Monthly Archives: October 2022

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Semiotics Storytelling

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Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols in verbal and nonverbal communication— language, gestures, or clothing and images. Semiotics explains meaning and reveals how we instinctively interpret the messages we receive, wherever we encounter them. The field of semiotics has plenty of lofty academic associations (maybe that’s why I never considered becoming a semiotics major), but I’ve discovered that the field has boots on the ground implications for marketers, too.

Your typical marketing professional is unlikely to realize it, but semiotics is the foundation of everything we do, from creating marketing messages to logo design, encompassing calls to action and all sorts of customer persuasion campaigns that are intended to influence buying decisions.

Laura Oswald, author of of Marketing Semiotics: Signs, Strategies and Brand Value (2011) and Founder/ President of Marketing Semiotics, a boutique brand strategy and research firm in Chicago, IL says, “Semiotic theories and methods can be used to identify trends in popular culture, to understand how consumer attitudes and behavior are formed in relation to popular culture, including brands, and how marketing and advertising programs can best meet the needs of consumers by improving communication with the end user.”

The decisions we make are often influenced by our emotions and those emotions are often guided by our subconscious interpretations of words and images. Semiotics can help decode those subconscious messages and marketers can use that awareness to create messages and branding that draw in the target audience.

You tap into semiotics as you articulate the brand identity, brand communication style and also your brand ethos, i.e., your company’s reputation and how customers (current and potential) perceive your brand. The quality of the products you sell or services you provide, along with the customer service and customer experience your company delivers, are the essence of brand ethos.

You rely on semiotics to create or select all of the marketing sytories and symbols that represent and promote your business—the behavioral, verbal and visual identities. To ramp up the power and broaden the reach of your brand, with a goal to inspire or strenghten customer loyalty to your brand, marketers are also advised to incorporate selected preferences and values that are popular with your target audience into your brand symbols.

So let your ads, social media posts, website and marketing emails echo the terminology or slang, images and colors most meaningful to your target audience loves. In addition to the colors that represent your company’s visual packaging and brand identity, even shapes carry meaning.

In particular, the shape of your logo communicates more than you may have thought about your company. Circles communicate friendship, unity, inclusion, safety and warmth (but you knew that!). Squares symbolize power and professionalism; those straight lines telegraph strength, dependability and also tranquillity.

So tap into the resources that semiotics provides to marketers and discover the secrets of how your audience may interpret what you communicate and learn the best ways to appeal to those you want to persuade.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Photograph: Kim Clark October 2021

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Your Short, Sweet Self-introduction

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When you think about it, this should be one of the easiest things you’ll do all day. You’ll join a meeting of some sort and, of course, everyone will introduce him/herself. That should be the easy part—-but when the person running the meeting calls on the group to go around the table and say a few words about yourselves, why do you get so nervous?

You could be in an online meeting or seated around a boardroom table. The meeting leader asks everyone to briefly introduce yourselves and suddenly, your palms begin to sweat and your heart beats faster. What should you say about yourself?

Many of us dread introducing ourselves, whether in a videoconference or in-person meeting. Self-introductions put you on the spot; you’ve gotta get it right and you only have 20 seconds. You feel pressured to portray yourself as well-spoken, intelligent and friendly —and worthy of being at the table. Why is it so intimidating to get the right words out?

You could use some help and here it is—-a quick and easy template to follow that will lower your stress hormones and guide you to make successful self-introductions, online or in-person, for business or boardroom. To make it work, all you’ll have to do is remember a timeline.

  • Present
  • Past
  • Future

The next time you’re in a meeting and someone says, “Let’s go around the table and introduce ourselves,” you know what to do. Take a slow, deep breath, and think, “Present, past, future.” Then smile and listen to everyone else until it’s your turn. You’ve got this!

Because your meeting is in the here and now your introduction will begin in the present. You might say something like, “Hi, I’m Frank and I’m a landscape architect. I’m self-employed and I design the exterior green spaces for residential and commercial properties.”

Of course, what you share will depend on the situation and on the audience. If you are not sure what to share, your name and job title is a great place to start. If there’s an opportunity to elaborate, you can also share other details such as a current project, your expertise, or your geographical location. Notice that your self- introduction is not dissimilar to your elevator pitch. But whereas your self- introduction is structured along a timeline, addressing when you’ve done or will do certain things, your elevator pitch follows a format of what —what you do, for whom you do it and the outcomes and benefits derived.

Next, refer to your history and share a sliver of the depth or breadth of your expertise with a reference to what you’ve done in the past.

In this section add two or three quick points that will provide your new colleagues with relevant details about your background. Now you can trot out your bona fides and establish some credibility, show them why you can be in the room. Consider your education and other credentials, past projects, employers and accomplishments.

“Hello everyone! I’m Grace and I’m a data scientist. At a couple of different companies, I worked with big data to better understand and leverage brand loyalty in the hotel industry.”

The third element of the template addresses the future. Now is your opportunity to demonstrate enthusiasm for the expected outcomes of the group’s goal when they are achieved. In this, the conclusion of your self-introduction, you express your interest and confidence in the meeting’s purpose. If you’re launching a project with a new team, express your excitement for being part of the process.

“I’m happy to be on the team, being invited to bring such an important goal to life.”

I’m excited to work with your company and help with the launch of a product that can improve how we live.”

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images. Mao Zedong (1893-1976), founder and Chairman of the People’s Republic of China, greets President Richard M. Nixon, who in 1972 became the first U.S. president to visit China since the 1949 communist revolution.

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Recipe for Great Content

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For several years now, the marketing gurus have been telling us that Content Marketing delievers results. Everything that you do to promote your business and your brand is useful, but Content marketing has emerged as an especially powerful strategy. But for the best Content marketing ROI, your content must address what matters to your audience–their pain points and priorities—and deliver what they value. Take care to produce content that brings these benefits to your intended audience:

  • Value: after reading or viewing your content, the Alternatively, your content may have helped them solve a problem.
  • Relevant: your content needs to relate to your audience’s life situation. Perhaps it helps them in their career, solves a relationship issue or serves to entertain them during a break. All three scenarios are perfect examples of content relevant to the person consuming it.
  • Consistent: publishing an award-winning newsletter of blog post post once and then never again does not constitute high-quality content marketing. Consistency  requires regular content of similarly high quality.

The guidelines above can help you develop a content marketing strategy that your current and potential customers will be drawn to. This is one of the most important aspects of Content Marketing—it’s all about your audience.

Furthermore, as you consider the platforms and delivery formats for your content, start by considering your audience. If social media will be used (and it most likely will be used), pay attention to the platforms that your target audience follows and trusts. Successful content provides value. In sum, you can better fulfill customer needs by understanding what they want from your business.

Updating existing content should be part of your content marketing strategy if your business has already started content marketing. Plus, updating existing content will benefit other aspects of your digital marketing strategy, including search engine optimization.

Keep your content engaging and easy to understand. If your Content Marketing Strategy includes longer blog posts, whitepapers or eBooks, they must be well presented and easy to read. Content that is hard to digest because it is challenging to understand rarely goes viral. Short sentences almost always beat long-winded explanations. If you offer video content, think about your presentation style and the technology used to record your content.

Content marketing is a great way to connect with current customer base and reach new ones. As with every form of digital marketing, a strategic approach is the most likely to succeed. Content marketing means being consistent, relevant to your audience, delivering value, most of all.

Evergage’s 2019 Trends in Personalization Survey Report found that 88 % of marketers felt personalization helped them deliver superior customer experiences, while 59 % felt it increased loyalty, and another 50 % saw a measurable ROI from personalization efforts.

Personalization doesn’t just mean dropping a customer’s name into an email. It means making your brand story come alive through relatable content and storytelling that connects on an emotional level, personalized to the customer’s current relationship with your brand.

In case you hadn’t noticed, customer-generated content carries great credibility and is a powerful for creating meaningful and influential content. Testimonials that feature your devoted customers can be used on your website. Positive online reviews are also very helpful, but the detailed and personalized stories presented in testimonials are known to surpass good reviews.

Your customers are sophisticated enough to realize that the goal of your marketing is to increase sales and leads; that knowledge can cause some to question the trustworthiness and authenticity of what you present. That potential for doubt is why successful Content Marketing Strategies include user-generated content to communicate first-person, relatable, credible experiences with your products and services.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: New Orleans, LA by way of New Bedford, MA chef Lagasse showcased his talents during Grand Cayman’s January 2018 Cayman Cookout, a premier culinary event.

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Do It Better: Perfecting the Customer Experience

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In today’s competitive business world to delight your customers, rather than simply satisfying them, is critical to the success of your venture. Customer delight is the new standard. To delight your customers means exceeding their expectations and creating a highly positive and memorable experience with your product or brand. Delight calls upon your entire team , customer-facing and back office, to smoothly collaborate to deliver timely, efficient and pleasant service to customers by focusing on their needs, challenges, questions and preferences.

Satisfied customers are good for your company, but delighted customers help you much more. Customers who carry the memory of their delightful experiences with your organization are more likely to become loyal customers and brand advocates who enthusiastically make referrals, give testimonials and reward your company with glowing online reviews. They become extensions of your marketing department.

When you accomplish this, you’ll build a strong relationship with your customers that makes them want to remain loyal brand advocates and promoters. Read on to better understand how your organization can achieve this level of service.

  1. Personalize every customer experience—Start at the top by addressing all customers and prospects by name in each marketing email. Furthermore, the product or service that you promote in those emails should be something that the recipients might possibly use. Obtain this information by resarching your customers. As always, knowing the customer is key.
  2. Quick response and follow-up—A critical aspect of solving problems for customers is responding to them ASAP — meaning, a big component of customer delight is the ability to be available and responsive whenever your customers reach out. Whether the issue is big or small, show your customers that you’re always prioritizing them by responding quickly.
  3. Resolve customer problems fast—The first and most important thing your organization needs to do is solve whatever problems your current and prospective customers are experiencing. Offering your customers a solution to a challenge they’re facing, or a way to achieve the goal they’re working towards, is what motivated them to do business with you — so don’t disappoint them. Offer your customers solutions that align with their individual wishes, needs, and preferences. The same goes for prospects and potential customers. Even though they aren’t paying customers just (yet), potential customers require you to solve their problems as well. not only should you solve customers’ problems in the short term, but you should think ahead for their future needs, too. Going beyond the immediate solution to provide information and ways to help your customers manage their challenges — and teach them to do so on their own, if and when possible — is how you can solve for the future, too.
  4. Help customers have the best experience possible—Make sure you understand why people are buying your product or service to determine how to help them succeed. When you truly understand what it is people need from a product or service like yours, you’ll be able to target those pain points and solve for them to exceed customer expectations. It can also be on a smaller scale, like the way you train your new employees to handle customer questions. Additionally, help customers succeed by providing them with the right educational resources so they know how to reach out to your service and support teams, get the help they want and need, or find answers to questions on their own.
  5. Listen to customer feedback—It doesn’t feel good to hear feedback that’s critical of your company, but if you’re serious about delivering the best possible customer service, you must face the unvarnished truth about how your product or service meets expectations, or doesn’t. You must learn what disappoints. Then you can fix it. Then you become more aware, smarter, faster and more successful. Your customers will tell you, one way or another. Listen to honest feedback, take chronic complainers ith a grain of salt.
  6. Loyal customers receive preferential treatment and perks —Loyal customers are the bedrock of your business and it would be inconsiderate and unwise to take them for granted. Keep their business by giving them VIP treatment and communicating to them that you understand and appreciate their business and also them, as individuals. Offer them perks such as discounts, service upgrades, speedy delivery, invitations to special in-store events and other benefits as appropriate. A strong customer loyalty program will make your customers feel appreciated while securing their future business. Did I mention that your loyal customers also make referrals?
  7. Surprise, delight and please —Enable your company to stand out from competitors, then you need to make a lasting impression on your customers. While your primary goal is to solve the customer’s problem, you can create a memorable experience by giving customers more than they ever anticipated. Customers expect to see their needs fulfilled, but are truly delighted when your team goes above and beyond in the customer experience.
  8. Easy to find company contact info—It’s so annoying to have to hunt down a company’s contact information. Customers should be able to get in contact with you easily. Even more importantly, they should have several avenues for reaching you, such as email address, telephone number and social media sites.
  9. Be enthusiastic—In every interaction with current and prospective customers, be sure that you (and your employees or anyone who represents you) displays a positive and welcoming demeanor that complements your brand. Always provide a real, warm, welcoming, helpful and personalized interaction that respects your customer’s time and leaves them happy, satisfied —and with a better understanding of the value of your product or service.
  10. Build a community—Humans are social beings and we enjoy the feeling of belonging to a community or group. Your community might be used as a resource for sharing useful information or act as a medium for users to submit customer reviews. No matter what your community’s function is, creating a space where customers can interact with one another and you and/or your employees adds value to the customer experience that your company provides and continue to delight these people.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Experience a luxury safari at Jao Camp in the Okavango Delta, Botswana