Everything your business does, is marketing. It gives people an experience… an insight into what you and your business stand for.

That experience is what creates your story: Either a story your clients love and want to share or a predictable story, which they soon forget. A story your prospective clients will be attracted to, or one they will ignore. A story that’s working for you or against you.

So, let’s look at your story

Look at your business from the ground up. What story are you crafting for your marketplace? This brief list will help you build a useful picture. It’s just some of the areas of your business, which combine to tell your marketplace, your story:

• Your customer service.
• Your approach to paying your suppliers. (Suppliers talk about late payers).
• The way you handle inbound calls and emails.
• The design of your website.
• The kind of suppliers you use — cheap, average or high quality.
• The clients or customers you choose to work with.
• Your opening hours.
• Your use of social networks.
• The promises or guarantees you offer.
• Your pricing, compared to your competitors.
• Your returns policy.
• The quality of your end product.
• The people or brands you associate with.
• The experience, knowledge and attitude of your team.
• Your ability to meet deadlines.

If you believe there’s room for improvement in your business, rewrite your story. You do this my looking across the whole of your business, and making sure that everything you do is creating trust and value.

Just don’t make the mistake of thinking you can rewrite your story with slick marketing. You can’t!