My thank you goes to Stefano Principato who shared this video on his blog.

Not all winning presentations are good, but there is one that is definitely worth taking a look at. It is the winner in the Marketing category. The presentation was developed by a company called Corporate Visions, specialized in Customer Message Management.  It is titled “How to tell a story that sells”.
It’s both a well constructed presentation and a lesson in how to build sales presentations/messaging, which should be centered on the prospect and not on your company. Don’t miss the fun video on slide 21!

If you like the concept of “Customer Message Management” may I suggest you register and watch the free Corporate Visions Instant Webinar titled “How to Create Preference, Not Parity, in Your Value Propositions”. You will find great insights here as well, coupled with an appealing presentation style.

That is why in the February issue of  “Clamer informa” -  an Italian professional B2B horticulture magazine – I have published an article titled “Il sito aziendale come strumento di marketing” (The company website as a marketing tool). The purpose is to get its readers to take a second look at their web presence and also learn a few things about web marketing, web analytics and SEO.

The article is also useful for those who are in the planning stages of their professional website.

It is freely downloadable clicking on the miniature below.  As I said, it is in Italian.

According to Joe Pulizzi, a content marketing evangelist, author, blogger and speaker:

“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

Today customers are more demanding and autonomous in researching for information and solutions to their needs; that’s why the slogans of traditional marketing have lost much of their effectiveness. Organizations that use content marketing, on the other hand, position themselves as an indispensable source of information for their prospects.

I believe that the purpose and many of  the techniques of content marketing are very applicable to all marketing activities in an organization, particularly in the B2B space and in developing effective white papers, eBooks, roadshows and presentations.

According to Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett, “”You cannot hope to implement a successful content marketing strategy without understanding exactly what  outcome you require. Equally important is an in-depth understanding of your targeted prospects.”

This phrase is also true for presentation development. Before you open PowerPoint and create slides, you need to know your objective (are you just trying to inform or do you need to persuade?) and your audience (technical, management, administrative staff…)  A brain-dump is seldom effective. Always put yourself in the shoes of your audience and think of what they would like to hear.

Therefore, if you want to be in sync with new market requirements, I suggest you do an audit – from a content marketing perspective – of all the outbound content you have.

You can also define your own personal news rack, called “My Alltop” and include blogs and sites that you see in the Alltop pages. Once registered and logged-in, just click on the “plus” sign besides the blog title and it will be included in your  personal Alltop page. I have created a personal page which you can see on http://my.alltop.com/acimatti.