The Holy Trinity of Service, or is it?

Sometimes it's known as the Iron Triangle. Which to me sounds like a cross between a Tory Prime Minister and a Caribbean vacation.

When you're deciding how to run your business you, supposedly, have to decide which two of these three goals you're going to focus on as "your product". 

Will you be Cheap and Fast? This is great because it gives you high turnover which is pretty important to running a successful business. But quality will suffer and, depending on your field, that could hurt you in the long run.

Will you be Fast and Great? This is close to nirvana, but also very hard to maintain. It requires hard grind, a toll on your employees if you have them, and likely sleepless nights. To do this you have to charge your clients more to justify the effort and/or put on more staff (or end up in an asylum).

How about Great and Cheap? Well, ok. This is probably only your side-hustle, right? I mean, you don't actually earn a living from this do you? No, didn't think so. Clients can expect great work, but you know, when it's finished and stuff. 

Which brings me to a more nuanced look at this. For me, rather than speed, I value reliability. What this means is I do what I say I'll do and deliver it when I say I will.

Or, to put it another way: I deliver on my promises.

So, instead of breakneck speed, I use schedules and calendars and make damned sure I'm not making spurious promises to clients. 

Maybe I'm cynical, but to me, that is a kickass proposition: I would hire a service that offered reliability as a central goal. Perhaps because it seems so rare these days, it is such a pleasure when someone delivers on their promise. 

What it means is that I can focus on Quality, without having to make my prices "premium", because I am not chasing my tail constantly. (I am busy though, don't get me wrong!)

In the end, services with a creative bent, like writing and editing, simply cannot compromise on quality: the quality of our work is our brand. It's our calling card. Do bad work and people simply wont be interested. So really we only have price and speed to work with. Instead, I focus on reliability, which allows me to be realistic with price.

How does this, for instance, translate to my business? 

I'm not cheap; I'm not the most expensive, either. I do high quality work, that people recommend, which is great! I do work quite fast, but I won't rush it if that compromises quality - I will consider each job on its merits, estimate the time it will take, and tell you. Then I'll stick to that timeline to the utmost of my ability (barring major illness, I never miss deadlines). Together this makes for an upper-middle road that I think clients can actually believe in. No unicorns here.

How do you manage this wobbly triangle?

Creating Investor Engagement in Technical Disciplines.

The question is, are your company announcements performing as well as they should be?


Companies involved in scientific research and development often make highly valuable discoveries, products or services which, by tapping newly created or already very large markets, could make a material difference to company value. “Game Changing” developments are, by their very nature, new to the market, and as such, require that investors understand the importance and implications of the new development. This can be difficult due to the technical nature of the development and the closed-world of scientific research where scientists talk to other scientists in language that is confined to the scientific community.

It is an information market.

Capital markets trade in information as much as they do in shares. Freely flowing positive news can give impetus to share price appreciation. It is critical in this environment that companies who wish to have brokers and investors talking about their offering, over that of competitors, provide information that is easy to digest and share. Thus any announcement (particularly technical announcements) made by a scientific company should be reviewed to ensure it communicates effectively with its target audience: namely stock brokers and investors.

Understand who you are trying to reach and what you are trying to do. 

Stockbroking, and the investment community generally, is a highly educated arena. However, the education is predominately confined to economics and finance, with only a small adjunct of technical/science savvy analysts whose main role is to judge company value on a case by case basis, usually confined to the very specific list of companies that any given broking firm covers. Given the segregated nature of academic specialization here, it is beholden on scientific companies to ensure that their market communications can reach across the divide. You cannot assume that it is a technically savvy analyst who is reading your announcements.

The curious thing about markets is that they can price-in the value of nearly any company development, no matter how technically difficult to understand it is. However this simply will not happen if the market cannot identify the news value, financial value, corporate value or, indeed, understand what you are saying. The net result is commonly no share price movement at all. So, market communications (announcements, presentations etc.) simply must be made with ease of understanding as a primary goal.

With the above in mind, I wrote a short paper on how to approach the problem of "translating" technical material into readable writing for the general market. It contains greater detail than what is here in this post. You can find it towards the bottom of this page: http://www.articul8.com.au/science.html

Clarity is King.

It should be enough to sell the concept of clear communications on one principle alone – the easier it is to understand a company; the easier it is to invest in that company.

The majority of listed companies understand this well and some have entire departments dedicated to good, clear public communications. However it is still common enough, especially in technical disciplines, for this to be overlooked. In the increasingly busy market, this can no longer be ignored. It may be the only way you can cut through with your message.

Given that you already have many very intelligent, well-educated, well-spoken individuals in your company, many of whom probably write very well, you may not need a dedicated communications or PR team. It may be enough to simply outsource the final writing and editing of your announcements. Get it all ready to go, but give the final job to an external expert. This minimizes the time and therefore cost of good communications with the outside world. It also need not jeopardize your obligation to release information to the market “immediately”.

Ultimately, the market can only judge your company based on what it does and what it says. You've got the what-it-does under control, that's how you got to where you are today. But spare a moment for the what-it-says. That may just be the critical difference for the future of your enterprise.

If you think you need help in crafting clear communications, drop us a line!

Is your business writing healthy? You may need help.

Have you stopped to think about all the written content you have out there? You might not realise how important it is. Not because you don't care, of course you do, but simply because you haven't stopped to think about it. Below is a list of copywriting moments for you. Think of it like a copywriting "health checklist" for you and your business.

1. Your website.

Seems like a no-brainer, right? Wrong. A lot of thought needs to go into the copy on your website. It's not enough to have a rudimentary explanation of your service, or a bland product description. You need to ensure that visitors understand how they can benefit from your product or service. What part of their life or business needs help, needs fixing? How does your offer fit into their story? Are you making it easy for them to understand you and see why they need you?

2. Your blog.

The centerpiece. The point of departure; the point of arrival. Your blog is where your story takes shape, and where people come to understand you. They visit your blog to learn. They will come to respect you and follow you. You bring people into your tribe through your blog, and all the other social media should hang from this fruitful tree. The better the writing, the more likely it is that people will stay, and, crucially, the more likely it is that they'll actually understand you. You need to be absolutely sure that what you write really says what you mean. That's where good grammar, punctuation, and spelling is critical; as is a good helping of rhetorical skill.

3. Business copy.

All of it: your brochures, your company reports, your letters. They must read well. Your marketing materials need to be catchy and informative. If not, they simply will not do their job. Selling is a dirty word these days, but selling is what you do. It doesn't have to be like bad daytime TV though. Well-worded copy has a magical ability to persuade without annoying the crap out of people.

4. Editorial content.

Many businesses (and people) write articles and other content for magazines and other publications (both in print and online). Well, they should, that is. Getting your words under somebody else's masthead lends credibility and prestige to your name. It builds your reputation as an expert in your field. Again, those words will need to be well crafted. In fact, you probably won't get published if they're not.

I'm not kidding about the importance of doing all this, and doing it well. Perhaps the only thing worse than not getting your message out there is hashing that message so badly that people actually think you're talking about something else (or worse still, they have no idea what you're talking about at all).

Here's some ideas for working all of the above into a STRATEGY. (Yes, you need one.)

 A. Think about what your business really is. Where do you fit into the life of your customer? How will you change their lives? Or, better, how will understanding your customers change you?

B. Get advice. Find a writer who can look at all the aspects of your written content, talk with you and your team, understand you and your business. Then let them at it for a while. You'll see improvements from day one.

C. Get help on any of the above. Don't have time to write a blog? Get it written for you. Why not put out a regular newsletter? Include your market commentary, talk about local events. Send it to your client list. Send it to your leads. Do it regularly. A good writer will even be able to suggest topics and ideas, making it easy for you to get good content out there regularly.

The internet age has reinforced the importance of writing. Google seeks out good writing and grammar in their search. It's more important than ever. Do it well, and do seek help if you need it.

It's also a lot of fun to tell stories. Make yours great.

Connecting with clients in a glossy way

When I'm sitting at a cafe and observing the world and all its delights, I often also peruse the pages of real estate magazines, and one of the things I've noticed is that some real estate brands put in more effort than others. Sure, they all have colour photos of beautiful properties that make me go deep verdant with envy, but some are more glossy, some are more stylish, and some even go the extra mile to include editorial content.

It's one thing to flick casually through a bunch of properties that you may or may not be in the market for, but its another thing entirely for a magazine to capture your attention for minutes at a time while you read the CEO's thoughts, or a lifestyle editorial on a local attraction or event. All that eyeball time, with the brand's logo in your face!

Given the relative ease of publishing these days, having a magazine is basically essential for a successful real estate brand. Having great content is just as important, and not just properties, written articles that engage with your audience. Harcourts and Jellis Craig, as seen above, are particularly fine examples of real estate brands that do this well.

You could say that without written content, your magazine is only doing half its job. But you need good writing, and good writers, and it's imperative that any published copy is well written, reads well, and achieves your objectives, because it will be in circulation for a lot longer than a Facebook post. If you want to do this without taking up all your time, get in touch and we can write it for you!