Would Mitt Romney as Secretary of Business Be Good for Small Business?

A possible new cabinet position could be right for Romney,

but his Bain experience and jobs platform indicate that he might not be right for SMEs

While on the campaign trail, President Barack Obama suggested that he would want to create a new cabinet-level position called Secretary of Business.  The responsibilities assigned to this new role would include the oversight of nine existing commerce-related government agencies, including the Small Business Administration.  The day after the election, Toure - a featured pundit on MSNBC's weekday show "The Cycle" - opined that Mitt Romney would be the perfect person to fill the job.

Romney enjoyed a stellar career as the founding CEO at Bain Capital.  But facets of his work at Bain, along with the ideas that formed the basis of his candidacy's job creation platform, suggest that his success in one type of business does not indicate proficiency in others, especially when it comes to helping small to medium-sized companies as a Secretary of Business.
 
Romney presented himself as a credible business expert during the campaign, and his extraordinary achievements at Bain Capital confirm this assertion.  Yet while he was a visionary at buying, optimizing, and selling companies, his Bain experience didn't include the operation or supervision of these organizations on a day to day basis.  He was involved in the macro financial processes of the firms that he acquired, not in the workaday details of figuring out how to attract and keep their clients; build their sales; manage and motivate their staffs; effectively define their brands and communicate their sales messages; or improve the quality of their products/services.

His goal at Bain was to scrub and polish his purchased companies so they'd be attractive for eventual sale to potential purchasers, and his success in achieving this goal has been proven.  What isn't proven, however, is the assumption that Romney understands how to successfully execute the quotidian details of running a B2B or B2C business, or grasp what owners of small to medium-sized firms need to do in order to survive and flourish.
 
Also in question are the solutions that Romney presented during the campaign to remedy our employment challenges. 

Romney's job creation platform relied upon three planks: reduce corporate taxes, reduce corporate regulations, and increase training of America's work force.  According to Romney, these three solutions would allow American firms to become more competitive, more profitable, and more open to hiring new workers 

The problem with this approach is that it does not address the key reason why firms of any size hire new workers:  to meet increased demand.  If consumers are buying more of a company's products or services, that company would need to increase its workforce in order to meet this surge in sales.
 
By not considering the link between increased demand and increased hiring, Romney offered a job creation plan that was predicated on a mistaken notion: companies would create jobs, but only if there are sufficient incentives to do so.  In Romney's macro business view, this idea made complete sense.  But for business owners, the only true inducement to hire is if there are sufficient new sales coming in for them to be able to afford to pay additional salaries and benefits on a sustained basis.

Mitt Romney's business acumen has been confirmed by his impressive private sector accomplishments at Bain Capital, and Toure's respect for these achievements is understandable.  But Romney achieved success in a specific type of business, namely private equity, venture capital, and public market investments.  To assume that Romney's financial wisdom would translate to good judgment as Secretary of Business - in which he would seek to improve the prosperity of America's small to medium sized companies - isn't supported by his lack of experience in the day-to-day operations of B2B and B2C organizations and his unproven ideas of how to increase American employment.

RANDOM & ESSENTIAL TIPS FOR BUSINESS OWNERS

Here are three completely random yet absolutely essential tips that all business owners need to memorize and be able to recite in their sleep.

1.  DON'T SPEND MONEY ON STUFF THAT WON'T DELIVER ROI

Too many business owners invest huge amounts of money into marketing initiatives like fancy logos, elaborate websites, etc. that are great for building their image, but do nothing to build sales.  Instead, put your energy into delivering an excellent product/service that exceeds customers' expectations - and the sales will follow.  If your product/service is lousy, a great image won't help you sell it.

2.  BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN WHAT YOU DO IN ONE SENTENCE

If you can't articulate what you do, why it's different from and superior to your competition, and who your customer is, you're in big trouble as a business.  Also, if you can't state this info clearly, concisely and convincingly – you’re chances of survival will be quite slim.

3.  ALWAYS BRING A CHEESECAKE

When selling your product/service, don't keep going back to the same prospects to ask if they're ready to buy.  Instead, serve them a bite of sweet, tasty news about your company,  like some press that you've generated, a customer's success story, or a new deal that you've closed.  Don't mention a word about selling them anything.  Eventually, after sampling a series of your yumminess, they'll soon be ready to dig in - and that's when you can begin doing business with them.

A New Idea For Marketing Pros: Communicating In A Way That Clients Understand

In “B.S. Detector”,a :60 spot for the Adobe Marketing Cloud suite of online measurement tools (Goodby Silverstein), an assortment of young execs are asked how their firm measures the results of its digital marketing efforts.  Each marketer responds by tossing out such jibberish as ripple effects, key influencers, cross segment synergies, and 360  views of the customer.  As they do so, they receive a shock from a machine that’s calibrated to penalize the usage of marketing-speak that sounds intelligent, but means absolutely nothing.

While the spot’s humor is based on its exaggeration of reality, I think that it actually reveals a troubling truth:  too many marketing pros are steeped in the argot of their discipline, and unable to explain how their work can deliver the results that their clients need in order to thrive in the marketplace.

According to author and corporate sales trainer Lee Boyan, there are three ways in which sales reps can close B2B sales:  they need to be able to explain how their product or service can make their clients money, save their clients money, or improve a client’s image in the marketplace.  These are the essential “big three” achievement areas in which all companies must gain traction, and the “big three” results (revenue generation, cost savings, image improvement) that business owners and C-suite executives are focused upon.

Unfortunately, while many marketing pros can effortlessly sprinkle dazzling (and dizzying) buzzwords into their pitches and presentations, many are at a loss when it comes to concisely delineating how their offerings can deliver one or more of the three key results that will keep their clients operating in the black.

I think that the reason for this disconnect is because most agency marketers have never owned or operated their own businesses.  If they did, they’d realize that their clients need tools that will help them make money, save money, or improve their image in the marketplace.  If a marketer can’t plainly explain how a particular tool can help a client meet those needs, then it’s worthless to the client – irrespective of how successfully the tool can stimulate ripple effects, key influencers, cross segment synergies, and 360  views of the customer.

To help marketers communicate more effectively, they need to first realize that their primary function is to support their company’s sales team.  Marketers must strategically identify the target buyers for their products or services, create the multimedia collateral that succinctly explains their offerings, and enunciate crystal clear value propositions that capture the deliverable benefits which would be most appealing to potential customers (and helpful to their company’s sales pros).  If five different marketers working for the same company give five different answers about why their customers should buy their product or service - and they do so using the same kind of inane yang that’s featured in the Adobe spot - then those marketers are failing their department, their sales force, and their company overall.

To remedy this situation, marketers should spend more time learning about the unique needs, goals, and challenges of their customers and less time inhaling the sweet smoke of their own overcooked, overdone marketing slang.  By putting themselves into a buyer’s mindset, they’d realize that a simply stated description of the specific “big three” benefits that a product or service can deliver is much more convincing than a string of moist, meaningless marketing mush that’s so devoid of substance, it could be used to describe just about anything.

Another option would be for all agency and in-house marketing directors to borrow Adobe’s B.S. detector and hook up each member of his/her team to it.  After a few rounds of responding to the question “what are the benefits that our product/service delivers to our customers?”, staffers would painfully get the point of how to provide the correct answer.  The result would be a reduction in the cliché quotient, an increase in brevity and clarity, and a much more effective – and profitable - way of communicating.

Does Your Station’s Marketing Kind Of, You Know, SUCK?

Radio marketers need to re-examine familiar methodologies

and question long-held assumptions in order to deliver results

There are two customer bases that all commercial radio stations serve:  listeners and advertisers.  A station may do a phenomenal job addressing the needs of the latter, but if it doesn’t also do a superior job attracting the former, the station won’t survive as a business entity.

In theory, it’s up to a station’s marketing team to lure and build their audience of listeners/customers in order for the sales pros to monetize them.  Problem is, most stations are relying on a familiar set of marketing tactics that are obsolete, misguided, or ineffective in a PPM world.

With that in mind, it would be helpful to take a look at five questions, the answers to which could indicate that your station’s marketing might kind of, you know, SUCK:

1. Is there a web content strategy in place?

Station websites aren’t just an extension of your brand, they’re also an extension of your business.  According to a 2011 survey by BIA/Kelsey, online revenue will increase by 15.1% in 2012, while on-air revenue will grow by only 3.5%.  If a marketing director isn’t taking his/her station’s website content as seriously as the program director takes the station’s on-air content, there are massive audience interaction opportunities – and accompanying revenue opportunities –that are being lost.

SOLUTION

To populate a station’s website with content that attracts listeners (and advertisers) and keeps them coming back for more, it’s imperative that your content SERFS.  It must be:

•Short – no long paragraphs or entries that require endless scrolling to read
•Engaging – the content should be fun, snappy, and interesting to your audience
•Relevant – the content should relate directly to, be a continuation of, or have a connection to your format and your on-air programming
•Fresh – if you want listeners to spend time at your site each day, you need to update your site each day with new content that addresses their unique needs and tastes
•Shareable – your content should be so appealing, valuable, and irresistible that your web audience is compelled to forward it to their social circles on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

By keeping the SERFS acronym in mind when vetting your station’s web content, you’ll have an effective benchmark to follow that will help to engage your current web audience, build new audience, and ramp up your online ad revenues.

2. Is there an accepted notion that outdoor ads lure new listeners and/or increase audience TSL?

Radio stations buy outdoor billboard and truck ads because they believe that such measures are a worthwhile way to influence consumer behavior.  The thought is that people will tune in or listen longer because they see a station logo on a huge roadside, building, or mobile placard.

The reality is that billboards are regarded in the ad world as being effective brand builders, not sales or audience builders.  According to ad expert Stephen Rampur, outdoor ads “create brand awareness and strong name recognition among passers-by.”

If a station’s goal is to truly inspire listening, billboards – especially those that feature a station logo/tagline/frequency/photo of an air personality - fall short:  their results are impossible to measure, they’re expensive, and they’re a non-strategic Hail Mary pass that won’t improve the fortunes of a struggling station.

SOLUTION

In order for an outdoor radio station billboard ad to have a shot at influencing consumer behavior, it needs to pack a powerful and undeniable WIIFM punch (and by WIIFM, I don’t mean a misspelled version of the AC station in Elkin, NC).

WIIFM – which stands for What’s In It For Me in sales jargon – is the prime motivator to inspire a desired action.  In the case of the radio station billboard, the WIIFM would need to offer information about key station-driven benefits that are attractive, rewarding, and exciting to a listener, such as:

• an upcoming or in-progress contest (on-air or online)

• the benefits of joining a loyal listener program
• web content that delivers immediate gratification, such as exclusive coupons or deals

Using bold graphics, tight and punchy copy, and – most importantly – an irresistible WIIFM message, a strategic billboard campaign can create the possibility for increased audience, improved web traffic, and enhanced revenue opportunities.

3. Is there a belief that the station van builds the brand, attracts listeners, and is a crucial element in the marketing mix?

Before minivans, SUVs, and Hummers took over the streets, a radio station’s van stood out.  When cruising around town or parked at a client’s place of business, the van – emblazoned with a bright station logo and encircled by enthusiastic listeners trying to get their hands on a free station t-shirt – attracted eyeballs and inspired excitement.

But with so many big vehicles now on the road, the novelty of a large station van is lost.  On its own, its effectiveness as a creator of floor traffic for the client that hires it is questionable, and its ability to generate excitement among younger listeners is also suspect.  As Hofstra University media professor John Mullen notes, “With so many distractions that are competing for listeners’ attention, you have to ask yourself:  is ‘sending the van’ a 1970’s idea that’s out of step in 2012?  Not only that, aren’t there other creative things that stations can do to build business at a client’s location beyond sending a few staffers, a vehicle, and a box of t-shirts that always run out?"

SOLUTION

Simply sending the van to a client’s place of business simply isn’t enough to bring about the increase in customer traffic that your client is looking for.  To augment the probability of attaining results, the van’s presence must have an irresistible WIIFM at its core in order to entice attendance.  In other words, while the van’s presence may have been a compelling lure to attract a crowd in the past, it isn’t any longer:  there needs to be more thought and planning involved so that the client isn’t just pleased by the customer turnout, he’s blown away.

One possibility would be to heavily promote a contest on-air with a very attractive prize.  To be eligible to win, listeners would need to be at the client’s place of business at a designated hour when the drawing would take place (the prize, of course, would be the product or service that is sold by the client).  A twist on this idea could also build up your listener database:  the contest would be open solely to event attendees who are enrolled in your loyal listener program.

To truly make a van event eventful, and to create value for the existence of the van, you can’t just schedule it, send it, park it and think that your job is over.  The presence of the van at a client’s place of business or a local event must be strategically leveraged in order to attain the greatest benefits for your station and your client.

4. Is there a belief that social buzz around your station indicates the existence of a large and loyal listening audience?

When a station’s Facebook activity, Twitter conversations, and YouTube views start racking up big numbers, it’s pretty exciting.  It seems like something big is happening, and it’s taking on an incredible life of its own.  Many radio marketing chiefs interpret this attention as an indication that people love what their station is doing, that their marketing work is successful, and that their ratings are on the verge of going through the roof.

However, according to news site WND, a supposed correlation between social buzz and real world ratings is quite murky.  The reason is simple:  social buzz and social media metrics measure exchanges between your station (news, content, and brand) and your listeners, as well as the transmission of these exchanges with your listeners’ social circles.  It’s great for this heat to be emanating from your station, but in no way can it be interpreted as being an indication of anything other than your most ardent P1’s taking the time to pay attention to, interact with, and spread your content.

SOLUTION

Having an active presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. is an essential marketing tactic for a radio station to support and embrace.  But misinterpreting a healthy social media buzz surrounding your station can create a sense of dangerous complacency and unfounded overconfidence.

In the past two years, dozens of stations across the country with robust social media traction have flipped formats due to low PPM measurements and disappointing profits.  Each of these stations had followers, likes, repins, and retweets out the wazoo, but in the end, station success isn’t determined by social media metrics.  It’s determined by the metrics that truly represent a station’s health or lack thereof:  ratings and revenue.

5. Is there an overall marketing strategy in place?

Many radio marketing chiefs make the mistake of thinking that implementing the right tactics – such as the ones listed above – will produce surefire success.  Not true.  What’s usually missing is a smart strategy that will guide a station’s marketing tactics toward a clearly defined goal.

In terms of their definitions, strategy is the big picture plan, while tactics are the moves that are used to carry out the strategy.  As writer and consultant Seth Godin points out, “The right strategy makes any tactic work better.  The right strategy puts less pressure on you to execute your tactics perfectly.”

As an experiment, ask all the members of your marketing team to define the department’s overall strategy.  Expect to receive a slew of “well, um, uh…” responses.  If anything more coherent is offered, don’t be surprised if everyone’s thoughts are not only completely different, but kinda sorta wrong.

SOLUTION

The director of marketing needs to create a clear and concise strategy statement that will be the roadmap for all of your department’s efforts.  This statement should be built in conjunction with the general sales manager, because it’s his/her team that the strategy will be serving.  It should also be vetted by the OM, GM, and PD so that everyone is aware of the plan and how it will benefit their respective departments.  Finally, the strategy statement should then be shared with the entire marketing squad, so that all members understand the overall goal of their daily efforts.

Radio station marketing that sucks isn’t terminal:  with a determined effort, it can be successfully reversed.  However, to make changes that will yield positive results and vigorous ROI, one must honestly acknowledge the suckage.  Due diligence that examines the extent of the suck must be performed and a smart plan needs to be launched that will set your department – and your station – on a cost-effective path to superior ratings, better profits, and 100% suck-free marketing results.