Marketing Clique

We all snicker when when we hear the saying, "Death by PowerPoint." Mind-numbing presentations unfortunately continue to plague meeting rooms, worldwide. There is not one person in the business world who hasn't suffered through an agonizing presentation. Even the torturers... err, I mean presenters have been victims of boring PowerPoint shows that they later cursed. Confession: I, too, am embarrassed to have crafted some real sleepers. What can we all do to improve?

It's a Performance, Not a Presentation

There's a reason not everyone is an actor, or a radio personality. The reason is simple: it's very difficult, requires a tremendous amount of practice, and an authentic delivery.

Today's business presentations are performances, and the demand for quality continues to rise. Your performance is either going to be a stage (AKA meeting room) performance, or a radio (AKA webinar) performance. Are you ready? If the answer is "no" or "maybe" you need to either rehearse until you feel confident, or recruit a better "actor."

Use the Right Tool

We tend to use the wrong software tool for the job. PowerPoint, much like Microsoft Excel, is often misused and abused. And, perhaps the most profound error is when a presentation opportunity is misused or not fully taken advantage of.

• Instead of using PowerPoint, try SlideRocket. It's a collaborative SaaS slide presentation platform that does everything that PowerPoint does, only better. You owe it to yourself, and your organization, to demo it. I don't work for SlideRocket. I have tried it, however, and know what it's capable of doing. I think SlideRocket has the potential to transform the way companies approach presentations.
• When you have an opportunity to present, present, don't just share slides. What do I mean by that? It's a performance, and an opportunity to share an exciting idea, not just an information dump. If a presentation opportunity is being used as a data dump it's a waste of everyones' time. I'm sorry. That information should be disseminated some other way.

Sales & Marketing Presentations

The good news is that presentations are still a welcome event in today's business culture. A good salesperson is comfortable presenting to different audiences, and able to shift presentation styles accordingly. The bad news is that most salespeople are not master PowerPoint slide craftsmen and inevitably end up stitching together a jalopy of a presentation, repurposing colleagues' slides, copying and pasting, and last-minute edits. The company's branding ends up suffering, the presentation is visually sloppy, and the salesperson is stressed.

Marketing likes to assemble beautiful presentations for salespeople. It's like mom packing a nice, wholesome lunch for you when you were a kid. The good news is that these presentations are normally well-thought-out, and more visually pleasing than what a salesperson would throw together in the Holiday Inn Express room the night before. The bad news is that management gets involved with trying to ensure that "boiler plate" presentation is chocked full of every last thing the company thinks it's good at, a busy "Nascar" slide of big brand companies with whom they've done business, and data, including the quintessential "hockey stick" graph. The reality is that salespeople, much like kids with their mom's packed lunch, end up changing things and monkeying up what was carefully and thoughtfully toiled over by marketing.

Whether to Include That Video Clip

Are you thinking of including that video clip in your presentation? Don't. Well, if you have to, make sure you've tested it a million times on the exact system you will be using to make the presentation... in the same room... using the precise audio visual system through which which you'll be presenting. If you don't, you'll be like everyone else. You'll get to the slide with the video clip and have it hang. It happens time and again. We've all suffered through it.

Is It a Webinar Presentation?

Again, use SlideRocket for this, especially if there are multiple presentations. It's easier. It's better.

Webinars are not only about a great presentation, but they're about sound quality and Q&A management. The best webinars are hosted by someone who is comfortable and familiar with how a good radio show is formatted. Use an excellent quality phone, not a cell phone, and certainly not a speaker phone.

A Bunch of Quick Hints

1. Use powerful imagery.
2. Less is more.
3. Condition your presentation to presentation conditions.
4. Avoid starting out by apologizing, especially for lack of preparation, or quality, or because you have a cold.
5. Avoid including a chart of data on a slide.
6. Use large font.
7. Offer an online archived copy that can be seen and shared with colleagues, embedded on your website, and include a link in your company email newsletter.
8. Avoid "reading" the slides to the audience.
9. For in-person presentations try blacking out, or whiting out the screen while you're explaining something in more detail.
10. Don't let your CEO present if s/he's not a good presenter.
11. Triple check your presentation equipment
12. Before: advance through each slide in your presentation, making sure it looks the way you expected it to look.
13. Start on time, especially if it is a webinar. People get antsy waiting. You don't want them starting out irritated.
14. Rehearse.
15. Rehearse.

We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is PowerPoint

An amusing article from the New York Times. Worth a read: http://nyti.ms/c8GATa

These days, marketing is increasingly accountable for sales and operational efficiency. Management is measuring the success of marketing using metrics that could just as well be out of the sales group's weekly report. What's more, marketing is required to show return on investment (ROI) each step of the way. With these mounting pressures, flat or decreasing budgets, and a seemingly endless list of daunting tasks, marketing understandably turns to technology.

What are some of the most high-impact technology-related marketing issues?

Sales force automation - Is the sales database connected to the same database marketing uses? How and when are prospects handed off to sales? In an upcoming blog post I will introduce more on this topic, including lead scoring and marketing automation, and which vendors are the most visible thought leaders: Marketo, Eloqua.

Forecasting - Marketing can earn more clout by contributing to an accurate revenue forecast. Make the forecast funnel make sense for your organization. Align marketing activities that are directly related to sales, and measure the success. That way marketing is seen as having a direct-line impact on revenue. Furthermore, marketing can justify increased marketing spend in areas that can be accurately attributed to revenue growth.

Website copy - Traditionally, website content has been positioned with two types of visitors in mind: 1) The website visitor who is in the introductory phase of the buying process and 2) The website visitor who is "low in the funnel" and on the verge of making a buying decision. The reality is that it's often a long and winding road. Depending on the complexity, or risk, of the product or service, website visitors may be hitting a site for a variety of reasons during the buying process. What's more, there is often more than one person involved in the consideration process, which can span many months, if not years. Make sure website copy is speaking to the appropriate personas, is written with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind, and contains easy-to-identify areas for the different types of visitors.

By coordinating the consumer's end-to-end experience, companies could enjoy revenue increases of 10-20 percent. -McKinsey report, March 2010

Social Media - What are the best ways to effectively use Twitter, Facebook fan page, video? Each brings technology issues, input from sales, marketing, and customer service. Then there is the requirement of authenticity, and ensuring the company brand is accurately portrayed. This is a simultaneous recipe for success and horror.

Content Management System (CMS) - Here is a perfect example of something that used to be "owned" by IT. Now it's common to see it owned by marketing. Work closely with IT to ensure the right website content is getting to the right visitors at the right time. There are plenty of search marketing implications to selecting and implementing a new CMS, like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal.

Conference Calls - Conference calls and web-based meetings with conference calls have become regular marketing events. Knowing the features and benefits of the different webcasting and conference call technologies is now a must for marketing. Ensure that links to archived webcasts and conference calls can be automatically updated on the website, and integrated into online sales and marketing collateral. What used to be solely an IT issue, conference calls and webcasts are regularly overseen by marketing.

"The Deck" - Endless PowerPoint presentations are created for endless reasons by an endless number of people on any given day. Chances are great that marketing ought to be policing how the company's brand is being portrayed (adherence to style guide) especially when these presentations will be viewed outside of the organization. The best way to collaborate on slide decks, to use common graphics, to collaborate on content, and to keep numbers up-to-date is to use a relatively new application called SlideRocket. SlideRocket is scalable, enterprise-class, software as a service (SaaS) presentation system that saves organizations from the hellish and all-too-common scenario of disparate file folder in multiple departments on multiple computer hard drives. Get relief. Check out SlideRocket.

Digital Advertising - Search and display advertising can now be closely measured and adjusted by marketing. Optimizing website landing pages has become a must. Test, test, test.

The list goes on. Technology continually wiggles its way into the daily activities of the modern marketer.