Marketing Strategy Archives - PROSAR Inbound Inc.

8 April 202028 October 2022

Make Your Content FRUITFUL: An 8-Point Checklist to Writing Good Content

Bowl of colourful fruit for PROSAR's FRUITFUL Content blog article.

It may seem that content generation has become a hot tactic in marketing just over the past decade, but it’s actually been around for decades. David Ogilvy, often referred to as the Father of Advertising, always believed that the steak is more important than the sizzle. He maintained that good copywriters must know their product extensively, present the facts honestly, and explain the products merits effectively.

Ogilvy favoured well-written copy as the most persuasive advertising tool. If you have a good product (and you truly understand your market), your primary task is to inform, educate and explain — thus helping your audience make the logical decision to buy. With all the hype and noise created by online marketing these days his message is rather refreshing.

Although content generation is not new, it is now seen as a key means of attracting and engaging with your audience. It’s not simply a matter of generating content; there are reams and reams (or rather, gigabytes and gigabytes) of content being pushed out. If your information is going to be noticed and have any effect, it must be good. To help you with that ambition, consider this list to make your content more FRUITFUL:

Facts – Do your research and really understand what you are writing about. It’s difficult to inform others from a position of ignorance.

Relevant – Understand who your target audience is. Knowing who you are writing for will inform what you write about as well as how you write it. It will also direct where you post/promote the content.

Useful – Beyond being relevant, is the information of use? Readers will have interest if it affects them: consider how does this information make their life better, simpler or more enjoyable.

Images – Many people are more visual-oriented, others are simply too busy to thoroughly read your piece. So complement your words with appropriate photos, tables, charts, funny illustrations, etc. to help convey your message.

Trustworthy – Be honest, in reference to the information as well as how it is presented. We all want our product or service to stand out above the fray, but writing strategically and persuasively does not require falsehoods, or even hyperbole.

Flow – People respond well to stories partly because of their structure. A logical order of information and understandable chain of events makes it easy for readers to follow. The tone of “voice” of your writing and rhythm of the sentences can make your writing more accessible and engaging. (And this may change dramatically depending upon the content or audience.)

Unbiased – Ultimately you have an agenda. If you are communicating professionally, you are either trying to gain awareness for you or your organization, improve SEO, build brand, attract potential clients (or finally impress your mother). But, biased writing is typically discounted or disregarded by readers, so keep their needs in mind, not your own.

Learn – Humans have a thirst for knowledge, we strive to be continuously learning, so being a resource is an excellent way to earn readership. Incorporate tips and information that enable a “knowledge take-away” (like a check list!). Informing is good, but teaching is better (without being preachy or condescending).

There are many considerations in writing good and accessible content. You may also want to check out 5 Tips for User Friendly Content.

30 July 201913 August 2021

A Brief Overview to Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation blog article on prosar.com - person pointing at backlit icons

Marketing automation, or inbound marketing, started taking hold about a decade ago and brought about a paradigm shift in how companies approach their target markets. It leverages the power of digital tools and online communication, and consumers’ growing appetite for information. It respects consumers’ greater control over the selling-buying process. And, rather than the traditional broadcast methods of pushing your message out to a general audience, inbound strategy attracts a receptive audience, nurtures a trusting relationship, and secures a loyal client. Here’s a brief marketing automation overview to help put it in perspective for you.

What started quite simply with the notion of attract traffic, nurture interest, convert leads has become more comprehensive and complex. Dynamic-based content allows you to create customized emails, web pages and forms for targeted market segments (personas) and even individuals. Tracking, reporting and analytics now play an important role in testing, measuring and improving deployment of the tactics. And the tools used to manage the process have become more sophisticated and powerful.

This greater complexity speaks to the larger role that marketing automation now plays and great potential that comes with it. It underlines the importance of developing a strategy and detailed planning to ensure your budget and efforts are directly wisely.

The Marketing Automation Process

The basic premise behind marketing automation is much like dating — make yourself known and attractive to those who are looking for what you have to offer. Once you have their attention, you work at proving your value with information and insight via content on your website and downloads. A progression of content and engagement keeps your prospect interested until you successfully build the case that they should purchase form you.

The starting point is to create an informative and inviting online environment, and downloadable content, that serves as a resource for those seeking your service or product. (Content generation is an important component, read Does Your Content Go the Distance? for some helpful tips) When their online searches (often aided by AdWords, social media and email campaigns) bring them to your website, the wealth of strategically written and presented information, calls-to-action (CTAs), landing pages, forms and automated workflows lead them through your marketing funnel, and hopefully to a purchase. The process can take months with many visits, email campaigns, information downloads and even phone calls.

A bonus is that these same tactics are then used to nurture an ongoing relationship. The intention is not simply to make the initial sale, but to cultivate an ongoing loyal customer. The marketing and sales processes can more easily be aligned and integrated to work seamlessly together forming a continuum of customer care.

Tactics Used in Marketing Automation

The primary objective is to convince your prospects that they should choose your organization. Educating your target market helps them appreciate your knowledge and understanding of their needs. Tools, tips and tidbits of information, either as blog articles, whitepapers, branded information pieces, apps, etc. provide evidence to your knowledge and understanding.

Marketing automation tactics include developing strategic content, social media promotion, focused SEO, targeted paid advertising (AdWords and online banners), creation of engaging, customized landing pages and emails, special offers promoted by effective CTAs, scheduled phone calls, chats or online presentations, and a structured plan that integrates all components to work together in an automated workflow. Tracking and analysis enables measurement at several different stages so that tactics and campaigns can be measured and tweaked for ongoing improvement.

If some of these tasks and terms are new to you, download the Ultimate Guide to Marketing Automation Terminology. A comprehensive PDF that explains all the lexicon.

You don’t need to employ all these tactics, but like any campaign with many moving parts, they are complementary and often prove to be more effective when used together. Whatever tactics you chose to implement, they need to be coordinated properly and consistent.

Marketing automation is a process. It takes time to create the content and components, and typically requires several months of applied and integrated effort before you start to see results. Once you have the system working, ongoing effort, trial and tweaking is necessary for ongoing success. Marketing automation improves sales and customer satisfaction, but it’s not a magic formula for instant success.

The Evolution of Smart Marketing

Developing a personalized dialogue to strengthen and maintain a feedback loop, repeat purchases and referrals is smart. Marketing automation simply uses modern tools and best practices to do what good businesses have always done: work strategically to attract prospects, demonstrate your knowledge for your product/service, listen to and look after your consumers.

26 February 201912 August 2022

3 Ways to Activate Your Website

Business person using laptop with icons of website, email, customer, data, marketing automation for PROSAR blog

It’s common practice to check out a company’s website before deciding to use their product or service. We all do it; either to learn specific information about the product/service, gain further insight into its use, or simply to feel more comfortable with the company before making a purchase or commitment. This is true for both B2C and B2B, online and in-store purchases, packaged goods and professional services.

Understandably, companies are doing their best to create websites that engage with targeted audiences. Savvy organizations are:

Presenting what they do in a stylish and easy to navigate manner.
Making their website easy to use on tablets and smartphones.
Ensuring their website is accessible for people with disabilities (a legal requirement for some organizations).
Incorporating meta information and strategically worded content to build a solid foundation for SEO.
Engaging readers with relevant and interesting information.
Positioning their brand with messaging and imagery for greater impact.

So, let’s assume you’ve done all the above and have a good looking, informative website that provides a good user-experience on any device. Good for you… however, you can do more. If you expect your website to play an active role in your marketing, it needs to go beyond passively presenting and further engage your audience.

Here are three areas where your website can play a more active role in increasing awareness, improving your message and brand, and facilitating growth. Note that PROSAR is a SharpSpring Partner, so naturally we recommend SharpSpring as a cost-efficient and comprehensive marketing automation solution, but there are many good automated marketing platforms such as HubSpot, Pardot, Marketo, etc.; and software specifically for email such as MailChimp.

Automated Emails

Going beyond an auto-reply email greeting when someone completes a form, your website can assist in nurturing relationships and prompting conversations when people have indicated an interest.

In their pre-purchase research, consumers may visit several websites looking for something specific or simply wanting to feel comfortable before they commit. Most consumers don’t announce that they are ready to buy, but they do provide signals. Wouldn’t it be ideal if your website could help identify those potential customers and reach out to them?

When a known user returns to your website within 24 hours or visits specific pages, a personalized and customized email could automatically be sent them. Perhaps providing details on the products they were looking at, informing them of an incentive (price, warranty, added value, etc.), suggesting an appointment, call or chat to answer questions… there are many ways to engage and determine how you can help them.
When someone downloads a resource from your website it can trigger a scheduled series of personalized and tailored emails with tips, related products/services, articles of interest, other relevant resources.
On an e-commerce website, an abandoned shopping cart or product comparisons could trigger a series of emails designed to provide information and insight, or bundling cost advantages on the specific products.

Workflows are series of emails crafted in advance and triggered by prospects’ specific behaviours. The flowchart can be as simple or complicated as you wish, with every if-this-then-that sequence of decisions triggering different emails. The prospects’ actions control what emails are sent to help them with their purchase decision.

Notifications should be added to the workflow so that marketing and sales staff can be alerted when and how a prospect would like information or assistance. Notifications can even alert when a prospect is on the website browsing.

Automated emails are not an excuse to force your information on unwilling recipients; the objective is to provide information to those who are seeking it. Harassment is not good business, the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) imposes strict and sensible regulations on how a company can engage with people via email, you can read more about CASL here.

Dynamic Content
On your website, as in your daily life, what you say and how you say it matters. When we speak, we typically cater our words to the audience we are addressing. Most websites are static in nature (ours included these days!). They are filled with relevant, but generic content. Many larger companies have people dedicated to their website and social media accounts, so content can be updated, making it more relevant and topical. However, it is typically focused on a single targeted audience, or worded to address as large a segment of the public as possible.

Personas are being used more and more by organizations to better understand and target specific audience segments. SharpSpring tools enable different versions of emails and website pages so that headlines, text and images can be customized for specific audience segments. When the website identifies a user, it will present the content that relates to that persona. One of the underlining benefits of marketing automation is the ability to target your ideal customer personas and treat them as individuals.

Dynamic content facilitates more appropriate and persuasive communication with targeted audience segments. It also improves SEO by tailoring versions of your content with specific search terms. Such strategically worded content impacts being found online, effectively presenting your message, and converting leads to customers.

Conversion Process

Combining personas, dynamic content, workflows and email campaigns with tracking, lead scoring and a full CRM tool (Client Relationship Management) provides a platform to nurture and convert prospects. This complete package is how things come together to more effectively (and efficiently) manage prospects and customers. By tracking user behaviour and notifying marketing and sales staff, your website plays an important role in supporting your customers and identifying prospects.

Marketers can identify trends and create customized content and workflows (emails and landing pages) to address them. Salespeople are notified of potential interest and reminded of customers who have not been active, triggering workflows to engage and retain lapsed customers.

Your website can be more than a 24/7 online brochure. It can be actively participate in the marketing and sales process by attracting, engaging and converting leads, as well as maintaining existing customers. Unlike social media, your website is a stable hub that you control. It is an ideal resource to go beyond passive information presentation and effectively engage with your targeted audiences.

6 September 2018

3 Steps to Implementing Personas

PROSAR persona audits - illustration of many different faces

Personas are more than a buzzword, they help you to define and cater to a company’s multiple audiences. While audience segmentation is nothing new, marketing automation tools and content-based marketing (with heavy analytics integration) has made personas a powerful tool for maintaining customers and getting new sales. The more you integrate personas into your marketing automation processes, the more likely you are to speak directly to your audience segments and connect with them, directing your messaging specifically for them.

If you haven’t started using personas, what are you waiting for? Using them is as easy as 1, 2, 3!

1- Determining Your Personas

Determining your personas involves a mix of looking at your ideal audience and your actual, established audience. Even if you have a large client base already, have you really taken the time to figure out who, exactly, it is your serving.

This is a good opportunity to see how well you’re serving your market. If your ideal audience and your actual audience are too far separated, you might want to re evaluate your marketing plan.

You’ll want to gather data in generally-homogeneous groups, but what those groups are is up to you. Depending on your market, you might divide it by job title, age, relationship status, company size, or industries that use your product.

It’s important to not limit the number of personas you use, but don’t over segment your audience either. You want to look for groups that have similar buying patterns and product/service needs.

2- Persona Templates

There are as many persona templates as there are CRMs. If you have a platform like SharpSpring, you’ll want to follow their template.

Be mindful to make the persona template as usable as possible — you will, after all, be using these to guide your marketing strategy and content. This means that beyond demographics, you’ll want to focus on USPs, Motives, and Pain Points.

USPs, or Unique Selling Propositions, is the objective the persona is looking to fulfill. Their motive is why they want it, and what will drive them to eventually buy it. And pain points consider possible problems/barriers they have that you can help them solve.

Other pieces of information — like their overreaching price-sensitivity, the length of their sales cycle, and what they value in a product/service (including the level of customer service they want, how much they want something to solve their problems) — are also important to keep track of. That data is going to influence how you speak to your personas, and can help you figure out how many audience segments you have.

By honing these elements down to something that is unified across market segments, you get an idea of who your clients are. You can then adjust your content accordingly, and take one more step to increasing conversions.

3- Using Personas

Once you’ve determined your personas and completed your templates, you need to start applying the insights you’ve gained.

If you have a CRM or automated marketing platform with dynamic content, personas are the way to segment them and help reach your audiences more effectively. This allows you to have a single piece of content that speaks to each persona, helping to create relationships, increase conversions and lower the amount of campaigns you need to run.

Dynamic content also applies to digital campaigns, as most online platforms allow you to segment by demographic information, interests, how much they’ve interacted with your company before, and a lot of other metrics that allow you to have a dynamic content experience.

Beyond dynamic content, personas can help focus your content strategy for your campaigns, website text, social media posts, and more. Once you’ve created your audience segments, you can start speaking directly to them with your content and structure what pre-existing content you have into categories that allow each persona to find the content they need without fuss. Personas should influence your website content, blog writing, whitepapers, landing pages, and any other marketing efforts you create. Some of your content likely already fits your personas (it’s how you got your current clients, after all), but refining it is a prime way to help draw more people to your website and conversion process.

10 July 2018

5 Considerations for Your Unique Selling Proposition

Unique Selling proposition hand-written for PROSAR blog

What are the unique characteristics that make your organization valuable to potential customers? If you had the classic 15-second elevator ride with a key prospect, what would you say to them?

Most likely you would struggle with a muddled sense of what your organization does but fail to present a cohesive and compelling introduction. How convenient it would have been if you were ready with a well-crafted Unique Selling Proposition (USP). A good USP accomplishes several objectives:

Differentiates your organization
Identifies the benefit(s) of dealing with your organization
Supports your brand
Engages the listener and creates interest

The concept of a Unique Selling Proposition goes back to the 1940s and has been used ever since to help marketers and salespeople focus on key statements that could influence potential buyers. Whether the buyer is a consumer or a business, and whether they’re searching for a service, a product or even an association to join, a USP can be instrumental in influencing their decision. Regardless of what you’re selling, the ability to communicate clearly and persuasively will help you be more successful.

A well-crafted Unique Selling Proposition is very powerful as it guides your marketing content and tone. It typically finds its way into your advertising copy. And moving beyond words, consider how you could incorporate your USP in processes and procedures, influencing the organization’s culture.

Here are five key points to consider when crafting your Unique Selling Proposition.

Be Specific: You don’t have time for a backstory; immediately hone in on the benefits you offer that distinguishes your organization. Remember that the point is not simply to enumerate why your organization is good, but why it is UNIQUE. Specify what makes you ideal in comparison to others.
Be Succinct: Clearly and quickly state your case. Your audience doesn’t need a description of how you do what you do (unless that is what makes you unique), however they do need sufficient context to determine any relevance for them. Include the context they need within your simple and short statement.
Be Compelling: It’s essential that you grab them right away. What’s in it for them? If they don’t care, they won’t listen, not even for 15 seconds. Consider not only how your service/product is relevant, but how it will make their life better. Present it in a compelling manner to give your statement more impact and grab their attention.
Be Consistent: Support your brand and organizational raison d’être. Not only does this make sense to positively position your organization, but if there is a disconnect between your USP and your established branding, or way of doing business, it can cause confusion and mistrust.
Be Honest: You want your statement to have impact and even be a little dramatic, but this isn’t the time for hyperbole. If your USP is not genuine it will sound like a sales schpeel, and that won’t interest anyone. If prospects don’t feel they can trust you, they won’t be interested in hearing any further from you. (And don’t forget that if you are successful, you have to deliver on what you’ve promised.)

Your organization may require several USPs to effectively address distinct audiences for different services/products, or for different market segments. You won’t be able to be specific, succinct and compelling if you’re trying to talk to many different audiences at the same time. It would be more strategic, and successful, to customize your USP for each targeted market segment.

This can be quite a process and it may take some time to hone your USPs until you feel they properly represent your organization. After you have internal consensus, I suggest vetting your draft USPs with clients and suppliers. Do the hard work and you’ll be ready to start riding the elevators with anticipation of that perfect prospect to walk in. Admittedly, that may never happen. But you will be involved in sales calls and networking when you’ll definitely have the opportunity to succinctly and compellingly state your organization’s value. And you’ll shine — you know what they say, “Luck favours the well-prepared.”

22 June 201813 August 2021

3 Strategic Considerations for Your Website

PROSAR Blog on Effective Websites Stylish image of laptop with Effective on screen

When we ask, “Is your website part of your marketing plan?”, most organizations affirm that, indeed, their website is an important part of their overall marketing. But often, they’re wrong.

Many websites are simply an online brochure with little more than some background and a listing of services/products offered. Oh, and a Contact Us page with a form inviting people to “Contact us!” That isn’t marketing, it is informing. Information isn’t a bad thing, but on its own it’s rather passive and unproductive.

The goal of marketing is to effectively communicate with a target market to align perceptions and reinforce or change behavior. Essentially, if you say the right thing in the right way to the right people at the right time — you should see some positive result. What results are you getting from your website?

With the great functionality available online, websites are an opportunity to do so much more than simply inform. By presenting information in engaging ways and using marketing automation tactics to build relationships, your website can complement and contribute to your marketing plan. To help make your website an active part of your marketing initiatives, consider the following suggestions.

Provide Content with Context

Go beyond simply presenting facts. Certainly, you should be factual and include details, but also provide context to make it relevant to your main audience. Why should they care, what’s in it for them? Marketers learn that Features explain what something does, while Benefits describe why it matters to the user. Then they can internalize and personalize material, making them more likely to act on your information.

Regardless of what your organization does, you’re selling something: products, services, memberships, ideas, etc. — there is a persuasive purpose for your website. Making your content meaningful to the user and helping them visualize how it makes their life better or easier, will have greater impact. Take advantage of your website to effectively position your organization and its message with persuasive and contextualized content. [Read more: 5 Reasons to Use Content Marketing]

Try to Interest and Engage

As you add relevant (and contextual) information, consider how to present it in an interesting manner. Infographics, animations, video, etc. make information more fun and often more memorable. People learn differently, so providing more than one way to interact with your information can improve the strength of your message.

Providing different formats also makes your information more shareable. Encouraging sharing and integrating your social media accounts with your content is a powerful conduit to reaching a larger audience and creating more meaningful ties.

Explore non-frivolous ways for the user to interact with your website. Polls, forms and other interactive online tools are important to gain information about your users and even start a dialogue. This can guide more effective communication, perhaps with dynamic content, and even lead to sales conversions. Use different and dynamic formats on your website to engage your audience. [Read more: Improve Conversions with Dynamic Landing Pages]

Create a Continuous Plan

Kaizen is the Japanese philosophy of ongoing improvement that North American businesses embraced in the 1980s. Some are still working at it (which is, after all, the point). It is a smart strategy to consider for your website, since your site is never “done.”

Most organizations realize the importance of keeping their website up-to-date and adding new content (including different media formats). Some companies go further and integrate promotions with emails and create new landing pages for each campaign, others track behaviour on their websites and make subtle changes to improve the user-experience or take advantage of high traffic pages.

Your website is a never-ending story, an evolving presentation that welcomes old and new visitors to drop in at any time. A plan that involves routine updating and analyzing, integrates communications and promotions, and facilitates the sales process, will maintain your website as an effective marketing tool.

It’s easy to treat your website as a constant, but that shouldn’t make it static. Ideally, it is constantly evolving and growing to better communicate with your target audiences and continue to provide the information and experience they are looking for. Consider and practice these three points; this process can reward you with business growth and loyalty. [Read more: Using Growth Driven Design to Make Existing Websites Perform]

24 November 201713 August 2021

Understanding the Branding – Marketing – Advertising – Sales Relationship

PROSAR: understanding sales and marketing - image of a businesswoman pressing a floating unlock button

“It should be simple,” he lamented, “just help me sell more.” Ultimately, that is what most small- to medium-sized business owners want: increased sales. However, increasing sales over a longer period in a sustainable manner to help a business grow to the next level is anything but simple. It requires an understanding of branding, marketing, advertising and sales; and how they work together. The following is a brief overview of how I see it working at the top level, without delving into the nitty gritty of conducting and applying research, tactics, etc.

Overall, your marketing communications strategy should represent the philosophy of your corporate culture, it’s raison d’etre. Starting at your brand level, marketing guides your organization’s communications, behaviour and actions of all staff — it is the essence of your organization. This may seem rather esoteric, but it is fundamental to truly understanding the role of marketing and of branding; which are often mistakenly lumped in with advertising and sales. And, that’s understandable, they weave together rather intimately.

Branding is focused on creating an appropriate image for, and experience with, your organization and positively positioning your organization in your audience’s mind.

Marketing is primarily concerned with strategically communicating your service/product features and benefits, in a strategic manner that amplifies your brand. Marketing should ultimately be focused on satisfying customer needs (and addressing pain points), which should lead to greater sales. But it is not necessarily a linear relation.

Advertising, however, has a direct relationship with sales. If you run an effective ad campaign in your local paper or on Facebook, you can typically rely on an immediate and commensurate bump in sales. Advertising involves using broadcast media to persuasively inform your targeted audience of your product/service’s features and benefits, giving them a reason to buy… now.

Sales is more than the end result. It incorporates the frontline, efforts (human or digital) to assist your audience in making the buying decision. Whether you have counter staff and retail clerks on-site, or stylish infographics and pop-up incentives online, a strategic frontline is a major factor in nurturing and closing sales.

Clear? If it is, consider that branding guidelines should inform your marketing, advertising and sales initiatives to ensure that every touchpoint helps to properly position your organization. An aspect of marketing should be involved in advertising and sales to hone your message appropriately for your targeted audience (and segments therein). Facets of advertising can, and often should, be included in marketing initiatives. The ultimate sale is often envisioned and sometimes explicitly included early in the marketing process (remember your ABCs: Always Be Closing).

Analytics can help to see through the confusion and determine the success of specific initiatives. Especially online, you can track all manner of marketing and sales initiatives to better understand how and when your audience engaged, or didn’t. And automated marketing solutions can help you use this information to nurture prospects through to a sale and even customer loyalty. However, part of marketing relies on an intuitive understanding of the rather convoluted marketing process.

Back to our lamenting business owner: he’s right that the underlying objective of the marketing and sales process is simple: to differentiate your organization and position it positively to your main audience. The implementation is the tricky part — just communicate the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, to the right people. It’s not easy being right all of the time, but the alternative is relying on luck, and we all know that luck runs out.

Your target audience is not forced to do business with you, people have choice — often abundant choice. This makes marketing crucial to any organization seeking to be successful. Strategic marketing differentiates your organization from others and effectively communicates the features and benefits you offer. A good marketing plan, effectively implemented will get it right most of the time.

27 April 201728 October 2022

How Consistency Improves Your Branding – 5 ways to help your brand reach its potential

The purpose of branding is to go beyond simply creating awareness, with the intention of nurturing a trusting and loyal relationship. It’s a comprehensive undertaking that requires consistent use of your branded identity, in all of its forms. It’s no easy task to maintain consistency among myriad print, digital and broadcast touchpoints: letterhead, business cards, ads, billboards, brochures, website, blogs, social media accounts, emails, ebooks, posts, videos, TV, radio… Reputation manifests in everything that represents your organization, including the experience of dealing with your organization.

In our ever-changing digital world and increasing communication channels, consistency is an increasingly critical aspect in successfully establishing a trusted and sought-after product, service or organization. This article focuses on the role that consistency plays in successful branding. Here are five important considerations that relate to your brand consistency, and your ability to build a strong brand.

Start from the Heart

It all stems from your mission, vision, value statement unique selling proposition, any guiding principles for your organization. Ensure that they are authentic and aligned. A thorough understanding of what drives your organization and what it has to offer is the starting point. Your brand is the essence of what your market thinks of your organization; so consider what it is destined achieve, and what its brand should represent.

A full appreciation of your target market, their expectations and desires is also key. In order to be successful, you’ll need a receptive market; resonating with your audience paves the way to acceptance. Essentially, your brand should relate directly and explicitly to the belief system of your organization and that of your market.

Set the Foundation

Even small companies can find it difficult to ensure that everyone treats branding aspects in a consistent manner. Add to the mix associates, freelancers, consultants, suppliers, advertisers, etc. and the task of maintaining a common front becomes rather formidable. Create a Branding Style Guide (this is often done when a new Corporate ID is created).

A branding style guide doesn’t need to be a monumental tome with excessive rules and regulations, but should cover all typical print, digital and broadcast uses. It should also be reviewed and updated periodically (at least every 3 years) to ensure it is relevant to the media and technology you and your industry are using.

It identifies all items used in presenting your organization and sets guidelines for their use. Graphic and presentation components typically include logos, icons, colours, fonts, specific photos and illustrations, etc. People have a strong and lasting connection with graphics and colours, which explains the importance placed on logos and their use.

Content components incorporate tagline, slogan, lexicon, tone, etc. What you say and how you say it can provoke tremendous impact and evoke strong emotion. In order for your audience to learn to trust your organization, they need to identify with what you have to say. The vocabulary used and tone of corporate content can help to position your organization as genuine, knowledgeable, caring, expert, as a go-to source that can be relied upon. Note that having a consistent corporate tone doesn’t mean that all your content needs to sound the same. Individual voices and characters within your organization add depth and can help to attract targeted segments or personas.

Plan the Journey

Knowing where you came from and where you want to go makes it more likely that you’ll actually get there. To keep you, and the rest of your team, on track, plan how content and graphic identifiers will be used to build and support your brand. How will it get in front of your target market? What format will it take? When? Use an Editorial Calendar to ensure strategic, relevant and scheduled content.

Content generation provides many options (web pages, blogs, emails, social posts, ebooks, brochures, whitepapers, etc.) and is an influential means of attracting and reaching out to your audience. Consistency in template designs as well as voice/tone help build a strong foundation for your brand (keep that style guide close at hand!).

An editorial calendar maps out what content will be written, by whom, how it will be published, and when. It allows a strategic approach (ensuring consistency in both frequency and focus) and overview to ensure you are creating content that is of value to your audience as well as supporting your brand.

Chose your social media carefully, there are a lot of platforms, and just because they are cool or popular doesn’t mean it is a good fit for your organization. Also, consider the resources required to maintain an active and strategic presence.

All Aboard

Having the components, a guide and a plan put you ahead of most companies. But to make it all work successfully you need buy-in from your organization. Your brand may not be a strong rallying force of motivation (it should be!), but it must be embraced by all. The entire organization needs to understand and support your branding initiatives.

In order for your team to be part of the successful implementation of your branding plan, they’ll need access to info and files. All graphic components, the branding style guide and editorial calendar should be easily accessible to anyone who will be publishing and presenting on behalf of your organization.

Stay the Course

A brand strategy requires ongoing monitoring and attention. It’s part policing and part propping. You need to ensure that your team is adhering to the style guide and maintaining the image and voice to properly position your organization. You’ll also want to identify where the brand is weak and might require additional support.

Don’t be overzealous or near-sighted in your regulation. In these fluid times, acknowledge that things change and your brand strategy and implementation will need to evolve to stay current and relevant.

Do you have any thoughts on brand consistency or other considerations that could be added to this list?

Image Credit: mindscanner / gettyimages

13 April 2017

3 Considerations to Improve Marketing and Sales

Align your marketing strategy and sales development for greater success.

Sales is an integral aspect of any organization: manufacturers, service providers, member-driven associations, small business, bureaucratic enterprises… All organizations rely on a steady source of revenue to survive and grow. It is understood that marketing is an important aspect of creating awareness, positioning a brand and essentially creating a positive environment for sales to occur. Unfortunately, how marketing strategy and sales development successfully work together is often not fully considered.

The relationship between marketing and sales has long been a troubled one. Whereas they should be working together in synergy with the common goal of securing relationships to strengthen the organization, they are often actively at odds with each other, oblivious to each other, or embroiled in a cold war of secrecy and subterfuge.

The digitization of the business world and its business development processes has helped bring these two disciplines closer, and many software tools approach the two coherently. However, many organizations still seem to cling to the old ideology that promotes two separate silos with little connection.

To reap the rewards of harmonized marketing and sales efforts, keep the following three aspects in mind.

Marketing and Sales are Distinct Functions

Although I am stressing the importance of integrating them, it’s important to appreciate that marketing and sales have different functions. One focuses on creating awareness, positioning a brand and developing interest. The other is tasked with capitalizing on that interest and closing the deal. Some feel that marketing spends money and sales makes money. Admittedly, it takes resources to mount a successful marketing campaign, but marketing should be a strategic investment. (And, it is getting easier to monitor and track your ROI.)

The difference in approach may often be subtle, but worth respecting. Trying to sell to new leads will probably annoy and scare them away; whereas a well nurtured lead may always be a prospect unless you provide a timely and appropriate buying opportunity. Understanding the difference between the two disciplines guides the role each should play and how they can successfully work together to improve your business development efforts.

Marketing and Sales Should be Aligned

Although marketing and sales are distinct, they should not be isolated from each other. The old corporate structure had separate departments, often with little communication between the two. Internally it was more of a competition as to which department was most valuable to the organization. Fiefdoms and bureaucracy may have been affordable then, but with leaner teams and higher expectations in today’s fast-paced and cost-efficient business world, it is essential to have an aligned and harmonious process that attracts leads and nurtures them to be satisfied customers.

To align your marketing strategy and sales efforts, it makes sense to work backwards. Determining your sales goals and forecasted breakdown is a good way to start. From their you can better identify your target audiences and flesh out buyer personas. Understanding who you will be selling to provides a good foundation for determining your marketing strategy. Where and how will you engage your audiences, what are they interested in, how will you effectively communicate your advantages and benefits, what aspects of your brand will resonate with them… Key marketing decisions that will guide your content and creative start with considering the final sale.

Structuring how leads transition from marketing to sales, with a communication/feedback loop, will allow a seamless journey for your prospects and returning customers. There are many good software tools that assist you in structuring, implementing and monitoring the process. Many (e.g. SharpSpring) help you to automate the process and identify opportunities — making the process itself an active part of the solution.

Integrate Marketing strategy and Sales Plan

You’re no doubt aware that a smart strategy with SMART goals is a smart way to proceed — plan your work, then work your plan. Most companies have a sales plan, it may simply be targets, but they at least have a clear objective to aim for. Many SMEs have a budget for marketing, but fail to have a detailed marketing plan. And I’d wager that an exceptionally small minority actually have an integrated sales and marketing plan. So, how is an organization expected to develop sales and grow with little or no structured guidance?

Sustained growth is achieved and maintained with goals, processes and tactics in place. Defining the strategy and ongoing tactics to reach your goals, and then putting the processes in place is what separates successful companies. Going the extra step to create a joint marketing and sales process will distinguish you even further.

The simple solution to growth is marketing strategy and sales working in harmony with a coherent strategy. The successful implementation is not so simple — it requires a good deal of knowledge and a lot of work, on a consistent and ongoing basis.

14 December 2016

3 Considerations for Guerilla Marketing

Guerilla soldier with thumbs up and sign that says Going Guerilla PROSAR.

We deal with a lot of small and medium sized businesses, and many are looking for the magic rocket that will quickly propel them to recognition, fame and fortune. They’ve heard of some fantastic event or promotion that made a start-up company a household name and driven 500% growth, and they want that. Who wouldn’t? Here are three important questions to ask when considering guerilla marketing.

How Does it Fit Into Your Marketing Plan?

Unfortunately, creating an Internet meme or popular guerilla marketing tactic is not likely; and not a realistic goal on its own. I certainly don’t underestimate the potential power of such a tactic, but the chance of being successful is remote… really, really remote. Before you start playing the marketing lottery, I suggest you invest in a good strategic plan. It sounds boring in comparison to a viral video or flash event, but it will focus your marketing efforts on tactics that will steadily move your company forward.

The advantage of a plan is that, well, its planned. It takes into consideration your current position, resources, your goals and where you want the company to be down the road. Growing your business successfully relies on planning your route to get there, and a strong brand [For more on Branding, check out: I Have a Website, Why Do I Need Branding?; Is Your Brand Relevant?] with structured marketing will accelerate that. True, some wild guerilla marketing would add an octane boost, but without the plan and marketing foundation, you might find yourself out of gas and coasting to the side of the road just as fast.

The benefits of a good marketing plan are numerous:

Build or support your brand
Clearly communicate what you stand for
Expand your market
Engage new audiences
Support sales goals
Improve the user-experience of dealing with your organization
Strengthen relationships with customers and leads
Provide measurable results to keep you on track

These are all important aspects in building a strong marketing foundation for your company. They allow you to project a professional image and provide targeted, clear communication to engage with your audience. They help customers to feel good about dealing with you and prompts referrals. They position your organization for growth and stability. And, they just might deliver a run-away successful tactic in the process.

How Much Can You Invest in Guerilla Marketing?

It may seem like success just happens miraculously, and all it took was a simple video. That can happen, but when it does it is a fluke. And, since no strategy is built around it, it is quickly forgotten when the next wave of cool videos and memes flow along the Internet current. Hard to ride the wave if you aren’t prepared for it.

On the other hand, companies have wasted large budgets on carefully crafted, wittily worded, and slickly sequenced videos and “impromptu” events that have gone no where. So budget alone does not determine the likelihood of success. Other than luck, the most important aspects are strategy and understanding. Strategy is main thrust of this article; understanding relates to your audience, social and societal considerations, the chosen media and communication. It’s a lot to understand and requires a team to gather the intelligence, decipher its relevance, integrate this knowledge and align it with your strategy and goals, design, develop and implement the magical event/video/meme that goes viral. Fortunately, both strategy and understanding are inherent in a good marketing plan.

It is a significant commitment of people, process and time, so don’t waste resources on trying to develop the rocket that will propel your brand to stardom, until you have your growth planned and a marketing strategy to get you there. It’s certainly possible that one of your planned and measured tactics designed to move you further along your structured marketing plan may go viral. And it makes sense to try to create such a tactic — as long as it is part of comprehensive plan and budget.

Besides Popularity, What is the Goal?

So, how would you leverage the popularity garnered from a run-away viral hit? Would it dovetail into your existing plan, or would you need new online workflows (landing pages, forms email campaigns, etc.), sales team strategy, PR campaigns, etc., to take advantage of this boost. If you’re fortunate enough to find success, don’t let it plummet away from you.

Be ready to respond promptly and positively. Popularity is wonderful, but usually fleeting. You’ll need to connect it strategically to your brand, processes and sales pipeline to successfully sustain your growth efforts. Again, it’s that boring plan that truly propels you to success, otherwise you simply have a really cool video that everyone watched for three days.

Planning is the key to business and marketing success. The better prepared you are, the more in-tune you are with your audience, media and environment in which you play, the more likely you will succeed. This gives you a strong foundation for sustainable growth, and makes it even more likely that a guerilla marketing tactic could work for you. But if it doesn’t, your organization is still progressing towards achieving its goals.

Photo Credit: MichealJay/gettyimages.com