Winning Pitch

Pitching is an art and science that most of us practice on a daily basis without even being aware of it! Everytime we put forth arguments to make others agree with our point of view we are in a way pitching an idea.

But talking about pitching in the marketing world is different. There is a lot of nerves and uncertainty. In his article Scott Berkum tells us his tips to create and perform the “winning pitch”.

Tip 1: Define and Refine the idea

We must keep absolutely clear in mind what we are going to present and how we are going to do that (i.e. the order, the time that is going to take, etc) to reflect confidence at the moment of pitching.

Tip 2: Start with their perspective

To make sure that we are in the right track we must also get in the viewers shoes and see if our pitch matches their expectations. It is essential to include everything the receiver wants to hear.

Tip 4: Structure

Create an “elevator pitch” to then progress to a 5 minutes one. The elevator pitch is like the main idea, a single phrase that summarise your objective. Once you have this concrete it will be much easier to build the rest of the pitch around that core idea.

Tip 5: Test

Make sure to practice and time the pitch before presenting. Try also showing it to other people first, friends or family. All this preparation will give you a fantastic confidence boost at the time of pitching and will assure you that your pitch won’t be too long.

Relevant Measurement

Definitely, measurement and organization are key things to improve performance and make any project successful; it allows us to identify what tactics works best for us. In the world of digital marketing, we have many advantages on our side when it comes to obtain this kind of information since there are many websites and online tools out there available to us. We just need to find out which of these ways of measuring performance are more effective and suitable for our campaign.

How do we define which are the best measurement elements to include in our dashboard? Here Ian Lurie, author of CoversationsMarketing.com displays what would be for him the perfect dashboard:

While searching the net for helpful information for this blog, I realised how extensive this subject is. Finally, I came across an excellent and informative video by Brett Relander of Tactical Marketing Labs that concentrates this information in 3 key ways to measure and evaluate a campaign’s performance:

1. Web Analytics:

We use these tools to keep track of visitors, clicks, and many other factors and information about our website performance and the audience’s response to it.

One of the best ways to use this tool is through Google Analytics. This is a free and extremely complete service provided by Google that generates statistics, allowing us to visualize things like how many clicks we are getting in each link, how much time users spend on your website and so on.

2. Keywords:

As Brett highlights, there are certain words you want to use to get higher organic search results. If you are wondering already what this term means, here is a small description:

· Organic Search: this kind of search organizes results in terms of content and keyword relevancy; it generates results that weren’t paid by advertisers.

· Non-organic Search: this search results are influenced by advertisers who have paid for their websites to be at the top of the page. In these results it is likely to find Pay-per-click advertising, which means that the advertiser pay the host every time their ad is clicked.

Having that clear, we can now see why you want to include popular words in your website. A smart and cheap strategy to boost performance is maintaining awareness of which are the most common words your customers or potential customers are searching online to then include these in the content and headlines of your company’s website, blog, Facebook page, etc... all your digital channels.

Measuring the results of the strategy suggested above and keeping track of search trends can also lead you to make smarter decisions when paying for search words.

3. Contact Points:

You want to identify and keep in minds which are the most popular mediums where customers are reaching you. For that, Brett clearly advises to keep unique contact points: one phone number, different types of banners (so that you know which ones get you more clicks), one email address, one blog for responses, and so on. This separation of via of communication can lead you to a better view and measurement of which of your tactics work and which doesn’t.

Engaging your customers

One of the most popular topics talked about lately in the world of digital marketing is engagement. Achieve a deep relationship with customers it’s not a simple task; you need an extensive knowledge of your customers, their consuming habits, their internet habits, etc., to build up and understand what is their pattern of internet behaviour...what do they like? What do they look up on the internet? What do they read and write?

According to Matt Rhode, blogger from Socialmediatoday.com there are 5 considerations marketers need to bear in mind when aiming to achieve engagement with customers...

1. Be active: The web 2.0 provides us with the brilliant opportunity to interact with customers in a meaningful way. One of the many good ways in which we can use this for is asking customers their opinion. According to Rhode, asking customers their opinions in a personalised way makes them feel special and willing to stick around at the same time that the company gets good insights and useful information.

One important thing to take into account when applying this is the fact that as a company they need to reach customers instead of just waiting for customers to reach them. A website that is constantly updated and active brings much more traffic that one that doesn’t.

2. Make it accessible: The more exposure and simplicity for customers to post comments and responses the better.

One of the good uses that we can use this exposure, even though it sounds a bit scary, is giving customers a space to complain, Rhode suggests. The key to this, he explains, is to make sure that you have control over these comments. Dealing with customers complains sound difficult, but it is certainly better to receive them where companies have the rights to respond and learn from them.

3. Respond: Failing to comment or action after a customer has given you feedback, a comment, question or complain, is only a way to tell them that you care about their thoughts. In order to maintain customers interest and engagement companies need to make sure that they provide a helpful response to their customers comments, complains of petitions.


4. Deal with customers in public: Not all of your customers will be initially willing to talk to you, and they are even less likely to post their complains to you.

If companies make sure of keeping conversations available for other customers to see, the chances of getting feedback from new customers increases. “Respond, and respond publicly; this is where an online community can really pay dividends”

5. Engaging is NOT a campaign: If a company plans to use their interactive platform to push sales they need to rethink an understand and whole concept of engagement.

Being “pushy” and showing a clear intention to sell are things that will annoy customers instantly. Companies should focus on building a friendly atmosphere where people feel happy to comment in, without trying to sell them anything but sincerely trying to get to know them.

How to Deliver Projects of Brief, on Time and Budget

What better situation to discover your capacity than a little challenge? Just as Erik Vervroegen, currently the most awarded creative in the world says, some of his most brilliant work came from moments of alert and tension: tight deadlines, seemingly insufficient money and half baked suggestions from exhausted creatives. In his own words:” Maybe it's just a case of the more problems you have the more creative you have to be."

Amnesty International Campaign, one of the campaigns Vervroegen developed without a lot of budget.

Having read a short but very interesting summary of his experiences under these circumstances, I came to the harsh but real conclusion that there is usually no time and no money. On the bright side, I agree with Vervroegen when he says that we can turn this disadvantage to our favour; pressure makes us focus and concentrate our energies more intensely. Here is a list taken from CIO.com by Ron Ponce, of 8 considerations to bear in mind in order to develop a fruitful project or brief:

1) Definition: To begin with, a company from CEO to team member must be concretely sure and clear of where they stand and what their goals are. The most important things to clear up are: the roles and duties of each member of the team, the standard that they are after and the policies, since it is important for a team to know in which format to operate, so the work is more uniform and organized.

2) Evaluation: A rational judgement of what to do first and where to invest the money must be present in the decision-making criteria. Just as Ponce says, there are always more ideas than resources so we must make good choices.

3) Human Resources: There is a reason why each of your team members is there; a good understanding of their strengths and weaknesses and the right distribution of tasks is vital.

4) Goals: A simple and clear understanding of what the objectives are and what is needed to get there is crucial for any project.

5) Control: As Ponce suggest, managers must understand that for every action there is a reaction and no matter how “simple” a change in plans might seem, when we are delivering a project it could signify a mayor alteration for timing and budget. The solution he proposes is to accommodate solutions to balance any change made within the project plans.

6) Monitor: A good manager must be alert and aware all the time, keeping track of the status of the project. It is important to document any comments, evaluations, results achieved, etc.; because these will determine future decisions. Transparency is needed to build trust around the project.

7) Measure: After all the work is done and delivered, it would be foolish to just pass to the next project without standing back and look what we’ve just done. It is amazing what we can get from evaluation, documenting and judgement; these are useful tools for reference and improvement in future projects.

8) Improve: Having the knowledge learned from past projects can track us in the right direction in future projects, making the team more likely to meet coming deadlines and budgets.

My Favourite Digital Campaign! McDonald's Digital Banners at Picadilly Circus

I remember one of my first sightseeing walks when I arrived to London in September of 2009. I was walking by Picadilly Circus when I suddenly see a bunch of people taking pictures of themselves in front of the massive wall of lights and colour that distinguish this famous landmark. When I realised what the huge digital and interactive banner consisted in
I was completely shocked for it's originality and it's extremely fun way to engage with people!

This campaign consists in displaying changing images on this huge digital bilboard located in Picadilly Circus. In the banner, they display all kinds of activities which the audience on the street can actually physically interact with. Some famous examples are the images designed to fit into original pictures, and the paper, rock or scissors game.

I think this campaign is very creative and very smart in many ways. One of them is the prime location to action it: Picadilly Circus is one of the key landmarks tourists usually want to see when they visit London; McDonald's know how many tourists snap pictures of that same spot every day, probably thousands!

Moreover, it's crazy to think how many of these people will put these pictures online and share it with all their friends and family! Even if they don't directly participate by engaging with the ads, McDonald's logo an image will appear in every single one of them. McDonald's have taken good advantage from this by placing ocassional McDonald's photographers who snap your picture and then invite you to look for it on McDonald's website; this strategy can be a great tool to attract online audiences.

Finally, the colorful and playful nature of the ads makes it really fun to interact with! People keep engaging with them because they genuenly have fun, it makes the sighseeing experience more original and trascendent, since it stays in the pictures.

Role Model and Digital Creative

Some days ago, while browsing the net in search for inspiration to write this post, I came across a really interesting character on TED. This spontaneous and multitalented guy has been lucky enough to work in a vast variety of companies, creating ways and strategies to achieve interaction between brands and their customers. His name is Renny Gleeson, and here is his TED channel and his website.

He started his career developing online and CD ROM games, opportunity that opened gates for him to start concentrating on other projects and jobs that called his attention. Since 1995, his Curriculum Vitae include companies like Cybersites, Saatchi & Saatchi, NBA, AOL, Nestle, Mc Donald’s , American Express and many others. Moreover, as a side project for all these jobs, Gleeson has uploaded and shared a good amount of videos, tweets, blog posts, articles and contributions to other websites that have helped him build a relevant online presence in the digital marketing world.

But what does his work for all these firms have in common? The main reason why I admire the content putted online by him: his creative thoughts on customer-brand interaction and his dedication to find effectives ways to do so. Just as he wrote in his article Advertising is dead. Now, Why Am I Exited?, a contribution article for Creativity-Online.com: “Brands need provocative relationships with good customers. They need their stories told, and "interactivity" is driving the reemergence of the collaborative narrative as art form and communications medium”. Here's a video where he explains further his thoughts.

Apart from his insightful articles, this man seems to have another useful skill to communicate his ideas: his speeches. With his dynamic way of speaking, humor and clarity, he transmits his ideas while keeping the audience entertained. Check out his Sneaky Moves of Antisocial Smartphones Users video where he comically picks on the issue of mobile phone addicts; or his Qik account, where he has posted 46 videos taken with his cell phone camera to highlight the way mobile devices are becoming a more and more an essential part of our experience.

Personally, personalities like this, beyond entertainers and informers, are inspirational role models; people who have radical different ideas, knows how to transmit them to the public and make an impact.

How to select the most appropriate channels to reach digital natives

What is a digital native, after all? According to Jane Friedman’s blog, There Are No Rules, this term refers to the generation that doesn’t really know a life without computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and so on; all the benefits that the digital era has brought to society. There is a bit of discrepancy on this idea among the ones the people who uses the term. There are some people feel strong about the innate nature of this knowledge, for example Ann Handley. However, Friedman and many other writers and media personalities think that this concept is limited; for them, digital knowledge is something that absolutely everybody gains by practice and involvement, therefore any regular participant can fit into this category.

Personally, I’m fond of the latter idea. Moreover, I think the plain definition of the term seems too bold to describe all the things that the label ‘Digital Native’ includes, so here is a short but concrete video that can help us to get a better picture:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwKD-GuKkFc

This massive compound of consumers behaves differently than the ones that marketing and advertising agencies had dealt in the past with. Here, Jane Friedman posted the most important aspects of their mindset according to her view:

1. Connection: Online experience it’s extremely varied, so they are hybrids.

2. Media Neutral: Content doesn’t have to be physically produced to have real value.

3. Focused on Passion: The larger the options and sources people get, the more likely they are to put aside any other subject they don’t like and dedicate hours to read, browse, watch and see content related to the things they love.

This new sector of consumers needs new ways and paths to be reached through if that’s the intention of marketing and advertising companies. Ann Handley, in writer at MarketingProfs.com highlights a selection of channels and ways in which these digital natives can be approached by marketers.

As we have said clearly before, web 2.0 is not about marketers sending out information to consumers; it’s rather marketers taking content where the consumers are, to create dialogue and engagement. Many examples of this might be the spread of brands across Facebook, Twitter and Plurk.com, as well as blogs. Social media and sites with a free comments, forum and/or feedback space represent a great channel to engage with new customers. The selection of the specific website (which social network website, which blog, etc.), can be found with the use of market research and the observation of audience’s online tendencies.

Moreover, since digital natives spend loads of time researching for products and services before they purchase it, another appropriate channel to call their attention could be the searching engines. With a bit of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), brands can make themselves more visible and therefore more accessible to online customers.

Another meaningful way to grab digital consumer’s attention is by building brand loyalty. Email is a good channel that offers great opportunities to this: loyalty could be promoted by mailing lists, memberships, special customer offers, and so on. The personal approach that email can have –if used wisely - can also lead customers to build that engagement and connection that we want them to feel towards the brand.

Top ten considerations for an effective marketing strategy

Nowadays, the web 2.0 offers so much to customers that to make an impression, it is absolutely vital to stand out, and create value for customers. Now, that is very easy point to identify, the real question is how to get there. Undoubtedly, a good online marketing strategy is crucially needed.

A good place to start, as Freemarketingzone.com suggests, is having clear ‘who are you’, `who are your customers’ and ‘what do you have to offer’. In other words, to work out what your modus operandi is going to be like, you need to understand what are your customers looking for, how do you want to be perceived as a brand and how does your offer fulfils those objectives.

There are several marketing blogs and websites out there that offer their own versions of what are the top 10 tips to get where you want to be within the online marketing world. Having read loads of them I found several common opinions; the following list is what I would call a consensus answer:

1) Apply Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

In order to be seen by customers and potential new customers you need to make sure your presence in the web is easily findable by maximizing exposure. Another big plus of this strategy is that it can generate a lot of traffic that is tangible, easy to measure in order to track how your popularity is doing.

2) Create Dialogue

Opening a blog, comment section or any kind of space where customers can interact. It is one of the basic ways of reaching customers with a personal feel, developing a relationship where they can actually engage with the company in a reciprocal way. This is also a great opportunity of getting feedback and valuable information that could cost millions to get only through traditional market research.

3) Be an Specialist

Don’t try to reach just about every user that you possibly can. The more specific you can make your strategy the better. With so much overload of information out there, web users look for very specific and customized content these days; specialized content will make the brand look more trustable, not to mention that it will be surely more helpful and knowledgeable, good reasons to make customers visit more often.

4) Diversify

A single website is not enough to turn viral. Try to find different channels or mediums (relevant to your target market of course) that you can use to spread your message across the web.

5) Keep the activity flow going

The addition of new material is very important if you want to keep your customers hooked to your online platform. This constant activity not only will improve the websites, blogs, etc. day after day, but will also create an image of innovation surrounding the brand.

6) Be Consistent

We want out brand to be easily recognized. Even though maintaining creativity and diversification are big part of the overall strategy, we must keep in mind that we don’t want the brand image or concept to change. Also, coherent internet content will help the brand to build a solid reputation within the online community.

7) Don’t be Pushy

One interesting observation that I encountered several times in my research is how customers are repelled by techniques and strategies that come across as pushy, such as spam emails. As Webmastercourse.com says, you should “help your customers to buy instead of selling”.

8) Be Open to Publish Content Beyond your Platform

Look out for other websites, blogs, electronic magazines and newspapers that are receptive of voluntary collaboration and material for new articles. This is an easy and effective way to get publicized, creating even more online presence.

9) Be Willing to Spend on Online Marketing

It is a fact that there are many expenses to be prepared for when executing an online strategy: the web hosting, the team creating the content, being included in search engines, etc. On the other hand, online marketing is one of the fastest and most popular ways to get brand names recognized, so the effort spent pays off.

10) Track your Results

Measuring the outcomes of every online move will lead you to find out what strategies worked out and which ones didn’t. Just like the old saying, “If it ain’t broken don’t fix it”, a good strategy is to keep the tactics that work simply until they stop working.

What is Digital Marketing?

I really like marketing. My mother worked in market research for years, and even though I only had a glimpse of her work, I thought that the subject and her job looked interesting and a lot of fun. From my perspective, marketing represents a relevant way to find out and explore what are the needs and wants of groups of people, and what are the things that have value for them.

In this blog I will be specifically talking about the recent and extremely popular branch of marketing that we call digital marketing. This area is becoming so broad and it's developing so fast (it might be expanding as you read this post), that it is hard to define.

Let's start from the beginning. In the past, we use to have analog technology, which was rougher and allowed a limited flow of electronic information. Nowadays we use digital, which means in essence, technology that generates, transfer and store information in terms of 0 and 1 (searchcio-midmarket.com, 2001). One of the most impacting effects that this change had was on the Internet, but we can also find this technology in most electronic devices – computers, cell phones, TV and phone signal, etc. – presently. Moreover, we now call digital media all kinds of media content that reach the audience through these devices: Online newspapers, advertising emails, smartphone applications, DVDs, and many, many others.

This situation has been developing further in the last few years. In the beginning, the internet was used by the audience in a passive, exclusively receptive way. Only some time ago, what we know as the Web 2.0 was born when authors, advertisers, producers, distributers and all kinds of publishers of digital content realised that a strong new trend was happening widely around the internet users community...interaction!

Just as we’ve discussed in our 9:00am Digital Marketing class, in the present world we define big part of ourselves and our actions by the way we relate to each other; those relationships can only be created and kept with interaction, dialogue. This is what makes digital marketing so meaningful and relevant to understand current human relationships; within it there is the potential to reach the audience in a completely different way and reshape the way relationships are made. The new digital marketing approaches the audience as a participant, not a receptor, so the content is being co-created by the public itself.

With this interesting and intriguing new concept, I hope to be posting soon more interesting material on the subject. Through exploring, sharing thoughts, knowledge and findings, I hope to make a journey out of this blog.