How do you drive business development for your small business?

There are numerous sources of business ideas. Many are excellent and proven. I want to bring your attention on one tool we all use — but too often left to fend on its own — communications.  Call it advertising, promotion, public relations (PR) or anythiong else. But all of these are in the communications bucket. In small business (and often larger ones) communications is the empty seat at the leadership table. But it is a powerful success enabler.

“Okay,” you say, “let’s get out there and run some ads.” Let’s get a promotion going.” Not necessarily bad, not necessarily good either. What you need to start is a business strategy which is well-supported by a communications strategy. Let’s take it by the numbers.

First — be clear about your business strategy. If you have been moving along from one year to the next, stop. Take stock of where you stand, what you want to achieve and how you will get there. All this sets the foundation.

Second – market research. This can be as simple as listening well to customers or asking questions of customers and prospective and listening to their answers. Market research could be results of a highly sophisticated study conducted by your trade association. It could be as basic as having your people ask a similar set of questions of everyone they deal with for a period of time, and systematically analyzing what they say. Research means understanding the context of your market, the dynamics affecting behavoirs and the impressions shaping opinions about your firm or the future.

Third — explore how communications can work in the marketing environment to accelerate your organization’s stratgegy and its progress toward realizing your goals. Central to success here means stepping away from tendencey to type cast marketing communications, and in, “Let’s get out there and run some ads.” Ads to do what?   Knock on the door of your customers’ attention to get awareness, share of mind, or generate traffic. Understanding how communications can contgribute to your business strategy means setting communications goals and developing a strategy for communications — all in support of the business growth plan.

Fourth — do it. Create an affordable, executable plan of action. Using one communications tool effectively is far superior to using a set of tools that fail to achieve, because you cannot achieve the frequency needed, or they don’t reach the right people, or any of dozens of reasons these efforts so often fail.

The greatest cause of failure is the fixation on the tools that we personally understand and find appealing versus the tools needed to drive the strategy — if there is indeed any strategy at all.  These four steps can be extremely difficult to execute with any discipline, especially when you’re taken with the daily challenges of running your business. Being so close to your business does not provide the vantage you need to move effectively from step one to implementation. If you can, it would pay you to enlist the support of a professional or a small brain trust of advisors to help you set the course.

The most citical professional support initially is not the development of an ad or drafting of your press releases. These skills will make sense, but only once you have identified a strategic plan for communications. In many cases, it would be preferable to execuite simply so long as it is focused and sustainable. By this I mean having one well-targeted promotion, or driving awareness through one well-aimed direct marketing ad campaign.

Communications is one means of driving devbelopment for your small business. Following these steps will ensure that whatever communications you deploy drive success.