Dare to soar!

Dare to soar,

how successful you are is determined by your attitude.

Happy Friday,

Debbi

Must~Read for Marketers

I just watched the greatest documentary~style TV show ever!  The Pitch airs on AMC and premiers on April 30^th. I caught the sneak preview.

The Pitch covers two ad agencies as they compete for the same piece of business.  It is a behind~the~curtain look at the strategic and creative process.  Whether your job is as the “pitcher” or the “pitchee”, this is must~see viewing.

Here are a few quotes from the show that will motive you and make you think about what we do …

“There’s no software that can write a great idea.”

~ Tracy Wong

Founding Partner

WDCW

What we do as marketers is special.  We have the one job that everyone thinks they can do, but few can truly do successfully.  As marketers, we’re expected to be creative on~demand. 

Computers can run our government, they can think strategically enough to play chess, but they can not create the ideas that connect a company’s brand, to a campaign strategy, speaking to a target’s unique needs, in the target’s voice, while factoring in the competitive messages to differentiate and make an impact in the marketplace. 

We are NOT the “arts and crafts department!”  We are NOT the “event planners!”  We are a special combination of researcher, artist, writer, strategist, accountant and sales person.  We are the left and right brain living in perfect harmony.

Marketing is creative, but it’s creative under pressure.  We’re told…

“Go be creative…

… and make sure you do this…

… and make sure you do that…

… and make sure you do it in the next 24 hours.

See you then.”

~ Jonathan Cude

Chief Creative Officer

McKinney

Marketing is about getting passionate enough about an idea that you’re willing to share it with the world … then watching that idea, that you love, get shot down because one person in the room “doesn’t get it.” 

Marketing takes the passion and the desire and the drive to give birth to great ideas and still be enough of a cold~hearted, callused, S.O.B. to forget them and move onto the next without looking back.  It takes thick skin and a short memory.

Last words of wisdom that were not from The Pitch…

“When a doctor makes a mistake, they bury it.

When a lawyer makes a mistake, they lock it away.

When a marketer makes a mistake, they publish it for the whole world to see.”

~Nick Sabatino

Flynn, Sabatino & Day

Nick was a mentor and a friend.  He shared this thought with me when I was an intern and I’ll carry it with me forever.  It speaks to typos and design flaws and ideas that simply miss the mark.  It reminds us of the importance of what we do and reminds me that my reputation, my company’s reputation and my client’s reputation are on the line every single day.

Be proud, marketers, you are an exceptional, irreplaceable, crazy~out~of~your~mind group of people.

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Want to learn more?  Enroll in the MarketMatch eCollege!  Smart learning online sessions delivered five consecutive Tuesdays with CFMP credits, tactical advice and a game plan for success!

MarketMatch is a full-service marketing firm, dedicated to the credit union and community banking community.  We utilize knowledge-based strategies to help you FOCUS on the efforts that will generate the greatest  MOMENTUM for your organization and demonstrate RESULTS with our written ROI Guarantee.

Learn more about us here. (click)

Chat with me LIVE! (click)

Or email me directly (click)

937-426-9848

Making it Matter...

Image from TippingPoint Labs

Greetings...

Marketers are challenged everyday with ensuring our dollar is invested in marketing strategy and tactical deliveries that work... in the end its all about three key letters-- R O I.

The return on investment is the holy grail that we MUST pay attention to and maximize.

The key is investing the "right" amount of dollars into the "right" strategies supported by the "right" tactics. 

Simple.  Right?

Well...it can be...

There are four strategies that a marketer SHOULD employ to ensure the marketing efforts pay dividends.   Here they are:

1. Content. Content. Content.  This is the king of all important elements. What we have to say is more important that how or where.  Good content is viewed, shared, discussed and actionable.
2. Relevant:  Our message, content and delivery need to be relevant.  Not to us, or our board, but to our target market.  Relevancy is in the eye of the beholder!
3. High Quality.  This means adding value!  A poorly written but relevant message may work...but a well written, added value relevant message is the key to the house!  "Well written" means brevity, crisp language and actionable word choice that intrigues the reader and has them wanting more!
4. Frequent (and recent).  I added the recency to the frequency because we both the maximized response is the intersection of frequently seeing your relevant message with the added power of recently being exposed to your message, too.

Here is a recent example of our Marketing Minute... monthly video vignettes that speak to a targeted message.  This is on the relevancy of your brand and how you can create followers that "wear your brand."  Enjoy!

Cheers!

Bruce Clapp


Want to learn more?  Enroll in the MarketMatch eCollege!  Smart learning online sessions delivered five consecutive Tuesdays with 2.5 CFMP credits for EACH session, tactical advice and a game plan for success!  Enroll here!

MarketMatch is a full-service marketing consulting firm, dedicated to the credit union and community banking community.  We utilize knowledge-based strategies to help you FOCUS on the efforts that will generate MOMENTUM and yield the greatest RESULTS for your bottom line.

Learn more here.

Chat with me LIVE!

Or contact me directly (click here).

Don't Miss These Great B2B Marketing Webinars

For B2B marketers, webinars are not only a great lead generator and essential part of a solid content marketing strategy, they can also offer a great educational opportunity to learn what other marketers are doing to drive awareness, engage prospects, and generate revenue.

Here are a couple of new marketing webinars you might enjoy. For a complete list of B2B marketing webinars, check out the B2B Technology Marketing Channel on BrightTalk.

Integrating Social Media into Sales and Marketing Automation
(Lydia Sugarman, CEO and founder of Venntive)
Apr 18 @ 11 am  ET | 8:00 am PT
Register Here: http://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/7489/45175

The Shift to Social Business
(Michael Brito, SVP Social Business, Edelman Digital)
Apr 17 @ 5 pm ET | 2 pm PT
Register Here: http://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/7489/43503

Generating Demand that Actually Converts into Revenue - A Case Study
(Mark Martin, VP Marketing and Business Development, Avnet)
May 31 @ 1 pm ET | 10 am PT
Register Here: http://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/7489/43961

Available on-demand:
Mastering B2B Social Media
(Kipp Bodnar, Inbound Marketing , Hubspot)
Watch on-demand: http://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/7489/43061

I hope you'll enjoy the webinars. If you are interested in producing your own B2B marketing webinars and sharing it with over 30,000 members in the B2B Marketing Community, please contact me at hhschulze@gmail.com.

Thank you,
Holger Schulze

First Energy

First Energy is a small start-up with big plans to transform the
way the world cooks. The company was nominated by the World Economic Forum for
its first annual list of Technology Pioneers. The nomination stated that First
Energy’s “revolutionary” cooking stoves were “helping save the environment
while making life more affordable in rural villages”[1]
in India and elsewhere.


First Energy's

For Great Marketing Content, Focus on the Jobs Prospects Need to Get Done

The first step to creating compelling marketing content is to understand what your prospects are trying to accomplish when they purchase products or services like those you provide. Most buyers, particularly business buyers, don't purchase a product or service because they want that product or service itself. Instead, when they become aware of a job that they need to get done, they look for a product or service that they can "hire" to perform the job. Theodore Levitt, the legendary marketing professor at the Harvard Business School, captured this concept in a memorable way when he said, "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole."

In The Innovator's Solution, Clatyon Christensen and Michael Raynor provide an interesting example of hiring a product to get a job done. A fast-food restaurant chain wanted to increase sales of milkshakes, and it commissioned market research to better understand how to accomplish this goal. The most surprising finding of the research was that almost half of all milkshakes were purchased in the early morning. The milkshakes were usually the only item purchased, and they were rarely consumed on the premises.

The researchers found that most of the morning milkshake customers were people on their way to work. They faced a long commute, and they needed something to make the drive more interesting. In addition, while they weren't necessarily hungry when they bought the shake, they knew if they didn't eat something, they would be hungry by mid-morning. Most of these customers also faced similar constraints. They were in a hurry, they were usually wearing their business clothes, and they only had one free hand.

These customers sometimes "hired" other foods to fill their morning needs, but most of the alternatives had significant disadvantages. Bagels got crumbs on their clothes, bananas were eaten too quickly to last for the whole commute, and breakfast sandwiches made their hands and the steering wheel greasy. It wasn't so much that these customers "liked" milkshakes better than bagels or bananas or breakfast sandwiches, but milkshakes were better than these alternatives at performing the job the customers needed to get done.

It's not hard to find examples of this idea in the business world:

• No business owner really wants accounting software, but many buy such software because they realize they need to generate invoices faster, know how much they owe to vendors, and understand how well their company is performing financially. Accounting software enables them to perform these jobs more efficiently than a manaul bookkeeping system.
• No business owner really wants property insurance, but most will purchase insurance because they know they need to protect themselves financially in case of a fire. Insurance is the best-available tool for performing this job.
• No business owner really wants a company brochure, or a direct mail campaign, or for that matter, a website, but many will invest in those things because they see them as effective tools for performing the job of increasing sales.

As businesspeople and marketers, it's easy for us to forget that most potential buyers aren't really interested in our products or services per se. What they are (or can become) interested in is what our products or services can help them accomplish. Our products or services are simply the means to an end, and this fact should determine the primary focus of our marketing content. To use Levitt's analogy, our marketing content needs to be more about quarter-inch holes than about quarter-inch drills.

To create such content, you have to know what jobs your prospects are trying to get done, why those jobs are important, what happens if those jobs don't get done, and what issues or problems can prevent prospects from performing those jobs. The answers to these questions will provide the basis for your marketing content.

TGIF

T.G.I.F.

I have seen this picture floating around and think it is hilarious! East coast time it is almost 3:00, 2 hours to go until the weekend starts. Whatever time zone you are in I hope your weekend is here before you know it.

Make it a great one!

Debbi