Archive for June, 2010

Social Media – How to Separate Personal From Business.

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Last week I participated in a panel discussion on social media for SugarCRM. One of the questions that came up was ‘how do you keep business and personal separate?’ The three panelists gave various answers, the main theme being whether used for business or personal, as a salesperson or an employee,  remember that it’s there forever so be careful, professional and aware.

However, a more advanced way to help keep them separate is to go in with a plan and share it with all company participants. Give them the tools and training they need to be successful in this new arena.

Don’t Just Dive-in – Social Media is a Marketing Tool

I’m often heard to say that using a social media platform is just like any other marketing tool. Before jumping in you should figure out who your target is, where to find them (Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn?) and what they’re looking for from a company like you. You would use this information to strategize on the best way to communicate with them and use your marketing tools effectively.

Are you using social media to raise awareness, educate about your service or industry or stay in touch with existing customers? What are they doing there? What’s their pain?

Social Media and Your Brand

Also like any other marketing tool, you’d need to hold it up to your brand and consider it in relation to everything else you use, like your website, brochures, etc. Chances are you’ve developed a look, a voice, a style, and specific marketing objectives. Though social media is often more of a personal approach, corporate brand should apply here too.

Your Social Media Marketing Plan

Your plans for social media should include:

  1. Where you should focus efforts (Twitter?)
  2. What you should do there (ie: discussions on LinkedIn)
  3. What you should talk about, your angle
  4. How it fits in with other efforts
  5. What are the objectives and guidelines for our participants (ie: no personal political comments)

With this basic plan in place it will be much easier to keep business separate from personal.

Educate Your Team

Just as you provide brochures and help prepare presentations, give your people the guidance they need to represent your company using social media. Remember that if you’re asking your professionals to be active like blogging, they may not be aware of brand guidelines at all and need briefing. It doesn’t hurt to do a little awareness education with other employees as well so they know what you’re doing and a little guidance as to what you’d prefer they did or didn’t do with their personal accounts. You can’t control their personal accounts but it doesn’t hurt to say ‘because our message is ____, we’d prefer if you didn’t mention ____.’

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Posted in All-inclusive Marketing, Social Media Marketing | 1 Comment »

Top 10 Elements Often Lacking in Marketing Materials.

Monday, June 28th, 2010

How many of them are lacking in yours?

Next to your actual sales force and your own undeniable powers of persuasiveness, web sites, corporate brochures and identity kits should be among your hardest working marketing tools.
In order to make sure you’re maximizing the power of these tools, we have put together a checklist of attributes which no self-respecting corporate identity package should be without.

1. Synergy With Your Company’s Overall Image.

This synergy is the key to building awareness of your company as a brand. Everything should look like everything else, because that’s what makes you look professional.

2. A Strong Essential Message.

This is the promise you make to your potential customers or clients, and it’s one of the most important pillars upon which your communications is built.

3. An appealing Look & Positive Feel…

that’s both ‘in character’ and inviting to read. People read things that look appealing and interesting. Anything else, they tend to ignore.


4. Obvious Corporate Identification.

It’s all the rage in the design world to play down logos. But that’s how most readers end up missing them.

5. Bad English Ain’t Good.

Bad grammar is running rampant in communications these days. Bad grammar can make you look like a not-so-bright, and therefore not-so-trustworthy company.

6. First Person Focus.

Never talk about your company in the third person. If you do, people will think you’re weird. Talking about your company in the first person naturally personalizes the communication and makes it more inviting for the prospect to read.

7. Simplicity. Simplicity. Simplicity…

in the use of supporting language and graphics. Remember, you know more about your business than anyone you are talking to. Showing respect for what they don’t know will always be rewarded.

8. A Positive Selling Attitude Throughout.

This is all about keeping the tone and manner of your communications positive, upbeat and on point, and one of the most important keys to stimulating response.

9. Testimonial & Case Study Support.

Your satisfied customers are, bar none, your best salespersons. Anything that quantifies results is going to be more meaningful to your readers than abstract notions or platitudes. You’ll be surprised how powerful these underused selling techniques can be.

10. Concrete Reasons Why The Prospect Should Be Doing Business With You.

Too many companies fill their communications with reasons why they are so great, but they seldom turn it around and give their prospects a real sense of what’s in it for them.

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Why B2Bs Should Care About Optimization (SEO)

Friday, June 18th, 2010

Should I care about Search Engine Optimization for my B2B company? The answer is yes.

In recent years many clients have come to us with search engine optimization (SEO) as an item in RFP for websites. Once they see what it takes to really make a go of it, to compete for first page, they’re turned off. They think it is not important or relevant to their business after-all, or at least not enough to pay so much. ‘We’re B2b, we provide a professional service, not sell products. People find us through word-of-mouth, not Google.’ I used to feel that way myself, but now I’m a convert.

Social media has created reasons to care about SEO from both ends of the spectrum.

First, because we all know how much user generated content, blogs, review sites are out there, more and more people are using search to find information or do research. When you search you are most likely to land on a blog or such like. If you generate content, people will find it.

Second and from the other end, social media has made it easy for companies to create opportunities for their brilliant content to be found in search, by writing blogs, participating in other blogs or discussions, having key people involved and hopefully active on sites like LinkedIn and Twitter – which all leads back to your company site.

Two sides to Social Media

There’s the literal driving people to your site, but those link-backs to your site also tell Google you’re important and socially active.

There are a number of things Google evaluates to rank your site; like in-bound links, conversion forms, alt text for images, blogs, meta descriptions, etc. They change the algorithms all the time but recently made a higher than usual significant change placing importance on social relevancy. Do you have an active Twitter account associated with your domain? Etcetera.
So what this means is, it’s not hard to build a website with good search-ability right from the start, like conversion forms, alt text for images, meta descriptions, etc. but then why not use social media to generate the content to be found? Google is a hungry beast, give it something to gorge on.

By the way, I learned a lot of this stuff from brilliant Smojoe, who we hire to help Rapport clients learn to make that content more findable and use social media for search with really different and interesting campaigns.

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Posted in All-inclusive Marketing, Business Growth and Change, Uncategorized, Web Development | No Comments »

How to Ask for Feedback

Monday, June 14th, 2010

At lunch today, my favourite writer told me a story about a client of ours whom she worked with while I was on vacation. She’s writing his brochure. After initial direction was approved, then a couple of back-and-forths between them, he took the draft to his advisory board for feedback. He got so many and such varied responses his head was spinning and couldn’t sleep that night.

We encourage clients to run their creative by an advisory board or, even better, ideal clients at exactly the stage our client did. However, if you simply say “what do you think,” the question is too open-ended. Here are some tips on how to get the most useful input.

This applies to anything from logos, to web design to any kind of content.

Give Them Some Background

Tell them who the audience is, how it will be used and what you were trying to achieve. For example, it’s going to a specific audience like financial controllers in large corporations (very different than the head of HR at a smaller company). It will be handed out at a tradeshow and you’re hoping to get meetings out of it. Also, tell them what specific result you are after, if applicable, like getting them to call directly versus sign-up through your website.

It helps to give a bit of background on your discussions with the creative team involved as well, like what led to the format or approach taken This may eliminate a lot of questions that can have you second-guessing yourself. Like ‘why didn’t you just do a tri-fold brochure’? You could pre-empt it by saying ‘we discussed doing a tri-fold brochure but realized it would be inserted into large folders and we also wanted to email it so…’

Consider sharing some of the market research that was done to help put it in context, like ‘client interviews indicated what’s most important to them is ______’

Create a List of Specific Questions

What about the piece is important to you – that a certain message get across? That people take a specific action at the end? That it builds a feeling of trust and stability or makes people feel warm and fuzzy? Use this as a guideline to come up with specific questions. Like, ‘did it make you feel warm and fuzzy?’ Same goes for concerns you have – ‘or did it seem too corporate’.

Also think about what you are sure of and don’t intend to change when framing questions. If you definitely like the design but are not sure about the colour, ask them specifically ‘what do you think of the colour?’ Tell them what message you are trying to convey and ask them if they get that from the design or copy. If not what did they get from it?

Broad Questions Are Okay

‘If you had one impression from this piece what was it?’

However, you may want to have follow-up questions ready. If you want it to convey that your services are delivered quickly because of the technology you’ve developed, and they got that, you could ask something like ‘but does it make our service sound cheap because it’s so fast?’

Make the Most of Your Community

Asking for feedback from people who represent your ideal clients or peers you trust for business advice is a great idea. Just prepare for it and know you may get some conflicting input. Don’t be reluctant to ask – most people feel privileged that you value their opinion.

Social media provides additional ways to get objective, anonymous and/or professional feedback. You can ask for feedback via the major channels like Twitter and LinkedIn, but there are also great places, both free, like Get Satisfaction or User Voice and professional/paid like EntreBahn (full version coming soon)

PS. It’s a great way to get a little social media exposure too.

Then What?

The best thing to do is gather the feedback and go over it with your creative team, who should be completely open to that. We’d discuss each bit, hold it against the creative brief and objectives, decide what’s important and what’s not, and make some executive decisions.

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Posted in All-inclusive Marketing, Big World Marketing, Never Stop Learning | 1 Comment »

Building Business Growth Momentum

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

The first year or so in business I mostly freelanced for other people: Neil, who encouraged me to start in the first place and whom I shared space with, and another old colleague. Neil had great dreams of us forming a partnership and building business together. When Neil’s work dried up, he became very angry and frustrated. We began to spend a lot of time at Betty’s, in a dark booth where he’d say things like ‘but we’re so talented, they should be knocking down our door.’ One afternoon after weeks of this, plus angry bouts in the office I realized two things: one, Neil didn’t know how to drum up new business and two, no one was going to find us in our dark booth at Betty’s.

I needed to find them

I literally stepped out into the sunlight and went back to the office where I Googled things like ‘business development’ and eventually ‘networking’. I didn’t even know what networking was, but I found some great options and started participating. I think a CAWEE breakfast was the first. I also tried Wired Women’s Network and Small Business Meet-up where I met my very good friend Richard. He introduced me to another group and on it went. In very short order I was co-hosting a Toronto event, met tons of new people online and offline. Not only actual clients, but great referral sources and like-minded business people I could identify with and learn from. They were positive and driven, like – as it turned out – me.

Payback is not instant

I don’t know the typical length of time it takes to start seeing results from networking efforts, I’ve heard six months. However, just know you are unlikely to meet a million dollar client your first time out. It takes time to build  trust and a proper understanding of what you do. The key is to keep at it, find a group or two you like and go regularly to build relationships, while also trying new places – online and offline.

For me, I started networking in May 2003, got my first related client in early July, then my business exploded in September that year. The rest, is history.

The small business community is, well, small.

I built my business through word-of-mouth. I did meet the occasional direct client at events, but for the most part I was referred by people I met at networking events, and then later by happy clients.

When you are out there meeting a lot of people they grow to know, like and trust you, and understand what you do. Then you are top of mind when their friends, colleagues or clients are looking for your services. I often saw the the same people over and over at events – building great relationships. I also looked for opportunities to speak at some and began to build my reputation as an expert in the field.

People talk. The community is small and I soon found that a surprising number of people in the small business community knew who I was. I was being introduced to people as ‘great designer’ or ‘the one who gets things done’ which was an early favourite and became an important differentiator for Rapport.

The best fuel for sales momentum: deliver a great experience

I didn’t find I was up against a lot of competition, but was certainly up against negative stereotypes of flakey freelancers and difficult divas. When Scott Stratten of Un-Marketing called me for the first time he said something like ‘I advise people to get professional logos and websites… I need someone to send them to. I’ve been burned by designers who couldn’t deliver before, so you have one chance and one chance only.’ He referred me to one client, I took great care of her and he referred me many more after that.

Unfair as it is, referrals that don’t work out reflect badly on the referrer. On the flip-side, great referrals make them look good and turns them into your biggest fan.

For clients, a great experience is essential to keep them coming back and prompting them to refer you to others. This is where it’s great to understand how they feel about your services. See our newsletter on how to do this. When we had clients interviewed as part of our own re-branding and saw that good design and competitive rates were just table-stakes. What they loved about us was the relationship, how easy it was to work with us and how well taken care of they were. That may sound soft, but remember the negative stereotypes I was up against – it was huge and wonderful to have that reputation.

Now we work extra hard to ensure work is done well and delivered on time, to create a professional but friendly experience from start to finish. This has been a mandate of mine since my solo days, but has developed into a strong culture and internal processes that work just as well for the ten of us.

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Marketing To Women. Contrary To Popular Male Belief, There Really Is A Difference

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

One of our clients has decided that they would like to do a campaign that targets women. As a man who professes to be in touch with the feminine psyche, (with female partners in and aside from business), my assumption was that I would not find all that much of a difference between marketing to men and women.

But the question of what the differences actually could be was intriguing so I decided do a little digging on the good old world wide web.

Now you have to be careful when you research anything on the web, because it is the great equalizer when it comes to information, and it’s really hard to separate the political agendas from the honest information, especially with issues like this. But like anything in life, if you dig around enough, you will start to see patterns of opinion.

Rather than bore you with the longer version of the results I found, I have distilled this research down to what I call “The 10 Commandments of Marketing To Women.”

What you will hopefully find as you read through it is that there is a high level of interconnectivity between all of these characteristics, which is not something you can always observe in men.

Here they are, in my opinion, the 10 most important things to keep in mind when marketing to women.

  1. Women Are Focused On Connections: They look for similarities as opposed to points of difference. They focus on creating cooperation, good relationships and ways to help each other.
  2. Women Trust Common Experience, as opposed to men who tend to put more faith in authority. The reason for this is that men think vertically as in hierarchies whereas women tend to think laterally as in common ground or level playing fields, where everyone can benefit.
  3. Women Prefer Win/Win Situations, as opposed to men who think win/lose. That is not to say they are less competitive than men, just competitive in a different way.
  4. Women Plan Ahead To Avoid Negative Outcomes. As a result women tend to be better long term thinkers and planners.
  5. Women Put More Time And Research Into Their Decisions. This means that if you are marketing to them, you are obliged to do a very thorough job of communicating information to them, as they will take it all into account.
  6. Women Are More Loyal To Those With Whom They Do Business. This has to do with the fact that women are simply much more confident in their decisions, whereas with men, not so much.
  7. Women Refer More Often Than Men. This is an adjunct to 6. It’s a lot easier for women to be good and frequent referrers, because they are more confident in the decisions they make in the first place and because it is more in their communal nature to recommend products and services they are happy with to others.
  8. Women Are Much More No-Nonsense Than Men. If a woman has an objection to something, she will tell you about it and expect you to address it immediately. She is a big believer in testimonials, as opposed to marketing hyperbole because she has highly developed B/S meter.
  9. Women Prefer Stories Not Facts. To women, stories are more memorable than features and benefits. She will relate stronger to stories involving people’s experiences with your product or service. This makes an emotional connection that can motivate them to take action. This means that things like testimonials and product reviews are something they will take a good deal of interest in.
  10. Women Believe That Quantity Is Not Quality. Women tend to look at just about everything in their lives from a qualitative perspective. Quality of life. Quality of service. Quality of products. Quality of experience.

A Wisened Man’s Perspective

Now being a man writing this post naturally puts me at a disadvantage. Because on the one hand, you could look at the aforementioned things to keep in mind when marketing to women and think, well OK, that’s the man’s point of view.

But then I would have to politely correct you because the sources I used to derive this list all come from blogs and web sites that are run by women. Just wanted to clarify that point.

Now if you’re a woman out there reading this, very little here is going to come as a surprise. But if you’re a man, most of this is quite a revelation…at least it was to me. It might be worth reading a couple of times, and seeing if there aren’t some things we men could do to be more like women. Maybe then the world would be less of a ‘dog eat dog’ place than it is now.

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Posted in All-inclusive Marketing, Big World Marketing, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »