This is a guest post by Nicola Thayil

I am lucky enough to live in the fabulous city of Melbourne, Australia and in a state where small business is strongly supported. Every year the Victorian Small Business Festival holds over 450 events for small business owners to get inspired, connect with other small businesses and learn some tips from experts.

I had been feeling slightly uninspired about my marketing activities of late, so this festival event was just the right injection of motivation I needed. Three keynote speakers and a panel discussion did not disappoint.

Let me share with you the key points I took away from their insightful presentations and ask you some questions of my own to help you reflect on your own marketing activities.

First up, Jason Fox (Bestselling author of The Game Changer) challenged us on our ‘default thinking’. Whilst this mode of thinking can be useful to save time and energy (those who have read Thinking fast and slow will be familiar with this idea), it can be the enemy of new and creative thinking. As a business matures and relies on previously used templates and processes to drive efficiency there is a tendency to stop thinking about how we can do things differently and we can become complacent. Jason suggested that we need to be in a constant state of discontent in which we are always looking at how we can close the gap between our current state and desired future state. Also, when we have a clear sense of meaningful progress, we will be more motivated. He challenged us to think about how we can shorten the feedback loop between effort and meaningful progress.

The second speaker, Holly Ransom (Emergent), gave us a demographic snapshot of how millennials are making purchase decisions and how their behaviour is influencing business. The statistics are confronting. For example with social networking we have now reached 3.8 degrees of separation, 50% of the world’s population is now under 30 and much less likely to trust advertising. Holly explained that young people today are trending toward access not ownership, hence the exponential rise of the sharing economy. Many of you will know Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why, Holly spoke about the importance of leading with the why when we market so as to ensure that the clients we are trying to attract can feel our why and allow it to resonate.

Continuing the connectedness theme, the third speaker, former advertising executive Craig Davis (Brandkarma.com), gave us six practical tips to build a more satisfying business and create value. Here they are:

1. Listen – it’s the single most important thing in driving trust,
2. Make meaning – build meaningful difference, find your purpose and live out your values,
3. Sell yourself – deliver your value proposition more clearly (“I help X do Y by doing Z”),
4. Get traction – choose a small number of marketing activities you can be great at. If they don’t work, try another set, iterate and refine them,
5. Tell stories – stories draw people in, they have a beginning, a middle and an end,
6. Test everything – don’t trade on your assumptions.

Finally, a few other snippets of wisdom from the event:

• “Daily identify three things you can do to create the most meaningful progress before 2pm”
• “Don’t make assumptions about how to serve a need”
• “Start before you’re ready. Readiness is a mirage”
• “Decide who your market is and serve them brilliantly”
• “Manage your energy not your time”

And now, over to you:

1. What is your why?
2. How can you deliver your value proposition more clearly?
3. How are you currently measuring your progress in marketing?

About the author

Nicola Thayil (nee Savage) is an accredited professional French to English translator and interpreter based in Melbourne, Australia. After a career in marketing and communications, she completed a Master’s degree in Interpreting and Translation studies and now works in the business, legal and marketing sectors, using her French and English language and cultural skills to bridge communication gaps and help organisations and companies achieve their objectives. Nicola is a committee member of the Australian Institute of Interpreters and Translators (AUSIT) and a member of the French Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FACCI). Her journey so far has taken her to live and work in France, Japan and Australia, including in a media and translation role at the Embassy of France in Canberra.

You can visit Nicola at www.nhmtranslation.com