Marketing

meshmarketing #2 – Bring it On!

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

After months of planning, the second edition of meshmarketing happens tomorrow. While I was excited about the initial meshmarketing last year, I’m particularly stoked about this year’s conference.

First and foremost, I think the content is top-notch. We’ve got excellent speakers, great keynotes (Michael Slaby and Marian Salzman) and workshops and a new venue, the Allstream Centre.

Getting back to the content, which has been a pillar of mesh and meshmarketing, we have been fortunate to have reaped the benefits of a beautiful partnership with Trina Boos, who runs the successful AdLounge events. Trina has quarterbacked the programming for meshmarketing with enthusiasm, energy and determination. While last year’s programming was pretty good, Trina has raised the bar in a major way.

So why it meshmarketing different from other digital marketing conferences?

First, we’ve brought in speakers – many of whom have never been to Toronto – to offer real-world insight into creating and running digital marketing campaigns. And while we have two terrific keynotes that will get meshmarketing off to an inspiring and thought-provoking start, the “meat” of meshmarketing is the afternoon of interactive workshops that will provide people not only food for thought but lots of ideas to make things happen.

Personally, I’m really looking forward to a fireside chat with Lee LeFever, who, along with his wife, Sachi, creates the popular CommonCraft videos. Lee and Sachi have made the many of the Web’s new and cool technologies such as social media, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook easily understandable.

As someone who spends a lot of time creating stories and helping companies clearly articulate what they do and why people should care, I have a huge amount of respect for people such as Lee, who can cut to the chase in a user-friendly way.

My thanks to everyone who has purchased tickets at a time when there are lots of different marketing conferences to attend. We hope you enjoy the programming, speakers and, of course, the networking opportunities – something that makes mesh and meshmarketing that much more interesting and valuable.

If you’d like to buy tickets, you can do so here.

One last thing: A big thank you as well to our event planner, Sheri Moore, and her MCC Planners team. mesh and meshmarketing wouldn’t be able to happen without them.

How Messaging Drives Strategic Focus

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

Last week, I did a post looking at how companies shouldn’t underestimate the importance of messaging that clearly articulates who they are and why people/consumers should care about what they make or offer. At a time when the attention span of many consumers is shrinking, good messaging is a must to capture their attention.

Another important element of messaging is how it can play a significant role in helping a company establish their strategic focus, as well as the what needs to happen from a communications, marketing and sales perspective to attract business.

One of the things I have discovered in working with a growing number of companies on messaging recently is how it makes them examine who they are and how they have positioned their products or services to do business.

In some cases, the messaging process has exposed that a company’s strategic focus is misaligned. The target audience they thought made sense turns out to have less appeal because the service really wasn’t interesting to meet their needs.

Then what? Either the messaging has to change, or the company’s strategic focus needs to shift.

In many cases, companies that take messaging seriously recognize that once they really understand who they are and why people should care, it can have a dramatic and, hopefully, positive impact on what they sell and how they go to market.

Rather than trying to put a round peg (existing messaging) into a square hole (consumers who aren’t interested), companies make an adjustment strategically to embrace the realities that a messaging exercise can expose.

One of the realities of exploring messaging is it’s not an easy or straightforward process. Instead, it is a subjective exercise in which entrenched ideas may need to stripped away to provide a fresh start. It means accepting the fact a company’s identity may have been wrong or misaligned. It means embracing concepts that may seem foreign.

Messaging is also an iterative process. The initial ideas may have little ressemblance to the end result. It doesn’t mean the original ideas were bad. In fact, they’re important because you have to start somewhere, and having something is a lot better than nothing. In other words, you can’t get to point “C” without starting at point “A”.

Finally, messaging continues to evolve; it’s not static.

The market changes, consumers changes, new technologies are developed, and companies shift their strategic focus to take advantage of new opportunities. It means messaging must be refreshed from time to time, which is a good thing.

(Note: Messaging is part of the digital marketing and communications service offered by my company, ME Consulting)

The Growing Importance of Messaging

By Mark Evans in Media, Social Media No Comments Tags: , , ,

Over the past few months, my consulting business has started to move in a new and interesting direction.

Many of the start-ups that approach me are looking for help with messaging to better articulate who they are and why potential customers would be interested in their products or services. It may seem like a straightforward proposition but, in reality, being able to clearly tell the world why they should care is a major challenge.

The biggest issue is a growing number of consumers are time-strapped and, at the same time, multi-tasking. And their attention spans are, at best, minimal. It means that if a company fails to capture their attention right away, you can kiss that potential customer goodbye. It’s not that your product or service isn’t interesting or worth a look; it’s more that we live in a world of instant-gratification and give it to me now.

This means that messaging quickly needs to resonate, captivate and engage. The mission statement, value proposition and feature benefits need to be crystal clear and basically grab people by their collars. There’s no time to be cute, subtle or a tease. Your messaging must make people immediately say “Yes, I get it.” It can’t make consumers do any work to figure things out because it will only encourage them to quickly move on.

The question is: if messaging is so important, why do so many companies struggle with it?

The answers are various and far from simple. In some cases, bad messaging has a lot to do with the skill-sets of people developing a product or service. They’re really good at building things but not good at telling other people what these things do and their benefits. It’s not a bad thing but the reality some people don’t have good marketing and communication skills, particularly when they have to do it in such a short period of time.

Another pitfall for many companies is they’re so close to the action, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to get a fresh perspective on what they do and why anyone would care. When you spend so much time focused on a particular product or service, it’s hard not to get locked in about what it does. This is where a third-party perspective can be invaluable to shed new light or ideas that may be entirely different than what a company has been thinking.

A big part of this problem is companies are focused on talking about what their products or service do, the features and the benefits. Instead, they should be focused on how their products or services meet the needs of existing and potential customers. There may be a subtle difference in these two approaches but they can make make or break a company.

The first approach is “me, me, me”, while the second approach is “you, you, you”. Look at how many companies talk about how “We make this product…” or “Our technology is best of class…”, rather than “You can use our products to be more efficient” or “You need to be reduce costs…..”.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for companies is acknowledging they need help to improve or change their messaging. It can be difficult to admit that what they’ve been telling the world may be working or, for that matter, an accurate depiction of who they are and what they do.

Any company willing to take the next step by seeking outside help needs to be flexible and open to change. They need to embrace the possibility that their messaging may be completely overhauled or taken in a different direction. It’s the only way that messaging can improve or evolve, which, at the end of the day, can make a big difference.

The Blackberry Torch VIP Event: Interesting

By Mark Evans in Wireless, Wireless/Research in Motion 3 Comments Tags: , , , ,

When my mother (aka the person happy to go out every night of the week) comes back from a movie or play that she either doesn’t like or not quite sure what to make of, her go-to description is “Interesting”. In her vocabulary, “interesting” can mean weird, odd, bad, terrible, intriguing or bizarre.

“Interesting” is a good way to describe the Blackberry Torch VIP last night. It was a packed affair that attracted celebs such as Ben Mulroney, Jim Cuddy and the uber-cool George Stroumboulopoulos, as well as a couple hundred other “VIPs”. Of course, free drinks, food and your very own BlackBerry Torch likely encouraged the enthusiastic enthusiastic turnout.

Aside from the free Torch (just being honest!), one of the reasons I wanted to attend was I had never been invited to a BlackBerry event. In fact, I really had not spent much time with RIM for years, even when I was a technology reporter with the National Post. This was a sharp contrast to RIM’s early days when I used to talk to co-CEO Jim Balsillie on a regular basis, and get pretty quick replies to e-mails.

One of the things that struck me about the event, which took place at a nightclub, was how RIM took a low-key approach. After about an hour of networking while the music boomed, RIM’s chief marketing officer gave a very brief speech, before the hordes scrambled upstairs to the outdoor patio to pick up their Torches. All in all, the buzz seemed pretty good. People seemed pretty excited to be there, although free does get people stoked.

At the same time, RIM is an fascinating story right now given the ultra-competitive smartphone marketplace, which includes the iPhone and Google’s Android OS. Despite better-than-expected second-quarter results, RIM still has a lot of work to do that may force it to make some bold strategic choices to remain a top-tier smartphone player.

While I’m curious to check out the Torch, I’m more interested in the RIM’s marketing strategies, and how it appeals to new markets beyond the core corporate users. For example, the focus on younger consumers is interesting given the BlackBerry is not that cool, although the Torch’s touchscreen is nice.

Although younger people may think the BlackBerry is un-cool, a lot of them have BlackBerrys because the keyboard makes it easy to use text-messaging and social media services such as Facebook and Twitter. BlackBerry Messenger is wildly popular among younger users because it’s dirt-cheap compared with SMS. It does make you wonder why Steve Jobs doesn’t unveil a kick-ass messaging service for the iPhone.

The Torch is also a social device, highlighted by an application called Social Feeds that you can configure to work with Facebook, Twitter and social media services, as well as access RSS feeds. Again, something aimed at younger consumers, which probably explains the decision to hold the VIP event at a nightclub.

The question facing RIM is “What next?”. Is really going to introduced an iPad-like device? (Something that likely be a huge mistake) Does RIM keep pushing into new non-corporate markets, particularly the younger demographic? And can RIM stay viable in the face of intense competition?

All of these questions will unfold in the next couple of years. In the meanwhile, most of the VIPs at last night’s event were pretty happy to be there, irregardless of RIM’s uncertain prospects. After all, everyone likes a good party, even on a Monday night.

Is Social Media Still a Novelty?

By Mark Evans in Social Media 3 Comments Tags: , , ,

As someone who makes part of my living offering social media strategic and tactical services, the market’s growth is definitely a good thing. There’s nothing better than to be fishing where lots of fish are swimming.

But sometimes I wonder whether we’re trying to fool the fish by wrapping social media in sparkly paper. With some spit and polish, social media is sold as the greatest thing since sliced bread, and then butter things up with lots of talks about engagement, relationships and conversations. And the funny thing is, most of this stuff gets eaten up.

Here’s a good example. On Twitter yesterday, I saw a tweet raving about a blog post on four ways a Facebook Page could be successful. Since I’m spending a lot of time creating and customizing Facebook Pages for clients, I checked it out.

If you’re curious about the four steps (drumroll, please), they are:

1. Have a compelling vision
2. Smart branding
3. Strategic inbound marketing
4. Real-time engagement

While the intention isn’t about criticizing the author, this advice is hardly earth-shattering or arguably the secret sauce you might have expected. They’re just commonsense for anyone doing digital marketing. Yet, these kind of posts are still enthusiastically embraced.

I’m not sure whether it suggests social media is still an immature market, or whether we – the social media sellers – are doing an amazing job of marketing social media as something new, different, mysterious and wonderful. It may be a little bit of the former and the latter.

To be honest, I’m somewhat conflicted about social media. On one hand, it’s a new and different way to reach out to consumers and have real interactions. And it has changed how companies communicate, market and sell.

At the same time, social media are tools that can be deployed to communicate, market and sell. They’re tools in the same way radio, television, newspapers, direct mail, billboards and e-mail are tools. Sure, social media is new and perhaps still pretty shiny but we’re still talking about tools.

I don’t want to be seen as someone raining on the social media parade but there still seems to be a lot of breathless enthusiasm out there, fuelled by people lucky enough to be ahead of the curve, at least for now.

Are Web Sites Becoming Passe?

By Mark Evans in Social Media 5 Comments Tags: , , ,

In the past week, I’ve come across two though-provoking articles about the future of Web sites.

In AdAge, Pete Blackshaw asks whether we still need Web sites given the growing corporate use of Twitter, Facebook and “cool” applications.

Jay Baer, one of the most thought-provoking people in social media, suggests Facebook is killing Web sites. He declares that:

“Like print newspapers, basketball players under 6 feet tall, and the McRib sandwich, the website as we know it will soon be a thing of the past – a quaint reminder of the original Internet era.”

So, the question is whether Web sites are doing the way of the dinosaur? With social media becoming a way for companies to engage with existing and potential customers, do Web sites have a strong role to play?

While Baer may disagree, I believe Web sites will remain a vibrant corporate tool. But, like Blackshaw, I believe how Web sites are created and used will change to complement social media. Blackshaw talks about how Web sites will need to be agile, flexible and easy for people to leave feedback. He believes Web sites need to become a solid foundation upon which social media, e-commerce and mobile services leverage and support.

From the work I’m doing with clients, the evolution of Web sites is already happening. Rather than simply being places to get information about what a company offers or makes, Web sites need to engage, entertain and educate. A compelling Web site should encourage people to do something – ask for more information, watch a video, subscribe to a blog, “like” a Facebook Page, follow a Twitter account, or even purchase a product or service.

The messaging for Web sites (something I’ll post on later this week) needs to quickly and clearly capture the visitor’s attention, and tell them why they should stick around (aka What’s in it for me?). If a Web site fails to immediately deliver a company’s mission statement and value propositions, time-strapped and multi-tasking visitors will move on without thinking twice.

The reality for many companies is their Web sites will need to be overhauled or built from scratch. Before the global economy swooned, many companies didn’t think twice about their Web sites other than making minor changes. After all, there was little incentive to make changes when sales and profits were booming.

Today, however, the emergence of social media is prompting more companies to re-examine their Web sites, which have become tired, outdated and uninspiring.

It’s not that Web sites are going to disappear; it’s more that Web sites are going to need more than a fresh coat of paint to stay viable. Companies will think to re-think what they want their Web sites to do, and how they are going to be aligned with their social media efforts.

So, long live the Web (Site) 2.0!

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