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.