By Cheryl Bascomb
Director of Marketing and Business Development
BerryDunn
We’ve all met him. The guy who talks on and on and on…about himself. No one wants to be stuck talking to That Guy, and your potential customers don’t want to read marketing copy that’s all about you.
So here are some suggestions to avoid being “That Guy” and to instead offer your prospects material they’ll want to read:
Take the reader’s perspective: Make your content relevant to the readers. Know what they care about and why they care about it. If you know what’s important to your customers, you can reframe your strengths to match their concerns in ways they understand.
For example, as an audit firm, we find it is very important to our bank clients that the people assigned to their audits know the banking industry, the myriad regulations and the implications to their financials, the type of IT security issues they face, and what their customers and regulators are asking of them. So we tell them, using blogs, collateral, testimonials, web copy, published articles, and ads that we have people who have deep experience in the banking industry and the bench strength to make sure that the teams that work with them are made up of bank experts. We go on to link them to articles we’ve written, positions we’ve taken with the regulators, and tips on banking IT security. We make sure our content aligns with their issues.
Taking the client’s perspective also means speaking in the terms your client uses. Although you may call them senior living facilities, your clients call them nursing homes. Read your copy aloud to a person who does not share the same expertise. That way you and the listener can hear the jargon or internal references more easily.
Don’t make your reader work: Just because you’re clear about how your company’s best attributes solve a problem for your customers, that doesn’t mean the reader sees it that way. Don’t be afraid to spell it out.
In our company’s proposals, if we say that every client has direct access to the partners and senior experts on the engagement, we mean we have the breadth within each of our industry areas to provide you with senior people who know your business and environment. You won’t engage with only mid-level staff who are doing the work in the field while the partners manage many teams far and wide.
However, what the customer might think is: “Your company is too small or too expensive for my needs if the partners are doing all the work.” Don’t make the reader make an inferential leap to understand how your skills translate to benefits for him or her. They may not arrive at the conclusion you assume they will. A word of caution: when fully explaining something, be careful to educate and not lecture your reader.
Make reasonable, meaningful claims: Of course you put the customer first. Of course you’re committed to quality. Of course your employees make all the difference. These claims, while true, are not meaningful differentiators between you and your competitors. They’re expected of you and every one of your competitors and are usually too vague for a client to understand how she or he will experience it for themselves.
Not sure if your claims are unsubstantiated or too broad? Take the “opposite” test: What does it sound like if you claim the reverse? “We put the customer last (or even second).” “We don’t give a fig for quality; we’re all about speed.” Does it make sense at all? If not, come up with a claim that sets you apart in a way that the customer understands. Alternatively, you can back up broad claims with specific (and verifiable) data.
For instance, a company could back up a claim of quality focus by saying, “We have an entire department devoted to testing new products for durability, fit, and tensile strength. Every size and every design change is tested for xx weeks before it can be released to our stores.” That tells the reader: “We’re serious about quality.” So does a no-questions-asked, money-back guarantee. Choose your weapon, but be specific.
Own your differences: There are things in your corporate culture, your marketing strategy, or even your location that set you apart. One consulting firm created a page on their website with rainbow colors surrounding their company logo. This told the world that they were proud of the fact that the company had always offered benefits to employees and their same-sex partners. Does this appeal to everyone? No, but it makes a statement to the government agencies who make up the lion’s share of the firm’s business and perhaps others who share the company’s values.
Use imagery: Break up your copy with images that do more than decorate. Use charts that tell a story—and go light on titles and explanatory copy. Create an infographic that explains a process or something you want your client to know in more detail. Show me, don’t tell me.
Images break through the clutter of information, give your material variety and visual appeal, and can catch the reader’s eye in ways that copy can’t. With more people viewing your website and your collateral on a small screen (as small as a watch in some cases), images can make your material more palatable and easier on the eyes as well.
Cover topics that may not be on your service list or the focus of what your company does: You can find expertise on topics of interest to your clients in surprising places in your company. Your business clients may need some information about systems security issues, or help creating a budget for a new line of business, or appreciate an update on the best ways to handle cranky customers or retain employees. Interview your company’s IT support, customer service, finance, or human resource departments to see what you can learn and share as helpful content.
Go where your clients go: Not sure what resonates with your clients right now or what is an emerging topic? Get ideas from the discussions they’re having on LinkedIn groups and other social media. Visit the websites of associations they belong to or the blogs and resources that appeal to that customer’s particular market segment.
You may know most of this already. But we’re not always consistent in applying what we know to what we do. I recommend that you give your marketing content a test—go to your website, pick some of your collateral material, select a couple of ads, and grab a proposal. Test each one against the seven points above. Count how many times you say “we” and “our” against how many times you say “you” and “your.” By making sure your content and your messages resonate with your customers, you go from being “That Guy” to the “Go-to Guy or Gal” who’s really got their back.
Cheryl Bascomb is the Director of Marketing and Business Development for BerryDunn, the largest independent CPA and consulting firm in Northern New England. She brings 30 years of wide-ranging marketing experience to support the professionals at BerryDunn. A versatile marketing executive and communicator, Cheryl’s marketing expertise ranges from developing marketing and sales strategy to brand management in a digital world
By Bronwyn Monroe
Senior Director of Strategic Marketing
NineSigma
Marketing’s greatest opportunity is also its most difficult challenge. Engaging audiences with distinct and powerful branding is the most effective path to driving interest, loyalty and sales. At the same time, it’s harder than ever to get through to your audience in new and meaningful ways.
Here’s an innovative approach: Consider bringing new stakeholders and perspectives into the product development process earlier while identifying novel technologies that give your offerings a competitive edge in the marketplace.
Inviting fresh ideas from experts outside of your organization with a related technology solution can challenge your existing views about how products can perform and what sets them apart from competitive offerings. Reaching outside your company’s walls to find solutions in other industries or technical areas not only brings new solutions to your company’s problems but expands the audience of individuals thinking about your organization and the needs your offerings meet.
For example, through the strategy of Open Innovation, the use of table salts in research for osteoporosis drugs led to new approaches to reduce the salt content of potato chips. Combustion capabilities used in construction provided an entirely new customer experience with traditional candles.
Today’s strategic marketing leader can benefit from understanding that millions of technical experts worldwide are either existing or potential customers, or influencers. When strategic marketing works hand-in-hand with R&D to open up technical needs to the outside world, it aligns two departments and disciplines to the benefit of both. R&D develops a direct connection to new innovators with fresh perspectives while marketing advances its products faster and increases visibility and equity for the brand.
The question then becomes how do you align strategic marketing and R&D in a sustainable and efficient manner?
Innovation contests are an increasingly popular solution that both B2B and B2C companies use to address a gap in internal know-how. In its simplest form, an innovation contest is when a company defines its technical need and attaches a prize to motivate innovators to respond with solutions that can be acquired, co-developed or licensed. Typically working with an innovation intermediary, companies can tap into a global solution provider network across industries and geographies to find winning solutions.
Take a recent innovation contest conducted by GE in its industrial solutions business. The company sponsored a technology search for an attractive, ergonomic rotary handle accessory for its molded case circuit breaker. The contest homepage included the prize amount for the five successful providers of viable submissions ($10,000 each), a timeline, and a full description of what was being sought.
Winners were chosen and announced in the press and posted online; their backgrounds as varied as the ideas they submitted: An industrial designer from Frankfurt, Germany; a toy and consumer product designer from Connecticut; a design consultancy based in Sydney, Australia; a spacecraft and robotics R&D engineer in New York City and a cross-functional team of architects, engineers and designers in Milan. By the end of the challenge, a community of solution providers, customers and GE innovation and marketing managers had been brought together around the development of what was basically a fresh new approach to a simple switch.
Another example of a brand-building innovation challenge was conducted by Under Armour. The company recognized its performance monitoring technology — Armour39 — as an opportunity to reinforce its position as a cutting edge sports apparel and accessories provider. In this case, Under Armour Senior VP of Innovation Kevin Haley announced the Armour39 Challenge as a chance to “…empower innovators from around the world to help us in our mission to make all athletes better.” The challenge called for solution providers to submit product enhancements for Armour39 such as competitive analysis, exercise identification and cardiac assessment functions that would provide real-time performance advantages for athletes.
The Under Armour marketing team turned the selection of the winners into a public event at the Under Armour Future Show in Baltimore, Maryland. The 15 finalists were invited to present to the Under Armour executive team; providing a highly visible finish to the challenge.
Conducting an innovation challenge requires a structured process that includes:
- A blended team from both R&D and marketing with established goals and metrics.
- A well-articulated call for submissions that makes it clear to solution providers what you’re looking for and any performance specifications that must be met.
- A timeline that establishes milestones within the project, which may have multiple phases.
- Transparent judging criteria and process.
- A dual technical and marketing outreach that engages the technical audience as well as a broader stakeholder audience around the project’s mission.
- A prize strategy that entices solution providers and demonstrates the sponsor’s commitment to selecting winners and winning solutions.
Companies that understand the value of innovation contests know they are a versatile tool to engage multiple audiences and develop a repeatable process to boost new product development.
One outcome that can be counted on is the unification of two traditionally separate divisions — marketing and R&D – by a common goal and mission. Now that’s something most marketing executives never thought could happen.
Bronwyn Monroe is Senior Director of Strategic Marketing for NineSigma which provides innovation services to organizations in the private, public and social sectors. Founded in 2000, NineSigma helped pioneer the practice of Open Innovation. For additional information, go to NineSigma.com.
Aniko DeLaney
Managing Director
Global Head of Corporate Marketing
BNY Mellon
Personalized and faster markets are changing the way marketers connect with audiences and account for the individual needs of their clients. This new dynamic
makes marketing a more people-oriented profession.
Marketers get it — they’re clients too
Marketers understand the importance of a consistent marketing experience because they are clients too.
If a web site or app doesn’t load, people move on. If the content is hard to understand, people stop reading. If the logo on the webpage doesn’t match the logo on the billing statement, people get confused. If the price of items added to people’s shopping carts doesn’t reflect what they saw on an ad or another website, people don’t buy — in fact, they’ll probably complain.
And this doesn’t just apply to B2C clients. It applies to B2B clients as well. The difference is that B2B clients are buying on behalf of an organization instead of for themselves. But make no mistake: B2B clients still want a well-tuned user experience – in some cases even more so because the financial stakes are higher.
Growing a business requires a marketing experience that is personalized, mobile, integrated and fast. But getting to this point isn’t easy and requires huge shifts in an organization’s marketing structure and internal processes.
Who’s driving?
It used to be that organizations drove marketing through a linear process. Marketers ran a specific campaign, decided how clients would learn about it, and then controlled their experience.
No more! Thanks to social media, the clients themselves now drive campaigns. Their online experience shapes our messaging. Their online product reviews have as much influence as ours. Above all, their online experience feels to them more like human to human interaction than linear marketing ever did.
Digital departments are the best assets
So, organizations need a great digital team that can quickly address all digital media that clients use. This team should track four competencies: social media, content strategy, user experience, and digital analytics. The team leader will integrate these skills closely with the needs of clients. That will happen with constant client in-put through surveys, social listening and user experience testing.
To get to this structure, a Chief Marketing Officer and his/her team must work with key leaders within an organization to (1) review the whole prospect-to-client journey, (2) document all the steps from first contact to sale to return visits, and (3) define all the key media touch-points along the way.
Finally, by building out a robust digital marketing department, organizations are able to make integrated marketing approaches a top-of-mind topic for staff. Once the mind-set of staff is changed, culture and changed behaviors quickly follow.
To prepare for this shift, a good high performance department has to have the processes in place to allow staff to react quickly to new ideas and improve the digital experience in-step with client feedback. By incorporating clear policies and procedures, staff can be agile and quickly respond.
The dawn of H2H marketing
It can’t be stressed enough: Marketing today has to feel like a conversation – not business to business, or business to consumer, but human to human.
Clients must not see marketers or the organizations they represent as cold and insensitive. Digital intelligence will always help segment audiences and target marketing. But success in the new paradigm requires the whole digital team to bring a very human touch to every step of the prospect to client journey.
So, what does the future look like?
Marketing is moving toward a more personal connection with clients. The marketing aims are to build brand loyalty and to offer value through a customized experience. A future that looks like this has a better chance to succeed in our new, digital normal.
Aniko DeLaney is the Global Head of Corporate Marketing for BNY Mellon with $28.3 trillion in assets under custody/administration and $1.65 trillion in assets under management. She is responsible for leading the team that develops the global marketing strategy, which focuses on brand/advertising, thought leadership and digital marketing activities.
She is also the Marketing Director for the Markets Group, which includes securities finance, foreign exchange, collateral management and capital markets. She leads global teams that develop strategic marketing plans with a focus on thought leadership and digital marketing.
