1. The first cut.

Imagine. You navigate the myriad of typefaces and find that perfect font, the one you absolutely can’t live without. It’s tall, trim, with just enough edge, but not too showy to take away from the message. But, hold on! Don’t get too attached to that pretty face just yet. Unfortunately, all fonts are not created equal.

2. Read the label.

You see, font designers, including those at Adobe, and Bitstream, personalize fonts. It’s like a signature. The serif turns up, it turns down, maybe it disappears altogether when it becomes italic. Or perhaps it is a bit fatter, squattier, or even thinner. Don’t assume your Century Roman is the same as client X, or client Y, or even mine. They may be subtle changes, but different nonetheless. Make sure we all have the same font, from the same foundry, so we see the same thing.

3. Salt or Pepper? Mac or a PC?

OK, so you chose the perfect typeface, you have the same creator, but wait, are you a Mac or a PC? That’s right, many fonts are platform specific-Postscript and TrueType on the PC, Postscript or T1 on the Mac. And they don’t like to talk very much. But you need a little of both, perhaps? Well, thanks to the recent collaboration between Adobe and Microsoft, thousands of fonts now work on both systems. This new cross-platform font file format, called OpenType®, makes translation back and forth between systems easy.

But, beware. Not all fonts are available in OpenType yet. The good news is that there are some great converters available, including one I particularly like called FontXChange® from FontGear.

Fonts. They’re enough to send any designer into a tizzy, never mind the average PC user! Happy Fonting!

Today’s Boston Globe has an interesting article about the renaming of Jurys Boston Hotel to The Back Bay Hotel, in an effort by its Dublin-based parent company to rebrand all of its properties to reflect their geographic locales. In a time when I often hear the lament, “all of the good names are taken,” and “you need to make up a name to stand out these days,” this article made me think. Are companies who might otherwise benefit from the use of solid, descriptive names missing out in their corporate and product naming efforts because of our own cynicism?

The last quote in the article should make any naming expert, corporate executive, or product manager take a pause. Stephen Johnston, general manager of the hotel stated it simply. “It’s kind of amazing that the name hasn’t been used before.”

Yes, many of the “good” names are taken, but as you venture into the naming game don’t get discouraged. Perhaps you may best be served by having a unique name created just for you. But the lesson learned is don’t discard any options in the early stages of development. Use all of the search engines to your advantage before you settle. Name development is a critical element of your overall brand and any effort should be conducted thoughtfully, thoroughly, and with the aid of experts who know how to sort through the alphabet soup of naming.

OK, that was a mouthful, but I will press on since the conference was chockfull of information about advertising, innovation, blogs, podcasting, broadband, mobile, in-video, in-game, social networks…the list goes on. New media has definitely made information more accessible but personally (my true confession), it has become a bane to my existence. As a marketing communications professional, keeping up with all of the new venues for spending ad dollars, coupled with the demand to prove a direct correlation between spending and sales, makes this job more challenging than ever. And that doesn’t just go for those of us who are going it alone. Any senior marketing executive faces the same challenges, whether he or she is in a corporate environment or working in an advertising, marketing or creative agency.

However, gaining conversion data that is real and adds value is not always easy. Too often useless numbers are thrown around to fool clients (or senior management) into approving a program that may or may not work. For example, if you use click-through data to measure the effectiveness of an online campaign that is being managed through your own site and shopping cart, you will get solid data. However, if you are trying to measure the effectiveness of an advertisement in a consumer magazine in the sale of products that are carried in thousands of retail chains (say for example, toothpaste) that’s a different animal. More direct research that may not, in reality, be worth the expense is the only way to get viable data.

The point here is that in some cases you just have to work with experience. A solid advertising campaign, designed for reach and awareness in a targeted market, is still a valuable element of your marketing strategy, and will help to drive sales even if not directly measurable.

So how do you break through the clutter? Build a scanable path for your readers through headlines, subheads, and imagery that visually sit on different planes. Regardless of the medium, following a few simple tips will make your communications pop and ensure salient points are visible in seconds.

• Level 1: Write headlines to pique curiosity. Headlines are the first level of messaging that readers receive from you. A strong headline conveys the start of your story in a few simple words. Your objective is to move readers to the next level-your subheads.
• Level 2: Use subheads to tell a story. Most readers scan subheads, first, so build a snapshot of your message here. Focus on the top level of your message here, to create interest and draw readers in so they want to read more.
• Level 3: Supply supporting details on a sub level. You’ve created interest with your headlines, now it’s time to provide supporting details with short paragraphs under your headlines for those readers who require more information. Here you can use more words to get into the nuts and bolts of your offerings for those readers who are intrigued to move beyond the headlines.

To distinguish the information presented at these levels, how you design the content is just as critical. The best graphic designers I know truly make this an art and are a valuable resource in achieving optimal results.

• Choose different fonts and colors to accent key information. Choosing different sizes, weights, and colors for your headline and subhead fonts will draw readers to this information first. However, be consistent to support the visual path you are creating for your readers.
• Use photos as a visual storyboard. Images that support headlines and subheads as readers scan your information are powerful, visual reinforcements to the text to help the reader follow your message path.
• Incorporate transitions strategically. Whether you use white space, folds, fades, light, or any other method, be sure to place these transitions strategically so they do not disrupt the flow you created, but enhance and support it.

If you have more thoughts to contribute, please comment or send me an email.

A company’s positioning, its core messages, and how it wants to be viewed should be the driving factor in all creative decisions. That includes color, type, and imagery, across any delivery medium—online, print, video, etc. Whether you have the benefit of working with a creative team or you need to “go it alone” as a smaller start up operation, here are some tips for making your creative execution work.

Before you begin any creative work, take the time to:

1.    Define your corporate positioning. Clearly communicate who you are, what you do, and where you fit in your market.
2.    Define your company’s personality. Are you aggressive or compassionate, youth-oriented or mature?
3.    Define your audience. Are you talking to financial executives, consumer gamers, or software engineers?

Once you know who you are and what image you want to portray to your target audience, then you can move onto developing a creative platform that can be used across the spectrum of communications tools:

1.    Choose 3-5 core colors that fit your corporate image. Don’t choose purple because YOU like it. Think about the look and feel you want to convey to your audience. Are you eco-friendly? Then you may choose browns, greens, and yellows. Financially-focused? Then perhaps darker, muted colors are more your style. Aggressive, hip? Then you’ll probably gravitate to clean, crisp, bolder colors. Regardless of your personality, sticking to 3-5 colors from a complementary palette that you repeat across the spectrum of marketing tools is a good start in designing a consistent image.
2.    Use 3 complementary typefaces that are applied consistently, for example, in headlines, body text, and accents. As a conservative company you may take a traditional approach and choose a bold, sans-serif font for headlines, an elegant, serif face for body text, and a simpler italic font for captions. But, if your business is more progressive, you may opt for a complementary selection of all sans serif faces. Note that if you are working with a designer he/she may take the liberty with more, but for the novice this will keep you out of font overload. With thousands of typefaces available, and the advent of desktop publishing it’s easy to mix and match and quickly distract the reader from your message.
3.    Select imagery that reflect your personality and supports your messaging. The choice between photography and illustration, stylized or direct approach, can sometimes be subjective. However, try not to influence image selection with your own preferences. Think about what would be best communicate your message to a customer. Is it important to show a piece of hardware or product packaging that will be recognizable to a consumer? Or, do you need to invoke an emotion with your audience that is best conveyed through artwork?

Regardless of the color, type, or imagery choices you make, the important thing is to remain consistent in your use of these individual elements across all of your marketing materials. And, be cognizant in your selection that all colors, and in particular, typography, translate well in traditional print, digital print, online, and video applications.

Thoughts, comments, any additional tips you’d like to share? Let me know.

Make ‘em stick!

A few days ago, I happened upon a gag gift that my husband and I received for an anniversary early in our marriage. As I recall, this gift was intended to bring humor and teamwork to our lives (likely given to us by one of our single friends). This ridiculous game requires each player to wear a colorful cap covered in Velcro. Players take turns throwing foam balls at one another’s heads in an attempt to get them to stick. While I cannot speak from personal experience, it turns out it’s not very easy to hit a bobbing head with a foam ball. As when throwing spaghetti against the wall, sometimes you have to throw a lot of pasta before something sticks.

So it may be no surprise that spaghetti thrown against the wall reminded me of partner marketing funds. Companies allocate a staggering amount of marketing dollars (be it market development funds [MDF] or Co-op) each year to help their channel partners market, promote, and sell their products and services. Unfortunately, some 25 percent of those funds (that’s billions of dollars) go unused. Flash to the head-scratching finance person (sans Velcro cap) trying to rationalize the return on the 75 percent that is utilized, and it’s all just a little confounding.

More often than not, when asked why they leave that “free money” on the table, business partners cite lack of time and resources to put those funds to good use. When you dig a little deeper, they often confess that it’s not worth the effort to comply with vendor restrictions or tedious claim processes. Translation: too much work; too little pay-off.

While re-engineering the MDF approval/claim process is outside the scope of this post (not to mention a real yawner), we offer the following practical ideas for maximizing the dollars you’ve dutifully set aside for partner marketing. (You have set aside dollars, haven’t you?):

1.    Take it from the top. Build a snapshot of your company’s top initiatives for the year. When will you be announcing and releasing new products and services? What new markets will you pursue? When will important corporate marketing and demand generation initiatives hit throughout the year? What marketing themes, if any, will your company promote?

2.    Identify how partners fit (or not). From this picture, identify if and how your different partner types plug into these objectives. What, if anything, can you package up and extend to partners in a “low-touch” manner? What opportunities are there for partners to participate in direct mail, advertising, and seminars (including web-based and social-networking media), effectively extending your reach into their customer bases?

3.    Share the plan. Create a brief deck of slides to articulate these opportunities for your partners (10 slides max!). This creates a foundation for planning and starts the creative juices flowing. Presenting a picture of where you’re going and how you see them fitting into your initiatives goes a long way toward helping partners understand their role in the equation.

4.    Identify the gaps. Once partners understand where you’re headed, listen to their objectives and jointly identify the gaps. At this point, you can decide if their marketing initiatives make sense in context of your plan, and entertain funding those as well.

5.    Enjoy a beautiful thing. The appeal of this approach is the ease with which both parties can rationalize direction, choose their participation, and get the most from their respective investments. It also eliminates the mystery around what you are likely to approve and hastens the process because you’ve agreed to a plan ahead of time.

Finally, make sure your channel account managers have the tools and skills needed to drive partner marketing planning. Oftentimes, channel account managers are focused on other operational and selling tasks, and don’t have the time or DNA for marketing.

Companies that master delivery of coordinated partner marketing treat their partner marketing funds as a strategic asset. They arm their channel marketing teams with the tools and information to optimize each dollar, and hold them accountable. If they lack channel marketing resources, they outsource the function (shameless plug here) to ensure every dollar is spent wisely…keeping them, of course, ahead of the curve.

Jacqueline Franklin, the founder of Routes2Market, brings over 20 years of experience helping companies solve their marketing and sales challenges.

The most effective case studies contain five important elements:

• A good story. The story must resonate with your target audience. You may choose to write about customers by industry, business application, or an important niche.
• A strong intro and summary. Don’t forget to summarize your story, including the important details you want your prospects to take away. Remember, many people only read the first and last paragraphs so put extra effort here.
• Details, details, details. Be specific. Was there a technology that helped speed up turnaround time? A process that increased cost savings? Or a service that increased employee productivity? Please, don’t rehash generic solutions to common business problems. Explain, in detail, the challenge your customer faced, how and what you delivered, and the end success.
• Scanable content. Make it easy for readers to get information quickly. Use subheads, short paragraphs, and bold type to accent key facts.
• Keep it brief. Depending where your story is being used, you may need different versions, but in all cases it should be brief.

It’s time to assemble your anecdotes and start building an arsenal of solid, highly relevant customer success stories to bring to your next sales call. Whether online, in print, or communicated verbally, case studies will serve you well in all your business endeavors.

Enter the case study. This valuable sales tool can help shorten your sales cycle, by letting you quickly demonstrate your successes in addressing important customer issues, on specific topics, and in targeted industries, featuring real stories that are applicable to your prospects needs. Well-written case studies provide targeted and substantiated information to prospects as they conduct research about your business.

Case studies can help shorten the sales cycle by showing:

• Proof. Demonstrate your success in resolving issues by providing key customer problem/resolution information.
• Relevance. Highlight actual problems the customer may experience that show you understand their business, application, or industry.
• Credibility. Name names. I said this before but it is important. Identifying the customers whose problems you solved with your product or service is critical in supporting the authenticity of your story.

The final post in this series will focus on the 5 elements of effective customer case studies. Stay tuned…

It’s not that I didn’t want to publish a blog. I did. Really.  I delayed launching this blog, well, because I was scared. Yes, it’s true. I’ve been in marketing communications for over 25 years now so you’d think nothing in this business could scare me anymore. But truth be told, I’m a perfectionist. My close friends and business partners often say I’m too hard on myself because of this trait. However, it was important to me to be sure I could provide relevant, useful information to readers. I knew I needed to make the commitment to writing on a regular basis, which, as many of you know, is not easy when trying to juggle clients, kids, and the dog. So here I am. Ready to commit. Still a little scared, but facing this challenge head on and with a purpose. My goal is share my experience in simple, “bite-sized” pieces, to help others learn and improve their own skills across the broad spectrum of marketing communications.

Comments? I’d love to hear from everyone, but go easy. I know how heated the blogisphere can be, particularly when a new blogger hits the scene. Remember, this blog is  a work in progress.  I appreciate your help, support, and encouragement in making Marketing Munchies a success.

• Pitch a unique or interesting story to the press. Coverage in news and trade media not only provides powerful exposure, but lends credibility to your  message since it is coming from an impartial party.
• Post on your Web site/blog to aid customers in their research. Seeing the story in multiple locations reinforces your message.
• Add to sales presentation. Add a printed copy to your sales proposal or speak anecdotally during your presentation. A series of short, targeted stories that relate to the prospect will open up conversations and energize your discussions.
• Feature at trade shows. Display key customer quotes from case studies in booth graphics and feature in advertising for the event to drive additional traffic to your booth. Then hand out printed copies of the case studies to visitors to deliver the full story.
• Promote through email/direct marketing. Design an email or direct marketing program around your successes. Feature key customers and their stories as part of a serial campaign.

Tidbit: If you have a good story to tell, then share it.

Next: How case studies can help to shorten the sales cycle.