Jan 20, 2016 | Communication, Marketing
I prepare and give quite a lot of presentations, and from time to time coach others as they prepare.
Speaking is a vital part of what I do, although I do not see myself as a professional speaker, just somebody with a point of view on a range of topics that can be of value to others, and I have learnt from my many stumbles.
Having the opportunity to deliver a presentation is a gift, someone is endorsing your expertise, giving you the benefit of their credibility, as well as offering the opportunity to demonstrate that expertise.
Gold.
It is also a fact that the presentations that do not work are almost always the ones where the effort has not been invested in the preparation.
It is surprising to me how often people stuff it up, despite the time, effort, and stress, often to the point of nausea, that goes with the experience of preparation and delivery in front of a crowd, even a small one.
There are some common characteristics of the successful presentations, some of which I have written about on previous occasions, but was motivated to do so again by a friend facing a presentation he should be able to nail, because he has the knowledge and expertise, but utterly lacks the confidence to communicate in front of an audience there to hear him.
Summarised is the advice I offered from my experience.
Have a clear purpose.
The purpose is the one thing that holds the whole presentation together. Every comment, story, slide, movement and demo should add to that purpose, it is the reason people came, or at least choose to give you their attention at the beginning. It is important to relate not just the information they were promised, but why it is sufficiently valuable to them that you have made the effort to assemble your expertise on the topic so they can benefit from the information.
Find the story that illustrates the point you want to make.
Sometimes it may be a montage, but presenting is really storytelling by another name, and we evolved listening to stories, it is how we learn and comprehend. At heart we are all storytellers, we do it for our kids, and friends around the BBQ, in the pub, we use common language, instinctively use metaphors and similes, and often ‘air quotes’ to indicate uncertainty when we quote numbers. Why should it be any different in front of a formal audience? We just need to find the story that fits the purpose, and tell it with passion, commitment and authority.
Build empathy and intimacy.
Most find this hard, as it seems unnatural. Many years ago before giving my first major presentation in front of 1000 plus industry players I went and had some coaching. The thing that really stuck with me was a throwaway piece of advice. ‘It is not a presentation, it is a performance‘ I was told, followed by ‘most people in the audience will admire the fact that you got up, and be eternally grateful it is not them, feed on it’
From that starting point, if you are thoughtful, building some empathy can be pretty easy. Phrases like “Imagine you were….” or ‘It was a stormy Tuesday night in the old rectory, and …..’
Building intimacy implies the audience sees you speaking only to them, grabbing and holding their attention, ‘I knew we were right when Susan said this one thing…..’ This cues everyone listening into focusing their attention on what you are about to say to the exclusion of everything else going on around them.
Words and Visuals.
They each have their place, don’t get them mixed up. Words belong coming from your mouth, they do not belong on a screen, that is where the visuals should be. If you make the mistake of putting your words on the slides, you cede the authority in the room, people will read the slides and not listen to you. Instead, if you put up an interesting visual that illustrates the point, the audience will listen to and remember the words. Slides offer a framework for the words, reminders of the points that need to be made.
Everyone prepares for a presentation differently, some write, rehearse then deliver the script word for word, others free-wheel around the framework. It does not really matter, so long as you retain the attention of the audience and make all the points necessary along the way. The critical thing to achieve is to leave the audience with a story that resonates, that delivers on your purpose.
Stagecraft.
Those lucky, and talented enough to be selected to go to NIDA spend 3 years learning about stagecraft, so a blog post cannot even scratch the surface, but there are a few basics.
- Your physical presence and actions create a part of the visual and emotional experience that your audience has, it is literally a ‘stage’. How boring just to have someone driving a lectern as often seems to happen. Use the stage, move around, map out your points using the space you have. When you have an important point to make, move forwards, to the middle, if you want to build suspense, move backwards, slowly. Use your hands to point, (finger) engage (open hands) and shape (move your arms in squares, circles)
- Modulate and change your voice. The tone, speed, silences, and level at which you use that great tool, your voice, adds drama and colour to the delivery. Few things are worse than a monotone, and everyone will drift off very quickly no matter how good the material.
- Contrast everything. Holding attention is aided by contrast, your voice, movements, use of visuals. Use contrast within the context of the words and visuals, and always with the purpose in mind as the glue. Ensure there is movement and colour relevant to the purpose of the presentation as it adds to the performance you are delivering.
- Respect the audiences time, attention and expertise. Never go over time, in fact, be a few minutes quicker than they expect, and they will be grateful, as will the organisers. Even the very best speakers have trouble retaining full attention beyond about 25 minutes, so why do you think you need 40? Much better to limit yourself, and remove the extraneous material from your presentation, concentrating on the really important stuff, the bits that connect directly to your purpose.
- Use props to make your point when appropriate, they are a visual metaphor, and can be remarkably effective at making the point, and being memorable.
- As the presenter, you hold authority over the room. The audience will stand up if you ask them the right way, shake the hand of the stranger on their left, even do a silly dance at the end if you have delivered to them. Use the authority wisely, don’t abuse it or you will lose them forever. Don’t cede that authority you have been given, use it yo your advantage. I often see presenters giving away their implied authority by opening with with something like, “I am humbled to be here….“. You have the opportunity to build on the authority implied by the fact that you are the speaker, and leave the stage acknowledged by the audience as the expert, which adds to the memorability of your purpose, and your position as the authority on the topic.
- Body language. If you look nervous, the audience reacts differently to someone who looks confident and in charge. The words might be identical, but the response to the speakers and retention of information will be entirely different. This TED-X talk deals just with how the palm of your hand impacts an audience, now add the rest of your body to the mix.
- Never, never talk down to people, use terms or jargon that may not be understood, or try and demonstrate your expertise by dazzling with bullshit.
Practise.
I am amazed at how often I see people deliver their presentation for the first time live, in front of the audience. Practising is time consuming, and feels strange, but the more you do, the better the presentation will be. I have a very wise pot plant in my study, it hears all my presentations numerous times before anyone else has the chance. The only downside is that the feedback is a bit limited, so when I am ready, I also try it on a few indulgent and critical friends. Audiences like spontaneity, but even the very best performers practise their material relentlessly, so it is effortless, and seemingly spontaneous. With that intimate knowledge of the material comes the potential follow a track that emerges from audience feedback, engage with them, or just “riff a bit” without losing your place, as the core material is almost on autopilot.
I hope that all helps the next time you are faced with that thing that, in surveys at least, many of us fear more than death, public speaking. This curated list of 8 TED talks contains a wealth of tips and is worth working your way through as you develop your presentation skills, or prepare for that scary experience.
Jan 18, 2016 | Communication, Marketing, Social Media
The ability of a headline to attract attention, then lead the reader deeper into the content is the make or break skill of copywriting, and even in this world of video, the ability to write a headline remains the single most important skill in effective communication.
No matter how good the body-copy, without a great headline, it will not get read.
So here is a headline template that always works.
Use combinations of these elements:
· Number
· Trigger word
· Adjective
· Keyword
· Promise
Let’s say the subject is a training seminar about managing cash flow.
Pretty dry stuff but of vital importance to any business, and make or break for small business.
The easy and obvious headlines may be:
‘How to manage your cash flow’ or
‘Cash flow basics for beginners’
However, if you apply the headline template you might come up with something like:
‘7 simple techniques to apply cash flow to your business to make more profit’
Let’s break it down.
Number: 7. For reasons I do not fully understand, but rooted in psychology, odd numbers work best, and lists in headlines work as they promise to deliver instant gratification.
Trigger words: Simple. Words like Free, Secret, Undiscovered, Expert, all offer incentive to open
Adjective: Manage. Adjectives are ‘action ‘ words, they reflect and prompt activity.
Keyword: Cash Flow. Cash flow is the guts of the post, and is the word that will deliver the search engine enquiries that ere relevant to the post.
Promise: ‘Make more profit’ well, who in business does not want more profit?
Alternatively, your headline might be:
‘Join us to learn the 7 secrets to greater profits through managing cash flow’
I do not know which would be the better headline, I am not a professional copywriter, but I am pretty sure both would work well.
An option if you were about to make an investment, such as in a public a seminar series, and generating a lot of interest rather than just capturing eyeballs on a blog post was financially critical, you could set about testing them by applying an A/B test which is pretty easy on social media platforms. Then you could use the better one, or perhaps do some more ‘wordsmithing’ to improve one or both for further testing.
As evidence of how the template works, the headline that caught you in the first place is the third iteration of the first one I scratched down, which was :’Killer headline template that always works’. Having written the post to articulate for you a template that really works, I realised I had better take my own advice.
You tell me if it worked.
Oct 30, 2015 | Communication, Social Media
“Self indulgent nonsense that passes as digital marketing strategy”.
That is what it often is, perhaps usually, but it can also be the road to success when leveraged by a truly expert marketer.
But everybody is a marketing expert, it is easy, just common sense, surely?
Why is it then that I see so much crap, so much waste of time and money, often lots of it.
Big businesses are the worst, the marketing people spend money like it is not their own.
Hang on, it isn’t.
By contrast, small business is intimidated by the jargon, the smoke and mirrors that has been so prevalent over the last 100 years, joined recently by the mystery of digital. They shy away and often do not take advantage if the greatest single marketing opportunity that has ever opened up for them .
The ability to not just send a personalised message to an individual, but to see what they do with that message, respond appropriately, and to enter into a ‘conversation’ with them.
I know there are lots of self styled gurus out there blathering on about people becoming engaged with brands, wanting to carry on a conversation with their favourite brand, and promising to deliver such an outcome, when common sense says it is crap.
Look at your own behaviour.
Do you crave the attention of a ‘brand’ do you actively seek a ‘brand experience’ crave digital interaction with your brand?
I thought not.
Most people are not thinking about interacting with their favourite brand of yogurt except when they are in the supermarket, or their head in in the ‘fridge looking for some brekkie, despite the protestations of digital marketing bag men whose job it is to flog a digital inventory of some sort.
Be careful, and ensure that you build the foundations of great marketing, get the fundamentals in place, then you can go ahead and win.
Oct 23, 2015 | Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Courtesy: “First dog on the moon”
I am getting pretty annoyed with the enthusiastic panting of the toothy self appointed social media guru brigade extolling the ‘awesomeness’ (my current second most hated word) of social media.
They give the serious advisors amongst us a bad name.
It happened again during the week. At a casual SME meetup, there was one of these types there flogging the line that all you had to do was give him some money, and you would make it back 10X (actual claim) because he was able to focus his specialist and exclusive Social Media expertise on your objective and ‘Abra Cadabra’ money would appear.
The loaves & fish story have nothing on this lot.
Social media is just a fragment of the challenge of Social Marketing enabled by the technology that not just encourages, but demands that your ‘targets’ (will have to think of another word) have the opportunity and means to communicate with the marketer.
As I have heard it said, ‘it is not communication until the intended message is received, understood and has elicited a response’.
Seems to me there are a few questions you should ask yourself about your message:
- To what extent does it assist the prospect move along the journey to a transaction?. We do not engage in social marketing for our health, it is for a commercial outcome. Therefore measure it against the progress towards that outcome, recognising there are probably many other things in your message mix, from deliberate marketing communication aimed at the prospect, to random stuff like how clean was the company delivery truck was when it passed your prospect at the lights last week.
- How does the communication add value to the prospect?. If you cannot add value in some way, why should the message assist the journey to a transaction?
- What do they do next as a result of seeing your message?. If they do nothing, it is just another of the 95 gazillion messages they might see today, if they do something as a result of seeing it, whole new ball-game? It is great to have someone take action as a result of your message, greater if that action not just moves them down the transaction path, but if they also share it with their networks. In effect they are not only acknowledging the value of your message, they are endorsing it to their networks. This is the gold at the end of the social marketing rainbow.
Social marketing is pretty easy to write and talk about in a superficial way, but very hard to put into meaningful practice. It takes careful and creative analysis of your prospects and your own value proposition, as well as the construction, content and nature of the messages sent. This is not an exercise conducted with a fairy wand and pixie dust, it takes serious marketing thinking and experience.
If it sounds almost too good to be true, grab your wallet and get out, because it almost certainly is.
Sep 18, 2015 | Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Blogging is a journey
Writing a blog can be confronting, and often small business owners shy away for the commitment. Make no mistake it is a commitment, but so is anything worth doing.
After 6 years and 1400 posts, and a lot of reading of posts by others, I have learned a bit, I hope, and assembled a few tips:
Be selective. Starting out you cannot do everything, so pick the platforms that suit you. Logically this follows some thought about where your target market hangs out digitally. This particularly relates to those in your field who are influencers.
Create an engaging profile. Every platform offers the opportunity to create a profile. Do it thoughtfully, considering the things that your preferred readers might like to see. Too often I see profiles that are incomplete or look like resumes, in the latter case, unless you are actively looking for a job, it is not of much interest to anyone but your Mum.
Upload a photo that does you justice. Your profile photo is like the headline photo in the front page of a newspaper, and you only get one chance to make a first impression.
Background images. Again, most offer the opportunity for a background image, this is the opportunity to confirm your expertise, or the thing you want to be remembered for. Unless, you are a Vet, no cats allowed.
Understand the platform. Whichever platform(s) you choose to start with, spend a bit of time understanding how they work, the features, and how you might be able to use them. Just having a profile up is useless, you need to be able to actively engage in the features of the platform to be noticed.
Follow and comment. Engagement starts somewhere, in most cases following those with whom you feel you would like to share a coffee with in real life is a good start. Once following, make comments on their posts, refer to other things they may be interested in, link to your posts, and create debates, offer an alternative point of view.
Learn from others. Social media has been exploding for the last 15 years. There are some real gurus out there along with all the wannabe’s. By watching and listening you will figure out quickly who they are, learn from them, model your digital behaviour on theirs, without copying, as you need your own ‘voice”. One of the gurus I have watched is Jeff Bullas, a true guru who lives almost around the corner in Sydney. By simply watching what he does, I have leant a lot.
Endorse and share. Sharing is an endorsement, if you feel something, is worthwhile, share it amongst your networks with a short note. These days it is easy to share on all platforms, but taking the time to write and endorse a post makes a lot of difference. Just clicking the ‘like’ button really means little any more.
Join groups. This is a great way to come to know those in a market who are the opinion leaders, and make a thoughtful contribution. I much prefer the closed groups, firstly because the rules can be set and you are less likely to be bombarded by irrelevant advertising messages, but more importantly because there is a common reason to be a member of a group, and if the reason is at the core of your businesses, it is clearly a good place to be.
Consistency. This all takes time and effort, but you have to be in the game to win. Those who find you worth following will get used to a rhythm, so once that is established, do your best to keep it up. Consistency in tone of ‘voice’ is also important. A blog is a personal thing, that is why people have followed in many cases, so outsourcing it can be a mistake. By contrast, having guest bloggers can be a great way to add value to your readers, and for your it offers the opportunity to attract new readers, point is that the guest post is explicitly written by a guest. I guest post regularly in a food industry magazine, it helps them with original and relevant articles and thoughts, and drives traffic for me.
Don’t pitch. When you use blog posts to pitch, if you do it too hard, you will lose readers. By all means offer access to landing pages that do pitch products or events, but they should be elsewhere beyond a soft invitation to readers who may be interested to click and go there. Hard selling on a blog post is the quickest way to put off readers other than being irrelevant or committing the sin of bad writing, I have seen.
Be visual. Human beings are visual animals, we respond to visual stimuli. Look at the reaction around the world to the photo of the little drowned Syrian boy being lifted out of the water. 
He is not the first to have been reported to have drowned, this was not the first story, it probably ranks at a number well over a million in the words written, but it grabbed the attention of the world like nothing that has gone before.
Be visible. Use social icons at every opportunity giving people as many opportunities to sample and connect as possible. It is a numbers game after all, and getting them to the front door counts.
Extend courtesy to others. Digital interaction is no different to face to face, apart for the obvious . People like to be thanked, acknowledged for their contributions, and have their efforts reciprocated. However, being selective in the reciprocity can be useful. There are many tools out there that just automatically do stuff, like follow or like. Following back an automated system is not the same as following back a person, so be selective and be careful who you like.
Start. Always the hardest thing, to make the commitment to yourself, and get on with it, dismiss the voice in your ear that tell you that you do not know enough, it is too hard, or that nobody will come. As we all know, the journey stats with the first step.
Jul 22, 2015 | Branding, Communication, Marketing, Small business
Email marketing is the stuff of small business dreams.
For the first time they can communicate with their markets, being able to measure the effectiveness of their efforts. Unlike the days of broadcast media where the return on any set of marketing activies was extremely hard to calculate, and therefore out of the bounds of possibility for those without a lot of money to risk, knowing the return and being able to experience for a modest outlay is fantastic.
There are myths, legends and piles of horseshit proclaimed about digital marketing, and SEO and email marketing key amongst the fodder.
I thought I would try and dispel some of the myths by offering some views of the basics.
This one is about email marketing, SEO will come in a few days.
There are piles of data available from email marketing providers, from the freebie version of Mailchimp to the really sophisticated providers like Infusionsoft, and everything in between. Each provider does things a bit differently, and charges for the levels of sophistication and integration that can be delivered. But all deliver metrics that will help you better target your email communication.
Following are the common, and probably most useful ones.
1. Bounce rate.
Simply the percentage of emails that could not be delivered to a recipients inbox, they “bounce”. Usually this is because the email as written is incorrect, or the email account has been closed, often because an employee has moved on. From time to time, you will get a bounce from an address due to a temporary problem, or closure such as a maintenance closure of a recipients server. Generally these will be delivered when the problem is removed, but those undeliverable where there is no temporary problem should be “cleaned” out of your list immediately. ISP’s regard high bounce rates as an indication of spamming, and so are likely to take action against such accounts.
2. Delivery rate.
As implied, it is the percentage of emails successfully delivered. Simply the converse of the bounce rate.
3. Open rate.
The percentage of your emails that were opened, pretty obvious. These days, we get so many emails that often we just skim those that appear important and delete or leave the rest, and most of us have our spam filters turned on, so that emails from suspect sources or with suspect subject lines are dropped automatically into the bin. This can easily happen to your marketing email. The best way to avoid it is to have personalised emails, “Dear Fred” rather than just “Hi”, and ask those joining your list to put your email address into their “safe” list in their email account.
4. Click Through Rate.
Often shortened to CTR, this is the number who clicked on one or more of the links in an email message. This measure is one of the foundations of successful digital marketing. When a target or prospect gets something, but does nothing with it, generally the communication will be deemed to have failed. Depending on what you are doing, an expected CTR will vary widely. You could reasonably expect a higher open rate and CTR on a newsletter that has been subscribed to, than an overtly promotional message, even from a trusted source. There are various techniques used too increase CTR rates, the best ones being an offer of something for free, which is the most common, but surveys work very well, asking for 2 minutes to gather general market or product information generates good click through rates as people like being asked for help when it is anonymous, and simple contests, like ” Which of these three is out of context” questions also can deliver excellent CTR rates.
5. Sharing rate.
The percentage of recipients who click on the “share this” button to share on one of more of their own platforms, or forward to others. Digital marketers often talk about “engagement”, the necessity to get some level of engagement before anything useful can happen, and sharing is one very useful measure of engagement. Equally, if you get a shared email post or message from a trusted colleague, you are highly likely to open and read it, it is a referral of the message.
6. Conversion rate.
The percentage of recipients who clicked on a link in your email to complete a desired action. It may be signing up to a list to receive more posts, or a move to the next level of a sales funnel, or even straight to a shopping cart. The conversion rate is the key measure of success of any communication, the recipient has done the action that was the objective of the email.
7. Email ROI.
Pretty self explanatory, but vital measure, and can become complicated when you start feeding in variables. In its most simple form it is the revenue generated by a campaign divided by the number of emails sent. Email marketing is not free, it consumes time and resources, so measuring the return you get on the investment is a crucial activity, and is the one that makes this type of marketing so effective.
Most will have heard the cliché “the money is in the list” from email marketing people, and it is half true. To my mind, the money is only in the list when those in the list take some action as a result of the communication they receive. However, growing your list of engaged and responsive receivers, waiting for your next communication or offer is a building block of ongoing email marketing success.
Need assistance, there are plenty more posts on digital marketing on this site, and there are many others around, mostly trying one of the techniques to get you into their sales funnel. Mine is really simple, call me if a chat would help.
