How to use content marketing to appeal to your customers?

Basically, content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling. It is non-interruption marketing. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent. (http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/what-is-content-marketing/

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Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

The four steps of the buying cycle with content marketing:

Awareness. Prior to awareness a customer may have a need, but they are not aware there is a solution.

Research. Once a customer is aware there is a solution, they will perform research to educate themselves. For example, a car buyer will try to find out what different types of cars exist, and which one will fit their needs.

Consideration. At this point the customer starts comparing different products from different vendors to make sure they’re getting a high quality product at a fair price.

Buy. Finally, the customer makes their decision and moves forward with the transaction.

Traditional advertising and marketing is great when it comes to the second two steps. Content marketing taps into the first two stages of the buying process by raising awareness of solutions and educating consumers about a product they may have never considered before.

(from http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshsteimle/2014/09/19/what-is-content-marketing/)

Great Content

If you’ve ever slogged your way through reading a piece of marketing and only finished reading because you had to, then you’ve experienced bad content marketing. When I speak to companies about content marketing I tell them that content is good if they genuinely want to read it. Content is great if they’re willing to pay to read it. If you want to see great examples of content, just look at what you’ve paid to read, watch, or listen to lately. If you watched The Lego Movie this year, you saw one of the greatest examples of content marketing to date. Oh, you thought they made that movie in order to sell movie tickets? Think again. That was a 100 minute toy commercial, and rather than using a DVR to skip it you paid good money to watch it. Is it any coincidence that Lego recently leapfrogged Mattel, the creators of Barbie, to become the largest toy company in the world? You may not have the budget to make a feature film to promote your company, but you can still give potential customers valuable information.

The #1 Secret of Content Marketing

Add value. That’s the secret. It’s not really a secret at all. We’ve already talked about it throughout this piece. Although when you look at some of the marketing companies engage in you wonder if they’re purposely avoiding the obvious. We skip advertising when it provides little to no value. If you want to learn about advertising that doesn’t get skipped, find a skateboarder and ask him if you can watch him look through a skateboard magazine. You’ll see that he spends as much time looking at the ads as he does looking at the articles and photos. Or check out The Berrics website. Much of the content is advertisements, but skaters don’t skip these videos, they watch them just like they watch the other videos, because they’re getting the value they want–good skating. As a skater I’d like to say skateboard companies pioneered content marketing decades ago, but I know they were only doing what came naturally, and selling more product was secondary to the fun of creating videos and magazines. If you want to hire someone onto your marketing team who understands content marketing intuitively, hiring a skateboarder might not be a bad step. 

(from http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshsteimle/2014/09/19/what-is-content-marketing/)

Crisis Communication and Reputation Management

A crisis is considered as anything that threatens the continuity and viability of a business.

Crisis management involves:
• Identifying a crisis
• Planning a response
• Responding to a sudden event that poses a significant threat to the firm
• Limiting the damage
• Selecting an individual and team to deal with the crisis
• Resolving a crisis

Your crisis plan

(source: http://ongoingoperations.com/business-continuity-plan-crisis-management-plan/)
Your crisis plan should identify the process of responding to an event that might threaten the operations, staff, customers, reputation or the legal and financial status of an organisation. It should cover strategies to minimise the potential impact of identified crises by limiting any damage and minimising any losses that your organisation might face, and ensuring the continuity of the business.

Prepare a crisis management plan with strategies that are:

• documented
• written in a clear and concise manner, preferably in action bullet points with key steps to be taken
• communicated often to staff
• available readily to all staff
• prioritised so that in or following a crisis, actions are taken in order to most effectively minimise damage and ensure business continuity
• tested in emergency run throughs and in staff training and brainstorming sessions 
• taking into account lessons learned from the past
• reviewed and updated regularly to take into account your business' changing circumstances

(source: https://www.nswbusinesschamber.com.au/Members/members-askushow/Planning-and-strategy/Growth-Development/How-to-prepare-your-business-for-a-crisis)

To prepare for crisis, conduct a SWOT analysis - the first step to preparing a general crisis response plan.

A SWOT analysis examines an organization's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This is best done with a group of key employees, volunteers, or supporters of your organization. Special attention should be paid to the weaknesses and threats you identify. Examine those threats and weaknesses to identify which crises are most likely to confront your organization.

Then brainstorm what would happen to the organization were the crisis to take place. What would be the cost in terms of money, assets, reputation, or the well-being of staff, clients, and volunteers? How could these effects be minimized ? Asking these questions will start the process of formulating a crisis response plan. 

Form a crisis management team as a core part of your crisis response plan.

- 

Decision maker

- Spokesperson

- Internal communications manager

It is vitally important that leaders and decision makers remain as calm as possible.

• How am I feeling? (Overhwlemed? Panicked? Confident? Scared?)
• How are my feelings affecting my actions?
• What is in my control, and what is not?
• What information / advice do I still need to make good decisions?
• Am I prioritizing effectively?
• Is our response true to the organization's mission?
• Is our response considerate of the health, well-being, safety and interests of our clients, staff, volunteers and others affected by the crisis

When crisis is over, answer these questions:

• What were the early warning signs of the crisis?
• Could we have recognized it sooner?
• What were the organization's weaknesses and vulnerable points that led to the crisis?
• Did we follow our crisis management plan and, if so, was it effective?
• If we did not follow our crisis management plan, why not?
• How effective was our response?
• How effective were our communications?
• Did we have the right people on our response team?
• How well did our leaders function?
• What could we have done differently?
• How can we better prepare for a similar situation in the future?

(source: http://www.strengtheningnonprofits.org/resources/e-learning/online/managingcrisis/default.aspx?chp=1) 

Creating Visual Identity

The picture below shows the core elements of visual brand identity:

5 key aspects of visual key identity:

1. Choose the right brand name
2. Create a consistent visual style
3. Develop a compelling logo
4. Pay attention to colour
5. Select appropriate typography
(Source: https://www.waveapps.com/blog/visual-brand-identity-design/)

The video below shows the process of designing a logo by CDG Brand Design Agency 

Example of good logo:
- Adidas. Even at the very beginning, Adidas put heavy interest into marketing, with “the brand with the three stripes” almost becoming their motto. Throughout time, the company’s logo has changed, but has always incorporated the three stripes. The current logo features three slanted stripes in a triangle shape, but referencing the logo of times past isn’t all that’s represented here. This new logo symbolizes a mountain, a metaphor for the challenges and perceivable goals that all athletes must meet and overcome.

Example of bad logo (according to the source http://listverse.com/2013/07/04/10-logos-that-mean-way-more-than-you-think/):

- London Olypmics logo. ABC News reports that the logo, which cost $800,000 to create, was generally deemed as childish, ridiculous, ugly, and in no way representative of London or the Games. Visually, “it’s really hard to understand what they’re trying to say,” Method’s Alicia Bergin commented. In an unofficial public poll by the BBC, 80% of those surveyed gave the logo the lowest possible ranking.”

Brand Identity and Image

Brand Identity and Image

Figure 1 below shows the difference between the two terms - brand identity and brand image


(source: https://www.brainmates.com.au/how-to/%E2%80%9Chow-to%E2%80%A6-%E2%80%9D-audit-your-brand)

10 ways to communicate your brand effectively:

1 Hit the target

2 Research rivals

3 Identify your core values

4 Communicate a story

5 Flexible designs

6 Keep it simple and direct

7 Create an aesthetic niche of your own

8 Bad ideas can lead to good ones

9 Nail the details

10 It isn’t finished (you can design uniforms and so on, but the brand needs to continue to be reinforced after that).

Check in detail on the website http://www.creativebloq.com/branding/10-ways-communicate-brand-effectively-1137662

Integrated Marketing Communications

What is IMC?


(source: http://mindfulkreative.com/tag/integrated-marketing-communications/)

The American Marketing Association defines Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) as “a planning process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time.”

The IMC planning process has been compared to composing a musical score. In a piece of music, while every instrument has a specific task, the goal is to have them come together in a way that produces beautiful music. It’s the same in IMC, where advertising might be your violin, social media your piano, public relations your trumpet and so on.

Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles – one of the United States’ premier advertising agencies. Proud to be named 2014 Full-Service Agency of the Year by thinkLA’s Interactive Idea Awards.

For the campaign, Toyota integrated social media into its traditional mix from the outset, inviting those who saw the ads on TV and in print to learn more at the company’s YouTube page. millions views.

Succeeding across multiple platforms. Now that’s IMC at work.

 http://imc.wvu.edu/about/what_is_imc

What does IMC include?

A management concept that is designed to make all aspects of marketing communication such as advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing work together as a unified force, rather than permitting each to work in isolation. http://marketing.about.com/od/marketingglossary/g/imcdef.htm

Why companies need IMC?

Don Schultz, in his work titled “The Inevitability of Integrated Communications”, considered that “the question of integration or not is moot” because in reality consumers integrate all messages received from an organization. Thus, even if the organization has transmitted uncoordinated messages to the same consumer, that consumer will integrate those messages according to some pattern. Unfortunately, in some cases, the criteria chosen by the consumer to make such integration can harm the organization and associated brand value. Hence the company must be able to manage the process according to its own interests and strategic purposes. http://www.unav.es/fcom/communication-society/es/articulo.php?art_id=415

How to coordinate IMC in company?

(1) Get Senior Management Support for the initiative by ensuring they understand the benefits of IMC.

(2) Integrate At Different Levels of management. Put ‘integration’ on the agenda for management meetings – whether annual reviews or creative sessions. Horizontally – ensure that all managers, not just marketing managers understand the importance of a consistent message – whether on delivery trucks or product quality. Also ensure that Advertising, PR, Sales Promotions staff are integrating their messages. To do this you must have carefully planned internal communications, that is, good internal marketing.

(3) Ensure the Design Manual or even a Brand Book is used to maintain common visual standards for the use of logos, type faces, colours and so on.

(4) Focus on a clear marketing communications strategy. Have crystal clear communications objectives; clear positioning statements. Link core values into every communication. Ensure all communications add value to (instead of dilute) the brand or organisation. Exploit areas of sustainable competitive advantage.

(5) You may have to prioritise communications activities according to your budget.

(6) Think Customers First. Wrap communications around the customer’s buying process. Identify the stages they go through before, during and after a purchase. Select communication tools which are right for each stage. Develop a sequence of communications activities which help the customer to move easily through each stage.

(7) Build Relationships and Brand Values. All communications should help to develop stronger and stronger relationships with customers. Ask how each communication tool helps to do this. Remember: customer retention is as important as customer acquisition.

(8) Develop a Good Marketing Information System which defines who needs what information when. A customer database for example, can help the telesales, direct marketing and sales force. IMC can help to define, collect and share vital information.

(9) Share Artwork and Other Media. Consider how, say, advertising imagery can be used in mail shots, exhibition stands, Christmas cards, news releases and web sites.

(10) Be prepared to change it all. Learn from experience. Constantly search for the optimum communications mix. Test. Test. Test. Improve each year. ‘Kaizen’.

http://multimediamarketing.com/mkc/marketingcommunications/

Storytelling

What is storytelling?

Storytelling is a method of explaining series of events through narrative. In marketing it is used as a tool to encourage consumer loyalty through entertainment or emotional connection. (dictionary at www.zideate.com).

Why to use storytelling?

Because great, captivating content can be a good way to attract precisely the right kind of leads (that will later bring in revenue). (By Stefaine Isabel Kobsa, article ¤ Top Storytelling Examples to Inspire and Optimize your Content Marketing).

How to use storytelling?

Ask youself questions:
-What kind of story fits my business the best?
-How can I integrate company's philosophy in a story?
-Which topics are equally interesting for my audience?
(By Stefaine Isabel Kobsa)

Good example of storytelling

Guinness advertisement on the internet reached 3 million views within 4 days. The ad features guys who play basketball in wheelchairs. The thing is that only one of the guys is really disabled, others are just his friends who support him. After the game, they go to drink beer together. On the background there is a voice: dedication, loyalty, friendship - the choices we make reveal our nature.