The Online Elevator Pitch in Marketing
Recently I bumped into a video on Youtube in which they explained how to draft your Elevator Pitch.
It made me immediately think about how we marketers build our messaging.
Too often I see advertisements, promotional e-mails or websites, which just don’t make sense, because they try to convey way too much information, which makes the message “fuzzy”.
Or if the message is very short, it is a 2-layered message which is difficult to “decode” on the receiving end.
Everyone wants to have a great Elevator Pitch. But how do we get that concept into our marketing?
How do you do that?
How do you leave a powerful and impactful impression?
If you ever wanted to defend your great idea, or your great new product, you know how difficult it can be synthesize your message to the core, which means “killing off” your favorite parts of the full story.
Most people talk way to long, write too much, and bring to much level of detail. They don’t know when to give little information, and when to give more.
Creating an elevator pitch is about “killing your darlings”.
And so is creating a strong message to your target audience: “kill your darlings”. Weed out everything you don’t need. Go back to what really counts for the end-user.
The online Elevator Pitch
We live in a digital world, where photos, images, audio and video have become really important. Just look at the success of Pinterest, Slideshare or Instagram.
And online, people will only give you a few seconds of attention.
You literally only have a few seconds to pass on your message, to make a good impression, and make them want to know more.
A few seconds.
Marketing Automation vendors: revealing strengths and weaknesses
Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/azmarshall/
Long sales cycles and complex purchase decision-making challenge B2B marketers to find the most qualified prospects and to build relationships long before the first sales call.
In this environment, automation is essential to achieving a high level of demand generation maturity, and many marketers turn to lead management or marketing automation providers to meet this need.
The clear benefits of lead management automation should have B2B marketers jumping to purchase it.
However, back in 2009 this Forrester study reviewed a number of vendors in this area, they saw an underachieving space. Market penetration was low (between 2% and 5% of B2B firms have invested selling to <25M$ companies).
Forrester named some reasons for the slow market adoption:
- Heated competition battling to grab share: because of the “big CRM players” beginning to play in this field, buyers hold back their investments because they believe they have the functionality already in house through their CRM system
- A massive amount of new players entering the playfield all with different backgrounds claiming to have similar functionality. These claims keep B2B buyers running from demo to demo and scratching their heads over which offering will best meet their needs.
MAS vendors come from different market. Image source : Forrester
Today, looking at the recent Gartner report of June 2012 the CRM market as a whole, of which this industry is very much part, enjoyed a strong rebound in 2011 with revenue reaching $11.9 billion in 2011, a 12.7% growth from 2010.
