6. Build and Nurture leads

Posted on January 16, 2012 by atul

Now that you have built a community following with the content that you have generated (& propagated), it’s time to nurture relationships with these people. To consume your content, your prospects would have parted with their contact details that now form part of your DB at the website (through your lead capture mechanisms)

Though they are keen to hear from you, they are not yet ready to do business with you. You need to build more trust and credibility before they are ready to do business with you.

It is necessary to have a proper lead nurture program in place, so that you are touching base with these prospects on a regular basis.

1. Cross-promote content - Now that they have consumed one form of content, they might be receptive to receive other similar content from you. It might make sense to make this available to them periodically. More in our free ebook The art of re-purposing and cross-promotions

2. Campaigns and offers - It is nice to test readiness, once in a while. If you launch any special promotions, offers, it is good to inform your prospects. If they are ready to engage, they will take the offer and connect with you

3. Newsletter campaigns – Offer them content in line with their requirements. A monthly newsletter is a good way to stay in touch and ‘on-mind’

4. Track conversions closely – Track behavior of these prospects to the different initiatives that you plan. If there are consistent positives, then it is time to move the prospect from the lead nurture pipeline to the active chase pipeline.  More info on Analyzing and tracking campaigns efficiently in our free ebook

A Summary of this series of blogs

1. So Marketing has changed!  Time to stop complaining & leverage the change – 5 easy steps – This is where we summarize what has changed in marketing and how you can systematically plan to leverage the change.

2. Invest in content marketing to build thought leadership and a strong following – Content marketing is like any other project. Plan it well and create fantastic content that can then be leveraged in different campaigns that you plan to run.

3. Expand your social networks, Listen, contribute, participate – Social networks offer you a great potential to manage viral marketing. It also offers you the capability of reaching a larger (& right) target audience very efficiently.

4. Publish content, be useful to your target audience – Having created content, make sure that you propagate it well across your various channels. Re-purpose content, cross-promote and analyze your efforts regularly

5. Measure, Analyze, Track and take decisions – No matter which channel you use to propagate your content, measure, analyze and track to take meaningful decisions. If thing are not working, change them in real time

6. Build and nurture leads – Nurture relationships with potential prospects till they are ready to do business with you.

Best,

Atul Dhakappa

Twitter – @xeniaconsulting | Web- www.xenia-consulting.com

Posted in Articles, Blogs, Campaigns, Email Campaigns, Landing pages, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Leads, Marketing Operations, Thought Leadership Content, Website Marketing, White Papers | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

5. Measure, Analyze, Track and take decisions

Posted on January 16, 2012 by atul

We are in the age of measurable marketing. You can use various  mechanisms to propagate your content like email marketing, Online PR & Article submission, blog propagation, systematic back-link building strategy, PPC campaigns. For each, there will be various mechanisms available to analyze and track operations. Also track your website rankings and search engine friendliness. It pays to be on the first page for identified search phrases. This can be achieved through systematic on-page and off-page SEO. Download our free guide on Some simple SEO tips to better your website rankings

Analyze your campaigns

1. Website – Tools like Google Analytics can provide you page visits, bounce rates, content visited, source of visits and so on.  You can also use Google’s URL builder to track efficacy of specific campaigns.

2. Email marketing programs – With EDM tools like mailchimp or constant contact ot simple desktop tools like sendblaster it is possible to understand what mails got delivered, bounced and also details of who opened your emails, and the click-throughs. These details help in scheduling the next level of campaigns to the target audience or engaging with them at a more personal level.

3. Blogs – With a variety of widgets and plug-ins available, it is possible to track various parameters related to a blog. Simple short URL tools like Bit.ly or goo.gl can be used to track visits to specific pages created. Blog subscribers and the comments that your blog receives also will provide you a lot of insights into how your blog is being received by your target audience.

4. Social Media – you can directly measure the growth in your social tribe.  Twitter followers, Facebook likes, Linked IN contacts will speak volumes. Also getting recognized as a major contributor on specific groups and for different business categories will help build your brand presence.

For a more detailed walk-through, you can download our free ebook on Analyzing your marketing campaigns effectively

A Summary of this series of blogs

1. So Marketing has changed!  Time to stop complaining & leverage the change – 5 easy steps – This is where we summarize what has changed in marketing and how you can systematically plan to leverage the change.

2. Invest in content marketing to build thought leadership and a strong following – Content marketing is like any other project. Plan it well and create fantastic content that can then be leveraged in different campaigns that you plan to run

3. Expand your social networks, Listen, contribute, participate – Social networks offer you a great potential to manage viral marketing. It also offers you the capability of reaching a larger (& right) target audience very efficiently.

4. Publish content, be useful to your target audience – Having created content, make sure that you propagate it well across your various channels. Re-purpose content, cross-promote and analyze your efforts regularly

5. Measure, Analyze, Track and take decisions – No matter which channel you use to propagate your content, measure, analyze and track to take meaningful decisions. If thing are not working, change them in real time

6. Build and nurture leads – Nurture relationships with potential prospects till they are ready to do business with you.

Best,

Atul Dhakappa

Twitter – @xeniaconsulting | Web- www.xenia-consulting.com

Posted in Campaigns, Content Services, Demand Generation, Email Campaigns, Landing pages, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Marketing Content, Marketing Operations, Uncategorized, Website Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

4. Publish content, be useful to your target audience

Posted on January 16, 2012 by atul

You have spent time & energy creating a content dashboard to support your demand generation plan and to create thought leadership through strategic marketing content. Now is the time to execute this strategy

Publish contentYour content may be great, but people need to know about it. You need to make enough noise about the content that you have generated. This can be done  through different mechanisms that include social networks, email campaigns to opt-in subscribers, PPC campaigns, Online PR and Article submissions and the type. Apart from direct propagation, also make sure that your website ranks higher on organic SEO. Download our free guide on Some simple SEO tips to better your website rankings

While you propagate content, make sure that you engage the target customer.

1. Put an abstract in place for your content, so that people can decide for themselves if it is worth spending their time on it

2. Promote multiple times on social networks. Social shares are on listening mode, so you may not be able to catch attention of your target audience with just one share. Engage with Group users with intelligent questions, debates and then plant your content in there.

3. Cross promote content. If users have liked one form of content, they are highly likely to consume other forms of content from you as well. Getting an altogether new customer for a new piece of content may be far difficult. Also read our free ebook on The art of re-purposing and cross promotions

4. Make sure that you have lead capture and marketing automation infrastructure available at your website. Make sure that the visits to your website count and your contact DB spirals upwards.

5. Analyze results from your propagation regularly.  You can track a variety of parameters using tools like Google Analytics . Download our free ebook on Analyzing your marketing campaigns effectively

5. Be thankful to your contributors/ people who are making suggestions to help your content plan succeed. You can do this by mentioning them in your content as credits or refer their links in the references section. Following simple rules will help you expand your social networks pretty quickly. Download our free ebook on Expanding your social networks

A Summary of this series of blogs

1. So Marketing has changed!  Time to stop complaining & leverage the change – 5 easy steps – This is where we summarize what has changed in marketing and how you can systematically plan to leverage the change.

2. Invest in content marketing to build thought leadership and a strong following – Content marketing is like any other project. Plan it well and create fantastic content that can then be leveraged in different campaigns that you plan to run

3. Expand your social networks, Listen, contribute, participate – Social networks offer you a great potential to manage viral marketing. It also offers you the capability of reaching a larger (& right) target audience very efficiently.

4. Publish content, be useful to your target audience – Having created content, make sure that you propagate it well across your various channels. Re-purpose content, cross-promote and analyze your efforts regularly

5. Measure, Analyze, Track and take decisions – No matter which channel you use to propagate your content, measure, analyze and track to take meaningful decisions. If thing are not working, change them in real time

6. Build and nurture leads – Nurture relationships with potential prospects till they are ready to do business with you.

Best,

Atul Dhakappa

Twitter – @xeniaconsulting | Web- www.xenia-consulting.com

Posted in Demand Generation, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Marketing Content | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

3. Expand your social networks, Listen, contribute, participate

Posted on January 16, 2012 by atul

Traditional broadcast or push based marketing is on a downward spiral and is making way for community or social marketing.  Companies now prefer investing more time in building Social Networkscredibility and trust among their target customer base by operating within the community rather than outside it.

There are a variety of social networks that people and communities use. These could range from tools like Facebook for sharing with friends, colleagues, Linked IN for professional networking, Twitter for mico-blogging and various other tools.

The number of twitter followers or facebook likes or Linked IN contacts that you have determine your direct reach. Here are some simple ‘karmas’ that you can resort to in order to increase your social media tribe. These channels that you set up, when built well can be the conduit for making your content available across a large number of people in your target community.

More info about this in our ebook – Expanding your social networks . You can plan to propagate a lot of the content that you generate like white papers, ebooks, blogs, articles, PR via your social networks. Also understand how you plan for a content dashboard

1. Twitter ‘karmas’

- Play by the rules, do not spam or try to contact people directly with marketing messages

- Retweet good and relevant content that you feel is useful to your followers and target community

- Thank people for following you and for Retweeting your tweets. You are dealing with real people here, Be polite and gentle

- Use hash tags effectively, where appropriate

2. Blog Karmas

- Follow blogs of thought leaders in your field. Make comments, contribute and reach out to these thought leaders to build backlinks to your site

- Blog regularly about topics that will be of interest to your target market community

3. Linked IN ‘karmas’

- Participate in groups, where you feel your target market resides and where you can make a valuable contribution and help others. Increase your Linked IN connections, build trust and confidence

- Use the status updates option intelligently to attract attention of your contacts to content that you propagate. Do not always resort to self-promotion. This ensures that you are topical and are not just a sales maniac. Comment/ voice your opinion on topics that matter to you and your audience.

- Participate in Linked IN Q&A, make sure that your experience counts.

A Summary of this series of blogs

1. So Marketing has changed!  Time to stop complaining & leverage the change – 5 easy steps – This is where we summarize what has changed in marketing and how you can systematically plan to leverage the change.

2. Invest in content marketing to build thought leadership and a strong following – Content marketing is like any other project. Plan it well and create fantastic content that can then be leveraged in different campaigns that you plan to run

3. Expand your social networks, Listen, contribute, participate – Social networks offer you a great potential to manage viral marketing. It also offers you the capability of reaching a larger (& right) target audience very efficiently.

4. Publish content, be useful to your target audience – Having created content, make sure that you propagate it well across your various channels. Re-purpose content, cross-promote and analyze your efforts regularly

5. Measure, Analyze, Track and take decisions – No matter which channel you use to propagate your content, measure, analyze and track to take meaningful decisions. If thing are not working, change them in real time

6. Build and nurture leads – Nurture relationships with potential prospects till they are ready to do business with you.

Best,

Atul Dhakappa

Twitter – @xeniaconsulting | Web- www.xenia-consulting.com

Posted in Articles, Blogs, Business Development, Campaigns, Content Services, Email Campaigns, Marketing Collateral, Marketing Content, Marketing Infrastructure, Marketing Operations, Sales Enablement, Thought Leadership Content, White Papers | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

2. Invest in content marketing to build thought leadership and a strong following

Posted on January 16, 2012 by atul

Traditionally, sellers have been looking for buyers and so the focus has always been on push based marketing efforts. These include things like mass mailing campaigns, participating in trade-shows, advertising and the type. Besides being very expensive, this traditional approach is losing its sting. Thought leadership content

Companies worldwide are investing in strategic marketing content to actively influence the customer buying process and create a thought leadership position. Marketing your services via the content you create gives you the opportunity to help prospects rather than over-sell to them.

To get your content marketing strategy right, you need to focus on a few basics

1.  Content should be aligned with the positioning and overall marketing strategy. Conducting a messaging workshop usually helps in arriving at a messaging strategy for your business. Read our free ebook on Conducting a messaging workshop

2. A content dashboard needs to be properly planned. What content will be published by whom and in what form. How will it be used in the marketing plan. Read our free ebook on Planning for a content dashboard

3. Content needs to be managed like any other project. You need a specialized team to take care of your content requirements. Read our free ebook on Content project – Getting together a dream team

4. Content can and should be re-purposed to form new exciting forms of content (after all, every content piece has a limited life). Read our free ebook on The art of re-purposing and cross-promotions

5. Leverage content to generate community following and leads - don’t just create content, propagate it in channels, where your target customer resides, make it available and track interested cases. Use marketing automation, analytics and tracking  well . Read our free ebooks on Expanding your social networks & Analyzing your marketing campaigns effectively

6. Generate thought leadership with content – If the content provided through your website continually provides consumers and clients with intelligent insights, then your company has an opportunity to be perceived as a thought leader in the industry.

Content can manifest itself in many forms. Ideally it should be in a form that is easy to consume by your target audience. At the very basic level, it is web page content, landing pages, CTA definitions. At a strategic level, organizations are increasingly using tools like white papers, e-books, blogs, webinars,  to engage with target customers and manage lead generation .

A Summary of this series of blogs

1. So Marketing has changed!  Time to stop complaining & leverage the change – 5 easy steps – This is where we summarize what has changed in marketing and how you can systematically plan to leverage the change.

2. Invest in content marketing to build thought leadership and a strong following – Content marketing is like any other project. Plan it well and create fantastic content that can then be leveraged in different campaigns that you plan to run

3. Expand your social networks, Listen, contribute, participate – Social networks offer you a great potential to manage viral marketing. It also offers you the capability of reaching a larger (& right) target audience very efficiently.

4. Publish content, be useful to your target audience – Having created content, make sure that you propagate it well across your various channels. Re-purpose content, cross-promote and analyze your efforts regularly

5. Measure, Analyze, Track and take decisions – No matter which channel you use to propagate your content, measure, analyze and track to take meaningful decisions. If thing are not working, change them in real time

6. Build and nurture leads – Nurture relationships with potential prospects till they are ready to do business with you.

Best,

Atul Dhakappa

Twitter – @xeniaconsulting | Web- www.xenia-consulting.com

Posted in Articles, Blogs, Business Development, Campaigns, Content Services, Demand Generation, Email Campaigns, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Marketing Collateral, Marketing Content, Thought Leadership Content, Uncategorized, White Papers | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

1. So Marketing has changed! Time to stop complaining & leverage the change – 5 easy steps

Posted on January 16, 2012 by atul

If you are a new-age marketer, you are already aware of the changed marketing landscape. Leveraging the change in marketing servicesIf  you have been doing it for a few years and are trying to grope with the change, here is a quick summary of what has changed in marketing services and what you can do to leverage the change.

Here are a few things that are making several of the old-school things that are taught at B-schools irrelevant.

1. Change in the customer buying process

Customers are no longer interested in ‘knowing more about you’. Their only interest is to explore what you can do to alleviate their pain. While this has always been true, they are now increasingly taking control of their buying process. The result of this is that your sales efforts do not yield the results unless it helps the customer’s buying process.  Companies worldwide are investing in strategic marketing content (via professional writing services) to influence the customer buying process. Marketing your services via the content you create gives you the opportunity to help prospects rather than over-sell to them. More info about this in ‘Invest in content marketing to build thought leadership and a strong following‘ or our free ebooks like Planning for a content dashboard or Content project – Getting together a dream team

2. Social phenomenon is here to stay – Traditional marketers operate outside the community and try to make noises that will grab the attention of the community. With the social media and community based forums, it has become far easier to mingle with the community, as a part of the community, rather than as an outsider. How can you then leverage this changed dynamics and use this for the benefit of your product/services. There are several ways organizations and individuals can spend time in expanding and nurturing their social networks. More info about this in ‘Expand your social networks, Listen, contribute, participate‘ or our free ebook Expanding your social networks

3. Managing quality and quantity of leads is getting to be a challenge – Every company has stiff growth targets. To meet these, you look to your marketing teams to deliver a stream of warm leads. With most customers having strong blocking mechanisms (to reach them), generating these quantity of quality leads by using traditional marketing mechanisms is getting to be a challenge.  Building and nurturing a community of leads through the content that you generate seems to be the answer. More about this in Publish Content & Nurture your leads

4. Marketing is more measurable - For years together,  CMO’s  and marketing teams have executed a series of marketing programs without being able to track the important parameters that define the success of the program. This implies that there was no clear idea of which ones made sense and which ones did not.  With the advent of measurable marketing, all of this has changed for the better.  It is now possible to measure, analyze, track and take decisions on ready and available data. More about this in  Measure, Analyze, Track and take decisions or in our ebook Analyzing your campaigns effectively

5. Technology is within reach – Too often, not having the right technology expertise used to create barriers in implementation for most marketers. Nowadays with most of the technology platforms freely available and easily configurable, you hardly need to know any programming to leverage the power of technology to aid your B2B marketing efforts.

A Summary of this series of blogs

1. So Marketing has changed!  Time to stop complaining & leverage the change – 5 easy steps – This is where we summarize what has changed in marketing and how you can systematically plan to leverage the change.

2. Invest in content marketing to build thought leadership and a strong following – Content marketing is like any other project. Plan it well and create fantastic content that can then be leveraged in different campaigns that you plan to run

3. Expand your social networks, Listen, contribute, participate – Social networks offer you a great potential to manage viral marketing. It also offers you the capability of reaching a larger (& right) target audience very efficiently.

4. Publish content, be useful to your target audience – Having created content, make sure that you propagate it well across your various channels. Re-purpose content, cross-promote and analyze your efforts regularly

5. Measure, Analyze, Track and take decisions – No matter which channel you use to propagate your content, measure, analyze and track to take meaningful decisions. If thing are not working, change them in real time

6. Build and nurture leads – Nurture relationships with potential prospects till they are ready to do business with you.

Best,

Atul Dhakappa

Twitter – @xeniaconsulting | Web- www.xenia-consulting.com

Posted in Campaigns, Demand Generation, Lead Generation, Marketing Content, Marketing Operations, Thought Leadership Content, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

How do you get thought leadership content to drive more leads & sales?

Posted on December 12, 2011 by atul

Thought leadership is radically different from traditional top-down leadership. It has nothing to do with climbing a hierarchy. Whenever you advocate a new idea to your colleagues or boss, you show thought leadership. You can expand the same discussion to your products & services. If you demonstrate to your customers an innovative way of doing things and solving a business problem, it is thought leadership!

Thought leadership Content to drive leads and salesTo be a thought leader, you need to immerse yourself in your professional domain and search for new things to that add value to your customer’s business. Thought leadership through use of strategic content is being increasingly used nowadays. Strategic content is taking many forms, some of the popular ones being white papers, e-books, Articles, Blogs, Webinars etc.

Here’s how thought leadership via strategic content helps you directly in generating more leads and thereby more sales.

1) Helps you position your capabilities the way you want to project it

Strategic content helps in creating thought leadership position and allows you to create a unique space for yourself, a space that you choose to occupy. You also get a chance to do all of this without really getting into a sales pitch.

2) Forces buyers to look at various dimensions before making a purchase

By providing an unbiased opinion and an analysis of various dimensions related to the product, you force the buyer to look at various aspects related to the decision before he makes the purchase. More likely than not, you end up highlighting the areas, where your product is strong and tilt the scales in your favour.

3) It creates a lasting impression

People who are impressed by your thoughts and opinions are more likely to consider you more seriously, when they need to make a purchase decision.

4) It has huge referral and residual value

Thought leadership helps in bringing a significant referral value, residual value and helps in viral and community based marketing.

What initiatives are you taking to build thought leadership?

We would like to hear from you and get your opinion. If you liked this, do comment back and provide suggestions.

Best Regards,

Regards,

Atul Dhakappa

Twitter – @xeniaconsulting | Web- www.xenia-consulting.com

Posted in Articles, Blogs, Lead Generation, Leads, Thought Leadership Content, White Papers | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

4 reasons why the brochure does not work anymore and what you should do

Posted on November 21, 2011 by atul

I was recently into a client engagement for over 4 months, during which we created brochures, case studies that the client could use at his website and in their communication with prospective customers. My thoughts, which btw I communicated to the client as well were – Brochure and case studies are important elements of messaging but they are increasingly diminishing in importance. These were important tools during the time of broadcast marketing, but the world is changing rapidly.

marketing content

Brochure no longer as relevant

The buying process has undergone a sea change and in today’s times, more often, the seller finds the buyer instead of the buyer finding the seller (which was the common case earlier in broadcast marketing days)

If the buying process has changed, then how can the marketing be done in the same old way?

Here are reasons why Brochures have lost their edge in recent times in generating sales

1) Brochure is an important part of a push marketing strategy and if push marketing has started taking a back-seat, so has the role of the brochure

2) In a sales prospect discussion, customer is more interested in solving his problems rather than look at what you have to offer. The tone of a brochure is typically what your products/services can do/offer. This diminishes the importance of the brochure in the discussion

3) Brochure as a handout at the end of a sales meeting used to work very effectively earlier, but with information overload the customer site, there is little chance that the customer will go through the brochure, even if he appreciates you leaving it behind for him

4) Community based marketing initiatives are increasingly gaining importance. Brochure talks to the community as an outsider and does not build a lot of credibility, cross-referencing.

Here’s what you should consider doing

1)By all means, invest in a brochure/case study, but have it as just another asset. Do not over-emphasize on it

2) Invest in mechanisms to build credibility and referencing with clients. Organizations today invest in blogs, articles, PR, white papers, e-books, videos and other viral and community based mechanisms to gain customer attention.

3) Build automation and marketing infrastructure at the website, so as to capture transactions happening at the website, to support the different campaigns that you run.

Regards,

Atul Dhakappa

Twitter – @xeniaconsulting | Web- www.xenia-consulting.com

Posted in Articles, Blogs, Case Studies, Demand Generation, Marketing Collateral, Marketing Content, White Papers | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

5 simple ways to use content marketing in your demand gen programs

Posted on September 30, 2011 by atul

Content marketing is about writing quality engaging content to promote your products/ services to key influencers and decision makers. Marketing your services via the content you create gives you the opportunity to help prospects rather than overtly sell to them

Step 1 – Generate Content

Content can be generated in multiple forms. Based on the objective it is expected to accomplish, the tone and the language can be accordingly adjusted. Some of the common forms, which content takes include:

  • White paper
  • Blog
  • Webinar
  • Article posting
  • Press Release

Step 2 – Propagate Content

Having generated the content, make sure that you get it across to your intended target audience. Generating content and making no noise about it does not make any sense. At this stage, it is also important to create a mechanism to track conversions. Some of the common mechanisms, that you can use to propagate content include:

  • Email Newsletters/ Campaigns
  • Webcasts
  • Social media share
  • Banner ads at affiliate/partner sites
  • SEM campaigns

Step 3 – Track conversions

While you propagate the content, you need to have mechanisms in place to track conversions. These include things like design of separate landing pages at your website, innovative CTA (Call to Action), database columns to capture registrations etc.

At an elementary level, it is possible to do this manually, however, do invest in a little bit of automation, so that it does not become an overhead to keep doing this for every campaign that you run.

Step 4 –Initiate customer touch points

Whie internet marketing is great; no large deal is ever closed without personal touch. Make sure that you engage with a qualified prospect. This could be over the phone, through personal meeting. Make sure that you equip your inside sales or the sales teams with the right knowledge about the prospect, based on his past interactions with your website. Knowledge of what the prospect is interested in can help a lot in focusing on the right areas during a sales interaction.

Step 5 – Analyze and improve

Based on the campaigns that you run and the metrics that you generate for it, analyze what is working and what is not. Define improvement areas and include the corrections in the campaigns that you plan to launch.

There is no universal ‘great’ campaign. It is highly contextual and there is always scope for improvement.

Regards,

Atul

Twitter - @xeniaconsulting

Web- www.xenia-consulting.com

Posted in Articles, Blogs, Business Development, CTA, Campaigns, Content Services, Demand Generation, Email Campaigns, Landing pages, Lead Generation, Lead Nurturing, Marketing Content, Sales Enablement, Thought Leadership Content, White Papers | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Ways to quickly get your integrated collateral strategy rolling

Posted on September 28, 2011 by atul

When you promote your products/services, you use a judicious mix of different channels. It is important that across all your channels, you are propagating along unified messaging themes.  You cannot risk diluting your value by talking about different things at different times. After all a brand can only be built by consistent, repetitive and unified messaging.

This brings into perspective the value of having integrated marketing collateral. Irrespective of whether you are using web content, brochures, case studies, white papers, webinars or direct sales presentations to engage with your prospects, all of these need to be talking along the lines of your finalized messaging theme.

integrated marketing

integrated marketing across different channels

How do you go about planning the integrated collateral strategy then?  Here are a few suggestions of how you can get your collateral strategy rolling?

1) Decide on messaging : Based on your unique offerings, a competitive study, understand the position that you want to occupy with your target market. Do this through a thorough messaging workshop and arrive at the primary and secondary messaging themes relevant for your product/services

2) Review marketing strategy – Have a detailed look at your planned marketing strategy to understand how you plan to engage with your prospects and customers. This will many times also provide you with a fair idea of how you need to provide support in different kinds of engagement

3) Identify different forms, that your collateral will take - Based on 2) above, identify different kinds of collateral and the forms in which you will need them. For e.g. if the means of engagement is primarily through the web, then digital copies might be a good idea, else you may also need to plan for physical copies. Even within digital copies, you can find out what form is most presentable. Is it a PDF document, flash files, video,presentations ?

4) Plan structures for these different forms – Define structures for different kinds of collateral keeping in mind the primary and secondary messaging levers. Even if you need some form of collateral at a later date, make sure that you have planned for the same. This will make sure that you have unified messaging across different forms of collateral

5) Roll-out and do independent audits – Roll out collateral and do independent audits with customers as well as your sales teams. You may have designed it to communicate in a certain way, but is it helping achieve that objective for you? It is always good to do a dip-stick on the efficacy of your collateral, so that you can make the adjustments, before you plan for mass distribution.

I hope this is useful for you in planning better. Let me know your thoughts and suggestions. will appreciate feedback.

Regards,

Atul

Twitter – @xeniaconsulting

Web- www.xenia-consulting.com

Posted in Campaigns, Case Studies, Content Services, Marketing Collateral, Marketing Content, Marketing Operations, Messaging, Sales Enablement, Thought Leadership Content, Website Marketing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment