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January 22, 2005

"How Small Businesses Can Copy Airports In The Area of Marketing Communication"

It’s Monday 10 January 2005 9.20 PM and I’m typing the article from my hotel room in Manchester, England. I’ve just finished reading what is the definitive course on blogs. For the past six months I’ve been working for major public companies with offices in Germany, France and England. These are multi billion pound corporations that are listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

All these companies, bar one share the same recent history. The CEO’s and CFOs swindled these companies out of hundreds of millions of pounds.

You might be thinking what does this have to do with me?

Well, very little in fact if you’re a small company owner because this is outside your league. However, what’s relevant to you concerns the impact your communication and therefore advertising has on the image portrayed to your customers.

While the majority of these public companies have experienced reduction in their share (stock) price and market capitalisation. “The stock market has very short memory”. It’s forward looking and driven by collective psychology.

Changing bad management for a better one and making products that people need gets factored in the share (stock) price, which often leads to the recovering lost value. While this is true for the companies I’ve being working for, it’s not true for all companies that have being rocked by “fraud”.

One consequence that all these companies MUST live with is a tarnished reputation. This is where you as a small company entrepreneur should take note because whether you’re making widgets or offering services, having a tarnished reputation will be the death nail of your business.

So how can you preserve and therefore capitalise on having a good reputation?

In truth there are many ways to project and capitalise on having a good reputation. One way is in your communication and advertising messages.

Because I’ve been doing a lot of traveling recently for my company, Small Business Resource, I’ve come to rely on the flight messages that airports publish to passenger on their monitors.

I’ve noticed how, simple, consistent, reliable, timely and dependable the information transmitted by these visually signposted screens are. I’ve seen thousands of passengers and non-travelers of all complexion, race creed and colour pacing their lives on the information published on these monitors.

Without this information, airports would grind to a stand still. Unbeknown to the public, in the background there are expensive network computers and highly trained team of “airline professionals” making all this vital information possible.

As a small business owner how do you stack up when it come to communicating with your customers? Is your communication and advertising targeted to a captive audience? Is it simple, consistent, reliable, timely and does your customers see you as dependable? Your customers care less about what’s going on in the background. They are not sympathetic to the challenges you face, instead they’ll judge you by the messages you communicate or broadcast.

If you’re a small business entrepreneur, consider how your business can benefit in 2005 and beyond by being open to the simple yet effective processes you working effectively, whether in large or small companies or around you.

One medium you should definitely be using is the Internet. Use it intelligently to build relationships with your customers and prospects. Unlike large corporations who can regain their reputation through their share price, you have no such luxury, however, if you honestly care about you customers and you back that up with real value this will set you apart from the competition.

The trick is NOT just to read it; anyone can do that, but to take practical steps to implement it tomorrow, starting today.

David Davis
Small Business Resource

Posted by David at January 22, 2005 5:01 PM

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