Feature :
Death by Powerpoint

Dear Reader,

Many thanks to all for the welcoming response to the first issue of our ‘Marketing Views’ newsletter. This is the 2nd issue with interesting information on the latest trends and practices in the marketing and corporate communication sector. Looking forward to your early comments and suggestions.

Raj Sekhawat ~ MV Managing editor

New ways of Self-promotion using the web

While free-to-consumer web services struggle with ways to capitalize on the enormous and costly traffic their properties are generating, a few industrious people are capitalizing on these free services. They are using Web 2.0 services to actively promote themselves and their own services to gain enormous profit and fame. Here are two such success stories:

Christine Dolce a 24-year-old cosmetologist who until a few months ago worked at a makeup counter in a mall has aggressively used MySpace’s free hosting and tools to promote herself and her own commercial website properties and offline businesses. Her MySpace page boasts of nearly one million friends, making her arguably one of the most connected people on the Internet. She now has a manager and a start-up jeans company and has won promotional deals for two mainstream consumer brands!

Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz are the creators and actors in the video clip viral sensation – ‘The Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments’ which was posted in ‘Revver’ and garnered over 4 million views. Revver is a website that lets video uploaders earn revenue from advertisements. The massive exposure and viral success of their video clip has reportedly yielded approximately $25,000 in ad revenue share from Revver.

While such stories of successful entrepreneurship are inspiring, they are undoubtedly few and far between. In the vast sea of blogs and vlogs it is difficult to catch the attention of your target group. Are blogging sites emerging as a new medium of advertising? You may  ponder on this question in the future.

Custom Media emerges as the fastest growing segment of B2B Marketing

New research in the B2B industry indicates that B2B marketing professionals no longer view custom publishing and Internet technologies, such as webcasts and e-newsletters, as ‘new’ media. In fact, a study states that B2B marketers are embracing custom media as a proven way to more specifically target their customers and prospects. The results of the study, illustrate the growing importance of custom publishing, or branded editorial content, as a weapon in the arsenals of B2B marketing professionals.

Are your salespeople caving in under price pressure? Four ways to stop margin erosion at the Point of Sale
 
What do you do when a potential customer is relentlessly insisting on a discount? When your competitors are ready to cut their price and do whatever it takes to make the sale, providing your valuable solutions at a low price could be a winning sale. But the price game will ultimately cut into your profits, allow commoditization of your valuable solutions and erode margins away. The hard truth is, if your salespeople are cutting a few percentage points off the price to make the sale, they are failing your company and their responsibility.

To counter this problem and to flourish and succeed in today’s complex business-to-business environment, an integrated and cross-functional approach is required. These kinds of solutions bring in successful value achievement and the desperate game of low bidding will become history. Here are four key tips to achieve this goal: 

We’ve all endured them … PowerPoint presentations that drag on forever.

Communication rules the world of business and the most critical job of a manager at the end of the day is to communicate well to attain goals. To be successful, a manager has to be effective in communicating one-on-one, in writing and in groups. Group communication can be a manager's most powerful asset. When presenting to a group, he or she has its full attention – at least at the start. The trick is to maintain it. Some quick tips on how you can use PowerPoint to captivate the minds of your audience and ultimately deliver a superb presentation.

The Ten Elements of a Great Presentation

1. At first identify a maximum of three key points you want the audience to remember.

2. Determine why your audience should remember these points, so you can communicate that, too.

3. Open your presentation with the “why” in such a way that it takes no more than one minute to explain. If you can’t explain to the audience why your presentation is important to them within one minute, you've lost them.

4. Never forget that the audience cares less about what you have to say than you do.

5. Speak at an appropriate rate and project your voice.

6. Communicate broadly through body language as well as spoken language.

7. Don’t use the podium. Speakers who don’t use a podium show more confidence. Walking, talking and gesturing at the same time also is a great way to hide the yips because all the adrenaline doesn't go to the throat.

8. Be so well rehearsed that it doesn’t sound rehearsed. There's no substitute for preparation.

9. Review your presentation with a trusted colleague or two to ensure that it conveys the message clearly.

10. When using slides -

• Organize your presentation so the titles of the slides alone tell the story. Text or charts should just support the title.
• Don’t overuse slide animations.
• Never read the slides word for word. Their only purpose is to reinforce what the audience is learning.
• Never spend more than two minutes on a slide.
• Let the slides enhance your presentation, rather than being a crutch.

To succeed as a leader, you must master the art of group presentation. If you just aren’t comfortable with it, do as many presentations as possible; this is the only way to cure your discomfort.