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Bootcamp Day 2 [Recap]: Points of Clarity

Submitted on Fri, 2011-07-01 14:58

Today we were honored to receive some sage wisdom from several marketing and social media rock stars:

Each speaker offered advice on how our entrepreneurs might maximize the impact of their marketing, pitching and strategies of gaining influence. Here are some of the topics they addressed:

Chris Colbert

“One Simple thing.”

Branding whiz Chris Colbert is a revered marketing titan in the same arena as Steve Hayden and George Lois. Colbert’s seminar was crafted around “One Simple Thing” (OST), defining the essential attribute of your business in a few short words. For example, Colbert cited “Change,” Barack Obama’s presidential campaign slogan of the 2008 election, as a powerful OST. Colbert continued, “An OST is rooted not rationally but emotionally. It is about the feeling your consumers should get from your business. An OST for Zipcar might be freedom as opposed to something rational but less compelling like convenience.”

Crafting a strong OST not only guarantees a brief and succinct pitch, but also serves as your mission statement when defining your brand. Colbert made a point to state that an OST doesn’t have to be permanent; it should evolve in accord with your startup.

For the full video of Chris Colbert's "One Simple Thing" click here!

Howard Kogan

“Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

Borrowed from Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, this quote emphasizes the importance of listening to your consumers before launching a marketing campaign. Kogan asked the audience to think of methods in monitoring customer feedback. Most of our entrepreneurs responded with suggestions such as Facebook, Twitter, newspapers and feedback technology built into the product itself. It wasn’t until someone suggested "speaking directly with customers” that Kogan began to applaud.

Instead of just asking “why” when speaking to customers, think of the right questions to gain insight into their experience with your product. Kogan reminded the audience that nothing replaces the value of a direct conversation with a customer

Emily Green

“Bullets, not Buckshot.”

In her seminar on pitching, Emily Green urged her audience to deliver with “maximum impact, minimal content.”  We’ve included some of the advice she offered for public speaking below:
 
1.Start with a simple, clear, goal. 
Try thinking of that goal as a verb. Are you trying to inspire? Teach? Scare?
 
2.Know your audience.
What do these people need to know, and what do they know already?
 
3.Define a time budget
Keep a watch nearby and allot specific increments to points of your presentation based on the depth of elaboration required.
 
4.Have a simple structure
In conjunction with your time budget, craft the basic arc of your presentation: where you will start and where you will finish. 
 
5.Guide people along the way
As you should be engaged with your audience throughout the presentation (eye contact, gesture), make sure to regularly assess whether you are effectively getting your points across. If you see puzzled faces, slow down to clarify for them. 
 
Green’s most memorable advice was: “plan, practice and polish. Great speakers are made, not born.”

Stan Dolberg

“Keep your friends close, keep influencers closer”

Dolberg described the importance of relationships with influencers. Influencers are people whose opinions boast considerable cultural clout. They can generate strong interest in your business, especially if you run a B2C enterprise.  Influencers can be anyone, however, and it is difficult to predict who and when the next big one will be. Therefore, when someone establishes himself as a powerful influencer, a rush often ensues for his or her endorsement. “Keep your friends close, and your influencers closer” serves as a way of saying that if you can establish an intimate or even exclusive relationship with the influencer, you not only give yourself a great advantage, but you remove one for a potential competitor.

Laura Fitton

“Listen, Learn Care, Serve”

Laura Fitton is the founder and CEO of oneforty.com, a website that builds social media tools for business applications. Citing Twitter as the launch pad for her success, Fitton explained: “I started my business in response to the fact that 5 billion people have instantaneous access to real-time news from even the shoddiest cell-phone.” She delivered her seminar with the same warmth reflected in her approach to social media tools in business contexts:

Listen 
“The best thing you can do right now as a startup is listen to what your consumers are saying via social media.”
 
Learn
“Engage your market by asking the right questions of your customers. Learn more about what they’re looking for.”
 
Care
“Your mother taught you how to tweet. Dress nicely (your avatar and background) have a complete profile and a link on your site that is friendly and convenient for customers to follow.”
 
Serve
“Do what you do best, and link to the rest. Make your website a one-stop-shop for all of your customer’s needs, and anything you cannot provide for them, show them where they can find it.”
 
For the full video of Laura Fitton's seminar, click here!
***

After these crash courses on all aspects of marketing, there is no way our entrepreneurs shouldn’t succeed in marketing their startups. We are so lucky to have such amazing members in our community donating their time to talk to our entrepreneurs! 

 

Author: 
Zack Trahan