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Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category
Thursday, April 26th, 2012
 I’ve been watching Simon Sinek giving a TED talk. This phrase comes from him. And I love it. This dovetails exactly with the positioning statement.
What he says in 20 minutes, speaks volumes about good, product positioning and meaningful customer-ready messaging. He paints a picture he calls “the golden circle” that includes the What, How, and Why of a company’s reason for being. Most companies, he says, are very familiar with “what” they do. They are even good at understanding “how” they do it. But, when it comes to “why” they do what they do, there is a pause. What’s their purpose? What are the beliefs that drives a company to do what it does? Are they in business just to make money, or are they driven by a belief shared by all employees?
He shares an example contrasting Gateway with Apple. Both companies have access to capital, access to brilliant minds and innovative staff, and can tap into the same market conditions. Yet, the ways these two companies communicate are completely opposite. And their relevant success is obvious to everyone.
Gateway might produce marketing messages that look and feel like this:
1. We make great computers.
2. They are simple to use and affordable .
3. Want to buy one?
Sounds pretty bland, right? Now Apple. Their messaging might be summarized like this:
1. In everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently.
2. The way we challenge the status quo is in hiring people who share the same belief and by making products that are beautifully designed and easy to use.
3. We make computers, phones, and a variety of personal productivity tools that challenge the status quo. Want to buy one?
Where do I sign up? The secret is that Apple focuses on the “why” question first. Their message gives me something I can believe in, too.
Simon also shares the example of Samuel P. Langley vs the Wright brothers. Langley was driven to become rich and famous and saw the invention of the airplane as a goal to achieve his wealth. Orville and Wilbur believed that flight would change the world. They didn’t work for a paycheck. They worked for a belief. This is exactly why the world knows the Wright brothers and don’t know Langley.
The lesson is clear: when you draft your company’s positioning and messaging, start with the “why”. What do you believe? Because if you don’t know, then your customers won’t either.
Tags: marketing strategy, messaging, positioning statement
Posted in Marketing | No Comments »
Thursday, April 19th, 2012
 Dan Zarrella, Social Media Scientist with HubSpot, recently gave a webinar entitled The Science of Email Marketing. He analyzed over 9.5 billion emails provided by MailChimp and came up with some unexpected results. Here is a brief summary of key findings based on the data, focus groups and an online survey.
- People are people. 88% do not have separate work and personal email accounts. So B2B and B2C emails all land in the same inbox. Treat business contacts as consumers. However, 58% have a junk email account (hotmail, etc.). Make your content relevant and valuable to increase the liklihood that recipients will sign up with their real (non junk) email address.
- People are creatures of habit. Most people treat their email as “homework” or tasks to do and read it primarily in the morning. Although they will continue to read emails throughout the day and evening, having your email in their inbox first thing in the morning increases the liklihood it will get reviewed as part of that morning email routine.
- People don’t hibernate on weekends. Surprisingly, the highest clickthrough rates (CTRs) and lowest unsubscribe rates were on Saturdays and Sundays. Most unsubscribes are on Tuesdays which is not surprising given that so many marketing emails are sent on that day. Experiment with your own list to see how weekend emails pan out for you. At KickStart, we started sending our monthly newsletter, KickStart Accelerator, on weekends several months ago. Our highest CTR was indeed on a Saturday.
- People are mobile. Over 80% of people read emails on mobile devices. Test your emails not only on traditional email clients (Outlook, Gmail, Entourage, etc.) but also on smartphones. For tips on optimizing for mobile, see this blog post by Adrienne Rhodes.
- People like links. The more links in an email the higher the CTR, even if it’s the same link presented multiple times and ways. More links means more ways to persuade the recipient to take action. Be sure to link to landing pages to help you gather metrics on conversions and especially if you are trying to generate new leads.
- People filter and archive their emails. To increase the liklihood that your email will land in the inbox or appropriate folder, use a consistent sender and subject line. If it’s a newsletter, digest, summary, etc. say so in the subject line. Pack the email with valuable information (data, statistics, how-tos) so it will be archived for future reference. You can send multiple emails per month to the same list without impacting unsubscribes or CTR as long as the content is valuable to the recipient.
- People like to feel special. Offer exclusive deals to your subscribers and remind them how important they are. They’ll look forward to receiving the emails and builds loyalty.
- People seldom forward emails. Nor do they Tweet about them. It’s okay to include Forward to a Friend and social share options, but more importantly include “Follow Us” links to build your social media audience. Post your newsletter or other content on your website so it’s Tweetable.
View the presentation.
Tags: dan zarrella, email marketing, hubspot, mailchimp
Posted in Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 13th, 2012
PPT Template: A Streamlined Integrated Marketing Framework
(NOTE: when you click on the above link, the template will download directly to your desktop. It doesn’t open a new window.)
Previously, this template for a streamlined go-to-market plan was available only to readers of my book, Marketing Campaign Development. Because this has been such a popular item, I’ve decided to make it available to everyone. Feel free to download it, adopt it, and adapt it to fit your own marketing needs. (more…)
Tags: go-to-market plan, Integrated Marketing, integrated marketing campaign planning, template
Posted in Marketing | No Comments »
Sunday, January 22nd, 2012
 B2B companies still talk about the “sales cycle,” but that’s internal thinking. It’s about the company, not about the customer. For a long time now, customers have been in charge of the buying process — researching, finding, and comparing products on their own before ever speaking with vendors. So why are marketers still talking about “demand creation?” That’s still a useful concept, especially in consumer products companies, but B2B marketers also need to be thinking about the buyers they don’t even know yet — the ones who are already out there looking for solutions. Rather than just pushing information out to a big list of prospective customers, marketers need to have searchable, findable content available online, so that when prospects are ready, they can find you.
(more…)
Tags: content marketing, customer buying cycle, Integrated Marketing, SEO, Social Media
Posted in Marketing | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 20th, 2011
There were several key announcements by Mark Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, at this year’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. Over 45,000 people attended the event while 35,000 streamed it live. It was the first time I had to wait in line to cross Howard at Fourth to get to the keynote.
The theme of the conference was the “social enterprise” – showing how social media and new collaboration tools are changing the way we do business. According to the Salesforce.com press release issued on August 31st, the social enterprise leverages …”social, mobile and open cloud technologies to revolutionize companies’ relationships with their customers.”
Here is a quick summary of a few of the announcements made during the keynote that sales and marketing professionals will find of interest. All offerings are scheduled to be available in late 2011. (more…)
Tags: dreamforce 2011, salesforce.com
Posted in Marketing, Sales, Social Media | No Comments »
Friday, July 1st, 2011
In my last post I described the demographics and content usage of respondents to our recent survey of KickStart Accelerator (our newsletter) subscribers. This time, I’m reviewing results on the questions we asked our readers in that same survey about their current marketing and sales practices and initiatives. Since these were all “check-all-that-apply” questions, the percentage totals will exceed 100%.
Bear in mind from the last post that our responses were predominantly from people in smaller to mid-sized B2B companies that sell tech products or services. Here is how they responded to questions about how they are engaging with customers:
(more…)
Tags: customer, Marketing, Sales, survey
Posted in Marketing | No Comments »
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