Advertising/Marketing

The Elevator Pitch: What do You do? Why Should I Care?

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing, Startups No Comments Tags: ,

Most people have heard about the “elevator pitch”, which succinctly describes what your company does and the benefits it offers users. It’s a two or three-line statement that, in theory, compels people to ask for more information.

Now, you would think that creating an elevator pitch is a simple exercise but it is surprising how many companies have ones that are bad, inaccurate or confusing. The big problem is there’s so much information they want to include, they lose sight of the fact it is supposed to be short and sweet.

The other issue is the people creating an elevator pitch live and breathe their company and products every day. It gives them tremendous knowledge but little external perspective or context. As a result, elevator pitches often reflect what a company wants to tell people as opposed to what people want to hear. It’s a subtle but important difference that often gets dismissed.

So what are the keys to a successful elevator pitch?

It starts by being as simple and to-the-point as possible. We do/make “X” that helps customers do “Y”. It’s a sentence anyone can understand immediately. There’s no industry acronyms or lingo. Again, think simple because we live in a fast-moving world in which people don’t want to work to get what your company does.

Second, make it abundantly clear how your product meets the needs of users. How does it make their lives more convenient or productive? Does it save them time or make their lives easier? Again, think about what the target audience wants or needs; not what you want to tell them.

Third, you need to think about adding a little sales sizzle by showing how your product is different from the competition. It doesn’t have to be a multi-pronged, technical kind of thing but a sentence that spells out why your product stands out from the crowd. Again, it’s not about blowing your own horn but making it clear to users that you’re not just selling another widget but something that rivals don’t do or offer.

The truth is creating an effective elevator pitch takes time and effort. It is an iterative process that can evolve from your original idea. It should also involve external testing, including people who do not have any involvement with your company to generate honest and frank feedback.

The other reality about elevator pitch is they change over time as your company, the marketplace, economy and customers change. It means making sure your elevator pitch is tested or updated on a regular basis.

For companies that have great elevator pitch, life is so much easier because every employee is reading off the same page, which provides consistency across the board.

If you’re looking for help with elevator pitches, messaging and other digital marketing needs, my company, ME Consulting, offers these services to startups and entrepreneurs.

Long Live the Newsletter!

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing, Startups 1 Comment Tags: , ,

When  you think about the e-newsletter, it seems like an old-school marketing tool. With inboxes overflowing, who would be willing to sign up for a newsletter and, as important, who has time to read them?

Well, it turns out newsletters are not only alive and well but apparently thriving. At a time when we’re multi-tasking, flitting from one service to another, and not really paying attention, newsletters have emerged as an effective way to reach existing and potential customers.

I subscribe to five or six newsletters that arrive on a daily or weekly basis. Some are quickly scanned, while others are combed through for information on ideas. In some way, they provide value, particularly because they come to me rather than me having to go to them.

The role and value of the newsletter jumped into the spotlight recently when I started to receive one from Freshbooks, which offers online invoicing.

What I like about the “The Leaflet” is it’s customer-centric, and offers stories about how customers are using and benefiting from using Freshbooks’ service. It also provides a smattering of interesting content. The “sell” for Freshbooks service is soft, which is the right way to go because signing up for the newsletter means Freshbooks has my attention.

For startups looking to connect and engage with customers, a newsletter should receive serious attention. When done well, they can become valuable sales and marketing tools that don’t necessarily have to consume a lot of time and resources if structured properly.

Newsletters are way to keep a company front and centre by letting existing and potential customers know that you’re interested in providing them with value-added information, you’ve got interesting things happening, and you want stay connected.

So the next time you dismiss the idea of a newsletter, you may want to think twice.

What do you think? Do newsletters work? If so, what do they need to include or be structured to be effective.

The Importance of Stupidly Simple Web Sites

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing 5 Comments Tags: , ,

When it comes to Web site design, there is one important rule to remember: Keep it simple, stupid.

While simple may seem unsophisticated, uninteresting or frill-free, it is also an approach that drives a Web site’s accessibility, usability and effectiveness.

Since starting my consulting business, it has been amazing and troubling to see many Web sites feature too much information, poor navigation and ineffective messaging that they make it difficult, if not impossible to be used.

Rather than pulling in people to read more content, get more information, register or make a transaction, these Web sites drive people away because they they seem too complicated, intimidating or not user-friendly. In other words, they don’t make things simple for people to use.

So why does simplicity matter?

The harsh truth is Web users are lazy and time-strapped. As a result, they want Web sites to be delivered on a silver platter. They don’t want to think about what they should do; it has to be blatantly obvious and intuitive. And it needs to be obvious with seconds, otherwise people will quickly click to the next Web site or search engine.

Many companies fail the “keep it simple, stupid” approach because they buy into the idea that by showing or telling as much as possible, it will provide visitors with a variety of options to make a decision.

Unfortunately, this approach doesn’t work.

It’s like going to a Denny’s restaurant with a menu featuring dozens of choices. It can make ordering an agonizing process. An easier option is going to a diner that only has a handful of items on the menu. It’s easy and quick for people to order because less (fewer choices) can be more (quicker choices).

So how can a Web site be simple yet effective? There are three key considerations:

1. The overall design, which takes into account the use of colours and whitespace, graphics and icons, etc.
2. The navigation, which needs to be intuitive, dead simple and obvious. People shouldn’t have to think about what to click on next; instead it has to be straightforward and easy.
3. Messaging, which means having text that effectively articulates what a company does and its benefits, as well as nomenclature that is easy to understand and intuitive.

Coming up with a good-looking, well designed and easy to use Web site can be a major challenge, which explains why so many Web sites are, at best, mediocre. In many cases, it comes down to money because effective Web site isn’t a cheap proposition.

But I believe that it’s an attractive investment that involves short-term pain but long-term gain.

meshwest: See Ya Next Year, Calgary

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing, Social Media No Comments Tags: , ,

Screen shot 2011 06 07 at 8 23 00 AMEven though mesh has been around since 2006 and established itself as one of Canada’s leading Web conferences, there is always some anxiousness when we (aka the mesh gang) launch a new event.

Some of the questions we ask ourselves is whether there’s room in the market for a new conference, can we put together compelling programming, and will people pay for something with no track record. It was with some trepidation that we launched meshmarketing in 2009, particularly given the economic downturn had pounded marketing budgets. With some luck and great content, we’ve established a pretty strong foundation for meshmarketing.

So when we decided to pull the trigger on meshwest, there was a combination of excitement and trepidation. We always wanted to take mesh national, and the time had come to either do it or shelve the idea. In the end, we decided it was a good idea, and we launched meshwest last week in Calgary.

With a mixture of happiness and relief, meshwest got off to a great start. We had a full house at the University of Calgary that were engaged and enthusiastic. And we had a great line-up of speakers – people such as Tobias Lutke, Keith Boulis, Danny Robinson, Dan Debow and Mark MacLeod that came in from out of town, and a local crew led by Doug Lacombe and Greg Hounslow.

As important, we met lots of interesting people and made some great connections that will only help us make the next meshwest in Calgary even better – along with meshevents in Edmonton and Vancouver later this year. From a personal perspective, it was insightful to get a handle on the local high-tech community.

Some of the highlights from last week include:

- The keynote conversation with Shopify.com CEO Tobias Lutke. Shopify is one of Canada’s most successful Web companies with an e-commerce platform that has more than 15,000 customers that generate sales of about $250-million. Lutke provided some great insight into how to start a business, the ways to maintain a healthy corporate culture, and how Ottawa-based Shopify has financed its growth.

- The panel featuring Leigh Himel, Sarah Dickinson and WestJet’s Greg Hounslow, which was focused on how companies can establish a strong foundation to succeed with social media. Hounslow provided hands-on insight into what it’s like to operate a corporate social media program, while Himel and Dickinson

- The Twitter panel with Allyson Simpson, Tony Rino and William Bakker. Rather than talk about the strategy or the tools, the panelists offered up first-hand experiences in using Twitter to drive marketing campaigns and business. In particular, Simpson charmed the audience by talking about how the Melrose Cafe has used Twitter to build a community and attract business.

Here’s a video of Doug Lacombe talking about the social media landscape in Calgary:

Doug Lacombe Talks About Calgary’s Social Media Scene from Mark Evans on Vimeo.

GroupOn IPO, Anyone? Count Me Out

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing, Social Media 2 Comments Tags: , ,

GrouponSo, GroupOn is jumping hard on the IPO bandwagon in a deal that values it at $30-billion. There’s no doubt it will attract a flurry of investors hungry to get a piece of the action.

This group will not include me. Why? Despite GroupOn’s high profile and 83 million e-mail subscribers, I’m not convinced it has a rock-solid business or enough of a competitive edge to justify its valuation,

Truth be told, GroupOn is an e-mail marketing company that has enjoyed first-mover advantage to become the industry leader. These days, however, there is no lack of competition. The barriers to entry are low, many players are also well-financed, and niche players are appearing to make competition even that much intense.

Another thing that would trouble me as an investor is whether GroupOn’s service will remain appealing to companies using it to drum up more business. Sure, there are success stories of how a muffin maker attracted thousands of new customers by offering a free muffin via GroupOn. But there are also lots of stories about companies that have taken a financial bath because they were forced to offer incredible deals to satisfy GroupOn’s needs.

In other words, consumers love GroupOn because the deals seem so good – assuming they actually take advantage of the purchases they make – while companies struggle whether GroupOn makes sense economically.

At the same time, GroupOn has demonstrated it is a business that can’t easily scale. Last year, it had $710-million in revenue but it also employs 7,000. To support its growth, GroupOn needs to hire more people. At the same time, GroupOn also needs to aggressively spend on marketing to attract consumers and businesses.

There is no doubt GroupOn is an interesting business experiencing strong revenue growth. With a $30-billion valuation, however, I’m far from convinced it is a good investment or a slam-dunk long-term business proposition.

For more thoughts on GroupOn’s IPO, check out Business Insider and GigaOm’s Mathew Ingram who asks if “Is Groupon Selling Tickets to the Bubble Parade?” while highlighting that GroupOn continues to spend aggressively on marketing while it racks up losses.

For some other thoughts on the GroupOn IPO, check out this video. What struck me was someone who asked why GroupOn was in a rush to do an IPO because “we’re way beyond paying the mortgage here”.

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

Web Design is in the Eye of the Beholder

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing 6 Comments Tags: ,

Web designI’m in the process of redesigning my corporate Web site, which has not seen a lot of love or attention since I launched my digital marketing and social media consulting business two years ago.

Having looked at thousands of Web sites (an occupational and personal hazard) and helped a growing number of clients develop and design their Web sites, I have a pretty good idea of how I want markevans.ca to look and what I want it to do. The challenge I’ve discovered is turning a vision into reality is challenging and, at times, frustrating.

At the same time, it has been really insightful to be on the other side of the table. It has given me a new appreciation about a client’s needs and how the process of creating a new or refreshed Web site needs to be structured.

One of the biggest lessons is that simply having a vision isn’t good enough. Nor is it enough to talk to a designer about the look and feel that you want. The problem is neither approach gives a designer enough insight and information about what you want or like. Design is a very subjective and personal thing so one person’s idea of good design can be radically different than other person’s.

Here are a few “rules” about Web design that I consider essential:

1. When you’re deciding on a Web designer, review their portfolios to see if their work and style aligns with your vision. Be critical. If you don’t like what you see, move on. If their works catches your eye, ask for a meeting to get a sense of fit, including how they like to work and the processes they use. Ask for references to get more information and insight about how other projects happened.

2. Before you launch a project, select a number of Web sites you like. They don’t need to have similar themes but it helps to pick Web sites that have the look and feel you’re striving to achieve. At the time, you can pick Web sites that have particular features you like. At the same time, ask the Web designer for Web sites they like to get a better sense of their taste.

3. Make sure there is a structured process that starts with an initial meeting, followed by a brainstorming/information session, and then by wireframes and mockups before you get to actually creating the design. Along the way, there needs to be opportunities to change things, although there should be limits, otherwise you’ll be change/edit hell.

4. Don’t be afraid to speak up if you don’t like the work being done. At the end of the day, it’s your Web site and you want it to work for you. It means if the process or design isn’t hitting home, speak up or forever hold your peace.

5. The cost of a Web design can be small or huge depending on your needs. Establish a budget before you start so a designer knows what they have to work with if, in fact, they decide to work with you.

To get a better sense of the Web sites that I find appeal, here’s a mini-list:
- MailChimp
- Rogers Ventures
- Orange Sprocket

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 »