Ten networking tips to help boost your career

Networking is a powerful tool for business people to meet relevant people that can help them further their career, whether it is a new job or new clients.  As they say, "It's not what you know but who you know."

What Is Business Networking?

Business networking is the act of interacting and conversing with other people to develop professional contacts and exchange information, usually in the setting of an event or meeting. Networking helps individuals to establish and nurture long-term and mutually valuable relationships, popular with career-focused professionals.

The aim is usually to expand one’s circle of influence and acquaintances to enhance opportunities to further one’s career — whether it is a new job or promotion or to meet potential future clients, customers or business partners. Invest time (and a little bit of money) into increasing your networks and relationships — personal and professional, and in the long-run, you will reap the benefits.

Although we often have individual goals, we should not forget that networking is for mutual benefit. If you want to further your career opportunities, you should be networking. Opportunities to network exist all around us. At the supermarket. At the gym. Picking up the kids from school or watching them play sport, or at religious gatherings. We should not neglect our networks as an opportunity to grow our business network. As they say, it is not what you know, but who you know.

Growing your networks will help you establish rapport and trust in your local community, so look for opportunities to network strategically. Consider locations where you are likely to meet new people with common professional or personal interests, and where you feel comfortable. Volunteering is one way to meet people and put yourself in a positive light, whether its coaching or for a local community group.

Business networking events

There are several options out there for business networking, this section will cover a few of those options to help you choose what might be best for you. There is not a “one size fits all” for networking — different settings and strategies will suit different people.

Try different networking events to see what is more comfortable for you. Do you like busy open networking events with noise and atmosphere, or would you prefer a sit-down coffee group with a dozen or so people, each taking a turn to talk? Whether you have introvert or extroverted characteristics will influence how comfortable you are in a certain setting.

Once you have worked out what type of networking setting suits you best, think about where you can meet the right kinds of people to help you further your career.

Chamber of Commerce

If you join your local Chamber of Commerce, often they have a range of events set up for their members. The goal of a Chamber is to help promote, support and encourage sustainable, profitable business growth in the local community for its members. Often, they run events once or twice a month where there are designated speakers on a particular theme, and there is a networking portion of the event.

BNI

The BNI group (Business Network International) is one of the most well-known and popular networking groups for business professionals. BNI is an American model franchised around the world, boasting over 270,000 Members in 9,500 Chapters worldwide. They call themselves “the world’s leading business referral organisation”. They are often very structured, and members meet weekly or fortnightly, usually over breakfast. There are a large emphasis and expectation to provide referrals for other members and because of this there is a membership fee to be a member, and typically only one person from each profession can be a member of each chapter.

Many of the networking skills discussed in this will not apply as this format is so structured and everyone gets a turn to talk about themselves and what they do.

Coffee networking group

Coffee groups

Coffee groups are a fantastic way to build relationships with people over a period. You could consider starting your own, set up through a Facebook or LinkedIn group, or your local mailing list. I run a local coffee group who meet once a month on the same day, time and location, to make it easy to lock into the diary. Everyone gets 30 seconds or so to give their elevator pitch and then we all have informal discussions with the people next to us, or sometimes as a whole table (inevitably with 10–15 people, smaller conversations break out). There is no fee to attend and no obligations for referrals like a BNI, so it has quite a relaxed feel. Once you build trust with people, referrals will naturally come.

LinkedIn Local

LinkedIn Local is a business networking event set up to leverage the growing popularity of LinkedIn and its professional networks. It is in over 1000 cities around the world, and the format is dependent on the individual event and its host. Some events are small coffee group type gatherings or at a bar, and some are more large scale in a specific events space. I run one called

LinkedIn Local Hamilton networking event

The benefits of networking

A strong professional network can have many benefits that can influence the success of your career and growth. Here are some of the benefits you will receive through planned and regular networking.

Career development

The overall goal for most people who attend networking groups is the evolution of their career. Some of those people might have a specific goal of short-term sales or to meet a certain person or type of person, but these goals all work towards the grand vision of being more successful in life and business.

People used to have jobs. Now people have careers. In an ideal world, more businesses would emphasize the professional development of their staff, but it is usually up to the individual to further their career. The average life span for a job is five years, even less for those under 35. Career-focused individuals often have an eye or ear out for better opportunities to further their careers.

Opportunities

Developing your career is a long-term game, and consistently networking will open many new doors for opportunities.

If you are a good networker, you will find opportunities to connect with different people everywhere you go. You could meet people who end up being a mentor to you or build a stronger relationship with somebody from senior management in your workplace. Do not dismiss the workplace as an opportunity for networking. Often large workplaces have an end of week or end of month drink, could be beneficial to your career progression.

You could also use environments such as after school sport when you chat with other parents as an opportunity to improve your soft skills and you never know where opportunities come from. It is all about building relationships with relevant people consistently over a period

For those people who have recently lost a job or have just finished their study and are looking for a professional role, networking is the perfect opportunity to put yourself out there to grab any opportunities. You never know who you might meet who could be hiring or can give you a lead or referral which lands you the role you desire. They might just connect you with the right people. Networking helps you watch the local job market.

Just like it can help you find a new job; networking is a great environment to meet clients. There more people you meet who know what you do, the more likely you are to find new clients who want to engage you. Whether it is directly or through referral because of the trust you have built through networking.

Increasing your local profile

If you have been to a networking event before, you have probably noticed that there seems to be somebody who knows everybody. Chances are, they are probably regular on the local networking scene. Professionals can leverage networking to increase their profile. When you become well known and well respected with many people, this increases their general awareness of what you do and your expertise, leading to more business opportunities.

Networking event — LinkedIn Local Hamilton

“Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.” (Carnegie, 1936)

Exchange ideas & knowledge

Networking is the perfect opportunity to learn. Therefore, a key skill to have as a networker is the ability to listen, as people who are strong networkers often exchange valuable information that is not public and only gained through conversation.

Whether it is keeping up with general current affairs, local news or industry knowledge and trends; the ideas and information gained from networking can help a career move forward. This sharing of knowledge also helps cement relationships by enhancing your credibility and mutual trust. Networking is a two-way street, so do not underestimate what value you can provide through sharing your knowledge.

Boost your confidence

Networking will help you develop and improve your soft skills which will increase your confidence to start conversations with new people. This increased self-esteem can be beneficial in the workplace when having conversations with senior staff members, or in your next job interview. Without having to consciously think about it, your body language will be a lot more positive from this self-belief.

Students often have not had many conversations with working professionals and once they leave their bubble of student life they can be a little nervous in job interviews or networking for the first time. It can be daunting. Actively trying to interact with professionals in your industry to gain networking experience and confidence can really set you apart from your peers in the job hunt.

Networking skills

Although it seems like great networkers are naturals, and often extroverts can be, it is just as much a skill learned and acquired. Here are ten networking skills or tips that you can use to become better at networking.

Have a plan

The first thing you can do to improve your networking is to have a plan. I must admit, when I first started networking, I had no idea what I was doing and would stand awkwardly in the corner and get nothing from it. Building a network is just like any other goal you have in life, and therefore, you need some sort of plan on how to achieve this goal.

Often people uncomfortable with networking view it as a work activity, which can make it seem quite loathsome. This mindset will not put you in the right frame of mind for networking. If you link networking with a higher goal, you will come into it with a much more positive mindset.

Whilst you do not need a specific goal for each event like I have to talk to X person, it is important to plan what you want to achieve so you increase your chances of meeting the right people. Choosing the right events to attend can define your success at a networker. Having broad goals for each event such as meeting with three people in your industry and knowing what actions you need to take.

Find familiar faces

If you are feeling uncomfortable and anxious about networking with people you do not know, look for people you are familiar with and join their group. It might be work colleagues or people you have met briefly previously. If you start here, you are likely to meet new people through them introducing you to people they know. You will also grow in confidence and after a while, you will get a feel for the atmosphere and should grow enough courage to approach other groups.

Networking event

Find other people who are alone

If you cannot spot anybody that you know, try and find other people that are there alone. Chances are that they are feeling just as awkward as you are! Not everybody who attends networking events are seasoned pros. Often there will be many people such as yourself who are new to networking or new to the area.

Approach them in a light-hearted way and ask if they are there alone too, and how it is awkward to not know anybody there when everyone else seems to know each other. You will probably share a laugh and their walls will come down and you might have a really enjoyable conversation. Other people might notice this and come and join you.

Position yourself near the bar if you are alone and looking for somebody to chat to. The worst thing you can do is try and capture people as they walk in. Chances are they are tired and or hungry after work, and the first thing they want to do is grab a drink. They will be far more comfortable and ready to chat if they have just grabbed a drink.

Remembering names

When you meet a person or group of people for the first time, do you forget their names 30 seconds after the introduction?

I am the first person to admit I am terrible at remembering names. Unless I am focusing on remembering names, it is like they are instantly gone from memory. This is not going to help your networking very much, as it can be very awkward to not be able to remember somebody’s name and you might steer clear of them to avoid the situation. On the flip side, people love to hear their name, and it will leave a great impression if you remember their name and introduce them to someone else.

Luckily, remembering names can be a learnt skill. Try and attach a visual cue to a unique facial or body feature of each individual. If it rhymes, that will help even more. You might meet a guy called Henry or Harry who has a long beard. The visual cue that helps you remember his name could be hairy.

Body language

Body language can be a crucial factor at networking events of how many conversations you attract in the evening. Go in with a positive mindset and Smile! If you are uncomfortable, try not to focus on this. Your body language will reflect you are feeling awkward and people will feel this energy and will not approach you. Try not to look serious. Focus on happy thoughts and be open with your body language.

Smile at anyone who looks in your direction and say hello. Whilst engaging in conversation, the head tilt is a positive cue you can use to create rapport with the other person. This body language shows the other person that you are interesting, paying attention and listening. Everyone likes to be listened to!

Entering conversations

One of the most difficult things to do as a networker is trying to enter a conversation already in full flow. Especially if none of the people in the conversation knows who you are. Confidence is essential when networking, but do not go in, all guns blazing and interrupt a group conversation.

Instead, wait for your moment. It will make a bad first impression if you interrupt the flow of the conversation. Start by listening and then find a moment where you can add some value. If you can ask somebody a question, this is a soft way you can enter a conversation.

Listening to others builds them up. A lot of people at networking events love to talk about themselves. If you are not a confident networker, let other people lead the conversation. If you show genuine interest, nod in the right places and ask questions to find out more about their experiences and opinion, it will leave a great impression without you having to say very much.

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” (Carnegie, 1936)

Focus on learning

As discussed earlier, the benefit of networking is the exchange of ideas and knowledge. Therefore, part of your mindset when networking should be to learn as much as possible. Focus on learning instead of what you plan to get out of that specific conversation, you will come across in a positive light.

Approach networking with curiosity and an open mind about what interesting people you might meet. If you want to learn something new about someone, your conversation will seem far more authentic to the other person. You may have an interesting conversation that gives you new ideas leading to new experiences. Concentrate how networking helps you boost your knowledge and skills to further your career.

Identify common interests

Memorable conversations often begin with a point of common ground. Your kids go to the same school or you are members of the same sports club. The sooner you can identify any similarities you have, the sooner you will build rapport with that person and the easier the conversation will flow. This will be the starting point for an ongoing professional relationship. Consciously think about how your interests and goals align with the people you are meeting.

The easiest way you can do this is by asking questions to find out more about them. The conversation will feel far less forced and more authentic and meaningful, which will be a lot more memorable than the previous conversation they had about the weather. They will also appreciate the fact you tried to get to know them a bit better and might introduce you to others in their network with mutual interests.

Pay it forward

Do not make the mistake of looking at networking from the perspective of something you do just to get something out of it personally. If you look at networking equally as an opportunity to help others, people will recognise this and be more willing to help you. Introduce your network to each other if you think they can mutually benefit and look for ways to provide value to people.

The more you learn about your new connections the easier it will be to help them. It could be anything from a restaurant recommendation to introducing them to someone in your network. A great networker will know people with skill and expertise in all kinds of areas. If they cannot help them personally, they will know someone who can. They will both feel grateful toward you for bringing them together, giving you brownie points.

There is nothing worse than talking to someone at a networking event and the conversation cut rudely short when the other person realises there is no immediate benefit for them to gain from that conversation and they walk away to talk to somebody else. Do not be that person!

Following Up

Following up with somebody with mutual interest after meeting them at a networking event might sound obvious, but it is something that many professionals fail to do. People get busy and you can quite quickly become forgotten, wasting the hard work you did putting yourself out there. Following up reaffirms what you discussed, establishing your connection with them and opens future communication. Within a couple of days, send them an email (assuming you swapped business cards) or connect with them on LinkedIn with a personalised message, reminding them who you are and your conversation.

Do not follow up too strongly, you do not want to ruin your hard work by coming across as clingy or desperate. Once you connect on LinkedIn, you can stay in touch through wishing them a happy birthday or tagging them in articles that could provide value to them. Just stay relevant — do not be pushy!

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That‘s this week’s blog. I hope you enjoyed this week’s content about networking.

Now go out there and meet some people!

How creating brand equity provides value to your customers

The power of branding in the twentieth century is obvious. Brands such as Google, Apple, Nike and McDonalds are globally recognisable and powerful, the only thing that sets them apart from their competitors is the unique connection and loyalty that consumers hold with them.

Interest in the theory of brand equity increased in the late 1980s with a concern that a shifting trend from businesses towards a short-term focus on finances could have a harmful long-term effect on their brand and marketing tactics. There was a realisation that brands are assets to a business, driving business performance over time.

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What Is Brand Equity?

Brand equity is the added or subtracted value given to a current or potential product or service, influenced by the brand. It is “the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand” (Keller, 1993). Consumers have a perception and desire that a brand will meet their promise of benefits. The higher the perception of value, the higher the premium customers are willing to pay.

Most people don’t think twice before purchasing Coca Cola

An elevated level of positive brand equity requires cooperation between the tangible and intangible aspects of a product or service. The intangible aspects come from a customer’s subjective experiences with a brand, the brand’s uniqueness and personality and ability to stay relevant and build a relationship with loyal customers.  

“Brands, in their ability to create choice, build trust and loyalty and drive a premium price.” (Interbrand, 2010)

 

Customers are willing to pay more

Consumers gravitate toward products with great reputations. Brands with strong positive brand equity can generate a premium when compared to a generic equivalent. Customers are more willing to pay a higher price — even if they can get a comparable product or service from a competitor for less.

This is how Apple can charge so much for an iPhone when a comparable alternative can cost less than half the price, yet Apple’s legions of loyal fans will queue outside the store to buy the latest phone on release. If a customer attaches elevated levels of quality or status to a brand, they perceive it as being worth more than alternatives.

This price premium is not limited to consumer products; a study on industrial products (See Bendixena, Bukasaa, & Abratt, 2003) found that the leading industrial brand name could command a price premium of 6.8% over the average industrial brand and 14% over a new and unknown brand. Technical specialists were willing to pay a price premium of up to 26%.

Other benefits of positive brand equity

Besides the benefits of being able to charge a premium price, there are numerous other benefits to having a brand with strong positive equity. Some of the benefits are as follows:

• Higher profit margins because businesses with high brand equity can charge more, but do not incur a higher expense to produce the product or service.
• The brand is more recognisable and trusted, therefore there is increased demand by customers which results in higher sales volumes. Brands are more easily extendable, which means the parent brand can develop a preference and favourable impressions towards their new products or services with their customers.
• Your target market more readily accepts marketing communications due to your existing positive reputation.
• A reduction in new product failure rates and launching costs are lower due to a higher level of brand awareness and trust with their target market.
• Due to the brand reputation of delivering a certain level of quality, customer retention and loyalty is high as consumers like to reduce their risk and simplify their choice.
• A reduction in marketing costs to achieve the same volume as it costs more to acquire new customers than it does to retain existing customers.
• Higher resilience to competitors’ actions as customers is loyal and unlikely to switch. This creates entry barriers to the marketplace for competitors as it is not a profitable market segment for their brand to target.
• A strong brand provides strategic support to a business strategy that will add long-term value to the organization.
• Brands with high equity can have higher marketing budgets to invest back into marketing through their higher profit margins. This helps ensure brand equity remains strong.

Brands are everywhere you look in big cities

Customer-based brand equity

Over the years, there has been confusion and disagreement on how to best define measure brand equity. There have been multiple definitions, but they predominantly fit into two distinct categories: customer-based and financial.

“Customer-based brand equity is defined as the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand.” (Keller, 1993)

Customer-based brand equity is the most popular conceptualisation of brand equity, introduced by prominent marketing academic Kevin Keller. He defined brand equity as attracting (or repulsing) consumers to (from) a product, generated by the ‘non-objective’ part of the product. It is the added value of a product in a customer’s mind. It is the influence brand knowledge has on consumer response to the marketing of the brand.

Keller’s brand knowledge construct drives brand equity and is made up of three dimensions — brand awareness, brand image, and brand associations. Brand image is a customer’s perception of a product, service or brand. Brand awareness is a consumer’s ability to recognise a brand and recall how they have that knowledge. As you can see above, an individual’s brand knowledge is the combination of their subjective brand awareness and brand image. Brand image should not be confused with brand identity, which is controlled by the firm. Brand image is the customer’s perception of this identity.

See Keller’s brand awareness framework below.

Kevin Keller’s brand awareness model

David Aaker is another notable marketing academic who modelled brand equity from the point of view of the customer. He believes recognition is the important driver of brand equity and identified four contributors to brand equity: perceived quality, brand loyalty, brand awareness and brand associations.

Variations of the dimensions the drivers of customer-based brand equity discussed in the literature include reputation, identity, personality, attitude, familiarity, commitment, trustworthiness, loyalty, and performance.

A common characteristic of both Keller’s and Aaker’s model of brand equity is brand associations. Brand associations are anything that creates a positive or negative feeling toward a brand. Marketing aims to create strong, favourable, and unique brand perceptions and associations with a brand that customers remember. It can be based on functional benefits of the product, but often focuses on connecting on an emotional level through a unique brand personality that reflects positive organisational values and social benefits. An individual’s usage experience also influences their brand associations, which is why tangible and intangible aspects of a brand’s products or services must align.

David Aaker’s brand equity model

“High brand equity implies that customers have a lot of positive and strong associations related to the brand, perceive the brand is of high quality, and are loyal to the brand.” (Yoo, Donthu, & Lee, 2000)

 

Relationships build equity

One of the underlying functions of marketing in the 21st century is to form a relationship with customers. Creating a successful relationship contributes to the positive equity existing in a brand, as these customers like and trust you. Brand trust and loyalty strengthen consumers’ investment into the brand by reducing their uncertainty and vulnerability.

A strong brand “increases customers’ trust of invisible products, while helping them to better understand and visualise what they are buying.” (Berry, 2000)

Brand trust is the willingness of a customer to rely on a brand to meet their expectations of function utility. This requires time and experience between the two parties, but trust plays an important mediating role in the creation of equity and value in a brand.

Brand loyalty is a commitment from a customer to consume a preferred product or service consistently and repeatedly into the future, despite situational influences and the marketing efforts of competitors having the potential to cause switching behaviour. Customers that believe in the value of a brand often will not spend time appraising cheaper options with lower prices.

Marketing’s role in creating equity

Companies can create brand equity by making products and services memorable, easily recognisable, and superior in quality and reliability. Marketing is a major driver of brand equity through differentiating products from competing brands. Marketing builds strong brand equity through influencing the brand associations held in a consumer’s mind. Enhance the strength of your brand by investing in advertising and resist often discounting products; as this has been shown to create negative brand equity for businesses, as customers are less willing to pay a premium price if they know it is often sold much cheaper.

“Brand equity is developed through enhanced perceived quality, brand loyalty, and brand awareness/associations; which cannot be either built or destroyed in the short run but can be created only in the long run through carefully designed marketing investments.” (Yoo, Donthu & Lee, 2000)

Create a personality for your brand expressed through your marketing mix. The connection a consumer feels with your brand’s personality can define your relationship with customers. Creativity helps develop a unique brand differentiated from competitors. Marketing communications should also be consistent in the long-term, from messages to the visual identity. The marketing mix should also always be relevant to the target customer and your brand image. Stay true to the brand.

The brand equity model below from Yoo, Donthu & Lee (2000) is a good illustration of how marketing contributes to the brand equity process.

Brand equity as the financial value

The second popular definition of brand equity is based on measuring the financial value of a brand. The value added to a product or service by its brand name compared to an unbranded alternative.

Marketers in the 1980s started to realise that certain brands offered considerable added value to products. They saw brand equity as a durable and sustainable asset to a business and wanted a way to estimate the unique value of each brand. One of the formulas introduced to estimate a brands value is by taking the value of the firm and subtracting the tangible assets and “measurable” intangible assets. The remaining value is the firm’s financial brand equity. This measure used at the macro (market) level, to put a monetary value on a brand for resale purposes. There are also measures for brand equity at a micro or product level, which allowed firms to observe the value of individual brands by isolating changes in brand equity by measuring its response after major marketing decisions.

As the financial method offered limited use to helping set marketing strategies to grow strong brands, researchers preferred the customer-based approach. The brand value was starting to be explored as a concept at around the same time, and researchers began to realise that taking a financial viewpoint to brand equity was confused the topic with brand value, and the two should be kept separate.

Brand equity can be measured as the financial value of a brand

Brand value or brand equity?

An uncomplicated way to separate the two is that brand equity what a brand does for a customer, while the brand value is what it does for the business. Brand value is the financial worth of the brand. Many marketing academics consider Interbrand to be the world’s most reputable brand valuator (see Chu & Keh, 2006), and each year they publish a list of the world’s most valuable brands.

There are three key components to Interbrand’s methodology for brand valuations:

· Analysing the financial performance of the products or services — the economic profit measured as “the after-tax operating profit of the brand, minus a charge for the capital used to generate the brand’s revenue and margins.”

· The role the brand plays in purchase decisions — the portion of the purchase decision attributable to the brand as opposed to other factors.

· The brand’s competitive strength — the ability of the brand to create loyalty and, therefore, sustainable demand and profit into the future

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That is it for this week's blog. I hope you enjoyed this week’s content about brand equity. Make sure you keep creating quality marketing content around your brand to increase your brand equity!

See you next week,

Dan

Using research to better understand your target market

Market research plays a key role in helping businesses to better understand their customers and marketplace, to help them make more strategic decisions.

This week’s blog explores the topic of market research.

Marketing team discussing a marketing strategy

What is Market Research?

Market research is the organized effort of planning, gathering, recording and analysing information to better understand a target market. This includes factors such as market size, the competition and customer types.

“Information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process. Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues…” (American Marketing Association, 2004)

Research is a key component to guide businesses with important strategy decisions, such as changing elements of their marketing mix and how this is likely to impact customer behaviours.

The research process first identifies and formulates the problem, then determines the research design such as the research method and collection of data and the final stage is the analysis and providing recommendations based on the research findings.

Why is market research so valuable?

There are many strategic and tactical decisions that businesses make in the process of identifying satisfying customer needs. There are many uncontrollable environmental factors such as economic conditions, politics, and social changes that complicate marketplaces. Analytics can show a business what is happening, but you can only learn so much. Market Research helps a business discover the ‘why’.

Research provides relevant, accurate and up to date information to understand a marketplace at a current point in time. This new knowledge of relevant information informs decision-making by reducing uncertainty. Often bad decisions in business are the result of guessing instead of putting any time and effort into researching what the customer would think or how the market would react.

You will never think on behalf of your customers or experience a product or service in the same way. Testing your assumptions means you will not waste time and money on a bad idea.

Research helps businesses improve decision making to create better products, improve the customer experience and improve their marketing to attract and convert more leads. This leads to three broad goals for market research. First is to better understand the marketplace; second, to better understand your customers; third, to monitor performance.

Gain a better understanding of your market

Without understanding a market, a business is just throwing something out there, hoping it will work. Do not learn from mistakes, look for the opportunities first and then tailor your products to suit.

A market analysis is a powerful tool to study the dynamics of a specific market, whether it is online, or localised. This analysis helps a business understand market trends to discover opportunities and guide strategy. A business needs to identify internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as external opportunities and threats. This is a SWOT analysis.

Part of understanding a market is knowing what your competition is doing better than you, to improve. A similar analysis a business can use through research is a PESTEL analysis, which investigates Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal factors in a marketplace.

Some of the broad goals business have for market research are:

• planning and implementing marketing strategies

• a competitor analysis

• risk analysis

• identifying market trends and opportunities

• learning the potential for a market

• target market selection and market segmentation

• product testing and refinement

• business planning

• understanding social, technical, and political aspects of a market

Young woman shopping at a hardware store

Getting to know your customers better

Research helps businesses understand their customers wants, needs, desires, beliefs and actions. Only then, a business can recognise whether their offerings meet those needs.

When you understand your customers better, you learn to learn how they think. You learn what they value, how they make a purchase decision, and what they think of your competitors. Once the behaviours and preferences of your target customers are better understood, you can modify your offering and accordingly the marketing to better meet their needs. This is crucial for planning a marketing strategy that aligns with not only who you are, but also what the customer is looking for.

Define your buyer persona

If your business does not already have buyer personas or understand your market segment and target customers well, this is a good place for your research to start.

Buyer Personas are fictional and generalised representations of ideal customers, created by a business to better understand them and therefore more effectively target marketing to communicate with them. Personas include characteristics such as age, gender, family, location, income and challenges.

Your research participants should then match the characteristics of your buyer personas. If you have more than one persona, focus your research on your most important personas and recruit a separate sample group for each.

Sales forecast

Monitoring performance

Market research can also help a business to monitor and evaluate their marketing or product’s performance. Large companies invest millions of dollars into product development, to ensure all that effort is worth it. Provide the right solution for a customer’s problem, at the right price, with the right marketing. There is a lot to get right… or wrong.

Ways you can test consumer opinions of new products or products in development is through focus groups and beta-testing. Companies can also analyse their existing data, such as analytics, to better understand the demand for their current products and services, to then make tweaks and improvements.

Research methods

Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the method for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyses the results, and communicates the findings and their implications.

There are two major types of market research: primary research and secondary research. Primary research is sub-divided into two research methodologies, quantitative and qualitative research; although it can be a combination of the two, called mixed methods.

One general research question guides the research; for example: How should we segment our market for product x. Or, who is the most profitable region for product y. More specific research questions follow to guide the research process and what information to gather.

Primary Research

Primary research is the design, collection and analysis of your personal data through methods such as talking to customers or observing behaviours. Primary research can be exploratory or specific. Exploratory is when research is trying to understand a certain scenario and is better suited to qualitative research such as open-ended questions with a small sample.

Specific research usually follows exploratory research and delves into more specific research queries a company may have. It is more direct towards asking certain customer segment-specific questions.

Two methodologies guide the design of primary research — qualitative and quantitative research techniques.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research aims to explore feelings, behaviours and experiences — things we cannot measure with numbers and statistics. Common qualitative research methods include in-depth interviews, focus groups, and observation. The idea is to gain deeper knowledge about your customers and/or target market, to find out the why behind their decision-making process.

“Qualitative research encompasses a family of approaches, methods and techniques for understanding and thoroughly documenting attitudes a behaviour… Qualitative research seeks the meanings and motivations behind behaviour as well as a thorough account of behavioural facts and implications via a researcher’s encounter will people’s own actions, words and ideas.” (Mariampolski, 2001)

Instead of asking specific questions to get an objective answer, qualitative research does not follow a scripted approach. The researcher is facilitating a conversation rather than trying to lead it. Do not ask yes/any questions, as this style of questioning can bias the outcome, through unintentionally swaying participants’ thoughts.

There should be a general focus for the session, outlining the topics you want to explore, but it should be natural and conversational with open-ended questions. You might include one scripted question such as “take me back to the day when you first decided that you needed to solve this x problem”

From this point, you guide the participants which “can you tell more about that?”, and “how…?”, “who…?”, “where…”, “what…?” Just delve deeper into topics that the participant thinks are important to discuss. Get them to go deeper into their experiences.

Qualitative research goes deeper than quantitative to explore the ‘why’ instead of just the ‘what’. The general demographic information is not as important in qualitative research, as we want to understand the consumption experience itself rather than customer characteristics. Just find out a little bit of background information to give context to the participant, such as their career and family life.

Market research team

Quantitative research

Quantitative research aims to describe and explain a situation or problem (attitudes, opinions, behaviours), through generating numerical data or data that can be easily transformed into statistical data. The aim is to be as objective as possible to be able to generalise the results for a larger population.

“Quantitative research… explaining phenomena by collecting numerical data that are analysed using mathematically based methods (in particular statistics).” (Creswell, 1994)

Common methods of quantitative research are customer surveys, polls, questionnaires, and analysing digital analytics or secondary data. With the rise of digital technologies, mobile surveys have become increasingly popular making it far cheaper and easier to compile this kind of research.

Quantitative research typically begins with asking demographic questions to form an accurate picture of who the participants or ‘sample’ for the study are. Demographic questions are those such as gender, age and education. For example, a male under the age of 20 is going to have many differences to a woman over the age of 65. Because quantitative research focuses on numbers and statistics, a larger sample increases the validity of the results whereas qualitative research has a much smaller sample.

A substantial portion of the questions is closed-ended, meaning participants have set responses to choose from that best fit their situation. This makes large datasets fast and easy to analyse, but the data is generalised and cannot delve into the nuances that qualitative research can.

Some examples of quantitative survey questions are:

• Demographic questions: Gender, age, religion, ethnicity, occupation

• How often do you use the product: Every day, once a week, once a month, very rarely

• What price do you think is fair for the product: $80, $100, $120, $150

How to find research participants

Once you have decided to conduct market research and choose a suitable method, you need to find participants. Research participants should be a representative sample of your target customers, as well as some of your actual customers. This will help you to understand their characteristics, challenges, and buying habits.

Ideally, your sample will also include people that researched your business but decided not to purchase. If they have chosen a competitor, you want to know why.

Finding customers is the easy part. Anybody who made a recent purchase should be in your CRM. You want to ask recent customers, as their experience will still be fresh in their minds. If you do not have a CRM, ask people when they purchase if they would like to do a brief survey.

CRM will hold information such as an email for potential customers who enquired or evaluated your services but did not make a purchase. You can also find participants through social media or online forums and other communities. Find out where your target audience spends time together. You can even create a Facebook group specifically for the study. Use your network to find participants, but they must be relevant. Stay away from friends and family, but they might know somebody. A post on Facebook and LinkedIn can be fruitful.

It might help to offer an incentive for participants to be involved in the study. You could offer something like a $50 or $100 voucher to spend 30–60 minutes to be a part of a focus group or complete a survey.

Secondary research

Also known as desk research, secondary research is a research method that uses pre-existing data. No fieldwork (e.g. no observations or surveys required), hence the term desk research. This existing data is summarised to strengthen the findings of primary research. If your data matches the findings of previous studies, it is solid evidence.

Secondary research is far quicker to compile and cost-effective than primary research as data collection is not first-hand. The kind of data you can find helps paint the ‘big picture’, such as industry trends or geographic factors.

Common sources of secondary research include:

• Academic journals, market research, industry reports or trade publications
• Online sources — websites, databases, publications, government data
• In-house company data and analytics — e.g. CRM, social media

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That is this week’s blog.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s content about market research.

See you next week,

Dan

How to use LinkedIn to grow your brand and increase leads

The potential for business people on LinkedIn is ENDLESS. Whether you want to find a job, or wanting to find an employee, want to learn new skills, looking to generate leads, or grow your professional personal brand, LinkedIn is the perfect platform.

700 million users across the world, many of them engaging on the platform every day.  The ability to connect with relevant professionals and have a massive potential audience for your content.  This potential is remarkably easy to tap into... If you know how. 

This article will discuss ten strategies you can use to harness this potential.  It is the second half of my two-part LinkedIn blog.  The first discusses the potential of the platform, how to optimise your profile and my background on the platform.  If you missed that - I have been using LinkedIn for around five years as a marketing tool for my business and receive over 50,000 views a month on my content, and hundreds of people view my profile daily.  These are my biggest tips.

Start conversations — post original content

If you want to grow your personal brand and increase awareness of what you do, you need to be posting content on LinkedIn. I do not believe there is a better platform for growing a professional personal brand. Sure, you may not have the reach of high-level influencers on YouTube or Instagram; but for the average person, you are far more likely to be able to grow an audience on LinkedIn.

If you are not already, Start posting original content. Focus on what comes easy to you, do not just do something because some ‘LinkedIn video guru’ is telling you that you “MUST be doing videos!”. If you are good at writing and not comfortable on camera, just focus on writing interesting content. If you are a natural on camera and not that good at writing, post video content. Just start posting content that aligns with your personal brand and what you are trying to achieve.

Different forms of content have their advantages and disadvantages, and people generally have a preferred type of content - so you will never cater to everybody. I do not watch a lot of videos myself, but I like to read interesting articles. Create content that you think your target audiences is going to be interested in. Think from their point of view — what would they like to learn or what would entertain them?

Articles do not get much of a push on LinkedIn anymore. It can feel like a lot of effort for little reward. But if you are already blogging and producing long-form content, there is no reason you should not repurpose it as LinkedIn articles. You are unlikely to get too many views (Mine usually get less than 100 views compared to 2500–5000 views on my average post), but if people are checking your profile out it can increase your credibility to have a few well-written and informative articles on there that position you as an expert in your industry.

It is also important to post any content directly to LinkedIn instead of posting any links. The algorithm does not like it if you send people away, and that piece of content will be penalised. Hail the almighty LinkedIn algorithm! If you must post a link to external content, do it in the comments instead of the main post.

Join conversations — engage in content!

One of the biggest unwritten rules of LinkedIn is to engage in the content of other people as well as your own. Comment on content relevant to your brand, whether it is your personal brand or business brand.

The LinkedIn algorithm favours those who engage. If you like or comment on somebody else’s post, they are then more likely to see your content. The algorithm is more likely to send your content into their feed. LinkedIn will assume that you know each other and that your content is also relevant to them. If you do not engage in anybody else’ content, they are unlikely to see yours. You could have high-quality content, but this does not matter if nobody sees it.

I have come to realise the importance of this over the last few years of using LinkedIn. If I am busy with work, and do not spend much time on the platform browsing content and engaging for a few weeks, I notice that there is a reduction in my reach. Fewer people see my posts. If I spend a couple of weeks of commenting and liking a lot more content, it will bounce back to previous levels.

As well as putting your content out to more people, writing well-articulated comments helps builds your reputation as a thought-leader, and more people will connect with you and find you credible to do business with. This will help you to start building a community around your personal brand. LinkedIn is full of people like you who want to connect and use LinkedIn for mutual benefit, but most of all to have conversations. It is social media. Also, it might seem obvious, but reply to comments on your post — do not just leave them hanging! They may never comment again.

Connect! Grow your network

Connect with people and form professional relationships. The more people you connect with means the bigger your network becomes, so theoretically the more potential opportunities of somebody seeing your content who might find it valuable. As well as being a content marketing platform, I believe people should think of LinkedIn as a relationship-building platform.

LinkedIn allows you to connect your email address book with your LinkedIn account. So first, send an invitation to connect with past clients, friends, and colleagues.

I suggest connecting with many people locally and with relevance to your industry. Even if their competitors or people in similar roles, this means they will have an interest in your content and may engage with you. If you are going to try and create a community around your brand you need to be visible. It is extremely hard to get your message out there if your network is only a few hundred people. I recommend trying and connect with at least 1000 people.

I have over 6000 connections, and when I first started using LinkedIn for my business, I was aggressive with building my network. I would connect with anybody in my area with more than 50 mutual connections. I assumed that if we have that many mutual connections then they likely to accept my request to connect. LinkedIn is not like Facebook where most people only have a few hundred friends; many people on LinkedIn have an open mind toward connecting with anyone, regardless of whether you have or will ever meet.

Connect!

You can send a little connection notes to increase your chance of them connecting. To be honest, sending notes to people that is not something I did a lot of when I first started building my connections up. It was about volume, and LinkedIn makes it easy to quickly send requests on mass to people they think are relevant. I know a lot of LinkedIn ’gurus’ would tell me off for this. But I figured that if people took offence me sending a request to connect without a personal note, and refused to connect for this reason, then they are probably unlikely to engage in any content anyway. It seems a bit dramatic.

If people send a note to me with a request to connect, I will try and respond to most and say thanks for connecting. I highly recommend not selling to people when you first connect, without first establishing a relationship and credibility. If the first thing a person does when they connect tries to sell me something, then I typically will not respond to that kind of message. That's not the LinkedIn way.

Try and connect with “influencers” too. If they have a large audience, chances are it is because they have a large network. They must have an open mind towards connecting with people. They realise the importance. Do not assume they will not accept if you do not have a big audience. If they then engage in your content, it helps push it out to a bigger audience and increases your credibility.

Targeting the right audience

Before you start creating random content with no purpose, it is important to define exactly what you are trying to achieve and who your targeting with your content. Then create content centred around this strategy. There are a lot of people who use LinkedIn to have random conversations or talk about their families as they would on Facebook. You wonder what they are trying to achieve, and whether they care about attracting new clients, or if what they do on LinkedIn has an influence on their career. If your main reason for using LinkedIn is to build your professional reputation for your career, then you need a direction and a focus.

Create content that is of interest to your target audience. Follow and connect with people who already have a large following, with a similar target audience to your own. You can get ideas for what kind of content to produce and share yourself, but also to start engaging in their content to increase your brand awareness with more of your target audience through having conversations.

It is also important to connect with people in your target audience. Some people with more of a sales mindset will tell you to send messages to these people etc but I’m from the perspective that if you start providing value in your content they will start engaging with it and learn who you are and what you do anyway.

 Focus on consistency, not metrics

Do not let the “likes” and engagement of other users discourage you to focus too much on metrics.  A lot of the time they are meaningless.  Somebody who spends 6 hours a day on LinkedIn will have far higher engagement than somebody who spends 5 minutes a day on LinkedIn.  That is just the way the algorithm is wired.

Sure, you can use likes a benchmark for your content.  But benchmark it against your own content, not other peoples’. If one of your posts got ten likes, and you usually get 2 or 3, then try another similar post.  If a certain style of post never gets any likes, comments or any views, maybe ditch it and try something else.  It is all a bit of trial and error. 

Views is another way to benchmark, but again, is not absolute.  Video views and article views are counted differently from post views, so do not let the low view counts discourage you.  Typically, all my posts receive at least 1000 views, but video views can only be a few hundred, and articles less than 50.

LinkedIn video post

Consistency is the key. Just keep posting content, regardless of whether you have people engaging. If it aligns with your purpose, then people will start to notice. Once you break over that barrier and start gaining engagement then it should consistently happen, if your content is interesting and valuable.  You will slowly keep growing an audience as more people see it, and want to connect with you to see more of your content.

LinkedIn post about local city

Make a point to spend an hour or so daily if possible, to spend scrolling through your feed liking and commenting on relevant content. Whether it is ‘leveraging’ (I do hate this word, but you can do this in a way you are still providing value) the networks of influencers and commenting on their content, or engaging in the content of local connections, or content relevant to your industry (do this by clicking on a hashtag to view content on that topic).

All of this will start to get the LinkedIn algorithm working in your favour.

 

Tips to get the most from the algorithm

You cannot just put random content out there and assume people are going to see it and engage in it. There are a few different tactics you can use to maximise the chance of people seeing your content.

As just discussed, there is a mutual benefit of engaging in the content of other people. The LinkedIn algorithm favours those who engage. You often see it when people start posting content for the first time. If they have been regularly engaging in other peoples' content over some time before posting themselves, then their content often they get a huge push from the algorithm. They have already earned a lot of LinkedIn algorithm brownie points.

Use relevant hashtags in your content, but not too many. LinkedIn recommends using three. If a post does well, it might start trending in a certain hashtag and go out to more people. As well as this, people can find your content if they are looking through posts with that hashtag. Aim for one broad hashtag such as #Marketing, use one more niche hashtag such as #contentmarketing and you can also use a unique personalised hashtag to help people find other posts from you. I have one called #50weeksofmarketing.

Trending posts on LinkedIn

In a post, the maximum number of characters is 1200. Try and use as many of them as possible. The algorithm gives more of a push to content that uses up more characters, as its easier to identify as quality content. Try to add an image to your written content, as more people are likely to notice your post and stop and read it.

The LinkedIn algorithm push posts out to a bigger audience if the initial engagement is high. A post might initially only go out to 1–5% of your connections and if nobody likes it or comments, it dies. However, if five or ten people for example like it within the first 30 minutes, the algorithm identifies it as a good piece of content that people want to engage in and sends it out to a higher proportion of your connections.

The time of the day you post can also influence how well a post does. If you post between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., 12 p.m. and 1 p.m., or 4 p.m. at 5 p.m. during the week, this is usually when the highest number of people are browsing the platform. Therefore, you have more chance of people seeing the content when you first post it.  In saying this, I posted some of my popular content between 8 and 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning and sometimes, 8-9 p.m. can work well.  People often have more time to browse after work hours as LinkedIn has become more like Facebook.  It is not just a work thing anymore.

Many “influencers” use engagement pods to make sure that their content gets this initial push. They try and cheat the algorithm by posting a link to their latest content in a private group and there is an obligation to like and comment on one another’s posts. Most of these pods you have to pay for, and does not guarantee the right people are going to see your content anyway; as most of the people in these groups are on the other side of the globe, and their network is the people most likely to see your post. Not your local network.

It takes a lot of time and effort to engage in all this random content (I imagine) and it also means you do not learn what kind of content works best for you. What your sweet spot is.  There is no quality control, they like everything. But hey, if you want an ego boost and pretend you are famous, go for it.

7.   Do not have a sell first mindset

The biggest issue that many people face who get little engagement on their LinkedIn content is their sales mentality. Think of LinkedIn as a relationship-building platform rather than a sales platform. I know the term customer relationships is often another way to describe a sales job, however, I believe too much of a sales mindset harms your ability to build relationships.

People tend to switch off from the content of people who keep trying to sell — we do it without thinking. I talked about it in my article about persuasion knowledge. If we do not have any need for a product or service RIGHT NOW, we are going to have no interest. But we might have an interest in a “how-to” guide or quirky story.

I have seen many people post content about nothing else besides the products they sell or how successful they are. Nobody engages in their content, and then they just end up saying “LinkedIn doesn’t work…”

Being a real estate agent for over four years, it is something I noticed often. The best real estate agents have no idea what to do on LinkedIn because they have a sell first mentality, and that does not work well on this platform. Nobody cares about how many houses you sold, but they do care about what is happening in their neighbourhood. That is why I stood out as an agent on this platform.  If one of my ‘for sale’ or ‘sold’ post got 20 likes, that was a great outcome.  Any of my content about infrastructure or growth would tend to sit in the 50-150 likes category, and obviously, a lot more people saw this content.  And it still had a real estate feel.  But I was not selling anything.

 

8.   Provide Value — Be Selfless

Instead of aiming to sell something in your content, aim to create value to certain groups of people on LinkedIn.  Your target audience – the people you are creating content for. 

Focus your strategy around providing value for people who could potentially be a customer one day. You could do this by creating infographics, or a video showing how to do something related to your profession. It does not always have to be business-related. It could be an opinion-piece on local politics or sharing a piece of news that makes people happy or excited.

Provide this value to people selflessly and without the intention of doing things “just” to leverage it. Do it for the sake of genuinely helping people, as if you have this mindset, people will notice. This will establish trust. People love authenticity and do business with people they like and trust. People start to see through those who are consistently self-promoting themselves doing these good-deeds, just put themselves in the spotlight.

You want to make people smile, make them laugh, make them think deeper about something, help them learn something or share a relevant news piece.  Create content to educate and entertain people. Pose thought-provoking questions. This kind of content is interesting and provides value to people.

Think from the perspective of your target audience.  If you do not know who your target audience is, create five buyer personas for the types of people you are trying to reach.  Is it business owners?  CEOs?  Future members of staff? Once we understand who our target audience is, it will be easier to think from their perspective when creating content for them.

If you are struggling for topics for content, use tools such as local news websites and Google trends to find topics relevant to your industry to talk about. Use your expertise to have a constructive conversation about the topic.  Read my article about content marketing to get more tips.

9.   Be Brave, Original and Authentic

Do not be afraid to be yourself. Honesty can polarise some people, but many other people will respect you for it, even if they do not agree. It builds trust with people. Speak your mind and be authentic to who you are and your beliefs but do it constructively. People on LinkedIn have a pretty open mind towards people expressing their opinion. It is not like Facebook, where trolls who just want to pick a fight and abuse people, lurking in the comments.

If you are authentic and speak your mind, this also means you will be original and stand out amongst the crowd. Many people on LinkedIn will stand in the shadows a bit and will not do anything too daring.

I would not recommend trying to replicate the strategies of other people who have a large following on the platform. Sure, take inspiration, but do not directly copy everything they do. Chances are that they built their audience based being unique and original, so that same strategy will not work for you. Stick to your bread and butter.

Do not post all kinds of random things that do not align with your personal brand and the image you want to create. I centre my content strategy around being passionate about my city, my networking events, marketing (before, real estate), and fitness/sport as part of my personal brand because I am passionate and find it easy to talk about. Occasionally I will say something political, but I try not to too much, as it can be polarising to large groups of people. Save it for when you want to take a stand and have something to say.

For example, this recent post where I discussed the possibility of using a place in New Zealand called Queenstown, as a Quarantine town (Quarantown), had over 25,000 views.

LinkedIn post 

Users of LinkedIn like to connect with the “person”. Posts with selfies in them often do surprisingly well. You might think, what is this, Instagram? But it is true. I have never been comfortable taking photos of myself, so it is not something I do a lot of. Instead, I will post a photo of a coffee meet up I went to. Consider how you can incorporate your unique human element into your LinkedIn content.

Grow a community

I think one of the ultimate aims of using social media is to create a tribe and community around your personal brand or business. If you can take your community offline, it will be even stronger. However, do not try and make the community about you. Instead, make it about a common cause and provide value through the community. There is a huge ability on LinkedIn to build a local audience.

People are passionate about the city they live in. Just look at your local sports team and the passion their fans have. A way to establish your personal brand in the local market is to create content around relevant news in your local area. When I was a real estate agent, my posts about a house for sale might get 5 likes on average. A piece about the local real estate market might get 10 or 20 likes, where a post celebrating a new piece of local infrastructure often had over 100 likes.

Because I had established local reach, this allowed me to set up LinkedIn Local Hamilton, a local networking event that has become popular. Now ten events in, I host them quarterly and around 1800 people have attended. Might not sound like a huge amount, but 150–200 odd local businesspeople coming to a networking event enjoying a drink creates a pretty cool atmosphere and people love it.

Linkedin post - Linkedin local networking event

When I started the events, I just wanted to meet some more local people so I could sell their house one day. I had no idea they would become so popular! Building my personal brand around sharing content about my local city was probably the perfect platform to launch the events, as I had a local audience. I had previously aggressively connected with local LinkedIn users - I could only sell houses in my city, so local geographic targeting was high up on my strategy list.

I have been doing the events two and a half years now, but only created a LinkedIn page for the event around ten months ago. I was quite hesitant because I knew it gave my personal profile coverage and I did not want to risk losing any reach. Now, I share a lot of the event content from an event page, and because of it, I think my personal page has become less saturated with content. This is a good thing, as I have not lost any reach and I can post more content focused around my business, which is marketing.

Linkedin business page metrics

Organising an event like this also allows you to set a page for the event on your website, as well as a form up to take email details for an events database. This will help with SEO, increasing your brand awareness and gives you the ability to contact these people via email. Do not use it to spam people with email however you will lose credibility quickly. You can see the LinkedIn Local page I set up on my website here.

Read my article about building a brand community.