Seeing red

December's 'Business Life' has an interesting feature on the use of colour in negotiation scenarios: 

"The colour of your office walls could influence how good you are at negotiating. A series of studies examined negotiation behaviours in various settings, including online auction sites. In auctions the colour red can lead to more aggressive bidding and people can end up paying more. In a negotiation the person competes against the seller and red influences them to make lower offers. 

So if buyers are competing for your services, the primary colour used on websites and marketing materials should be red, but when trying to avoid a buyer's aggressive instinct, you should use a more neutral, calming colour."

Inspiration!

I was delighted to be able to support Ute Wieczorek-King in running a highly energetic workshop for solopreneurs this week in central Berkshire.

Ute, the power behind Success Network (www.successnetwork.org.uk), took a diverse group of business owners - from accountancy services to wine-tasting - through an insightful 7-point healthcheck. Ideas were shared in a dynamic and mutually supportive environment.

Consumers (still) prefer email

Despite the rise and rise of SMS, email evidently still has a part to play in mobile communications...

According to a survey by Forrester Consulting, around a third of smartphone users are likely to make a purchase after opening a promotional email (a staggering 32% to be precise), but only 9% do so if they receive an SMS.

The conclusion is that marketers should optimise their emails for smartphones.

Personal or promotional? Tweets masquerading as personal comments get the chop

Nike has had the dubious honour of becoming the first company in the UK to have a Twitter campaign banned by the Advertising Standards Authority. Wayne Rooney failed to make it clear that an apparently personal tweet was in fact a marketing communication/advert for Nike. Both player and advertiser have received a firm smack on the wrist.

While your budget may not run to footballing superstars, it’s worth remembering the distinction in your own Twitter campaigns and not try to pass off sponsored endorsements (or employees' comments) as impartial comment.

For more on this story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jun/20/nike-twitter-campaign-banned

4 top tips for writing a winning award entry

It's the awards season, presumably so that the organisers can host the awards ceremony in the autumn, before the Christmas rush. Several clients in different sectors have asked for my help in preparing an entry for their specific industry award.

Here are my 4 tops tips...

Entering an award is little like taking an exam, so remember:

1. Constantly refer back to the 'questions' (the criteria) to ensure you give the judges exactly what they want
2. Rather than making vague claims, supply hard evidence in the form of statistics and customer quotes
3. Keep to the wordcount - judges do notice if you go over! Give enthusiastic colleagues a strict wordcount and ask them to highlight what is and what isn't a 'must include' in their contribution
4. Don't make any assumptions - avoid jargon, product names and technology references that the judges may never have heard of - easier said than done, of course

Contact me for more help with copywriting a (hopefully) successful award entry.

Good luck!

I'm a 'word goddess' - or so I'm told...

"Margaret, you’re a Word Goddess. I have no idea how you converted my diatribe last week into this." 

Isn't that nice?

Chartered Marketer status

Good news! The Chartered Institute of Marketing has confirmed my Chartered Marketer staus for another twelve months.

That's good news for me - nice to have one's skills, experience and achievements noted - and good news for my clients, as it helps to keep my marketing knowledge current and gives me insight into top trends and issues for marketers.

Marketing by numbers - in a good way!

One of the really impressive benefits of digital marketing is the ability to measure exactly how many of the target audience have clicked on, opened, read and/or forwarded content.

It's very rewarding when clients can feedback precisely on metrics such as:

• The coverage received for press releases posted online
• The number of retweets
• The number of readers for a white paper
• The number of times content appears in Google News searches

For example, one client recently wrote...

"We published the new white paper in our newswires yesterday and we’ve had hundreds of leads - over 500 already, in fact. Great forward rates too so it seems the readers are really valuing the content and either opening lots of times or forwarding to multiple colleagues. All good news for us!"

Good to know that involving M squared achieves measurable results!

Shock Electrical fire up their marketing

I'm delighted to be working with Shock Electrical, who undertake large, prestigious electrical, lighting, communications and renewable energy projects across the South East. Shock Electrical have been successfully operating for ten years and now want to take their marketing to the next level.

First stop: a new website - and enter M squared.

Shock Electrical were referred to me by London-based Livewire Home Integration, for whom I helped to create a completely new website last year. Livewire do amazing 'automated home' installations (audiophile grade listening rooms, home cinema, intelligent security...) and working with them was a fascinating insight into how the other half lives!

Visit Livewire's website at www.livewireintegration.com to see the end product (with some cool design by Oculus Design of Reading).