Doug Richard's School for Startups » pr

Drawing on the Support of Big Business by Simon Devonshire, SME Marketing at O2

Guest Blogger — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 15:21:59 +0000

“O2 recently came on board as our big business supporter. I for one think that their superb business strap line, “we’re better, connected” reflects our beliefs about early stage businesses. Their financial backing will allow us to connect with a new generation of businesses through a major expansion of accelerated business training for entrepreneurs online.” — Doug Richard

Simon Devonshire, Head of Small Business Marketing at O2, is a guest on today’s blog.

Schools for Startups is an impressive initiative which will no doubt motivate and inspire entrepreneurs. Doug is an especially talented and thought provoking presenter and business coach. The content of his lectures is about helping businesses to grow which I believe is relevant to all businesses. Doug makes a phenomenal difference to the thinking and performance of small businesses and we’re proud to be on board to support the creation of additional online training programmes targeting entrepreneurs.

We know that access to good quality training can be difficult and expensive for new businesses who are just getting off the ground. That’s why it’s so great to see School for Startups filling the gap. Enterprise creation is so important for the recovery of the UK economy, and small business sits at the heart of entrepreneurialism. Being able to access expert training and advice for free online at a time that suits them can only help young enterprises continue to flourish.

But it’s not all about O2 & School for Startups sharing our support and experiences. It’s a two-way relationship. We want to learn from entrepreneurs and help our business customers to grow their business. More small businesses do business with O2 than any other network. If we are to continue to be there to support them every step of the way, we need to make sure we understand the ongoing challenges they face in the ever changing modern business environment.

One thing O2 well understands is that entrepreneurs and small businesses absolutely rely on flexible communications technologies.

Many businesses these days launch and run for years in a ‘virtual office’. Owners, key employees and strategic partners spread across the UK. When customers call, they need to feel the coherence and cohesion of a traditional brick and mortar business even when one doesn’t exist. Web hosting, e-commerce, cellular internet connectivity, broadband wireless, various forms of VOIP, small businesses now require the kinds of service and support that was available only to multinational corporations less than a decade ago.

Doug Richard’s pragmatic advice on launching ‘ultralight’ businesses with little or no outside funding is, we believe, founded on bedrock of a telecommunications company that provides a truly tremendous number of ‘just in time’ services for entrepreneurs. O2 and School for Startups share a single vision for entrepreneurs in the UK. Speed, agility, flexibility, insight, value . . . Like O2, School for Startups is determined to give them the tools they need.

We look forward to the opportunities that this partnership will bring for us to work more closely with startups and are committed to supporting Doug in championing entrepreneurs and new business in the UK.

– Simon Devonshire

We mention in passing . . . O2 has launched a ‘Joined Up’ communications service, which extends beyond its core mobile offering. The new services provide businesses with one single converged solution for their telecoms requirements spanning mobile, fixed line, data, broadband communications, equipment and professional consultancy. It gives businesses of all sizes an opportunity to outsource their telecoms, ICT and consultancy needs to just one provider, reducing the amount of time spent handling and managing systems and communications services, which are not core to their business. Find out more.

Living Without Air: Ship Early, Ship Little, Ship Fast

Doug Richard — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 10:04:26 +0000

The 4 Ps?

Product, Price, Promotion, Place, the Four P’s that historically have defined marketing operations have long been a road map for businesses who want to bring a product to market.

Develop a product that packages a set of features and benefits
Determine the proper price for that product
Decide how to promote it
Determine how to distribute it.

That’s how you market a product. At least it used to be.

For many businesses the traditional interpretation of the 4 P’s is is misleading at best and toxic at worst. Online games and iphone apps, open source software and social networking sites blur the line between promotion and product. Grocery stores now take orders online for home delivery. Print shops let you upload documents that are subsequently printed and couriered to clients. Many schools now consist of students and faculty that never meet face to face. Aren’t we all Internet businesses these days?

Understanding What Has Changed . . .

The reality is that over the last decade the process by which products are brought to market has changed radically and many otherwise competent business professionals are still struggling to cope with new realities.

For example, many software startups still identify their product as being a long series of specific features that let the customer achieve a given set of objectives. When you ask these businesses to add a form that lets someone invite a friend to use the application, or to create a Facebook widget that lets the product communicate with customers through their favorite social network, these developers say “We need to work on core features first. Lets save that for Version 2.”

They see all “code” as a component of the “product”.
They don’t understand that they, like everyone else in the market, must create the code required to connect their product to customers and their customers to one another.
They don’t understand that they never get a version 2 if they haven’t integrated their product or service into its marketplace by creating the necessary code.
They seem to believe, despite the fact that they have no customers and usually haven’t done much in the way of classic marketing research, that they know what the customer wants and it is embodied in their feature list.

The last decade of software successes demonstrates that this is “flawed” thinking. Twitter does one thing very well and everyone that uses it invites others to use it. There is no clear division between the Twitter service and its methodology. Facebook, Linkedin, Google, Magento, and many other very successful businesses have discovered the same solution.

More traditional businesses face other cognitive challenges.

Brick and Mortar companies believe they have a “core business” which may be anything from producing cast iron pots to selling accounting services.
They use the web for this thing called “marketing” which is seen as an auxilliary operation they undertake in order to increase product sales.
Annually, or quarterly, the marketing budget is calculated. Some money is spent on advertising, some is spent on the website, some is spend on bulk mail. There is no adherence to any kind of specific strategy or methodology for this development which is considered “marketing”. Companies still think in terms of campaigns.

These businesses do not see the Internet and other communication connectivity as a necessary core element to their product or service because they do not see themselves as a “software” or “internet” company. Over the last fifteen years, Amazon, Lulu, Netflix and Ebay are just a few of the businesses that have re-envisioned traditionally brick and mortar businesses leveraging new communication options.

There is a new road map for bring products and services to market because what businesses are now expected to sell is a good “customer experience” that extends all the way from presales, to product adoption, to long term use. Actually, businesses have always been in the business of selling “good customer experiences” it is just that these days that requires that elements of “marketing” and “software development” be incorporated into almost every successful widely-adopted product or service.

Ship Early, Ship a Little, Ship Fast

Given the changes in how products are developed, priced, promoted and distributed, there has been a concurrent change to how most enterpreneurs should launch their businesses.

Create a very stripped down version of your product or service with a very small number of features, maybe even just one really great feature. Ceate all the code required to connect this product or service to its target market.
Launch the product aggressively, so people who need the tool can find it and share it with friends.
Wait for the “wall of sound” that comes as customers adopt the product and begin providing feedback. Release new versions of the product based on what actual customers want from the product rather than what they imagine the “ideal feature set” to be.

This methodology for bringing a product to market offers many advantages over more traditional strategies.

It allows startups and small businesses to start their business with a minimum of debt or outside investment and in a relatively short period of time. The objective is to create a very elegant, very useful, very simple solution to a given customer problem.
It lets them leverage the Internet for solution distribution at a minimum cost and for a minimum purchase price at a reasonable profit.
It lets them refine the product over time based on feedback from paying customers.

The Ship Early, Ship Little, Ship Fast methodology works for almost any new product or service because it jetisons an antiquated understanding of what a product is, how it is promoted and how it will be delivered.

Entrepreneurs Guide to Understanding Why We Buy What We Buy. Understanding Consumers.

Doug Richard — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 08:21:43 +0000

by Doug Richard, Founder of School for Startups

Anyone who has ever watched me on the Den, or at one of my S4S Surgeries, knows that I have certain questions that I expect entrepreneurs to be able to answer. Who are you? What does your company do? Who are your customers? What problem are you solving for them? How does your product meet their needs? How will your customers find your product and buy it? Who will sell it? Who will deliver it? It is surprising how many people never get past the first two questions.

From these questions it may seem that I think customers routinely make well considered and rational choices about the products and services they buy, that I’m asking these questions because I think these are the questions that customers ask.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m under no illusion that Burberry coats are purchased by people who have done a careful study of all competing overcoats and have, upon long reflection, decided Burberry is the appropriate choice. In fact, I know customers almost never ask these questions. Burberry, like Coca Cola, is a brand that has successfully imbued itself with a promise to the wearer that anyone who sees them wearing Burberry or drinking Coke will understand that they are the sort of people who wear Burberry and drink Coke and all that that implies; whatever that, indeed, implies.

Chances are good that you buy the breakfast food your mother used to make you when you were a kid. You buy shoes based on what you think looks “fashionable” rather than comfort or sturdiness. You choose what car to drive, what day care to send your kids to, and what home to purchase for reasons just as ephemeral and poorly understood. In a sense, a good product that meets a real need is just the opening ante for an entrepreneur. It’s the very least you need. When I ask these questions, I’m confirming that an entrepreneur knows he has a customer, that he’s knows his customers needs, expectations, his buying habits and the competition.

Knowing the customer inside out is almost more important than having a good product. In fact . . . having a good product is occasionally completely optional . . .

In 1928, George Washington Hill, President of the American Tobacco Association, hired the The “Father of Public Relations” Edward Bernays, to make women start smoking cigarettes. There was, in the 20′s, a considerable taboo against women smoking. It was thought to be vulgar and manly(perhaps a bit redundant). Edward Bernays contacted a bunch of débutantes who were scheduled to march in the 1929 Easter Parade in New York City. He asked them to carry cigarettes sequestered on their person and, at a signal from him, to light up during the parade. He told them they were making a statement about the equality of women and their right to be like men. He said they had as much right to smoke as a man. Their cigarettes were “torches of freedom.” Bernays told the newspapers that suffragettes were planning to infiltrate the parade to make a statement about the equality of women. The rest is history. Everything went as planned and woman began to smoke by the millions.

Even more extraordinary, anyone who felt strongly about the equality of women was co-opted into Bernays invidious plan and felt compelled to support womens’ right to smoke! We now know that cigarettes are one of the most harmful products of the modern era. But at the time, that was neither here nor there. And the story seems peculiarly Machiavellian in hindsight.

But we live in a world that has inherited the extraordinary shift to a consuming public that buys in large part on desire rather than need. Bernays understood that our sense of self is in part made up through the eyes of others around us. We become the sum of how we are perceived. And our subconscious response is to adorn ourselves with brands that signal to everyone else how they should see us, so we in turn can see ourselves the same way. Bernays was a master at assigning to products values whether it was notions of equality tied to cigarettes or independence to cars.

An entrepreneur may start with a great idea based on a remarkable insight, he may produce truly exceptional products, but it is paramount that he know his customer’s needs, his buying habits, his expectations, how he sees himself and why he buys what he buys. He must be able to explain, and hopefully demonstrate, why the customer will buy.

I believe we can do well and good. But I am very conscious of that fact that it is very common for people to innocently wrap their products with values that may enhance or limit their products’ appeal.

For more insight into why people buy things, and the practitioners whose work built the world in which we live, look up the work of Edward Bernays online (http://www.bookrags.com/biography/edward-l-bernays/). He worked his strange brand of magic for more than 60 years for some of the worlds largest and most profitable businesses. There’s a great deal you can learn from his work. For more information about School for Startups, our classes, our online TV station and our other resources, visit www.schoolforstartups.co.uk.

Welcome to S4Stv!

Doug Richard — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 07:27:44 +0000

Today is the day when we charge ahead and try out our new School for Startups service, S4Stv. This afternoon at 6PM we will be broadcasting live across the web from the Conference Centre at the British Library in front of an audience of a couple of hundred people.

This will come at the end of an afternoon-long live event where we will have been doing a deep-dive on Public Relations and Search Engine Marketing. But don’t worry if you miss the event, we will be releasing 2 x 30 minute shows over the coming month capturing the heart of the day. They will be available on the S4Stv site at SchoolforStartups.co.uk.

In fact, in the next few weeks you will see us making quite a few changes beginning with a whole new website that let’s us really drive alot of new material out very quickly. We will also be launching an ambitious event seminar around the country, new partnerships, and a flood of on-demand shows, short clips, podcasts, editorials, how-to’s and of course our live web-streamed surgeries where we try to help young companies in real time on stage.

How to Turn PR into cold hard cash sales (advice for consumer businesses)

Doug Richard — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:28:58 +0000

Many people fundamentally mis-understand the power of Public Relations.

A few weeks ago I touched on the notion that a press release is not always for the press; that sometimes it is more useful as an SEO tool.

But public relations is not really about press releases at all. It is about relationships and stories.

I don’t know how many times I have had arguments with new entrepreneneurs about the foolishness of hiring a dedicated PR person internally. Oh I understand the motivation: the person will work full-time on the company’s account, they will reall get to know the product, it’s alot cheaper etc. etc.

But this mi-understands why we hire PR people in the first place: it is to gain access to their access. By having multiple accounts they have multiple reasons to engage their circle of journalists. The journalists themselves won’t necessarily know why they’re calling because it may be from a current customer or a new one. But it permits the PR person to remain fresh and to keep the relationships fresh. Equally, they can gain access for a new, small company on the back of their prior relationships with older more established clients.

But equally, they have other key advantages. If you choose the right one, you are not merely getting someone who delivers your latest story to a select group of journalists, they may bring much much more to the table. The greatest PR folk of all time invented great stories. They created the conditions, events, moments, or confrontations that were inherently newsworthy. It is an all too rare talent and most people cannot do it effectively.

Great PR people are also very commercial and understand that, in some publications, the opportunity exists to create direct selling opportunities. In fact one of the best practitioners of the art will be joining me this Friday afternoon at the British Library to come up on stage and talk about how she has repeatedly been able to get consumer products, especially kid’s products, including web-sites where no product was involved; full pages and even magazine covers dedicated to selling her clients’ products.

She and her team are one of the top consumer facing teams in the country and, as part of my effort to expand entrepreneurs thinking about how PR can be strategic and far more creative, she is going to tell all at my advanced seminar on marketing. It starts at 1PM at the British Library (here’s the link: http://s4sfastgrowthmarketing.eventbrite.com) and it has some other kick-ass guests and our first ever live web broadcast at the end (but more about that later.)

So if you are interested in PR, if you want to understand how you can use it to get page space for no money, if you want to hear from the best consumer PR artist in the UK, come Friday.

Doug

An Entrepreneur’s Guide to SEO Through Press Releases

Doug Richard — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:06:12 +0000

Edward Bernays, Freud's nephew and the master of spin

Every entrepreneur has read articles advocating the use of press releases to build business. We are always told to write a very targeted press release, send it to a carefully selected set of writers, editors and radio hosts, and hope they reprint it or find a way to mention your product or service on the air.

These days that advice has gaping holes in it. It does not address a profound change in the way the publishing industry has changed or the new way in which most people find the things they buy.

Pay Attention, This is (mildly) Technical . . .

Marketing is no longer about interrupting people while they are being entertained or informed. TV ads, newspaper ads, radio ads are all interruptions. Marketing is more and more about interception. Grabbing people on their way to the product or service they are looking for.

Good marketing is about getting the right product or service in front of the people who will want to buy that product. A 2006 Media Consumption Study indicated that 54% of Europeans use the internet every week, and 45% are online every day. 78% of European internet users shop online. US internet demographics are in line with these figures. So if you have a product or a service you want to sell, a whole bunch of your customers online. Search engines, like Google.com and Yahoo.com, are where most people who start searching for products and services look first. So if you want to intercept your potential customer you need to be on top of the organic search engine rankings. The secret here is that the press release is no longer a release for the press…

Here is my step by step method to use the press release to move your product or service up the search engines rankings exactly where your customers will look to find them. (We’ll talk about other things you can do some other day)

How to…

First, as always, identify ten search phrases that your customers will probably enter when they are ready to buy your products or services. Things like “London Travel” or “iPhone SMS Applet” are good examples.

Write a press release about your product, your service or your company. It must be newsworthy. If you’ve won an award, or donated something to a local charity, or hired someone new, you have something to write about.

Make sure at least one link in the press release points to your website.

Give your press release a title. The very best titles will pair your product or service with the name of something or someone your target market will find interesting. For example: “London Travel Company Donates One Million Pounds to the Prince Trust” or if you don’t happen to have a million quid sitting around “iPhone Applet Sends Groups SMS Messages to All Phones Free”.

Submit your press release through an Internet Press Release service that gives news to news.google.com and news.yahoo.com. Many services submit to these news services, including www.prweb.com. (There are others that specialize in the UK) These services have human editors which determine newsworthiness, so writing spam and calling it a press release is not an option.

Wash.Rinse. Repeat.

Repeat this process 1-3 times a week for six months to ensure you have great placement on the search engines for the keywords you care the most about.

Why does this work?

Hundreds of thousands of websites and blogs use the RSS Feeds to post news articles from news.yahoo.com, news.google.com and other news aggregators for their users to read. This a free, passive way for these sites to get fresh content so their website doesn’t go stale when they don’t have time to update it.

These RSS feeds are configured to search for search terms like “Prince Charles”, “London Travel” “iPhone Applet” or “SMS Messages”. So if your press releases contain these terms it gets picked up by those sites. (Check out: http://www.google.com/support/news/bin/answer.py?answer=40796&ctx=sibling)

Millions of users set up “agents” that forward links to news articles with specific terms as well. News articles with these terms get forwarded to users who may forward the message to others. (Check out: http://www.google.com/alerts?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=%22london+travel%22&t=1&source=news&cd=2)

Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Alta Vista determine where your page appears in the listings based upon how many other pages link to them. So running fifty to a hundred press releases in a year that create thousands or tens of thousands of links is a very fast way to build a long term “home” for your website at the top of almost all search engines for the keywords you care the most about.

Press Releases for the Press Are Still Important

Writing a small number of press releases that you send directly to writers, editors and radio hosts has value in that a recommendation coming from a trusted source has a great deal of value. But, even these professionals will search Google and Yahoo to learn more about you. Appearing high in any keyword search for your type of product or service increases your perceived status.