Short old words

With a nod to Winston Churchill, who said, "Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all," Jakob Nielsen's latest AlertBox advises us to use familiar words and phrases when we write about our products and services and avoid made-up words -- even if they're brand names:

"If people know and already like your brand enough to search for it, wonderful: You're halfway home. This is particularly true if you're a B2B site, where a main goal is to simply survive the sales funnel’s initial discovery and research stages and make it to the shortlist. You should of course include your brand name when describing your products so that fans can find you. But don't abandon the other 95% of prospects who are searching for their problem and don’t know the name of your solution. In the funnel's early stages, people tend to use non-branded search terms, because they haven't yet decided which companies to put on the shortlist. This is exactly the time when you have the potential to influence them."

This is a great reminder for B2B marketers who get so caught up in branding their "solution," they forget how people actually talk about the problem at hand.

Planning cheat sheet

Thank you, Lance Tanaka, VP & Mgr. of Government Affairs for Bank of Hawaii, for these succinct definitions:

Goals: Determine the object of your pursuit and define the ends, not the means.

Objectives: Measurable statements to support goals.

Strategies: How you expect to achieve your objectives.

Tactics: Specific actions that support goals, objectives and strategies.

Lance came from Hawaii/IABC to facilitate the San Francisco chapter's strategic planning session last weekend.

Define the brand experience

Before you develop a brand strategy, understand the brand experience:

• What is is?
• How do you improve it?
• How do you sustain it?
• How do you communicate it?

A useful reminder from TMP Wordwide's Global Brand Strategist David Kippen at an SF/IABC strategic planning workshop.

Telling compelling stories

When you think about your "brand promise," consider this: Does it articulate why someone should work with you instead of someone else?

Tom Holownia of Blended Thinking posed that question to the East Bay IT Group Sales & Marketing SIG. Instead of "branding," he tells compelling stories. His definition of branding:

"Branding is a process, the way we do things. It is our stories of expectation, fulfillment and satisfaction."

You can learn how to tell more powerful stories by rehearsing the answers to these questions (common fodder at networking functions):

1. So, what do you do?
2. How do you do that?
3. Who have you done that for?

Your answers should succinctly explain what problems you solve, what opportunities you help seize or what threats you help avoid. They should highlight what's different about the way you work. And don't hesitate to drop the names of your biggest customers. (He name drops Schwab.)

If you tell your story well, you will shift the listeners perceptions about you. A clear, concise, compelling and credible story will make the benefit of selecting your company undeniable.

I've touched on this topic before (see posts on taglines, 30-second commercials and value propositions). But I especially liked Holownia's "Game," where participants tried to answer the three questions, and his pointed questions helped them drill down to the core message. Nice!

Market research resources

La Piana Associates Marketing and Communications Director Michaela Hayes shared some great resources for doing market research on the Internet at the June SF/IABC ICR workshop. She recommended using SurveyMonkey or Zoomerang for quick, easy and free online surveys. Also, not to forget our own customers as a source of market intelligence. A few quick phones calls can uncover emerging trends, buying influences and other insights that can direct your messaging strategy.

Unbury your message

The iMakeNews white paper, "Lost in the Mail: Over-communication is burying your message," offers tips on how to streamline your communications so you don't contribute to email overload. CEO David Fish explains why marketers send too much email:

• Multiple channels push content. For example, product marketers, regional marketers and corporate marketers may send e-newsletters to the same lists.
• Channel partners add noise. When business partners and value-added resellers mount their own campaigns, your message suffers.
• Internal communications clog the pipeline. Employee mailboxes are overstuffed with messages from management, project team members, and HR.

To ovecome these barriers, Fish advises consolidating content in one management system, piggybacking messages with business parnters, and executing the campaign with a single layered message instead of multiple messages.

Stories build brand

ClickZ columnist Martin Lindstrom gives us a nice analogy using three rocks. Their stories (involving the Berlin Wall, Neil Armstrong and a garden) illustrate how knowing the history helps you appreciate the value. Lindstrom advises:

"[D]on't forget the little story that can infuse your product with charisma and bond customers with the product emotionally and intellectually"

Telling the story behind your brand helps differentiate it from seemingly similar products. When you become a good story teller, you'll be better able to articulate your unique value proposition.

Accelerated planning tool

Bonfire Communications CEO Gordon Rudow presented an accelerated communication planning map at the April 13th SF/IABC Independent Communicators Roundtable designed to facilitate a 2- to 3-hour planning meeting and produce a roadmap for internal communcations with measurable ROI.

A powerful tool for focusing attention on issues that matter, the map evolved from Rudow's inspired take on organizational comunications:

"Organizations are networks of conversations that guide actions. ... Corporate culture is the collective converstation. ... To guide a culture through change, you need to nurture specific converstations that inspire people to take action in alignment with the new direction."

At the risk of oversimplifying the process, here are the six steps Rudow outlined, including some of the communication models that fuel each step:

Identify Audience Concerns.
Discover what motivates people in your organization. Profile individuals at various levels (role-based tiers). How many tiers can you effectively reach?

Align Client Conerns.
Make the business case for giving your audience(s) what they want. Walk through:

Context > SWOT >

Vision > Mission > Objectives > Strategies >

Requirements > Implications > Timing > Tactics > Training

> Operational Change

How will the communication strategy achieve operational change at each tier in the organization?

Define Objectives and Strategies
Define SMART (Simple, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Time-based) objectives for achieving awareness, understanding and action. What do you want your audience to do differently?

Create Story / Theme / Messaging
The message for each audience should be guided by one "north star idea" that can guide action. Every story you tell that audience member should be a proof point that supports this one idea.

Determine Design Criteria
How do you package these ideas so they resonates with your audience? Are they branded with your standard style guidelines, or are they given their own identity?

Choose Vehicles and Solutions
Open the communicator's toolbox and examine each tool -- online training, face-to-face presentations, Webcasts, informational materials, newsletters, intranet knowledge center, etc. Choose tools based on how people learn and what inspires them to act.

When you involve the right stakeholders in an accelerated planning session, you can come away with an action plan that will guide your creative team as it refines the message, design and tools. Roll out the plan in conjunction with events that give it traction.

Though Bonfire designed this model for internal communications, it clearly has application for external audiences -- albeit with more time spent on validating assumptions about audience concerns.

Creating credible content

Nearly 25% of technology buyers surveyed are dissatisfied with the caliber of the online content they access when researching products and services, according to "Define What's Valued Online," a survey by the Chief Markteing Officer Council. The survey report says:

"[M]arketers still have an opportunity to improve their company's messaging and value of online technology content."

Key findings:

• 90% said online content has a moderate or major impact on vendor preferences and selections.
• The most-cited benefits of online research are "ease of access and availability" and "breadth and depth of information."
• 50% dedicate up to 5 hours a week doing online research.
• 70% start their research with a search engine (vendor Web sites are a distant 2nd).
• White papers, product reviews and research reports by industry analysts and professional associations were the most preferred content.

Researchers' top pet peeves:

1. Hype and puffery
2. Biased and slanted content
3. Poor communication of business value proposition
4. Too few proof points that evidence ROI

To make your online content more valuable to the people who make or influence buying decisions, make it accessible, informative and unbiased. Communicate how your solution solves their problems, and demonstrate ROI with case studies.

Apple turns 30

Revisit the memorable milestones in Apple Computer's 30-year history, and don't miss the now-famous 1984 commercial.

As the lawyer said, not even a moron in a hurry would mistake this Apple for the other one (which only has a placeholder on the Web!). Whose brand is stronger?