SlideShare – see for yourself what it can do
I tend to use SlideShare for uploading presentations and sharing them with delegates who attended one of my events. However, my aim is to look further into various programmes to find out what else they can do – like most people I only access a small percentage of available capability on most things due to time and lack of in-depth knowledge. I will share these with you as I go along.
By now, everyone knows effective content is essential for educating, engaging, and converting readers into customers. This is an article that was published on the Content Marketing Institute website, written by George Passwater.
The problem is that many businesses believe in a “create it, broadcast it, and hope it works” methodology. If this actually worked, content marketing would be “one size fits all” and everyone would do it right.
Sometimes, being the ‘best’ choice for a prospect isn’t what will ultimately decide whether you get the work. Sometimes, it may be important to be ‘good enough’ or even just ‘safe’. We can’t always assume that our prospects are motivated to find the best option – the most knowledgeable, the most experienced, the most creative, the biggest agency… whatever. Sometimes prospects have other criteria Continue reading
Put yourself in a situation where you desperately need help. For example you are stranded on a motorway in bad weather with no mobile phone and only a marker pen and a flip chart to hand!
How would you attract the attention of other motorists and persuade them to stop and help?
You wouldn’t write a joke, a clever play on words or draw a nice graphic – you would probably write as big as you can “HELP ME” on the paper. That would do the job of getting your message across to your “audience”.
It is far easier to sell something you believe in. If your sales force is struggling, it may be that they lack conviction or a unified belief and vision. Your selling message may not be strong enough or distinct enough.
Your sales proposition needs to be clear and compelling, and the benefits of your service / product must be obvious. Your sales force should be fully committed and be bale to have faith in the strength of your proposition.
If your sales message is fuzzy or unclear, or if you have no clear distinction which highlights the benefits of your service / product then your sales force will struggle. It won’t matter how good they are.
Before you condemn your sales team ensure that your sales proposition has merit.
For more information please contact Marie
Being busy doesn’t always mean being effective!
By being a business that is clear on what you offer, you will beat the competition that has a comparable offering. The company that clearly articulates what it does, why it’s relevant and how it’s different not only helps customers make better and faster buying decisions, it also (perhaps more importantly) knows where it is going and so does every member of staff.
As your marketing continually evolves, you will find you are doing lots of repetitive tasks and perhaps not even monitoring whether those strategies are still working for you.
The first thing you must do is revisit the goals and objectives for your business. If you are not keeping those at the forefront of your mind then it is very easy to lose focus and that’s when things start to unravel. Each activity much link to a goal and they all must work together.
I often say to clients that once you have produced something it can be reworked for lots of different things – for example, a press release can become social content, a case study, an article, a blog post, a PDF etc – there is no point reinventing the wheel, but content has to be appropriate for the platform you are using it on.
A lot of people say content is king and that is certainly the case online BUT it has to be quality first over quantity. There is no point churning out lots of unstructured material when (a) nobody is interested and (b) it cannot be found by your prospects.
Insofar as consolidating your marketing, keep your messages consistent, represent your brand with integrity, integrate your marketing strategies where possible and keep your eyes open for opportunities to regurgitate work already produced.
If you would like help in consolidating your marketing please contact us
Forget what business you are in – what do you actually do?
When somebody asks you this question, most people respond like this:
“What is it you do?”
“We’re accountants.”
“OK, so what do you DO?”
I mean in the eyes of your prospects?
When I think about the following jobs, I automatically associate characteristics with people who work in those roles – righly or wrongly:
Double Glazing Salesman – aggressive, hard sell, ruthless
Many companies don’t gather competitor intelligence because they fail to recognise the value of doing so. If you decide that you are going to monitor competitive activity then you must put a plan in place to make sure you have a structured method to gather material so that you don’t get sidelined with unnecessary information overload.