FREE Marketing for Startups Webinar

 

FREE Marketing for Startups Webinar on Wednesday, May 18 from 11:30 am to 1 pm ET. Sponsored by RIT's Venture Creations Incubator and Nextcorps. 

Sign up here: https://nextcorps.org/event/marketing-for-startups/ 

90 Trends Shaping Our World

Sometimes it’s useful for marketers to understand trends that may affect their businesses. Here are some of the current trends that I am monitoring:

1. 5G technology
2. The Internet of Things
3. Mobile Internet
4. Cloud technology and distributed infrastructure 
5. Democratization of technology
6. The world becomes hyperconnected
7. Move toward all media consumed through the Internet
8. Seamless language translation, making the world even smaller
9. Exploration of more direct human-computer interfaces (HCI)
10. Electrification
11. Electric vehicles (EVs)
12. Autonomous vehicles
13. Drones
14. Battery technology
15. Microgrids
16. Grid-connected renewable energy systems
17. All forms of clean tech
18. Software defined vehicles (SDVs)
19. AI & machine learning
20. Autonomic systems
21. Generative AI
22. Big data analytics
23. Edge computing
24. Quantum computing
25. Nanoparticles
26. Next generation materials including honeycomb lattice
27. Photonics
28. Virtual and augmented reality
29. Advanced robotics
30. 3-D printing 
31. Process automation and hyper-automation
32. Explosion of smart devices
33. Genomics/genetic engineering
34. Health care data analytics
35. Personal medical devices
36. Telehealth and mobile medicine
37. Hyper-personalized medicines
38. Social determinants of health (SDOH) receive greater attention
39. Mental health becomes a larger priority
40. Unbundling of health care
41. Web 3.0
42. Blockchain (distributed ledger) technology
43. Cryptocurrency
44. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs)
45. A cashless society
46. Privacy and cybersecurity
47. Biometric technology (face, voice, eye, hand and signature security)
48. Deglobalization
49. Redesign of supply chains
50. Increased self-service
51. Recurring revenue streams
52. Distributed enterprises and remote employees
53. Increased flexible work 
54. Continued growth in the gig economy
55. Huge need for retraining for new economy jobs
56. Minimum living wages as an alternative to job loss
57. Increased time sharing of all things
58. Extreme personal profiling
59. Hyper-targeting and hyper-geofencing 
60. On-demand personalized customer experiences
61. Move from retail stores to Internet distribution centers and home delivery
62. Move toward unique and boutique in retail
63. Increasing use of personal digital assistants
64. Cameras, cameras everywhere
65. Struggle for personal privacy
66. Increasing popularity of veganism and vegetarianism
67. Increased focus on personal health
68. Decrease in romantic relationships
69. Increasing acceptance of sexual freedom 
70. Decrease in organized religion, increase in personal spirituality
71. Continued decreasing trust in traditional institutions, especially government
72. Shift from a patriarchal society to a matriarchal society
73. More focus on the home
74. Increasing self-care and compassion toward others
75. Increasing importance of pets as family
76. Increased frequency and severity of natural disasters due to climate change
77. More eco-friendly lifestyles
78. The private sector steps up its support of social and environmental issues
79. Distributed localized agriculture through hydroponics and aeroponics
80. Increased “fake news” and disinformation
81. Increased sophistication of deep fakes
82. Increased botnet activity
83. More censorship, less free speech
84. Increased public awareness of and pressure to address economic inequality
85. Less capitalism, more socialism
86. Continued urbanization
87. Continued population shifts to less expensive states
88. Less abundance thinking, more scarcity thinking
89. The blurring of war and crime with the emergence of terrorism
90. Rethinking of the criminal justice system

If you aren’t familiar with some of these, I would recommend that you search on and read about those that most interest you. 

Brands and the Digital World

 

Here are some of the effects of the digital world on brands:

 

• A brand’s online presence can improve brand awareness.
• A brand’s website is critical to the perception of that brand because most people investigate a brand by going to its website.
• Blogs can create thought leadership and emotional connection for a brand. But consistent new content over time is required to activate these effects.
• If a picture is worth a thousand words, then videos are worth ten thousand words. Consider creating a YouTube channel for your brand.
• For thought leadership, consider podcasts too.
• SEO is still important.
• A third (older) to a half (younger) of people investigate brands through social media before they purchase. 
• Advertising in social media makes it easier for people to become aware of and try new brands, including brands that could not break though in the analog world because of lack of marketing funds. This, to some degree, levels the playing field for smaller brands.
• More and more product offerings are delivered through social media feeds.
• Low follows, likes, views and shares can reflect negatively on a brand.
• If you are just starting with your brand’s online presence, use Facebook and Instagram first. 
• Consumer targeting is significantly improved through Facebook and Google ads. Data analytics can result in highly targeted or even tailored product offerings to individuals.
• Brands would do well to set up pages on Facebook and Instagram as a way to interact with customers.
• The Internet provides many forums for people to provide feedback on brands, including negative feedback. It would behoove brand advocates to monitor as many of those forums as possible and respond as appropriate. It is important to respond as quickly as possible.
• Online forums can increase consumer engagement with brands.
• The Internet leads to greater brand transparency, but skilled marketing can also make a brand seem bigger or more popular than it actually is.
• Marketing automation can generate quality leads.
• Marketing automation makes it easier for people to respond to offers without prior awareness of the brands behind the offers.
• One needs to be extremely careful about how the marketing automation is set up or it can backfire on the brand. This is very similar to how automated telephonic customer service can backfire on the brand. 
• Geofencing can encourage immediate purchase when a consumer is near a retail outlet. 
• Geofence in the places that your target customers are at the times when they are there. Think this through carefully 
• Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, Venmo, PayPal and Amazon’s 1-Click Ordering make it easier for people to purchase things online with fewer clicks.
• The online presence of brands makes price comparison much easier, which can drive down prices or at least direct the consumer to the cheapest source of the brand.
• Online clothing brand sales are still tricky. Several approaches have been implemented to help with sizing and visualizing the clothes when worn but there still are issues with tactile qualities of the fabric, quality of the construction and fit. This may lead to more returns for online purchased clothing brands than store purchased clothing brands.
• The younger the consumer, the more everything is transacted on the smart phone. All brand interactions must be optimized for mobile. 
• To some degree, the digital world has made people more savvy and cynical about brands, mostly due to increased transparency.

21 Stories for Scouting

 

I have always been a fan of proactive publicity. In 2011, my local Boy Scout council decided to enlist the services of Over the Edge Global (https://overtheedgeglobal.com) to create a fundraising event in which people donated $1,000 each to rappel down the side of a 21-story building. I was on the committee that helped pull this together. It was a novel idea at the time and no one had tried it before, especially as a big well-publicized event, in downtown Rochester.

 

We created a PR plan that enlisted the support of local news anchors and talk show hosts on television and radio. We invited those people to rappel down the building the day before the actual public event. And we set it up as a competition in which those local celebrities competed against each other for who could raise the most money. 

 

Not only did we get people to pay $1,000 apiece to rappel down the side of the building. We had people raising far more than that from friends, family and co-workers to sponsor their rappelling. One guy, “Little Joe” Aiello, who was in his eighties, alone raised tens of thousands of dollars of sponsorships each year for his rappel down the side of buildings, which he did several years in a row until he was 93. But there were also event sponsors. The event itself was covered by almost every local media outlet. And even better – the media people couldn’t stop talking about the event days before it occurred and weeks after it occurred. Our local Boy Scout council received over a half a million dollars in free publicity the first year alone. 

 

And the best part is the event tied into a real Scouting activity that reinforced “fun” and “adventure,” two key components of the Scout program.

 

This is just one example of the power of proactive publicity. These blog posts list some others:

• Proactive Publicity
• Proactive Publicity
• Colonel Sanders in New York
• Genesee Brewing Company
• HEB Brand the Big Winner in the Texas Energy Outage
• Brand Benefit Cues
• Out-of-the-Box Marketing Techniques

 

Branding & Pitch Decks

 

I have found that my experience in crafting brand strategy and positioning has helped me immensely in coaching startups in their pitch deck creation. Startups use pitch decks to raise funds and other support for their nascent businesses. Just like brands, pitch decks need to tell a story. By definition, stories have plots and characters. The characters are the target customers and the plot is how the nascent business will uniquely solve a significant problem that those customers have. The story needs to outline the company’s unique value proposition and the business model that will enable it to deliver on that unique value proposition. The value needs to be defined in terms of customer benefits rather than product functions or features.

 

The business must demonstrate that it has done due diligence in understanding who its target customers are demographically and psychographically and what their functional and emotional needs are. It needs to show how it will deliver a unique and superior solution in meeting its customer’s needs. This requires a thorough understanding of the competition. Further, the business will want to illustrate what its product is and how it will be used, including how the customer will experience using it. Ultimately, the business will want to share its long-term vision, which is very similar to the vision that would be a part of a mission | vision | values statement. 

 

Sure, there are some other elements in a pitch deck that are not typically a part of brand strategy or messaging, including an overview of the market, the startup team and its advisors, the potential risks, the finances and why they are pitching to a particular investor. But, whether one is creating a new product concept statement, a brand positioning statement, a brand ‘elevator speech,’ a startup pitch deck or even a grant application, the following components are essential:

·      Detailed customer description,

·      Customer insight including an understanding of their unmet needs or pain points,

·      Unique value proposition,

·      Which includes an articulation of the unique benefits that will be delivered to the customer,

·      And an understanding of the competition,

·      And finally, proof points and “reasons to believe” that you can deliver on your unique value proposition; put another way an indication of how the organization’s business model supports delivery of its unique value proposition.

And, if there is additional space for description, the messaging would benefit from being told in the form of a story with a happy ending.

My experience in new product development, brand positioning and strategy, not-for-profit grant writing and now new venture coaching has allowed me to identify the similarities between these activities. It all boils down to understanding an unmet customer need and developing a solution that uniquely meets that need. Further, it requires proof points that one is capable of uniquely delivering against that need. Finally, this message can be delivered in a more compelling way through storytelling. It’s that simple and it is also that complicated. 

The Essentials of Marketing

I have crafted successful marketing plans, strategies and campaigns for more than 250 brands over the past thirty-eight years. Over those years, I have witnessed enormous changes in how marketing is executed. However, most marketing fundamentals have not changed in decades. Here is my summary of those fundamentals:

• People are primarily driven by emotions
• Images are more powerful than words and videos can be more powerful than images
• But it is also important to paint vivid pictures with your words
• In copy, generally less is more
• Product / service quality and consistency matter
• Outstanding customer service can overcome other flaws
• Having a unique value proposition is essential 
• Continuous innovation is a must for extending a brand's lifecycle
• Maintaining high brand awareness is critical to customer brand insistence
• Brands that share important values with their customers create the highest loyalty
• Brands are often used as self-expression badges
• Price segmentation yields increased revenues and profits
• One of the most important aspects of marketing is successfully recovering from errors or crises
• Guerrilla marketing, proactive publicity and publicity stunts can yield the highest ROI
• PR and media relations are important elements of the marketing mix
• Identifying and using influencers can be very productive
• Word-of-mouth and viral marketing can be very powerful
• "Unexpected" and "outrageous" almost always work in marketing
• Humor and entertainment are key elements of advertising campaigns 
• Brands can tap into the human propensity for tribalism
• Unfortunately, fear still sells
• Gaining deep customer insight through marketing research is a key marketer's tool
• Market segmentation is as important as ever
• For larger organizations, creating the optimal brand architecture is one of the trickier marketing tasks
• Carefully crafted (and tested) headlines and subject lines can make a huge difference
• It is possible and hugely advantageous to design and implement the optimal customer experience
• Most automated customer service systems are disastrous 
• In the end, it is all about the customer and what motivates him or her