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There are three big holes in the common development of a B-to-B buyer’s journey - and chances are that your buyer’s journey profile (or 'persona') has all of them. The three big holes are: LEED marketing is taking on all the characteristics of technology marketing. If you understand and use successful technology marketing practices for your LEED marketing, you can skip the traditional trial-and-error process of an evolving and crowded LEED market and leapfrog to marketing success. The term networking is one of the most overused - and misunderstood - in today's professional environment. Too often it is job seekers or others who only network when they want something - like a job. What many of these amateurs overlook is that professional information and favors are much like a bank account - you can't make withdrawals unless you've made deposits. Here are some pragmatic tips for professioanl networking. Although sales forecasting is an art and science unto itself - market forecasting (in other words - the total size of the market, given some reasonable assumptions) is not rocket science, and once you understand how to do market sizing, it is relatively straightforward. Here are some tips for determining market opportunity and conducting sales feasibility analyses.
The Wall Street Journal recently ran a front-page article on this topic. Here's the part they left out. Using your executive peers for do-it-yourself consulting can have more downsides than you expect. Here are some factors to think about, and tips on what to look for in an advisor.
In periodically cruising the online forums that address marketing topics, I've noticed that over the last few years that reading the postings has become more and more painful. It's hard to tell who is more clueless - the posters or the respondents - many of whom are self-styled experts mixing opinion and cliches to offer a range of home remedies for the perceived marketing ills of the posters. So how do you evaluate the value of the exchanges between poster and respondent, and evaluate the advice and commentary that you read on the online marketing forums? Here are some tips:
A major concern for marketing and sales executives is that they are always 'on-message' with all of the communications that reach their prospects and customers - helping to create, establish and build a customer relationship that will ‘competition-proof' their customers. Here's a diagnostic process that will keep you 'on message'.
Voice of the Market are qualitative surveys that can give marketing executives a unique 18-month look-ahead to help them ‘get their hands around' their markets. When focused on specific marketing problems and completed in a timely fashion, they serve to reduce uncertainty with marketing decisions and heighten the probability of marketing success. Here's how to develop a Voice of the Market survey.
With the arrival of blogs and other forms of unstructured commentary on business topics, the issue for business owners and executives becomes how to separate meaningful commentary from much of what is simply opinion, with no value beyond that of the narrator's anecdotal experience. Much like the investigators on the popular series CSI, the challenge is to separate fact from fiction, or reality from superficial perceptions. Information forensics may be the latest technique necessary to separate mere appearances from the facts.
With the billions that is spent on marketing each year, in a country where sales and marketing has been raised to almost an art form, why is it that most marketing really doesn't work? By saying it doesn't work, we mean the number of new product failures and unmet revenue goals. A quick check of the marketing visualization and marketing process that follows it can point to the problems.
Marketing ROI often chases the wrong issues - the real issue is how well your messaging reaches the desired audience, and if they understand and act on it. Conventional ROI techniques often can't measure these factors. Here's some tips on what to look for.
Successful attorneys have a keen understanding the marketing principles that pertain to legal services, and how to develop a marketing program and style that is unique to their firm and to them as an individual. This can be
accomplished while still maintaining the special professional aura that is attributed to those who practice law. How to develop and implement such a program for a law practice is the focus of this article.
Handspring (maker of the Treo line of wireless handhelds) recently laid off most of its marketing department - including the VP. Was that indicative of a new trend, or more the fact that their marketing function failed to justify its existence? In a depressed economy, does it make sense to abandon the marketing ship, or does it simply need a new course? Here's a few benchmarks to help you connect your marketing more closely to the revenue dollars.
Developing a realistic marketing ROI starts with the accurate determination of your reachable market, segmenting that market by characteristics, and then determining the competitive environment in each segment. A realistic look at these factors can highlight profit-poor markets that are masked by apparently large prospect numbers. This is an added benefit - a hard look at the market segments helps you to select the areas of the market that will give you the highest potential for profitable sales, and hence a good ROI - before you even budget a single marketing dollar.
Product reviews help decision makers (users or buyers) evaluate competitive products and narrow their selection process. Product reviews serve as part of the sales messaging effort. Properly leveraged, they can help to shorten the sales cycle and speed up the customer evaluation period. There is a lot that the vendor can do to help the product review process along, and to try to get their product reviewed in the most favorable light. Much of this is simply understanding the review process, and developing the structure and materials that will help the reviewer see your product as both you and your top customers do.
If you want your PR program to support your sales and marketing - you have to develop a marketing PR program - and avoid using the more common journalism PR. This article shows you how to distinguish between the two, and describes how to develop a marketing PR program to support your sales.
High-tech PR during the go-go Internet runup used to be built around the concept of ‘buzz' - loosely defined as industry chatter. Although never a really valid metric for communicating your company's competitive distinction, it had a certain allure and appeal - especially if there was no real measurement of the results, and the programs were built around puff pieces on the company's executives and technology ‘superstars'. The media complied with publishing reams of this pablum, and endless lists of ‘Companies to Watch'. Those days are gone - now you want to be perceived as a 'survivor'. Here's some tips on how to persuade your markets not to push you off the island.
The Thematic Release Program is a short public relations program that has been specifically focused for a particular market or marketing channel: it is a tight sales and marketing communications program which takes a specific theme (of your choosing) and expands on it to serve as a catalyst for the media to develop it into editorial coverage - with enough flexibility for them to take that theme in a unique direction for that publication. It also serves, in its raw form, as channel marketing and sales collateral - quick, focused and effective. Here's how to develop a Thematic Release program.
If your products and marketplace have on-going changes due to technology and other issues - there’s no reason that the professional salesforce, which is the tip of the spear, can’t maintain an informational advantage and re-engineer the buyer’s vison. Admittedly, not as easy as it once was.
Reaching qualified prospects with your unique competitive message has never been more important - or more difficult. Here's a proven sales tool that most sales professionals overlook.
On-going downsizing and staff reductions have affected just about every business, and a frequent casualty is any corporate function that communicates to the outside world. Short-sighted management has often deemed these functions 'dispensable' - effectively removing their eyes and ears in the marketplace. Opportunities are lost because management just can't see them.
The ability of most companies to answer even the most basic sales questions is dismal. (How is your product different? How will I use it?) We are not talking esoteric issues here - but rather the basic blocking and tackling of up-front sales information. The reason for this is that most companies are introspective when it comes to their prospects' information needs. They 'preach' to their prospects more than they engage them - never determining what information they need to make the buying decision. Hence, they make the buying process even more difficult for the customer. There's a simple methodology available to prevent this, and it is based in the proven abilities of top salespeople - providing instruction to the prospect on how to make the buying decision
When a marketing VP says that he has to rewite his press releases - that tells you something's wrong. It's usually more than just the wordsmithing. Here's a checklist for making sure you will really get what you want in your marketing materials, before you enter into a contract - by knowing how to spot the talent to product it.
Consider the following scenario: Your company, after some tough years (pretty typical for your industry) finally has a new CEO in place for the last year, has shaped up the product offerings and won some impressive second-tier accounts. Now you've been selected as a finalist for that marquee customer Fortune 500 proposal. Your CEO personally heads up the presentation team, and delivers a ‘knock-em-dead' ROI justification for the multi-million, multi-year contract, and personally guarantees to oversee the implementation. As the presentation wraps up, you are daydreaming about the bonus - and then the bomb drops.
In an over-communicated world, highly focused and brief messages that target your prospects' known hot buttons do a far better job of attracting your sales prospects and other interested parties. That's what is meant by the term ‘60-second elevator speech.' Here's some tips on how to develop a PR effort with that same singular focus.
Perhaps because public relations is an unregulated and unlicensed profession, it is the subject of many "myths" and anecdotal "facts" about what is necessary for successful public relations. For any professional who has a grounding in the body of knowledge that makes up the practice of public relations these myths are amusing at times. But in the end - they can cause serious problems to the unsuspecting clients who take them at face value and attempt to build a program on PR "myths and urban legends". Here's a rundown of some of the top PR "myths".
In the music business, there is a category known as ‘crossover' - this is a category of hit music that ‘crosses over' from a specific genre to becoming a mainstream hit - examples are reggae (Bob Marley), smooth jazz (Sade) and Cajun (Beausoleil). In a similar sense - if you want to get the most value from your public relations effort - it pays to look for a ‘crossover' appeal to the mainstream business media. Just as crossover music has a distinctive rhythm and beat, your crossover PR has to have distinctive customer experiences and business solutions. Here's what to look for, and how to ‘cross over'.
One of the biggest benefits of public relations is in the battle for mindshare (media visibility and market understanding) in the marketplace. Rather interestingly, many companies that think they have satisfactory public relations programs in place are losing this battle - for a number of reasons that may surprise you (and them.)
Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion... My favorite part of the television series Law & Order is the detectives' strategy sessions and interrogations. They have no problem bending the truth and misleading people, then taking the information to build a case. That's what can happen in a media interview if you're not prepared. If you want to be more like the cool defense lawyers rather than the unwitting suspect - here's your media Miranda warning.
"Bad news on the doorstep" was the refrain from the popular song years ago. And it seems to be getting a lot of play in the business world these days. With situations ranging from sudden stock gyrations and layoffs, to labor disputes, key executive deaths or disabilities, fires or natural disasters and workplace violence, there is no limit to the type of situations a business executive may be confronted with in any given day. Here are some practical perspectives that management should keep in mind when developing a crisis communications effort.
All the signals point to an economic downturn in 2001. When this happens, PR budgets will come under increasing scrutiny, as will most business expenses. PR agency fees, long accepted both as exorbitant and tolerated as a cost of doing business (in many cases funded by free-flowing VC dollars) will be a prime candidate for budget cutting as the focus turns to increasing profitability. But obtaining better value for your PR budget dollar requires a change in the PR resource selection and management procedures as well. Here's how to make sure your PR program directly supports your bottom line - and not just that of the PR agency.
I recently read a blog post that described four disastrous, train-wreck scenarios in video production and streaming. Not surprisingly, the blog post was by a company claiming expertise in these areas, claiming that such problems would not happen with an experienced vendor.
With the high degree of success of online video, new emphasis has been placed on the role of video for BtoB marketing messaging - but there needs to be an understading tha BtoB marketing video is different than social media video.
Public relations professionals who are involved in broadcast public relations often overlook community access television as a vehicle for their clients' messages. Although community access television does not have the centralization or unified reach of broadcast and cable television, it can still be an effective channel for community-oriented messages and causes. However, public relations professionals need to be aware of how community access television works, and the differences in dealing with community access as opposed to conventional broadcast or cable television. (This article appeared in the December 2003 issue of PRSA Tactics, page 18)
With all the recent frenzy over blogs, one would think that the Internet equivalent of the Gutenberg press with movable type had just arrived. Upon closer scrutiny, it's more the case of some good old dot com hype, with a little breathless high-tech type tabloid reporting thrown in for good measure. Here's a contrarian opinion to the over-enthusiasm on blogs, and a few caveats for both bloggers and counter-bloggers alike.
During the presidential campaign of 1992, signs began appearing at campaign stops which read: "It's the economy, stupid!" as a way to remind the candidates of the primary issue that was on the voters' minds. Since then, the expression has entered the common vocabulary. If your prospects and customers could hold up signs for you - they would probably read: "It's your website, stupid!" - giving you a message as to what is (or should be) your number one marketing tool. Are you listening?
Web muggings can take several different forms - they can be reputation muggings - focused at your products, technology or strategy, or they can be morality muggings, which are focused at your management and your treatment of employees (e.g. HR policies and layoffs.) In the extreme, they can be fantasy muggings - where bizarre hoaxes, myths and urban legends can start. There are several preventative measures that can be taken against web muggings, and certain self-defensive methods to ‘fight back' if you're mugged. However, there are also situations when about all you can do is cut your losses. We'll start with the basics, and look at each type of mugging in turn.
You communicate a lot more than you realize in recruitment advertising. Here are some guidelines for sending the right message and avoiding self-defeating errors.
Few articles provide guidance to potential students in identifying good instructors so that their learning experience is rewarding, challenging and enjoyable. Some instructional experiences, by definition, are not and never will be (the military comes to mind.) But for most of the instructional experiences you will experience you'll usually choose the instructor. Here's some practical tips for finding the best instruction.
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Public relations professionals who are involved in broadcast public relations often overlook community access television as a vehicle for their clients' messages. Although community access television does not have the centralization or unified reach of broadcast and cable television, it can still be an effective channel for community-oriented messages and causes. However, public relations professionals need to be aware of how community access television works, and the differences in dealing with community access as opposed to conventional broadcast or cable television. (This article appeared in the December 2003 issue of PRSA Tactics, page 18)
Are You Sure You Are 'On Message'? Click here to link to the article How to Develop a Thematic Release Program for Channel Marketing How to Build a Sales Public Relations Program Forget the Rolex, the Lamborghini, the 100,000 square-foot 'trophy house'.
Want to show everyone you've arrived? Get a pilot's license. Spin recruiting: Develop a communications program to attract and retain IT staff
b. Innovative Lead Generation
Upromote Online Magazine - Archives Click here to link to this article
Public Relations 911. Why Crisis Planning Makes Sense. By Jeffrey Geibel, APR.
Let's Make a Dealer!, Marketing Tools - Marketing Tools magazine Let's Make a Dealer! by Jeffrey Geibel.
© 2017, Jeffrey Geibel, All Rights Reserved
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The customer profile or application case study (sometimes referred to as a ‘success
story', or mis-labeled as a ‘customer testimonial') is one of the most powerful
tools in the public relations or sales and marketing toolbox. However, not all case studies are the same. There are case studies - and there are Deep Case Studies. The Deep Case Study goes much further into the how and the why of the customer's experience. Traditional case studies focus primarily on the "what" - as in a historical account of what happened. When properly prepared, a deep case study gives a 360-degree view (vendor and customer) of how your products or services solve business problems for your customers, and why customers chose you as their vendor. Chances are, your CEO couldn't do a better job making the case in person. But most case studies don't come anywhere near meeting this criteria and are, in fact, a boring read. Some are actually so bad as to be a liability from a sales and marketing perspective. Here's some tips and a checklist for developing deep case studies to help make your customer profiles as interesting to your prospects and other third parties (such as the media and industry analysts) as they are to the very customers you are profiling.
Hayes gave up. Dell sued their agency. Goldmine, a long-time player and instantly recognizable in the CRM arena, is now Front Range Systems. A growing
body of evidence suggests that if you want to build a brand, you had better
be able to do it in a single sales cycle.
The 'chasm' between your expert buyers and mainstream buyers
needs to be bridged, not just crossed. Here's how to do it.
What is the key sales and marketing messaging you can extract from a successful sale - that will attract more sales prospects? Find out with the
Sales AutopsySM - a step-by-step diagnostic technique to isolate the success factors hidden in your successful sales.
Maybe - Maybe Not
But neither is it impossible.
Every successful sale that you make contains a hidden marketing code
for reaching your best prospects. If you can break the code and leverage
it with your public relations program, you will have a real-time marketing
message that will always be on top of the market - and your competitors.
Here's how to do it.
Public relations for complex technology works best when it is integrated
with your sales and marketing strategies. Easier said than done - here's
some issues to be aware of, and the capabilities that you will need in your
public relations advisors.
Top of Page
Public Relations Topics
Public relations is one of the most frequently outsourced professional services,
but there remains a substantial degree of dissatisfaction with the results
of most pr programs. There are many reasons for this, but here are some
suggestions for identifying and selecting a pr advisor (consultant or agency)
who is right for your company and what you want to accomplish.
The Internet has affected a lot of businesses, perhaps none as much as journalism. Once regarded as the high priests of information and informed opinion, journalists now have to demonstrate a definite ‘value add' in order to attract and retain readers' eyeballs. And a lot of them are simply not up to the task. Here are the tell-tale signs of smokestack journalism, and dying publications.
Technology Public Relations Topics
Your market can subtly change from innovators to mainstream buyerw, and your messaging ought to change with it. Here's some tell-tales that your market has changed, and some tips on how to realign your public relations to reach the new buyers.
Reaching out to your pre-sales audiences with a public relations program
is a not a straightforward as it would appear. There are two special
considerations that a technology company should keep in mind as it develops
and executes its pr program - those are keeping the bandwidth wide and putting
it all in hard copy.
Larry King is perhaps the most popular talk show host of all time. So what
does his approach have to do with high-tech public relations? Read this article
and you'll see why some high-tech pr programs get your attention - for all
the right reasons.<
Setting market expectations is a key byproduct of the public relations effort.
Here are some factors to consider, and some methodologies.
Public relations often disappoints the high-tech executive. Here's what to
look for in a high-tech public relations program, and from the practitioners
bidding on it.
I had a different interpretation of the incidents. In essence, the fundamental issue with each of them was a lack of understanding of video production and related issues by the customer. In other words, these customers were uninformed. Again, not surprisingly, they got burnt one way or the other.
Before you rush out to put some more video on your web site or as part of your digital marketing or ABM efforts, it's a good idea to make sure you understand what's involved in producing a business video so you don't wind up looking like a social media poster, unless, of course - that's your market.
."...that's a great idea about CAT. Your primer is excellent."
VP Communications, Aircraft Owner's and Pilot's Association [AOPA] - largest pilot's organization in the world
Simply overlaying digital tools on top of a conventional public relations
program really doesn't gain you much - the unique characteristics of a 7x24
world requires a rethinking and new structure for your underlying public
relations program. Here's what makes the difference...
Public relations materials that are going to be used on the web need to be
developed with the business browser in mind. Since most material is only
a mouse click from oblivion, a tight, market-centered and user-centered focus
is critical for success. Here's the 5W's for your web-based public relations
materials.(Note: This article was featured in Web Promote Weekly.)
The Internet can be a very powerful tool for your public relations program,
but a lot of that depends on how effectively you use the web. Many companies
don't get the full potential of the web for their public relations program.
This is not due to any unique technical knowledge or webmaster tricks, but
rather ignoring basic web characteristics and user orientation. Here are
the web site 'Press Room' categories of the Stealth, Egyptian,
Smithsonian, Release-of-the-Week Club and the
Professional.
'Internet time' often refers to the increasingly rapid time compression for
Internet product development, roll out and the related window of opportunity
to gain market share. However, an Internet company's public relations program
has to keep pace with the same Internet time schedule. The Internet press release is a tight, self-contained document that
takes a specific theme and uses it as a catalyst for the media to develop
the release into an article - with enough flexibility for them to take the
theme in a unique direction for that publication. Here's how to develop a
Internet release program.
A colleague recently attended one of the ‘boot camps' for start ups
and reported an interesting comment from one of the venture capitalists:
they get about 10,000 business plans a year, and maybe fund a dozen or two.
That translates to odds of 1,000:1 The chances of an entrepreneur getting
any visibility on that radar is pretty slim, unless they already have
some industry visibility. A few entrepreneurs have figured this out,
and that's why the savvy ones fund their public relations program before
they even get venture capital. If you don't like 1,000:1 odds, and you're
in the same goldrush with the other technology entrepreneurs, then you might
want to increase the odds in your favor with some dot.com pr.
It's tough in the current full-employment economy to find competent IT staff, and even tougher to keep them. It's going to get worse over the next decade with the declining availability of a technically trained workforce. Your employee public relations
program might make the difference between the ability to attract talent — or the need to scramble for it. Here's how to put your public relations program to work recruiting and retaining your IT talent.
As a public relations professional, Boston-area general aviation pilot and
flight instructor, I followed the media reporting on the crash of John F.
Kennedy, Jr.'s plane with a fair amount of interest. What I saw during the
weekend of July 17-18 showed that valuable lessons had been learned by
governmental agencies since the public relations debacle of TWA Flight 800
three years ago.
Forget the Rolex, the Lamborghini, the 100,000 square-foot 'trophy house'.
Want to show everyone you've arrived? Get a pilot's license.
Respective logos and trademarks copyrighted by their publications.
."...that's a great idea about CAT. Your primer is excellent."
VP Communications, Aircraft Owner's and Pilot's Association [AOPA] - largest pilot's organization in the world
High Tech PR Tips from GEIBEL Marketing...
Back to School! - Bentley College Profession Julie Mello references our definition of public relations and links to our articles on Thematic Releases and What your Web Site Says About Your Web Savvy....
