editor, Author at Mediastreet

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7 ways to grow your Instagram following

January 3, 2020 No Comments

Currently one of the most popular social media apps on the market, Instagram is now a fertile ground for growing internet fame and promoting brands and businesses. However, with the vast amounts of competition across the site, growing an authentic following requires a careful and strategic approach. Below is seven of the key steps one can take to growing a genuine following on Instagram.

Tune your profile

There are surprising amounts of Instagram accounts that neglect to do it. Carefully create every piece of your Instagram profile to evoke your brand and appeal to your target market. Craft your username to contain keywords relevant to your business so that it pops up when people search for your services. Use your bio to succinctly describe what your business does and what makes it great. Post carefully crafted images that evoke your business. Put together a profile that looks promising to follow.

Get your hashtag out there

By now, pretty much everyone knows that a major key to getting word of your brand across the internet is to create your own custom hashtag – #jennyssalon, #eatatjoes, #mikesgarage, whatever might be relevant. However, according to SMMRank online media platform it’s simply not enough to just throw your hashtag out there and hope that people will not only use it, but also associate it with your brand.

You need to go a bit further than that if the hashtag is going to gain any real momentum.

Consider the places that you advertise your business, both online and offline. Digital ads? Posters? TV or radio ads? Billboards? Put your hashtag in all of them. Feature it prominently next to your logo. Not only will this get your hashtag out there, it’ll also ensure that it’s associated with your brand.

WOW! Budapest is one of the most Instagrammed UNESCO sites!
Incredibly sexy plus-size Hungarian girl taking over Instagram! — PHOTOS

Look into influencer marketing

Marketing your Instagram profile (and your brand in general) through influencers might, be one of the most effective approaches to marketing.

Really, think about it.

Internet celebrities have some seriously loyal followings nowadays – hearing your brand recommended to them by a third party that they trust is likely to do a lot more to entice potential customers to your brand than any direct advertising.

Of course, you’ll need to ensure that the influencers you choose to market you have decently sized followings that cross over with your target market; but considering the sheer amount of prominent individuals to choose from on Instagram alone, chances are that you won’t have any trouble finding the right one.

Post at a consistent rate

It goes without saying that what you post ought to be engaging and relevant to your business; but besides that, if you’re going to keep your profile prominent, you need to be sure that your posts are also consistent.

Settle on a certain number of posts per day (and think out the number carefully – too few will likely cause you to get lost in the sea of other content, but too little might come off as spammy).

Then decide when they’ll be posted (consider the time zones of your target market, what time they’ll most likely be looking at their feeds, and so forth). Then, schedule the posts ahead of time to ensure that this schedule is maintained. Followers and newcomers who can rely on your content to be both engaging and to crop up on their feed at a consistent rate are much more likely to become genuinely loyal followers.

Participate in relevant conversations

An Instagram profile that simply makes posts and does nothing else is apt to come off as a bit detached. If you’re really going to get your name out there and gather a loyal following, a key tactic is to actually engage with other Instagram users – especially in conversations that are likely to interest your target market.

When followers comment on your posts, engage with them – let them know that you are hearing their feedback, and that you appreciate their support and loyalty. But take it beyond your profile, too – follow other accounts that relate to businesses like yours, and engage with them, and their followers. Get involved in conversations about matters relevant to your target market – though, of course, do so in a manner that averts stirring up controversy. Doing so will not only introduce your profile to a host of new potential followers; it’ll also give new followers the sense that your profile, and brand in general, has a team of actual human beings behind it, who are interested in actually engaging with the community, rather than just selling a product or promoting a brand.

Tap into what appeals to your audience

Whatever your brand or business may happen to be, it has a specific target market – a market with specific demographics, who have specific interests, and are likely to follow specific things.

Do research into what your target market enjoys. That’s to say, organic research – go onto chatrooms and websites frequented by your target market and follow accounts that they follow. Keep an eye on the sort of things they talk about and use this to inform yourself about what is popular among them now, and what will likely be popular in the future. By tapping into these interests and catering to them via your Instagram account, you’ll be much more likely to draw the interest of potential customers.

Prompt your followers to help

Last, but not least, is this one. And that’s referring to small things here – stuff like ending a post with “don’t forget to drop a like!” or “hit like if you can relate!” Minor prompts like that, which ask very little of your followers and only take a moment of their time could result in a serious influx of likes – which, in turn, will push your account up on the algorithm and make it far more likely to be found by fresh followers in the future! In addition, of it you always can buy high-quality Instagram followers on Instagrowing. This will make it possible to get new subscribers as soon as possible.

Sourced from Daily News Hungary

In News

Preparing A Great Marketing Section For Your Business Plan

January 3, 2020 No Comments

By Matthew Podolsky.

Every business needs a marketing plan – a systematic approach to attracting the consumers you hope will become your customers. A marketing plan is a prime component of your business plan; your business can’t survive unless people buy your product or service, and they can’t buy your product or service if they don’t know it exists.

As with any other section of your business plan, the marketing component will be highly specific to the nature of your business and industry. Still, there are guidelines that can get you started and shape how you approach your marketing research and choices.

In this article, I’d like to share an overview of the process of developing a great marketing section that will make your business plan stand out to potential investors, partners and loan officers.

In the marketing section of your business plan, your overarching goal is to show how you’re going to expose your potential customers to your product or service, and show how you’re going to get those potential customers buy what you’re offering. That means fleshing out the “four P’s” of marketing:

• Product (or service): What exactly are you selling, and why will people want it?

• Pricing: How much will you charge, and why?

• Place: How and where will customers buy your product or service?

• Promotion: How will you attract those customers (and keep them coming back)?

1. Describe your product/service and target market.

The idea is to paint a picture of your product or service as valuable to the customers in your target market. This component details what you’re offering to customers, how they’ll benefit from it and why it’s better than what everyone else is offering to that market.

You’ll detail topics such as:

• Your product/service’s traits and features.

• Your target market and ideal customer.

• How your product/service benefits that target market/ideal customer.

• How your branding strategy relates to that target market/ideal customer.

• New products/services you’ll offer the same market down the road.

Tie all of the elements together to show that your product, strategy and target market are in perfect alignment.

2. Explain your pricing strategy.

Pricing is a huge consideration. In involves balancing value, competitiveness and profit, and it affects other aspects of your marketing plan, including your budget and where you advertise.

To come up with the ideal price for your product, consider factors including:

• Your target market’s needs and finances.

• Your costs to produce and sell your product or service, both fixed and variable (materials, shipping, labor, rent, utilities, administration, promotion).

• Product availability.

• Pricing of similar products.

Include information on your profit margin, and explain how your pricing choices relate to your target market, providing detailed information that shows your strategy is on the mark.

3. Lay out your sales and distribution methods.

For the “place” component, you’ll show how and where your customers will access and buy your product or service. The basic components are product distribution and sales transactions.

Describe your plan to get your product or service to your customer, including information on distribution channels and customer transactions. You’ll address topics including:

• Distribution channels: Will you sell the product directly to the customer, or indirectly, through an outside distributor?

• Customer transactions: Where/how will the customer have a chance to buy the product or service (retail location, home delivery, sales representatives)? What are your payment methods and terms? What are your warranty and return policies?

If your distribution involves sales representatives, the “place” component should also include details on any sales-related training, metrics and incentives involved in your strategy. Either way, include how much you expect to pay for all of the distribution elements.

4. Show how you’ll get the word out.

Detail your approach to advertising and promotion. Explain the reasoning behind that approach, and project your return on investment (ROI) if you utilize your strategy.

There are myriad options available when it comes to getting a product or service in the public eye, including:

• Internet, newspapers, magazine, TV, podcast, or radio advertising.

• Billboards, bus or subway ads.

• Direct mail, telemarketing or flyer distribution.

• Trade shows, press releases or product-launch events.

• Online presence (web site, social media, email marketing).

• Local directories or coupon books.

• Promotions (contests, giveaways, two-for-one deals).

• Community involvement (sponsoring a local fundraiser, hosting a community barbecue).

Don’t try to do some of everything; focus is the key. Use your understanding of your target market and your unique selling proposition, along with research into the costs associated with various promotional approaches, to develop a strategy to most efficiently convey that message to that market.

In the process, you’ll gain the knowledge to estimate your ROI and develop your advertising/promotions budget, in which you’ll indicate the percentage you’ll devote to each method employed in your strategy.

Effective marketing is critical to the survival of any business, so take the time to get it right and convey it clearly. It should be obvious to anyone reading your business plan that you know your customers, what they want and the perfect amount to charge for it.

By Matthew Podolsky

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Branding is dead, CX design is king

January 3, 2020 No Comments

By Micah Bowers.

The days of crafting brands without incorporating a CX design mindset are drawing to a close.

One of the hardest things about design is keeping track of the terminology. There are many words to learn, and definitions frequently overlap. But don’t think for a moment that any two terms mean the exact same thing. Distinctions abound. Abbreviations matter.

So it is with user experience and customer experience design, or UX vs. CX. The two disciplines are so closely related, their differences so murky, that they are sometimes used interchangeably.

Originally, the UX umbrella was meant to cover every facet of an individual’s interplay with a company, but our distinctly digital age complicated things. UX is now associated with the quality of interactions between a user and a digital product, and CX design has come to encompass all the other encounters that a person has with a business.

All other encounters—the scope is enormous.

Today, UX designers typically focus on a series of goal-driven tasks and the overall quality of interactions; for instance, “How can we improve mobile navigation so people can find things more easily?”

To create cohesive experiences, UX designers must also be aware of the ways in which their work impacts existing features. “Does changing our navigation improve discoverability and speed up our purchasing process (or increase our conversion rates)?”

Zoom in with UX. Zoom out with CX. It’s a natural pairing.

But what about other design disciplines? How do they fit into the CX design equation? More specifically, what impact does brand design have on the customer experience? At the very least, it seems like brand designers ought to be aware of all the ways in which their clients interact with customers.

Avoid a myopic brand

Brand designers have an uncanny ability to pinpoint the attributes that make companies special.

What do they do best?
How are they different than the competition?
Why should anyone care?

With these insights in hand, brand designers unify the most essential truths into a promise between company and customer.

This promise, the brand promise, has few words but permeates every aspect of a company’s activities. It names a common goal and inspires everyone involved to move with a shared sense of mission.

But, a brand promise can be restrictive—especially when a brand designer doesn’t appreciate the full scope of a company’s touchpoints (aka any interaction that has the potential to change a customer’s feelings toward a business). For example, a design team lands a contract with a grocery chain and goes all-in on a strategy that makes digital interactions top priority. They define a compelling brand promise and outline a companywide mindset that emphasizes high-quality digital tools and content. Unfortunately, the team doesn’t give the same level of care to the grocer’s brick-and-mortar experience, and they fail to develop a plan to infuse in-store interactions with the updated brand sentiments. A crucial aspect of CX design and customer engagement has been ignored. With time, customers grow frustrated because the glossy rebrand they encounter online doesn’t translate to the real world. In-person interactions with the grocery chain didn’t become markedly worse, but they feel slow and dated in contrast to the lofty expectations set by the rebrand.

CX apathy causes irrelevant brand collateral

Visual identity design builds on brand design. A brand promise is the foundation, brand values are the frame, and the elements within a visual identity are the fixtures and finishing touches. They embody the most important aspects of the brand in visual form and serve as aesthetic benchmarks for a host of promotional collateral.

Chobani’s visual identity was designed so that the brand, despite being a household name, would be perceived as a small, humble craft company (like its early days). [Image: courtesy Toptal]

To create an effective visual identity, it’s crucial that a brand designer have big-picture knowledge of a company’s customer journey—all the ways customers interact with the company and perform tasks over time. Why is this so important? Designing promotional collateral for brand channels isn’t like creating a responsive interface for different screen sizes. It’s not enough to recycle and resize the same design elements over and over. Every channel has unique constraints and content demands. Time, scale, distance, environmental distractions, and user expectations are just a few factors that come into play. It’s not necessarily the brand designer’s job to create promotional collateral, but it is their job to design a visual identity that is adaptable to multiple scenarios. Let’s expand on our example from earlier—the brand team that goes all-in on digital.While building out the grocery chain’s visual identity, the brand team decides to outline a set of photography guidelines that will give the grocer a more intimate and human feel. The intentions of the team are good: They want to cultivate a more relatable web and social presence by showing happy people enjoying the grocer’s goods.But the human-centric photos don’t account for the chain’s past success promoting products out of home—where ads must be interpreted in the blink of an eye. When a new set of billboards, bus wraps, and kiosks are designed following the brand team’s guidelines, they are visually attractive, but the photos of smiling people don’t fully communicate the deals the grocer is offering. The ads fail to grab the attention of motorists and pedestrians, and the campaign fizzles.

Brand designer keys to omni-channel awareness

Brand channels are unique and evolving

Every channel that a company uses to communicate with customers has its own idiosyncrasies. What works on one channel isn’t guaranteed to work on another.

Some channels are structured for highly personalized interactions—others less so. One channel may be geared toward in-depth videos while another is known for short audio clips.

Channels aren’t static either. Features, popularity, and demographics are always in flux. Just when everyone thinks they have a handle on “where users are spending their time,” a new channel emerges and disrupts everything.

The paradigm can’t be controlled. Flexibility is paramount.

There’s no way to dominate every channel. Fit is crucial.

Consistency is the lifeblood of engagement

Engagement measures a customer’s feeling of relationship with a product or company. Feelings and relationships may be fickle, but they thrive on consistency.

The takeaway for brand designers? Consistency encompasses more than visual design decisions like logo placement and color use. Every touchpoint makes an impression. Every interaction impacts perception. No part of the customer’s journey is inconsequential or dismissible.

The customer experience is interconnected

Customer experience design is a web of interconnected interactions. Touchpoints don’t exist independently of one another. They’re all part of the same story, all linked to a brand’s core promise.

A purchasing experience on mobile doesn’t end. It extends into unboxing, setup, and regular use. It continues through ad campaigns and customer support. It endures on social media. Finally, it breathes new life with the choice to make, or not make, another purchase.

Click here for a larger version. [Image: courtesy Toptal]

CX strengthens brand relevance

Branding is dead? Hardly. It’s stronger than ever, but that doesn’t change the fact that a crummy interaction completely undermines even the most inspiring brand promise. Can brand designers control what happens at every touchpoint? No, but they can design brands that are disconnected from reality—brands that make big promises but don’t deliver when it counts. When such a disconnect exists, customers tend to look elsewhere.

Branding isn’t dead, but the days of crafting brands without incorporating a CX design mindset are drawing to a close.

Feature Image Credit: Toptal

By Micah Bowers.

Micah Bowers is a senior designer at Toptal. Follow him on LinkedIn and Dribbble. This article was originally published on the Toptal Design Blog.

Sourced from FastCompany

In Jobs

Senior Account Executive

January 2, 2020 No Comments

Outset Agency, Basement 7 Pembroke Street Upper, Dublin.

Outset Agency seeks a highly motivated, creative and skilled Senior Account Executive to join our growing team, who will have a particular focus on the Creative Campaigns area of our business.

We are a new-age agency that focuses on how audiences and businesses connect. We work directly with both brands and agencies, helping them to achieve their goals.

Our work is focused across 3 key areas; Creative Campaigns, Influencer Marketing & Live Experiences.

The successful candidate will have experience working within the client services area of a marketing or media agency and have a strong knowledge of all the different marketing functions across digital, content, experiential and beyond.

The Senior Account Executive will be responsible for managing a portfolio of client accounts, as well as assisting the Key Account Manager on other projects.

Responsibilities:

Liaising with clients on a daily basis – with the Client Services team the lead point of contact on all Agency work
Plan, develop and assist in the delivery of client campaigns and projects
Plan and manage client budgets and advise on campaign elements and distribution channels
Internal project management of Agency’s work across Digital, Content, Influencers and Events
Supplier management and building business relationships
Creation of client proposals
Working closely with and reporting into the Key Account Manager on all Agency work

Requirements

Requirements:

Minimum 3 years of experience working in Marketing or a related field (preferably Agency side)
Strong understanding of current online and offline marketing concepts, strategies and best practices
Ability to prioritise tasks and focus on multiple projects and deadlines simultaneously
Strong presentation skills
Excellent communication skills with the ability to interact professionally with clients and business stakeholders
A creative thinker – we want someone that is resourceful and has the ability to think outside the box
Ambition – we are young company that is moving and growing quickly, there is a huge opportunity for personal growth within the business for the right candidate

Click HERE to apply for this job.

In Jobs

International Marketing Director – Performance Demand Generation

January 2, 2020 No Comments

Groupon, Dublin.

Groupon provides a global marketplace where people can buy just about anything, anywhere, anytime.

We’re enabling real-time commerce across an expanding range of categories including local businesses, travel destinations, consumer products, and live or lively events. At the same time, we are providing advertising options and tools that merchants can use to grow and manage their businesses. Culturally, we believe that great people make great companies and that starting with the customer and working backward moves us forward.

We are looking for an expert in Paid Marketing to lead our International markets. You will have experience managing / optimizing performance marketing campaigns, building and leading a team, and partnering with analytics and engineers to scale these efforts through automation. You are a marketer and a leader of teams who’s particularly energized by performance marketing, growing efficiently and looking for new areas to optimize. If this sounds like you, please reach out to us.

Key Responsibilities:

Manage all aspects of Paid Marketing for our International businesses, including strategy, forecasting, and technology.
Develop the strategic roadmap for paid marketing and SEO while partnering on overall multi-channel strategy
Collaborate with engineering and product to drive automation for the channels
Build and optimize Paid marketing campaigns for specific KPIs
Create and manage relationships with internal and external partners (cross functional teams and external teams)
Integrate and align the channels into a unique customer centric approach.
Establish and track key performance indicators and other supporting metrics to measure digital marketing effectiveness and ROI

Champion analytical insights and dashboards that demonstrate the specific value of digital platforms and channels
Manage the digital marketing budget and create compelling business cases for future investment

Lead, develop and manage the internal SEM, SEO, Display and Affiliates teams
Partner with cross functional Ad Tech team to build automation, optimization, and scalable tools for the online marketing team
Champion excellence within online marketing team and our cross functional partners

Who you are:

Minimum of 10+ years of work experience in a global organization as a Digital Marketing or business leader, including the strategic management and hands on execution of Display, SEM, SEO and Affiliates, and other digital advertising platforms
At least 5-7 years of people management experience, excellent leadership skills with the confidence to lead, manage and engage team members (both direct and indirect reports)
BS degree in Business, Economics, Math, Engineering, Statistics or related field preferred. Masters degree is a strong plus
Expert in online advertising management and budget optimization
Strong ability to manage external vendors and agency partners
Ability to synthesize data and analytics from a wide variety of sources into concise, actionable insights and recommendations
Ability to collaborate with cross-functional teams and influence decision making across all levels of the organization
Strong ability to develop and implement plans while continuously monitoring results and implementing continuous improvement methodologies
Innate ability to stay in tune with and take advantage of emerging technology trends and platforms within web/digital marketing

Click HERE to apply for this job.

In Jobs

Hotel Market Executive (Ireland, UK & Italy)

January 2, 2020 No Comments

Ryanair, County Dublin.

Ryanair is Europe’s largest airline, and No.1 travel website, carrying more than 140m customers per annum, operating more than 2,000 daily flights from 86 bases, connecting more than 200 destinations in 40 countries and operating a fleet of more than 400 Boeing 737-800 aircraft. Ryanair has recently announced firm orders for a further 200 new Boeing 737 aircraft, as well as options for 100 more Boeing 737 MAX 200s, which will enable Ryanair to lower fares even further and grow traffic to 200m p.a. in 2024. Ryanair currently has a team of more than 19,000 highly skilled aviation professionals, and has an industry leading 32-year safety record.

The Role

Ryanair is looking to hire a Market Executive, Hotel Supply (Ireland, UK & Italy), to join the Ancillary Revenue team at the most exciting time in its development. The successful candidate for this role will report to the Hotel Market Manager, and the role will be based in our Ryanair Head Office, Dublin.

Results oriented, you will be responsible for delivering direct hotel supply for Ryanair, as we aim to disrupt the established accommodation market in Europe, by offering hotels lower commission rates, passed directly through as savings to customers, as we move closer to being the “Amazon of Travel”. You will join the best team in the industry and work closely with your counterparts in our Digital, IT, Marketing, CRM & Legal teams to deliver your objectives.

The Role

Manage a defined geographical territory of hotels in Ireland, UK and Italy
Sign up new hotels & groups, meet the hotel acquisition and retention targets.
Ensure hotel listings are optimised with engaging content, all room types and rate plans when set live on the Rooms platform.
Contact hotels to get special promo rates (e.g. mobile-only, package, closed-group rates) and ensure our direct rates are positioned to convert on Ryanair Rooms (growing market share of Rooms bookings)
Contact hotels to resolve inventory & rate queries as well as ensure invoices are fully paid.
Provide extranet self-service support for hotels & manage 3rd parties such as suppliers & channel managers
Forecast sales for your portfolio of hotels, and prepare and deliver weekly management reports against agreed KPIs
Work with our Labs team to add features and functionality to the Ryanair hotel extranet & connect to channel managers.
Visit and travel to meet with hotel groups at least 20% of your time

Requirements

Fluent in English & Italian, advanced excel and excellent communication / presentation skills
Relationship builder, business developer, problem solver, results oriented, numbers focussed
5 – 10 yrs experience in Hotel / Travel industry
Degree level or equivalent required

Click HERE to apply for this job.

In Jobs

Creative Studio Account Executive

January 2, 2020 No Comments

Brandface, 47 Terenure Rd E, Rathgar, Dublin.

The Studio is the creative engine within InSight Marketing and breaths visual life into the many campaigns we create for our clients. Aside from supplying the design and artwork to the agency client service teams, Studio also has an enviable list of direct clients. We are looking for a Studio Account Executive with a very unique set of skills.

Inside the Studio, you will work closely with the Creative Director to help develop and deliver POS suites, packaging projects, site branding and brand activations to our own list of Studio clients. We will require you to be able to manage and traffic work flow in and out from the Studio Design team. This involves a close working relationship with the designers and ability to take a brief from the client services teams in the agency. As a candidate you will need to know and be comfortable with design, print & production management, and be very organised with the ability to deliver on timings and quality.

Outside of the studio walls, you will be required to project manage a team of installers and printers, making sure we have everything we need in place ahead of site activations and branding, while also being just as happy sitting in front of and dealing with clients on a daily basis.

Remuneration for this role is €35,000 with 21 days holidays outside of public and bank holidays. Based in our offices in 47 Terenure Road East, Rathgar, Dublin 6, D06 Y672, with hours of opening between 8.30am and 5.30pm Monday to Friday.

If you are super organised, great with clients and love working in a creative environment show us how you shine!

Click HERE to apply for this job.

In News

The best persuasive speech ideas & tips

January 2, 2020 No Comments

By Meghan Ryan

Persuasive speech is a form of communication where you convince the audience to agree with your argument and motivate them to take action. The best speeches will feature topics that are thought provoking and interesting to both you and your audience. Check out our list of great persuasive speech ideas to help you get started, as well as general tips to make any presentation more persuasive.

Top 8 persuasive speech ideas

Below are 8 persuasive speech ideas, each with the potential to spark discussion and engagement with your audience.

Does the working environment affect employee productivity? Many have heard the old adage, “A happy worker is a productive worker.” Much of an employee’s happiness can come down to the environment they work in. Discuss how improving the company work environment can help increase employee happiness and, in turn, their productivity. Make suggestions on ways certain businesses can improve their work environment.
Are innovation and adaptation crucial to driving a business forward? In almost any market, it’s important to stay on top of current trends as well as to continue to innovate, offering products and services that your company’s target market will need. Discuss the importance of adapting to the changing market and focusing on innovation to stay competitive in the industry. Talk about some ways in which a company can drive innovation.
Is brand awareness the most important part of a marketing strategy? Marketing is how you present your company to your desired target market. While there are a number of factors of marketing that create this presence for your customers, brand awareness can be one of the most critical. Discuss the ways in which a company can improve its brand presence and how consistency is vital to success.
Should businesses outsource more or keep all they can in-house? Outsourcing is becoming more and more prevalent in business. Many companies try to tackle all they can in-house, whether to save money or to maintain total control over how the company is presented. Discuss the pros and cons that come from outsourcing and make some suggestions on which types of work are more commonly outsourced than others.
Is it better to cater your business marketing to a niche audience? Determining your company’s target market is one of the most critical steps when establishing a marketing plan. While all companies are happy to have every consumer as their customer, trying to cater to everyone is often difficult. Discuss the pros and cons of catering to a niche market versus a wider market.
Should all businesses eventually focus on global expansion? Businesses are designed to grow and evolve, and often that means the possibility of global expansion. But is this option right for every type of company? Discuss some situations and business models where global expansion should be a primary focus and situations and businesses where it does not need to be the end goal.
Is online marketing as effective as it once was? In the modern workplace, the quickest and easiest way to reach your target market is through digital means. Yet, with an increasing barrage of emails and online ads, it’s hard to tell how effective this type of marketing still is. Discuss when online marketing can still be effective and other marketing methods that can support it and help improve your marketing plan.
Should a business focus on its online presence more than any other marketing facet? Some companies rely completely on an online presence while others make online marketing a key component of their marketing plan. Discuss the benefits of maintaining an effective online presence in the digital world and provide some ways that a company can improve its online presence and strengthen it.

Persuasive speech tips

When preparing a persuasive speech, try to keep the following tips in mind so that you stay focused on your goal and deliver a convincing speech.

Always keep your end goals in mind

The purpose of a persuasive speech is to engage your audience and convince them to believe in something that you believe in. Keep your goal in mind throughout the whole presentation and make sure that your word choice and each fact you share backs up your argument. A key persuasive speech tip is to stay focused – avoid spending too much time on backstory and anything that can be construed as a complaint. Your audience needs to know why they should side with your argument. If there is something bad you are mentioning in your speech, don’t just inform them about it or complain about it, convince them to take action.

Speak to your audience

Know the audience that you will be speaking to. Your material should be in a format that can directly speak to them. For instance, if your audience knows little about the topic of your speech, use a problem-solution format to first inform the audience of a problem and then provide a valid solution. This, along with citing credible sources, will give your argument more sway.

Use persuasive language

Word choice is an extremely important element of a persuasive speech. In order to convince your audience to side with your argument, you need to convey confidence and evoke emotions. Some types of persuasive language include:

Exaggerations
Expert opinions
Alliteration
Anecdotes
Appeals
Rhetorical connotations

Support your message with visuals

You can use as many words as you want to articulate your argument, but one powerful image can evoke strong emotions and shift a person’s mindset in a second. For this reason, make sure to incorporate a visual element in your persuasive speech. Prezi’s storytelling format and zoom animations weave visuals into your presentation seamlessly and give your presentation a more conversational feel. This is important in a persuasive speech when you want your audience to feel comfortable and open to new ideas. Learn more about incorporating visual design into your Prezi presentation.

Establish credibility in your opening

You will want to establish yourself as a reliable source as early as possible at the beginning of your speech. The sooner you gain your audience’s trust, the easier it will be for them to see the validity of your points. You can build credibility through storytelling – use a specific instance where a situation occurred or provide examples that resonate with people on an emotional level.

Practice as much as possible

The more you practice, the more comfortable you’ll feel and the more confidence you’ll project. Practice with friends or family members and ask them to provide constructive feedback on areas that can be improved. If you prefer to practice alone, consider recording yourself or delivering your speech in front of a mirror.

The best persuasive speech ideas are almost always something that is interesting to the speaker. Their natural excitement about the topic helps them win the audience over with their argument. Choose a topic that is close to your heart and use Prezi to bring your ideas to life.

By Meghan Ryan

Sourced from Prezi Blog

In News

The End of Targeting As We Know It

January 2, 2020 No Comments

By Lance Porigow,

In a fundamental way, a target market is like a galaxy. Both seem like comprehensive, discrete entities, complete unto themselves, until we look closely. But ultimately, a galaxy is an aggregation of micro-phenomena – stars, planets, comets – each with its own discrete existences and properties.

This is true of target markets as well. A target market is a personification of the audience we think is most likely to buy our product. But the reality is that all members of this “market” have unique characteristics, and they often respond to different stimuli.

The New Age of Exploration

Ultimately, then, if we really want to understand either a target market or a galaxy, we need to zoom in and focus on the individual objects and phenomena that compose it. The good news is that just as powerful telescopes and discoveries in physics have allowed us to see into the depths of our galaxy and predict cosmological events, advances in tracking, ID resolution and data science allow us to expand and refine our vision of our audiences, enabling us to understand – and thus better serve – the entire range of people who might be interested in what we have to offer. In this way, we significantly expand our potential universe of consumers, while improving every communication and interaction.

Marketers have historically determined the most likely buyers for their brand by defining the demographic and behavioral patterns of their best customers. This has involved researching preferences, understanding passions, examining purchase motivations, and more.

But there are known flaws with this approach. Specifically, we see time and again that stated purchase intent has been shown to have low correlation to actual sales. And the limiting nature of a lowest common denominator target segment is an even bigger problem. We know there are always people who don’t fit neatly into our target market, but who would still be interested in our product.

The Expanding Universe

Now that computational processing power and data science techniques can simultaneously make sense of the thousands – or millions, or billions – of data points we have about the members of our audience, we have opened up a much more robust form of marketing intelligence; one where there are really no limits to whom we market our products to. This enables us to move past the limitations of targeting to a handful of segments. With all of this data, why not open up the potential to acquire all audiences that we can responsibly identify, reach, and profitably convert?

To test the idea of a single audience versus multiple audience approach, marketers will need to experiment more with pitting traditional research directly against behavioral data targeting. While traditional research may show that an audience is performing well, automated testing with multiple undiscovered audiences may perform just as well – and often exponentially better.

The Final Frontier

As we move into what is conceivably the end game of marketing – a future where a target market is a segment of one, where virtually every individual can be precisely targeted with highly relevant messages (albeit anonymously and with appropriate permissions) – brands need to begin executing at the intersection of data science and creativity. This means rethinking the relationship between disciplines – branding, media, creative, production and data science – If we are to leverage our new, expanded consumer pool. To operate in this new world order, we need to recalibrate how all of our marketing disciplines adapt to enable the individualization (as opposed to personalization) of communications.

For companies of all sizes, new audience identification modeling can generate significant new revenue. The time to experiment with marketing to many audiences is now. By doing so, we can more deeply understand and better communicate with an entire human galaxy of individuals who find value in our brand.

Cosmic.

By Lance Porigow

Sourced from MediaPost

In News

How I Went From Consultant To Coach And Others Can Too

January 2, 2020 No Comments

By Sheryl Lyons,

My entrepreneurial experience as a consultant has been quite a wild ride with many ups and downs, both financially and emotionally. I have learned by now that business is cyclical with ebbs and flows. So how can other consultants like me make the best use of their excess capacity when business is not as strong as they would like? Personally, the answer was “invest in yourself.”

For the past four years, I have run my own consulting business that focuses on helping leaders to manage their workplace culture. Last year, I had an increasing number of clients and colleagues ask if I could provide individual coaching services. As a leader and entrepreneur with a background in human resources and leadership development, their requests seemed logical and in alignment with my skills and talents. However, I have hired my share of coaches in my own career with mixed results. I knew that whatever I chose to do, I wanted to do it with the right knowledge, credentials and credibility. My journey to coaching and my advice to others can be summed up in five essential steps:

1. Find a coaching course.

In an initial online search, I learned that demand for coaching was growing faster than supply. That gave me confidence in my timing. To ensure I was doing it properly, I researched coaching certification providers and enrolled in an online class. There were many certification classes available, so I selected one that fit all of my criteria: It was accredited by the International Coach Federation, had positive student reviews and offered courses online with a feasible class schedule. I loved it so much that when the first class ended, I immediately signed up for the next one. These courses commanded a good chunk of my time for two months, but because my client count was manageable, I had the time and energy to commit.

As I progressed through each class, I also rediscovered a love of learning. This was the first investment I had made in myself since completing my MBA some 12 years ago, and I had forgotten how fulfilling and rewarding it was to venture into something new. At the end of the courses, I became a Certified Master Coach (CMC), thereby taking the first step in creating a completely separate business line to complement consulting.

2. Define your target market.

In addition to learning the ethics and proper techniques of effective coaching, the courses helped me define my target market, which was different for nearly every student in the class. Coaches specialized in health and wellness, marriage and relationships, career transition and — my specialty — business leadership and executive coaching. Knowing your target market will help inform your overall marketing strategy and approach.

3. Create a coaching agreement.

Next, it was time to establish packages and pricing and create my coaching agreement. I conducted my own anecdotal research in my hometown of Houston, Texas by polling my network on whether they had ever hired a coach and at what price point. That data, coupled with my own experience of previously hiring two coaches, solidified my pricing structure. The coaching course also allowed participants to review and compare one another’s agreements. From that exercise, I streamlined and reduced my lengthy legal document and took pieces from several in our cohort to include clauses I hadn’t considered, such as cancellation, refund and record retention policies.

4. Market yourself as a coach.

Once I had those components solidified, I strategized with my marketing team on how to showcase our new coaching offering and build a client base. We began with an email campaign announcing coaching opportunities and my new coaching credential. We then updated all sales documents and my website to include the coaching option as a complement to consulting. I also worked coaching into the conversation with existing and prospective clients to practice and hone the messaging.

5. Encourage others to invest in themselves.

This journey has served as a reminder that our employees desire to be invested in as well. That feeling I had rediscovering a love of learning is not unique to me, and it inspired me to be more intentional in supporting my clients and my employees in their ongoing development. I was reminded that, as leaders, we have the privilege of setting the example and showing our employees that you’re never too old or too established in your career to try something new.

There’s a saying that goes like this: What you choose to do when you have nothing else to do reveals your true character. Today, I have as many coaching clients as I have consulting clients. It is my hope that other professionals can learn from my experience and use a slow season to master a new skill that can propel you forward.

By Sheryl Lyons

Founder and President,Culture Spark, LLC. Culture Spark helps leaders build culture as competitive advantage and turns managers into leaders

Sourced from Forbes