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 >>

If you are a CEO

If you are a CEO, you must start a blog.

A personal blog is about your company’s difference from competitors. About your brand’s difference from competitors brands.

All your marketing messages must reinforce the difference, stated in your blog.

If you are a CEO of big company, your blog must be a guide for your marketing department.

Your PR agency must create messages that reinforce your difference from competitors. The difference expressed in your blog. If not – fire this agency.

Your advertising agency must read your blog and create commercials, that reinforce the message of your blog. If not – fire this agency.

Your sales force must sell, using promise, expressed in your blog. If not…

Your production manager must act, following your brand difference, expressed in your blog.

Your R&D team must concentrate in areas that reinforce your brand difference, expressed in your blog.

Throw out mission and vision statements, company mantra, beliefs, core value, brand promise and all other corpstuff, filled with corptalk. Now you have a blog with sincerely written personal posts.

Letter to shareholders? Forget it. Now you have the blog. Attention! Even this post must dramatize difference from the competitors brands.

Not differences, but difference. The same main difference, why your customers are buying from you not from your competitors.

You are a CEO?

If you are a CEO, you must start a blog.

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Linas Šimonis about Marketing Strategy for CEO