In the market for a handmade table and chairs, I was already interested by the furniture-maker’s website and photographic portfolio.  But a visit to the workshop, which enabled me to stroke the timber and try out the curves of a sample chair, turned me from a warmish prospect into a serious buyer, despite the budget being somewhat higher than I’d planned.

So for those of us selling services, what can we do to replicate the furniture workshop experience?   How can we make it feel real for our audiences, and get them to engage more than their senses of sight and possibly hearing?

One thought is to at least make more use of ink on paper.    At a recent presentation of branding concepts to a client, thanks to a fire alarm we had to abandon the Mac and resort to paper in the café round the corner from the office.  What was interesting was to see how much more everyone engaged with the printed drawings and pantone chips than they had with pixels on the screen.  Getting our hands on physical objects is still a powerful experience.

We’d love to know how you bring touch into your marketing?

by Victoria Ash

Take a look at the marketing you do for your business.  Are you just telling people what you think they should hear (after all, you do know a lot about what you do)?  Or perhaps you’re just telling people the same sort of thing that everyone else is (after all, you’re incredibly busy running the business) ?

Stop and think of Calvin and his chewing gum article.  How do people really decide to buy what you offer?  Do they really get an exhaustive list of all the features of you and your competitors and use that data to make their choice?  Or do they, perhaps, let their feelings sway their choices like Hobbes the tiger?

The route to good marketing lies in understanding what makes the buyer buy, whether it’s advertising soap powder or bringing in a new client to your accountancy firm.  And, funnily enough, this requires trusting your instinct as well as gathering lots of data.

Are you doing enough to understand your buyers?  Are you trusting the Hobbes in you?  And am I perhaps reading too much into a cartoon strip?

by Ursula Bosworth

So, go on, have a look at the picture of “Paul the puppy” and then go wag your tail at someone.

by Paul Griffith

Given the context that “the world is a noisy place”, Steve skilfully develops the notion that clarity and simplicity of message is central to how a brand is perceived. This perception can be further refined if focus is given to the absolute core of the message and the exclusion and abandonment of superfluous and meandering subtexts.

This rings true irrespective of whether you are the world’s top brand or a small business, since only businesses who are able to‘rise above the noise’ will get their message heard.

So work on all the elements of your message:

* Your Story
* Your Presentation
* Your Beliefs and Values
* Your Dreams and Aspirations
* Your Business Culture

Then distil these into a simple deliverable communication that resonates with your business’ frequency to witness a true enhancement to your “signal to noise ratio”.

(By the way..Don’t feel compelled to have to present your message wearing shorts!!)

Sas Soubhi

We know from experience that this is something that our clients regularly experience and part of our role is to give them some frameworks or structures to hang those ideas on, giving them shape.  In taking a dose of our own medicine, there were a few insights that might give you food for thought:

* Have a brainstorm and then sleep on your ideas  – it may help you see the wood for the trees and you’re more likely to instinctively know what’s the right thing to do

* If you’re focusing on strategy, ask yourself ‘Why’ and ‘What’ and leave the ‘How’ for later: diving into implementation is for another day

* Find a framework to help you: we used our own 9 Boxes to help us prioritise our marketing and business development at a high level, and then our Buyers’ Journey framework to help us segment our markets and offers

* Be aware of the energy curve in these kind of discussions – lots of energy and enthusiasm at the outset; a bit of a dip when you don’t know where to go next; and then feeling re-energised but calm when you know the way forward.

by Victoria Ash