easy.  Today we showcase a client and their challenges and a book and a blog post.  Together they give you the one principle you need to write a B2B online brand strategy.

How to get customer community integrated into your marketing

Three things we read and discussed coincided this week:

1. Planning with the Silver Fern Farms marketing team
2. Reading The B2B Social Media Book
3. Commenting on Confused of Calcutta’s blog post – Musings about communities and prices

Start with the blog post - there are three main points: Everyone in the community is a customer; Communities expect a range of prices for each product or service; A connected community converges to act as a single, composite customer.  

Take the range of prices – some customers are happy to read free offerings; others will contribute to comments or test purchase items while others are avid fans.  The Silver Fern Farms team were discussing how to organise messaging across different geographical marketplaces – not all their range is sold in each country. [They sell lamb and venison in supermarkets.]

Treating all the customers and prospects as a single, composite customer enables us to deliver into separate marketplaces with variable messaging.  Yes, we do not use the same message to each group.  BUT we know the customer is smart and can read.  Being clear about what products are available in which supermarkets matters.  It builds awareness of the wider product range and helps customers appreciate the global nature of the Silver Fern Farms business.

Is B2B any different for online?

Slant these ideas into the business to business B2B world. This is where I find clients have the greatest problems “coping” with a singular community.  And ironically, this is where the greatest opportunities exist for B2B.

Read this quote from the Book

Most B2B companies live with fear. The fear of giving away too much information, saying something wrong, giving competitors an advantage.

But I know B2B companies have another fear. Integrated messaging.

This is perceived as hard to do.  Mainly because of the territoriality of the agencies and staff who service the brand.

Each market, each customer, each group of buyers fits into a hierarchy of customer-types. From the inquirer who wants to read for free but not participate up through to the possible purchaser.  Your brand needs to set up its marketing to allow and

enable each customer type to engage at the participation level the customer chooses.

I wrote that in bold because this principle is the key to your strategic marketing plan.

How does engagement work in practice?

Set up a range of marketing activities that allow any customer from the vast pool of possibles to enable customers to get what they need.

Think of it as a staircase, each step has an increasing level of engagement and possibly a higher price.

When planning your online messaging think of your brand’s online presence as if it were a niche magazine.  You should aim to be the best ‘trade journal’ magazine you possibly can be.  Dominate your niche and the customer will figure out which of your offerings (from free to paid) she wants and where/how to acquire for herself.

Here’s how.

We had a client commission us to do a lovely campaign to promote a national holiday with “21 Things to do ….” type of activity.  Trouble was, the main focus was to build social media followers on Facebook.

Making a landing page on a website is easy.  Facebook was a challenge.

We like challenges.

Our first big discovery was the ebook How to Master Facebook Marketing in 10 Days.  Here we learnt that you can create custom welcome tabs with an iFrame application and set it as the default landing page for visitors who have yet to “like” your product.

A welcome tab fit right in line with our purpose, because it encourages liking and boosts followers while highlighting our clients creative holiday campaign.  But it had some shortcomings too.

As suggested in the ebook, we used the Wildfire iFrame app. For this clients’ needs, the welcome page was to be predominately made up of text, which meant that it was time to roll up our sleeves and do some coding.

Having to translate our text to HTML programming was doable, but a bit of a pain.  Ensuring that our page had the look and feel that we wanted required switching between the html backstage look, and the finished product, to check and recheck that our links were in fact opening in another tab, that the right words were bold and underlined, and that we approved of the overall look of the page. It was tedious, but we did it.

Our ‘hack’ here was to create the page in our WordPress blog and when we were satisfied with the look and feel, to then copy the HTML into Facebook.

Next step was to take it live.

To set the newly-created welcome tab as the default landing page, we (as admins of the page) hit the ‘Edit Page’ button in the top right hand corner, taking us to the Manage Permissions tab of the Page Dashboard.  Selecting the drop-down menu next to the Default Landing Tab section, we chose the name of our newly created welcome tab (which, unless you change the name yourself, will automatically show up as ‘Welcome’). Our page was up.

But the happy “ta-da” moment quickly wore off, when we refreshed and still ended up, by default, on the wall of our page, rather than our sparkly new welcome tab.

Did the hack fail?

By testing different accounts and comparing, we discovered that only viewers who have not yet liked our page will automatically land on the welcome tab.  Admins and consumers who have already liked your page will be taken directly to the wall, skipping the welcome tab altogether.

Well, that just wasn’t going to work for us.  To get around this unfortunate feature, for each post that we made about our list, we linked back to the welcome tab, which featured the list in whole. Although, something to note, each time we posted a link to the Welcome Tab, a preview of our ‘about’ section showed up.

But with all of the glitches, our Facebook welcome tab did just what we had hoped.  Before the welcome tab launch our client had under 50 followers, now, not even a week later, they have over 500.

It was a learning process, but a successful one.

Tell us about your experiences – ever tried something like this?

If you have a newsletter or an online sign-up, you know the usefulness of an auto-responder.  Once it’s set up, it takes over and you get to sit back, relax, and have a drink while your auto-responder does all the talking.

But in order to get to that point, you have to write the copy and set it up.  Check out our how-to guide for Auto Responders.

The autoresponder marketing analysis breakdown

First off, know what you are marketing, who your auto-responder audience is, and how long it will go for.  Also, identify the main goal of the auto-responder: “to guide customers through our technology”, “to thank a customer for choosing our product”, “to sell a customer on our product during their free trial”.

Once you’ve established the background information and know the goal that you are hoping to achieve, it is time to write the copy for each message.

Remember that the purpose of an auto-responder is to lead a consumer through to a goal.  It is a guide. The content in each step should be supportive and relevant.

Although each post will differ, it is wise to have a consistent format for each.  This can be as simple as intro, info, and customer support details on each message.

Let’s take a look at a breakdown of an example series of messages.

1. Welcome

The first auto responder message should be dedicated to welcoming and thanking the customer for signing up for your service.

2. Road Map

One auto-responder format is to “tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them”.  In that case, the second message should let consumers know exactly what to expect from the series.  Some guiding questions to consider are how long duration the responder will be, what you will disclose in each message, how to contact customer support, etc.

Then…

3. Let the Show Begin

Whereas the other messages gave an overview and instructions, the third message in your auto-responder series should give out the information itself.

This is the meat of the auto-responder.  The length of this middle, informative section depends on the details and purpose of your series.  Just remember, that when it comes to an auto-responder, it’s best to keep each message as one-pointed as possible.

4. Goodbyes

With your information given, it’s now time to say your goodbyes.  It’s nothing fatal, but it is your last chance to summarize your teachings, promote your product, and say adieu to your customer audience.

Make it count.  The last message is usually the one that will stick the most, so show your appreciation for their choice and encourage them to continue on with your product.

One nice feature we found in Feedblitz who we use to deliver client auto-responders is the ability to use the end of an auto responder sequence to trigger the start of something else (a coupon discount; a subscription to a mailing list).  That saves you having to re-engage with the customer in future.  Hopefully they like what you’ve been saying and are happy to remain in touch.

Your turn

Sounds easy enough, right?  And just think, by taking the time to write what we’re sure will be a superb auto-responder, you have saved yourself from having to respond one-by-one to each of your eager customers.  And saved time, means saved money.

Read more about how to Create Opportunities in our biz dev methodology category 6 – Creating Opportunities

Events can potentially be one of your largest marketing spends throughout the year, so when making such a big investment it is key to be organised and prepared.

So here are our top tips of the little things which often get forgotten which can help you plan and prepare for your event:

1.       Objective Setting

Even before thinking about booking that venue or event space you need to get organised.  Think about your key objectives. What do you want to get out of exhibiting and how will an event help you achieve this? Think about what your key measures of a successful event are or how will you track your ROI?

Think about who you want to target and how you’re going to appeal to them.

Also if you have attended an event previously- think about your successes and failures and include this in your plan. You don’t want to make the same mistakes you had previously.

2.       Budgets

Plan a budget and make sure you stick to it ensuring that you have covered even the small things off your list. This can help you measure your return on investment down to finite details. Think about how much your event space costs, your exhibition stand and even the little things like hotel costs and travel.

3.       Create an event calendar/ project list

Creating a list of important times and details (with project manager) can help you see your key task lists and who is supposed to complete it. Give yourself plenty of time to plan and have your exhibition stand build, produce your marketing collateral and order your promotional materials- these things can certainly take more time than you think.

4.       Create a marketing plan

Many exhibitors leave promoting their attendance at an event until the last minute. Think about creating a marketing campaign in advance of your event. Add your attendance to your website, social networks and blogs. Talk to your industry magazines and associations to promote yourself. Creating a formalised event marketing plan will really help you to promote your attendance and to get those all important attendees to your stand.

5.       Let your team know

Making sure you have your sales team or best company representatives at your event is hugely important; you can let them do what they do best in a fantastic environment. Making sure peoples’ diaries have the event in well in advance can ensure that internally your teams are well informed and are able to attend.  Often it is effective to create a staff rota to schedule breaks and lunches so that your staff don’t all disappear from your event stand at the same time. Make sure they have a list of all the details of the stand- organise a briefing before the show opens so they understand how to work all your stands gadgets and know where the pens and pads are for example.

Have a list of dos and dont’s to make sure your staff are aware of your expectations. It is also useful to create a document detailing features of the event including details of where they are expected to park, when you require them etc. These things often get forgotten.

6.       Let you customers and prospects know

It’s a great opportunity for you to meet with you customers and potential customers under one roof- the cost saving of having meetings at the venue vs. organising individual one to ones can be huge and it’s a great chance for you to show off your companies creativity with a fantastic exhibition stand. There is no point having an effective stand and well organised event but with no one to visit you.

7.       Sort out transport and hotels in advance

Once you know you are attending an event it’s a good idea to get booked up into a local hotel to your venue. Many are aware of local events and can hike their prices up so it’s a good cost saving exercise to book transport and accommodation for you and your teams.

8.       The don’t forget items…

Make sure you make a list of all those little bits and pieces which can get forgotten. Yes you have your huge exhibition stand but did you remember the stapler? Making sure you have thought about every possibility is better than not having the tools if you need them. Badges, stationary and other equipment are often left behind. Always be prepared.

This is a guest post by Tamara Pitt, marketing manager for exhibition stand manufacturer Nimlok.

I am giving her some advice on business development for her business as she wants to become the go-to website for indie music videos.  However, I also said that I'd tap the power of the network and get your help and advice for her as well. 

Read Caroline's description of her business and the issues she faces.

Please comment with your advice for her.

Thanks

RadarMusicVideos.com is a music video directors' network and worldwide music video commissioning platform.

There are c2000 members, 1-5 briefs are posted each week, all briefs have budgets, usually from £5k/$7.5k to £100/$150. Clients – indie labels and DIY/unsigned artists – pay 15% of their budget to Radar if they commission, the remainder is production budget. Directors can get free accounts on the site, but pay £20/$30 per annum to see and pitch on briefs.

Three issues I'm facing:
1/ Sales. Artist and Label clients who've used the site give glowing testimonials, but the numbers of new clients coming onto the site aren't growing very fast. There's a potentially huge global market for this service of indie labels and DIY/unsigned artists and I'm not getting to anything like enough of them through my own efforts and word of mouth. Is an affiliate scheme the right solution? What other options are there?  

2/ Escrow. I'm hesitating about requiring clients to place the 15% commission in escrow. My concern is that it represents a barrier to entry for new clients, who I think are fairly hesitant in general about whether the site is 'worth it'. On the other hand, chasing people for payment is a pain and will become a significant cost once the site gets busier. Should I bite the bullet and do it now? If so, who do you recommend?

3/ People management. I outsource everything I can. I've just started working with part-time people on marketing. How long can I keep outsourcing and holding regular face to face team meetings? I want to grow organically and to put off costs like office overheads for staff for as long as possible.

4/ Given your answers to 1-3 above can you help me prioritise, Where should my resources go?

Caroline is very happy to receive advice from marketing professionals offering their services but in order not to be swamped with pitches, please contribute to the comments here first i.e. show your hand.  As a second stage I'll share contact details with her if you give me permission.  Please don't contact her via the Radar site for this project.

Using the we20 forma t, the group will be trying to 

talk about the issues and come up with some potential answers. Founders of the we20 project will be on hand to introduce the event and generally help out.

Teams can be made up of friends and/or be representative of a specific company or brand. All ideas can then be put forward to the we20 website, which has a direct link with decision makers at the G20 summit in London.

So, enough of that moaning into the early hours at your Soho members' club about how our world leaders don’t have a clue. Now’s your chance to actually tell them! As an added bonus, the name of your company or product may well be seen by millions of people.

This theme has been buzzing around for a while – I met up with Steven Waddington recently and he's just put a great blog post about 'thinking positive' in the recession . Actually I really like the title "Bollocks to Denial and Despair!"

And so would you all help me think up some great ideas that will help people in the creative industries through these difficult times?

My list starts with

1. New business models – take products to market on a risk and reward basis (like bike sharing, The Anomaly business model and Lauren Luke ) 
2. Low cost marketing ideas – Tim Reid has a list
3. Social media tools that can support your existing marketing strategy and tactics
4. Creating opportunities for new business to happen – there will be loads of new ones developing as time goes on
5. I still think there's a role for CRM – the tools are cheap and freely available and all it takes is some strong thinking about your differentiation by need to really stand out
6. And Opensource for Agencies…. a topic close to my heart… DM me if you want to know more about how to re-use and publish your failed pitch ideas and see the benefits flowing back to your agency.
7. Umair Haque's Manifesto for Smart Growth – I particularly like point 2 "Connections not transactions" which echo the motivation behind Amplfied 09 the network of networks.
8. The Sirolli Institute has a economic development methodology that I've long admired since my days with the Aga Khan Rural Support Project in Gilgit – their bottom-up development method (enterprise facilitation) involves working with people who want to start a business and mentoring them through the process on a totally confidential basis. Rochdale Council in the UK i s using it right now and I think it's a great way for an economy to kick-start itself.

Now over to yo'all [gotta stop that Texas thang goin' on in my mind!]

[later... keep thinking up new ones - just added 6 and 7.... and later again number 8.]

Brochure download  

Last year I played a very small part in delivering the content – doing marketing advice to course members.

This year's course runs in Cambridge from 29th June to 5th July 2008.  It costs £1000 if you come as an individual and £3000 if a company is paying you to attend.   

Mike Cassidy – serial entrepreneur [and very rich man].

Kelly Lewis – geekbrief TV host

Evan Williams – Founder of blogger, twitter

Tim Ferriss – author The four hour work week. the book hit the tipping point at SXSW last
year…. 

Key learnings: Do usability testing; pre-plan your key days with VC / hires; ask advice of the more experienced and do what they suggest; Tim's advice on how to reach influencers is SPOT ON for biz dev; as is the question at the bottom about finding a mentor, how to run a daily to do list

Speed as the primary startup
strategy – what does fast mean? 

MC – get all the decision makers in one room when you meet a
VC to reduce delays.  Try to have all the
VC meetings on one day and ask for a term sheet 
on the same day.  Go in with
everything lined up, a customer quote “the if…then” contract. 

Hiring – reference checks with other hiring managers while
the hiring interviews are going on.  Make
the offer at end of day and ask for acceptance within 1 day….

Product developments – rapid with incremental releases –
quickly and new releases fortnightly enforcing the discipline of user feedback
and adapting making a discipline within the company.

TF – time perception is key. 
The importance of what you do and how it’s seen by your audience.

EW – why has Twitter moved so fast .  A self-expression tool means others find out
about it quickly.  Critical mass was key
for Twitter – they grow most quickly from this point e.g. SXSW last year it was
6 months old and a group at the conference used it and it created a ‘have to be
on’ movement.  Take this into account in
your planning – see where it’s working and go towards that market where it’s
working well.  Facebook did this
brilliantly by launching in colleges.  They
got twitter onto the screens at SXSW last year – there were existing users, on screens,
the event suited the utility of the product and the good luck that the big
names in technology were using it.  REM is a recent
new joiner @remhq !

TF – following the market that is responding is really
important.  The pinpoint of information
overload was so acute among techhies so he created "the low information diet"….was
launched.  Personal outsourcing also
picked it up early I pushed by outsourcing my online dating….

KL – what contributed to your success of podcast downloads
and video?  Community and passion.  We build an audience is about getting out
there, shaking hands and meeting people (in a virtual world) and letting their
WOM follow.  You are the expert in your
world and so go out and involve yourself in forums and don’t go out and shout I
am an expert, come to me.  But present
yourself and answer questions that you can because you are an expert and put
your signature to include your website, name and what you do.  Just be discrete.  Being that expert that people go to.  Passion, be focused so that there was no if,
ands and buts.  Make it happen.  It has to be real.

What propelled you early on? 
Community, love your viewers, meet and talk in many ways – my forums,
twitter, other places, force the conversation into many media.  A meshing with your audience.

TF – the audience isn’t about reaching the most people.  I spent a lot of time with a small number and
developed a close bond with them.  Deep
interaction and enthusiasm.  I didn’t
find the influencers directly but if I email Scoble or Mike Arrington –
I am competing in the biggest channel.  In
person is the emptiest channel – don’t be a traffic bigot but chose the
thought leaders.  Brian Oberkirk 
is friends of the A listers…. he is read by many of the other traffic
leaders.  His endorsement led to others
picking it up.

MC – start with a very clean simple feature set and don’t
spend 6 months doing an elaborate spec from within a cave…. launch with a
simple set and watch what people like and use. 
Xfire fortnightly release and user feedback led to product updates.  Usability testing – we do it but most don’t
really do it.  Use a random person and
ask them to talk out loud as they use it for the first time.  Listen clearly and invite your engineering
team along.

MC – common mistakes that slow you down?  Building the team is the tough nut because it
is critical.  For a strong person pay
them more – passionately recruit them.  I
invite new hires over to dinner with their partners, send them flowers
welcoming them.   Put lots of energy into
getting key people.  Don’t hurry.  What happens on day 1?  Have the pc and email account ready for them –
we get all the paperwork out of the way before they join and have everything
ready, phone number, project list all waiting for when you show up.  Set a tone for the pace…. by showing
projected timelines ready to roll.

EW – how do you do product development and facilitating distribution of
products.  Features….
brainstorming.  Chaotic.  Everyone thinks of features and sometimes
engineers sneak them in.  We don’t want
process to get in the way – the nice thing about Twitter is you can ask users
what they want and what would solve the problem for me.   Get as
much feedback as possible – we hear a lot from our users (verbose to begin with
and they can let you know what they want LOUDLY!).  Get people in a room and I write in order to
work out whether it’ll work.  Don’t get
too hung up on how the current user base / community wiull react – this makes
you hesitate to make changes and it can make you vulnerable to competition and
fast followers. 

KL – top concrete to do list for new starters?  Stop talking and just do it.  I often tell people what to do when they send
me emails asking for a  and 3 months later I speak to them and they haven’t
done it!  Ask questions.  I answer my email.  I have advice pages on my website.  Everyone in new media is here to help
others.  This helps us all grow and push
podcasting forward.  Mistakes – promote too
early. The first 10 shows will be bad when you look back on them.  Get the show under way and test it and get
kinks out. 

TF – I had a wordpress site I played with for a few weeks
without even promoting it anywhere.  Lifestyleexperiments
blog. 

MC – are there certain things you shouldn’t do quickly?  “John Wooden – move quickly but don’t hurry”.   Beware
of internal team morale issues.  A small
team with high morale is hard to defeat. 
The 6 day war – my favourite business book.  If morale is high people can go 5 months
without salary!  People waste energy for
internal sniping.  Don’t rush over
internal friction if something is happening deal with it face to face.  The spiral of anger – “ask if you meant to
say that because I found it offensive” 
Take 10 minutes immediately to sort it out and diffuse so the morale
comes up high again. 

TF – reaching influencers. 
I had a few points of contact at SXSW – don’t skimp on the amount of
time you spend with them.  Priority was
meet first, email second – each one took me 1 to 1.5 hours to craft – I read
their stuff and knew them inside out to make my stuff relevant.  I got responses from 80 -90% from them. Find one
feature or 5 pages that will be very interesting to that person and make the
connection very clear as you introduce it to them.  I never actively asked anyone to review it in
social media. I wanted to explore concepts and trends / phenomena.  I offered to write guest posts and explain the
concepts on others blogs. 

KL – we partnered with big businesses in order to avoid the business finance
side (VC) and to enable us to create a better show.   As a two man team, this was important to us
and for other small businesses. 

TF – focus with what you are good at – either add people,
get a lot of money and work out what to do with it or eliminate as much as
possible.  Feature on Evan in Inc. Magazine. When building a product you mainly thing about
adding for improvement – also consider subtracting!   “Don’t
measure what’s measureable but measure what’s meaningful” Warren Buffett. 

Questions:

How to reconcile recruiting talent versus VC meeting?  MC – skills of entrepreneurs from a survey found 2 key commonalities – they like to
bring their chair with them when they move company and they did an extraordinary
job of forming a relationship when there was no reason for it to be
beneficial.  You can later on use the
network of relationships.  He has 6,000 people in outlook
contacts.  He keeps a spreadshet of cool people I
meet who I may work with some day. 

Talent – do it ahead of time. 
Keep your list…. who would I hire. 
Keep in touch with them.  TF you
don’t want to have to develp the relationships when you need them or ask for money when
you need it without the backing relationship. 
If you want a reviewer give them 10 months head start. 

What affects your outlook? 
Slack by Tom de Marco, he talks about you should not have 100% of your
time filled because you are not flexible. 
Have empty spaces in order to respond and do creative things.  KL – the millionaire next door inspired me
not to go to college.  TF – read books by
people who are the best at what they do even if it is not your industry.  Ben Hogan on golf – best little book ever.

The value of focus balanced with personal life? MC gets home
at 6.30 every day and runs at lunchtime every day and so I make myself go
despite crises.  There is a strong
correlation between the number or weeknights a family dines together and drug
abuse and children problems.  And so I
cme home and eat with my kids at 6.30 and at 8.30 I am back online.  TF – determinants of happiness are meals with
family and friends and low expectations. 
KL – we work constantly but I do work with my husband!

It is hard to find a mentor to guide me and show me how to
do things – importance?  TF – I knew
nothing about social media when I launched my book but it was a card I had to
play which publishers don’t understand. 
You need to be very humble and up front about this.  Bloggers say TF is interesting because he
asks a lot of questions…. about simple stuff. 
Never pretend when you don’t know. 
Women find this easier than men. 
Make it easy for them to help you. 
If you get a referral (don’t say you are friends unless you really are)
Tim will write an email addressed to you subject line "your name via the Friends name: Tim Ferriss"  Say
who you are really clearly.  10 minute
update actions with his pa.  Answer the question: Who are they and
what do they want from me?  Try to enable
them to give you a 2 sentence answer because they are busy people.  Exhaust your options before contacting
them.  Aim high, you never know they may
be interested in you.  How to get hold of
anybody…. you can reach people – Fedex overnight letter to wArren Buffet got
a handwritten reply!

Start ups and inefficiencies briefing people as they
learn.  Get people working as soon as
possible.  Focus on having lunch with the
team all the time.  Spend money in ways
that cause people to hang out together. 
They come up to speed quickly. 

Bad habits to fall back into that you constantly have to
readjust? TF – checking email when I don’t have to.  At SXSW everyone is screen sucking everywhere
and so why shouldn’t I?  Key is create a
"not to do" list…. review this more than to do list.  Buffett and Schwartzenegger don’t have set
calendars – the freedom to focus on what’s important rather than be pre-committed
to things that make you feel productive. 
Choose feeling bored rather than being productive – most pick not to be
bored and so check email first thing on Saturday… schedule something more
compelling.  Schedule bracketing
activities that end the work week or end the day….

How do you find users if what you do is ubiquitous?   Zipcar – get hyper local.  One neighbourhood in NYC and dominate
it.  Choose your channel and dominate.

What happens after you launch and other variables pitch in
to your busyness?  MC – I keep my to do list
on a spreadsheet and re sort it nightly and prioritise long term and short
term.  One trap is the short term things
focus you never get to the long term things. 
Short term things you have to do that day… promote long term things to
short term in order to get them done if they are too long on the long term list.  TF ask does this matter, does this
matter?  Opportunities are
tantalising but very few really matter.  Exercise
the "No" muscle.  The art of letting bad
things happen – TF most-read blogpost. There is never a good time to do something important….
so do it. 

What made me smile was the leaflet they gave me about the Bank

“The Bank issues banknotes. Gaining and maintaining public confidence in the banknotes is vital to the economy. A safe and stable financial system is also essential to the economy. The Bank assesses the risks to the stability of the financial system and works to strengthen the way it operates.”

Now, if you saw the Dispatches programme last night, you just might cynically smile and point out that the Bank’s assessment of the stability of the financial system was a tad lacking over the recent past…!

The report is a glossy report full of good graphs and diagrams presented by two economists from the Bank and a guest – this time Bridget Rosewell from GLA Economics.
The rest of this post is a summary of the report – as interpreted by me (in italics) in relation to creative agencies working from the UK.
Forecast – business activity growth will be less than 2% for the first half of 2008 but by end ’09 it will be back to 2.5%.

Your revenue growth may weaken because brand spending will shrink (or not grow) and if you are counting on increasing your revenues this year, it’s going to be tough.

The pound has lost value internationally by about 6% since September 07

If you export or sell abroad this is good because your prices will appear relatively cheaper.

Lending to corporate has significantly tightened since November and is increasingly constrained.

Watch out if your business needs to borrow money – you may find it hard to find a bank willing to lend to you and the price (fees plus interest plus collateral) you pay may be expensive.

Property prices fell 4% in both November and December.

If you can buy your own offices, this may be a good time to buy. Remember putting a business asset into a Self-Invested Pension plan can be a nice tax situation for business owners.

Recruitment difficulties are reported as reducing. i.e. it is easier to find skilled staff for vacancies.

It should become easier to find staff – but be sure you have the revenue stream to pay them secured before hiring.

Future investment intentions are falling more in service industry businesses than manufacturing.

Investments can include plant, machinery, technology, computers – do your clients sell these things – they may suffer falling order books and this may knock onto your work too.

Output growth in services forecast to fall by -1% and in construction by -0.5% over 2008.

If you have clients in services or construction – they are unlikely to be growing their work with you.

Oil prices will continue high but not rising further. Food prices and raw material prices have risen.

Retailers for foods and restaurants will be putting up their prices to maintain their margins.

Pay settlements in 2008 – 60% of survey respondents expect them to stay the same as in 2007.

Don’t offer pay rises to your staff above inflation.

The situation for London – by Bridget Rosewell
London is growing in output and employment more than the rest of the UK. But it is a more volatile economy and so if there’s a downturn (cf dot.com bust) it is worse in London. Shoppers are expected to continue to visit London and there are no signs of a retail slow-down yet. Future new orders are falling but business activity and employment is steady. The cost and availability of business finance will tighten – this could be a once-in-25-years size event. Personal disposable income is falling in London and so consumer spending may fall.

If you have clients in business services, financial services and IT expect lower growth in their businesses and a knock-on to your work with them. And watch consumer price index (CPI) figures for changes in the rate. NB this is not the same as retail price inflation (RPI).

There was a question from a man from the Chartered Institute of Personnel who said they completed a survey recently of their members and found that the ‘intention of making redundancies’ rate is rising…… could be the start of a slow-down / recession.

Those of us old enough to have been working in the last recession will remember that marketing budgets were among the first to be cut. But this time it’ll probably mean a move to better ‘value’ spend i.e. web, digital rather than OTL and direct.

i am not a techie… but I am reasonably competent at using technology. But long ago, I learnt to apply the “David Baker Test“.   I was working in-house doing marketing and was trying to get 14 operational departments to write a chapter of the business plan – in the same format.  Not as easy as it sounds.

David Baker was my acid test.  He was a fantastic deal-maker but didn’t really do paperwork much.  If I could get him to understand what I was seeking, and he delivered it, I had succeeded.  He represented the lowest common denominator.

Doc Searles’ blog post on Microsoft’s Live.com maps feature, fails to pass the David Baker Test…. in a major way.  He explains it here

It’s amazing to me that Microsoft doesn’t make live.com search any easier. Take the maps side of live.com. It beats the crap out of Google Maps in at least one hugely helpful area: “bird’s eye” views — from four different directions……Maps, and Geo in General, is one place where Microsoft could open up and leapfrog Google in features and usability. Hey, why not?

And here’s the killer…

[Later…] I’m looking for a way to show the birds-eye view to another person here at the Berkman Center, and I’m failing to find it. So are they. And they’re using a Windows workstation, even. So we’ve got maps.live.com flunking not just the Obviouness Test, but the Easiness Test too.

And the David Baker Test too, clearly!