Business Partner Magazine - Issue 45 by Business Partner Magazine

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Is Your Business Planning A Return To The Office? Here’s How You Can Make Your Employees Feel Safe

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Sandra Hinshelwood EDITOR

The Seven Habits and Characteristics of Ethical Leaders

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Business Partner Magazine is issued bi-monthly by Sandra Hinshelwood of Effective Website Marketing

AR/VR Training Applications for Small Businesses

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6 Clever Things You Could Be Doing With a Customer Data Platform

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Changing Times Require A Shift In Business Attitude

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How to Use Digital Storytelling to Improve Your Marketing Strategy Aljon Sampaga LAYOUT/DESIGN

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Is Perfection Stifling Your Success?

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MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR Welcome to Issue 45. Spring is here, and with it comes some renewed optimism. The Covid-19 vaccination programme is being rolled out with great success in the UK, with over 20 million people vaccinated already. A road map is also in place to lift the lockdown. With the lifting of restrictions in mind - our cover story – “Is your business planning a return to the office?” offers some great tips to get the office opened safely. As a leader, the pressure on you to perform and deal with all manner of never experienced scenarios has been immense. As things begin to return to normal, we have seven habits to develop in your leadership teams and suggest what you look for in potential hires as your business continues to grow. The economic environment is challenging. Take steps to get the most out of all the data that is available. Not only do you need to collect the right kind of data, but your marketing team need to be able to leverage the knowledge of your customers. The easiest way to do this is with automation software. Software and technology are developing rapidly, and the use of AR/VR is also gaining ground. Small businesses have the most to gain from these technologies. I wish you all the best for the new season. Stay safe. Sandra

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IS YOUR BUSINESS PLANNING A RETURN TO THE OFFICE?

Here’s How You Can

Make Your Employees

Feel Safe

or most of us, it’s been a long, long time since we stepped foot in the office. We have worked from home, we have figured out furlough schemes, and we have found a way to keep our businesses going in spite of everything the Coronavirus pandemic could throw at us. As we keep a watchful eye on the news and wait patiently as the good news starts to become more concrete,

many business owners will be thinking about how and when to re-open their offices. While there are obviously many benefits to having the office up and running again, there are many factors to consider before you do so, and the most important is making sure that it is safe for your employees. Here are a few steps that you must be sure to take before you ask them to return.

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Don’t Rush It If there’s one thing that we’ve learned from this pandemic, it’s that patience is a virtue. While the UK government is determined to avoid any further national lockdowns, we can’t rule it out. With that in mind, when you start the process of reopening your office, remember to take it slow. Make sure that you are up to date on all the latest safety rules and regulations and keep the numbers of employees in the office at any given time to the absolute minimum at first. If there’s no reason for people to be there, let them work from home. Remember, rushing now means backtracking later.

Employ A Professional Cleaning Team This point isn’t just about making your employees feel safe, it’s about making sure that they are safe. When it comes to cleaning a workspace during a pandemic, there is absolutely no margin for error, no room for cutting corners. You are going to want to make sure that every surface is cleaned, and that frequent high-touch areas are identified.

What’s more, this is not just a one-time thing, you will need to stay on top of this for the foreseeable future. Your office will need a professional cleaning company that understands how to decontaminate a space. This is where experts such as SMC Premier come in, as they have been helping businesses, hospitals and other places of work do just that for more than 35 years.

Make Sure You Keep Talking To Your Employees As difficult as things have been for businesses throughout the pandemic, it’s important to remember that each and every one of us has faced huge challenges through the last twelve months and have had to make difficult decisions on a daily basis. Every manager wants to be able to support their staff and make them feel safe, which is why you are going to need to keep the lines of communication open during this process. If you are thinking about opening the office again, get in touch with your employees and let them know the details. Give them a safe space to ask questions and raise concerns. Some may be raring to get back into the office, others may want to work from home a little longer.

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THE

HABITS AND

CHARACTERISTICS OF

ETHICAL LEADERS

he business world, not unlike other parts of society, was flipped on its head by the COVID-19 pandemic, and many changes that occurred are expected to stay in place even after the vaccines have played their parts, and society reverts back to some sort of normalcy.

RESPECT The ability to show respect and fairness to potential customers and clients is obviously an important trait for anyone

Remote work is one of these expected trends, and from maintaining a productive morning routine even though you don’t really have to get dressed, to expanding business across the globe with digital advancements, adjustments related to the remote workplace are aplenty. Both domestically, and abroad, ethical leaders make for ethical teams, and honesty and fairness are the marks of any great relationship, business or otherwise. Here are seven habits to develop in your own leadership teams, and to look for in potential hires as your business continues to grow.

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with a client-facing job, but the best leaders treat their employees with the same respect, or even a touch more in situations where said employee may need a leader’s support beyond the regular scope of their business relationship. Compassion, and a genuine interest in colleagues is a great mark of a respectful leader.

TEAM-FOCUSED Aligning with the respect mentioned above, leaders who are ethical also make it very obvious that the team is their

focus, not themselves. By enabling team members to perform at their highest level through trust, and providing the necessary tools, a leader also enables the members of that team to better themselves and advance their own careers. Any true leader will be happy to see a colleague succeed no matter what, even if with another team who has an opening at a higher level.

STRICT AGAINST ETHICAL VIOLATIONS To truly gain trust of your team, it’s important to occasionally show that you mean business in regards to the honesty, respect, and fairness an ethical leader often touts. When someone at your business lies or disrespects a co-worker, a no-tolerance action should be taken swiftly against that individual. Even in punishment, however, respect is important, and the actions should be informative and corrective, not simply punitive.

DECISIONS MADE WITH VALUES IN MIND Though the bottom line of business is, indeed, the bottom line, no amount of dollars should trump the values of a company that are laid out in a credo.

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An ethical leader will possess the ability to look past dollar signs when dealing with individuals and businesses who do not preach the same levels of ethics and fairness that your team holds true.

PREACH EQUITY

EAT LAST

Another win-win situation involves diversity and inclusiveness. A leader who not only hires with these things in mind, but also makes a conscious effort to increase cultural awareness around the office (and beyond) is a leader with ethical standards and their team in mind. Ultimately, this plays a similar function as putting people before profit, as it lets your team know that values and hard work are all that are important when it comes to your expectations.

Perhaps the most telling trait of an ethical leader is their ability to give themselves the toughest jobs, or at least explain to, and reward an individual who draws the proverbial short end of the stick. Whether local, or global business leaders, the “eat last” mentality will almost certainly garner respect from you team members, and is also something potential clients notice and appreciate. If the team has to work Saturday, a good leader will be the first one there and the last one to leave.

PEOPLE OVER PROFIT This piggybacks off of the value-based decision making, but ensuring that your team is happy is truly a win-win situation. Satisfied employees stay with companies, and companies with high retention rates are more alluring to future employees, as well as more profitable, as training times and turnover duties can be minimized.

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AR/VR TRAINING APPLICATIONS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

irtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) training has the power to revolutionise small businesses. As we learn to adapt to changing working environments; from an increasingly remote-based workforce to the challenges faced by the long-term impact of Covid-19, having a strong and reliable skills base has never been more important. VR and AR training is an immersive learning experience that recreates real life settings and simulates work challenges. It gives employees the chance to gain on-the-job training in a risk-free environment where they can

learn by doing. Retention of skills learned in VR and AR is high, meaning it is more likely to be applied in the workplace and ultimately lead to increased productivity. A recent report by PWC found that learners in VR trained 1.5 times faster than e-learners and were 3.75 times more emotionally connected to content than in the classroom. Learners were 275% more confident to apply skills learned after training and four times more focused than their e-learning peers.

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On The Job Training Employees have the chance to experience hands-on, practical and measurable training in a safe, risk-free virtual environment, where skills are learned faster and the retention of learning is improved by the ability to repeat and perfect tasks. VR specifically offers a collaborative learning environment that accurately replicates a real-world workspace. This means that teams can train together to improve workflows and interdependent tasks. It also can bring together teams in a shared workspace without having to be in the same physical space – great for businesses based over multiple sites or those with significant numbers of remote workers. AR and VR mix real and digital worlds, immersive technologies and on the job training are a match made in heaven. As immersive experiences often use a human-centred design approach during development, they fit seamlessly with the objectives of on the job training interventions, which are tailored to an individual’s training needs, rather than trying to impose a “one size fits all” approach.

work schedules, rather than making employees spend days away from their workplace on costly training courses. It also means that the learner can access training when it is convenient for them, focus their attention and repeat experiences when necessary. This helps them to learn faster and retain knowledge for longer. What’s more, immersive experiences can also be easily introduced at scale and can respond to changing environments and working practices.

Remote Training Remote collaboration platforms create unique spaces for employees to work and train together. Team members and audiences may be based around the world, but they can connect in one space via a range of devices including VR headsets, PCs and mobile devices. This means that while they may be based remotely, they’re not isolated from each other.

VR and AR training can be fitted around

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Recruitment & Upskilling Training A new company can be uniquely challenging. By creating tailor-made VR and AR onboarding experiences, you can effectively communicate your company’s identity, introduce fellow team members and get a head start on your business operations and procedures; possibly even before their first day on the job. Ensuring that employees are working at the top of their game and communicating effectively with teammates, customers (and beyond!) is good for business. VR platforms aren’t just great for facilitating collaborative working for remote workers, but can be harnessed as a powerful learning and development tool. By using immersive technologies, tailored training programmes in AR and VR allow team members to learn quicker and deeper, leading to increased retention rates and productivity, as well as provide tangible cost savings.

High Risk Training

By taking training out of the real world and replicating real-life, high risk scenarios in a virtual space, employees have the chance to learn by doing in real time, in ways that will often be impossible or dangerous to do in real life. This has significant benefits for teams working in highly skilled and specialised areas; especially where team members’ actions are interdependent on each other.

Soft Skills For training that focuses on soft skills, interaction with, and reaction to, another person is central to the learning process. The increasing sophistication of VR platforms to pick up on, and react to certain behaviours, means that immersive courses are incredibly effective for the development of skills such as problem solving, communication and emotional intelligence. So, whether it’s honing presentation skills or improving customer relationships, through to learning how to work in an inclusive environment and team building, training no longer requires face-to-face scenarios or classroom-based learning.

VR-based training has the power to connect remote teams to learn together in a safe and inclusive environment.

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Is the future of training virtual?

Adopting innovative new training programmes is a crucial part of a company’s need to evolve in response to our changing world, in addition to the fragmentation of workplaces through globalisation and remote working. The recent advances in VR and AR means that training can offer a perfect solution to keep your employees highly trained, motivated and productive – just at the time when you need them performing at their best.

AUTHOR

TIM FLEMING CEO, FUTURE VISUAL Tim is CEO and co-founder of Future Visual who are experts in producing award winning VR and AR content on their collaboration platform VISIONxR™. Clients and partners including ESL One, IATA, Peugeot and John Lewis.

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CLEVER THINGS

YOU COULD BE DOING WITH A CUSTOMER DATA PLATFORM

Is your business making the best use of its customer data? Is your marketing team able to leverage knowledge of your customers from your data? Are you even collecting the right kind of customer data?

n reading this post, you’ll soon see why businesses of all sizes need not just a customer data platform, but the right customer data platform that combines with marketing automation software. You’ll see how you could be better engaging with your current and potential customers. We’ll look at how you could transform the way your customer data is used to better target your marketing efforts for real results. Plus, you’ll learn what to look out for before making any investment in data platforms.

WHAT DATA SHOULD A PLATFORM BE COLLECTING TO BE USEFUL? First of all, it’s worth spending some time looking at the data you could be collecting and what is and isn’t useful. By shopping online, customers provide some basic data. It’s straightforward to collect delivery information like names and addresses, and products purchased. It’s all vital and necessary, but does this allow you to truly know your customers? So instead, let’s think about what your marketing team would like to know to provide the most targeted, personalized campaign.

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interact with Instagram posts? ● How do they feel about your brand? What reviews have they made? Have they completed any surveys? A good customer data platform should be able to tell you all this information. And once you have it at your disposal, your marketing team can do some clever things. More on that later.

WHAT INSIGHTS CAN A CUSTOMER DATA PLATFORM OFFER? Here are the most valuable features to look out for before you make any investment in customer data platforms. Aside from the basics, what every marketing team would like to know is what drives potential customers to make a purchase. To know this, you need to get a clearer picture of customers’ behavior. You need to know: ● What proportions of purchases do they make on and offline? To do this, you’ll need to connect your shoppers’ in-person and online purchases. ● What journeys are they making on your site? Do they leave items in their baskets for later? Do they come back? ● What kinds of marketing do they engage with? Do they open emails? Do they click on Facebook ads? Do they

• Be more than just storage A customer data platform should not be seen merely as storage. That is its most basic purpose. It must also organize customer data to be both usable and flexible. We don’t yet know the future trends that will impact the way we do business, just like 20 years ago few of us were anticipating the impact that social media would have on the way we interact with customers.

• A comprehensive customer dashboard A good customer data platform can connect up all the interactions your customers make (like completing a dotto-dot picture) and then display them

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simply in one place. So, it is possible to link up valuable information like browsing history, which messages have been opened and which have been ignored, surveys answered, loyalty point interactions, and much more. This provides a comprehensive but clear dashboard-style single customer view for all your online clients. Sounds impressive, but what can you then do with this information?

• Track customer behavior It would be naive to expect customers to interact consistently with your business year upon year. They are real people with real lives that move on, after all. The customer data platform allows you to compartmentalize your customers according to their recent interactions. Templates built into a platform can funnel customers into segments according to their behavior. This allows you to have a clear picture of which customers are currently your highest spenders, or who shops predominantly online and who visits your stores but never your website, for instance. Get a sense of who your customers are proportionally. How many lapsed customers do you have? Do you have a high proportion of customers who wait for a deal before purchasing? These are all valuable insights.

HOW CAN THESE INSIGHTS BENEFIT YOUR MARKETING EFFORTS? Knowing and understanding your customer base better has some fantastic repercussions for your marketing opportunities.

1. Personalize your email marketing For a start, utilize customer insights by tempting your customers with personalized email offers that encourage them to modify their behavior or to remain consistent purchasers. Tempt lapsed customers back, nurture brand-new customers, and reward your regular customers for their loyalty, for example. Sound promising? Employing a digital customer data platform can have further serious benefits for your marketing efforts.

2. Plug into online ad platforms Connect your data with online ad platforms and automate your marketing efforts accordingly. This gives you the capacity to firstly target the right existing customers and then, most importantly, exactly the right potential market. Based on your analytics of your existing customers, you’ll know exactly what marketing opportunities to look out for.

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Simply plug your customer data hub into online ad platforms and get full control of who sees what.

3. Target your marketing campaigns with pinpoint accuracy and save costs Going fishing for customers with a large net means you’ll catch the attention of many, yet few will turn out to be what you are looking for. Instead, use your knowledge of your customer base to send smaller campaigns out to a far more specific target using relevant, optimized content. A higher conversion rate combined with a lower spend is likely to be far more productive and profitable than a major, catch-all campaign.

4. Build trust with personalized customer microsites Improve transparency and build trust by allowing customers the same access you have to their data. Personalized customer microsites do just this, letting your customers view their data whenever they want. By building trust, your customers are more likely to use store check-in features and see the benefits of allowing your staff to capture purchase data in-store. This, in turn, gives you even more usable data.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Salam Saadeh

5. Monitor marketing spends The impact of your marketing campaigns will be easy to determine because you’ll have far better monitoring capabilities. Measure the true value of your ad spend using the metrics that your customer data hub now provides.

6. Gain timely insights The right data platform can empower you to make the right decisions at the right time. Being agile is vital. When times change for your customers and your customers’ behavior changes, you can have instant insights at your fingertips. The year 2020 and the coronavirus pandemic have demonstrated the importance of this. A customer-centric approach is widely seen as the way to drive business growth, yet this can be virtually impossible without the right insights into who exactly your customers are. The right customer data platform can provide these insights and significantly benefit your marketing approach by providing a personalized experience for customers, both new and old, whatever the size of your business. She is Co-Founder of UrbanBuz, a Customer Journey Management Platform that enables businesses to connect, unify, and unlock their customer data to optimize their customer engagement and marketing budget, while delivering personalized connected customer experiences at scale.

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CHANGING TIMES REQUIRE A SHIFT IN BUSINESS ATTITUDE

hanging times require a shift in business attitude. In this time, three things to consider are specialisation over generalisation, consistency of brand message, and demonstration of your business emotional intelligence. It’s a given that one of the reasons you are in business is to make a profit. The era of ‘greed is good’ a la Wall Street starring Michael Douglas belongs squarely in that time and cinematic context. Today’s consumer is socially aware. They care about the environment, what they eat and the labour conditions that produce the items they purchase. Recent global demonstrations triggered by the Black Lives Matter movement indicate how social concerns impact a business.

Companies like Nike have demonstrated emotional intelligence, and acute business acumen, by forming brand partnerships with athletes who relate to their youthful target audience. Fashion houses to educational leaders to business conglomerates pay extra attention to how they are perceived within the context of diversity and inclusion. It is the effective communication of this perception that drives the narrative of showing empathy. Consumers relate to this and, therefore, support the business. The overarching point is that your business should be aware of and respond to issues that matter to your consumer base. Whether you sponsor laptops for a local school or volunteer at a charity, it helps be seen as socially

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responsible and caring about more than your bottom line. Distinguishing your business at this time can be aided by the consistency of your message in all areas of your branding. Have you ever caught yourself singing a song without downloading the words? That’s because you heard the piece regularly. The power of repetition allows information to sink into the subconscious mind. Your mission statement will best resonate by staying on message with differentiation to the platform, e.g., a post on TikTok will be brief, savvy and high impact compared to a corporate business presentation about your mission statement. Same message, different execution. You and your team should be the living embodiment of what you stand for as a business. Your business cards, social media posts, website, business correspondence, manner of answering your telephone, terms and conditions of trade, plus all other dealings should reinforce your brand message. The aim is for your business to be like that song in the minds of your target audience. Repetition is the key to mastery, and mastery requires specialisation over generalisation. Let your business be known for doing something well. Expertise trumps mediocre, and this is why people are willing to pay more for premium products or services. Clarify what you offer and stick to it by connecting with

your tribe who value what you provide. Consolidate your product or service, identify your consumer base and keep working to develop market share. Be clear about who you are and what you offer because the energy of this confidence will attract, maintain and increase your consumer base. After all, only you can do what you do.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MALIK MUHAMMAD Malik Muhammad was raised and educated in Jamaica and read law in London. He created The Empowerment Mastery System to influence, help and inspire businesses to cultivate their visions. Malik enjoys vegan cooking and quad biking. He is an after-dinner speaker, event host and convenes empowerment seminars internationally. His latest book COFFEE & CONTEMPLATION: a taste of empowerment is available on Amazon.

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HOW TO USE

DIGITAL STORYTELLING

TO IMPROVE YOUR

MARKETING STRATEGY

n recent years, brands have begun to realize the power of storytelling. Storytelling can help you to build your brand’s reputation, connect with your audience, and grow your following (and your business).

In any case, they use a story in order to communicate a core message or messages. Storytelling works because it engages with your audience on an emotional level. This not only captures and holds their

In our modern, online-driven world, digital marketing tactics are arguably the most important effective ways to reach your potential customers. If you want to drive organic traffic to your site you should use Ghost Marketing link building, and if you want to connect with your audience, digital storytelling is the key. Here’s how to use digital story to take your marketing strategy to the next level.

What is Digital Storytelling? Storytelling is all about using narratives to get information across to your business. These narratives could be factual, fictional, or somewhere in between.

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attention, but it helps you core messages to stick. It also provokes emotional reactions that make people more likely to take action, such as buying your product. One of the best ways to create enhanced brand content for ecommerce businesses is by using digital storytelling. Digital storytelling uses modern technology to incorporate the themes and elements of storytelling. There are many formats that can be used to create digital storytelling, video being the most common, but a range of other media can also be applied to tell a persuasive and informative story.

HOW TO USE DIGITAL STORYTELLING TO MARKET YOUR BUSINESS 1. Start with a Great Story No matter how well you execute it, if you don’t have a great story at the base of it all, your digital storytelling won’t be effective. Your story should encourage your audience to draw similarities between themselves and your brand, thus building your relationship. By having empathy for you as a brand they will understand you, are be more likely to trust you and be loyal to you. Your story should not only build empathy, but it should also be entertaining and educational. This lets you capture your audience’s attention and convey the information you want to get across.

2. Use Characters Characters are essential to effective storytelling, because they are the link between your audience and the story, and you as the storyteller. Every story should have at least one character that the audience can relate to: this is key to creating empathy, as it allowsyour audience to put themselves in the shoes of your character.

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This character could be a persona related to your business or your product. You could even find creative ways to personify your product, making this the character for your story.

3. Introduce Conflict The next thing that all good, compelling stories have is conflict. The conflict within your story is important because it connects the audience to you through relatable experiences. It also plays on your audience’s emotions which is important for engagement and compelling them to act. Conflict and challenges are a part of everyday life, so it is essential that they are part of your storytelling too.

4. Tailor to Your Audience A good story must be all the things mentioned above, but above all it should be specific to your audience. Everyone will respond to stories differently, therefore in order for a story to resonate with your audience it needs to be the right story for them. To know what stories will suit your audience, it is critical that you know how your audience is. Think about your target market and your buyer persona: what messages, themes and characters are going to be most relevant to them? These are the things you should incorporate in your story.

5. Know Your Core Message At the heart of every story (at least for marketing purposes) is a core message. It is essential that you define your core message right from the start, as your core message will influence how you tell your story. If you are not sure what your core message is, think about what your purpose is for the digital story you are creating: is it to sell products, or something else? Also reflect on your ‘why’ as a company, which should underlie all of your brand’s messages.

6. End with a Resolution It is important that you complete your story with a resolution of one kind or another. A resolution is essential to wrap up the story, frame the characters and conflict you presented. However, this resolution does not need to be obvious: often the best endings in storytelling are those that invite the audience to come to the conclusion themselves. Your resolution should also point your audience towards a call-to-action, something that you want your audience to do. An obvious call-to-action is to buy a product, though it could also be something else, such as signing up to your mailing list or claiming a gift card.

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IS PERFECTION STIFLING

YOUR SUCCESS?

f all the ways it’s possible to fail, trying to succeed too much is perhaps the most insidious! Entrepreneurs and managers are all alike, looking towards efficiencies and the building of the best proposition, service or team possible. And while that’s great in some situations, it’s terrible in others. Whether it’s a successful single business delaying when they should move into being a franchise or the new start-up that never finishes prototyping its key offering, the story is the same: delays and dissatisfaction in the name of doing it right.

NOBODY’S PERFECT It’s important to remember that everything is possible when you’re standing still. Investing ever more time into a specific product or service so that it can be ‘perfect’ is a double-edged sword. Worse still, it’s an easier mistake to make from far away; an extra month or two of product research will be just the ticket, you might say. In actual fact, we’re not always perfect guessers either. We often perceive

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our success in an endeavour as being a mile out when an inch may be true and it’s once more a problem where estimating is concerned. Electing to take more time to improve something? You might have missed out on a promising start to a sales campaign next week.

ADAPTING ISN’T FAILING There are innumerable stories of giant business enterprises failing due to a lack of flexibility and an attitude of embracing change. We all love having a plan and there’s more than a little pride involved when the time comes to see it tested. We can become defensive, failing to hear out valid criticism in the hope that our treasured effort pays off. It’s one way to do it. Amazon, which you may have heard of, thrived in part due to its willingness to be different. They reacted to the market’s demands, shifting smoothly from an initial offering of books through to online grocery delivery ten years later. And another ten years after that, once they had benefited from using the infrastructure of other companies, they bought a fleet of vans to do it themselves. They weren’t sure how things would turn out and they succeeded because their strategic planning accounted for that in themselves – and in their clients and customers.

DRAWING THE LINE So, when do you know in yourself that you’re on the wrong side of perfection? It’s not easy, but it’s worth learning to selfevaluate in as unbiased a manner as you can. Knowing yourself and your market empowers you to make decisions quickly, but with minimal risk. For many entrepreneurs, it comes down to the quality of their planning and their confidence in it. It’s possible to paralyse progress completely by endlessly secondguessing and delaying. By being confident that they have received, absorbed and interpreted all the information available to them, they can act decisively in the moment and make an informed strategic or managerial decision. Knowing that it’s often better to act than to act perfectly, a successful entrepreneur is able to act in a smooth and responsive manner, agilely making calls on the progress and direction of their company. By being thorough in planning and free from the need for a specific, perfect outcome, it’s easier to navigate the business world and to make the right decisions.

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