What's the Big Deal? How Daily Deal Sites are Bad for Business

The latest dot.com startup craze to sweep the globe is undoubtedly the growth of daily deals sites. Groupon led the way as the fastest growing company in history, others have followed suit in a bid to make a quick buck. 

Struggling businesses, eager to get bums on seats, have thrown traditional marketing values firmly out of the window in a bid to buy the customer: at any price. And when it comes to daily deals sites, it's a heavy price to pay. 

For the customer, it's a great deal. Savings in excess of 60% - and you can't deny that it's driving purchases that would have otherwise not been made.

But for business in general, it's bad news. Very bad news.

The costs of marketing are roughly between 70% - 80% of revenue. How many businesses can operate AND turn profit when 80% of their cost base is a marketing cost? Very few I would think. 

Compare this to a "traditional" marketing approach of spending roughly 10% of turnover on marketing activity (and that's what I would recommend for a start up who needs to spend just a little bit more). See, business forgets that marketing is simply the process of buying a customer. And savvy businesses know that you make money when you buy and not when you sell. In other words, buying as frugally as possible is the recipe for successful business practice.

If you don't believe me, watch any episode of The Apprentice and note the near obsessive attention to purchasing costs applied by Lord Alan Sugar and his aides. Costs which, on more than one occasion, have been the difference between success and failure of a task. 

But these sites don't care about business. They care about making money. Their business model is sound. You make the product (at your cost), you give it to them to market, they'll slash your retail price to something undeniably palatable (not profitable), and they'll take half the proceeds.

They don't negotiate. They pretend to, but really a few percentage points here and there will not make a massive difference to either them or to you.

Their terms and conditions are anti-competitive. Try and suggest amendments to their contract and all hell breaks loose. Ummmmm, last time I looked a contract was meant to be an agreement between two entities. Emphasis on the word agreement.

They like to dictate the price (and therefore the discount). I've had it suggested to me on several occasions that £19 would work better than £21, or would bring it into line with competitive offers. In any other industry, we'd call this price fixing and report them to DBERR. 

And even after all that, even if your product or service is great, if you are even slightly off the beaten track, they'll make the decision that their customers are unlikely to travel to get it, and exclude you from the party. Whatever happened to the concept of free market? This is a level of screening that is ALL about generating the maximum profit for them and nothing to do with the customer whatsoever.

Now, I'm not advocating that businesses should avoid daily deals sites altogether. They can have their uses in driving new customers to the business. However these should always be part of a wider marketing mix, ideally with other marketing activities that generate positive returns on investment and cost a lot less. 

There's room in this crazy developing discount market for a sustainable operator to come in and deliver. However everyone's currently off on a "me too" escapade - publishing giant DC Thomson contacted me last week about their new Beezer Deals which will launch in January. Their business model? Exactly the same as Itison and LivingSocial. Their unique offering? The ability to to advertise the deal in their daily print titles. I can barely contain my excitement.

In the same hour, DiscountTown also contacted me. Yet another discount site. Yet another similar business model.

Where's the innovation? It's not enough just to draw a pretty logo, stick it on a website and call yourself the next big thing. Yawn. Where's the true differentiation?

Businesses are getting much savvier when it comes to daily deals sites. They've been round the block a few times now and know the pitfalls and the questions to ask. They want the reach of these discount sites, but not the costs. They are trying to negotiate deals that work for them. They are walking away from deals that are not going to work for them. That suggests to me that this media is about to grow up - it's no longer about getting business at any cost, it's about strategic, effective marketing activity. 

And their growing pains are evident.  Every week I receive desperate phone calls from all the main operators trying to get my clients to give them offers to sell. They are crestfallen when I say no. 

With maturity, comes wisdom, and it's only a matter of time before a wise operator looks at the business model of these daily deals sites and recognises it is ultimately flawed. It's simply not sustainable. For businesses to survive, they need to make profit. Profit will simply be unattainable if your marketing costs amount to 80% of turnover. 

This starts a viscious downward spiral. Less profit = less business development = less businesses = less jobs = less customers = less. Just less.

I really hope someone's going to jump into that space and soon. Before it's too late.

How's Business for You?

This is a question I've been asked daily in the last month. Mainly by other business owners.

And some funny things have happened in response to my answer.

Business is good for us. We've had our busiest year (ever), we're recruiting, expanding and continuing to develop. The future is looking rosy. When we tell people this, a look of relief comes over their face and they whisper in hushed tones "Us too."

It would seem that in amidst this recession that there are a good many businesses who are doing very well indeed. Businesses who are struggling (in a good way) to keep up with demand. Businesses who are expanding, employing and charging their way through the recession.

But these businesses are, for some unknown reason, scared to shout about it.

The media is piled high with failure stories. Shop closure after shop closure. It's almost as if success in this volatile market (one which is clearly full of opportunities for the most versatile of entrepreneurs) is a dirty word.

So come on, if you are doing well, let's shout it from the roof tops. It's not a crime to perform well during a recession - in fact it's a good sign. It's a sign that things are not as bad as they seem. That the "green shoots" of growth are, indeed, there. That it's not all doom and gloom. That people and businesses are still spending money (despite numerous reports to the contrary).

The pundits don't always get it right. But who can blame them if these success stories are all being kept hush hush?

The Digital Dandies: A New Consumer?

I went shopping yesterday. Not something I do very often I have to admit. And something very interesting happened. Everywhere I went, absolutely everywhere, was offering me something for nothing.

In Boots, I was given two vouchers - one offering a lot of free loyalty points if I spent just £35 in store, the other was a money off voucher for a range of products. In addition to this, the purchase I made was a 3 for 2, and the young girl at the checkout took three minutes to run back to the shelf for me to get me my "free" paper gift bag that goes with them. God forbid I should miss out. 

Fast forward to Tesco, and I'm now the lucky recipient of two (not just one) money off petrol vouchers. My husband was momentarily tempted by a "2 for..." offer in Tesco until I pointed out to him that "2 for £1.20" wasn't that great an offer when the price of the individual product was 63p. A 6 pence saving: hold me back.

These kind of heart warming rewards from national retalers are just fine and dandy. But it worries me that they just aren't getting it. 

These offers are primarily about survival and driving cash flow income to a business. The short term loss, they believe, will ultimately be offset in the long term by the gain of keeping a customer for life. But is there such a thing anymore? Marketers had better hope so. For their sake. 

There is one stark fact that marks out this recession from others: the market has changed considerably. 

While businesses have had their heads down trying to figure out whether to stand still, give up or move forward, the market has marched forward at an alarming pace. Shifting it's media consumption irreversibly, changing its spending habits forever, re-prioritising its needs and altering its consumption patterns.

If you're not sure this is the case, ask yourself the following questions:

Do I buy music from a store in a CD format or do I download/access it in a digital format for a fraction of the price?

Do I access news via a printed newspaper which I've paid for or do I hop online and get it for free?

Do I visit company websites anymore or do I prefer to like them on Facebook and let the information come to me?

Do I buy my train tickets from the station or do I buy them online to get them at a cheaper price (and possibly a first class upgrade)?

Do I go to a travel agents to research and book my holidays, or do I wait for a great deal to come up on Groupon and buy it on impulse?

Do I send big files by email or do I pop them in my free Dropbox?

If you selected the second option for at least two of these questions, you are part of a growing generation of consumers that I like to call The Digitial Dandies. 

I call them Dandies because, like a Dandy, they are (in the main) well dressed, educated individuals who are in eager pursuit of interactive leisure activities with high consumption of cultural activities such as music, events, travel, experiences, and quality products. The digital part is just the highly sophisticated mechanism they use to make this lifestyle possible - and at a fraction of the cost.

 

Digital Dandies want quality news content, but they want it for free. They are prepared to travel on public transport, but don't pay the full price and book online for a discount or an upgrade. They use facebook as a filter, accessing people, companies and offers via streamlined, targetted content that they have pre-selected. They love music, but they don't have a vast collection of CDs - their iPod collection is, however, extensive. They love films, but instead of going to the cinema to watch them they are either delivered by post (on subscription) or by digital download straight to their ipad or PC. They used to be called Early Adopters. They probably still are.

This is a big challenge for traditional retailers and it's clear they are fighting back with a barrage of offers, aimed at consumers like an automatic weapon: some of the ammo might miss but with just the sheer volume, they are bound to get some results. 

However, it's entirely the wrong approach. Marketers need to go back to basics on this one and start looking at the market and changing their businesses to fit the new model. Old fashioned consumer research is a must (albeit, we suggest making good use of technology to get the best results....): find out what your customers are doing and follow them. 

Successful businesses follow their markets and not the other way around.

Make your Message Clear

One of the fundamental aspects of communication is not that you must clearly send the message, but that it must be clearly received as well. 

And yet, despite over a week of protesting, miles of press coverage and extensive discussions on the subject, a significant part of Great Britain is still wondering why on earth people are protesting in tents outside St Paul's Cathedral in London. 

They chose the site, apparently, becuase it was situated near to the London Stock Exchange.  Their protest is supposed to be part of an anti-capitalist protest. However their message has been completely lost in the melee, and it's all down to one fatal flaw in their communications plan: their choice of site. 

Media coverage has been singularly focussed on St Paul's Cathedral, it's requirement to close because of the protestors, the loss of its income in the period of closure, it's leadership (or lack thereof), and the confusion as to why the protestors are there in the first place. 

In fact, it is now unilaterally being referred to by the press as the "St Paul's Protest". As messages go, we could say this one has completely lost its way. 

The protestors should pack up, go home and think again if they want to get their message across without being subject to further ridicule and satire and remember: when you are trying to make a point, communicating clearly is essential. Otherwise it's just noise. 

QR Codes: The Next Big Thing?

Clients have been asking me about QR codes. They are the next big thing, or so I am led to believe.

As a marketer, we've always got two options when it comes to the next big thing: Ignore it until it becomes too big to ignore or jump right in, play with it, experiment with it and maybe get it right (or very badly wrong).

As a consumer, I've downloaded the QR app to my smartphone. And used it. Twice. The second time it just annoyed me as the QR code was just too small to snap.

You see, all these QR codes on posters are all very well but how many marketers are sticking them up there without really giving them much thought? Quite a lot I would say.

That's why there are QR codes appearing on billboards (really? seriously?) and in magazines (which I always read with my mobile phone in my hand, of course) and on business cards (because it wouldn't be the height of rudeness to zap someone's QR code while still talking to them face to face at an event).

In fact, I see the marketing industry making use of this brand new, exciting (and it is exciting) technology in a rather dull and everyday way. Trying to fit it into their existing media. Deploying very little imagination in the process. Very few are geniunely using this technology to combine customer's needs with their marketing objectives. In fact, I can think of only one campaign I've seen to date that actually achieves this dual purpose, and with sophisticated finesse.

Tesco. In Korea.

Their virtual subway store, aside from being genius in its simplicity, has truly put the use ofthe QR code at the heart of the campaign. The marketing part of the campaign is, quite simply, the delivery mechanism. The PR value generated is incredible. In fact it's almost the inverse of other marketers' approaches to using QR codes.

It's engaging, it's effective, it's interactive and, over and above everything else, it's useful. For both the business and the consumer.

So until we can do something useful and effective with a QR code for a client, we'll be resisting the urge to stick them on posters and business cards. Just because.

Is Groupon Past its Sell By Date?

One of the fastest growing tech companies in the history of the planet appears to have lost its shine.

Storming across the US and into Europe in recent years, Groupon arrived in a blaze of glory, a consumer champion promising the customer unbelievable discounts and, for the retailer, unrivalled access to bums on seats.

In the midst of a recession, businesses flocked in droves, discounting their products and services by as much as 80%. Customers followed suit, buying at alarming rates. These bargains were too good to miss.

But they have a fatal flaw in their business model and, I suspect, the cracks are beginning to show.

It's a simple crack, right at the core: No business can afford to discount by 80% permanently.

So in order to succeed and grow, Groupon needs an ever extending supply of businesses from which to draw and they are clearly running out. This much is evidenced by their repetition of deals of seemingly marginal interest. Do we really need another 60x80 canvas print, or an electronic cigarette lighter for £18.99? Hold me back.

Groupon may give businesses access to the discount seeking masses. But who really wants customers like that?

Sure, for a while you'll be really busy, and some will stay as customers for a longer term, but for the vast majority, it will be a one hit wonder.

In an earlier blog I wrote about how discounting can work for the business, as long as a strong degree of planning goes into the deal. And that still remains true.

However responsible and sustainable business is a two way street. It always has been.

If businesses are expected to provide a living wage, then consumers must be prepared to pay a realistic price. This is responsible behaviour for long term sustainability.

As a matter of principle, we are horrified by stories of sweatshop practices and the exploitation of children in the pursuit of even cheaper goods. Then on Saturday we shrug it off, march down to our local supermarket and spend a tenner on four T'shirts, which probably cost 25p to make.

Groupon's approach is pushing us in the same direction.

How long before these businesses, having cut their income by 80%, start struggling to survive?
How long before they start cutting back on staff?
How long before they shut their doors altogether?

Ultimately it's the consumer who pays for the cost of marketing in the price of the goods and services. Groupon has reversed that equation, and now it's the business. However 80% marketing costs is too great a burden for even the most successful of businesses to cope with. And it will be the consumer who pays the ultimate price with less market choice, higher unemployment and gross deflation.

So the next time you grab a bargain, give just a fleeting thought to how you would be affected if you had to give 80% of your income away and consider, even for a moment, that there may just be another way. And if you do go ahead and press the button, enjoy your experience of that business: it may well be your last.

Should Editorial Be Bought?

This week I heard about a change in policy at one of Britain's largest media houses: editorial can now only be about products and services offered by advertisers.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not naive. I'm aware that the brandishing of my marketing budgets has frequently led to coverage where there may previously not have been any. However, I am also aware that many, many businesses simply can't afford to advertise in major newspapers or glossy magazines, but who might be doing incredible, newsworthy things that deserve to be written and talked about.

So what does this all mean and why does it matter?

Well, advertising is a regulated industry. If someone presents something to you in an advert and you believe their claims to be incorrect or unfactual, you have a right to complain and a body to complain to.

Advertorials are up front about being paid for editorials and marked as such so you can decide for yourself if the information is biased or relevant.

However there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to stop a newspaper or a magazine creating a policy like the one I've mentioned above, passing off funded opinions as genuine editorial. This is the media equivalent of back room deals by governments. You, the consumer, the reader, have no idea it's gone on and the outcome is entirely outwith your control.

The net result will, in my opinion, be bad for business in the long term. Smaller, innovative companies who can't afford to advertise will not get the opportunities to be heard that they fully deserve, the customer and readers will not get the opportunity to decide for themselves.

Instead we will be spoon fed a smorgasbord of products and services that can afford to pay and, although they may not be the best, they will be the only ones we can read about.

Magazine and newspaper content will degrade, although perhaps not at first. Readership figures will move with them. And an industry, which has clearly lost its way in the dark, may have just put the final nail in its own coffin.

It may seem like good business sense to look after your paying customers (advertisers) but what about the hundreds of thousands of paying customers (readers) whose rights to unbiased editorial that they are clearly overlooking?  The people that, ultimately, matter most to the paying advertisers?

I'm afraid that while, as a marketer, I like to opportunity to negotiate coverage with publications in return for advertising pounds, as a PR I also like the fact that editorial is NOT something that can be bought.

It's the media equivalent of free speech and should always remain so.

Poor Service is Costing your Business Money

This week my husband made £500 by just complaining.

£500.

For those of you who know my husband, you'll know he's not the type to complain. He's pretty laid back and things that would irritate others casually pass him by.

So it had to be terrible service in order for him to make a stand. And make a stand he did.

Shockingly his net gains this week come from just TWO sources.

And I'd be exaggerating if I said that he made £500 in one week. The truth of the matter is he did it in a single day.

His benefactors? A national tyre fitting operation who managed to damage his car when it was last on their premises (then tried to cover it up) and a Scottish bank who last week decided to change their online banking system for businesses (seemingly without testing it first) wiping out significant swathes of data in the process and turning a 5 minute transaction into one that endured a nauseating 150 minutes. Yes, you read right: 150 minutes.

Just think, at £500 per week, if my husband were to complain about every poor service experience, it might have the potential to deliver him a living wage.

The lesson to be learned from this? Poor service costs your business money. A lot of money. 

Get things right and that money goes straight to your bottom line.  

Good Year or Bad Year? You Decide

It's been a Bad Year.

I've heard this more than once from a variety of business people. So it must be true.

On more than one occasions I have been told that customers just don't have the money to spend. They are behaving differently. The business is just not there anymore.

Explanations abound. The Bad Year has been caused, it would seem, by something "out there" - the economy, the recession, customers, the market, the town.

If I was to give in to the rhetoric, external factors outwith their control are the cause of this doom. It has rarely had anything to do with the business.

But here's the thing. Our clients, across the board, have had a Good Year. Sales are up, visitor numbers are up, profitability is up. How come?

In fact, if we extend our reach beyond Scotland there are  many examples of businesses who are having a Good Year.

Apple now has more cash than the US government - an unusual victor in a worldwide marketplace that is supposed to be struggling to pay their basic living expenses.

Primark, the budget retailer, by comparison has had a Bad Year. In precisely the circumstances you'd expect them to flourish.....

So what's making the difference?

I'd like to hazard a guess that it's partly to do with innovation, and partly to do with vision.

Apple has a vision for the future. Apple has continued to innovate practically ignoring the recession, pushing on regardless. Launching iPads and iPhones and changing our expectations in the process.

Marks and Spencer announced significant investment in the layout of their 703 stores just last week, and "shook up" their marketing team the week before. Their share price rocketed.

Looking at our client base, the one thing that binds them together is that they all have a vision for the future of their business and they are just not prepared to accept that the recession will have an impact. They are ready (and eager) to bend and flex with the market to journey towards that vision. Many of them have altered their business models in the last 12 months. They've shifted their marketing activities significantly and trusted my judgement when I've said "That won't work anymore".

Marketing has also entered a new era. Media has shifted. Customers have shifted. Behaviour has changed and changed for good. Many businesses have failed to shift with them. And until they do, they will continue to have a Bad Year. And possibly another one after that.

I am still staggered that some businesses are trading off a hotmail or gmail address. Some don't have websites. Many don't have facebook or twitter pages. This is the modern equivalent of a business refusing, point blank, to invest in a phone in the 1960s. Wise up.

Wake up. Smell the coffee. If you want to start having a Good Year, the solution is very, very simple. You need to stop doing what you've always done and innovate. Customers are still spending money. The business is out there. You just need to focus on making it easier for them to buy. And that doesn't mean dropping your prices. If you don't believe me, visit the Apple Store.

Innovate. And your customers will come back. Stand still, and they won't.

Death of a Salesman: What Double Glazing and Print Advertising have in Common

If you grew up in the 1980s, you'd know that double glazing was all the rage. The double glazing gold rush was pursued vigorously and competitively by an army of double glazing sales people who used each and every technique in the book to win those sales.

As their market started to contract, their sales tactics got stronger and more erratic. The consumer affairs programme Watchdog was awash with complaints about strong arm sales tactics, calling on vulnerable people unawares, and generally becoming a nuisance to society. 

This kind of sales pest behaviour is well documented, and broadly disliked. But despite that, some organisations and industries persist in maintaining this sales approach.

Take my job, for instance. I'm one of those strange people who spend their life developing and delivering marketing plans. This means I spend time looking at the market, identifying key messages, setting marketing objectives, finding suitable communication mediums, setting budgets, spending them, and delivering against that plan.

I find this delivers results. 

Advertising sales people, clearly, assume that I do something completely different.

Judging by their bizarre behaviour, they must think I sit at my desk with a big pot of money waiting on the last minute, must buy advertising opportunity to plonk right into my lap. Relevant or not.

This baffles me.

Some advertising sales people have got it right. Every January I have meeting after meeting with sales reps from outdoor advertising companies and radio stations. They ask what we have coming up for the year, I tell them. They show me the range of their products, they share their pricing mechanisms with me. They give me data on their media and its effectiveness. Occasionally they bring goodies - nothing ostentatious - but my spoils from these meetings have included packets of biscuits, boxes of chocolates, post-it notes and mugs. 

They see their job to assist me in the all important planning and budgeting stages. The outcome of this clever and well thought out sales process is very simple: they have a higher likelihood of being included in my marketing plans.  

Print advertising sales people (in the main, and there are a few exceptions) seem to respond to seeing other media or adverts and call me. Daily. Incessantly.

And the truth is, they haven't got a hope in hell of placing a sale - because the budget and media plan is already set. They have missed the proverbial boat. And not just by minutes. It sailed weeks ago.

I am not alone in being caught in the grip of the onslaught of advertising sales. Our clients are sick to death of it. As a result, we offer them this promise as part of our service: Let us deal with them.

And we do.

We route all our calls through a call answering service so it's easy to analyse the impact of advertising sales calls on our business.

Last week 61% of the incoming calls we received were from advertising sales people. Each and every single one of them believed they were the only advertising sales person to call me that day.

Only one of those calls was from a sales person from whom I was actively trying to purchase. One person called 5 times. In one day. And refused to leave a message. She will assume I don't know that she called that many times, however our system tells me everything I need to know. Imagine the negative impact on that publication's brand before she even gets through to me.

This erratic and seemingly desperate behaviour is indicative of an industry in turmoil. Readership figures are dropping, prices are increasing and their sales teams are panicking. If they see a poster in a train station on their way to work, they call that company that very day to see if they want to buy advertising. Their not so very clever assumption is that because we have already spent money on advertising, we must have money for advertising.

I know this to be true as, in our plan, we have the "in charge" dates of outdoor advertising sites I've booked, and every time we have a billboard or a poster go up in the outdoors, we brace ourselves for a flurry of advertising sales calls from daily newspapers. It's almost laughable. But it's really not that funny.

Print publications need to sort their advertising teams out and get back to the basics of selling. Know their market, know their needs and meet them. Otherwise they are in grave danger of becoming the double glazing sales people of the business world.

You have been warned.

Don't Say you Can if you Can't

My husband recently ordered a room divider for his new office. The website said it would be delivered within 2 weeks.

Almost 6 weeks down the line he is still waiting.

In a fit of growing irritation he's called the company daily for the last 8 days. Various excuses have ensued: the factory is closed for two weeks, it's waiting to be despatched, it'll be with you tomorrow, it'll be with you next week, we're not sure where we are with that order.

That company is now in big trouble:

• It's in breach of the UK's Distance Selling Regulations
• It has also breached the Advertising Standards Authority's rules and regulations with making false claims on their website
• And it's clearly in breach of Contract

We could go to town and ensure they are delivered several strong slaps on the wrist for their incompetence. But it's a bit like scolding a stupid child for being, well, stupid.

You can't legislate for intelligence in business. So let's try to keep it really simple:

Don't say you can do it, if you really, really can't.

Teach a Man to Fish

Marketing has always been, for me, a fascinating subject. Drawing on many academic disciplines from psychology to maths, from art to economics.

At its heart, marketing is very simply the process of buying customers. It's both an art and a science. And much of its motivation is based on a simple theory: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

Maslow was a psychologist whose 1943 paper, A Theory of Human Motivation, suggested that individuals had a simple progression of needs starting with the physiological and ranging to the self-actualizing. The premise was that until one need was fulfilled, the individual had little or no desire to move onto their next priority.

Marketers have traditionally used the hierarchy as a means to communicating product benefits (slimmer, prettier, faster, better) and driving lifestyle choices (fulfilled, happy).

The recent London riots would perhaps suggest that, some 60 years later, Maslow's pyramid may no longer be as relevant.

Just one week ago London, and a number of other English cities, were gripped in a series of so called "consumer riots" which saw thousands of, mainly young people, take to the streets to thieve and loot.

The spoils of their efforts? 42" plasma TVs, shoes, DVD players, trainers, bicycles, alcohol, designer jeans..... the exhausting list of fast moving consumer goods goes on and on.

This was society's poor, we are all being led to believe. Neglected, unemployed, gang-ravaged communities. Their riotous efforts could be, depressingly, understood within that context, even justified.

But this was no modern re-make of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. These rioters weren't starving to death. It wasn't bread and water they were looting for, it was plasma TVs and games consoles. So much for Maslow's hierarchy.

These people have put self actualization at the very top of their needs list. Everything else? Seemingly secondary. The Bishop of Manchester agrees.

But perhaps marketers are partly to blame for this overt, all consuming consumerism? Maybe this is the culmination of all that is fundamentally wrong with capitalism? But can businesses play a part in helping society to change?

When I think about the corporate obsession with perfection, it leaves little room for mistakes and therefore learning. How do these young people get a genuine start in life if no-one is willing to teach them, or give them the opportunities to learn?

I've always felt that businesses have a role in education. I am extremely grateful to those companies and managers who took me on with little or no experience and taught me the skills of their trade. I may not have followed a career in some of their lines of work, but they were willing to take the risk. Now we are so obsessed with perfection in service delivery and efficiency in operations that it's our young people who are genuinely missing out.

So, for all those business owners out there who employ people, this is your broom. This is your opportunity to help clean up our community and make a tangible difference. This is not someone else's problem. And it's certainly not just the responsibility of government. It's our problem to solve. Each and every single one of us.

Give a man a fish and you'll feed him for one day. Teach a man to fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime.

Let's get back to basics.

Word of Mouth Marketing: The Holy Grail

We’re often led to believe that word of mouth marketing is the very best kind. Reliable, effectives and free, it spreads like wildfire and costs the company nothing. But marketers often miss out on two vital components of word of mouth marketing: it must first be believable, and everyone needs to be saying it.

We live in a cynical age, where integrity appears to be lacking and even the most well meaning claims are subject to scrutiny.

Several months ago I switched supermarkets. I ditched the weekly Tesco shop in favour of “luxury” food market Marks & Spencer. In one simple move I saved time, money and improved the quality of the food we eat.

But, and here’s the interesting part, everyone I’ve told about this amazing money and time saving move hasn’t believed me. They’re just not convinced. It’s not just any food, it’s Marks and Spencer food. Surely it must be more expensive.

The cost of my weekly shop has dropped by almost 40%. The time I have to spend shopping has been halved. I can’t argue much with figures like that. But everyone seems doubtful that my information is correct.

“Try it for yourself!” I suggest.

My suggestions fall on deaf ears. I’m the only crazy woman I know making these claims. Remember: word of mouth only works if everyone else is saying it too. This is one of the indisputable laws of marketing. A demand curve that first demands that there is a slow burn of early adopters.

This is true for almost every product or service ever launched. Unless you are Google+ that is.

When I consider the number Facebook or Dropbox requests I suspiciously ignored before I finally gave in (mainly to the sheer volume) then I guess it’s reasonable to assume I’m not one of the world’s early, early adopters.

In the early adoption stakes, Google+ has played a blinder launching as an “invitation only” – there’s nothing more alluring to word of mouth early adopters than something they can’t get access to. Claiming the fastest social network launch in history, and well on its way to 20 million members, the sheer volume of people talking about Google+ is enough to guarantee initial success.

By jumping the demand curve, and putting early adoption above everything else, Google+ may have missed one crucial thing: if all the early adopters abandon the network after failing to find anything interesting in it, they’ll have to work twice as hard to continue to grow. After all, who wants 20million early adopters saying it’s not worth it? Better to have a smaller number of early adopters giving you useful feedback on how to improve. and develop. That’s what’s behind the success of Facebook. And Marks & Spencer.

Not Sure What to Call this One so Let's Just call it "Sorry"

On Sunday I wrote my blog. Nothing unusual about that: I've been writing every Sunday for months now.

Except this one turned out to be different. It was to be my first ever Huffington Post submission.

"Write about something topical" they suggested. But as a writer on business related topics, that's not always so easy.

News that Amy Winehouse had just died on the Saturday was prevalent. A terrible tragedy of a talented life cut cruelly short. Forgive me, but I really do see a certain symmetry here with small business owners, many of whom fail to succeed for a multitude of different reasons.

So that became the topic of my blog. Big mistake.

Within minutes of being published on the Huffington Post, my blog started to attract comments - most of them negative.

Within hours, my blog was being blogged about.

In less than a day, other bloggers had started to blog about me and my blog post. I note, in this world of uncensored journalism that not one of them contacted me for a quick interview.

I apologised online for any offence I had caused. Still it didn't seem to  make any difference.

In a public pillorying reserved usually for just the rich, famous and political, I got the equivalent of an online roasting.

Then some of the criticism turned personal. Idiot. Bigot. Narcissist. Reprehensible. Insensitive. The list, regrettably, goes on.

In a McCarthy-esque turn of events, people began to hunt me down. Huffington Post didn't publish their comments so they turned to Twitter to harass me. Others got to me on facebook. Some tried other routes.

So here's the deal (without trying to sound too much like Bill Clinton in my defence):

I did NOT mean to offend anybody. I did see the analogy. I'll take on board the points about sharpening up my writing. And I appreciate that many will have found the content to have been in bad taste. For that I am truly sorry.

I did NOT write my blog as a deliberate link bait. I wrote it because I write about business and, as a Huffington Post submission, it was recommended that is was topical. Inadvertently I seem to have seem to have "link baited"  - a terms I didn't even know until Sunday night. It was never my intention. Who would want attention like this anyway?

I DID protect my tweets and my facebook pages. And I make no apology for that. These pages are mine to protect.

I DID initially try to respond to people's comments individually. However when things turned nasty, and I hope you'll forgive me, I decided it was better not to engage in further conversation. Tasteless blog or not. Bullying of any kind, on or offline, is unacceptable. And bullying includes name calling.

And finally, without wanting to sound too cynical here, the Huffington Post small business section is a relatively new area of their site. Most of the other articles, from what I can see, have less traffic, less interaction and less standing in google.

Which really does leave me wondering if I was, naively, the bait.

Amy Winehouse's Untimely Death is a Wake Up Call for Small Business Owners

It would be terribly remiss of me not to blog about the untimely death of the 27 year old British singer Amy Winehouse today.


Unlike others, I won't be picking apart her chosen lifestyle, nor will I be judging her. She made her own choices and, although it would appear that these choices ultimately led to her death, they were hers to make.


For small business owners there is, however, a lot to be learned from Amy's untimely death.


Although rarely referred to as such, most musical artistes and celebrities are businesses in their own right. In fact, for all those detractors out there that say that  being"self-employed" is not a "proper" business, think again. This successful business model is one that has been proven time and time again.


But whether you are a pop star, a plumber or a business consultant, the same rules still apply: you ARE the product. And if that's the case, you are going to need to take really good care for yourself if you want your business to succeed.


Amy got off to a great start. She had the raw talent and the skills to write and perform. She trained herself, brought the right people around her and she made it to the big time. And quickly.


With five grammys and a Brit Award to her name, you'd think she was untouchable. But, like every fledgling, fast growing business, Amy lost control. Her "brand" became driven by her record company. Her "image" was tinkered with, and her relationship with the media resembled more of a cat and mouse game (where Amy was the mouse), than a strategically managed campaign. Little by little the public saw a young, healthy, talented girl, slim down to just a shadow of her former self.


At first, she was talented enough to get by. Live performances, although slightly edgy, were strong enough to forgive the fact that she'd obviously had a few before she went on stage. But eventually, even this all proved too much for her adoring fans and just a few months ago, the quality of her performance was so poor she was booed off stage in Serbia.


There are so many parallels here in business. A young business starts well, and gets busy. The business owner frequently ignores their own health, swapping trips to the gym for an extra couple of hours in the office, eating takeaway dinners instead of healthy home cooked food, scrimping on sleep and generally running themselves into the ground.


This cycle of personal abandonment all leads to poor decision making in business. Recruiting too many staff (usually the wrong ones) too quickly. Missing deadlines. Not responding to Customers. Falling behind with the business finances.


And then the wheels fall off. This is the business equivalent of being booed off stage.


Clients complain, or worse - walk, and businesses are left in a spiral of decline that, in some cases can be irreversible.


So, my advice to small business owners (and pop stars) is this: your job is like a marathon, not a 100m sprint.


You need to train for it. Moreover you need to maintain your own health and fitness first because if you are at the core of the business. You ARE the brand. Start eating healthily, stop scrimping on sleep and start going to the gym.


It may sound simple. But it works. You will benefit. Your customers will benefit. Your business will benefit.


And today, in honour of Amy Winehouse, I am going to go to the gym. For the first time in about six months. She's just reminded me why I should.

Pride: In the Name of Love

I'm definitely a messy pup. In absence for a full time cleaner my house is, at the best of times, in need of a good and thorough tidy up.

My workplace, however, is a very different story.

While it occasionally dips into chaos (more often than not following several coinciding print deliveries) it is, in the main, a bastion of tidiness and order in which we take great pride as a team.

We're currently working with some businesses who have let that pride slip. Battered down by the ravages of two years' recessionary sales, they've taken less and less care of their appearance and it's become a major problem for them.

Team members no longer really care about how things look, placing items here, there and everywhere. And as the level of clutter increases, the sales figures fall at a similar pace.

So we've suggested something revolutionary to help them kick start sales: tidy up.

Have a good clearout. Hire a skip. Dump it all. Un-deck the halls. Make some space.

We did the same thing ourselves a few months ago. I stopped procrastinating, hired a storage facility and we spent a weekend archiving and shifting boxes. Interestingly we seem to be busier with more client work than ever. A coincidence? I don't think so.

The impact on one business we're working with is equally positive. The business owner is beaming with pride. They have started making plans for the future. They are excited about where they work. Their sales have (suspiciously) started to increase.

And with no "sales and marketing" involved whatsoever.

Take a look around your office tomorrow morning. If it looks like it needs a good clearout, talk to your colleagues schedule in a late evening or a Saturday morning and get it done. It'll make a big difference to your working life. I promise you.

Class Wars: Service is Everything in the Fight for Customers

This week I changed the habit of a lifetime and travelled to London by train.

Opting to avoid the 5 hour pantomime of driving to the airport, parking the car, taking off half your clothes as part of an essential security mission, being felt up by someone you've never met before, putting your clothes all back on again, hanging about for an hour, flying down to London, navigating the Heathrow Express and then the tube to finally reach my destination.

This time I jumped on the train at Perth, had a quick breakfast in Edinburgh, and boarded their first class East Coast Train at 9.30am to arrive at the heart of London some four and a half hours later, having got quite a substantial amount of work done on the train.

It was, in many respects, a first class experience.

But the return journey was quite different. Same rail operator, same first class service.

They started off well - we all got breakfast. But somewhere between London and York it all went horribly wrong.

Not enough sandwiches arrived on the train at Darlington. As a result, staff were left to deal with an increasingly hungry bunch of first class passengers.

We were unabashedly offered a dry croissant (no jam or butter available) and a packet of crisps for our lunch. We were told we were lucky to be offered even that. 

Passengers joined together in a first class mutinty to make suggestions to the service team:

- Couldn't they go and get some sandwiches from the paid buffet car?
- Couldn't they offer us vouchers so we could go and get those sandwiches all by ourselves?

Our suggestions were shot down in flames. No. You must take the "complimentary" offer. It was the other first class passengers further down the cabin who ate all the sandwiches. We were then told that the food offered up in First Class was not paid for as part of the ticket price (this was in response to the interjection of the American girl, who was sitting opposite us, who bemoaned "But we're paying for it!"). It was a complimentary offer, not a commitment, in other words.

The rousing conversation that followed, involving people of several different nationalities, made me feel ashamed to be British. Expectations of first class service across the globe are consistent, it would seem. But the staff at East Coast Trains have obviously not grasped them.

Fast forward an hour or so and we've changed trains having managed to grab a sandwich at Waverley. Scotrail's First Class experience is quite different: a free cup of coffee and a biscuit, combined with a marginally bigger seat.

Gabor, the first class attendant, who was forced to work in a compartment that was not air conditioned on an extremely hot day and packed to the gunnels, had us all cheered up instantly. So much so, that some of us were threatening to write to East Coast Trains and suggest they needed people of Gabor's calibre on their service.

Because it is just a matter of service.

Gabor, unlike his colleagues on East Coast Trains, understood that apologising for the hot state of the train was undoubtedly the way to go. East Coast? Well, you can judge by their responses to our helpful suggestions that they clearly didn't give a hoot.

It is worth noting that Gabor's first language was also not English.... just in case you hadn't made that deduction from his name. The staff on the East Coast Train service were all (and I mean all) British through and through, with accents spanning the full East Coast line.  

And I found myself wondering: Is it a British thing to believe that serving people is beneath them?

Have we mistaken first "class" service to be some sort of socio-political divide?

How would their attitude shift if they knew that the majority of people I spoke to (on the way down and the way up) had "upgraded" to first class as a wee treat to themselves, and were all left bitterly disappointed. My travelling companions included tourists, students, police officers, housewives and nurses. Many of these people are employed by the same British government that owns and operates the nationalised East Coast Trains. With the exception of John Humphreys, I wasn't aware of any of them who were celebrities, politicians and bankers......

It takes dignity and intelligence to serve people. Remember: although you serve them, you are not their servants.

In a class war, your standard of service is everything in the fight to gain and keep your customers.

Awesome? Not Really - We've Seen it all Before.

On Wednesday, the world waited with baited breath. Facebook was going to announce something "Awesome".

It turned out to be video messaging.

Awesome indeed. I can hardly contain myself.

To say that the public was underwhelmed is an understatement. This statement of impending awesomeness came directly from the big guy, Mark Zuckerberg himself.

Has he lost his mind? Connecting up all the individuals on the planet using a a big database and the internet is awesome. Using video phones online (which have been around a while) is not.

It is thought that the new video chat functionality is a direct competitive response to Google's launch of Google+.

However, by over-egging the pudding, the "awesome" announcement seems to have backfired.

While the world clambers for their special invitations to go to the Google+ ball, Facebook's new chat has been left to fester at the right hand side of the screen. Like a debutante waiting to be asked for their first dance.  

A classic case of the boy who cried wolf, perhaps.

The Hacks can't take the Flack

It would be remiss of me not to blog about the goings on at News International and the fated News of the World this week.

I, like many, have looked on as the British (tabloid) press have allegedly sunk to (apparent) new lows.

Revelations that NoTW employees hacked into murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's mobile phone, deleting voicemail messages, tampering with police evidence and giving her poor grieving family false hope at an extremely difficult time, have been met with an iron wall of collective British agony, disgust and well deserved anger.

News International's response to this crisis, however, took us all by surprise.

In the corporate equivalent of suicide (or perhaps that should be murder), the life of the News of the World has been cut down. Dead.

Intriguingly, the British public have known for months (years, even) that the NoTW was involved in the illegal practice of phone hacking. But clearly our collective conscience doesn't give a hoot for law breaking when the victims of said crime are celebrities, politicians or members of the Royal family. They are "fair" game, apparently.

So it's not the crime in this instance that has caught the attention of the public, it's the victim. In fact, you could argue that, collectively, we were prepared to forgive NoTW for the crime - in many respects we already had. With 10 million readers, a raft of recent industry awards, and some of the world's biggest advertisers behind it, the NoTW was undoubtedly one of the UK's most successful British newspapers.

But for the irate British public, Murdoch's decision to shut down this 168 year old newspaper is not the ideal outcome - no matter how much initial jubilation it may have caused.

We prefer justice in this country, not corporal punishment. Rupert Murdoch has, in one seemingly well intended action, demonstrated that his unwielding power in this industry is paramount. It won't be the British justice system that brings this corporation to its knees: Rupert Murdoch will make those decisions himself, thank you very much.

The net result: we may never know the full extent or truth of what has gone on behind closed doors at News International. It's very hard to serve justice to a ghost.

Overselling is Simple: Just Make it Easier for Customers to Buy

This morning I published a blog on how selling is, fundamentally, a simple process. You just need to make it easier for your customers to buy.

Groupon is a prime example of making sales simple. They remove one of the strongest barriers to purchase: price. In so doing, they make the customer's purchasing decision as easy as it will ever be. The result: a LOT of sales.

Feedback on this morning's blog pointed me in the dircetion of an article in today's Sunday Mail entitled "Demand for Groupon false eyelashes deal causes Glasgow Beautician to Close Salon" - regrettably not the only story of its kind, and certainly not the last.

Groupon, the villain in this sorry tale, is being blamed for selling almost 700 coupons for a beauty business that is manned by only one person. Forcing the business to close its doors, renege on the deal and irritating a shed load of people in the process.

But who's really at fault here?

Groupon can limit the number of vouchers sold - their system enables that. So was it greed, naivety or a simple inability to add up the number of available trading hours and divide them by the number of appointments that's behind the beauty therapist's failure? Well, probably a bit of each of them. And since Groupon is more than up front with business owners about their business model and how it works, one might suggest that the business owner who is entering into a contract with Groupon also has a responsibility to fully assess the situation.

A photographer I know recently did a Groupon offer. He operates alone. There's only so much business he can handle. So he restricted the numbers to no more than 100 vouchers to be sold, and asked for the deal to run on a Saturday (one of Groupon's quietest days). The results? Enourmous traffic to his website, around 70 vouchers sold, improved awareness of his business, new customers and a happy Groupon partnership.

Blaming Groupon for your own rash decision making in business is not the answer. If you don't want to oversell, price the offer differently, or cap the number of vouchers available. One thing's for sure, if you don't ask questions, you're certainly not going to get any answers.

Selling is Simple: Just Make it Easy for the Customer to Buy

Today's blog is inspired by Seth Godin's post yesterday on "The Overwhelming fear of Being Wrong" - which got me thinking: Selling is actually very simple. You just need to make it easy for the customer to buy.

But despite this so many companies, big and small, try to over-complicate the process. They befuddle the customer, overstate the benefits and lose the sale. Not because their product is inferior to a competitor's, but because the customer is paralysed with fear that their purchasing decision may be irrevocably incorrect.

Technology marketers are the biggest culprits. Bedazzled by TLAs (three letter anachronyms) and complex technological features, their sales literature either requires a degree in technology to comprehend or you must first spend several hours googling the TLAs until you can vaguely understand what they are trying to communicate (God Bless Wikipedia).

Last week I needed to purchase a digital projector. Unable to understand the difference beween the multiplicity of connections on offer, I found myself caught like a rabbit in the headlights. Conversely, my purchasing problem was simple: all I needed to know was the price and whether the connection between the projector and the laptop was the right one. A simple picture of the connector would have sufficed. The rest of the sales guff was irrelevant to me. I take it for granted it can project pictures onto a wall. It is, after all, a projector.

So I took a risk and bought one on trust. Luckily when it arrived the connector was the right one, but the purchasing process could have been so much less stressful.

Telephone marketers are also guilty of missing the point too. Not the fancy mobile marketers (that's another blog altogether) but the old fashioned, bog standard, plug into the wall telephone. The most remarkable feature of a telephone, correct me if I'm wrong, is it's dulcet ring tone. Too shrill and it'll have you jumping out of your skin every time it goes, too subtle and you'll be missing calls. Moreover, if your telephone rings regularly (which mine does) you'll want something that's not going to drive you up the wall with irritation to the point that unplugging it altogether (defeating the purpose of having a phone in the first place) is your only option.

But try to find out what a telephone sounds like before you buy it and you'll find yourself becoming quickly regarded with suspicion. Retailers will look at you perplexed when you request to hear the phone before you buy it. "Why on earth would you want to know what it sounds like?" "Well, you're right Ms Fox, it doesn't tell you on the box." But..... isn't that what I'm buying? I don't need to know that it has a state of the art digital keypad (woo!), and it's memory can hold up to 100 phone numbers (wow!) and it's battery life is 8 hours (yay!). I want to know what it sounds like.

We recently met with a company who was about to embark on an overseas sales trip. They have a great service at a great price but were making the fatal mistake of leaving it up to the customer to decide how much of that service they wanted to buy. I suggested they "package" up their service into 3-4 simple price based options that are easy for the customer to buy. Their email to me following the return from their trip speaks volumes for the success of making it easy for the customer to buy:

"We got a lot of positive feedback on the new structure and 16 out of 18 companies we met are interested in what we are offering."

16 out of 18 companies? That's an 88% hit rate...... imagine what a difference that would make to your business.

So , if you do one thing this week, take a cold hard look at your sales literature and decide to make it easier for the customer to buy.

What Glastonbury's Mud Loving Customers Can Teach Organisations

The media is awash this weekend with pictures and tales from Glastonbury's mud embracing customers. Up to their knees in brown stuff, and soaked to the skin with rain, some 137,000 festival goers have shrugged off the weather and appalling site conditions and have gone about their business in the most jovial of ways.

In normal circumstances, subjecting customers (and, not to forget, the festival staff) to these kind of conditions would be enough to spark protests, general strikes and fevered calls for the government to adequately regulate the weather.

But Glastonburyers (is that their technical term?) are a prime example of what can be achieved when you "choose your attitude" - a simple adjustment to how you decide to deal with things that present themselves.

Choosing your attitude, in a business setting, is vitally important. Times may be tough, work may be hard, but how you decide to deal with it is what will set you apart from your competitors. In recessionary times this is even more pertinent. Nobody wants to deal with a business who is projecting an aura of failure and abject depression.

I don't mind admitting that when I first started my business that I struggled to get to grips with this. Choosing your attitude is a skill, and like all skills they take practice before you can fully master it. You have to learn to focus on the positives (always), down play the negatives (always) and, most of all, get past your own emotional responses to situations. Much easier done if you are in a group of 137,000 doing exactly the same. Not quite so easy if you work alone.

There are many ways of doing this. I have worked hard at acquiring the language of positivity. Some people call it NLP, I just call it a much more pleasant way to talk to yourself. I no longer have problems or issues, just challenges. Failure is a learning  opportunity. I never have a bad day, just a day that was more challenging than others.

The rewards are worth it.

Imagine the possibilities if (and I'm going to be slightly controversial here) public sector workers accepted that the country had a finite amount of resources to work with and chose to approach this challenge with a positive attitude. Instead of unions, protests, disruption, stress and strikes, we'd have proactive solutions, positive rallys, focussed workforces and direction.

Businesses that are struggling in this recessionary climate should also take heed. Are you talking yourself into a situation of less customers, less income and less resources. It's a well known fact that the most successful entrepreneurs are those who view the world with abundance, and for whom opportunities exist at every twist and turn.

So tomorrow morning when you get ready for work, give some thought to how you are going to make it a good day. In fact, not just a good day, a great day. You will undoubtedly come up against challenges, but decide not to let them affect your great day. And see if you can taste the difference.

If you really believe that this is impossible, just look to Glastonbury for inspiration.

So it Is

It isn't hard to make people feel special. In fact, it's remarkably simple.

The receptionist at our firm of accountants recently hung up her headphones after some thirty years service, to embrace retirement. Her departure has left a considerable void in that business. While the position has been filled, training has been delivered (and her replacement can more than ably answer the phone, direct your calls and greet you in person), she forgot to pass on her secret weapon. Three little words: So it is.

Here's the script:

ME: "Hello, may I speak to David Smith please?"
RECEPTIONIST: "Who's Speaking?"
ME: "Tricia Fox"
RECEPTIONIST: "So it is!"

Wow. Three little words that simply say "I remember you" - this is platinum service at its best.

I was certain these three little words were used on every customer who called. But they were always said with so much sincerity that their every day use was more than forgiveable.

And, if I may be so bold, I think those three little words (which have probably been viewed by managers as the receptionist's individual style and character) are an excellent point of difference in an otherwise crowded marketplace, and should have formed part of the new receptionist's training in how to handle calls.

Don't believe me? Then ask yourself when was the last time a receptionist made you feel special?

So it is.

Deadly Discounts and How to Avoid Them

Discounting is the new marketing trend.

Groupon is reported to be the fastest growing company ever (ever) with 5 million users in the UK and even more worldwide. Other copy cat business models (Itison.com, KGB Deals, LivingSocial) have quickly followed suit in what is ultimately the next land grabbing gold rush of the ecommerce landscape.

But business owners beware. Discounting is both a marketing science and an art. One which, if not thoroughly thought through, could backfire with catastrophic circumstances.

Over the past few weeks I've had many philosophical discussions with clients about Groupon and its ilk. Many of these discussions are tinged with fear and suspicion. But discounting is a viable, and arguably clever, marketing strategy. Tesco's are the king of the discounts and it hasn't done their business any harm over the last few years. 

So here's the deal on the deal. Here's how to make sure it works for you.

Assess Capacity and Demand:
If you are in a service business, your marketing has to be ALL about creating demand and maximising capacity. Failure to maximise capacity and you lose money. 

For instance if you've only sold enough hairdressing appointments for half a day, and the other half a day passes, you've just lost half a day of revenue - never to be gained again.

If you can fill that half a day with paying customers, albeit at a smaller value, you are now making more money than you would have been than if you'd not sold anything at full price.

Do NOT discount if you do NOT have capacity in your business. This is where others have come a cropper. Itison.com's Dundee launch sold 5000 Dominos pizzas in one day..... needless to say, thanks to such a great offer, Itison.com had plenty of dough but the pizza shops didn't have quite enough to satsify all those hungry pizza loving bargain hunters.

Assess Profitability and Pricing:
This is the key to success. Discounting is NOT about giving it away at a loss. Roughly speaking, most discounters are looking for the business to give the service away at around an 80% discount on advertised price. So, unless your "mark up" is in the region of 400% your discounting adventure will be costing you money.

But there is a way to do it, at a profit:

• Don't make single service offers - combine services to maximise the use of operational time and increase the value of the deal
• Only put on offers where you have a high likelihood of making a cross or upsell - for instance a service that's likely to result in a product sale, or will need multiple visits (at full price)

Assess Reach and Impact:
There's choice in the marketplace so you don't just have the option of one when it comes to selecting a discounting partner.

If you are looking at discounting as a media channel, first consider its reach. Response rates in the industry are typically in the region of between 0.3% - 2% at most.

In simple terms, if the database of the discounting firm sits at 100,000 total "reach" you can expect between 300 - 2000 people to take them up on the offer. In most cases it's at the lower end of the scale. In exceptional circumstances it may be much higher. But in those cases the deal is a steal.

So if you're not sure you can support the capacity uptake of 500 new customers, consider using one of the smaller discounters. You might only get 50 voucher sales, and only reach 10,000 people, but it might be a better solution for a very small business.

Carefully Consider Frequency:
Tesco discounts all the time. Their business model supports this activity. They either negotiate with their suppliers to get the products at a discount, or they push prices down across the board to ensure they make their profits even though they are offering up bargains galore to customers in store.

Your business is, most likely, not following this kind of discount model. So tread carefully when it comes to frequency of offer. We would avoid committing to more than three deals in any calendar year and the timing needs to be sporadic, rather than predictable. The last thing you want to do is train your customer base that, if they wait a couple of weeks, they'll get it at a 60% discount. There madness lies.

The offer should always be seen as a "treat" or an "exclusive" in order for it to be successful for both you and the discounting site.

Assess Audience Response:
It is very likely that your existing customers will be on the database of the discounting company. So having a strategy that rewards existing customers is a must. Whether it's a loyalty promotion or something simple that says thank you, never forget: these are the guys that, ultimately, keep you in business.

Tickets Please! Olympic Lottery is no Winner

Over the last two months we've all been unable to avoid Olympic Tickets Fever.

Millions of us applied for tickets, stashed the extra cash in our banks and waited (im)patiently for the funds to magically disappear confirming that we'd got our hands on one of Willy Wonka's Golden Tickets.

And we waited. And waited.

Until one day we were told: THIS IS IT!

The collective British sigh of disappointment was audible. Bank accounts were checked with increased desparation and frequency. The money was still there! Why haven't they taken it yet? Realisation dawned. We'd lucked out. There would be no visit to the chocolate factory.  

It's a tough job to manage the expectations of millions of people but the fall out from the disappointment has been well deserved. The Olympics PR team are guilty of setting high expectations, failing to manage them and rubbing salt in the wounds thereafter. All of which could have been easily avoided.

And they had every chance to get it right. The National Lottery has been doing it well for years.

The odds of winning the National Lottery are pure chance. So, it would seem, was the lottery for the Olympic Tickets. The Olympians failed to communicate, however, that we were all taking part in a nice big gamble. The odds, as we've subsequently found out, were much less than a 50/50 chance of being successful with 55% of applicants walking away with nothing at all.

The National Lottery manages expectations that the odds of winning the big one are around 14 million to one. So, every week, when we don't win, we simply shrug our shoulders and say "It was a long shot anyway, back to work on Monday!"

And they can't say they weren't warned. In an article published on 9th May, Matthew Beard from the London Evening Standard argued that Olympic Chiefs should be telling us just how big a gamble we've taken. He was not the only one to pose this argument. The media was awash with shock and awe stories of how people had maxed out their credit cards and faced financial ruin when (if) they were lucky enough to get all they purchased. The rest of us smugly looked on thinking: idiots.

But it turns out they were the sassy ones. The seasoned gamblers who got it at once. Spread betting was the only answer. The odds of winning were so exceptionally low it was the sheer number of bets that counted. That was the only way you could increase your odds.

Official advice ran contrary to this, however, and this is where the corporate line failed to deliver. The lottery system would be "fair", only buy what you can afford, everyone has the same chance of getting tickets. So the vast majority of Britain did what they were told and totally lucked out.

An inevitable backlash ensued.

"UNFAIR!" cried Britain.

"NOT SO!" cried the heartless Coe. Completely missing the point.

Coe continues to defend the "system" but fails to understand it's not the system that was the failure, it was their communication strategy that was the ultimate patsy.

The key messages failed to come across. The punters were clueless to the kind of gamble they were taking. And now hundreds of thousands of people, finally understanding the odds, are to be given a second chance gamble. But will they be flocking to the Ticketmaster Casino in their droves?

Fool me once: Shame on You. Fool me twice: Shame on Me.

Lord Coe can rest easy. The Olympic "goals" will have been met: The event is on target to sell out. It's just that Britain won't be quite as engaged in his Olympic dream as they once were.

Shame. Because that's really what the whole point of the Olymics: Dreams.