No surprise – communication is key.

We’ve learned and relearned a couple of things. Honest, direct and informed feedback makes for a smoother, more efficient process. A smoother process often breeds mutual respect. And, with mutual respect, all partnerships can succeed.

Here are two-and-a-half tips to help build trust, foster innovation and achieve more in any successful partnership between you and your creative team, whether they’re in-house, an outside agency, or freelance contractors.

Define.

A professional creative team will guide you through the strategy-building process, but whether you’ve hired an agency, a freelance or an independent contractor, you may want to provide your own creative brief as well. A good creative brief or communications strategy will inform and direct the work at hand. It will answer questions about the project, its audiences, its purpose, its timing and its distribution or end use. Be clear and concise with your direction. Don’t just define the project – website content, print advertising, sales education iBook, inbound marketing; be clear about what you’d like the project to do for your company. Feel free to share the successes and shortcomings of previous projects and campaigns.

Trust.

Once you’ve clearly defined your objectives, explained your company’s vision and mission, and provided information about the intended audience’s culture, let your team employ its skills and talent to create on your behalf. When each conceptual draft meets the communications strategy, or answers the creative brief, you’ll know that you’re working with folks who get it; you’ll feel more confident trusting their professional expertise. And, when their insights and ideas gain your respect, you’ll have earned their tireless involvement and steadfast commitment.

Repeat.

Clearly, communication fosters confidence. When we gather good information, ask relevant questions, define where we’re going – together – and then deliver ideas, content and designs that reflect that conversation, we’ve created one of the keystones to a provable, successful partnership. We’ve heard each other, seen evidence of understanding, and trust that it can and will happen again.

Now, that bears repeating.

To help you communicate the details of your next project, contact us by email for a communications strategy worksheet.

“Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” Helen Keller

© Stone’s Throw, Inc. All rights reserved.

Starting out, we at Stone’s Throw often coach clients with smaller and medium-sized businesses to use social media initially as a way to demonstrate vitality, interest, and enthusiasm by showing activity on social media platforms. Let the world see your public face – especially if your potential customers use social media. Ensure that your posts are consistent with your brand image and messaging, and please make sure that you have a system for post approvals, monitoring, and responding.

If social media advertising will indeed add value to your marketing efforts, there are a few terms you’ll want to know:

Awareness ads: Paid social media advertising is a way to create energy and push your posts into the newsfeeds of your selected audiences. These ads are often referred to as awareness ads; they boost awareness by allowing audiences to see your ad (“impression”). Awareness advertising is often the least expensive of social media placements.

Conversion ads: To encourage your audience to take some kind of action (visit your webpage, make a phone call, complete a form, etc.), social media ads have to work harder and typically cost more. They require the user to move from a passive audience member to someone who takes some kind of action. This is often referred to as conversion.

Engagement rate: Most social media platforms use metrics to describe the types of interaction your posts generate. Engagement rate refers to the number of likes, shares, and comments your posted content receives.

Hashtag: You can supercharge your posted content by tagging keywords with a hashtag (#) – what some of us used to call a pound sign. When a # precedes a word or phrase (without any word spaces), the social media platform sees the phrase as a searchable keyword. This can be especially helpful when looking for people talking about a particular marketing issue online. #smallbizmarketing

Should your business advertise on Facebook or LinkedIn? Here are a few things to consider.

Unlike traditional print advertising in which we pay for the amount of space on a page and the number of issues in which an ad will appear (for example), social media advertising offers many avenues to get ad messaging in front of potential customers. The costs are determined, not just on a set amount per exposure to that audience, but in competition with others vying for that same audience. If it sounds like we’re talking about an auction, we are. For much social media advertising, you actually bid on getting your ad in front of your audience. You will notice terms like pay-per-click (PPC) associated with bid-based advertising. Other options of setting fixed prices to reach verified target markets on social media require a larger investment and are available mostly to big brand advertisers.

Social media platforms often say that cost is both the overall amount you spend on advertising and the cost of each desired result. This is overly simplified. However, if your desired result is to increase your number of Facebook followers or garner more LinkedIn comments, you could say that if you spend $100 a month and get five new followers each month, the cost of follower acquisition is $20 per follower. (We say this is overly simplified because there can be many other factors that influence cost, including your time, messaging development, ad and artwork creation, etc.)

When we at Stone’s Throw think of social media advertising as part of the overall promotional activity of a smaller to medium-sized business, we focus much more intently on moving prospects closer to you. How can we get that prospective customer close enough to have a conversation? That conversation can happen on a social media platform, yes, but for businesses like ours, we want to have that conversation privately. We want to ask questions that reveal challenges, exchange ideas, and answer questions as the consultative souls we are. So, one of our promotional goals is to spur a one-on-one exchange, either through email, telephone, video conference, or an in-person meeting. If social media advertising can get us to that goal, we think it could be worth a trial run. Start small. Assess. Branch out.

Just starting out on social media? Here are a few things you should know.

Larger companies typically understand how to leverage their marketing efforts to grow business. Part of that understanding is manifest in an institutionalized lead qualification and sales process. Salespeople undertake rigorous training on the features and advantages of products and services, how to use recommended marketing materials, and even how to overcome customer objections. But, having a workable sales process helps businesses of all sizes.

You likely have a sales process already, even if you haven’t memorialized it in print. Have you tried writing it down? Not only will it help you save time with each prospect, it will help you identify where you could lighten up or fortify activities. We know it’s all about making connections and building relationships, not about getting caught up in data entry and recordkeeping, but outlining your process is likely to help streamline your efforts for optimal effectiveness.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or you market a growing mid-size business, reviewing the phases of your company’s selling process will help you ensure you have all the tools necessary to build your business with increased opportunities. Download our quick guide to getting organized with your sales process.

For ideas on how to position and market your business, let’s talk. Give your salesperson all the communications material needed for optimal performance: introductory email content, an informative website, capabilities brochures, spec and sell sheets, email marketing campaigns, and even telephone scripts for initial calls and recommendations for online CRMs.