Part of Charles Darwin’s theory about the ‘survival of the fittest’, is that each species must either ‘adapt or die’. 125 years later, a subset of our own species (entreprenuers and business owners) need to implement his advice: ‘adapt or die’. You see, I believe that during the economic recession that we’ve struggled with during the past three years, most business owners attribute many of their problems to the ambiguous ‘financial crisis’, issues like tight credit, sagging revenue, etc..
However, its my belief that a far more dangerous problem that we’re faced with are the catastrophic, gut-wrenching changes in the way we actually do business, and even communicate with each other. Who heard of Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter 3 years ago? Yet they, and the Internet platform that supports them, are responsible for dramatic changes to the entire media industry. Care to guess how many newspapers in North America have disappeared during 2009? How often do you listen to the radio anymore, when you have so many other choices of listening to the music you like, when you want it.
Still have one of those phones at home that hangs on your wall (or sets on a desk)? Now we carry individual cell phones with cameras, video, texting and more computing power than mainframe computers had 25 years ago. Heck, even the US Postal Service is flirting with bankruptcy; when’s the last time you wrote a personal letter (remember those?) or mailed a postcard?
Here’s the dilemna these market dynamics are causing…the technology revolution has rapidly changed the way we communicate with each other during the past five years. The problem is that the traditional methods of communicating via television, radio, newspaper, or even direct mail with our clients and customers is disappearing into the sunset. Meanwhile, the replacement channels or processes for a business to communicate with existing clients and prospective customers isn’t nearly as well defined or developed. In fact, implementing some of these same technologies such as texting, email, etc, can be either socially unacceptable, or downright illegal.
Given the current trend of media businesses like radio, and newspapers going out of business, my challenge becomes communicating my next big 50% off sale to my current clients and new prospects. How am I going to grow my business, or even survive if I can’t effectively communicate with my clients? What’s an entreprenuer to do?? Oh, I suppose I could give you some explicit advice, but it’d be obsolete by the time you read this. So instead I will offer three basic suggestions…plus one bonus!
1. Go where your customers are. If you’re looking in all the wrong places, any form of communication will be adequate. You likely won’t be selling snow blowers or snow shovels in Florida, so no form of communication will yield results. Does your product or service have a niche? Is there a place on the internet or in the offline world where they congregate to socialize or to network?
2. Once you find them, figure out the best way to communicate with them. Is it the internet? Direct mail postcards? Twitter? Don’t get too wrapped up in any specific method of transmitting your message, be flexible and adaptable to new developing methods of communicating.
3. What you communicate is always more important than how you communicate. Your messages to clients must always articulate the value, or they simply won’t respond; the silence will be deafening no matter what medium you use to transmit the message.
4. Don’t be pressured into quickly adopting new technologies to communicate with clients. 96% of the world’s inhabitants aren’t identified as ‘early adopters’ of new technology. Make sure that the new method or technology to communicate actually works for you, achieves some sort of measurable ROI before you jump in. Just because its there, isn’t a valid reason to include a new technology in your communications strategy.
