solution for their business based on who their customers were and which directory they used.

Now we’re in much the same situation with intense competition between many of these directory websites, and with some having to close to further subscriptions, as can’t make a living out of taking on new companies.

The next question is; if you’ve got a website that allows people to register and create a business listing, what else can you do to that is useful?

The most useful things of course are finding suppliers and more importantly finding customers.

The most obvious approach to finding a new supplier is to say who has recommended them on websites like LinkedIn.

LinkedIn does give you some depth of knowledge about who it is that is recommending a supplier. So you may be able to spot a bunch of friends from the same area who all recommend each other.

You can also see if some of the recommenders are useful, competent, high-level people, which tells you the potential supplier is competent and worth contacting.

The next approach is to find out if your potential supplier does something you can see in concrete form. Is there anything you can find which demonstrates that they are able to do what they say they can do.

For example in the case of a SEO (search engine optimisation) consultant; if he or she says she can get your website to the top of the Google rankings, has she managed to do it in the past? Have a look at some of the projects she has worked on, and see if she has succeeded.

In the case of an architect; have a look at the buildings they have designed and see what you think of them.

However many consultants work on a confidential basis and you cannot see evidence of their work because it’s confidential.

In these cases you need to be able to see slices of their knowledge. Examples of what they know; evidence of their core competence and their ability.

The best way to do this is to find things they’ve written which demonstrate what they know and how they think.

It may be in the form of a blog or a report, and should show their logical approach to problems and how they actually do things.

Whether these are free of have to be paid for, if they seemed reasonable, competent and intelligent, then the potential supplier should do a good job for you, and that’s what Gibli does.

Using natural metaphors to help us innovate our marketing strategies

I have found metaphors useful in making complex situations easier to understand, and I find a interesting parallels between the ways in which we promote our companies, and the way plants distribute pollen and seeds.

Both entail the distribution of information, be it an advert or a package of DNA. Both use a variety of mechanisms to distribute the information, and both have mechanisms which work well and mechanisms which don’t work so well.

Tweeting for example is like producing pollen or seeds in large numbers and letting the wind to do the distribution (ie fungal spores).

Email is like producing larger seeds and using a combination of gravity and wind to do the distribution (ie Sycamore seeds).

But in nature agents (ie squirrels plant acorns and bees distribute pollen) are used much more than we use agents to promote our companies in te business world.

Google could be described as an agent, as if we invest in pay-per-click they are trying to find us customers.

But in nature some techniques some work better than others, as the energy invested in producing the seeds or pollen is rewarded by increased chances of furthering the species. In fact communal bees pollinate more crops that solitary bees.

This means that the next development in business promotion is likely to entail getting more for our money than just a click, and using community websites as agents which are more efficient than Google.

The other issue which comes in here, is how do we attract other users to our ad or profile / the bees to come to our flower? I think this means having nectar which is sugary enough to entice them, which in the business world means a reward.

The reward doesn’t have to be free, as bees will fly long distances to collect nice sugary pollen. It just has to be good enough to draw them in. I like knowledge in the form of white papers or reports as it can be collected online, and doesn’t need anything to be sent.

That leads me to the concept of Knowledge Trading, which means using these reports as bait to attract potential customers. These could be free or to be paid for, but the free approach is like including all the stray beetles and grubs which by chance land on our flower, and does not discriminate enough in favour of bees – ie potential customers.

Push me, Pull you!(Advertising vs Search Marketing).

Much of what goes on on Linkedin groups and many other social networking sites is a variant of push advertising, as although most of it takes place as a conversation, most business people are all looking for opportunities to promote their products or services.

They sit at their desks waiting for someone to say ‘How do I’ or ‘Where can I’.

However when someone has a question like this, they need to be aware that they may be deluged by people offering services, and may end up working with either the wrong company or both wrong and too expensive.

So there is a risk for buyers trying to find suppliers in any form of social networking.

So I believe that genuine buyers are likely to read the conversations without making contact until they understand who is competent and who not. They will also spot the blatant and may avoid that person if the conversations he or she is engaged in are shallow..

This is a reversal from push advertising to pull, and is a better approach for buyers, but finding relevant reports or conversations to make up the background research is not as easy as it seems., as they may not be able to see where else this potential supplier is making comments.

It would be idea if they could see all the activity in once place, so they could gage if that potential supplier, trainer or partner was the right person for them with the right knowledge, attitude and skills.

However even if this were possible, it might simply show pages and pages of conversations about things which are of little interest to us.

The ultimate ideal would be a directory of reports written by the potential supplier proving their competence in their field. Then we could read these and get a real idea as to what they know. However he or she is unlikely to give the really useful information away, and we may have to pay for some of it.

But if we get a good supplier as a result of this, and save or make thousands as a consequence, what do a few pounds spent on reports really matter.

There’s Gold in them there Social Marketing Hills

In a number of ways, the social marketing revolution is rather like a gold rush.

The reason is that as yet we don’t really understand where the gold is in the hills / where the value for businesses lies.

Each miner tells you a different story, go up that creek / use Facebook to promote your business.

And like a gold rush, people will tell different stories about where the gold is, and how to find it.  Some stories are correct, but others are red herrings to put you off the scent.

In a real gold rush, very few people make it big. However the saloon owners and other merchants generally do OK. In the social marketing revolution its likely to be the owners of resources which do well. For example the Hootsuites, Twitters and Linkedins of the new world will all win.

However if our analogy is true, then the majority of us real users will struggle to find concrete value in social marketing. However there are rich gold finds and poor gold finds.

Some will find value by luck, some will bring a map (or be trained). But do the trainers really know how best to do social marketing? And aren’t new tools appearing every day?

The answer is that the way social marketing works is changing every day, and until we know more, we won’t have a definitive understanding of which approaches work best.

It may be that it will be academics who finally produce a map showing where the social marketing

Gold sky at night

value lies and why. However like geologists in a gold rush, they tend to arrive late on the scent when big business begins to take over.

Social media, meaningful conversations or inane drivel?

As i get older I find it very difficult to keep up with all the conversations taking place on Twitter, Linkedin, FaceBook and the like.

Occasionally I find some topic which I become involved in, but often loose interest after three or four replies.

Where do people find the time to engage in all these conversations, and do they really produce business for companies trying to grow?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, and I suspect the answer will vary according to who you are, how old, race, sex etc, etc.

However my worry is ‘Are we spending too much time discussing an issue, rather than getting right to it and dealing with the point in question?’

As well as being business people, we are also social beings as well. And communication is generally enjoyable and to some degree fun.

But is this clouding the nature of the online conversation? Are we being social and enjoying ourselves to the expense of doing business?

I suspect the answer is yes, and perhaps its only grumpy oldish men who can spot the difference….

Sometimes when I go to networking sessions I am tempted to tell someone to get to the point. WHAT DO YOU DO?

But I’m polite and let them rabbit on. The same goes for social media, except that I can walk away from my computer and make a cup of tea, or go to sleep, or go for a drive, and the person at the other end may not be aware of this.

The same goes for social media, as conversations are like chameleons changing colour, they change topic according to who is involved.

So this grumpy old man says: get tot he point, answer the questions, be brief, tell me how to do it. I don’t care what you saw on TV last night, or that your wife’s second cousin once removed was run over by a milk float. I don’t want to know…