by admin | Mar 22, 2011 | Blog
| Today, LinkedIn is the single most powerful marketing tool for professional services and business-to-business organisations. Whether you are new to LinkedIn or have 500+ Connections, if you have not used this social media platform to seriously improve your business or your career, then this is for you.
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Date: TBA
Time: TBA
Venue: TBA
RSVP: Enquire Now
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If you have any interest in this event or have a interest in a marketing topic for an event, contact qubePartners on 03 9018 7224.
Further Information
| Benefits |
Key Deliverables |
DISCOVER HOW TO USE LINKEDIN TO GAIN EXPOSURE, ENGAGE CUSTOMERS AND GROW YOUR BUSINESS:In this 60 Minute Free Workshop You Will Discover:
- Why LinkedIn is the most powerful yet underutilized Social Media platform for Business-to-Business (B2B) enterprises and Professional Services Firms
- Why LinkedIn is the perfect marketing hub that links the top 3 social media tools in the B2B and Professional Services space; Twitter, LinkedIn and Blogs
- How much time you will need to invest into social media marketing to reap the benefits?
- How to make your message stand out and be noticed?
- What are the marketing Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media
Who should attend?
Whether you are new to LinkedIn or have 500+ Connections, if you have not used this social media platform to seriously improve your business or your career, then this is for you.
Business owners, Independent Consultants, C-Suit Executives and Recruitment Firms have all been benefitting from LinkedIn in the USA for the last 3-4 years. Flying under the radar and noise of Facebook, LinkedIn has been the quiet achiever, but now it has reached critical mass, even in Australia, with 1,500,000 members!
LinkedIn, like all other forms of Social Media is still in its infancy, yet now even students are jumping onto the channel to research employers and to get advantage in the market place. If you own, manage or are responsible for marketing in a Professional Services firms, like Accounting, Law, Architecture, Engineering, I.T., Financial Planning, etc or Industrial & Technology firms, ranging from Manufacturing to Software & Hardware then you will benefit greatly.
Marketers who are reasonably new to Social Media have been getting amazing results and you can too!
RSVP:  |
- Presentation Notes
– Who should attend?
- Increased Exposure – 85%
- Increased Traffic – 63%
- Qualified Leads – 52%
- Closing Business – 48%
(Ref: 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.) |
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qubePartners runs events for clients and the SME business community to assist business owners and managers increase the return on their marketing investment:
Events and Free Workshops include:
- Brand Design and Marketing Strategy
- Social Media Marketing (focusing on LinkedIn)
- Referral Generation
- Legal and Intellectual Property
- Business Networking
Currently we are re-evaluating our events to make them relevant to your needs. If you have any interest in running an event or have a interest in a marketing topic for an event, contact qubePartners on 03 9018 7224.
by admin | Feb 17, 2011 | Blog
Why are today’s smart marketers talking about Brand Promise rather than the all too familiar USP – Unique Selling Proposition?
The answer is simple. The low barriers to entry in most industries created by the free and almost instant flow of information, resulting in the hyper-competitive nature of today’s marketplace means there are very few unique products and services and if they are unique to begin with they do not stay so for very long.
This paradigm shift has repercussions for for every modern enterprise. It means that brand owners and marketers must create unique experiences for their customers and communicate them clearly to their prospects. Because these experiences are what will differentiate them from their competitors. To do so they must work out what it is that they can promise their customers.
Product, Price, and Place (distribution) can be easily copied by competitors, which is why marketers invest much time and budget into Promotion (Communication). What can not be copied is the relationship, the emotional connections you develop with your customers. And like all relationships, they require consistent and clear communication.
Brand Promise must be:
- A Benefit that is relevant and important to the target market.
- A benefit that is different from the competitors.
- A benefit that your company is able to deliver.
The benefit may be:
- Functional
- Emotional
- Experiential
- Self-Expressive
Brand Promise is ideally expressed as:
Only (name of your brand) delivers (relevant differentiated benefit) to (target customer).
The Brand Promise is a critical ingredient that assists marketers work out the Positioning Statement.
by admin | Feb 16, 2011 | Blog
Cover via Amazon
People love stories from children’s fairy tales to books and movies. A story is more memorable than a straightforward message. A story is easy to re-tell and pass on to other consumers, hence providing your brand with more Word of Mouth Marketing opportunities.
A brand story needs to be:
- Real and authentic
- Colourful and interesting
Advertisements are nothing more than stories with the best ones engaging their audience. Famous brands such as Virgin and Apple have real stories surrounding their founders and form an important element of their strategy.
Most common marketing stories:
Blake Snyder (professional screenwriter) has story scenarios that align to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs:
- Physical Needs
- Safety Needs
- Social Needs (Buddy Love & Rights of Passage)
- Self Esteem Needs (Fool Triumphant & Superhero)
- Cognitive Needs (Everyman v Big Brother)
- Aesthetic Needs (Look good, Feel Good)
- Self Actualisation (Search for Meaning & Personal Salvation)
Gerald Zaltman, author of “How Customers Think” and Professor at Harvard Business School identifies deep metaphors in the minds of consumers in “Marketing Metaphoria”:
- Balance
- Transformation
- Journey
- Container
- Connection
- Resource
- Control
and Christopher Booker’s book, “Seven Basic Plots – Why We Tell Stories” (which took him 35 years to write) has the following:
- Overcoming the monster: Defeating a force which threatens safety, existence, success – David v Goliath
- The Quest: A group in search of something (who may find it or something ‘better’)
- Journey and Return: The hero journeys away from home and comes back (having experienced something and maybe having changed for the better)
- Comedy: Not necessarily ‘haha’ funny. a misunderstanding or ignorance is created that keeps parties apart, which is resolved, by the end, bringing them back together
- Tragedy: Someone, tempted (vanity, greed, etc), becomes increasingly desperate, or trapped by their actions, until the climax where they usually die
- Rebirth: Hero is captured or oppressed (a living death existence) until they are miraculously freed
- Rags to Riches: Overcoming a state of poverty, want, and/or need.
By telling your brand story you can differentiate your business and form a stronger connection with your customers and prospects. By understanding why you started the business, or for example why you named it in a certain way, customers will feel like they know you and understand you. After all it is hard to connect with someone you don’t understand.
by admin | Jan 30, 2011 | Blog
Deep thinking is required to work out the optimal offer for your customers and prospects.
Once you have a good understanding of your customer needs you can begin to formulate your offer. Start out by asking these basic questions and remember that often best ideas come from people who are closest to the customer!
- What problem do you solve and what is unique about the way you do it? E.g.: Sometimes all it takes is a different attitude. Max Super (a Superannuation company) in Australia took a boring and jargon laden product category and made it fun, by making fun of itself and the industry thus appealing to a younger audience. Groupon and it’s now many copy-cats have taken the concept of online auctions and group buying, word-of-mouth, and consumer desire for a bargain to create a whole new fast growing category.
- What are the different market segments?
- What are the Competitors offering? If your offer is no different to your competitors then how do you expect prospects to choose your company? If your offer is essentially the same and in many cases it is, then the how you communicate (promote) that offer to your target audience becomes paramount. Which is why “we marketers” focus so much on the Promotion versus all the other parts of the Marketing Mix.
- What is the Opportunity Cost of your product? E.g.: what will your customers miss out on or give up by buying your product or service? How can you minimise this cost?
- What features are the most / least valued? The innovation that is iPod came about precisely using this type of analysis. There were many much more technically superior MP3 players on the market when iPod came on the scene, but the ipod gave the simplicity of operation to consumers that they craved and took away the features they didn’t value (complexity). Can you imagine if this was done with Video Recorders / Players or software like Microsoft Word – where the vast majority of users only used about 10% of the product’s potential?
- What is the Pricing Structure & Role of Price? E.g.: Price is the simplest and oldest signal of any market place. We have all grown up with the phrase “you get what you pay for”, so make sure you align your price with the perceptions you want to create. Telling prospects that you have the best software, service or widget on the market at the cheapest price may simply mean you will not be believed, so make sure you either price it as being “the best” or take great care explaining how you can deliver it at this price point to make sure your story is credible.
- What is the Distribution Strategy?
- What is the Selling Process?
Make sure that your distribution strategy and sales process are aligned with your customer buying process.
Another great way of discovering new ways of solving old problems is actually examining the existing and recurring customer problems and frustrations and then overcoming those. Every customer problem is actually an opportunity in disguise to improve your customers’ brand experience.
Image by maxymedia via Flickr
by admin | Jan 24, 2011 | Blog, Strategy
I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgement; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination.
David Ogilvy
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