Tag Archives: marketing communications

February 21, 2023 · 5:44 pm

Branded Interviews: Your Pathway to “Enlightened” Thought Leadership

Traditional thought leadership – whether it’s delivered through owned media or earned media – most often involves showcasing your own ideas and opinions, those of a client, or of an individual within your organization.

From a content marketing perspective, the shortcomings of traditional thought leadership include:

the high noise factor, caused by market competition for attention
the perception that thought leadership is mostly self-promotional
the sad truth that few “thought leaders” have anything interesting to say
the challenge of producing new or interesting insights on a consistent basis, and
the reality that your target audiences are unlikely to read your long-form commentary.

The Alternative to Traditional Thought Leadership

The underlying assumption of “Enlightened” thought leadership is that managing the conversation (on any topic) by showcasing respected, credible 3rd parties is far more effective than promoting your own, your client’s, or your company’s opinions and insights.

In other words, you must put ego aside, and acknowledge that your “internal” intellectual capital can be worth less than credible outside voices that you deem to be worth hearing, and whose message supports and validates your company’s value proposition.

This somewhat contrarian approach to thought leadership…delivered in an editorial format that we call Branded Interviews…is the most effective way for B2B companies of all types to build brand stature, and to connect the dots between marketing and sales. Hands down.

Branded Interviews serve as inherent 3rd party endorsements from credible opinion leaders.

In a nutshell, Branded Interviews are:

Interviews with recognized, respected opinion leaders with credentials related to your industry or professional discipline. They should not feature employees or clients
Presented in a quick-reading Q&A editorial format, with 10 – 12 questions that highlight the individual’s personal and professional background, insights, and opinions
Purely objective in nature. Guest comments should not mention or promote your business in any way
Published on a quarterly or bi-monthly basis; distributed to clients, prospects and referrals sources; and promoted on LinkedIn…ensuring top-of-mind awareness with target audiences
Valuable due diligence assets for your sales team to use with prospects
Inherent 3rd party endorsements that should be archived in a dedicated section on your website

In truth, Branded Interviews require considerably more time and effort than traditional thought leadership content, even compared with what’s involved in generating bylined articles in respected business publications. The strategic selection and solicitation of guests, the development of relevant questions, the interview logistics, the conversion of an interview transcript to concise written responses, and the approval process, all take time and finesse. But the end-product is well worth all that work; producing evergreen content with unmatched credibility, and countless marketing and sales applications.

It’s Not About the Content; It’s About the Relationships

Perhaps the most compelling reason to convert to enlightened thought leadership is that the publication development process itself has tangible value, in terms of establishing and building relationships with influential individuals who can make things happen for your company.

For one of our clients – an emerging healthcare technology company – their Branded Interview led to a relationship between the firm’s CEO and the interview guest that resulted in acquisition of the company at a significant multiple, which was the CEO’s intended exit strategy.

Asking a recognized opinion leader (that your firm may have no connections with) to be profiled in your Branded Interview may seem like a long shot, as well as a formula for embarrassment if the opinion leader declines. But the invitation process serves to put your company on his / her radar screen, and is flattering to the individual, whether or not they accept. Very often, high profile individuals do accept invitations to be interviewed simply because, like most people, they enjoy telling their story, and sharing their ideas.

The editorial process is an opportunity to build brand awareness and business relationships.

In our view, Branded Interviews are an important and cost-effective way for B2B companies to get noticed and build brand stature, and should be a core tactical component in an integrated marketing strategy.

Before initiating a Branded Interview program, however, there are two important caveats:

This is not a short-term marketing tactic designed to produce an immediate market response. It’s a sophisticated, longer-term approach that will yield tangible marketing and sales benefits over time.
Lacking a senior management commitment to produce at least four Branded Interviews over the course of a year, B2B firms should pass on this marketing tactic.

Promotion of Branded Interviews on multiple channels increases their impact and ROI.

Give me a call if you’d like to learn more reasons why we’re such big fans of Branded Interviews.

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Tagged as #content marketing, #thought leadership, B2B marketing, brand strategy, marketing communications, marketing strategy, PR strategy

May 22, 2017 · 3:05 pm

Managing Brand Strategy…When Your Name is on the Front Door

Any business founder / owner whose surname serves as their company’s brand name has a unique challenge. If (s)he’s built a successful business that relies on the efforts of its employees, the founder of an eponymous business eventually will need to address brand transition; particularly if it’s a B2B or professional services firm.

Brand transition involves shifting market perceptions of the firm away from the individual founder(s), and toward an enterprise-based brand positioning. Over time, this means moving brand perceptions away from “Smith & Company: Jack Smith’s business,” and arriving at “Smith & Company: The business that Jack Smith built.” Or better yet, eventually “Smith & Company: Who was Jack Smith, anyway?”

The brand transition strategy goal is to have a company’s stakeholders – including clients, prospects, referral sources, vendors, etc. – understand that its value proposition is based on the collective talents and experience of all the people who work there; not solely or largely on the individual whose name is on the front door.

When it comes time for a founder to sell or step out of their business, a marketplace identity that relies heavily on that individual’s personal credentials, relationships or charisma will serve to erode the brand equity they’ve worked so hard to establish. It can also reduce enterprise valuation, and handicap the near-term effectiveness of the company’s new owners; particularly when those new owners are the marginalized employees who intend to grow the business.

Ideally, and years in advance of considering their exit strategy, founders of eponymous firms will have the foresight to consider the internal and external advantages of building a strong management team and showcasing that group’s intellectual capital. This requires a founder to put the welfare of the company ahead of their desire to promote themselves. And this can often be a tough task for people with strong personalities who’ve leveraged their ego-driven determination to build a successful venture over 20 years or more.

In our experience, many company founders give little or no thought to the task of shifting market perceptions away from themselves, and have not considered the benefits of a more institutional (and scalable) brand presence. Or they will recognize the issue with very little time left in the game, and then seek to apply some quick or simplistic remedy, such as advertising, to change market perceptions.

Other than ignoring the brand transition issue altogether, company founders have two options:

Re-brand to a Generic Name: To wit: “Smith & Company is now SmiTech Consulting Group!” This can be a viable strategy for eponymous firms at any stage of their lifecycle. These initiatives involve lots of planning and moving parts, and include heavy investment in communication tactics over at least a 6-month period to re-educate stakeholders.

Even with careful planning and coordination, a portion of brand equity will be lost in any re-branding effort, because some stakeholders will never remember the connection between the old and new brand names. Over time, however, re-branding to a generic corporate name can be worth the near-term market confusion for eponymous firms.

Go Cold-Turkey: Forget about orderly brand transition. Founders looking to jump-start an initiative to build an enterprise-based brand should consider going cold turkey, simply by disengaging themselves from the marketing & sales process altogether. This can be accomplished in a discrete manner, or in a more dramatic fashion.

One company founder we worked with, for example, called in his senior team and asked them what immediate and longer-term steps they would take, with respect to business development, if he died of a heart attack that morning. (He was the company’s top rainmaker.) After assuring them that he had no medical problems, the management team spent several hours in a white board session that provided the raw material for a very effective brand transition plan that the founder endorsed and implemented with great success.

The tactics generated in that company’s “cold turkey” planning session were neither complex nor sophisticated. Instead, they were straight out of the Marketing Communications 101 playbook, and included:

– Thought leadership content based primarily on ideas of interest to clients; not related to the accomplishments of individuals at their firm;

– Sharing the spotlight across the entire organization, involving all types of editorial and public platforms;

– Reconfiguration of all public facing materials, notably the firm’s website, to reflect the collective strength of their organization;

– Internal recognition and encouragement for all employees to promote the firm.

Many notable eponymous firms have succeeded in brand transition: McKinsey, Ernst & Young, Skadden Arps, Korn Ferry, etc. The back-stories are unavailable on how those firms accomplished that goal, and whether the change was managed in orderly fashion, or was the lucky result of internal chaos.

Although we’ve not found any research on this topic, we suspect that for every brand transition success story, there are at least 10 examples of firms that have failed; not simply in terms of brand identity, but more importantly, in terms of the company’s survival. Too often, a founder’s unwillingness to acknowledge the contributions of employees ensures that there will be no brand legacy when they leave the business…and sometimes in advance of that.

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Tagged as #thought leadership, B2B marketing, brand positioning, brand strategy, eponymous firms, marketing communications, marketing strategy

January 20, 2017 · 11:52 am

Your Marketing Content: Is it Fake News?

The marketing profession has a reputation for sometimes using less than reliable market research to promote a point of view. And this marketer has been guilty of that sin.

Years ago, our insurance company client was introducing a new Directors & Officers liability insurance policy, and asked us to raise market awareness. With good intentions, but given no budget or time to perform proper market research, we interviewed a total of 6 corporate CEOs and board members to provide some validation to the underlying premise of our press release. The headline read: “Most Corporate Directors & Officers Believe They Are Not Adequately Protected from Legal Risk.”

With very little expectation that such shoddy market research would qualify for exposure in the financial press, and dreading inquiries from journalists asking about our research methodology, the press release went out. To our great surprise, we received no calls from reporters checking our facts, and the story was immediately picked up by two major wire services, and appeared as a news squib on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, followed by coverage in several business insurance trade publications.

Our client was overjoyed with the media exposure, but we felt less than honorable, and resolved that we would never use market research to promote a client’s product or service unless we believed the supporting methodology had sufficient rigor. And over the years we’ve lost client work as a result of that position.

Research integrity was an issue long before the internet became the platform for content marketing. Most often, your research-based news items would not be covered by respected media sources unless you successfully endured their credibility gauntlet. Editors demanded your research methods and data, and had to be convinced that your study was objective and legitimate. Our very thin D&O insurance liability research was a rare and risky exception…and perhaps a sign of things to come.

For well understood reasons, the “legitimate press” now has neither the manpower nor the time to dig deeply for validation of market research that supports content generated by organizations. The loss of this important filter, coupled with the explosion of online content, has created a marketing world in which sloppy, incomplete (and sometimes blatantly false) research generates news items that can go viral and become accepted wisdom. Pumping out content in volume has become far more important than creating high quality content that could ever withstand the scrutiny of a hard-nosed editor.

What this new world of content marketing means for individuals is simple: Assume that all “research-based” information requires close scrutiny. Believe nothing at face value, regardless of the source. If it’s important to your business strategy, or you intend to adopt the research to support your own point of view (or an upcoming PowerPoint presentation), then you’ll need to become that hard-nosed editor who scrutinizes the original source; who looks at the sample size, respondents, questions asked, etc.; and who determines whether the research results legitimately support the conclusions.

What this new world of content integrity means to companies is more complex: Assume that the “research-based” content that you produce is a reflection of your brand’s integrity. For the Marketing Department, this involves educating the corner office regarding the rigor, time and costs involved in market studies, surveys, research necessary to yield content worthy of customer-facing applications. For the corner office, this involves calculating whether the intended marketplace outcome is worth the necessary investment. It also involves avoiding shortcuts.

Without the 4th Estate as the content gatekeeper, there is now far greater opportunity for companies to benefit from content marketing. But by failing to adopt the market research integrity standards that journalists long upheld, there are far more ways for companies to damage their brand through application of the tactic.

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Tagged as B2B marketing, content marketing, D&O liability insurance, Directors & Officers Liability Insurance, fake news, marketing communications, marketing content

October 9, 2016 · 4:50 pm

Skip the Marketing Plan. Try this “Easy-Bake” Recipe Instead.

betty-crocker The first question we ask prospective clients is, “Do you have a Marketing Plan?”

Most prospects sheepishly acknowledge that they don’t have a formal Marketing Plan. This group earns big points with us for honesty.

Some less forthright prospects will claim they do have a Marketing Plan, but when asked to show it to us, this group responds with, “Our plan isn’t written down,” or “It’s being updated,” which really means that they don’t have a plan.

There are several good and bad reasons why companies (of all sizes) don’t create a Marketing Plan. Those spoken and unspoken reasons include:

· It’s too much work to create and maintain a Marketing Plan.

· We had a Marketing Plan once, and it just sat in a 3-ring binder on the shelf.

· Senior management doesn’t understand marketing. Why confuse them more?

· It’s easier to just keep trying different marketing tactics, to see what works.

After decades of watching companies either earnestly struggle to create a Marketing Plan, or strenuously avoid creating one, we recently had an epiphany. We realized that most companies should SKIP the Marketing Plan altogether.

Here’s why: The ratio of companies without (versus with) a Marketing Plan will never change. So rather than badgering and shaming the “No Marketing Plan” companies, we should help them focus exclusively on the critical components of marketing that will help them succeed. We call this process the “Easy-Bake Marketing Cake Recipe.”

In Betty Crocker fashion, here are step-by-step directions for creating an Easy-Bake Marketing Cake for your company…completely devoid of all marketing jargon:

The Strategic Ingredients

Step 1: Determine why customers should buy your product / service. This seemingly simple goal – to understand what’s special about your company – is the most essential element of marketing strategy. Many companies either don’t have a clue, or have an unfounded / unrealistic viewpoint on why people should do business with them. You need to nail this step.

Step 2: Learn why customers are buying from your competitors. To gain a reliable answer to the Step 1 question, you need to possess a thorough understanding of the competitive landscape. The most successful marketers know everything about (and closely monitor) current competitors, to gain insight into why customers buy from them. They also work to anticipate new competitors, and explore potential customer solutions that could disrupt the entire category.

Step 3: Learn what your customers want and don’t want. If you’re not having a continuous, two-way conversation with current, prospective and former customers, then you are flying by the seat of your pants, marketing-wise. And you can’t rely exclusively on surveys to gain that market intelligence. Pick up the phone and talk to decision-makers at least once a quarter to really understand what they think and what they need.

The Practical Ingredients

Step 1: Define what your marketing resources are. Marketing requires money and people. Work backwards to build a marketing strategy. First decide what resources are available to invest, and then determine what strategies / tactics you can afford to apply properly and consistently. Having an “open budget” for marketing makes you a target for the latest gimmick, and is a sure way to waste a boatload of money.

Step 2: Put your sales process under the microscope. Marketing is not a religion. To justify its existence as a corporate function, marketing must help produce tangible business outcomes. Most marketing activity should be related to sales…and the sales function requires close scrutiny in advance of any marketing investment. If your sales process is broken (or non-existent), then your marketing will likely yield nothing of value.

Step 3: Define exactly what you want your marketing to achieve. Your marketing goals should be directly or indirectly connected to activity that drives revenue. If that revenue connection is fuzzy, or based largely on wishful thinking, then either refine or eliminate the weak strategies and tactics. Be ruthless in your evaluation of all marketing activity at all times.

The Tactical Ingredients

Step 1: Select one effective direct marketing tactic. Most email solicitations go unread, with good reason: they are self-serving, poorly written and lack a compelling rationale for people to respond. But because the email marketing bar is so low, there is plenty of opportunity to stand out from the crowd. There’s also a big opportunity to leverage traditional snail mail, largely because marketers have abandoned that channel in lemming-like fashion.

Step 2: Select one smart content marketing tactic. The objective is to showcase your company’s intellectual capital (which is very different from a sales pitch), either through respected print / electronic media sources or social media, primarily to gain online visibility for that content. The 2016 marketing reality is this: If potential clients can’t find you by searching online, then you are not in the game. If you prefer to stick with the “We’re a relationship business, and don’t need an online brand presence.” marketing approach, then please let me know. I would like to short your stock.

Step 3: Select one consistent tactic to keep in touch with clients, prospects and referral sources. With so much media noise and competition, and because you can never know when people will be ready to engage, it’s important to remind decision-makers that your company is ready to help them. Quarterly communication is sufficient, and will avoid being viewed as a pest. Standard “all about us” newsletters are boring, so provide content that’s meaningful and of interest to your readers.

This overly simplistic, 9-step planning process is unlikely to gain the endorsement of the American Marketing Association. But for the vast majority of businesses who don’t have the time or interest to create a bona fide Marketing Plan, this “Easy-Bake Marketing Cake Recipe” should more than suffice.

Compared with some of the overly ambitious, non-productive Marketing Plans that we’ve seen over the years, it’s also likely to produce a much tastier outcome. Bon appetit.

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Tagged as #B2B strategy, #marketing, #thought leadership, Betty Crocker, direct marketing, DIY Marketing, marketing communications, Marketing Plan, marketing ROI, sales & marketing, sales strategy

June 28, 2016 · 8:28 am

B2B Marketing Needs One Giant Step…Backwards

Vest Pocket Brochures In the dark ages of B2B marketing communications, circa 1980, the goal was to get your snail-mailed communications past the office gatekeepers (a/k/a “executive assistants”), and onto the desks of your targeted decision-makers.

Most often, however, the sheer volume of first-class mail processed every morning by office gatekeepers made it more likely that your personalized pitch letter and costly sales brochure would end up, unopened, in the garbage can. Dead on arrival.

But starting in the mid-1990s, corporate adoption of email communication changed the dynamics of direct marketing. First-class mail volume dropped from a peak of 59 billion pieces in 1996, to 23 billion pieces in 2013 — a 61 percent decline.

So in theory…this significant reduction in snail mail volume meant that the bar for getting materials past the office gatekeepers was lower; making it far easier to get your marketing materials into the hands of intended targets.

But that’s not what’s happened.

Instead, in lemming-like fashion, B2B marketers largely abandoned snail mail as a viable marketing communication channel, and adopted email as their “direct” medium of choice.

Now, 20 years later:

The sheer volume of email, even with clever Subject lines, makes it nearly impossible to gain the attention of targeted decision-makers; and

Misguided “eco friendly” practices (notably, failure to appreciate the paper industry’s stellar record of sustainable forest management) have fostered a generation of lifeless marketing collateral that’s either viewed onscreen, or downloaded and printed in PDF format on office printers.

As a result, today’s B2B marketers are failing to capture opportunities to connect with prospects through physical materials, in a business environment where the arrival of personalized, first-class mail is often a unique event; prompting most gatekeepers to ensure that it’s delivered to the intended target.

In addition to capturing this marcom window of opportunity, marketers would be well-served to take an additional giant step BACKWARDS…by developing “Ink on Paper” collateral materials that build brand stature.

What marketers will gain by recapturing the lost art of Ink on Paper includes:

Visceral Impact – Pixels on a screen have no weight, no dimension, no texture, no smell. Ink on Paper places something physical into a person’s hands. They open the cover and turn its pages. It’s a sensory experience that communicates on human terms, and that cannot be replicated by a flimsy PDF reprint created on a laser copier.

Personality – The range of creative expression using pixels is limited by the fixed dimensions of a flat glass screen. Ink on Paper lives on a canvas of unlimited graphic possibilities, in terms of size, shape, color and physical features. It provides an opportunity to stand out from the crowd, to express yourself more effectively, and to make an impression that’s likely to be remembered.

Permanence – People scroll through computer screens at hyper-speed. The volume of information is unlimited, and no intellectual commitment is required of viewers. Ink on Paper moves in slow motion, forcing readers to pay closer attention to its content.

Whether they sit on a desk or in a vest pocket, high quality printed materials suggest that the people and company who produced them actually exist, have nothing to hide and can be trusted.

Practitioners in most disciplines are often quick to embrace new tools and methods that enhance their results and professional satisfaction. But a much smaller number of those professionals understand the importance of sticking with, or adapting, existing tactics that work well. They do not fear appearing out-of-touch or old fashioned.

Seasoned marketers who have thrown the baby out with the bathwater in their wholesale adoption of digital communications, as well as more recent arrivals to the marketing profession who have always lived in a paperless world, would be well-served to reconsider Ink on Paper as a medium.

No marketing communications program is truly integrated without high quality print collateral.

Try using those materials as the basis for a snail mail campaign with clients or prospects, and see what happens. Ideally, do it before your competitors discover the opportunity.

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Filed under B2B Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Uncategorized

Tagged as #content marketing, B2B marketing, direct mail, direct mail channels, Ink on Paper, marketing collateral, marketing communications, marketing materials, office gatekeepers, paper industry, sales collateral, snail mail, sustainable forest management

December 22, 2015 · 10:26 pm

Time to Kill Your Company’s Zombie Blog?

zombie When pressed to explain why their company has a blog, many CEOs will admit they were either pushed by marketing counsel to create one, or believed they needed a blog because their competitors have them. Few CEOs understand the purpose of a blog, and most members of that small group are not convinced that their blog delivers any tangible value.

CEOs and marketers who are currently deciding whether to establish a company blog might consider these 3 reasons to forget the idea altogether:

You’re not convinced there’s a connection between your blog and your business objectives.

The intranet is a graveyard of dead company blogs, representing well-intentioned, half-baked and underfunded efforts to benefit from content marketing. Many of those blog casualties represent efforts to “put a toe in the water,” as a means to determine whether the company should make a serious, long-term commitment to a blog.

Unfortunately, a blog is much like a marriage, but without dating in advance of a commitment. First, you must conduct due diligence, then you make a long-term commitment…for better or worse. Many blog failures, in fact, are the result of reluctant brides (doubting CEOs) who are willing to give conditional or temporary approval to proceed, which often serves as sufficient rope for the marketing department to hang itself.

CEOs and their marketers are best served, and their blog is most likely to succeed, if senior management understands its function, benefits and limitations, and is 100% committed to a very long relationship.

You’re unwilling to provide your blog with the necessary resources.

A sizeable number of dead and useless blogs are doomed to fail because they lack the economic and human resources required to create and sustain an effective corporate blog. Unfortunately, the typical blog development strategy consists of these 3 steps:

The IT Department will add a new “blog” page to the website.
Content creation will be an internal group effort, with people / departments taking turns contributing blog posts on a regular basis.
The Marketing Department will manage the content creation process, suggesting topics and prompting individuals to contribute their posts according to a schedule.

Three months later, the Marketing Department grows tired of hounding would-be content contributors, and management is not seeing the expected increase in lead generation or even website traffic. Posting frequency drops from weekly to monthly to quarterly. The corporate blog gradually becomes an internal albatross and an external brand liability.

CEOs and their marketers are best served, and their blog is more likely to succeed only if senior management allocates the resources to hire or engage the editorial horsepower necessary to produce high quality content on a consistent basis that:

Supports the value proposition and related core messages
Engages target audiences
Is associated with measurable business goals
Strengthens brand stature

Lacking the proper resource allocation (which does not mean simply adding blog management to marketing’s plate), and not making specific individuals accountable for its success are two ways to guarantee your blog’s failure.

You don’t have a well-defined content marketing strategy, or you’re unwilling to stick to it.

Even with management’s full support and proper resource allocation, many blogs become editorial Zombies: moving and breathing, but with no heart and soul, simply sucking the lifeblood out of their corporate hosts.

Without an intelligent content marketing strategy that’s directly related to your company’s brand positioning, competitive landscape and sales initiatives, your blog wastes corporate resources and represents an opportunity loss. If blog activity is not driven by a strategic plan and editorial calendar that’s endorsed by senior management, and if your blog agenda is usually based on a frantic search for content – from any source, and regardless of its relevance – then your blog is one of the living dead on the internet.

CEOs who understand the power of an effective blog, and who have the backbone to support content marketing as a viable means to advance the enterprise, deserve to be rewarded with a program that delivers bona fide thought leadership and market engagement; not a constant stream of repurposed news items, self-serving photos from the company’s latest mud run, or press releases and job postings that your customers, prospects and referral sources will never care about.

If your company has already created a Zombie blog, and is unwilling to take the steps necessary to bring it to life, then it’s time to drive a stake through its heart. Just take it down. No one will miss it. And your company’s internal harmony, balance sheet and brand reputation will all benefit as a result.

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Filed under B2B Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Uncategorized

Tagged as #content marketing, #thought leadership, blog effectiveness, blog strategy, blogging, content creation, dead blog, marketing communications, zombie blog

November 12, 2015 · 1:19 pm

Facing the #1 B2B Deal-Killer: “Do You Have Any Clients Just Like Me?”

In new business development efforts, B2B firms of all types are often challenged by prospective clients with this question: “Do you have any experience working for companies in my industry?”

Very often, the answer to that question can be a deal-killer for B2B firms without an appropriate client list or some other means to demonstrate industry-specific credentials.

Lacking the proper “just like me” credentials, some firms will argue that the skills and experience they currently possess can be applied across all types of industries. And although this may be true, that response typically fails to convince the prospect, and can even backfire. Because most companies believe their situation and the challenges they face are unique, suggesting otherwise usually will end the sales process.

Short of a firm merger or hiring an individual with the experience in a targeted industry, there are a few ways that professional services firms can gain business outside of the constraints of their current industry credentials. For example:

Recast Your Value Proposition: Take an inventory of your firm’s experience and capabilities, and identify those elements that are likely to address the current needs and opportunities of the industry you’re seeking to break into. By re-casting your public facing materials, or creating new marketing collateral and thought leadership that’s focused on your target industry, you can establish a baseline level of credibility that serves to offset the lack of actual client work in that field.

Seek Expertise in Individuals: Your firm may not possess the desired industry credentials, but some of your employees might. Ask all of your associates if their professional experience includes work either for or with companies in a targeted industry, and “borrow” those credentials, with their permission. Prospects often don’t care where your firm has gained the requisite industry knowledge, as long as they are confident that it exists.

Engage Freelance Talent: There are plenty of freelance practitioners with deep credentials in your target industry who are willing to lend their credibility and expertise to help make a sale, if they stand to benefit from the transaction. This is also a way to test the business potential of a new industry vertical without hiring an employee.

Earn Your Credentials: If you’re serious about breaking into a new industry, you’ll need to become a student of what makes it tick: the economics, the core issues, the competitive landscape, and how it is currently being serviced by your peers. This means following trade journals; reading relevant books and academic research; attending leading conferences and trade shows; studying the opinions of its thought leaders; talking to people who are considered “experts” in that field; and contributing comments and questions in relevant online / offline industry platforms. Chances are that this work will eventually generate insights, discussions and relationships that foster tangible business engagements in that industry.

What’s important to remember is that, regardless of the target industry, your credentials are only one part of the sales process. Once you overcome the “clients just like me” hurdle, the prospect will be more interested in how you intend to address their specific problem or opportunity. And that’s where you should work to direct the conversation.

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Tagged as #marketing, #thought leadership, B2B marketing, business to business marketing, marketing communications, professional services marketing, top-of-mind awareness, value proposition

June 11, 2015 · 5:01 pm

Checklist Marketing: Too Many Shoes in Your Suitcase?

Many companies view marketing simply as a checklist of items they believe to be essential: Website…check. White Paper…check. LinkedIn and Twitter Accounts…check / check. Client Newsletter…check. Trade Show…check. Blog…check. Publicity…check.

But marketing strategy is not akin to packing for a trip. “Shoes” may be on your checklist of items to put into your suitcase, but depending on your destination and itinerary, you may need dress oxfords, high heels, running shoes, slippers, golf shoes, sandals or hiking boots. Or perhaps you only need the shoes on your feet.

Marketers often throw far too many shoes into their suitcase, either because they see competitors wearing them, or they wish to avoid explaining why their company lacks the trendiest footwear.

Unfortunately, it’s this collection of shoes with no real reason to be in the company’s suitcase that causes the greatest problem for the marketing function, in terms of justification of related costs and contribution to enterprise goals.

To wean our B2B clients off their shoe fetish, we apply a “Marketing Diagnostic” planning tool, consisting of 10 simple questions. Here are the first two questions it asks:

1. Does your firm have a written marketing plan?

Although it’s the most essential marketing task, most firms do not have a written plan. A marketing plan need not be lengthy, take months to prepare, or require the services of McKinsey & Co. Effective plans can be developed in a few whiteboard sessions, and be contained in a 2 – 3 page document that address these key questions:

What is our value proposition and competitive advantage?
What is our target market and who are the decision-makers?
What specific business goals / benchmarks are we seeking to accomplish?
What tactics will we use to engage with and nurture our target audience(s)?
What budgets, timeframes and responsibilities will we assign to those tactics?
How and how often will we measure results and make course corrections?

The two most important aspects of a marketing plan are, first, that it ensures organizational consensus regarding the firm’s strategic purpose, where it wants to go, and how it intends to get there. Secondly, it provides accountability for results. In many cases, it’s that fear of accountability that discourages firms from creating a marketing plan.

2. Do all of your marketing tactics have measurable goals linked to business outcomes?

This diagnostic question involves the most difficult aspect of marketing: demonstrating tangible outcomes that justify the time and expense invested in marketing tactics. The classic complaints against marketing sound like this: “We’ve attended the XYZ conference for 3 years, and it hasn’t generated any new clients.” Or “We were mentioned in the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, and no one has contacted us based on that exposure.”

However, when you examine those marketing results-related complaints more closely, you’re likely to discover that (in the case of conferences) the firm failed to build an integrated strategy to communicate properly both in advance of and following the event, and did not leverage the conference-related content to reach a broader audience. And in the case of publicity, the firm likely generated the wrong type of media exposure (regardless of where it appeared), or simply hung the coverage on their website like a hunting trophy, instead of using it proactively to engage with their target audiences.

This second diagnostic question, regarding the practical benefit of marketing activity, is actually an integral part of the marketing plan development process. Every tactic that’s included in your marketing plan requires its own response to “How will we measure results?” Some tactics can be measured in terms of direct business outcomes, such as lead generation. But tactics that are unlikely to generate direct results, such as media exposure, will require a plan that combines related tactics. For example, to benefit from your published bylined article in a trade publication, your strategy might include sending a reprint of that piece (along with a non self-serving cover note) to targeted audiences, as a means to generate the awareness and conversations that precede transactions.

Both Do-It-Yourself marketers and professional marketers alike rationalize their activity on a tactical basis (number of white paper downloads, website traffic, “Likes” and “Re-Tweets,” etc.), and fail to either design or connect the marketing dots in a manner that’s likely to drive meaningful business results. This disconnect is the #1 reason why marketing is held in such low regard, compared with other professional disciplines.

If you’d like a complete copy of our 10 question “Marketing Diagnostic” planning tool for B2B firms, just shoot me an email through LinkedIn, or to gordon at andrewselikoff dot com. It includes a self-scoring system, allowing you to know exactly how you stack up, marketing-wise.

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May 7, 2015 · 12:36 pm

Investment-Related Publicity: How Clueless is Your Fund?

According to BNY Mellon’s most recent survey of Investor Relations (IR) practices worldwide, fewer than half of the nearly 700 respondents are using media relations to support their IR goals. More significantly, only 6% of that group included media exposure as a top IR goal.

Whether its reluctance to proactively pursue publicity (also called “earned media”) is based on cost, control, or misunderstanding of the function, the investment industry is failing to take advantage of one of the most powerful means to build investor awareness, third-party endorsement, and assets under management.

Here are some thoughts on how your fund can effectively leverage publicity:

More Publicity is Not Better: The term “media mentions” is broadly used by the investment industry to describe publicity, which implies that the sheer volume of exposure is beneficial. Even if your fund generates piles of press clippings, however, there are too many distractions within print, broadcast, and digital media channels to ensure that target audiences will ever notice, or be influenced by, any of those mentions. A media relations strategy driven by volume rather than substance is an expensive, zero-sum game.

Not All Publicity is Created Equal: High-value media exposure puts an exclusive spotlight on your fund’s intellectual capital, underlying values or narrative, and typically allows you to control all or most of the content. On that basis, specific types of publicity — such as a firm profile written by a “friendly” journalist, or a one-on-one interview on relevant topics — are far more valuable than simply being mentioned or quoted (often with a competitor or two) in a news story, or providing a sound bite for CNBC.

Create Credibility Tools: The underlying value of media exposure lies in the inherent third-party endorsement that’s provided by a respected, objective media source. (This is why a Wall Street Journal article is more valuable than paid Wall Street Transcript coverage.) Your goal is to generate media exposure that serves as ad hoc “credibility tools” for your firm, which can be used in your IR program to assure current investors, prospects and referral sources that you are a safe choice. If your publicity doesn’t make your fund’s marketing materials more believable, then the tactic will never have a connection to asset growth.

Plan Media Solicitations Last: Most media exposure is pursued in a haphazard, opportunistic manner. But to generate publicity that has inherent business value, you need to work backwards: first define what specific behavior or opinion you’re attempting to influence, and then determine what type(s) of media exposure will accomplish your goal. Only at that point are you prepared to solicit specific media opportunities that have the potential to drive measurable business outcomes.

Put Your Media Exposure to Work: Too often, media placements are passively hung on a website or a LinkedIn profile like a hunting trophy. But media exposure itself is never the goal; it’s only a means to an end, and must be put to work. Current and prospective investors, referral sources and other key audiences should be consistently reminded – through your positive media exposure – of who you are, what makes you different, and why they should invest with you. This is the tedious but critical step that most firms skip: maintaining a database of important contacts, and nurturing those relationships with those individuals by leveraging their media exposure to drive awareness and engagement.

Slice & Dice for Incremental ROI: In our digital age, there are online opportunities to gain additional mileage from the publicity you generate. For example, if you’ve scored a bylined article in a respected publication, initiate a discussion on the article’s topic within appropriate LinkedIn user groups, and attach a link to the published piece. Or use Twitter to promote your article’s link, by Tweeting (more than once) a provocative observation or quote from the piece to generate interest.

Funds that use media exposure effectively also understand the greatest limitation of the tactic: that no amount of publicity can compensate for an enterprise that lacks a strong value proposition, a clear sense of purpose, and underlying integrity. Without those cornerstones of brand reputation, publicity’s potential to expose a fund’s shortcomings will always represent a liability.

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April 16, 2015 · 5:33 pm

Marketing Failure at Professional Services Firms: Who’s to Blame?

The Hinge Research Institute – a division of one of the nation’s smartest B2B marketing consultancies – recently published the results of its survey of 530 professional services firms representing accounting and finance; technology; marketing and communications; architecture; engineering and construction; legal; and management consulting disciplines.

In its report, 2015 Professional Services Marketing Priorities, Hinge examined current business challenges and approaches to implementing marketing initiatives at small and medium-sized firms, with annual revenues ranging from less than $5 million to more than $100 million. Owners, partners and principals represented 60% of survey respondents, marketing professionals represented 23%, and the balance were operational or senior level decision-makers at those firms.

Although this was not the intention of this study, or the expressed conclusions of Hinge, the research findings provide insight into why marketing fails to deliver a reasonable return at most professional services firms.

Failure to Connect the Dots

In the Hinge research, here’s how small and medium sized professional services firms ranked their current business challenges:

No surprises here. “Attracting and developing new business” (72.1%) is understandably the most significant challenge for any business;
However… “Strategy / Planning Issues” (26.8%) are either something professional services firms believe they have under control; are not greatly concerned about; or fail to associate with new business development.

Activity without Purpose or Accountability

The apparent disconnect between strategy / planning and actual marketplace results is reinforced in the marketing initiatives that professional services firms planned for 2015.

According to the Hinge survey, the focus of most professional services firms is on the tactical aspects of marketing, reflected in their plans to:

Increase the visibility of their brand (57.9%) and their experts (54.5%)
Upgrade their websites (54.9%)
Make clients more aware of services (53.5%)
Create content marketing programs (47.2%)

Conversely, the strategic aspects of marketing are all at the bottom of the 2015 to-do list for most professional services firms:

Develop marketing strategy / plan (45.5%)
Find stronger competitive advantage (40.8%)
Conduct research on target market (33.8%)
Conduct client satisfaction research (22.7%)

It might be argued that strategic marketing tasks did not make the list of 2015 planned initiatives because professional services firms already have those disciplines covered. But our own experience counseling professional services firms over the past 20 years suggests otherwise.

One of the first questions we ask a new or prospective client is this: “Do you have a written marketing plan?” Most often, and consistent with the Hinge study, the answer we receive from them is “No.”

Who’s to blame for unmet expectations in marketing professional services: The senior managers who focus on tactics without a strategic foundation? Or the marketing professionals who should know better?