Entries Tagged 'Corporate Strategy' ↓
February 15th, 2011 — Corporate Strategy, Marketing, Public Relations, Web marketing, Writing
An effective positioning statement includes four things:
1) Your customers
2) The problem you’re going to solve
3) Why you’re different
4) Your competition
A positioning statement is for internal use only. It is not a “mission statement,” a “tag line,” an “elevator pitch” or anything for selling purposes. Those materials require language intended for external audiences. This is for internal audiences only.
A positioning statement is used to provide guidance during a marketing campaign. Every company and every product will have its own positioning statement. It ensures everyone is working from the same page and toward the same goals.
A positioning statement must be credible. It is not hopeful thinking; it is grounded in truth.
Define Your Customer
Your ideal customer is the person who you can help best, and in return, will receive maximum benefit from your products or services. Who are you trying to serve with your business?
Define What Your Customer Wants or Needs
People will pay a fortune to solve an immediate problem, but will hardly invest a dollar to prevent a problem from happening. What is the urgent desire or pain point that your ideal customer is experiencing right now that you can make better immediately. What is the compelling reason that customers buy from you?
Define Your Product Category
Be clear about who you are—and who you are not. If you don’t, your customers will decide for you, and it may work against you!
Remember, the human mind will categorize things. Your customers will label you in their minds, and they can only remember one thing about you at a time.
Tell your customers how you want to be remembered. Make it something familiar and easy to remember. Otherwise they will reject your label and come up with their own substitution. Be strategic and simple.
Define Your Key Benefit
Make sure your key benefit addresses the true needs and desires of your target customer. Look beyond the obvious. What secret hopes, dreams, fears or frustrations are your customers really dealing with?
Define Your Competition
Who do your customers think of when they think about your product or service category? Who do you lose the most sales to? This might be a single entity, or an industry. If you’re a local provider, you might need to distinguish yourself from larger, more well-known brands. Be specific.
What Makes You Different?
Tell your customers what sets you apart, and make sure that reason resonates with the reasons they need or want your product or service.
Now, tie it all together. Finalize your positioning statement. Sit on it for a couple of days, then look at it again. Are you being clear about who your customers really are? Are you able to succinctly define your key benefit? Does the value you provide align to the needs and desires of your customers? Are you able to explain what makes you different from the competition.
Download my Product Positioning worksheet to help you through this process. Or, leave a comment below with your questions or suggestions.
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October 17th, 2010 — Corporate Strategy, Marketing, Media, Web marketing, Writing
Depending on your business, your customers probably aren’t hearing from you as often as they need to.
That’s because for most people, “out of sight is out of mind.” So remind customers about the value you bring to their lives on a regular basis.
You wouldn’t go more than two weeks without talking to your good friend, so why go several weeks without talking to your best customers?
Here are some more tips for what’s working best in e-mail marketing right now:
Frequency:
Send some type of communication every 10 to 14 days, as long as it makes sense for your business. If you sell mattresses, furniture or cars, monthly or quarterly communication will make more sense.
Remember, it’s not just your customers that you’re communicating to, but also their family and friends. So even if someone just bought a car from you it still makes sense to stay in touch, because soon that person will be talking about their purchase with their friends and colleagues.
Most businesses send their newsletters out monthly, but research shows you’ll get better results if your prospects hear from you more often. But be realistic about what you can sustain over time. You can brainstorm a list of topics to write about based on the content needs of your customers. Just remember, shorter is better. If you are feeling overwhelmed with information, then your customers are too!
Content:
The ideal mix is a blend of educational and branding content mixed in with a promotion to support sales (coupons, giveaways, sweepstakes, etc.). Your educational and branding information should outweigh promotional content by a ratio of 8:2 or 9:1.
Remember to include information about your upcoming events. Your ultimate goal is to inform and entertain (and in most cases people want to be entertained more than they want to be informed!) You can also include surveys or encourage customers to submit questions that you’ll answer in a future newsletter.
If you’re struggling for ideas about what to write about, keep a list of questions that many customers ask you about on a regular basis. Ask your staff about the most common topics customers ask about, or keep a manila folder nearby to drop ideas into when they come up during the day. If they have an interesting conversation, that could be a topic for the newsletter. Listen to your customers for ideas. You can also look in online forums and online discussion rooms about topics relating to your industry. LinkedIn Answers is a great resource for finding industry topics that people are talking about.
Tone:
It’s okay to write your newsletter like a personal e-mail. Remember, value is not just useful content. People get value from being able to connect to other people on a personal and meaningful level. Especially in this technology age. People enjoy stories. Real value comes from learning who you and your company are as people. The personal connection becomes the most important element of “value”.
E-mail is a personal, one-to-one communications channel. Most newsletters focus too much on providing “value” but forget to add in the personal aspect. Make the personal aspect part of your unique brand.
Format:
The trend these days is away from long newsletters and toward shorter, more frequent blog posts. Are you suffering from information overload? Well, your customers are too! Instead of sending out monthly or quarterly newsletters with 1,500 words or more, consider if you could chunk your content down into shorter, more frequent e-mails instead. Or better yet, consider if your “newsletter” could be a short personal update with link to your latest blog article.
Graphics:
It’s good to have at least one picture to capture and draw interest in your content, just make sure your logo doesn’t dominate the entire e-mail preview pane window. Make sure your text at the top of your newsletter includes the name of your business and the first few lines of your content so that recipients can see your most valuable information first.
Text-only format works extremely well, too, and has been found to be the most compatible across all e-mail platforms.
“From” and “Subject” Line Fields:
The first two questions people ask themselves when they get any e-mail is: 1) Do I know this person? and 2) Do I care? Make sure your “from” and subject line fields answer both questions convincingly.
Use your real name and company name in your from line, as in, “Dr. Charles Kaempen, KUSA Industries.” Then, grab attention and tell your customers what the value will be in opening your message. “How to save 40% or more on your next installation.”
For more information about successful newsletter design, check out these resources:
Tips on Design: http://www.constantcontact.com/learning-center/hints-tips/ht-2008-04b.jsp
HubSpot Lesson on Successful Newsletters http://inboundmarketing.com/university/successful-email-marketing-cv301
You can also ask a question about your newsletter by submitting a comment below.
What have you found to work best? What has been your biggest frustration? Share your insights below!
August 30th, 2010 — Corporate Strategy, Customer Service, Marketing
It may be easier for your customers to find you on a Google search than it is to find your contact card in their phone or PDA. Surprising, but true. How many times do we add a contact’s e-mail to our Rolodex, but never take the time to hunt down their phone number and add that in, too?
It happened to me all too recently. There I was, standing in a parking lot, needing to talk to a great freelance writer I know, but I just didn’t have her phone number handy. In fact, I had been pulling up her name and phone number from e-mail, and just couldn’t find her last message fast enough. So I used my smart phone to Google her name. She came up in the first result (as my name also does) and there she had it … her phone number right there on her Web page. Easy to find! Within 5 minutes we were on the phone, and I was able to book her time in the 15 minutes I had available that day.
How much easier, would it be, to simply have a vendor’s phone number in the banner?
Of course, it depends on what type of business you are in, and how much effort you want to spend answering incoming phone calls, but guaranteed it will help people to find you easily and quickly … even faster than if you had a phone book listing.
The other reason you might want to add your phone number is to “reduce friction” on your Web site. Friction is the resistence people feel when they do business on the Internet. Research has found simply having your phone number will boost opt-in rates and improve sales. It’s just another way people can quickly get in touch with you. It also shows you are someone “real.” Having your picture in the header and a clear statement about what it is you do also reduces friction by making it obvious within 5 seconds what your site is about.
What are other ways you’ve found to reduce friction on your site? What do you think your customers looking for when they come to your Web site? What personal touches can you add to make it fun to do business with you? Share your ideas in the Comment section below.
June 17th, 2010 — Corporate Strategy, Facebook, Marketing, Twitter, Web marketing
How does West Hawaii compare to mainland U.S. when it comes to using social media for business marketing? More than 100 West Hawaii residents responded to the first annual West Hawaii Social Media Survey in April. The results are presented below in a 19-page report with 10 charts and interpretive analysis.
This is the first look at how West Hawaii uses the Internet and social media tools for marketing businesses.
Previously, this data did not exist. In this report you’ll learn:
- The percentage of West Hawaii marketers using social media to promote their businesses
- How much time West Hawaii marketers spend on social media
- The benefits most associated with social media
- The relationship between time invested and results
- The most popular tools, and which tools are best for what purpose
If you’re a marketer in West Hawaii and sometimes wonder if your efforts will pay off, these results will guide you!
If you’re already investing in social media, this report will let you compare what you’re doing to those that have the most success.
