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Posts tagged ‘communication’

11
Dec

SEO and Search are useless

Image source: Flickr, @anthonylkdking

Imagine you are perfectly happy with your solution. Imagine that you have a business in which the solution is providing you with a descent return on investment.

There’s no need for you to change.

Now imagine that you are a vendor with a solution that will provide more return than any other existing solution on the market.

You are creating comparisons, providing ROI tools, and doing all the right things to attract buyers with your content.

They are not searching

SEO will not help you, because they are not searching.

When they do search, you are there. But unfortunately, they don’t search, because they don’t need you. They are happy with what they have.

He/She’ll be blind for everything you have to say.

So what do you do?

The perfect world

If they are not searching, they are exploiting their current situation.

They are not aware that there’s something better out there, because basically they don’t have a problem.

But then the day comes.

The day they start being slightly unhappy, and realize that the world they are in, is not perfect. That the solution they have is not perfect.

That day they become receptive. They are willing to listen. And when they are ready to listen, you must be speaking.

When the day has come

Your buyer realizes that there is more out there. He want’s to know more. That’s the day he starts being receptive to e-mails, conference invites, whitepapers and webinars. Read more »

14
Nov

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.

Read more »

27
Jul

Study: Strategic issues for communication management until 2015

The European Association of Communication Directors just published its annual report

It provides insight into communication and PR professionals (survey from 2200 communication professionals from 42 countries in Europe), and has titled it:

 

 

Challenges and Competencies for Strategic Communication

Why am I covering this report?

The reason I am covering this report is because

  • It show the biggest challenges for marketers and communicators today.
  • Because it comes from a descent source
  • Because it has data from previous years that allows to spot trends.

Key take-away’s from the European Communication Monitor 2012

  • Most important strategic issues: Need to address more audiences with limited resources
  • Ethical challenges: Six out of ten PR professionals faced moral problems within the last 12 months
  • Barriers to professionalization: 84% state that top management lacks understanding of communications
  • Integrating and coordinating communications: Shaping multiple identities is more relevant today
  • Practice of strategic communication: Operational work takes 37% of a typical week
  • Social media: Large gap between perceived importance and real implementation in most organisations
  • Development and qualifications: Management and business knowledge needed, but training is missing

Read more »

18
Apr

Struggling to build a consistent messaging across all your channels?

Does it feel like you need to invent your marketing message every time you start a marketing action?

Do you feel like your remote marketing teams do not understand what messaging to put in their marketing actions?

And how do you make your messaging consistent across all channels, at all times?

That can be a challenging task…

 

Changing marketing dynamics and exploding expectations

Compared to a few years ago, marketing has becoming increasingly complex as a result of the exploding number of sales and marketing channels that need to be managed.  Marketers need to go from one-way conversations to two-way dialogue with integrated channel activity.

Operational tools that help marketers

In order to successfully manage these changing dynamics and expectations, marketers now must have tools that enable them to:

  • Communicate their brand messaging consistently across channels, regions and maybe also different business units;
  • Collaborate with internal and external partners through effective scheduling, time and resource management;
  • Integrate all campaigns and initiatives into a common strategy, and
  • Provide clear reporting and visibility so that sales and senior management and all stakeholders are clearly aware of how projects are delivering versus corporate goals.

There exist many tools on the market, ranging from very simple but adequate project planning tools for small teams like milestoneplanner.com or basecamp.com, towards full fledge marketing resource management tools (see this Gartner Magic Quadrant of 2012 for the most important players). And I am not even talking about the exploding array of marketing automation vendors.

(I am not affiliated with any of these vendors).

But if you are the one responsible to develop communication campaigns or lead generation campaigns, these strategic plans won’t tell you how to translate these elements into tangible messaging which you can use in your marketing activities.

Read more »