vital marketing

Sometimes, it’s just simple personal expressions that make a difference in creating meaningful relationships.

This from a net promoter blog on the success of AIG and CEM. It illustrates how baby steps can have a giant impact:

“One of their [AIG's] big points of focus in terms of experience design is to really focus on the main moments of truth, and to make specific changes to reflect what they know about personal events happening in the customer’s life. Such as special communications and offers that are linked to events like birthdays, family changes, moving house, or other things that are, actually, a pretty big deal in peoples’ lives! And when they get personalized communications, it’s a great way to make them know that your company cares about them personally. These types of programs and changes, have allowed them to double revenues in some cases.”

And this:

“I thought he summarized all of this nicely by highlighting the fact that they have focused on moving from a “push” model, that is about marketing and selling to clients, to a “pull” model where excellent customer experience generates a natural positive image and word-of-mouth to bring in new customers. And ultimately, this all comes down to demonstrating every day to their clients that they are listening. The act of listening, and responding to the client, is right at the center of developing deeper relationships.”

So keep it personal….and listen closely…..

Or perhaps your offerings are just “flexible,” “next generation,” “industry standard,” “mission critical,” “scalable,” and a few other overused, hype-driven phrases.

In David Meerman Scott’s eBook, “The Gobbledygook Manifesto,” he analyses over 388,000 press releases sent in 2006. What he found was 74,000 mentioned at least one of the gobbledygook phrases—the same meaningless jargon kept cropping up over and over again.

The winner (or most abused term), was “next generation”, with more than 9,800 references. This was followed with over 5,000 uses of each of the following words and phrases: “flexible,” “robust,” “world class,” “scalable” and “‘easy to use.”

Volume Analysis: Gobbledygook Business Terms

As an online expert and viral marketing strategist, Scott says, “just like with a teenager’s use of annoying catch phrases, I notice the same words cropping up again and again in Web sites and news releases—so much so that the gobbledygook grates against my nerves and many other people’s, too. Well, duh. Like, companies just totally don’t communicate very well, you know?”

Scott continues, “Just saying your widget is ‘industry standard’ means nothing unless some aspect of that standardization is important to your buyers. In the next sentence, I want to know what you mean by ‘industry standard,’ and I also want you to tell my why that standard matters and give me some proof that what you say is indeed true.”

Always Write for the Buyer
As you write news releases or website copy, start with your customer in mind; not with your product. Well-written materials speak in the customer’s language … what are their problems and business issues? How can you communicate in way that demonstrates your expertise in the market?

To learn more about the study and how to avoid these overused clichés, download Scott’s complimentary eBook, “The Gobbledygook Manifesto.”

I’ve  got to give Tom Boylson (www.printingalliance.com and www.promotionalliance.com) kudos for this one. Have you ever worked with a client or partner who can’t find their original artwork (vector art… .eps file?) Or your own company can’t get its hands on the original art….the designer is long gone, the computer it was stored on is in the computer graveyard….etc. So as a result, everytime you need something printed, it’s a major hassle. Here’s a possible fix…. www.brandsoftheworld.com. Go to this site and type in a brand…. say General Electric and you’ll get a bunch of options. You’re not going to always find what you’re looking for but it’s a resource. I uploaded one of my client’s logos – OstermanCron. Now we have a central resource for grabbing the logo (and who knows…. it could help SEO too??) This is also a resource for getting new vector art created from your .jpg or .gif file.