You are here: Home / Archives for Communications

Sometimes The Hardest Thing You Will Ever Have To Do…

January 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Is stand up for yourself.

It’s true. And we have all been there.

Perhaps you don’t have the best job in the word or the nicest boss or the cordial co-workers. You take it day in and day out because you say to yourself that you are lucky you have a job.

Why?

Someone shared a story recently with me about her first day in a new job with a new company. She decided to take some clients out to lunch but ran the risk of not making it back to the office in time for a team meeting. As the clock slowly ran out, she couldn’t exactly hurry the client along while out to lunch so she kept pace and ended up getting to the meeting a few minutes late. So what happened?

The head of the division called her out in front of everyone and said ‘I don’t care who the f*ck you are, but you don’t come to my meetings late.’ And you know what she did?

She said, ‘I was taking one of your f*ckin clients out to lunch. Do you have a problem with that?’

You know what happened next?

He respected her.

She stood up to him and on his level to boot.

Not so sure I would take this approach. I’m not even sure I would’ve said anything at all (I might’ve said ‘do you want me to leave?’) and it made me think about all the times we are crushed, that we live with the norm because we don’t see a way out. We are thankful for what we have and too busy doing that than to make time to pursue something better.

LinkedInDiggShare
Filed Under: Blog, Communications

Are We Allowed To Be Constructive Even If That Means Being Negative?

December 28, 2012 by 2 Comments

I am a pretty active user on Yelp! I like to rate places, write reviews, add information, check-in – the whole gamut. As a marketing professional I see the value someone like me provides (and Im not just tooting my own horn here). I provide honest opinions and feedback without the business owner soliciting it or giving me something in exchange. Now my reviews are not always the best. In fact, studies show that people are more inclined to talk about a bad experience than a good one. I guess it just makes a better story – right? We’ve all been there!

A Bad Hair Day – Literally

About 6 weeks ago I went to a salon in my town for the first time. I moved recently and am a little tired of driving over an hour to get a cut & color so wanted to see what was around here. The salon came highly recommended and had all 5 stars (3 reviews total but still).

So I did not have a 5 star experience. I wont share all the niddy-griddy details here but I did share them on Yelp which resulted in me getting a call from the owner of the salon. She said it was unfair that I wrote a negative review without talking to her first. She also told me this would destroy her business.

I felt bad. I really did.

Now I had to consider what I could do. I could take down the review altogether and leave this woman and her salon with their 3 ’5 star’ reviews. I could modify it so it wasn’t so harmful (it honestly wasn’t bad anyways). Or I could leave it as is.

Ramifications of Being Honest

While I did decide in this case to take it down, I starting to consider our ability to leave honest reviews and constructive criticism. Is this even allowed anymore? We will not always ask for the manager when we are dissatisfied (I couldn’t get out of there fast enough!) and we wont always take down our reviews. How will business owners react? Could my bad experience actually destroy her business? I really doubt it and if so, then she has way bigger problems than my bad hair color.

You cannot expect perfection. We all want it but it’s highly unachievable. Strive to get better each time instead.

You cannot berate honesty. Instead of crying about a bad review, thank the person for their honesty. You just learned something about your business that you didnt already know (not to mention the reason why someone wont be returning).

You cannot ignore criticism. I love criticism because it helps me get better. That’s all it does. I dont enable it to beat me up or make me feel bad. I simply allow it to make me better. Do the same for your business.

Businesses, restaurants, gas stations, whatever, look more real when they dont have a bunch of gold stars next to their name. We should be allowed and encouraged to be honest. We should be constructive in our response, but honest, open and complete transparent. Same goes for the business owners.

Transparency wins, not perfection.

{photo via Flickr Creative Commons contributor Michael Loudon}

 

LinkedInDiggShare
Filed Under: Blog, Communications, Consumer Marketing

How NOT To Get a Call-Back From a Demand Gen Marketer

December 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I’ve always found it a rewarding challenge to work as a demand gen marketer who is marketing to other marketers. We are our own worst critics. Think of who rolls their eyes at ugly stock imagery. Who is the first to point out the typo? Usually a marketer. So I find it especially yucky when I get an email such as the one I am going to share that is full of so much gobbledygook-zilla that by the time I reached the end, I had no clue what was being said, shared or asked of me.

Hi Christina,

I hope all is well.

My name is XYZ (name has been removed to protect the innocent). I noticed you are in charge of lead and demand generation at XXX and I am looking to discuss ideas on how our companies could work together in similar fashion we’re working with other organizations within your space.

To give you a brief overview, XYZ is an advertising technology and services provider that offers a Centralized Media-Management Platform (CMMP).
• We empower hundreds of media buyers to plan, launch, analyze and optimize their marketing strategies across a regulated ecosystem.
• Unifying performance, digital and traditional media.
• Providing solutions that increase operational efficiency, ad performance and brand display.
• We are VC backed with over $20MM in funding from Comcast, Liberty Global and Foundry Group.

Looking at XXX’s website, I see that you have a library of whitepapers and webinars. We partner with hundreds of brands to power their content syndication and lead generation initiatives, but also leveraging our technology platform to create efficiencies together which streamline internal marketing processes like systems, reporting and analytics. Simultaneously, we can supplement these demand generation initiatives with branding and distribution strategies via our DSP and Live Trading Desk.

Please let me know if we can arrange a call this week or next with one of the senior members of my team to discuss how we can partner with you to help you achieve your marketing goals and drive your planned initiatives.

If you’re not the correct person, my apologies; would you be able to point me in the right direction?

Best,

XYZ

Initial thoughts included the following:

  • What the heck is a “Centralized Media-Management Platform”? Has anyone heard of this?
  • Who cares if you are VC backed and funded? Are you going to help me reach my goals?
  • Are you an agency? Software provider? What the heck is this?
  • via our DSP and Live Trading Desk <- Huh???

How I would make it better

Consider what it is I would care about in my position. “Providing solutions that increase operational efficiency, ad performance and brand display” doesn’t tell me a whole lot and you are not even using language that I care about. If you re-worded this to say “provide solutions to increase lead volumes from online display ads”, I would likely pay attention. Use my language – take some time to see how I write about topics I care about. Im very active on Twitter – one look at my stream can pretty much sum up the things I am interested in and even the ways in which I describe things. Throwing some fancy schmancy techno language babble around does not help you sell to me. I have no appetite whatsoever to even consider being on a phone with someone that may talk the same way.

We know you know you stuff. You dont need to word-stuff the heck out of your intro email to prove it. Assume I know nothing and you will actually look a lot smarter.

LinkedInDiggShare
Filed Under: Blog, Communications, Marketing

Getting Started With Whitepapers

December 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

A quick glance through the most popular search terms that brought you and other readers to my site in the last day, last 30 days and even of all time, has made it clear that ‘papers’, ‘whitepapers’ and ‘white papers’ are clearly on your mind. A post I wrote “13 ways to Promote One Whitepaper” is a must-read and has been read at this point thousands of times. I hope it is helpful and you are taking away some value to apply at your own company. But perhaps I put the cart before the horse with this one because to promote a whitepaper would assume you have already created one. So let’s talk about the first part; how to get started with whitepapers.

Start with an idea

Everything starts with an idea even your whitepaper. I look at this a couple ways. First I look at what trends are appearing in the market. In a previous company, we were targeting e-commerce professionals who were challenged with building a shopping cart on their Facebook page. I conducted some research and found articles and blogs that talked slightly about the topic but nothing that was truly addressing it. This would be a great idea for content but I felt that we could do more here and create a guide or whitepaper that really consolidated all the information and provided e-commerce professionals with something they could use.

Can you solve or help with the problem?

Now just because I had identified a problem that was not being addressed and a clear audience to consume this whitepaper, didnt mean I necessarily had the ‘right’ to write about it. Who was the authority on the topic? Me? Certainly not. Could I find enough of and the right resources and information to pull it all together into a succinct paper? Yes, I could.

Draft the outline

Everyone’s outline will be different based upon your topic and audience and the overall goal or takeaway you want your audience to have. But you must start with a summary of why the paper exists and why the person should read it. Next, outline the layout of your paper. In this example, my outline looked like this:

  • Why Facebook cannot be ignored by e-commerce professionals – data
  • What are the solutions that currently exist? How can a retailer get started today?
  • What do consumers want? Is any method working to convert Facebook users into paying consumers?
  • What does the future look like? What should be available that currently is not?
  • Case study of how our product solved this problem

Start writing or hire a copywriter

For this particular guide, I combined a copywriter’s skills with internal resources. I knew I did not have the time to do all the research involved to write the paper but I also knew that we had to add our side to validate certain points (especially our predictions for the future). It’s up to you how you want to approach it but you can hire some great writers for very cheap money.

Edit and lay it out

Once we had the paper back from the copywriter, we edited it so it sounded like it came from our company. We then added more verbiage based on our experiences and point of view. As a final step, we worked with internal designers to lay out the paper in a fun, easy to digest manner. Keeping in mind our target audience of e-commerce professionals, we knew the design was an important consideration and we could have a bit of fun with it (may be different if you are targeting bankers for example).

Now go promote your whitepaper! See link in first paragraph for some ideas :)

 

LinkedInDiggShare
Filed Under: Blog, Communications, Content Marketing, Marketing, Strategy

Using Small Words: An Exercise From ‘The Impact Equation’

December 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I just finished reading Chris Brogan and Julian Smith’s new book “The Impact Equation”. Now I’m not going to go into a big review here since I already did that one Amazon. Click here if you want to read it. What I would like to do instead is go through an exercise from the book entitled ‘Use Small Words’ (page 98 if you’re following along).

The idea is that we over-complicate things when we should focus more on being simple. How do you describe what you do, what your company does, what you believe in, etc.? Chances are you trip over your own words and realize that you just mumbled a whole bunch of mambo jumbo. I know I do. How many times have I set next to someone on a plane and received the notorious question ‘what do you do’? I want to get better at it so let’s start.

First, I’m going to go through the exercise without thinking of small words. Then, I’m going to re-think my answer and use small words.

Describe what you do for work. Describe what your company does.

I am a marketer working in demand generation. I basically run programs that fill the top of the funnel with leads for the sales team. Third party emails, webinars, content syndication programs, online display, paid search. Stuff like that.

The company I work for is a software company. We provide marketing automation software which allows marketers to automated messaging (primarily email) to send to the right person at the right time.

This makes total sense to a marketer but probably not to many other people. Now I’m going to try and use small words.

I am a marketing manager at a software company. My job is to find people in the market who have a problem we can solve. I use various types of tactics to do so including email and online events.

My company helps marketers do more with less. Our software enables them to automate tasks that are often manual and then track their returns with more accuracy.

It’s not easy – you try it! We are so consumed in what we do and what we are good at, that we sometimes assume that everyone knows what we are talking about. It’s tough! How would you describe ‘marketing’ if someone didn’t know what it was? Tough!

LinkedInDiggShare
Filed Under: Blog, Branding, Communications, Marketing

Mapping the Customer Journey and What This Has To Do With the Media You Buy

December 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I read on AdAge about new research that suggests marketers are not spending their budgets wisely. Are we really getting worse or are we not attributing media spend properly? Do we focus on filling the funnel rather than moving people through it?

The big ‘elephant in the room’ on this debate was that marketers are not spending enough on social media. In addition, the popularity of online display ads has inundated the market so much that their value is flat and/or declining. Yet we still do more of the latter and not enough of the former.

I want you to consider for a moment the phrase ‘there is a time and a place for everything’ as we think about traditional vs. digital media and how we connect and engage with our prospects throughout their journey to become a customer.

Chris Gorell Barnes states ‘Marketers must stop considering each element of their advertising campaign, and budgets, in silos and start to consider the entire customer journey and the best medium to engage with them, whether that’s social media or video.’

Regardless of B2B or B2C, social media has a place in the funnel. You need to determine where your customer is in the process when they engage with your brand via these channels. That should map your strategy and allocation of budget to proceed. Whether they are in the discovery phase or the decision phase, you need to run some analysis and determine where buyers are when they are spending time with your brand on social media.

Same goes for display or traditional media. I have typically seen these effective in 2 ways. The first is to position your brand in front of people who are at various stages – hey, remember us, click here. And the second is to re-target prospects who took an action at one time however you haven’t seen them in awhile.

Sit with your sales team and map out the customer journey. Similar to how we think about the types of content we use at various stages (whitepapers early on, datasheets and product demos later), consider the media you would use to reach people in various stages. The way you reach a cold prospect and the type of conversation you have may be entirely different than how you place your brand in front of someone who is heavily considering you.

LinkedInDiggShare
Filed Under: Blog, Communications, Content Marketing, Lead Nurturing

7 Things You Need in Your Customer ENewsletter

October 8, 2012 by 1 Comment

Awhile back I promised you I would react to search terms that brought you to my site and work to answer some questions that you are asking. So the search term this week that I picked is ‘content for a customer enewsletter’ which is sort of fitting since I had this topic queued up in my drafts for awhile now. So let’s get to it, you searched for what types of content to put in your newsletter, landed here and I intend to answer this question for you.

1. Product Updates

This is one of those rare moments when I tell you it’s ok to talk about your product. Give your customers updates on what’s happening, where is your product going? What problems in the market are you seeking to solve with your solutions?

2. Tips on Using Your Product Better/Differently

Again, these are your customers so let’s help them out with some tips on using the product. Not everyone is using it the same way, so why not spend some time sharing unconventional ways people are using the product so your customer base can get a wider perspective? We become so consumed with what we do day in and day out, that it’s great to learn how other companies are solving similar challenges.

3. New Content

That whitepaper you just published to support lead generation efforts should be shared with your community as well. Don’t get too caught up in the fact that content is only good for demand gen, your audience may find just as much use out of the information as your prospects.

4. Industry News

Ever try and keep up with everything that’s going on? It’s tough! There are thousands and thousands of interesting blogs, news sites and graphical representations of what’s going on in your industry. If you can’t keep up, what makes you think your customers can? Do the work for them and collect and share links to interesting reads, they will appreciate it!

5. New Hires

Your customer’s are invested in the success of your company and everyone likes to see a friendly face with a name. Why not take this opportunity to introduce someone new on your team? Adding a new hire announcement to your customer newsletter adds a bit of personality to your communication (and your employee will feel extra special about it too).

6. Upcoming Events/Webinars

Again, don’t forget about your customer base when you have a new webinar coming up or you are attending/hosting an event. Your customers will find value in your offering too – and if they don’t, they won’t register. but at least you invited them.

7. Customer Highlight/Case Study

Did you just publish a new case study this month? Share it in your newsletter! The customer featured will love to see their name in print and the rest of your customer base will not only appreciate the story, but will most likely be even more encouraged to share theirs with you to get some limelight.

Hope this helps! I will close on this note. While I am calling it a ‘customer’ newsletter, don’t forget your prospects here! One thing I have done in the past is share a newsletter with customers that had no gates to content. I would then replicate the same exact newsletter but put forms in front of case studies and whitepapers for prospects.

LinkedInDiggShare
Filed Under: Blog, Communications, Customer Marketing

Does Social Media Make You Feel Good About Yourself?

September 25, 2012 by 1 Comment

I’ve been meaning to write about this for awhile and something happened today that reminded me that I wanted to write this so here we go. MarketingProfs published an article about our behavior on the social web and questioned if we act badly. It was interesting to me that a majority of the survey participants shared that social media actually improves their self-esteem and makes a person feel better about themselves. Their bonds are stronger with other because of social media.

Today over on Ken Mueller’s blog Inkling Media, he wrote about Social Media and our Shared Experiences. He too was sharing the fact the social media has enabled us to become closer and to share experiences that we otherwise would not have shared. I couldn’t help but think about the night of the Olympics’ Opening Ceremony which I spent alone (or rather, with Tini) on my couch with phone in hand and Tweetdeck open. Hours flew by in which I watched the ceremony and shared my experience with others. I didn’t even consider the fact that I was technically alone until I made the comment today on Ken’s blog. And then he replied ‘It makes me sad that you were alone, but glad we could all share those experiences! You need to make some friends!’ Haha Ken. But then I got sad (I’m not mad at you Ken – I promise). Did social media make me happier? Am I not as ‘alone’ when I have Tweetdeck ready and armed?

Does social media make you feel good about yourself?

Let’s consider this for a moment. Introverts have thrived as a result of the world wide web. The internet has provided an outlet to make funny remarks, reach out to people, engage, strike up a conversation with a stranger, publish your thoughts and any other number of things. We request connections from people we don’t know just because we like how they described themselves in their profile. We follow and re-tweet people because they said something smart. And you know what? Other people respond. They want to connect with us, and tweet us back and comment on our thoughts. They want to meet us in real life and hug us and tell us we are awesome.

Of course it makes us feel good! Why wouldn’t it?

While a majority of people that have met me will argue I am not an introvert, I have a very hard time at events in which I know nobody. You want to meet me for dinner? I am a bubbly, non-stop talking, very loud person. But I don’t know you and I’m stag at an event? I’m drinking wine and hanging by the food table hoping someone will talk to me first. Just being honest here. That does not make me feel good. That makes me feel bad.

But online, because of social media, I don’t have this fear. I reach out without hesitation. I tell someone I think they are great and sometimes they say it back. I share my thoughts on topics and ideas and give my opinion freely. I want to be here and participate and it’s less nerve-racking for me. You don’t get to see how nervous I am. You don’t get to hear the shake in my voice. You don’t get to see my hand shake so hard my wine nearly tips over. And thankfully, you don’t know how much I am sweating when I hit that send button.

I’ll leave you with this. My self-esteem has not improved because of social media but it does make me feel good but I think it has a lot to do with what Ken says and that’s really about the connections and shared experiences. Sharing a laugh with a friend or a good conversation – even in 140 characters – is never going to be a bad thing.

 

LinkedInDiggShare
Filed Under: Blog, Communications, Social Media

If You Are In Marketing, Sales Is A Customer

September 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Awhile back I wrote about my conversation with my sales team as being the best I had all day. The point was that as marketers, our sales groups are our customers. I feel like we forget this. We draft up personas about our target audience and consider messaging for email campaigns and websites that ‘sell’ our company’s products but we don’t often think about applying the same attention to sales.

The Role of Field Marketing

Over the last couple of years – at least for me – I have seen a new role emerging called Field Sales Marketing. In this role, marketers are assigned to either a sales rep or a territory and it is their responsibility to ‘hold hands’ with the sales team. Sales does their job; selling the win. Marketing does their job; developing compelling materials and messaging to support the win.

So let’s consider sales as our customer the way field marketing does. What does sales need from us? How can we make their lives easier?

Internal Newsletters and Doing the Work

Something you can start doing right now, as in today, that is very simple and very helpful is create an internal newsletter designed for sales. Now I will not call sales lazy in what I am about to say next but sometimes we need to support them as in do the work for them. This doesn’t mean calling their prospects. This doesn’t mean making call lists (not all the time). This doesn’t mean farming or hunting or anything else to do with animals. This means supporting them by doing some work.

The newsletter is often thought of in a couple ways. Most common is the customer newsletter or company newsletter. Next may be an internal newsletter. What about a newsletter just for sales? Create one weekly that is comprised of articles about the competition, major changes to the product, internal announcements that are relevant, industry news that the external audience (prospects) is interested in and anything else that may be considered useful.

I see internal chats and emails flying around saying ‘check out this news article’ or ‘this company just released this upgrade’ or whatever. It’s too much for anyone to digest let alone your sales team. Support them by quickly consolidating what’s important, add some brief descriptions (cough, read the article for them so they dont have to) and send it out.

It’s not hard, you already have the content and I bet your sales team with be overjoyed (ask for feedback and suggestions for improvement of course).

LinkedInDiggShare
Filed Under: Blog, Communications, Marketing

P.S. I’m Not a Designer

July 13, 2012 by 2 Comments

My first job was as a Marketing Assistant at Clark & Reid, a moving company. It was a huge opportunity for me to enter the field of marketing and I did everything. ‘Everything’ included designing which I did on Publisher. Yes, that’s right. I didn’t know how to use Photoshop – and frankly, didn’t want to learn – so I figured out another way. I could crop images and put shadows on objects. I could change font sizes and color. I could even design something that could be printed (the image in this post is a postcard I designed for a mailer). Yes, I guess I was a designer at the time, or at least thought myself one.

I didn’t know any better

Why do I say that? Because I didn’t. I wanted to do it all and that was what I did. I did it all. You want me to design a postcard? Ok, I’ll do it. When do you need it by? You need an image for an email? New website layout concept? I got you covered! Over the last couple of years my feelings on this have changed. Why? Because I know better. I know that there are people who exist that can do a better job of it. I wont say I am not one of those people who wishes deep down that they had a creative bone because I do, but I am just not a designer.

Ever look at something perhaps someone in your company created, maybe a competitor created or a brand you admire and think ‘that’s so cool? Why didn’t I think of that?’ Well, stop thinking that and trying to come up with something better because if you are like me (not a designer) then you are going to be spinning your wheels for a while.

Adapting and communicating

I feel sometimes this misconception that because we are marketers that we should always have something witty to say, we should be the ones starting the party and bringing pizza to the office. We are the ones that come up with the ‘cool stuff’ that everyone else admires. It’s a tough role to live up to and I can testify to that.

Adapting to this role and fitting in is not easy. I have made attempts to communicate what I can and cannot do yet I continue to be asked to perform tasks beyond my skill-set (primarily from friends and family who just don’t understand the role I play). Well, I am not a designer and I have resigned myself to the fact that I never will be. It’s ok with me, is it ok with you?

LinkedInDiggShare
Filed Under: Blog, Communications
«Older Posts