We thought the paddleboat was securely tied to the dock and were enjoying an evening cocktail on the porch when a group of intelligent and worldly adults noticed the boat was adrift.  Quickly surmising the situation, four discussed the strategy by which to rescue the run away boat.  Two offered to swim out to save it.  They put on life jackets and set off after the boat. Two more didn’t wait to participate in the strategy and took off down the closest route – a treacherous cliff – and one of them ended up in the hospital with a broken wrist.  While both the swimmers and ‘acrobats’ accomplished the same goal, the ones who adhered to the well-thought out strategy avoided weeks of rehabilitation.

There are always multiple ways to accomplish the same objective but inevitably the most well thought out strategy wins out.  Why is it that we sometimes take the short cut to achieve speed to market?

Today marketers are under so much pressure to deliver in seemingly unrealistic timeframes to stay ahead of the competition that they often rush into “random acts of marketing”.  In order to fully maximize results, marketers must stop to develop a ‘roadmap’ for each campaign and plan for the ongoing nurturing of leads.  They must leverage every medium at their disposal to captivate their audiences who have unique ways in which they consume information.   Lucky for us, we have more resources at our disposal to achieve these objectives.

Gone are the days when marketers would report their results based on the number of people to attended their trade show booth, or opened a direct e-mail or clicked through on the website.  We are now held accountable for defending the ROI of our marketing budget and those metrics are a radical departure from the past.

In order to deliver a true ROI on marketing campaigns, marketers can’t take the fastest route.  They must step back and assess their audience and messages and proliferate their campaigns across a myriad of vehicles.  Taking the time to develop that roadmap, setting specific goals and executing consistently will yield the best results.

While launching a social media/inbound marketing campaign may seem easy – just start tweeting, or post a blog, or create a Facebook page – it’s not going to be effective unless you’ve thought through the next steps.  If someone reads your blog and wants to learn more, you need to have your website and resources aligned.  If they react to a tweet, you need to be prepared to respond.  You need to have thought through the lifecycle of interactions that eventually nurture each lead into a sale.  To learn more, I encourage you to read “The 10 Step Program to Jump-Start your Inbound Marketing Machine” by Anne Marsden.

Don’t take the short cut that just allows you to ‘check the box’.  Do the work and create a multi-faceted plan to maximize coverage, nurture potential clients and deliver real world marketing results.

Many of our clients have come to us with questions about inbound marketing. They’re either new to inbound marketing or need help improving the effectiveness of specific parts of their program.  To lend a hand, I decided to write a reference guide on the topic.  It’s an easy to read, interactive PDF full of useful facts, figures, links and specific instructions to start up – or tune up – your inbound marketing program.

A word of encouragement and a word of caution:  If you follow these steps you WILL get results.  But they aren’t magically easy, nor produce overnight results.  (I’m not one of those marketers that guarantees instant weight loss with no need to exercise or eat less.)

Inbound marketing isn’t an event, it’s a discipline.  And as many companies know, it is one of the most cost effective ways to find, attract, and engage prospects. In this interactive E-Guide you’ll learn the statistics that show that inbound marketing isn’t just for B2C. You’ll learn why it’s becoming the cornerstone of the most effective B2B marketing organizations. And you’ll learn the steps required to get your program in shape.

These 10 steps, when practiced with dedication, will change the marketing – and sales – lives of the companies that implement it.  Nothing that is life changing is easy. But these steps are do-able and when consistently applied, the results are guaranteed.  More inbound traffic.  More leads.  More engagement with your target market.  More sales.  Yes, more sales.

So if you want to learn how to jump-start or re-invigorate your inbound marketing program, click here to download your free copy.

How many plates do you keep spinning?

Cartoon provided thanks to Independent Audit Limited

For many of us, the number (if high) is a badge of honor.  The more we have going (programs, projects, meetings, etc.), the more important, the more successful, the more in demand we must be.  Right?

I started musing on this while taking my shower yesterday…it was a mental detour from my review of what I was going to do that day…. who I needed to call, emails to return, writing assignments coming due, new clients and programs that required care and feeding.  I was getting pretty stressed over how much was on my plate, and in my frustration, my brain took this detour.

The adage “Don’t confuse activity with results” came rushing at me, quickly followed by another thought…”Was my busy-ness actually impeding my results?” Could I be spinning so many plates that it was just a matter to time before one (or more!) would come crashing down?

Then I literally stopped still in the shower, razor in hand, and had a scarier thought…

“Is there a subtle form of self protection and denial that goes on when we put all those plates a-spinning?”  Could making ourselves too busy be a shield against the inevitable – and all too understandable – crash when something just has to fall? After all, won’t the world see and forgive a slip up from someone who is clearly attempting the superhuman?

The reality is when we set too many plates (projects, meetings, deadlines) spinning, we set ourselves up for failure.  A failure that might not feels like it’s our fault.  But it is.

By not consciously prioritizing and deciding which plates/projects to focus on, we loose control and almost certainly ensure that one of the really important ones will fall. By taking control and actively choosing what not to do, we gain both the time (and responsibility) to give our best creativity and ability to the deliverables we believe matter most.

And that’s where fear can creep in.  When we deliberately choose which projects and meetings and assignments to undertake, and execute to our best ability, then the results speak for themselves.  Choosing the right things to focus on and then executing well yields the positive result we desire.  Choosing the wrong things, or poorly executing does the opposite.  And then – Yikes! We have only ourselves to blame – and the mistakes are harder to fix.

But regardless of whether overcommitting ourselves is a subconscious act to avoid responsibility or simply an inability to say “no”, the result is the same:  Something is going to come crashing down.

I finished my shower with a resolution: I will take some plates (projects, plans, people) and set them down, rather than worrying anxiously how to keep any of them from falling.  I will own which plates I keep spinning, and hold myself accountable for the results.

What will you do?

From Good to Best - Tips for Improving Your Webinar

Assuming you’ve done the right things to get people to register and attend (that’s a topic for another day), here are 5 quick and vital tips (+ a bonus tip) for planning your next webinar:

1. It’s a radio show with visual aids more so than a live presentation.  In a live presentation your audience is sitting in front of you and while they may daydream or work on their Blackberries, the number of distractions is limited. Not so a webinar where your audience has far more opportunities to abandon you. That means your voice inflection and your visual aids are your hooks for keeping participants engaged instead of doing email.
2. Visuals: More images, less words.  Probably THE most important element of a meaningful webinar experience. What’s on the screen is your chance to grab their attention and focus that attention to what you are saying.  It’s a proven fact that people cannot read and listen effectively at the same time.  And, if you put words on the screen, they’ll read – rather than listen. And when they’re finished reading, they still won’t be listening. They won’t be engaged with you.  So use your screen to visually “suggest” your points, but don’t write them out.  It’s hard work to create visual props, but it’s worth it.
3. Tell stories. We are wired to learn by example.  We’re interested in things that happen to others and we automatically apply their experiences to ourselves.  By using stories, you can educate without pontificating.  As you’re planning your webinar, pick a short number of key messages and some examples to bring each point to life.  Simply.  Adding more facts or talking faster to “get it all in”, is a surefire way to loose your participants.
4. Intersperse interactivity: Ask survey questions. Have a contest to give away a goodie to whomever answers a question (about prior material) the fastest.  About every 6 minutes or so switch from focusing on your presentation material to attendee engagement.  People are naturally competitive.  Use that and it’ll pay off in both participation and retention of your key message points.  Did you know that GoToWebinar has a feature that tells you when participants move off your webinar’s browser window…a perfect indication that attention has wandered.  Use tools like that to guage when it’s time to stop talking and start interacting.
5. Don’t take your self so seriously! Adding some humor helps to lift your tone and can bring back the attention wanderers. Not a natural comedian?  Don’t force it. Find a funny picture to help make a point or a way to nicely poke fun at yourself.  However you do it, a bit of levity or self deprecation can win listeners and drive home your messages.

Those are my top 5 quick tips.

Now the bonus tip – not so quick – but definitely worth the extra effort:

Read this article:  The Seven Deadly Sins of Storytelling – based on the book The Dragonfly Effect by Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith.

Avoid these deadly sins and keep your webinars off of life support.

And for those interested in harnessing social media for more impactful marketing, go one step further and read the book. You’ll learn invaluable lessons that go well beyond webinars, showing you how to use social media to create social change and to better engage with clients, prospects and colleagues.

So what are your tips and tricks for effective webinars? Share your experiences and while I can’t send each of you a special prize – we’ll all be winners from our combined experience.

My friend Erin loves hats. She wears them often and she looks absolutely fabulous in them.

Recently, another friend and I were meeting Erin for brunch at a little French bakery/restaurant. Neither of us had been there, but as it happened, Erin had arrived at the restaurant before we did. As we got close we saw a woman sitting on the restaurant’s porch wearing a floppy-brimmed hat. Even before we were close enough to see the name of the restaurant or her face, we knew we’d found it – and Erin. The hat did it.

What does this have to do with your business? Actually, quite a bit.

A strong branding strategy well-executed can do for your business what floppy-brimmed hats do for Erin: make you instantly recognizable, express your personal style and set you apart from the crowd.

Step back for a minute and take a look at how you present your business to your prospects and customers. Do all of your communications mediums – building signage, ads, Web presence, e-mails, newsletters, product sheets, letterhead, promotional items, trade show booth, truck signage or whatever you use to let people know about your business — look like they came from the same company? Are they all different? Or do they fall somewhere in between?

It’s tempting to try to make everything you do new and different from what you did last week or last year. However, that can work against you when it comes to building a strong brand.

Consistency is at the heart of brand recognition. Remember, while you see your brand day after day, the people you are trying to reach don’t. In fact, it takes seeing it several times for a brand and image to begin to register with a prospect. When it comes to establishing and maintaining the integrity of your brand, some things simply need to stay the same: Your logo, its placement on a printed document, your spec sheet template, the banner on your website, your “boilerplate” on press materials, among others.

Think about the brands you recognize on sight: Coca Cola, McDonald’s, The Travelers Insurance, Apple, Nike come to my mind. What do they have in common? Every one of these brands has a logo that they use everywhere – and whatever else they do, that logo stays the same.

So, where’s your hat? And how does it look on you?

Every business needs a “hat” of its own…an identity unique and recognizable. And just as doing what your company does takes specialized knowledge, so, too, does establishing and maintaining your brand. This is an area where hiring experts like Marsden & Associates to review your branding and help develop consistency where it counts can pay dividends. Give us a call or drop us a line. We’d love to help you find the perfect hat.

I’ve been in the world of communications for quite awhile. Long enough at least, to remember when photos were shot on film, not digital media, and television, newspapers and weekly news and trade magazines were the fastest ways to deliver messages to your customers.

Not anymore.

Sure, these are still viable ways to communicate. But today’s buyers, business and consumer alike, are Web savvy. In fact, more than 70 percent begin their search for exactly what you sell online.

If your prospects aren’t finding you on the Web, or if what they find doesn’t represent you well, you’re losing opportunities – potentially your greatest number of leads – and sales. In the one-to-many equation, it doesn’t matter how good your salespeople are or how many of them you have. They simply cannot be where all your prospects are at the moment they decide to begin their research. But your on-line presence can.

Like most busy business owners, you know that you need a presence on the Web. So, you’ve invested in a website. But when’s the last time you, or anyone in your company, evaluated its effectiveness as a lead generation tool?? Your focus is on building your business, not your website. And, in the words of Hamlet, “There’s the rub.”

Even with the best of intentions, the time you or your staff has to devote to your website is limited. Keeping it updated and fresh and figuring out how to optimize it for search engines requires specialized knowledge and perhaps more importantly, time. Your website stagnates and becomes less and less effective. And your potential prospects end up as someone else’s customers.

Web marketing is an area where outsourcing makes perfect sense. Marketing firms that provide on-line marketing services, from the designers and programmers to social media and advertising specialists, have expert knowledge that can help you maximize the value of your web presence. They are every bit as focused on their business – making your web presence work effectively for you – as you are on what you do.

And notice that I didn’t say your website, but your web presence. Your website is of course the cornerstone, but there are many other places that your company should be represented on-line. Depending on your business, it could be on-line directories, Facebook, LinkedIn, FohBoh… and the list goes on. Your on-line marketing provider can help create and manage the action plan to keep your on-line presence funneling prospective clients to your door.

You may think that you can’t afford to spend money on marketing. But, as the saying goes “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.” If you’re spending money on salespeople, Yellow Pages, or any other form of advertising, but your on-line presence is weak, then you’re wasting money. And the good news is that it doesn’t cost a ton to get quality on-line marketing support these days.

Think about it – every hour you devote to building and maintaining a Web presence is an hour diverted from your business. Why not reclaim those hours by outsourcing design, content and maintenance of these vital marketing tools? The net ROI will be well worth it.

And just in case you were wondering, Marsden & Associates has the talent, tools and resources needed to build and manage your on-line marketing program. For over 8 years they’ve been delivering websites and on-line lead generation programs for companies large and small. I’m delighted to now be a part of the team.

We are thrilled to have new clients, new fun projects, and new additions to Marsden’s Associates. I’d like to introduce you to Ann Strople, our newest member of the team – though no newbie to marketing. Ann brings a strong background in building brands, crafting communications and developing on-line marketing presence for companies both large and small. For Marsden & Associates, Ann is focused on helping our clients hone their message and ensure it is hitting the mark in both on-line and traditional channels.

We’re already excited about Ann’s contributions to our clients’ marketing initiatives. Now we’re also looking forward to what she has to contribute to our blog. Please give her a warm welcome – and don’t hesitate to sing out if her message strikes a chord. (Yeah, I know that got a bit cheesy, but musicals always do that to me….)

Have you ever been to a restaurant, starving, you’ve already made up your mind what you want, way before you reach the table. In one quick breath you rattle off your order “I’ll have the steak with loaded mashed potatoes and green beans”.  As soon as the words leave your mouth your stomach growls with approval and anticipation. Fifteen minutes later, you spot the waiter walking toward your table, holding a tray of steaming hot plates. Your mouth waters, and you slide your glass of wine to the side to make room, you can almost taste that steak! The waiter stops at your table and plops down a delicious plate of sautéed salmon and steamed vegetables?  *record scratch*. “

Ummmm….I didin’t order this.” You politely say to the waiter. For a half second you almost tell him to leave the plate, you’re hungry and you do like salmon. But you ordered the steak, you send it back. That’s kinda how I feel about “cold” emails.

I’ll be honest; I have a steak/salmon (love/hate) relationship with cold emails. I love them, because they usually have some information that I could probably use. On the other hand, I hate them because well-I didn’t order (subscribe) to them. I have enough emails in my inbox, which I asked for, and sometimes I don’t even get a chance to read them. Yeah you may have awesome info but chances are I’m going to send it back (unsubscribe).

My advice for sending emails…I’m undecided. Send? Don’t send? It’s a toss up for me. If you decide to send, follow these simple guidelines:

• Tailor your cold emails to be more appealing to the recipients…if you obtained email addresses from a partner/vendor, shape your email message to appeal to that vendor’s buyers.
• In a B2B world, go straight to the value add –what information/education/assistance are you providing?
• Don’t ask them to answer questions (bogus survey), don’t try to sell – provide some truly valuable info/insight/research.  Earn their trust and they may give you the chance to talk to them again (by not unsubscribing, or worse, reporting you as spam.)
• Give them something free. You want them to actually subscribe to your emails right?

Don’t be discouraged; If your cold emails aren’t being read, just find another way to get your message across. Be creative. Just remember, no matter how good your salmon (cold email) looks, I ordered the steak and that’s (usually) what I want!

I’d like to introduce you to a new voice on Perceptions. Please welcome Erica Williams. Erica has joined Marsden & Associates to bring her talent, wit and marketing passion to our clients’ marketing communications needs. From time to time, she’ll share her views and suggestions here. We hope you’ll enjoy and add your thoughts to our conversations.  Anne Marsden

When E-mail Sucks
Are you unintentionally sending out e-mail that sucks?

I live with a BlackBerry and receive about 150 e-mails a day, every day. If a few minutes go by without an alert, I reboot, figuring there’s a ‘system’ problem somewhere. And I do read most of them… except the ones that suck. More on that shortly.

In my first job out of college, I was a marketing assistant for a global medical products company. One of my key duties was to create and implement e-mail campaigns. My first attempt was lackluster, but after falling and picking myself up a few times, I learned what wasn’t working and why:

1. Make the subject line compelling. If all I see is a one-line display on my mobile device, it better speak to me – not you, not your product – me. Think about it, craft it, and make it six words or less.

2. Don’t bury the key message at the bottom. Don’t frontload your note with background, especially if you expect me to take action on something. If it’s that involved, add an attachment and give me a ‘heads-up’ in the subject line.

3. Keep it short. We’ve all got too much electronic information to sift through. If it’s longer than a few sentences, call me… and keep the voice mail short, too.

4. Mail early in the day. This is one thing those of us of a certain age have learned from snail mail. Let’s see a show of hands: Who doesn’t check e-mail first thing in the morning, even before coffee? Right out of bed, I’m used to scanning for the ‘real’ mail and quickly dumping the trash. Email campaigns and/or email blasts will have a greater chance of surviving the delete button if you send them between the hours of 4-6am.

5. Cut out the fancy fonts. Some of your recipients may not have fancy fonts available on their viewing device. Stick to what works. Try classics like Times New Roman, Franklin Gothic or Arial

LET’S ALL DO BETTER. There’s enough sludge in the info pipeline, so let’s do our best to not add to it. Fit your communication to the medium. Twitter’s done this best with its 140-character limit. Why not set one for e-mail? I like 100 words. That’s about 500 characters, 7 sentences, or two paragraphs.

What do you think makes a good – or suck-y – email??

I have somehow gotten the bee bug. OK, sure, I  love honey, nature, gardening, and am always open to adventure… but mothering 6000+ bees in hopes of producing a few pounds of honey is still a strangely random interest.

And strange it is. Beekeepers are as varied and vocal a community as Harley Davidson riders …with some decidedly different expletives.

Living in the internet age, I felt fairly confident that I could learn, rapidly and relatively easily, from the avid bee keepers around me. I went to beekeeping school, I found and follow blogs on the topic, I joined a local beekeeping association for those (fool)hardy enough to try to keep bees in an inner city. I ordered my 2 NUC’s (a nucleus of a bee hive each holding ~3000 bees, a queen, and the basic start to a bee colony).

But now – where do I put them? What type and size hive? What about the placement? Do I feed them to help them get established?  Or as many beekeeping hobbyist say “Let them bee”?

I”M SO CONFUSED!!!

So afraid of doing the wrong thing! Of wasting time and money and worse still – killing a whole bunch of bees because I don’t’ know any better…

And that’s when it hit me – like any inexperienced, under-informed, over-achiever that wants to do the right thing – I’m going to latch on to whomever makes me feel the safest – the least scared – through this journey.

The website that talks to me the best – that offers comfort and a sense of “You can do it!” is the one that I’m going to listen to and the one from whom I will either buy – or will go wherever, and buy whatever they recommend.

I knew it the minute I was placing orders for a boat load of equipment – from a site that I knew next to nothing about – except that a beekeeper with an “Authentic Voice” said “Here’s what I did, here’s what I learned, and here’s what I recommend.”   Good enough.  Granted, this isn’t a multi-million dollar investment that my career is balanced upon.  But the emotional angst is still the same.

So – if you are a company that understands that your potential buyers (including B2B buyers) start their education and buying process on-line.  If you want to get to them while they are finding their way…when they have a desire – a need -  then you need to remember that they learn, and they make buying decisions with their hearts with as much, if not more than, their heads.

Which means you need to be the Authentic Voice they hear.  The voice that says, “I went through this.  I was scared. I learned.  And I found this approach worked best.”

Then you won’t be a voice in the wilderness.  You won’t be the voice preaching to the choir. You will be the voice building new colonies.

Bee Happy and Prosper.