Michael Litt: 5 Reasons Why You Should Start Crafting a Video Marketing Strategy. Before a video marketing strategy is put in place, there are millions of questions you've asked yourself in order to get the ball rolling. What does video mean to my business? Will my customers actually watch my video? What will this cost me? Answering these questions should not leave you pulling your hair out; rather, it should push you to start developing that strategy. We've been listening and commenting on forums, LinkedIn groups, Twitter and Facebook and it has become clear that what people want -- marketers in particular -- are reasons why they should be using video.
Video elicits greater emotional responses Viewers, consumers, visitors (however you position them) respond better to content that utilizes more than one sense. Video gives you an opportunity to exercise those creative juices Have you ever said to yourself, 'If only I could show people what I mean when I write about <enter subject matter here>'? People love to talk to people, not brands. Organization has its effects.
A simple truth about photo albums. Customer-centric Marketing: 7 triggers to engage customers and build loyalty. “How many of you believe you are more fascinating than the average person?” Keynote speaker Sally Hogshead, who goes by Chief Fascination Officer at Fascinate, presented this question to the MarketingSherpa B2B Summit 2012 audience Tuesday afternoon. Not many hands in the room went up, which supported Sally’s findings: Only 39% of people believe they are more “fascinating” than “average.” What is fascination? According to Sally, it’s a moment of total emotional focus. She has developed the 7 Triggers of Fascination, “which are deeply-rooted means of arousing intense interest.” When your company fascinates your audience, your will get more engaged and loyal customers who are more likely to refer others.
That leaves marketers asking, “How can we create the moments of fascination with our consumers that use the same triggers we experience when we are fascinated?” The seven triggers represent different paths or ways to fascinate your customers with your brand. Trigger #1: TRUST Why repetition? Four “New Marketing” Skills You’d Better Learn Quick. I am pleased to introduce our guest blogger, Matt Heinz. He brings more than 15 years of marketing, business development and sales experience from a variety of organizations, vertical industries and company sizes. His career has focused on delivering measurable results for his employers and clients in the way of greater sales, revenue growth, product success and customer loyalty. You can connect with Matt via email, Twitter, LinkedIn or his blog In just the past few weeks, I’ve talked to 5-6 marketing professionals who got out of the game years ago (to have kids, to travel, to try something different) and are now ready to get back into it.
Most of them don’t recognize the marketing roles they’re now facing. B2B marketing today has changed significantly. Here’s a relatively simple mathematical model for understanding the lead-opportunity-sale math for your company. 2. Your prospects are sharing their needs and buying signals on the social web every day. 3. 4. #1 in a small market... You are very welcome! Every time you visit a store, town or city, there is a sign welcoming you. Of course, there is often a considerable difference between the welcome message on the sign and the warmth of the welcome you actually receive. Here’s a great example of the power of delivering on a welcome message, and the positive impact it can have. Welcome to Jedburgh Yesterday, I visited a small town in Scotland called Jedburgh. As I drove past their “Welcome to Jedburgh” sign, I saw another sign shortly after, telling us that the town provides visitors with free wifi. This turned out to be really useful and allowed me to quickly upload photos to my Instagram account and access Google Maps, etc.
The difference between a welcome message and a welcoming experience The reason I find myself recommending the town to my friends, is not because they invested in a huge, expensive welcome sign. In short: A warm welcome is not something we get from a sign or a well crafted slogan. Photo: Jedburgh.org.uk. A marketing tip from The Gingerbread Man! In today’s post, I’m going to give you an example of great marketing and explain how you can build the idea into your business. The Gingerbread Man There’s a local coffee shop I use sometimes, which decided to start baking their own, delicious gingerbread men. To begin with, they made just 100 of them and found they sold really well. Soon, they were baking 500 at a time, to meet the demand. Then, sales slowly started to dip until they were selling fewer gingerbread men in a week, than they were initially selling in a day.
One of the team suggested they made gingerbread chicks, not gingerbread men, to celebrate the upcoming Easter holiday. Immediately, these new gingerbread chicks sold like crazy! Marketing and relevance They quickly figured out they were onto something and started making special gingerbread products to celebrate everything from Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, to the World Cup and the Olympics. What does this mean for you and your business? Here are 2 key things to focus on: The circles of marketing. Most amateurs and citizens believe that marketing is the outer circle. Marketing = advertising, it seems. The job of marketing in this circle is to take what the factory/system/boss gives you and hype it, promote it and yell about it.
This is what so many charities, politicians, insurance companies, financial advisors, computer makers and well, just about everyone does. The next circle in has so much more leverage. This is the circle of telling a story that resonates with a tribe. This is the act of creating alignment, of understanding worldviews, of embracing and elevating the weird. Smart marketers in this circle acknowledge that their product or service isn't for everyone, but bend over backwards to be sure that some people will be able to fall in love with it. The next circle in is easily overlooked. And the innermost circle is the product or service itself. When in doubt, when your marketing isn't working, the answer is easy: go one circle in. 7 Steps to Marketing Success for Consultants and Coaches. Over the years I’ve worked with a lot of consultants and coaches teaching them how to market their businesses. I’ve spent twenty-five years learning how to build my marketing consulting and coaching business and even developed a network of independent marketing consultants and taught them how to build their businesses.
Many businesses, even those that don’t call what they do consulting or coaching offer consulting in the form of services or information. So, today I submit the steps I believe are the essential elements needed to build any coaching, consulting or service related business. 1) Build your email list First and foremost you need to exist online in a way that allows large numbers of people to find you, but in addition to finding you they need a reason to give you permission to reach out to them over time.
One of the most important elements in your marketing arsenal is a great eBook that motivates people to willingly give you their email address. This is a numbers game. Marketers with power. Business without Borders | It’s still all about knowing the customer. Learning Lessons by Going Where Your Customers Are. I’m a geek and given the choice I will always choose to hangout with my own “kind”. Having launched a product and started a service business I quickly realised that I had to break out of my habits and start going to where my customers really are.
That’s why, when I was given the opportunity to speak to an entrepreneur and startup founder about this subject, I immediately jumped on board. Jeremy Kagan is the founder & CEO of Pricing Engine. A web service that helps the “little guy” make the most of online advertising by optimising their resources and budget, while making suggestions on what ads they should invest in.
Last May, instead of going to Internet Week in NY or TechCrunch Disrupt, Jeremy decided to build a group of experts and go to where their customers were. Pricing Engine along with the guys from GinzaMetrics, nowSpots, OwnLocal and Sailthru, started Local Innovation Labs. LiL stand at the conference The results of this initiative were incredible. The LiL group. How to Build a Social Brand That’s a Sweet Orange in a World of Bitter Apples! How do you build a brand that is a sweet orange in an online social world of bitter apples? How do the brands that leave lasting imprints in your head do it? Why is that jingle you hear one time on the radio or TV in the morning stuck in your head all day? Why do you consistently buy one brand over another? Standing out in a crowd of noise, confusion, spammers and fakes online is not easy. It takes hard work, research, knowledge of people, knowledge of tools, knowledge of best practices and more.
There is a reason that the brands, jingles are stuck in your head. Good marketers know how to do these things with their eyes closed. I like to stick things in a nutshell and make it as easy as possible for you to understand. 23 Tips to Build a Brand that is a Sweet Orange in a World of Bitter Apples 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. Bonus Tip: Inspire – Connect – Achieve! Inspire your audience to connect with you. Heartbeat of Social Media Series. Entering sync markets. How does a painting end up selling for $5 million? Why do some songs end up being listened to by legions of teenagers?
Which companies end up with investors swarming all over them, eager to put in cash? Hint: in each case, it has little to do with the verifiable, rational analysis of the product. In some markets, things are popular merely because they are popular. John Legend's version of Compared to What is a pale imitation of the original, but don't tell the local teenager that. Whining about what's good is a silly way to do business with people who seek to be in sync.
In every one of these markets are people who spot trends, who go first, who set the pace. Marketing to those that want to be in sync is a fundamentally different project than treating your audience as a horizontal mass of isolated people, all to be approached with the same story at the same time, all making independent decisions. Superman, Batman and worldviews.
Everyone sees the world differently, but our worldviews vary in clumps. Some people are focused on today, some on tomorrow. Some people see an innovation as an opportunity, others see a risk. Some people want strength while others seek obedience. Some want facts, others prefer fables. Smart marketers understand that these biases and expectations are shared across particular groups (sometimes connected groups--tribes). When speaking to the market, you will always do better if your story resonates with the worldview of the collective you're trying to reach. Consider two common worldviews: Superman's and Batman's. Batman comes to the world angry. Superman, on the other hand, comes to our world with his gifts and sees his life as an opportunity and an obligation, one that he embraces. Imagine giving a talk to a conference full of Batman types.
There are dozens of other worldview-types out there. It's virtually impossible to sell a product or an idea or a vote to all of these groups at once. Usually, a lot is insufficient. People don't care how much you offer them. They care about whether you exceeded their expectations. If you want to delight, if you want to create a remarkable experience, if you want people to talk about you or buy your stock, the secret is simple: give them more than they expected. If I walk into your store and it looks and feels like stores I've been into before, my expectations are locked in. Now what? But if I walk into your showroom and it's like nothing I've ever experienced before, you get a chance to set my expectations, right?
Marketing isn't merely bragging. Marketing creates a culture, tells a story and puts on a show. In our rush to get picked or get noticed or build buzz, the instinct is to promise more. Information density. How many choices should your customers have? How much information should be presented, how many dials are there to turn, how quickly are you asking for people to grasp concepts and make choices?
Consider two options: When talking to an amateur, to a stranger, to a newbie, to someone who isn't committed, the best path is clarity, which means simplicity. Few choices, no guessing, no hunting around. When talking to a fellow professional, to a peer, to someone in the same groove as you, the goal is to maximize useful density of choice. If you're a frustrated user, it's likely that the marketer/presenter/doctor has made a mistake and either split the difference in how much information and power was conveyed or missed the mark entirely in one direction or the other.
The interface for your mail program ought to be far more information rich than the emergency kill switch at the gas station. Three masters. Why lie? "We've decided to hire someone with totally different skills than yours... " and then they hire someone just like you, but more expensive and not as good. "We're not going to buy a car this month, my husband wants to wait... " and then you see them driving a new car from that other dealer, the one with the lousy reputation.
"I'm just not interested... " and then you see the new RFP, one you could have helped them write to get a more profitable and productive outcome. People lie to salesmen all the time. We do it because salespeople have trained us to, and because we're afraid. Prospects (people like us) lie in many situations, because when we announce that we''ve made the decision to hire someone else, or when we tell the pitching entrepreneur we don't like her business model, or when we clearly articulate why we're not going to do business, the salesperson responds by questioning the judgment of the prospect.
In exchange for telling the truth, the prospect is disrespected. 8 Bold Resolutions For Marketers. Here’s a trivia question for you: What was George Harrison’s last released single? The answer, as it turns out, is Any Road, a song that reminds us, “if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” This poignant parting gift from the youngest Beatle is worth singing right about now as we plot our annual resolutions for our brands, if not our lives. Of course, singing is one thing, and resolving to do things is quite another. To get us all on the right track, I first consulted with trailblazing marketers at Cablevision, Eloqua, Fandango, IBM, PetCo, SAP, and the Grammys. Their insights, based on longer separate interviews, form the basis for these 8 “must do” resolutions for marketers seeking a clear direction on the road ahead. 1.
The need for meaningful metrics has never been greater yet seemingly more elusive to marketers. 2. Lots of brands talk the talk of doing well by doing good. 3. 4. In 2011, content became “the new black.” 5. 6. 7. 8. You know your customers, but do you understand them? | Small Business Matters. Brian Vickery - Social Media - Voice in the Wilderness. Basic Branding Principles for Your Small Business | A Successful Woman. 7 Steps To Sure Fire Marketing Success - Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing. People In Your Life. (188795 unread) - shalliebey - Yahoo! Mail.
Become a Provider of Choice: Shift Your Focus to Customer Experiences. Michael Gerber | Dmort Business Solution. Consumer Behavior For Dummies Cheat Sheet. Can't watch your parade if the house is on fire. Kayaks and Startups: Signalling direction on the open water by making a hard turn. How to fire your low quality clients and grow a rewarding business.