We are passionate, energetic and committed Communication specialists.   Our area of expertise is in Talent Placement, Media Training, Public Relations and Crisis Management.

1. The world has changed and the change of pace will keep accelerating.

Whether there will be another financial crisis or not and how big it will be is not something any of us can predict or control, but jobs will keep being lost; outsourcing, offshoring, resources will keep flowing to where the return on investment is the greatest. Whether it is job vacancies or business opportunities you will have to work harder and smarter to stand out and differentiate yourself from a greater number of competitors all trying to get a smaller share of the pie.

So, who can you rely on when times get tough?
You! And the equity in you; your personal brand. LinkedIn is the perfect personal branding and publicity tool.

LinkedIn, is a way that you can communicate to the world

1. What you know, your experience and expertise, knowledge and the benefits you can deliver to your clients and manage and leverage
2. Who you know, your trusted network, the people that think you are good
   There’s no point debating which of the two is more important, you need a good dose of both for success.

2. Online Marketing in general and Social Media Marketing specifically, together with the irreversible swing towards inbound marketing means that if your online marketing assets are not optimised and helping you and your business ‘get found’ then you will rapidly be left behind.

When it comes to B2B and professional services, LinkedIn provides the ultimate platform to combine all of your marketing assets, once they have been optimised – no point driving visitors to a leaky boat:

• Your LinkedIn Profile itself is a great way to be found by prospects and stay top of mind in front of your customers
• Your Website
• Your Blog
• Your YouTube Channel
• Your Slideshare

3. Everybody in business relies on it, everybody wants it, everybody knows it is the most effective way of attracting customers, yet when it comes to the holy grail of generating referrals very few businesses / salespeople have a have a plan and a process to turn their connections into contracts!

LinkedIn is the perfect Sales Tool for B2B and professional services marketers that allows you to leverage your networks. LinkedIn provides the perfect and simple platform for every step of a typical Referral Process:

1. Identifying Referrers / Influencers in your Network
2. Providing customers with a WOW experience (LinkedIn won’t help you there – you need to be great at what you do or deliver exceptional value through your products and services!)
3. Stay Top of Mind through regular communication that adds value to your customers and prospects
4. Educate your network how to refer to you
5. Ask for targeted Referrals and Introductions, rather than ‘asking for referrals blindly’
6. Recognise and Reward those that refer to you!

Don’t get left out, get LinkedIn.

To learn about our LinkedIn courses check this out.

Most SME business owners do it themselves or let the job be done by the media or designers. Their expenditure lines the pockets of media companies, web developers, designers, printers who are not aware of simple and proven Scientific Advertising Principles.

• Develop an Advertising / Marketing Communications Brief
• Designers need a good brief from a marketer / advertising professional.
• Great advertising / marketing communication is a result of a collaboration between: Marketing Professionals (Strategists - on the Client or Agency side, or both!) and Advertising Professionals (Creatives – Creative Directors, Copywriters, Art Directors, Designers)
• Great advertising / marketing communication provides Hope and Optimism, and in general in a recession customers will block out messages based on FEAR. Emphasize reasons, especially Functional Features, provide evidence that the Brand delivers value and emphasize “family values” if applicable.

Here are are our best marketing resources, free of charge, use them to satisfy the needs of your clients and surpass your competition.

InsightGIS is an IT company that specialises in geographic information systems (GIS) and location intelligence. Our services add value to your business and information systems by merging them with locational information. You gain the benefits of visualising your data and easily accessing your information.

Here is an example by a jewellery chain that produced amazing results:

A simple headline was changed from:

“We guarantee the quality of the diamonds we sell”

to:

“If the Gemological Institute of America doesn’t confirm our diamond’s colour, clarity and carat weight to be at least as good as we promised you, we’ll buy back that diamond for the price you paid, reimburse you for the cost of grading, and pay you an additional five thousand dollars. If other jewelers aren’t willing to match this offer, you’ve got to wonder why.”

for spectacular results!

Does your brand provide a guarantee like this? Examine your Brand Promise and aim to deliver on it each and every time!

People are too stressed and busy for dense visuals and jargon - a common sin of Finance and IT industries.

• Time Deprivation + Technology = Compression
• Digital TV 500 channels & The Web = Life now is 24 x 7x 365
• Compressed patience and attention span of customers means that unless you grab their attention instantly they will use their Remote Control or click their Mouse to never be heard from again!
  

A simple PICTURE is a 1,000 WORDS, but it better tell a story much faster than that or today’s consumer will be gone before you have the chance for the proverbial wink!

• Dramatize your brand’s most important benefit?
• Communicate simply? Simplicity is powerful – less is more
• Use natural, real life dialogue?
• Avoid jargon?
• Tell a story, leave a picture in your prospects’ mind?
• Ask questions?
• Provide proof and reasons to believe?

• Does your marketing communication grab Attention?
• Does your marketing communication clearly identify your brand? Does it do so immediately and throughout the advertisement?
• Does your marketing communication reinforce your brand identity?
• Does the your marketing communication clearly communicate your brand’s unique promise?
• Is your marketing communication tone and style true to your brands Essence and Personality?
• Does your marketing communication have a Positioning Statement that reinforces the brand’s Promise?
• Does your marketing communication connect with the reader / viewer on an emotional level? Fear?  Hope? imagination?
• Is your marketing communication significantly different from that of your competitors? Could another competitor make the same claim? If you inserted a competitor’s logo would it make no sense or be unbelievable?
• Does your marketing communication have a good Offer?
• Does your marketing communication make the reader/viewer believe they will be better off by purchasing your brand?
• Does your marketing communication have a strong Call To Action?
• Do you have the process in place to capture (and measure) responses? E.g..: Keyed Ads?

• Promoting your personal brand
• Proactive Networking
• Checking References and Backgrounds
• Look for a Job, Seek and Hire Candidates and be better prepared for interviews
• Generate Leads and Accelerate Sales
• Ask for Advice from your own network as well as “Crowdsource”
• Find Experts and Partners
• Improve your Personal Productivity with all of the different LinkedIn tools, Widgets, and Apps.
• Research trends and industries, gather opinions by running pols as well as track company news.

Finally and most importantly, LinkedIn can provide you with the perfect and simple platform for a Referral System! Referrals are critical to success in business.

FACT
- 98% of Businesses rely on referrals to gain new business*

FACT
- 3% of businesses have a strategy for referrals*

REFERENCE:
*BNI – Business Network International

Benefits of a Referral System:

• Lower Marketing Costs
• Higher Revenues
• Prospects convert to Customers
• Better customer ‘behaviour’
• You can concentrate on your business

Please note that there is a large and important difference between Word of Mouth Advertising and a Referral System. Word of Mouth or ‘going viral’, usually happens by chance. We as marketers try as we might do not have control over a video or a game going viral, and more fail than succeed!

A Referral System, on the other hand is:

• Predictable
• Consistent and
• Repeatable!

LinkedIn can assist you in most of the critical steps of a typical Referral Process:

• Identifying Referrers / Influencers in your Network by listening and studying where opinions are being shared
• Providing them with a WOW experience (LinkedIn won’t help you there - you need to be great at what you do or deliver exceptional value through your products and services!)
• Stay Top of Mind
• Help them Help You - you need to educate your network how to refer to you
• You need to ask for Referrals and Introductions
• And you need to Recognise and Reward those that place their trust in you and refer to you!

LinkedIn or any other technology or media channel for that matter will not help you Stand Out and Be Noticed!

You need to give people a reason to talk about your products and services, and make it easier for that conversation to take place. You’ll need to be creative and wow prospects and not just with your message. Remember the old adage - “great advertising kills bad products faster”

As with all social media or marketing activities in general, the more you put into them the more you will get back in return. The more you care and share the more likely you are to benefit. Check out this latest Infographic http://mashable.com/2012/02/08/new-content-marketing-tactics/

To learn about our LinkedIn courses check out http://www.themarketingnetwork.com.au/promotion-media/social-media/linkedin.

Get LinkedIn or become LockedOut!

‘Brands are like people’ is an analogy often used to describe the companies they represent. Virgin is the brand built by Richard Branson and the two are hard to separate. Consumers buy into the personality of the founder and what it represents and promises.

In many cases however ‘brands are people’ - every celebrity is a brand, from Oprah to Dr.Phil, to rock stars and actors to sports people like Beckham.

Business brands take on or communicate the values of their founders. This is especially true for start-ups and new businesses, professional services firms where the names of the founding partners make up the brand names. Although this is not the best way to brand your services business this is still the dominant reality for many.

So the brands are designed and communicated by people. People, especially in services industry is who we all buy from! So it makes sense that ‘these people’ have an optimal representation of who they are and what makes them special in the place where it matters most, the place where positive perceptions are formed - online!

Your online identity and representation is made of your online assets:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Blog / Website
• YouTube Channel, etc

The most important of these in the SME (B2B & Professional Services) is LinkedIn, and we’ll cover this next.