Entries Tagged 'marketing' ↓

Just when you think you’ve sussed all the social media platforms and latest marketing gadgets and gizmos, something else comes along.

Today I want to take a look at Periscope.

According to their website, Periscope was inspired because they “…wanted to build the closest thing to teleportation.”

That’s big.

But in real terms, Periscope offers you a way of exploring the real world through someone else’s eyes. It is an app that lets you share and watch live video broadcasts from your mobile phone.

OK, that’s pretty cool, but is it something you can use within your marketing strategy?

Let’s take a look at a few possibilities.

Peek behind the scenes

Because the shared video is live, it brings with it unpredictability and spontaneity.

As such, it’s a great way to show the personality behind your brand, helping your audience build an emotional connection to your business.

Live training

Forget recorded webinars and the such like, how about using Periscope for live training sessions and demos?

Customer support

How many times has a customer turned to you for advice?

You spend ages crafting a lengthy email trying to instruct them in how to carry out a procedure.

Wouldn’t it be easy to live stream your explanation instead?

Giveaways

Competitions and giveaways are always a great way to boost audience engagement. The live nature of Periscope will help create a real buzz, but don’t over do it. Once in a while is enough.

Share events quickly

Twitter has already made the spreading of news and world events spontaneous, now Periscope can take it to a new level. Live video of events around the world will definitely set you apart from the competition.

Admittedly, Periscope isn’t going to for every business, but if you can see some value in live video streaming why not give it a try?

If you’re already using it, how’s it going down with your customers?

How have you used it to engage with them?

Share your ideas and experiences by leaving a comment below.

This blog first appeared on our parent blog, Briar Copywriting Ltd, but we also wanted to share it with you here. 

 

Marketing – you can’t run a business without it.

Whether you’re a social media fanatic, blogging hero, content writer extraordinaire, or a wizard at email marketing there’s one thing you must do in order to get your customers to buy.

Finding out what interests your customers is vital if you want them to take notice of the constant stream of messages you’re putting out.

So what is it?

What is the mystery thing that all your customers want to know about?

What is it that really interests them?

The answer is simple; the answer is they’re interested in themselves.

That’s right – they don’t care about your business, where your premises are, whether you’re the market leader (everyone says that), or a great innovator (yawn), all they want to know is how you are going to help them.

How selfish!

You’ve spent years building up your business. You’ve weathered economic downturns, fluctuations in your market place and umpteen rows at home because of the number of hours you spend at the office and your customers don’t care.

But then again, why should they?

None of that’s going to help them, is it?

The only way they’re going to spend their hard earned cash with you is if you can convince them that their lives will be greatly improved by your product or service.

It’s the exact same reason why you buy things and yet it’s easy to forget that when you’re putting your own marketing materials together.

Forget about your business

When crafting your message, put yourself and your business to the back of your mind.

Every thought you have must centre on your customer.

• Who are they?
• What problem do they have?
• How can you help them?
• What can you offer them that will solve their problem?

There’s no room for a tempting “we’re the best at what we do” spiel.

The cold hard fact about marketing is that there’s no room for your ego. The only thing that matters is what you can do for your customer. Keep everything you write focused on them and you’ll see your sales increase.

Author – Sally Ormond, Briar Copywriting Ltd

The tone of voice you use in your marking communications is important.

It gives your reader a sense of what your company is like, how you operate, your approachability, in fact it is something that will help your reader make up there mind as to whether you are a company they want to do business with.

So how do you find the right voice for you?

That is a question answered by Sally Ormond of Briar Copywriting Ltd – this is what she had to say:

You’ve read it numerous times. Every marketer on the planet is telling you that your company needs a tone of voice guide. You get it, but convincing your management to fork out for one is proving tricky.

How to get your management team on board

If you’re going to do this properly you need your whole team to be on board, including those in their corner offices with the to-die-for city views.

How do you do that?

Simple, just talk brand consistency.

Your company wants to deliver the best experience possible to its customers to build loyalty. Part of that comes from consistency across all forms of interaction – website, email communications, YouTube, social media, brochures, in-store and mobile.

If you have multiple writers producing your content (rather than using a well-trained copywriter, ahem) you won’t get that unified voice without a tone of voice guide. Your brand becomes confused, your customers can’t connect with it and it slides from their memory faster than a fast thing.

The guide will present a set of rules for what can and can’t be said and the language that should be used. It will clearly define a:

• Voice – described in adjectives (i.e. friendly, lively, professional, approachable etc.)
• Tone – adaptations of the voice to suit different audiences and content type

How to find your voice

Now the hard work begins.

Finding your voice requires input from your management team, so ask them if the brand was a person what kind of personality would it have?

Then you have to tighten it further, for example, if the response was “upbeat” find out exactly what that means – vibrant, modern, colloquial?

Also ask what it’s not – this is often easier to answer.

Finally, think about your relationships with your customers, what would that be like – friend, guide, confidante?

Slowly a picture should start to emerge.

What about your tone?

I mentioned earlier about how your voice would have to be adapted to suit different content types and audiences.

So your writing will differ from blogs to social media, website content to white papers because they are addressing different audiences.

Think about:

• The type of content you’re writing
• Who will be reading it
• How they are feeling/why they are reading it
• Tone that should be used (i.e. professional, empathetic, friendly, authoritative etc.)

It’s also a good idea to then offer an example to show the tone and type of vocabulary that would be suitable in that situation.

You did it!

Creating a tone of voice guide isn’t a quick process and can, at times, be rather frustrating, but hang in there.

Once it’s in place, the consistency of your marketing approach will create a coherent and memorable brand.

 

 

 

Summer.

A time for holidays and relaxing.

It’s also the time when a lot of businesses experience a slow down.

Leads drop off, the phone stops ringing and no matter how may times you refresh your email client, no enquiries are coming through.

You have 2 options:

• Put your feet up and mope
• Put in some groundwork for future leads

Old enquiries

Every business has a pile of leads that didn’t go anywhere.

Despite sending out competitive quotes, for one reason or another they didn’t get taken up. You were going to give them a call, but you were so busy you forgot.

So how about doing that now?

Give them a call for a chat, you never know their position may have changed and could now be in the market for your product or service.

What have you got to lose?

Review your sales process

Are you really being effective?

You probably think you are, but if that were the case you wouldn’t have that pile of warm leads to work through, would you?

Now’s a great time to review your marketing strategy from top to bottom.

Set yourself some targets to focus your efforts to make sure you minimise your ‘slow’ periods.

Referrals

That doesn’t mean start phoning clients and asking them out right to refer you to someone – you don’t want to look desperate.

Offer them an incentive in the way of a generous referral scheme – you know the sort of thing “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.”

It’s a great way of extending your sales team without taking on new staff – and a whole lot cheaper.

Every business has slow periods, but how you deal with them when they come is what makes the difference.

Use them to your advantage and start planning for a stronger future.

The internet is jam packed with videos these days.

Bloggers, would-be musicians and companies are all at it vying for your attention.

That means if your video is going to cut the mustard and get noticed it’s got to be something pretty special.

Granted, the production, initial idea and storyboard will have a lot to do with that, but so too will your video’s script. After all, you need powerful words to make the most of the action.

Making an impact

The first thing to remember is that your script must be written in spoken English.

Written English, as you would use for web copy and other marketing materials, will come across as stilted, so it’s important to write as you speak.

Whether you have a storyboard to fit your script to, or you’re writing freestyle, it’s important to start with the most important person – the customer.

Every word must be directed at them and what they need, so think about:

• What are they looking for?
• How does the product/service help them?
• How will it make their life better?

These should all be addressed early on (and recapped at the end) before you talk about any features.

Pain and pleasure

Once you’ve worked out what you need to cover to answer the question above, finding the customer’s pain (i.e. the problem they have and the reason for them looking for a solution) should be fairly easy.

Your next stop is to highlight this issue in your script and show how the product/service will alleviate it and make their life better.

Speaking

Going back to the earlier point of using spoken English – now’s the time to ignore (some) grammatical rules and write as you speak.

Don’t get me wrong, it still has to be good English, just not as straight-laced as written English.

The best way to make sure you’ve captured it is to read the script out loud and adjust it until it sounds like natural speech.

The length of the script

Remember this is a video, not a feature length film.

The video isn’t there to answer every question the customer has; it’s there to tempt them into finding out more.

Ideally, your video shouldn’t exceed 90 seconds.

Call to action

Yes, your script does need a call to action.

If you don’t include one, it will just fizzle.

Recap your main points (especially the benefits) and tell them how to get in touch. The final visual should be of the web address, phone number and email. Let’s face it if you forget that they’re not going to get in touch.

So, a quick recap:

• Write for the customer
• Write in spoken English
• Keep to 90 seconds or less
• Finish with a call to action

Author – Sally Ormond, Briar Copywriting Ltd