Brighter Marketing

I am halfway through reading The Absolutley Critical Non-Essentials, by Dr Paddi Lund, an Australian Dentist who has written all about customer serice and why it is the small things in your business that really matter to your clients. It is a great little book and is worth a read as it is packed full of some really great ideas. It’s things like the cleanliness of your reception, the way you are greeted on arrival, or the fresh flowers and toiletries in your hotel room. He has shown that the “non-core” areas of your business are very very important contributors to your client’s perceptions of what you do.

These are all important elements that help you to build a successful business and brand in the minds of your clients and prospects. You could have the best designed logo in the world, with an amazing website, but if you phone is answered by a bored sounding and unhelpful person, it can instantly give a bad impression of your business. Last year we won some business with a new customer and as always we asked why they had chosen us. We were surprised by their response as it seemed to have nothing to do with our marketing skills. Their answer was a follows..

• Two of the other marketing consultants we saw, weren’t that well dressed, one of them had really old scuffed shoes on and the other had some stains on his tie.  We liked the fact that you were well dressed and looked professional.

• You sat and listened to us. One of the other consultants told us what he was going to do to market our business without knowing anything about us. The other consultant looked bored while we were giving him an outline of our strategy and repeatedly told us that he had to be at another meeting by 11:00am

• Your proposal arrived by recorded delivery in a lovely cardboard envelope branded with your logo. There was a proposal for each of us inside and a personal letter to us all. The others arrived as PDF files with short covering emails.

• You seemed like genuinely nice people, who wanted to to work with us and we liked you.

All of these were small details, but the added up to create a good impression of Brighter Marketing which gave us the advantage over the competition. If you want to find out more about making your company and brand more effective take a look at these articles  that we wrote a while ago but are still valid.

Beyond the Logo - Creating a strong brand takes more than just creating a logo, find out how to develop a winning brand

Marketing Glue - This articles focuses on those elements that make your clients sticky and attract them to your organisation.