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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