You may have noticed the cute story about Tiger bread. If not, let me summarise:

Giraffe bread

The story starts with a letter to Sainsbury’s from a 3 year old.

“Why is tiger bread called tiger bread? It should be called giraffe bread. Love from Lily Robinson age 3 and 1/2″.

It received a reply and they both got posted on a blog.

“I think renaming tiger bread giraffe bread is a brilliant idea – it looks much more like the blotches on a giraffe than the stripes on a tiger, doesn’t it?

“It is called tiger bread because the first baker who made it a looong time ago thought it looked stripey like a tiger. Maybe they were a bit silly.

“Chris King (age 27 & 1/3)”.

Subsequently the story hit Facebook and Twitter and then this happened:

“In response to overwhelming customer feedback that our tiger bread has more resemblance to a giraffe, from today we will be changing our tiger bread to giraffe bread and seeing how that goes.” (Sainsbury’s)

Speak up!

This story is cute but more importantly it shows that good ideas can make an impact with the support of social networks. If nobody except Lily, her mother and Chris from Sainsbury’s had been aware of the letter it’s unlikely that the change in name would have occurred.

Changing a product name from tiger bread to giraffe bread is hardly a life altering experience. The fact that a three year old can get the attention of the third largest supermarket in the UK, a company with an annual turnover in excess of £21 billion, is exciting.

Marketing gold

Lily’s idea, as well as being practical, has started a new wave of publicity for the company. Anyone reading the news story is likely to come away with a fuzzy glow (unless they’re autobots) with the idea of freshly baked tiger/giraffe bread from Sainsbury’s happily at the forefront of their minds. Feeling hungry? Can you smell the sesame oil?

Thought so.

Credit: Thanks to BBC News for my story quotes.

I got a comment on one of my posts recently that was very badly written. I don’t mind that – I’m not the kind of person who would reject a comment just because I didn’t like the author’s sentence structure. What worried me about it was that it came with a link to a copywriting website. At first I thought, ‘OK, maybe they’re affiliated with the site but a professional does the copywriting’. I even clicked the URL to check it out.

It looked OK

The design wasn’t bad and there weren’t any flashing banner ads. It seemed reasonable. Then I started reading.

O dear.

Not quite as bad as the comment I’d received but full of errors and discrepancies. The worst thing was when I tried to leave the site and a box appeared saying something along the lines of

“Stop! Please help us by saying what’s the main reason you’re leaving our site!”

O dear.

It made me think. If your English isn’t very good, either because it’s not your first language or you just struggled with it at school, how would you know if someone else’s writing was good or bad?

Would you recognise a well written sentence? Would you spot the tpyos?

The thing about spam is, although most people treat it as a joke, it must work at least some of the time or people wouldn’t keep doing it. The battle for online quality is still being fought and there are many sites which are substandard and poorly designed or implemented.

Avoid looking like a charlatan

• If your tastes in web design tend towards loud and ‘crazy’ you may need a second opinion to help you tone things down. I don’t advocate boring web design but your site should reflect your business and that means it needs to look professional, well organised (i.e. not cluttered) and populated with well written, good quality content.
• Pages for portfolios, case studies or client endorsements may be appropriate, depending on your business offering.
• Adding a link to your professional Twitter stream can also be helpful to show how you interact with people online. The Twitter stream is useful for showing that you are accessible and it gives people who don’t know you an insight into the type of person you are.
• Be warned, if you do this you need to be careful what you tweet. Swearing, bad spelling, hacked accounts and mistaken messages that you meant to send from your personal account can all spoil a beautiful homepage. Equally a stream of messages saying ‘BUY NOW!!!!’ or similar will mark you out as a spammer, not a savvy salesperson.
• That reminds me, don’t use all caps because that’s the online equivalent of STANDING REALLY CLOSE TO SOMEONE AND SHOUTING IN THEIR FACE. It also makes the text harder to read as many people recognise words from their shape. Put it in all caps and you lose the natural shape.
• Don’t clutter your page with too many adverts. It may be tempting but the effect on your page design won’t be pretty and visitors will assume you’re just online to make money from ‘click-throughs’.
• Lastly, don’t make it hard for people to leave your website. Boxes that ask “are you sure you want to leave this page?” are not cool. Believe it or not I’ve seen them used several times now and I would never revisit any of those sites.

If you’re wondering about web design, social media integration or how to impress on the web why not give Firehoop a call? You can also read more about web design and usability from their articles here.

Did I miss something? Let me know in the comments!

Closing a contract is rarely a joyful experience. You may despise the client if they’ve been particularly difficult to work with but most of the time you know you’ll miss the work and the money. Sometimes you’ll miss the client too because they were helpful, fun to work with or just didn’t interfere with your creativity too much. Whatever the reason, contracts do end but you have a choice to end them well, badly or downright atrociously.

Scenario 1:

The client was rude, unreasonably demanding and now refuses to pay for work completed in good faith. You could be rude back, point out all the reasons why they suck and wish, very loudly, that their business fails before flouncing out of the office, slamming the phone or clicking ‘send’.

This response is more satisfying to think about than perform. The resulting guilt, stress and possible career shame (as your ex-client bad mouths you and forwards your email to all their contacts) can blight your life and earnings for some time.

Scenario 2:

The client was very good to work with but they no longer have the budget or support from the relevant department or individual to continue your contract.

It’s unlikely you’ll get in a strop over this scenario and instead you might email them to say you’ll be sorry to stop working with them and to thank them for being a good client. This is probably the bare minimum in terms of a required response to the news that your contract is ending. But is there anything else you can do?

Don’t assume the client knows stuff

I don’t mean you should presume your client is an idiot and that’s why they’re dropping you. But there are some things they may not realise, such as:

• You really have enjoyed working with them
• Your work has benefitted their business (hopefully in some specific, measurable ways)
• You offer other services
• Your contract could be changed to offer a reduced or alternative support level

I don’t consider myself a sales person and I hate to be pushy, so that’s not what I’m advocating. All I’m saying is that a carefully and pleasantly worded email covering the four points above could really help.

It may not get you a new contract but it will leave a positive impression in their mind:

• the client will remember you for longer
• they’ll be more inclined to hire you again when their financial/company situation changes
• they may say nice things about you and recommend you to friends in other organisations
• and they’ll be more inclined to give you a sparkling reference on LinkedIn (if you ask nicely)

Being rude, or simply failing to express yourself clearly is a great way of shutting a door that might have otherwise been left helpfully ajar, waiting to spring open on a new opportunity later.

What are your top tips (or horror stories) for ending contracts?

In my last post I mentioned the Guerrilla E-Marketing Seminar I was due to attend and I discussed my fears about hard selling and aggressive, thoughtless tactics. I didn’t really know what to expect but my fears were unfounded and it was totally different to every other training seminar (post University) that I’ve ever been to.

I went with my other half who also happens to be a client. I’ve been instrumental in formulating the business’ communication strategy as well as the marketing, SEO* and SMM** activities. Consequently he thought it would be useful for us both to compare our work with the advice given in the seminar. I was also hoping to pick up some new tricks.    

What I did pick up was some good quality coffee and a delicious shortbread. As I sat through the presentation I realised that everything being talked about was either stuff we already do or stuff we’re planning on doing soon.

I didn’t learn a lot (aside from a few pieces of useful software) but the statistics were encouraging and I found myself warming to our speaker. He did convince me that e-mail marketing doesn’t have to be about harassing people or following cold leads – which was the impression I’d had before. Instead it can be organic, friendly and useful to both parties. And there’s some great software out there to help us monitor our progress!

It’s definitely given us both plenty of ideas although not necessarily in the direction the organisers intended! 

* Search Engine Optimisation ** Social Media Marketing

I got a letter in the post today about an e-marketing event I’m due to attend next week. It’s entitled Guerrilla e-marketing which makes me wonder how the simple object of selling turned into an act of warfare.

I never really thought about sales until I took a job that required me to sell stuff. I wasn’t called a salesperson. I was not in marketing. I was an advisor. I was a customer advisor trying to sell financial products. Now, before you all hit the off switch and throw your computer out in disgust I should point out that I left that job some years ago. I left because the role was not what I had been promised and because I found out that I hated selling.

When I joined I was told that my role would be largely about customer service and helping people. I was told to discuss products with customers that I thought would be helpful. The longer I stayed there the more apparent it became that what they actually wanted was for me to ask every single customer if they wanted some product or other – a loan, an overdraft, a savings account (told you it was years ago!). If you couldn’t match them with a product how about an account review?

I was bad. Very bad at sales. Sometimes I sat next to the guy who was the best at sales and I could hear him saying the same thing to every single customer. I wondered if the customers in the queue behind could hear him repeating himself as well. He was playing the numbers game – nothing fancy – no tricks – it probably annoyed a lot of people but he got his sales.

Strangely I never got the urge to adopt his technique. I found it impersonal and I knew that if I was a customer I would be desperate to get away from him and I certainly wouldn’t be falling for his sales pitch. Then again, perhaps I viewed it very differently from my side of the counter. After all, I got to listen to it all day. Customers would hear it much less and in a completely different context. Even so, it still seems like an aggressive and callous sales technique and I HATE aggressive or thoughtless selling!

That’s why I’m nervous about the guerrilla e-marketing event. I hope it will be educational and filled with useful tips and techniques but I’m worried they’ll be telling me I need to e-shot the whole of the UK threatening their children. Is it an overreaction based on my previous bad experience with sales?

I will let you know how it goes. In the meantime I’d be interested to hear about your sales experiences from either side of the counter, computer or headset!