Your company may have the best offering in the world, but unless you tell people about it little can be achieved. The purpose of marketing communications is to get your message across to potential buyers. The outcome is sales leads, or at least, a positive climate where direct approaches or recommendations are well received. 

The ExecKIT® Marketing Communications Methodology helps you to devise a marketing communication plan to get the message across to potential buyers in an effective way.

Branding

"Branding" is a word that conjures up images of washing-powder, jeans, toothpaste and cola drinks, but many of the most powerful brands in the world relate to the IT business. Few can match the achievements or marketing budget of Microsoft, IBM or Apple, but if you are a company, whether you like it or not, you have a brand. People will either know about you or they won't. If they do, they will have an opinion about what you do and how well you do it. 

Contrary to popular belief, the most important thing about a brand is not the way it looks or whether it sounds cool. What matters is whether the brand encapsulates the value that the company provides, and that it does it with integrity. 

This ExecKIT® module takes a practical approach to branding, demystifying a complicated subject and enabling you to produce a brand that is consistent and appealing. 

We cover

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• Understanding your brand

  • Strengths and weaknesses

  • Brand circle

• Brand dynamics

  • Stakeholders

  • Brand soul

  • Brand development

• Brand communication

  • Naming the brand

  • Unique brand proposition

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Collateral production

 
Every market offering, to be credible, must be supported by marketing collateral that describes it, explains how it is used and builds confidence. This ExecKIT® module helps you to create this essential material. It helps you to:

• identify the audience

• define the message

• create the "hooks"

• define the documentation brand

• identify the "call to action"

• write the material, for example

  • Marketing flyers, such as

    • service or product descriptions

    • company history

    • customer list and testimonials

    • CVs, people profiles

  • White papers

    • Business/Market sector

    • Technical

  • Articles

  • Presentations

  • Case studies

  • produce the finished items.

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The result will be a set of high-quality marketing pieces that increase sales and reduce time-to-market. 

Networking 

People like to do business with people they know and trust. Whether you call it "networking", "contact management" or the "old boy network" everyone understands that it is much easier to do business with people you know than people you don't. 

Business people are fatigued by cold calls, mail shots, spam, advertising campaigns, and invitations to events and briefings, so they erect high hurdles to strangers. Unless your company is a "big name" the only way to get to see a new prospect will often be if someone they know and respect recommends you personally. This means that networks of personal contacts are becoming an increasingly important business asset, providing a valuable way to get things done. 

This ExecKIT® module enables you to build a personal network that adds value to yourself, your networking contacts and the business community at large. 

Events management 

A marketing "event" can provide a great opportunity to promote your company and your offerings and show the market that you mean business. 

But while a good marketing event is a boon, it is also a very risky venture. You must be clear about what you are trying to achieve and that you can attract the right audience. You will need marketing flair to attract the right audience and showmanship to carry it off on the day. 

If you do succeed in attracting delegates, they will expect their time to be used very well. Every aspect of the event will be judged by the highest standards and even the smallest mistakes will be noticed and highlighted. 

Worse still, events can be totally ruined by trivial things: badly timed invitations; poor air conditioning on a hot day; an unclear map which causes your delegates to get lost; or faulty presentation equipment. These things are trivial, of course, until your prospects' diaries are full, or they start sweating, yawning, booing or just not turning up! 

This ExecKIT® module enables you to plan, prepare and execute a marketing event that makes a very positive impact. 

Websites 

A website is now as essential a part of any business as a registered office or telephone number. Your website is the place where new and existing customers come to learn about you, assess you and, if they are satisfied, perhaps contact you. 

But is your website giving the right marketing messages? Is it consistent with what people know about you, and what everyone says? How does it support your marketing aims and objectives? Does it conform to user expectations about how a website should look and feel? Does it foster communication with your customers and stakeholders? 

Increasingly a company's website is the focal point of its marketing communications. This ExecKIT® module helps you to ensure that your website projects your marketing messages, and is consistent with your brand. It helps you to define the brief, manage the creative and technical design, perform the development process, develop the content and promote the website to your customers. 

The result is a successful website that supports your marketing goals and which everyone loves! 

Press relations 

Good press relations are a vital ingredient of many marketing communications plans and are an invaluable way of building an awareness of what you do. The media has an insatiable demand for copy and the right story can provide a powerful way of getting your message to a wide audience at low cost. But take care. Unless you understand what you are doing, your company can end up becoming the story in ways you did not plan! 

This ExecKIT® module will help you to:

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• define your key messages

• identify stories with "legs"

• target publications that your customers and prospects actually read

• evaluate whether to manage the activities in-house or use an external agency

• understand and make contact with the right people - should you target the editor-in-chief, the news editor, the features editor, the reporters/journalists, or the production editor?

• build relationships

• execute through press releases, feature articles, press conferences and press parties

• develop your ongoing plan.

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Telesales 

When a company needs new leads, or wants to sell business without the expense of more sales professionals "on the road", it often considers telesales. However, ChangeBEAT's industry data shows that many companies fail in their efforts to establish an effective telesales organisation. 

But for some offerings in some markets, telesales provides a great way to build the pipeline and sell new business. Telesales can be an effective way to generate new leads or offer a way to maintain contact with existing customers, ensuring their satisfaction and keeping them informed about appropriate "add-ons". 

Before you invest time and effort launching a telesales campaign, you need to think very carefully about your target market and whether you can devise a sufficiently simple and compelling message to attract the prospect's attention. If you can clear this hurdle (and it isn't always possible) you will then need to consider in more detail how to set up your telesales operation. 

How many times will you chase a prospect? Will you leave a voicemail (and run the risk of causing a negative reaction)? How will you deal with "screening"? Is it practical to develop scripts that will enable your teleseller to deal with requests for information? Who will make the calls? What metrics should you gather to enable you to evaluate your success? 

This ExecKIT® module helps you to evaluate whether telesales is a practical approach in your market, and if so, how to launch a successful telesales operation. 

Advertising 

For certain offerings in certain markets, advertising provides a cost-effective way to increase market awareness and generate leads. This ExecKIT® module helps you to ensure you are getting the best from your advertising budget. It covers how to:

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• define the purpose of the advertising campaign

• define the target

• define the advert

• agree the desired response to the advert

• plan how the advert will be supported

• measure success or failure

• plan supporting marketing communication activities

• plan required timescales and resources

• develop a theme for the campaign

• evaluate and manage the design of the advert in-house or through an external agency.

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Marcomms planning 

Gaining the attention of people who can benefit from your offerings but have no business relationship with you (or have never heard of you) is the great challenge of marketing communications. One-off activities are most unlikely to deliver results. To be effective, marketing communication programmes must be planned, persistent and sustained. This ExecKIT® module provides you with the framework to:

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• plan your marketing communications mix

• identify the audience, the key message and the budget for each marketing communications activity

• develop the tactical plan of activities for the year

• define the measurement criteria for monitoring the success/failure of each campaign

• analyse the results to shape future marketing communication programmes.

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Underpinning our approach to Marcomms planning is the "penny falls" model which considers how you move someone from a stranger to a purchaser in realistic steps. 

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