One piece of content, 20 ways to use it

If you’ve created a piece of marketing material, here are 20 ideas for squeezing every last drop of value from it. Most of which take time and energy, rather than money, so that you can make your marketing budget go further.

With a nod to John Watton, recently named B2B Marketing Magazine’s ‘B2B Marketer of the Year’, this is a quick blog on what he affectionately calls “pimping your content”.

First off, what do we mean by content and content marketing?

We all produce powerful content all of the time, for example a presentation you put together for a client, a talk you gave at a networking event, some training material you’ve produced for staff or clients. All a great starting point for a bit of market-facing content. You can, of course, generate content especially for marketing purposes. For example, commissioning some research to prepare a paper, or writing a How-to guide or checklist.

So, let’s say you’ve gone to the trouble of collating some compelling and relevant thoughts that your target market might find interesting, here are…

20 ideas for things you can do with your marketing content:

1. Turn it into a paper that can be downloaded from your site as a PDF in return for data capture.
2. Knock up some slides and put it on SlideShare, even better add a little voiceover.
3. Video yourself giving an abridged version and pop it on You-Tube.
4. Embed your SlideShare or You-Tube content on your website.
5. Post your SlideShare or You-Tube content on your company Facebook page.
6. Use the content to write a 500 word article and submit it to the free article sites, or use a professional to help you. We like NikkiPilkington.com
7. Sell it in as an opinion piece to a relevant press title.
8. Use the content to host an online event, like a live web seminar. Check out EventBrite for ways to do this really cost-effectively.
9. Contact local networking groups, like Business Link or FSB and offer to give a talk on the subject.
10. Tweet a link to your download, SlideShare, You-Tube, press article, etc.
11. Post a link on your LinkedIn status.
12. Add a link to your email footer.
13. Post your content to content sharing sites, like Business Week’s Business Exchange or UTalkMarketing
14. Write it up as a Blog in your company Blog (what do you mean you don’t have one? Ridiculous!)
15. Offer it as a guest Blog on relevant other blog sites.
16. Use it as the basis for intelligent comments on Blogs and Forums, ideally with a link back to your download, presso, etc.
17. Add to a library of comment that you have available when responding to press features.
18. Turn the content into a short training session and offer it as value-add to existing clients.
19. Use the same content to run a paid-for training event for your market.
20. Run an internal ’show & tell’ to get your team up-to-date on the subject.

In small business marketing, every penny counts – so if you have some content make sure it works really hard for you.

Also don’t be shy in using it, re-using it and re-using it again. At the B2B Marketing Lead Nurturing event (30 Sept 2009), John sagely reminded us that if, as marketers, we’re totally bored by a piece of content, then the market has probably only just noticed it. If the material is relevant, interesting, and not date-defined, you can probably dine out on it for six months to a year, at the very least. Probably longer. I mean, for each new follower on Twitter, for example, it is effectively a brand new piece… don’t be shy in showing them your best stuff.

You might also be interested in:

• Bryony’s 30 minute webcast on generating online word of mouth on SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/clearthoughtconsulting/online-word-of-mouth
• Case study of integrated campaign including social media: http://www.clear-thought.co.uk/life_cycle_campaign/
• Understanding which content to use when in the sales funnel: http://www.clear-thought.co.uk/in_thought/art/1/
• A typical thought leadership campaign: http://www.clear-thought.co.uk/in_thought/art/12

By Bryony Thomas | Chief Clear Thinker | Clear Thought Consulting Ltd | www.clear-thought.co.uk

A reflection on our first year in business

August 5th marks Clear Thought Consulting’s first full year since incorporation as a Limited company, so it seemed like a good time to reflect.

Most proud of: having secured business through a lead on LinkedIn

Most frustrated by: not having done lots of things sooner

In the past year, we’ve undertaken billing work for six clients, mortgage is being paid – and even afforded a few luxuries. The question most oft asked is how we find new business. This has been secured in the following three ways:

• Leads picked up from online networking
• Work secured with existing contacts
• Leads picked up through marketing students tutored for CIM Diploma

Having now sorted the proposition more clearly and invested in the website, we’re about to kick off a few more traditional lead generation activities… will report back on what’s worked in due course.

It has also been enormously rewarding to start seeing the fruits of local reputation building. For example, Bryony was recently asked to join a monthly B2B marketing forum set-up by a senior marketer, and former colleague, in Lloyds TSB Corporate Banking. On asking her fellow forum members for ideas on who to invite, my name came up through having been spotted answering questions and posting discussions on LinkedIn – as we’d previously worked together, she dropped me a line. Then, on meeting with a local agency yesterday, again it seemed that word of mouth had done its trick before my arrival, both on Twitter and through a mutual contact. This is great to see in action, because generating positive word-of-mouth and online reputations is key advice we give clients. So, as you can see, we practice what we preach.

Although we’ve been up and running a year, the last month has felt like we’re really onto something. The new website went live 12th June, and we’ve stepped up the new business activity by talking to agencies – where we’re able to provide two key services: 1) client incubation (taking small or troublesome clients and getting them in a position where they’re better able to have effective working relationships with marketing suppliers), 2) strategic planning overflow. This adds to the direct business proposition, where we work with small businesses as the marketing director they can’t quite afford – giving them a heavyweight marketing mind on their team without the overhead. We now have Cheryl Crichton on board as Associate Clear Thinker, with a key focus on opening agency doors, and we’re hoping to announce a direct business lead in the not too distant future. These are things I wish I had done sooner.

On the administrative side of business running, here’s a quick rundown on decisions made, etc:

• Using Kashflow cloud accountancy software to keep a close eye on the books
• Had a content management system built for the website from open source code, rather than buy off the shelf
• Have a virtual reception and phone answering service set-up at Bristol eOffice, I’m yet to try their hot-desk and meeting rooms
• Have call-forwarding service from Gradwell (http://www.gradwell.com/phoneservices/callforwarding) which means that we can keep he number we now have however many time we might move or grow, a bit of future proofing
• Have an accountant in place on recommendation from a friend, but have actually found online research more useful in terms of understanding Ltd Co accounting
• Invested in brand visuals from Christian Tait, which we launched on the worked about six weeks ago and we’re really pleased with
• Tried networking breakfasts, didn’t seem to have much going for them

On the list for the year ahead:

• Getting CRM in place for the company, probably Salesforce.com
• Getting round to joining IOD and GWE to get on the local networking drive
• Employ first full timer
• Think about getting an office, as we’re likely to be four people, and we can only fit two at the moment
• Step up the digital marketing with article syndication, SEO, etc.
• Refresh the press photography, it is five years out of date, and I don’t look that fresh anymore!
• Do a load of courses in digital stuff to keep pace
• Think seriously about doing the Doctorate I’ve been thinking about

Mistakes made:

• Given away a bit too much time for free in over-servicing
• Overspent on a few online tools that we could have lived without
• Got distracted by franchises and associate roles initially, wish I’d just kicked off full pelt from the starting pistol
• Have a habit of printing everything out and not re-using paper – which is hideously wasteful and expensive
• Worked too long and not maintained fitness, so have gone down with a few too many sniffles this year…
• Worked almost every weekend, should spend a bit more time with family

What success will look like this time next year:

• Small, but dedicated team, in place all covering their mortgages and earning enough to smile
• Aiming for eight major clients by this time next year
• Have a wee idea in mind for some e-commerce elements, which I’d like to have kicked off this time next year
• To have been shortlisted for a few decent awards for the marketing activities undertaken with clients

Would be fascinated to hear about other people’s first year in business. Do share.

By Bryony Thomas | Chief Clear Thinker | Clear Thought Consulting Ltd | www.clear-thought.co.uk

So, if you’re not an agency… what are you?

We’ve been getting a few puzzled looks when we say that Clear Thought Consulting isn’t a marketing agency, so we thought we’d clarify the business model a little for those who might be interested.

So, we work with smaller businesses, from about 12 employees to about 200. If the company is still small enough to feasibly remember everyone’s names, then so much the better. So, big corporates are out. Within this, we work with businesses whose products or services are bought through a process of careful consideration – so, impulse buying isn’t our thing. Complicated, expensive or high-risk purchases are.

We work directly with clients to get them up and running on the marketing front. Typically, a business may have dabbled in marketing or have a reception-come-marketing approach. The point of pain that we’re there to address, is the company that knows they want to grow, but that doesn’t have the skills to get the message out (if indeed they know what the message is). In this situation, going straight to an agency or recruiting can be extremely frustrating. Without the basics in place, it is unlikely that a business will know exactly what to brief, or what to look for in a marketing employee. So, we work with companies in this situation, over six to twelve months to lay the foundations of a marketing operation, and to make sure that the business leaders know the purpose and function of marketing for their business.

A three phase Clear Thought project will position, enable and then act to allow clients to grow their businesses

Our approach is firmly centred on configuring free-flowing sales funnels for our clients – to generate both new business and new-from-existing business. Often, people think that what they need from marketing is to turn the tap on – i.e. get more leads in. This is sometimes true. But, more often than not, the tap is flowing into a leaky bucket. We first fix the bucket (sort out brand, messaging, websites, sales tools, databases, etc) and then help them to work with various marketing suppliers to turn the tap on. But only when their marketing operation is configured to make the most of it. In set-up phases, we spot gaps and problems and hook the client up with the right experts to resolve these issues. Once the funnel is fixed, we set them sail with a decent set of marketing providers, and we might also assist with recruiting a marketing team.

So, you work on commission..

No. Clear Thought is paid by the client for a programme over six months to a year. Introductions to third party suppliers is totally focused on what is best for the client, so we never take kick-backs from suppliers. This ensures that our judgement is never clouded by potential remuneration. Where an agency account director might want to tie a client in to a semi-dependent relationship to ensure an ongoing income, we want to get the client to a point of independence where they can run their marketing without us – hopefully recommending us to others along the way.

So, Clear Thought competes with agency planners…

There’s a little bit of overlap with planners, but not much. The clients we work with probably wouldn’t have the budget to get where they needed to get through using an agency planning team. Because we work over a longer term and from within a client’s business, we can get them to the stage where they can brief an agency properly without wasting time, money and goodwill on mis-briefing. In fact, we can work with agency to help them with problematic clients – by skilling-up the client in how to get the most from marketing suppliers and undertaking infrastructure projects (like CRM set-up) – so that the relationship is more fruitful all round.

Do you just do the thinking?

We believe that action creates clarity. So, although smart thinking is our key differentiator – thought without elbow grease is pretty useless. Our programmes are highly active and involve lots of input and energy from clients in putting plans into action to see if they work, learn from doing them and refine for future improvements. The key thing here is that we never just ‘do’ – we will always find out why something needs doing, and if its being done in the best possible way.

Hope that answers a few questions. If you want to know more, please do drop us a line.

By Bryony Thomas | Chief Clear Thinker | Clear Thought Consulting Ltd | www.clear-thought.co.uk

What shape is your marketing budget?

The questions I most often get asked about marketing budgets are:

• How much should I spend as a percentage of turnover?
• Should I benchmark against competitors?
• How much shall I spend on each discipline (PR, DM, Events, Ads, etc.)?

All totally reasonable questions… but what you should be asking is: what shape should my marketing budget be? Seriously, it is the most important question there is on the budgeting front. So, let me tell you what I mean.

A decent marketing programme is centred on a sales funnel, onto which you’ve mapped the decision making process for your target audience. (see previous posts Making Marketing Pay, and What to Say When).

FIGURE 1: Chart to show the influence of marketing spend across the sales funnel

From this you can put together a programme of activity that moves a person from awareness to a sale. Each marketing technique has a different level of influence at each stage of this process. You need to determine the level of influence at each stage, then apportion this across the funnel.

There are a few ways to decide the amount of influence each technique has:

• Workshop with the sales and marketing team to agree the apportionment
• Surveys or focus groups amongst new customers to get them to assess what they saw at each stage (this can be tricky, as people often post-rationalise decision-making, meaning that emotional triggers are downplayed)
• A best guess (hey, we’ve all got to start somewhere)
• A combination of all of the above

From this exercise you now have a powerful tool for designing programmes and allocating budget. Now analyse your budget in the same way:

• Split your spend into each technique
• Apportion this spend as per the influence amount you’ve worked out for that technique (for example, if you worked out that PR has 40% influence at awareness, 10% at interest, etc. your spend on PR should be tabulated to reflect that)
• You now have an actual shape for your budget

Compare your actual budget shape to the ideal budget shape you’ve established to maintain a free-flowing sales funnel. This allows you assess where you’re spending too much or too little, and to adjust your spend according to the funnel requirements.

Now, if you have a budget cut, or find a pot of cash, you again have a powerful tool to decide how to adjust your spending. The crucial factor here is to maintain the shape. So, rather than cutting a project that happens to be the right level of spend, you can cut evenly across the funnel ensuring that you’re not leaving any gaps.

By Bryony Thomas | Chief Clear Thinker | Clear Thought Consulting Ltd | www.clear-thought.co.uk

A typical thought leadership campaign

One of the key strengths at Clear Thought Consulting is in conceiving and running thought leadership programmes. I’m often asked what these entail, so here’s a quick run-down of the basics.

Thought leadership is about being front of mind in regard of a certain subject or market. A thought leader will always make it onto a ‘long list’ when people are making buying decisions – and often become the benchmark against which others are measured.

Timescales:

• Thought leadership programmes are not a quick fix, you cannot expect immediate results.
• A thought leadership marketing programme is only effective in the medium term, and then only when it forms part of a funneled sales approach. That is, a planned process that uses specific tools and techniques to move people from one stage to the next through the buying decision. The thought leadership programme typically acts as a top and tail to this process.
• In the longer term, thought leadership programmes also serve to create a bank of ‘good will’ in more junior members of the target audience, which translates into awareness and leads when they move into more senior positions later in their careers.

Typical thought leadership tools:

First off you’ll need to think of subject matter that is interesting, engaging and useful. Then, create a campaign that has a mix of tools that can be used to influence people along hierarchical and vertical planes.

Typical thought leadership campaign checklist:

• Get your best brains in a room, or even better some customers, and think about subjects that are interesting, engaging and useful.
• See if you can find a respected industry partner, if not then use your own research and expertise to prepare a ‘future trends’ report that can be downloaded online in return for data capture.
• Prepare an accompanying 1/2 hour presentation and use the content to host a live web seminar.
• Prepare press and direct mail to generate report downloads and webinar registrations (these can be tailored to sectors, and as customer and non-customer versions).
• Track report downloads and invite anyone who has downloaded, but not registered for webinar an invitation.
• Practice your webinar with the technology, slides, hosts in the room you will be using for the live session.
• Host the webinar and record the session.
• You can often boost attendance with an offer to attendees of something like a free book or other useful offer for people who attend – we’ve previously managed to get signed copies of business books by talking to the publishers.
• Review the people who attended and downloaded and get your best sales people to follow-up the hottest leads, keep the others for future or your junior team.
• Anyone who registered, but didn’t attend can now be invited to watch the recording.
• The recorded version now goes up on your website, where it can be viewed in return for data capture – this can form the next level of the campaign (where perhaps Director level people were invited to the live event and more junior people are now invited to view online).
• Alternatively snippets form your web video can be placed on You-Tube, Twitter, or other document sharing sites to drive people to the original download.
• All data captured builds your database for future relevant, timely, engaging and useful thought leadership material.
• New techniques allow you to publicise your materials at little cost, with simple things like Tweets, LinkedIn updates & news items, contributions to discussions, blogs, etc. For example, we’ve seen great traffic by posting content on Business Exchange.

As said, this needs to form part of a sales funnel, where the aim of the game is to increase hit rate when your sales teams pick up the phone. If people have read something interesting or attended and engaging event, they are much more likely to be warm to the call.

For more on sales funneling, see our 20 minute webcast: http://www.slideshare.net/clearthoughtconsulting/making-marketing-pay-1202609

For an example, you may like to see a recent campaign for Fraudscreen looking at The Life-cycle of a Debtor: www.fraudscreen.co.uk/lifecycle-part-one

By Bryony Thomas | Chief Clear Thinker | Clear Thought Consulting Ltd | www.clear-thought.co.uk

Making marketing pay

Being asked to prepare a talk for the Bristol & Bath Marketing Network on ‘Making Marketing Accountable’ has given me some space to reflect on my key learnings on making marketing pay. It was a 20 minute talk at a reasonably high level, just enough to get the conversation started…

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Making Marketing Pay

View more presentations from Bryony Thomas.

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Here’s a quick summary:

First off, I asked “who are marketers accountable to?” A great presentation from FutureLab neatly breaks this into three key areas of accountability:

1. Our world – society, environment, etc.
2. Our customers – accurate descriptions, no false promises, etc.
3. Our companies – making a profit, keeping people employed, etc.

For my talk, I focused on the latter and specifically on some key techniques for making marketing pay:

1. Map out your sales funnel;
2. Work out which tools do which job through the sales funnel;
3. Assess activities and spending on these to ensure the funnel flows properly;
4. Measure movement through the funnel to identify and remedy holes and logjams.

Having done this, there are some key pieces of advice I’d give any marketer:

1. Put every project, campaign and pound in context – a neat device is to have a funnel icon on all documents with the step the activity pertains to highlighted.
2. Place any spend report or budget request within the funnel, demonstrating the impact on actual or anticipated sales results.
3. Maintain your funnel flow – if you need to cut budget, cut evenly through the funnel so you don’t leave any holes… or add spend evenly so you can cope with the extra demand you create.

As you’d expect from a room full of marketers, I was asked some thought provoking questions…

• How do you work out the percentage through-put from one step to the next? I’d start by work-shopping this internally and reviewing historical data. This gets you to putting a stake in the ground. You then track actual results against this to refine over time – remembering that this is a tool to facilitate conversation between teams and to draw your eye to areas needing attention. Absolute accuracy may never be possible, but this will always help you identify areas of concern or success and prioritise resource and energy.
• How do you avoid this becoming a finger-pointing tool where marketing point to sales and sales point to marketing? You work out the funnel metrics together and regularly review against it. You can also go further and use the funnel to apportion people’s time against activities in each step, which can help to facilitate inter-team collaboration.
• How does this work in big companies where small aspects of each step are often owned by different teams who play each other off and get highly political? It doesn’t – this works in organisations where the CEO or MD has bought into the concept and is leading from the top to avoid such in-fighting. I do know that this makes it sound easy and that it really isn’t – but a genuine grasp of sales funnelling in large organisations will often require a full change management programme – such is the nature of turning a tanker.

Some questions from me to you:

In my thinking over the years and in preparing for this talk, I’ve come across some emerging themes, on which I’d love to hear your thoughts:

• Does ROI obsession create a race to the bottom? If ROI is the king metric, surely the quality and standing of your brand will suffer due to cutting back on ‘fluff’ to make the ROI look better… if this is done continually will you ultimately devalue your own offering? Apple could clearly make more money on each sale by cutting packaging costs, for example, but they’ve prioritised brand over absolute ROI. Is there a lesson there for all marketers in setting, and staying true to, core values for long term value.
• Analysis versus intuition? How do we, as marketers, balance the potentially conflicting forces of detailed analysis and personal intuition or hunch?
• Transparency and self protection? I’m a big believer in making everything crystal clear. But, I have certainly encountered marketers who like to maintain a sense of mystery in which marketing is a dark art, so as to protect their own standing or to avoid answering difficult questions. How do we overcome nervousness in some quarters about putting marketing under the microscope and enabling our peers from other disciplines to understand what we do?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Related links and thoughts:

• http://clearthoughtconsulting.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/what-to-say-when
• http://www.slideshare.net/alainthys/reflecting-on-marketing-accountability
• http://www.slideshare.net/jeffmol/making-marketing-accountable-ita-cfo-roundtable-1039508

By Bryony Thomas, Director at Clear Thought Consulting | www.clear-thought.co.uk

So, you want to be a rule breaker?

I’m currently working on two, very different, business-to-business websites, and have been knee deep in information architecture (IA) and web design for the last six weeks or so. Having come across the same questions time and time again… I thought I’d put pen to paper about rules you should never break online.  For this, I am specifically talking about business main websites, not blogs, twitters, forums, etc.

I see myself as a free thinker. My natural reaction to someone telling me that I can’t do something or shouldn’t do something is to challenge it. So, I find myself in the unusual position of championing convention. When it comes to business websites, function must always take higher priority to form (sorry designer friends). The look and feel is a very close second, but it is second.

So, when warming a client up to IA, I tend to use an analogy of a website as a text book. A business website serves a purpose – people come to it looking for something specific and their time is precious. Your site needs to get them to that info as fast as possible (whilst sign-posting them to relevant other content along the way). Think, if your site was a textbook you’d add a contents page, an index or lay things out alphabetically. Can you imagine trying to find a word in the dictionary if someone had decided to order things according to… say, their favourite words first, or some other such  subjective nonsense…  it would drive me crazy! This is the effect you have on site visitors if you ignore web conventions – so, don’t do it if you want to facilitate that all-important search-to-sale journey.

Web conventions you should not ignore

• Logos go on the top left  and typically link back the homepage, this is the equivilent of flicking back to your contents page in a book.
• Major navigation goes along the top and secondary navigation goes on the left – I didn’t make the rules, it is just what people expect to see, so why mess with it if it helps people find what they are looking for? For me, I think of major navigation as chapter headings and secondary navs as chapter contents.
• Legalese in the footer of every page – it has to be there, but it will never sell your stuff, so just put it at the bottom. For me, this is like the publisher’s page at the front of a book.
• Disabilities Discrimination Act (DDA) and best-practice – get decent advice on this, you don’t want to break the law or alienate potential customers.
• Don’t put text in as an image – Google (other search engines are available) can’t read them and it causes a DDA headache.
• Use system fonts – I know that they are a bit dull, but using anything else is totally impractical, you need to use a font that is installed on every computer so that you can be sure your text will be legible to all.

Hmmm… so, business websites should all look the same?

No way. Just because reference books all have contents pages and indexes, they certainly do not look the same. Hard back, soft back, image style, tone of copy… just walk around a book shop, there is plenty of variety. Online, you add personality in the same way… but by employing a designer who specialises in web – print designers never get this quite right.  The two sites I am working on at the moment could not look more different. Your brand can sing through, but you don’t need to mess with the stuff that makes your site actually work to make this happen.

And of course, there are always exceptions… particularly on very simple sites of fewer than 20 pages, where you can get away with being a bit more maverick.

For me, these are guiding principles. There are bound to be many more detailed tips from IA specialists… but if you start by putting function before form you’ll be better placed to move forward.

By Bryony Thomas, Director at Clear Thought Consulting | www.clear-thought.co.uk

Kicking off 2009 in style

2009 has kicked off well for Clear Thought Consulting, with two exciting consultancy projects underway for new clients, a new business push planned on the SPAN front, a new batch of CIM students to inspire, partnerships forging with some great local marketing specialists and plans afoot for Bristol networking this year.

Gradwell appoints Clear Thought Consulting: In October last year, I was delighted to be appointed by Gradwell (www.gradwell.com), the small business internet infrastructure providers, as their retained strategic marketing consultant. We’re two months in and we’ve cracked some key foundation work ready for a really exciting 2009. Gradwell closed the year by bagging the ITSPA Best Business VoIP award, and I am looking forward to telling the world about this and their other great products. All in all, this win was a testament to the power of networking – as it is a lead I picked up through LinkedIn.

To deliver the plan I’ve put together, we’ve also engaged some excellent specialists from my little black book, who I’d like to tip my cap to:

• Cheryl Crichton: a freelance marketing / account manager who I originally worked with in 2001, and whose hands-on style is perfect for her ongoing role with Gradwell in delivering the plans I devise.
• Christian Tait: freelance designer who I’ve worked with at his last two agencies and who has somewhat set the bar for other designers to meet.
• Ferdinand Edwards: qualitative researcher extraordinaire, who added valuable depth and colour to my quantitative approach.
• Samantha Castillo: freelance copywriter whose extensive technology experience made her the natural choice for this client.
• 3Sixty Digital Marketing: arguably Bristol’s best web agency, who are currently undertaking a full review of the Gradwell website in readiness for a full refresh.

Fraudscreen appoints Clear Thought Consulting: November saw another client come on-board in the shape of Fraudscreen (www.fraudscreen.co.uk), where I’ll be working with one of my ex-Experian colleagues, John Sharman, and the unanimously impressive team in Gresse Street. Where many will be looking at the year ahead with trepidation, Fraudscreen is one of the lucky ones with products that are perfectly positioned for the current economic environment – helping businesses make fair and commercially sound acquisition, retention, collections and debtor decisions.

For me, this is another very welcome annual support contract with some upfront investments to be made. We’re currently knee deep in website re-building, ready for a web-centred thought leadership programme. For this, I have again to thank some excellent marketing partners:

• 3Sixty Digital Marketing again, using  Sitecore, their recommended content management system.
• Creative Template Solutions: Kathy’s pragmatic approach to digital templates has never failed to be an excellent investment.
• TickBox Marketing for getting a wee campaign microsite up at www.paymentintent.com in a matter of days.
  

Bryony is let loose on CIM Diploma students: After my first term of tutoring, I am anxiously awaiting the results for my CIM module – with fingers crossed for all the students in my group. I’m also looking forward to meeting a new cohort of the Cambridge Marketing College at the end of January and I hope to inspire them to see their CIM qualifications as much more than a piece of paper!

Networking  anyone? I’m also looking forward to getting involved with getting the Bristol arm of the Bristol & Bath Marketing Network up and running. With Bath running successfully, there must be marketers in Bristol up for a monthly meet to keep up to speed with the latest, meet other local marketers and have a drink. Watch this space for more details.

I hope that 2009 brings you many and varied opportunities.

No risk, no point…

Love and hate are two sides of the same coin. Truly compelling messaging is almost certainly going to upset someone… providing that you’ve identified the people you want to inspire and the message works for them, does it matter if you upset people? Often the answer is no. Clearly, you need to be legal, honest and fair – but a bit of controversy can be a good thing. Who was it who said “write what you like, just spell my name right”? So true, especially in an search-enabled world.

Really good design should go completely un-noticed

I spent six hours this weekend clearing junk from my house. It felt great. I sorted through piles of boxes, threw out unwanted clothes and re-organised a load of storage. Then, my Dad came to visit and commented on what a lovely home we have. Now, he didn’t say ‘Wow, isn’t it tidy’ – in fact he didn’t notice that I’d been tidying, but by clearing away the distractions he was able to notice the lovely touches we have around the place – like art and photos.

A room that is clear of clutter and that is well laid out to enable you to move around freely, is a joy to be in. Good literature design (on and off-line) is the same. There are various design conventions in regard to leaving white space, to aligning and anchoring headings and sub-headings, etc. – and whilst most people picking up a brochure (except those of us who work in the business) won’t consciously see these rules being applied, they will enjoy a well designed piece much more. This is most evident when you see something that hasn’t been well designed – you don’t know why, it just doesn’t look right. Just like when you walk into a room that has been freshly vacuumed, you don’t actively notice the carpet pile all running in the same direction – it just looks better.

Whilst there are, of course, examples of anti-design where rules are actively broken to create a jarring and clashing visual impact – most marketing literature, particularly in B2B, requires the sort of design that allows the message to take centre stage, that gently gives a sense of the corporate culture, and that silently guides the eye to the key points.

So, take care if you’re tempted to prioritise content over design in times of budgetary squeeze – if the two aren’t balanced, you’re missing a trick.

Necessity, the mother of invention?

Will an economic downturn curb the enthusiasm of companies to spend on decent creative, or will it force people to be more inventive?

The recent Honda live ad, where they booked the entire ad break for a live parachute jump was pretty innovative. You could argue that this is sign of a company splashing the cash… or was it only possible because prices are on the down and a stunt like that becomes affordable? It is certainly true that in an increasingly saturated media landscape, people need to work harder for standout – but chucking money at it is not always the answer.

In the socially networked world, creativity is king. The Cadbury Gorilla is case in point. Though I’m sure Cadbury spent a pretty penny, the many hundreds of spoofs that really made the campaign a success were made in homes with dodgy webcams or even camera phones. It is the idea that shines through – really capturing imagination.

So, will a downturn lead to a mass of truly awful ads… possibly on TV, but in the ‘click to forward’ world, the dross simply doesn’t make it through the judging panel that is the self-selecting audience.

By Bryony Thomas, Director at Clear Thought Consulting | www.clear-thought.co.uk

What to say when – managing marketing content through the sales funnel

Many businesses fail to move people through the sales funnel from awareness to action, not because they have their content wrong, but because they use it at the wrong time. By mapping your content against your sales funnel you can determine both the tone and quantity of information to make available to increase your chances of moving people through to a sale. This applies equally to decision-making processes that take 10 minutes or 10 months.

Many of us will have experienced a sense of ‘information overload’ where we simply switch off, or the frustration of wanting to know more about a product or service before we commit and not being able to find it. Both happen regularly, and when they do – you’ve lost a sale.

For almost every purchase we make, we run through a broadly similar decision-making process (I say almost, as the impulse bar of chocolate at the supermarket counter is quite a different process). Typically, and particularly for more complex purchases, our thinking will go something like this: ‘My laptop is heavy – I saw that ad for really light weight ones, who was it again?’ (Latent need); ‘There’s that ad, it’s X-brand’ (Awareness); ‘I’ll just check out their site’ (Interest); ‘Hmm, well the weight certainly compares well, but can I afford it, what are the other options?’ (Evaluation); ‘I’ll pop into Y-shop to see what it feels like and ask a little more about it’ (Trial); ‘I’ve researched the best price, I’ll get it from there’ (Purchase). Kotler and others have spelt out various different versions of this process, there’s bound to have been one modelled for most markets. So, our step-by-step decision-making process is something like 1) Awareness, 2) Interest, 3) Evaluation, 4) Trial, 5) Purchase.

Against this process you should map and measure your sales funnel, you’ll steadily whittle down your audience at each step, with interested parties moving through the funnel and those who either don’t want what you offer or who are turned off by your messaging going elsewhere. To maximise the conversion at each stage, marketers should consider two key elements; tone and quantity.

What do I mean by tone? As short-hand, think emotion. Against the sales funnel, there is an appropriate tone at each step. If you imagine a continuum from emotional to rational, typically your marketing material will need to start at emotional and move to rational through the funnel. Emotional appeals are most likely to really grab someone’s attention. If you hit a nerve, they notice you. However rational you are, e.g. ‘we’re cheap’, if they don’t feel a need for what you’re offering they’re unlikely to notice your communications in the first place. Successful emotional appeals, in marketing terms, usually hit on a negative feeling and say that you can take it away. This is called finding the point of pain. Once you’ve established that emotional appeal, your communications need to move into more rational territory, where proof is needed. As a sanity check on the tone of your marketing materials, map out each stage of the sales funnel and look at the material (offline, online, sales person, in-store, etc.) and assess the tone – are you too rational too soon? Are you trying to appeal to their emotions when they’re looking for proof?

Quantity, in regard to sales funnelling, is a fairly straight forward concept – start ‘short and sweet’ and then provide more information at each step. Where most organisations fall foul of this is on their websites. Home pages are often jam packed with information. Considering the journey a home page or a campaign landing page is only the second step on the sales funnel – they are still pretty emotional (what’s the benefit for me?) and they are looking for key messages. Again, map out your journey and assess the quantity of information you are serving at each stage, it should start small and increase at each step.

So, if you’re experiencing lots of web traffic, but low numbers of enquiries – or lots of footfall and low sales, think about the sales funnel. An initial assessment against tone and quantity will sign post where your blockage might be and put you on the path to a free flowing sales funnel that has a tangible link to your bottom line.

By Bryony Thomas, Director at Clear Thought Consulting | www.clear-thought.co.uk