Business Media Club blog: What’s the missing ingredient in your marketing?

02 Feb Business Media Club blog: What’s the missing ingredient in your marketing?

Remember the panic buying last year when word of the potential impact of Coronavirus hit home?

First it was the bare essentials of loo roll, hand sanitiser and pasta. Then flour, as if we somehow wouldn’t survive without baking our own daily bread.

But the real sought after item wasn’t any of these basics. It was yeast.

You couldn’t buy it for love or money, and when some savvy supermarket or small shop garnered supplies, word hit the streets and stocks were swiftly snaffled up. You half expected dealers to hang around street corners mumbling: “Psst, want some yeast?”

The reason? As all bakers know, you can’t get bread to rise unless you add yeast to the mix.

You need to know how much to use and how to treat it, of course. It must be kept away from salt when mixing dough, for instance, and if you whisk it with lukewarm water it provides a more pliable mix, perfect for stretchy pizza dough.

Yeast is a living culture, a micro-organism that not only leavens bread but is essential to bake the sweet treats of life like cakes and cookies.

Fact is, you can’t bake without it – and if you see businesses as living cultures (and you should) the way organisations develop and function is determined by the culture that grows within: how its ethics, values, principles and purpose permeate an organisation which, when done well, can enable it to grow bigger than the sum of its parts.

Nothing helps achieve this more than communication – the messages you send out in sales, marketing and other external communications and the internal belief-system you need to weave to inspire, motivate and engage those working within.

Our first 2021 Business Media Club meeting focused on locating the roots of the passion for your profession, why and how it floats your boat, what make you original and authentic and how to shape your own vision based on core values and beliefs that you can combine into a living, breathing culture.

“You have to ‘be’ your culture,” said one attendee. “You must live it,” added another. “Finding your moral compass is crucial,” said someone else. “People who share common values gravitate to one another.”

Our second 2021 meeting will add the missing ingredient. Not yeast, words.

Words have the same effect as yeast, if woven into a narrative thread that courses through your entire communications – stitched together into mission statements and straplines, told as stories in blogs, case studies and testimonials to support publicity campaigns, marketing copy, sales pitches, proposals, social media and transferable into audio-visual form as graphics, branding, video, photography, podcasts and so on.

This requires planning, of course. You need to know precisely what you really want to say and why, then skilfully knit it together into a campaign message board to promote your values, skills and service and tell it in story form.

In fact, in that opening Business Media Club meeting of the year, I counted 42 different stories told by our attendees in just two hours. That’s what happens when you enable people to talk, explain their situation and share their thoughts in an interactive experience.

Care to join us?

The next CGM Business Media Club meeting is on Friday, February 26 (10am-12pm), repeated on Thursday, March 4, (2pm-4pm).

For further details visit our Business Media Club page. 

Book your seat via Eventbrite.