Linas Šimonis about Marketing Strategy for CEO

Consultant of Marketing Strategy

  • A Business Blog Should Always Look Like a Business Blog?

    Strategy is what defines a winner in the long term. All these web 2.0 techniques are only tactics. The new and important tactics therefore, but it can vary from business to business. When I say "every business should have a business blog" I do not mean that every business should have an internet site with blog software installed and posts appearing there. What I mean is the mentality of openness, strategy, leadership, stream of useful information. Personally delivered message of the strategy. The new web 2.0 technologies opened a very new way to reach buyers or prospects and it is foolish not to use this channel. But this can be achieved in different ways than a formal business blog. Yes, your business blog can look not exactly like a blog Sometimes conversation with customers can be a little bit different from "real" business blog. Nice example is Red Oxx, a… Read more >>

  • Is Howard Schultz Hired by Starbucks Competitors to Destroy the Starbucks?

    "We secretly have done blind taste tests in Starbucks stores and discovered that Starbucks expensive coffee tastes not better than instant coffee." I can imagine this experiment and campaign from Starbucks competitors. But it was Howard Schultz who sets-up a blind taste tests in Starbucks stores to prove that expensive Starbucks's coffee is not better than instant coffee. This is the dream of every Starbucks competitor. Instant coffee is the antithesis to Starbucks’s strategy The strategy of Starbucks is to be expensive Italian style coffeehouse. This is a wonderful strategy and it brings to Starbucks its fame. The essence of this strategy is to resist all cheap things in coffee. In customers mind, an instant coffee is cheap coffee. Customers think that it is lower quality than espresso and tastes not so good than "real" coffee. So, if Starbucks confesses that their coffee tastes the same or worse than instant… Read more >>

  • Social Media Professionals Are Needed!

    Recently David Meerman Scott wrote about the problem me and many managers and marketers are facing. In blog post entitled When marketing in the Netherlands you need to get Heeves, he pointed to a problem that in different countries there are different leaders in social media platforms. If you want to be successful in such country, you should know local habits very well. Social media professionals are needed! In my consulting practice I work with high-level managers, usually CEOs, on marketing strategy issues in web 2.0 age. Because I am from a small country I understand that if you want to reach broad audience in any non-US area, you should know local habits, preferences. And of course, local language. Yes, the local language, because not everyone in the world speaks English. Who can help understand local issues? Who can help represent companies in those countries? Obvious answer – local social… Read more >>

Dear CEOs, Are You Ready For the Conversation With Customers?

This Is Not a Company’s Communication to Customers, This is the Conversation of People Who Happen to Work In This Company With People Who Happen to Be the Customers

Marketing 2.0 is not a hard push of advertising to national TV. Too big noise, shrinking audience, skeptic society makes old-school marketers less and less relevant.

The old-school marketing tactics was simple – create a 30 second spot, buy time on national TV and you are the king.

Not true anymore.

The old way of communication when companies spoke through ads or, at the best case, through PR department, are loosing efficiency.

Change from advertising to conversation

Nature of communication between companies and customers are changing. Today customers are skeptic, they have a huge amount of information between their fingertips, they are googling your company, your products, your services. And they end up listening to the third party sources and are reading references of your past buyers.

New social media tools are gaining popularity and even Consumer Reports are facing huge competition with forums or blogs.

The best what you can expect – that your potential customers when they make a decision will come to read blogs, written by your employees. Not your ads, because they don’t trust them anymore, but your blogs.

In most cases it will look like the conversation between people who happen to work in your company with people who happen to be your customers.

No matter how conversation happens, what counts is the customers belief that the people who are blogging or posting in forums, or twittering or talking in any other place are the experts in their fields and are fairly neutral and honest.

That’s why in most businesses social things are so valuable.

A CEO must lead the company’s conversation with customers

Sure, the most common social thing in the new web 2.0 age – a blog.

A blog from your company’s employee with an expertise in his field is one of the most valuable marketing tools today.

The best case is the business blog from the CEO of the company. The highest authority tends to be the most listened and the most reliable source by customers and prospects.

But this business blog must be a business blog, written by the CEO, not by the PR or advertising department. Yes, a CEO can have a blog editor, or a blog coach, but all posts should be written by himself personally.

Because this is not the company’s communication to customers, this is people’s who happen to be the CEOs of the company conversation with people who happen to read the CEO’s blog and happen to be the customers.

The role of CEOs are changing from managing to influencing

Little by little the time of brutual advertising campaigns are passing away.

The time of conversation, honesty, experience, expertise has started.

Today a CEO must stand in the front of that.

Many smart and most successful CEOs are already taking conversations with customers.

In previous times, when conversation was impossible due to technological issues, the most successful CEOs spoke to customers through media. It helped them to build a company and brand.

Now CEOs have a huge opportunity to bypass media and to stand in the forefront of this conversation. And that’s the biggest challenge and opportunity for a CEO.

Because, like Seth Godin said, “People don’t listen to companies, they listen to people”.

Dear CEOs, are you ready?

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Linas Šimonis about Marketing Strategy for CEO