Website Design and Replacement
A website is always the centerpiece of your company. It represents your brand, your products and services and your core identity. Most younger companies are severely challenged with website design and deployment. In the absence of an experienced marketing executive, the projects can take the company in the wrong direction. It is not just a function of experience – many executives outside of marketing understand the key features of a well-developed website. Project management alone can kill the project or let it go in the wrong direction. There is also a need for speed. A well staffed and prioritized project for a site with less than 100 pages can certainly get done in 8 to 12 weeks. The initiation of a website project requires you have the basic marketing infrastructure in place. This means you need branding elements (colors, logo, personality, identity, fonts), positioning and messaging (corporate, product, [...]
The New Opportunity for Social Media as a Service
Social media is no longer new. Years of experimentation have yielded the indisputable facts that this medium, somewhat uniquely, can attract customer in-bound participation better than anything else. Despite the fact that it has been around for years, social media has still not been well exploited by the great majority of businesses and government. Chances are you are not taking good advantage of it. Why? Two reasons. First, the value proposition has not been clearly understood and that has certainly changed in 2015. Recent surveys show that most marketing teams “get it” and will be increasing social media spend. Two, and perhaps more important, is that tactical execution is poor and has failed to support overall strategies for social media success. In most companies, the social media effort consists of a part-time effort by one or two marketing marketing team members. They will post to a few properties [...]
The Problem with Content Marketing
Content marketing suffers from the same forces as all marketing collateral creation. Efficiency, quality, the speed of delivery and accuracy. The content creator often cannot get the content into acceptable deliverables. Common complaints are that the content creator has not included key corporate messages and infused the brand identity correctly. Perhaps they are just not skilled writers. A content creator might be inside the product management or more likely, the product marketing department. Content creators are often members of the management team. Or perhaps a guest customer advocate. A strong communicator in customer support. These people are hard to find because their primary responsibility doesn't revolve around the content generation. Most of them don't have the time nor the necessary written skills. Assuming the content was completed, then the corporate marketing team needs to work back/forth to get the content into an acceptable form. Many other deliverables are often required including [...]
Optimizing Public Relation Firm Performance
Successful management of your public relations team requires a detailed understanding of how these firms operate and what they need from you to be successful. The goal of public relations is to create and enhance an organization’s reputation, to deliver its key messages through media coverage. Done correctly this enhances the brand, helps create lead flow and ultimately impacts revenue in a positive way. How do you present and deliver what the company has to say, to the right target audience, in volume, so as to achieve this goal? How do you get your voice heard above the fray? First, we all need to understand that public relations is a professional services business like any other. They are selling a blend of hourly services, and intended results, over the course of a contract. Measurement of results and key performance indicators (KPI) usually are measured monthly, quarterly and annually [...]
Understanding Contract CMO Engagements
The notion of a consulting assignment as a contract chief marketing officer (contract CMO or CCMO) or interim chief marketing officer (interim CMO) is a relatively new concept. Areas in which there are high densities of high technology companies have really created the demand for this level of consulting. Silicon Valley remains the center of this opportunity and it is very specifically driven by the venture capital community and the chief executive officers that serve them. A contract chief marketing officer provides and supports a very broad mix of marketing and management activities. These activities may include contract program management, strategy, market opportunity analysis, corporate marketing, product marketing, content marketing, social media, demand generation, public relations, analyst relations, digital marketing, telemarketing, telesales, business development, and sales development. Usually, during the first two weeks of the engagement time will be spent such that CCMO can come up to speed [...]
Messaging Du Jour
As a fellow highly experienced chief marketing officer said to me this past month, "it seems to your investors and board members as if there is a magical, special, and still secret set of words, and one only set, that will somehow elevate and transform the company's prospects to into wild runaway success."Good grief - he's totally right. How often should messaging change? Ideally almost never. Certainly as infrequently as possible. If you are changing corporate messaging every 3 months, then by definition you don't have messaging. That means you don't know your market, how to best sell your product, or understand your customer's value proposition as they perceive it. A message is repeated consistently over time. Consistency is the keyword. Messaging is a basic part of marketing infrastructure necessary for the executive team, marketing team, employees, partners, and key ecosystem members and our contractors to best [...]