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Category: Marketing

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Leadership Marketing Personal Development

We could all take marketing lessons from Coca Cola

The name Coca-Cola is universal, one of the most famous brands ever. Even People all over the world over recognize the name and the logo. It’s a name like Kleenex or Xerox, so pervasive that the brand name becomes the generic description of a variety of items. Yet, Coke still spends millions of dollars each year marketing their soft drink. You would think for most of us wouldn’t even need to be marketed TO? When I go out to dinner and order a soft drink, I always say, “I’d like a Diet Coke.” What more can the company do to make us stop and pay attention?

The Share a Coke campaign is catching a lot of people’s eyes this summer. I first noticed the change on the cans about a few weeks ago. I’m not a coke drinker then I grabbed from a friend’s fridge said “Family” and the next one said “BFF.” I was curious what the new cans were all about so I actually went to the Coca-Cola website. Darn you, delicious soft drink company! I fell for your incredibly clever marketing ploy!

I thought the cans were cute, but then learned that the 20 oz. bottles have been replaced by names. With that knowledge, I revert back to the 7-year-old me who used to go through the bike license plate displays at the beach, desperately searching for my name. Unfortunately, I’m not likely to find my name on a Coke bottle this summer because the names on the bottles are the 250 most popular names of teens and millenials in the United States. How do I know this? I learned this fact because I wanted to learn more about the intriguing marketing campaign and researched articles about the campaign on the Internet.

The campaign was a huge success in the U.K. last summer so Coca-Cola decided to expand it this year. When you find your name, you can take a “selfie” with your bottle and share it online (the hashtag is #shareacoke, of course), or see who else out there has found your name for you? Not a teen or millennial? You can order a bottle with your name from the online store or get a customized bottle from the Share a Coke tour when your hometown is one of the 500 stops.
So, even though Coke is one of the most famous brands in the world, they have some how captured my attention enough to

  • Look at each individual can I take from the fridge
  • Go to their website
  • Desperately search for name on a bottle
  • Look up articles about the marketing campaign to learn more

What can we learn from this? The greats never rest on their laurels. Even the most famous brands in the world can get customers to examine their product more closely. We can #beunstoppabletogether.

Do you have questions or comments about the issues in today’s post, want to know how to apply them, or how to help others with them? If so, contact me at connie@pheiffgroup.com or CLICK HERE to schedule a 20-minute discovery call to discuss with you personally.

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Personal Development

Think Your Voice Sounds Weird? Here’s Why.

If you’re like most people, when you hear yourself on a recording, your first thought is, “Oh my gosh, that’s not really what I sound like, is it?” The short answer is: yup, that’s you! Here’s a bit of insight as to why, and a few tips to make sure you sound your best, no matter what kind of voice you have.

When you are listening to someone else, the “input” goes in your ear, hits the ear drum, and sends vibrations through the inner ear canal, which the auditory nerve takes up to the brain for interpretation. This is also how it works when you’re listening to yourself on a recording, which is like listening to another person.

On the flip side, when you speak, of course your own words come out your mouth and the sound goes into your ear for the same process we just discussed, but that’s only half of the input.

The other half is that when you speak, air comes up from your lungs through your throat and vibrates through your vocal cords, the “source” of your voice. But then those vibrations also ricochet off the muscles in your throat and mouth, in your nasal cavity, and create residual vibrations that hit the bones in your neck and head as well, sending their own pulses to the brain.

In essence, when you listen to someone else or a recording of yourself, you’re listening in “mono-sound,” or single track. But when you listen to yourself while you’re speaking, you’re listening in “stereo” or “surround-sound,” with a much fuller, richer sound.

So how can you ensure that everyone hears your best, most melodic voice? Here’s three quick tips that will help them hear your ideal sound.

First, hydrate. Make sure you drink enough water, because a dry throat, dry mouth and tired throat muscles don’t allow sound to flow easily. The “fine print” to this is that it also means you should limit caffeine (*gasp!*) prior to an important speaking opportunity, because caffeine is a diuretic that makes the problem worse.

Second, limit dairy. Dairy produces mucous, and mucous gives you that sensation of perpetually needing to clear your throat as well, which is an annoying habit to hear time and again in any speech, presentation or conversation.

Lastly, breathe! The way you breathe will directly affect the quality of your voice. Start with your posture. If you’re slouched in your chair, you limit the amount of air you can take in, which is the fuel for your voice. And as you run out of air, it “fries out,” with a frog-like, croaky sound. Some people also ramble on and on without taking a breath for fear that if they do, someone will jump in during that split second and cut them off. Once the air is mostly gone, if you keep on talking, that same vocal “fry” will creep in again.

Why does this matter? Because not only is it unpleasant and even annoying to listen to, but it sounds insecure, timid, and hesitant, which is a combo that connotes anything but leadership.

So remember: Drink water, limit caffeine and dairy before speaking, and remember to take enough breaths while you’re speaking. This allows you to maximize the fullness of your tone, so the voice you hear in your head more accurately reflects the voice that everyone else hears when they listen to you… and that’s a voice the projects confidence, control, poise and power.

Who doesn’t like the sound of that?

********

Do you have questions or comments about the issues in today’s post, want to know how to apply them, or how to help others with them? If so, contact me at laura@vocalimpactproductions.com or click here to instantly schedule a 20-minute focus call to discuss it with me personally!

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Personal Development Women In Business

Networking with Confidence and Purpose (i.e. Why Networking Doesn’t Have to Suck)

I am constantly surprised by how often I’m working with clients and the issue of networking comes up. In all the coaching – and group training – I’ve done around this issue, I’ve noticed that, broadly, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who generally enjoy networking and those who loathe it. But there is one thing both groups have in common: most people don’t feel like they get true much out of the experience beyond a glass of wine or beer and a handful of business cards from people they’ll probably never see again.

One of the key reasons for this frustration is that most people fail to bring one thing into the networking event: a purpose.

When you attend a networking event, why do you go? Maybe you enjoy the social interaction, or you’re just following the conference schedule, or maybe a colleague dragged you along as a “wingman.” Ultimately, none of these approaches have an underlying purpose that would make networking valuable. So how can you make networking a useful and positive experience with actual ROI… and do it with comfort and confidence?

Networking with Purpose

A purpose should be specific, but can also be simple. For example, I might know that an HR exec I want to meet will be there, so my goal is to have two minutes of face time with her to be able to introduce myself in person, and get her to agree to setting up a follow-up conversation a few days later. Once I’ve accomplished that mission, everything else is gravy and I’ve networked with purpose.

If you don’t have something that laser-focused as your reason for going, here’s a simple rule of thumb: Networking is simply planting the seeds for a new relationship. It doesn’t have to result in an immediate financial transaction, but the purpose is to meet someone that you can then build a relationship with.

Ultimately, whether or not you become each other’s client is not the issue. The key is that you never know when there will be a reason for you to contact them – or for them to contact you. Maybe you’ll read an article that you think they’ll appreciate and you send them a link. Maybe you’ll look through their contact list on LinkedIn and see someone you’d like them to introduce you to. Or maybe they are chatting with someone else at another networking event a month later who just so happens to need your services, and they can make the introduction.

There’s a terrific book called The Go-Giver that epitomizes this perspective. It’s an easy read in parable form that you can skim in a weekend, and will clarify both how to do it and why.

Networking with Confidence

Interestingly enough, one of the biggest stumbling blocks people face is not why they should talk to someone, but simply the mechanics of how to start the conversation, much less how to sustain it.

First, it’s important to distinguish the difference between networking and small talk.
“Small talk” is simply a communication tool used to break the ice, and initiate conversation with someone new. It can be something as mundane as the weather or how slow the elevator is to a more organic offering like a compliment or asking a question about what you’re looking at on the buffet.

I’ve struck up great conversations with other women by saying, “Just wanted to tell you – I love your shoes!” With guys, tech is always an easy in-road: if he’s looking at his smartphone, try, “Hey, is that the new iPhone? What do you think, worth the upgrade?” Or, while in line at the bar, it’s an easy cause to talk about what someone drinking. “Arrogant Bastard Ale (or Cupcake Chardonnay)… that’s an interesting name! Any good?” Then it’s easy to segue with, “By the way, I’m Laura.”

Natural next-steps for the conversation include asking if it’s someone’s first time at a particular event or what prompted them to come, what they thought of the keynote speaker, what organization they’re with and what kind of work they do. It doesn’t have to be rocket science, so don’t over think it. It’s about finding common ground, and/or showing a genuine interest in knowing more about the person, and the above topics are easy and “safe” for any networking event.

Simply put, enter any networking event with purpose and the mindset of discovering some interesting new people who have the potential to create a mutually valuable relationship – of any sort. When you take this perspective, you’ll realize how valuable and easy networking can be, and you might even learn to enjoy yourself in the process!

Categories
Marketing Personal Development Technology

How Can CMOs Be Ready for Big Data?

Many will tell you that we are already in the age of Big Data, and maybe we are. But the truth is that whatever pile of data we have today will look puny in just a few short years. Big Data keeps getting bigger, so whether you think we have already arrived or Big Data is around the corner, how can CMOs be ready for what comes next?

It’s not that complicated, actually. The most important step any CMO can take is to move to a data-driven decision-making process. What that means is no more “golden gut.” What that means is that we don’t ask the CMO what to do–we ask the data what to do. It doesn’t matter whether the data we have now is big or medium-sized. The truth is that most companies do a crappy job with small data.

How would your job be different if every time someone asked you to decide something, you asked what the data shows? And if there is no data, you asked how we could get some? And if no one knows how to get the data, you ask what kind of experiment can we run to get the data?

For some CMOs, that’s very threatening. They believe that their job, like any good executive, is to make the tough decisions. And that’s true. But what if the toughest decision you will ever have to make is to give up your own personal control and seek the data to make the decisions?

Data-driven decision-making is a culture change. It says that instead of believing in our own opinions, that we will focus on our customers’ opinions. When we focus on data that tells us what our customers want, it’s amazing what geniuses we become.

It feels like data-driven marketing is a loss of control. But what we need to accept is that depending on our own opinions is the most out of control we can be. Each decision that we make personal might feel under control, but competing against companies that decide based on data will quickly make us extremely uncomfortable–because they are making better decisions than we are. And in just a few years, we won’t be making decisions based on data–we will be providing rules for computers to make decisions based on data. We’ll do that because people can’t decide fast enough.

Have you reconsidered your reliance on data for decisions? Moving to data-driven processes prepares you for the onslaught of data that is coming for all of us.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Marketing Personal Development Women In Business

How to Position Yourself as The Go-To Expert in Your Niche Market

Accelerate Your Market Positioning to Gain More Credibility, More Clients and More Sales

Quickly accelerate your brand awareness and expertise by effectively marketing yourself as the go-to expert within your niche market or industry. Learn how to become recognized as the authority and stand out in a crowded marketplace.

During this inspiring presentation, you will learn how to expand your value, increase your fees, and multiply your income streams to create more sales and profits.

Learn How To:

  • Quickly accelerate your brand to become known as the go-to
    expert in your niche market.
  • Stand out, get noticed and gain more high-paying clients.
  • Dominate your competition.
  • Create multiple income streams around your expertise to dramatically increase your income.

Categories
Leadership Marketing Skills

5 Reasons Every Business Owner Needs a Book

Are you wondering how to expand your business? Has a major segment of the market shifted away from buying your products or services? Are you questioning your marketing plan? There’s one simple answer you probably haven’t considered:

Write a book.

It’s true. This one thing—especially if it’s an actual printed book rather than a Kindle or eBook—has the power to grow your business beyond your expectations. You’ll experience a whole new world of opportunities simply by having your name on the cover of a book.

Authority

Imagine you’re at a conference or local networking group and you meet two CEOs who both specialize in business branding—something you know you need help with.

One CEO says all the right things. She’s been in business for years and worked with some top-notch business owners. She has great ideas for how she can help you solidify your branding and assist you with marketing.

The other has a similar history and story, with one added bonus: she’s just handed you a copy of her latest book. It’s a professionally printed, substantial publication that practically exudes confidence.

Which person do you think shows more authority in her field? The one with the book, of course. There really is nothing better when it comes to establishing your authority in any niche than having a book with your name on it.

At this point, I have written or coauthored more than 800 books, articles, online courses, chapters or case studies. This factor more than anything else helped people in my field get to know me.

Expertise

Why does a book speak so highly of you and establish your authority so well? Because it gives you a platform to show off your expertise. It’s like being invited to present on any topic you choose on the world’s largest stage.

Not only that, but your readers are a captive audience. They’re listening—in that moment—only to you. That’s a powerful position to be in, and one that gives you an opportunity to really show off your stuff.

Market Reach

No matter how many readers Google sends your way, no matter how much traffic your YouTube channel receives, nothing will ever compare to the number of potential readers Amazon and other online booksellers can bring your way.

Positioned correctly, your book can reach millions of new readers, and thousands of potential clients. Combine that with the expertise and authority we know comes with being a published author, and that’s a recipe for success that can’t be beat.

Better Than a Business Card

If you’ve ever been to a conference, you’ve no doubt collected a stack of business cards. You get home and toss them in a drawer, and six months later you throw them out, without ever having contacted the people who gave them to you.

But if one of those people handed you a book instead, what happened? You’ve likely read it (or at least leafed through it). You almost certainly didn’t throw it away. And you remember it—and the person who wrote it.

Press Opportunities

Turn on your television to any interview show, browse through Huffington Post, or listen to any of a number of popular podcasts or radio shows, and you’ll quickly see that most of the guest speakers and interviewees have written a book.

The fact is, interview shows depend on interesting, insightful guests to keep their audiences listening, and there’s no better applicant than an author. Writing a book will open up many, many opportunities for appearances that you may never have without your name on that cover.

Do you have to write a book to be successful? No. But there’s no denying the fact that a published author will find she has a much easier time growing her business than the business person who keeps putting it off until later.

Do you have a book in you? Contact me to discuss my editing and ghostwriting services. I’d love to see your book take shape.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Skills Women In Business

Homage to the Master Storyteller

Nope, it’s not Steven Spielberg, or even Dr. Seuss. It’s Hans Rosling.

Never heard of him? After today, you’ll not only have heard of him, but you’ll wish you’d done so years ago.

The late, great Dr. Hans Rosling passed away on February 9, 2017. A professor of public health, he was the master of taking arguably mundane data – and lots of it – and one of the most boring forms of visual presentation – the graph – and transforming them into a mesmerizing story that made you forget you were learning.

So for anyone out there who uses the excuse that the information you have to share “isn’t all that exciting” to defend why their presentations are uninspiring, after reading this post, that excuse no longer exists.

See for yourself in this BBC video where he analyzes the life-expectancy-to-income ratio of 200 countries over 200 years… in about four minutes. As you watch, you’ll be amazed at not only how much he accomplished in those four minutes, but at how much you actually learned… not to mention how much you enjoyed the experience in the process.

The key lesson for our purposes here is something he states in the first few seconds of the video: “I know that having the data isn’t enough. I have to show it in ways people both enjoy and understand.”

Talk about a one-two punch; let’s face it, most people are satisfied if they can get people to understand their data. The idea of combining that with having the audience actually enjoy hearing about it… that seems almost as likely as finding a unicorn.

There is huge differentiator that most people fail to grasp: the amount of information you present in no way naturally correlates to the amount of information the audience absorbs. That part is 100% up to you to make the information both comprehendible and ideally interesting, so it’s not just that the audience can understand what you’re saying, but they actively want to understand it, and then ask for more.

That’s why Professor Rosling was the master. For most of us, we’ll claim that of course global public health is important to us on a general level, but it’s not something we’ll go out of our way to learn about. But from the moment he starts talking, we are practically compelled to keep watching, genuinely curious to see where he goes next.

So what’s the secret sauce to being this good?

I’ve worked with a lot of people in this area, and there are some really important commonalities regarding the challenges that they face, and where Professor Rosling excels. Let’s break down the ingredients into three categories: Visual, Verbal and Vocal.

First: Visual. This one’s easy. As the adage says, “A picture is worth 1000 words.” When graphs or other visual aids are easy to see and understand, the audience just “gets it,” allowing you to share more information much more efficiently. His body language also flows with the picture, and matches his level of enthusiasm as he speaks, which makes it all feel very natural, and draws you in.

Second: Verbal. He’s a globally-renowned expert, but he doesn’t try to prove this by using lots of technical terms or speaking over the viewers’ heads. He uses language everyone can understand, and breaks his points down into distinct sentences with a clear beginning and end. It’s not a rambling stream of consciousness as he figures out what he wants to say. He is crystal-clear on what each point needs to be, and he delivers them on a silver platter, one by one, making it easily digestible for the audience.

Third: Vocal. Without looking at his script, how can you tell where sentences (and points) start and end? Because you can hear it. At the end of his sentences, you can hear where there is a period or exclamation point based on the intonation changes in his voice: there is a low drop for periods, and the sentence or last word may rise in pitch until the very last second and then quickly fall to indicate excitement, i.e. the exclamation point. Where a phrase is not the end of a sentence, his pitch often goes up to indicate a comma, and then the rest of the sentence follows, culminating in the voice-drop. And at the end of his sentences, there is a brief pause, which allows you to process what he just said, and prepares you for the next nugget to come.

(For those of you who need to hear/see some examples of these vocal concepts and the ones that follow, check this short little video here.)

Intonation contrasts – otherwise known as tonality, i.e. where you put the high and low pitch points in your speech – have an additional value beyond implying punctuation and grammar: they are chiefly responsible for conveying interest. He “punches” important key words with higher pitch and draws them out a bit in a way that sounds more enthusiastic. It captures the audience’s interest, and even makes it easier for them to cognitively process the key points, aiding in comprehension.

Plus, the audience will feed off the speaker’s energy before they process what they heard. Dr. Rosling genuinely loves his subject, and his passion for it comes through with each fact he shares, and it’s contagious.

As a point of contrast, reflect back on actor Ben Stein’s most infamous character, the economics teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, who epitomized the world’s most boring teacher. While that was funny in the movie, the sad truth is that he more accurately reflects the typical speech style of people at your average office meeting or presentation than Professor Rosling.

The good news is that the typical standard of mediocrity in how people share data can be raised, and I challenge you to do it. While you may not have all the fancy computer graphics at your disposal, you can use these simple verbal, vocal and visual strategies to tell the story of your data rather than just plod through your statistics one by one.

Better yet, you can also use his software to bring your data to life if you so choose. At Dr. Rosling’s site, Gapminder.org, he gives it to you for free through open licensing, and even shows you how to use it.

So thanks, Dr. Rosling, for inspiring the world in two ways: with all that you have done in the world of public health, and for modeling how to make even the most “boring” data compelling through the art of storytelling.

********

Do you have questions or comments about the issues in today’s post, want to know how to apply them, or how to help others with them? If so, contact me at
laura@vocalimpactproductions.com or click here to schedule a 20-minute focus call to discuss them with me personally!

Categories
Marketing Personal Development

Grow Your Business With Powerful Online Marketing Funnels

Drive More Traffic and Gain High Value Clients

Discover how automated marketing funnels and data capture strategies will up your marketing to increase your online sales. Learn how Facebook ads, Webinars, Landing Pages and Video Marketing will move you ahead of the competition as the go-to expert.
Uncover innovative and strategic action steps to move you to the next level of online exposure. Get motivational with up-to-date business marketing strategies and solid business advice from a Global Marketing Expert with over two decades of experience.
Learn How To:

  • Activate automated marketing funnels that grow your database
  • Develop innovative marketing strategies to increase sales
  • Utilize online marketing funnels to up your competitive game
  • Take strategic action steps to move to the next level

Categories
Best Practices Marketing Skills Women In Business

How Strategic Pauses Will Engage Your Listeners

Power Speaking Skills: Strategies to Improve Pacing with the Power of the Pause:

Maria Guida, president of Successful Speaker, Inc. helps you speak with the poise, passion, and persuasive power of a Broadway actor. In this video, Maria tells you how to use the Power of the Pause when you speak. (This is Part 3 in the series called, “Engage Your Listeners by Allowing You Ideas to Land”).

The Successful Speaker, Inc. video series provides speaking strategies that will help you enhance your leadership presence when you give business presentations, speak with senior management, make sales calls, network, and more. The video series addresses every aspect of successful speaking, including how to sound authoritative, speak with credibility, master active listening, and engage your listeners. The videos also provide speaking strategies rooted in theatrical performance, because actors know how to move audiences. The result: you will become a more authoritative and successful speaker!

The Successful Speaker, Inc. videos will help you project star quality and get more YES’s in the workplace and on the speaking platform. Learn how to enhance your credibility: speak with stage presence, confidence, authority, and authenticity. Discover ways to engage your listeners: use vocal dynamics with impact, to make your communication sing. You will learn how acting improvisation can help you develop the ability to think quickly on your feet. You will also discover how to rehearse strategically with techniques that focus the mind and help you appear completely spontaneous.

There are many other videos about communication, public speaking and presentation skills hosted by Maria Guida and Successful Speaker, Inc. All of these videos are available free of charge on YouTube at Youtube.com/SuccessfulSpeaker

and also at www.successfulspeakerinc.com/blog.
And if you’d like to learn more about how to speak successfully for business, log onto our website and join our mailing list, to download additional, free tips for successful speaking. Visit www.successfulspeakerinc.com.