Clear Thought’s Top 10 Blogs of 2009

Taking a look at our stats, and based on unique views of these posts, the Top 10 Clear Thought Blog posts of this year goes like this…

1. 10 things to include in a marketing brief

Handy tips on writing a brief for marketing that sells – what to include to make sure that your supplier is most likely to get the project right first time. Read blog »

2. What to say when, managing marketing content through the sales funnel

A quick look at the right emotional tone and volume of information people respond to at different stages in the buying process, and how to tailor your marketing material to hit the right note at each stage. Read blog »

3. What shape is your marketing budget

An approach to setting your marketing budget that makes sure that you maintain an integrated mix of activity that supports every stage in your sales funnel. Read blog »

4. How to create powerful sales tools from your desk

A seven step guide to creating compelling and professional sales and marketing materials using Microsoft Office. Includes two case studies. Read blog »

5. B2B Social Media; Be There, Be Relevant, Be Proven

Practical advice that any B2B marketer, business owner or sales person can put into practice to generate leads through social media. Read blog »

6. A typical thought leadership campaign

A quick run-down and checklist of the things to include in a thought leadership campaign. Particularly powerful in B2B or complex sales processes. Read blog »

7. Treat your website like a member of your team

Practical advise for anyone in laying the ground rules for how to approach your website as a function in your business, rather than as a one-off project. Read blog »

8. One piece of content, 20 ways to use it

20 ideas for things you can do with just one piece of content, like a presentation or a paper – giving you ways to squeeze more from your marketing budget. Read blog »

9. What are your social media rules?

In this blog, Bryony shared her own rules to managing the way she interacts with friends, colleagues and acquaintances on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Read blog »

10. The Jamie Oliver approach to marketing

Reflections from attending the B2B Lead Nurturing event in September, looking at how marketing wants to feed sales with health food, when they are likely to have a taste for junk food. Read blog »

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

How to create professional sales tools from your desk

Every business needs sales and marketing collateral. Stationery, product literature, case studies, press releases, direct marketing, customer comms… the list goes on.

Whether you choose to go paperless (PDFs and downloads) or use hard copy (traditional print), it all takes time and money… graphic designers, photographers, copywriters, printers, web developers…

There is a way to save time and money…

This year we’ve helped two clients make the most of their marketing budget with powerful use of collateral templates. For one client we helped create almost 100 pieces of collateral from just four professionally produced Microsoft templates. So, if you’re looking for ways to create marketing content on a budget, here’s how…

1) LOOK AND FEEL: As part of a major re-branding exercise we asked one of our favourite designers to create some examples of typical pieces of collateral (a case study, a product sheet, a letterhead and a newsletter).

2) GUIDELINES: We then made sure that they were included in the brand guidelines with detailed instructions on their make up (colours, fonts, use of imagery etc).

3) IMAGE LIBRARY: The designer also recommended some Royalty Free imagery and icons which now make-up a library of images that can be used across the templates. We had these images re-coloured to fit the brand.

4) COPY: We had one of each type of document professionally written (always recommended), along with some tone of voice guidelines. We also created a spelling conventions checklist, which is now used with the tone of voice guidelines in-house to write copy.

5) CONVERSION: We then worked with the client to take these designs and guidelines to a Microsoft template specialist who emulated them exactly in Microsoft Word. These initial four designs were turned into ‘click and type here’ templates that anyone could use. This also included styling tables, charts and flow diagrams into the style sheets. Everything was locked down and pre-formatted, so the brand could not be compromised.

6) CASE STUDY SCRIPT: We also worked with a professional copywriter to prepare a script and list of key questions to enable us to interview customers and get the answers we need to create an engaging case study. And, we always asked for ongoing permissions to use quotes, etc. at the same time to enable us to continually add to our arsenal of testimonials.

7) BRIEFING CHECKLIST: And finally, we left the client with a briefing check list and document ‘structure’ for each item, to ensure no content got missed.

There was some initial investment in setting everything up, but once done, any number of documents can now be created from each of the templates. With practice, 2 or three 2-page documents can be created in a day.

Here are some examples of documents we’ve helped clients produce using simple old Word, PowerPoint and Excel:

So, even if you’re a small business wanting to do your own marketing, you can produce brilliant marketing materials from your desk. Our golden rules for this are 1) Work with experts to get the first few done, 2) Develop checklists, etc. from doing this, and 3) Get Word and PPT templates produced by an expert (we like these guys www.creativetemplatesolutions.co.uk).

By Cheryl Crichton | Associate Clear Thinker | Clear Thought Consulting Ltd | www.clear-thought.co.uk

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.