Situation: A CEO wants to increase awareness of company products and services. They have a strong customer list and a long history of successful projects. How to they increase awareness among potential customer decision-makers? How do you boost awareness of your products and services?

Advice from the CEOs:

• There are three stages to a good awareness strategy:
  • Visibility
  • Credibility
  • Profitability
• The company already has great products and services. Hire a quality PR Firm and have them highlight this for company trade shows, blogs, YouTube, etc.
• The objective is not broad awareness but getting to specific decision-makers – what will get to them?
  • Generate broad awareness of company capabilities through entertaining videos to excite the team members of prospect companies who report to the decision makers.
  • This is a complex strategic sell. If recommenders think that the company’s stuff is cool they will pass the word – create a campaign to encourage this.
• The priority is to close more business. Why not brand or co-brand and promote the company’s products? This may ease reaching the target decision makers.
• The PR advice is good – but how will this play to the crowd that’s writing the check?
  • What makes current customers comfortable working with the company? Is it repeatability?  Credibility? Creativity? Referenceability? Decide which it is and highlight it.
  • Everything that the company is doing on the “cool” side falls under the marketing strategy. Efforts in PR and sales must support this marketing strategy.
• Consider a campaign on YouTube – How do the parts of “Sally” work? How did we design it?  This attracts a smaller audience, but it may be the right audience.
• Within company capabilities, there are two distinctions to clarify – both are important but require different emphasis:
  • Innovating the product
  • Innovating the process – making it happen

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