50 Top Australian Marketing Blogs

The top 50 list of Australian marketing blogs has just been published and shows Aussie marketers are an innovative, free thinking lot.

Check out the list here.

Career Building Step #1 Get People to Pay Attention

Lately we have run into some fairly dispirited communicators frustrated by their senior management's lack of attention to their ideas. I sympathize.

I know how trying it can be to get people to recognise the value of your media or marketing suggestions. Worse still is when they readily adopt the same ideas from a consultant "earning big bucks", treat them like heavenly revelations and implement them.

So how can you get your boss to recognise the value of what you're suggesting?

• Sometimes it's sad but true. The communicators "selling the organisation, don't sell themselves". So don't just be tolerated- be valued. Continually talk up the value your communications brings.
• When you submit your annual budget are you asking people to commit to an act of blind faith? Forecast the results and benefits you plan to deliver.
• Most professional PR and marketing services run on a billable time basis. Clearly show how you spend your time and how your investment of effort brings results.
• It's easy to typecast communicators as left brain, artsy types far removed from the real world. Learn to speak the language of management - outcomes and objectives, deliverables, targets, milestones, prospects and sales.
• Managers are busy people. They want to see things at a glance. Use graphs, graphics and tables to visually present information.
• Benchmark with the best. Ask senior management which organizations they admire and then find out why those organisations communicate effectively. If in fact they do things better, learn from them. When you introduce new ideas tell those on the top floor, where these fresh insights come from and how others have made them work.
• Measure everything you can lay your hands on. Measuring your communications is the only way to show progress. (Check out Angela Sinickas' free resources on communications measurement).
• Report early ... report often. Regularly send one page reports upstairs about what you are doing. Don't write a history book so keep reporting short, sharp and concise. Finish each report with a "where to next" section in dot point form.
• When things succeed, collect and circulate testimonials to profile your achievements.
• "Comma jockeys and font fiends" talk tactics. Top communicators talk strategy. Continually remind people who they are trying to reach, what they are trying to say, the results they are trying to achieve and how your proposals will get them there.

Sometimes convincing people within your organisation can be tougher than convincing your external audiences. But taking the time to engage management can be a career building step.

Value or Vanity in Selecting Media

When running campaigns, sometimes clients insist in seeing their issue reported in a particular magazine or newspaper. This type of "top down" direction is great because it can really focus your media efforts.

But the big "but" is does that publication reach the target audience? Or is not merely reflecting the CEO's personal preferences. In other words landing a story in a particualr publication might be more about vanity than real value.

If your goal is to simply reach the largest number of Australians, the recent Roy Morgan Readership Survey for the year ending March 2008, is a good guide to where to direct your media relations efforts.

Right now the top three newspapers by circulation in Australia are:

• The Sunday Telegraph (NSW)
• The Sunday Herald Sun (VIC)
• The Sunday Mail (QLD)

And the top three magazines by readership are:

• Australian Women's Weekly
• Woman's day
• New Idea

Whether your media efforts are dictated by volume or vanity, don't forget that media coverage is valuable only if it helps you reach the people you need to talk to.

Roy Morgan figures as reported in the 30 May 2008 edition of AdNews

What Makes a Great Brand

This past week we ran a workshop for one of the most successful community sector organisations in Canberra. The CEO and 35 of her staff spent the day actively exploring ways to move their already dynamic organisation to the next level of performance.

As part of strategizing the future, we asked people to identify organisations they most admired. What made them stand out? And how could they embed the qualities that made others successful, into their own organisation?

The team turned up a list of around 15 organisations they most admired. It was truly an eclectic mix, ranging from the Salvation Army to McDonalds to a popular home decorations magazine.

The group's dicussion identified four factors that make a brand succeed over the long term. An organisation must:

• Have a consistent purpose and recognisable benefits.
• Deliver those benefits day in, day out.
• Continually reinvent itself as customer and community circumstances change.
• Constantly communicate - to staff, customers and all the other organisations that shape its environment.

Each week thousands of words are written about branding. Yet we think this team of 35 passionate community workers provided one of clearest explanations we have seen about what a brand must do, to move from good to great.

Link Your Story to National News

Linking your issue, cause or concern to this week's headline news is one way of attracting media attention. After all your organisation might be able to offer a journalist another perspective on what people are already talking about.

But short of turning into a mega media junkie, how do you find out what's making news?

Each week Australian company, Media Monitors, shows graphs with the top five domestic, international, business, sports and talkback stories. They count the number of times a story has been mentioned across print, radio and television which is a good indication of what's hot and what's not.

So the next time you think about approaching the media check their media index to see where your story might fit.