Get the content right: “First and foremost, you need to remember that a blog is not a sales tool. If you try to sell to someone before you’ve established their trust, you are fighting an uphill battle,” Redhead cautions. “Remember, readers are interested in your knowledge and expertise, so think about your audience’s pain points and how you can help to solve them. If you offer credible advice and insight, readers will stop thinking of you as a vendor and will start thinking of you as a trusted resource.”

Keep it short: If you find your blog post going over 800 words, then consider breaking it up into two parts, Redhead suggests. “Subheadings, bold text and hyperlinks also help to make content more digestible,” she adds.

Think about style: “A business blog should obviously be professional, but that doesn’t mean it has to be stuffy,” says Redhead. “Make sure you inject some personality into your posts and adopt a conversational tone,” and ensure your blog is proofed by at least one other person to avoid any embarrassing mistakes.

Invite comments and be open to criticism: Blogs are a great opportunity to get a better idea of how your organization is perceived by the wider market, and the benefits of interacting with readers far outweigh any disadvantages, Redhead notes. “Besides, you are allowed to moderate all comments as they come in,” she says. “Just be sure that if your blog does receive comments, that you respond appropriately, so readers know their input is valued.”

Promote your blog: Once you start blogging, don’t just assume people will come and find it, warns Redhead. “You need to actively promote it, so ensure the link is in an obvious place on your home page and your e-mail signatures (it’s surprising how many firms forget to do this), and crucially, disseminate it via all of your social networking channels,” she says. “Furthermore, registering your blog with sites such as Technorati and submitting posts to bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious will make it easier for readers to find it.”

Get social: Including share tools for the major sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter allows readers to quickly and easily post your content and helps drive traffic to your blog, notes Redhead. And don’t forget to encourage your employees to do the same. “All posts should be tweeted, published to relevant LinkedIn Groups and shared via Google+, Facebook and any other social presence you or your employees may have,” she says. “Moreover, using RSS feeds will also ensure readers are notified every time you publish new content.”

Measure: Tools such as Google Analytics enable you to measure the traffic generated by your blog and include a wealth of additional information such as where referrals are coming from and which posts are generating the most interest, says Redhead. “It’s important to use this information to refine the way you blog and keep giving readers what they’re looking for.”

Don’t forget the headline: “Headlines play a critical role in getting people to read on, so obviously they need to grab their attention,” says Redhead. “However, they are also used by search engines to identify what the post is about, so make sure headlines contain keywords and are relevant to the subject of the post.”

A picture paints a thousand words: “Interesting images such as infographics, photos and video content can all help make your blog more compelling, but what many people don’t realize is that they can also be a useful SEO tool,” says Redhead. “Although search engines can’t read or interpret images, adding tags and titles to visuals can help your blog to be found (and use keywords wherever possible).”

Include a call to action: “this should motivate people to take the next step, whether it is to comment on the post, connect with you on Twitter, or sign-up to your newsletter,” Redhead explains.

Source: Business Computing World

ALSO COMING SOON:

• Thursday, October 4: Myriad: The Gene Patent Fight Continues…
• Thursday, October 25: Getting to “Yes” in University IP Licensing: Mock Negotiation Workshop

Don’t go nuts right away: “Huge campaigns take huge time, effort, and money,” notes Johnston. “Ramp up steadily and see what’s working and what isn’t.”

Don’t confuse easy with effective: “One of the concepts that all kinds of people miss is that SMM isn’t free money; you don’t just post anything online and wait for the money to roll in,” notes Johnston. “SMM is like anything else in business or in life; you tend to get results out of it in relation to quantity and quality of effort put in.”

Join conversations in industry and user groups: “Contribute. Say something interesting. Get noticed,” Johnston advises. “There are so many blatant sales pitches in some of these forums that a thoughtful, articulate comment will have twice the impact.”

Keep it short and simple: “The fact is, everyone has so much on their plates these days that they just don’t have the time to devote to long content,” Johnston observes. “A 30-minute how-to video on YouTube may be great, but sectioning it into 10 three-minute videos is much better. And maybe 15 two-minute videos would be better still.”

Be consistent: Don’t mix business with personal: “If you are using your Twitter account as a business platform, stop using it for personal use,” Johnston admonishes. “While social media is less formal than most of us are used to in the business world, remember that you are using it for business. You don’t want to confuse your business reader by interjecting tweets on your review of the new Batman movie.”

Have great content: “If you send a tweet with an update that you are exhibiting at a tradeshow, is that valuable content I want to share with my network?” Johnston challenges. “That’s pretty unlikely. But, if you tweet and reference a story about a novel new way you have solved a quality problem that I and my professional peers wrestle with every day? Well, that, my friend, gets shared.”

Measure potential viewers: Johnston recommends that you measure potential impressions — that is, the number of times your content could have been read. “In my case, I post to my blog three times a week, then link the blog to my LinkedIn account, where the posts can be seen as status updates by my 1,000 connections. So, I have a potential 3,000 impressions a week,” he explains.

Measure content interactions: “This is where you count re-tweets, shares, visits to your blog, likes and similar activities,” notes Johnston. “Count the times people are actually interacting with your content.”

Count engagement interactions: These include comments, questions, opt-ins, and any interaction the reader has with you.

Experiment: “Try a lot of little changes,” Johnston suggests. “Adjust the length of blog posts. Publish content at different times of the day. Experiment with different headlines. Your job is to always be striving to optimize your content and its delivery such that you maximize your opportunities for engagement.”

Source: PCB Design 007

John A. Fraser, assistant VP for research & economic development and executive director, Office of IP Development and Commercialization, notes that much of this assistance comes through the Office of Research GAP Grant program. “The program has two main functions — working with the faculty and the TTO to better define the business opportunity of a spinout, then working with investors and potential CEOs to build a team and financing to make it happen,” he explains. “They offer a loan program of anywhere from $50,000 to $300,000 to a start-up if it can cash match the loan with a qualified investment round.”

Larry Lynch, GAP program consultant, worked closely with VanLandingham to refine his pitch. If you had seen his original pitch, and then seen it in its current state, he says, “you would not have recognized it; at first the guy could not put two words together that were not technical.”

Lynch is quick to point out that this was due simply to a lack of knowledge about marketing. “Jake’s a pretty smart guy; once he realized the kind of questions and answers that need to be given to non-researchers he got good at it,” he recalls. “You could have taken your 5^th grader to the most recent pitch he gave, and they would have understood what was important and the science behind it — and the problem-solving that could come from that science.”

“Ordinarily researchers are quite technology focused,” notes Fraser. “The GAP program is entirely solution focused — what are the benefits? Larry worked with Jake frequently to refine the pitch from ‘this is a great technology’ to ‘here are the benefits and how it works.’” A detailed article on the GAP program appears in the September 2012 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

Do your research: “Search pro video sharing sites like our company’s for examples of videos you like (and don’t like),” Diamond suggests. “Be very specific in searching the specific genres you decided would be a good fit for your company: corporate video, public service announcement (PSA), webisode, commercial, and so on.” If you are having trouble finding examples you like, she adds, you can always perform a detailed Google search, e.g., “Corporate Video Production in New York,” to view and compare local companies. Then, make sure to find styles that match your company’s personality.

Request a quote: Next, request quotes from at least three of the companies whose style you liked best, says Diamond. “Be very detailed upfront about what you are looking for; and remember, you get what you pay for so don’t expect a Superbowl commercial if you went with a discounter solely based on price alone,” she says.

Review credentials: “Compare one company’s reel to others in their specialty,” Diamond advises. “It’s crucial you don’t just hire an artist, but a business-minded creative who can listen to your needs and visually produce a piece to help you solve a problem or reach a specific demographic.”

Ask for references and recommendations: “Your video is the most genuine depiction of your business — and these days, you can’t take it back once it’s out there,” says Diamond. “So make it count.”

Source: Business 2 Community

Make the habit easy to do: For example, McGregor shares, “I have done extremely well in sales by sending out a small number of handwritten thank you cards each work day in my business.” He says he rarely sends out fewer than four a day. In his Day Timer each day he puts six blank thank you cards and six pre-stamped envelopes. “I also have with me at least 10 names and mailing addresses of people that I could potentially send a thank you card out to.”

Have simple reminders: A salesperson McGregor met explained how he created the habit of asking three people each day for referrals. “He put three coins in his left hand trouser pocket,” he says. “Whenever he asked a person for a referral he would move one coin to his right hand trouser pocket. Every time he put his hands in his pocket he was reminded how many people he still had to ask for referrals.”

Get started early: “One of my personal goals is to write a certain number of articles, special reports and programs on marketing each year,” McGregor notes. “I make sure that each day one of the first things I do is sit at my computer and write a page or more of marketing ideas. This takes around 15 minutes to do. One page a day is over 300 pages a year, which is the size of a book!”

When you have good marketing habits, says McGregor, “you’ll be surprised at the good results these create for you.”

Source: The New Zealand Herald

Shift gears from “cost containment” to “revenue enablement”: Many companies now generate 30% or more of their revenue from outside the U.S., notes Ray, and in the high-tech sector, international sales often account for well over 50% of the total. “This trend only stands to continue, as new and emerging markets around the world form the growth engine for so many businesses,” she says. “Research from Common Sense Advisory shows that the translation budget at most organizations is typically less than 1% of total revenue. In other words, the cost of translation is miniscule compared to the revenue it generates. As a marketing manager, you need to push hard to enable your executives to view translated websites for what they really are — revenue enablers, not cost centers.”

Base your language and market choices on real data: Research shows that no single country or language accounts for more than 25% of the total online population, Ray notes. “That being said, you should be able to effectively communicate with approximately 80% of your potential website visitors using just 11 languages: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish,” she says. “So, the next time someone raises concerns that a multi-lingual website will create too many headaches, reinforce the fact that your company won’t have to deal with hundreds of languages.”

Integrate international SEO as part of your translation process: “SEO is just as critical for prospects to find you outside of your home market as it is inside, but even veteran marketers overlook SEO for non-English-speaking markets,” says Ray. “The trick is that your site may require additional keywords to cover the various ways in which people search on a specific topic in a local market. At the same time, your original phrases must be translated carefully so that they match local search patterns as well. Language service providers that have a strong practice in localizing websites can provide excellent guidance in this area, along with in-country marketing staff and partners, if they are available.”

Focus on mobility for emerging and frontier markets: Even if you have a mobile marketing strategy for English-speaking customers, you may not realize how important mobile really is for people who speak other languages, such as Spanish-speakers in the United States and customers in many other parts of the world, says Ray. “It is often not just the platform of choice, but the only platform on which you can consistently reach your prospects and customers, regardless of age or socioeconomic level,” she asserts. “According to the International Telecommunication Union, there were 6 billion mobile users at the end of 2011 (87% of the world’s population), with 4.5 billion mobile subscribers in the developing world. To ensure that your website strategy is on-track, you should focus on the countries and languages represented in this category that are in your top 10 markets over the next 12 to 18 months, along with the demographics that go with them.”

Add social media to your global marketing mix — now: “The middle classes in emerging and frontier markets expect to engage socially, especially through mobile platforms –often more than in the United States because their offline culture may be much more interactive, community-based, and people-centered to begin with,” says Ray. “Reach out to local staff, partners, and language service providers to find out exactly what approaches and messages resonate on local platforms. For example, customers in Turkey would expect to find your company on Facebook, while prospects in China would look for you on Sina Weibo. No matter which platform you use, you will need to adapt — not just translate — your content for those markets.”

Source: Chief Marketer

This boot camp series allows you to stretch your professional education budget and give your staff and faculty a well-rounded understanding of their role in nurturing technologies toward the marketplace. You receive all 13 programs in three formats — DVD, on-demand video, and print transcript — with links to all handouts and Powerpoints. You can share it throughout your organization, any time and any place, all for one low price. For complete details on the programs and faculty, and to order this cost-effective training and education tool, CLICK HERE.

Create a social media policy: This was the first thing Kurtzke did when she took her job. “Work with your HR team to ensure that all employees are aware and agree with the policy — similar to an IT policy, a social media policy is an absolute must-have these days,” she says. “There are tools such as the Policy tool if you don’t know how to start (http://socialmedia.policytool.net/). However, I would strongly recommend to only use this as a pointer. Your policy must be right for your business and can’t be generic.”

Make it everyone’s job: “Don’t let stakeholders regard you as the person that will execute all their social activity,” Kurtzke cautions. “This will only hinder the fundamental changes required to make a business ‘social media fit.’”

Investigate tools: “There are some awesome tools that help with collaboration,” says Kurtzke. “For instance, GroupTweet will allow stakeholders from different business areas to tweet from the same account, and it’s also got a neat pre-moderation option so that the Social Media Manager can retain editorial control. After all, it’s still your job to be the guardian of your businesses’ social media efforts.” She adds that Conversocial is a tool that makes Facebook activity much more effective and efficient.

Put training into practice quickly: “Don’t just keep it theoretical, and don’t [bring] in external companies who may not understand your specific business needs,” Kurtzke cautions. “Since a change in thinking is required to make social successful, always use practical exercises and then encourage stakeholders to use the new knowledge immediately, i.e. with current activity.”

Be patient: This approach takes time, and not everyone is equally eager, ready, or able, notes Kurtzke. “This is normal and, while it can be frustrating, it’s so much more satisfactory when you see the results,” she says. “Nothing puts a smile on my face like seeing a senior stakeholder suddenly pop up on my Twitter feed!”

Source: eTurboNews

“We’ve have had a partnership agreement with Crane for years; we try to help make connections between the business community and entrepreneurs with federal labs,” says Deborah D. Dewey, president of GAGE and one of the key organizers of the event. “They have objectives to push their technology out, and they have very attractive license agreements.”

Her predecessor had tried to do some technology showcases, bringing people down from the lab and inviting other attendees, “but they did not really get things moving.” She began meeting with local companies, asking about technologies they were interested in and what problems they needed solved.

The thought behind the new campaign was that if the investors could be put on a bus, they would actually see the kinds of resources that were available at Crane. “We also realized that if we just invited them they might not come,” says Dewey, who convinced the mayor to send out the invitations. “We felt that if the mayor invited them they’d think it might be worth taking a day out of their busy schedule to go on a bus trip,” she says. A detailed article on the “Get on the Bus” strategy appears in the September 2012 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

Design is critical: The overall design of your e-mails is of utmost importance, says Sanders. She recommends you focus on the following:

• Links: Make your call to action clickable, and be sure it’s big enough to “click” with a fingertip.
• Columns: If you’re doing an all-mobile campaign, be sure to stick with one column. Otherwise, to ensure your e-mails are still friendly for both computer and smart phone, utilize responsive web design, otherwise known as media queries, to adjust for screen size.

Do your testing: “While you’ll have customers receiving e-mails on their phones before you get a chance to test, it’s worthwhile to do so regardless,” says Sanders. “Test more than once to see where there is need for improvement, what seems to be getting clicked, and so on. This will be crucial to ensure your mobile, computer and tablet customers are all getting the same great e-mails.”

Be short and concise: Your mobile e-mail readers are on the go; sitting in line at the bank, stuck in traffic after work or on lunch break, notes Sanders. “To be sure that they are still reading each e-mail you send their way, you want each and every one to be created with focus and intent — from styling to wording,” she says. Consider these factors:

• Simple versus attractive: Mobile customers don’t have much room on their screen, so instead of including dozens of slow loading images that lengthen the e-mail, keep your design simple.
• Subject line: Most mobile phones will only display the first five or six words, so think of it as a Tweet — keep it short and simple but enticing.

Consider the fold: On a mobile phone, your customers don’t see as much on one screen as they do on a computer notes Sanders — and, when your customer can’t see the entire e-mail in one shot, they need more motivation to continue scrolling though. “While some e-mails will inevitably require more text, keep your heavy weighted content on top so you can talk them into scrolling through,” she advises

Basic code changes: Finally, Sanders says, it’s important that you consider the back end of your design. “If your customers are getting the bulk of your e-mail on mobile, you want them to still gain from the content,” she notes. “To do this, you’ll need to modify your coding slightly. For example, Blue Train Mobile suggests, ‘Set inline CSS for all stylings and NEVER use CSS shorthand.’”

Source: Business 2 Community

ALSO COMING SOON:

• Thursday, October 4: Myriad: The Gene Patent Fight Continues…
• Thursday, October 25: Getting to “Yes” in University IP Licensing: Mock Negotiation Workshop

“I am very excited to host this event and create the potential for life-changing ideas to become a reality,” says Chancellor John Sharp. “The state’s largest research university should take a leadership role in bettering the lives of people all over this planet.”

Sharp notes that Texans see and use products based on Texas A&M research every day, including “products ranging from improved cotton in the clothes we wear, to traffic guardrails that save thousands of lives, to improved wheat varieties that improve the profitability of Texas farmers.” According to Texas A&M more than 110 guests and investors were registered for attendance.

Source: KBTX

Know that spectators’ expectations differ: “While you may simply see the crowd as a single entity, the individual level tells a different story in terms of expectations from your high-wire act,” says Spencer. “Some might be anticipating some sort of a heart-stopping performance while others might simply be contented with an uneventful crossing.” It works the same way for your contact list recipients, she notes, but unlike the tightrope example, you have the ability to appeal to specific audience groups through proper segmentation in e-mail marketing.

Deliver what the crowd came for: “You have to make a genuine effort to put on a great show and strive to meet everybody’s expectations,” says Spencer. “Don’t try to please everybody with just one e-mail blast — it just won’t work. Instead, you continually engage with different audience segments at different times.”

Learn to shift your weight: As you proceed along the “tightrope,” you’ll find the tendency to hobble toward either side at specific points on the wire. “To compensate for this and avoid falling, you need to shift your weight to the opposite side until balance is restored,” Spencer advises. “In e-mail marketing, this is identical to how you should distribute your focus between telling and selling. You shouldn’t have too much of either.”

Trust the wire you’re walking on: “Think of the rope as your e-mail campaign itself,” offers Spencer. “If you’re not sure about the soundness or quality of component in your business contact list for your campaign, you’ll end up hesitating to take decisive steps like send a promotional e-mail at the right opportunity.”

Keep the end of the rope in focus: “It’s always better to make sure the part of the tightrope that meets the other platform is always within your sight,” Spencer advises. “Don’t look to the sides and, most of all, don’t look down. Working with e-mail lists for marketing is essentially the same. Keep your goals in mind and strive to achieve them without fail.”

Have a safety net in place – always: “Even with all your practice and preparation, there will always be a chance for failure,” says Spencer. “It’s a good practice to always have some sort of a backup plan or contingency measure to fall back on when things don’t go your way.”

Source: Business 2 Community

ALSO COMING SOON:

• TOMORROW, September 12: Intellectual Property Law Essentials for Faculty and Student Inventors
• Wednesday, September 19: New Post Grant Proceeding Rules: Adjusting to the New Reality
• Thursday, October 4: Myriad: The Gene Patent Fight Continues…

Shake up your industry: “If you think your industry is dry and boring, you need to shake things up by coming up with ways to make it worth paying attention to,” says Nathalie Lussier of Nathalie Lussier Media. “Why does it matter to you? Get personal, share success stories of people in your industry or your clients.”

Create internal excitement: “Get employees to blog about something that excites them,” offers Bobby Emamian of Prolific Interactive. “We created the ‘Prolific Innovation Fund,’ which allows everyone to purchase a mobile accessory and write a review on it. It is creating team excitement, innovation and a lot of great relevant content for our company blog.”

Provide unique value: “No matter what your company does, there’s information, inspiration, and/or entertainment customers are looking for in the space,” says Derek Flanzraich of Greatist. “Provide something consistently valuable — and something people passionate about this space couldn’t get elsewhere.”

Entertain with infographics: “For the average American, the crowd funding industry and the JOBS Act may seem like alien concepts filled with complicated, dry details,” admits Eric Corl of Fundable LLC. “We’re currently working on an infographic to feature on our blog that will detail the impact of the JOBS Act and the widespread change the implementation of the act will bring. The visual representation of the change makes it approachable and engaging.”

Make it trendy: Melissa Cassera of Cassera Communications suggests that you tie your business into the hottest trends. “For example, anyone in any industry can blog about ‘What Fall TV Previews Teach Us About [your industry],’ since you can take elements of fall TV previews — promotion strategy, engagement, specific show themes — and spin it in your own business,” she observes.

Make others better: “Get them excited about what you’re doing in the industry, and encourage them to participate in your blog,” suggests Luke Burgis, of ActivPrayer. “Feature your competitors! Be the source. Great Players make the players around them better.”

Source: Personal Branding Blog

Launched in the fall of 2009, it had a two-fold rationale, according to David B. Pruskin, senior associate director of operations and administration in Harvard’s Office of Technology Development (OTD). “It was certainly designed as an educational tool; we wanted to inform inventors about the process,” he notes. “But equally important was to highlight who we are. This publication provides us an opportunity to reach out and establish ourselves as a partner with the faculty.”

The publication covers the commercialization process in a step-by-step fashion, beginning with a description of the purpose of OTD, then proceeding through disclosure; IP protection; marketing; industry collaborations; sponsored research; and different types of agreements. The 22-page publication concludes with OTD contact information. A detailed article on the faculty guide and its utility as an internal marketing strategy appears in the September 2012 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

In the Guide to Intellectual Property Valuation, 2nd Edition you’ll also find advanced tools that will help you navigate common landmines and arrive at supportable, optimum valuations for your innovations. This is not your typical IP valuation text. It goes far beyond the basics of IP valuation, theoretical models, or accounting gimmickry. And you won’t find rehashed topics already covered thoroughly in other resources. This guide provides you with a deeper, more practical analysis that the critical task of IP valuation demands. For complete details and to order, CLICK HERE.

If your online presence is genuine and your brand is “real,” says Briere, relationships will blossom. Here are her recommendations for setting up a steady foundation for your relationship marketing — thus creating a healthy community online:

• Understand your audience: “Identify your niche market and how you plan to solve their problems,” says Briere. “Have a clear vision for who your products and services are going to help so you can target them more directly with a message that resonates more powerfully.”
• Engage with your audience: “Write with your audience’s wants and needs in mind,” Briere advises. Listen to their feedback — good or bad — and give them a say in the conversation. “Conversation is a two-way street, and there’s a difference between talking to people versus talking with them,” she observes.
• Be a part of your community: “Be present in conversations about your own brand and your industry,” says Briere. “A good relationship marketing strategy covers all aspects of a community — from customers to competitors.” Accordingly, she adds, find ways to join in on relevant conversations, offering your own opinion, experience, expertise and input. “Just be sure you have something worth saying,” she cautions.
• Demonstrate your expertise: “One component of your relationship marketing strategy must address the fact that there is competition for what you’re offering,” notes Briere. “People will respect and listen to you more intently if your language is confident, clear and beneficial.” If you’re not the expert in a certain area, that’s okay, she says. In such cases, seek the advice or help of a non-competitor who knows the subject through and through, and give them credit for their knowledge.
• Answer questions: “Create free downloads, pay close attention to what people are asking on social media sites, and set up a blog dedicated to helping visitors find the answers to their most common questions,” Briere recommends. “Your customers want to be acknowledged and appreciated.”
• Provide excellent service: “Don’t just stop online with your relationship marketing. Continue the process offline and really show your customers that you appreciate them,” says Briere. “Treat them with respect before, during and after a sale.”

Source: Business 2 Community

More than just spending money on marketing, he continues, you need to create an “experience” in this digital age which sets you apart from the banner ads, e-mail blasts, and old-school websites out there today. He cites a book by Rick Mathieson entitled  The On-Demand Brand: 10 Rules for Digital Marketing Success in an Anytime, Everywhere World.” He says he supports these new marketing rules:

• Insight comes before inspiration: “Innovative marketing starts with customer insights culled from painstaking research into who your customers are, and how they use digital media,” Zwilling explains. “Then it’s time to innovate through the channels or platforms that are relevant.”
• Don’t repurpose, re-imagine: “Digital quite simply is not for repurposing content that exists in other channels,” Zwilling asserts. “It’s about re-imagining content to create blockbuster experiences that cannot be attained through any other medium.”
• Don’t just join the conversation, spark it: Zwilling suggests that you create new online communities of interest, rather than joining existing ones. “Ask why it should be, and why customers should care,” he suggests. “Then give them a reason to keep coming back. Keep it real, social, and events-based.”
• There’s no business without show business: “Your brand is a story; tell it,” says Zwilling. “Accentuate the personalizable, own-able, and sharable. Viral is an outcome, not a strategy. Make people laugh and they will buy.”
• Want control? Give it away: Several companies, including Mastercard, Coca-Cola, and Doritos have let customers build commercials and design contests, with big rewards for the customer and for the company, notes Zwilling. “That’s giving up control, with some risk, to get control,” he says.
• It’s good to play games with your customers: “Games are immersive, but shouldn’t be just a diversion. They need to drive home the value proposition,” Zwilling observes. “Don’t forget to include a call to action, like leading people to the next step of the buying process.”
• Products are the new services: “Start-ups need to realize that products are the jumping-off point for building relationships with customers,” says Zwilling. “Digital channels enable you to turn products into on-demand services that help customers reach their goals, and add value.”
• Mobile is where it’s at: “In addition to thinking of mobile as a new advertising distribution platform, remember it’s far more powerful as a response, or ‘activation mechanism,’ to commercial messages we experience in other media — print, broadcast, and more,” says Zwilling.
• Use smart ads wisely: “The new generation of ‘smart advertising’ enables the creation of an Internet banner ad to fit each viewer’s age, gender, location, personal interests, past purchase behavior, and much more,” Zwilling declares. “The trick is to do this without being invasive.”

Source: Business Insider

Take readers behind-the-scenes: “Even in a ‘dry, boring old industry,’ your blog readers will be fascinated to see the hidden, behind-the-scenes vantage point of the company,” says Doreen Bloch of Poshly Inc. “Incorporate photos or video to enhance plain text blog posts, and use a variety of writers to bring in diverse perspectives from the team. And of course, post regularly to keep your audience engaged.”

Go pop culture: Kenny Nguyen of Big Fish Presentations says that using pop culture references can be a great refresher. “For example, my company blog focuses on the subject of presentation and video,” he shares. “When Coachella featured a Tupac hologram earlier this year, the web went abuzz with questions asking if this was a new feature of presentations. Of course, we jumped on the discussion, explained some costs, and our opinions on the matter.”

Win with video: “We liven up our blog periodically by creating a video-based post,” shares Bhavin Parikh of Magoosh Test Prep. “Just use the webcam on your computer to speak openly about a specific subject that’s relevant to your audience.”

Stock up on case studies: “Even when a topic is boring, people love to hear about the emotional struggles that people faced when implementing something new,” says Lawrence Watkins of Great Black Speakers. ‘For example, if you are in the concrete industry, talk about the joy your customer had when they got their driveway paved.”

Showcase your clients: Kelly Azevedo of She’s Got Systems suggests you interview your best clients for their stories about how your company gave them value. “Ask these clients to explain how their perception changed from boring and stuffy after working together,” she offers.

Become the industry expert: “Instead of exclusively blogging about customer loyalty, I decided to become an expert in local marketing,” says Jun Loayza of Tour Woo. “We wrote about local social marketing, restaurant hardware, and customer loyalty. We were so good that we now ran very high on search engines.”

This is the first in a two-part series.

Source: Personal Branding Blog

Attorney Kevin E. Noonan, PhD, of McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP, notes that the decision leaves plenty of open questions and room for interpretation. What does it all mean for TTOs and university researchers with gene-based innovations, in terms of both patenting and licensing? In addition, the decision is likely not the last word on the matter, with a Supreme Court case likely on next year’s docket — a particular worry since the related ruling in Prometheus (and the Supremes’ directive to re-hear Myriad at the Fed Circuit) seem to hint at skepticism over lines drawn around “products of nature.” Join Dr. Noonan on October 4th for Myriad: The Gene Patent Fight Continues, a one-hour webinar that will deeply analyze the most recent decision and discuss how the opinion affects your university and its relevant IP. For complete details and to register, CLICK HERE.

ALSO, DON’T MISS THESE UPCOMING DISTANCE LEARNING PROGRAMS:

• Wednesday, September 12: Intellectual Property Law Essentials for Faculty and Student Inventors
• Wednesday, September 19: New Post Grant Proceeding Rules: Adjusting to the New Reality
• Thursday, October 25: Getting to “Yes” in University IP Licensing: Mock Negotiation Workshop

Use actionable words: Action words or verbs, although comprising the basic elements of a CTA, form only one part of its “actionable” aspect, notes Spencer. “In order to be really effective and actionable, CTAs need to be clearly and strongly phrased and avoid vague and uncertain terms,” she says. “A classic mistake in relation to this would be using the term ‘Click Here’ instead of using something stronger like ‘Get it Now’ or ‘Register Now’ as CTAs,” she explains.

Motivate action with urgency: From the above examples, the two suggested CTA versions both contain the word “Now,” which not only increases the CTA’s strength but creates a sense of urgency as well, says Spencer. “Aside from clarity, your CTAs should make your offer or command sound important, exclusive, and immediate,” she adds.

Make your CTA stand out: “CTAs are almost useless if it takes a great deal of effort from your recipients to find, read, and understand them,” says Spencer. “That’s why it’s vital that you find the right balance between color scheme and contrast characteristics. In addition, your CTAs should be located right above or below the fold with no exceptions.” With the increasing trend toward mobile e-mails, she adds, it’s also important to consider the potential effects of smaller display screens with the visibility and readability of your CTAs.

Use HTML in place of images: A significant percentage of recipients in your contact database may be using platforms that block images from appearing on your messages, thereby compromising the presence of your image-formatted CTA, Spencer cautions. “A simple yet powerful HTML trick can achieve the same effect as images but eliminates the risk of being blocked,” she says. “Talk to your developer about applying this HTML approach.”

Clarify the process: “Your CTAs should clearly indicate what your recipients are in for once they click on them,” Spencer says. “Effective CTAs are able to provide this information without being too lengthy or redundant, which can cause hesitation or loss of motivation from your readers.” She adds that you need to avoid surprises, as these can negatively affect your messages’ ability to convert or generate responses.

Limit available options: “Although there’s no explicit limit to the maximum number of CTAs you can insert into your e-mails, having too many can cause unwanted distractions from your desired actions,” says Spencer. “If you do need to include multiple CTAs, make sure to prioritize the most important ones by making them stand out from the rest.”

Source: Business 2 Community

“It had been a very effective tool for us to get the message out on what research the university was doing,” he recalls. “I came to Clemson and there had never been one; I thought this was an omission and something that really would benefit the university, as we could really present to the public, funders, and donors the broad range of research that Clemson was doing as well as make it easier for our own people to know what was going on.”

Such a magazine, he continues, can be an effective marketing tool. “I think that to market what the university is doing becomes very important, and when someone presents some research we’re doing that’s novel, a magazine is a wonderful venue because it allows a demonstration of the total involvement of the university in research — and everyone can see we’re not just a one-hit wonder. We have a broad research portfolio, and it’s very important [the articles] include the entire university.”

“We have an obligation as well as an opportunity to explain academic research to the people who fund it,” adds Neil Caudle, editor of the Clemson bi-annual magazine, which is called Glimpse. “It’s not enough to publish in journals — as important as that is; the public that supports the research needs to understand what their investment gets them — knowledge, advancements to society, and so on.” In addition, he says, the publication helps invite target audiences into the conversation and addresses alumni and others with a vested interest in research, including potential collaborators.

“It builds the academic community beyond the bounds of the campus,” Caudle adds. “That’s an obvious marketing advantage when we go out to meet potential collaborators — it helps change the image of Clemson for the better. We’ve made great strides in research, but not everyone knows that; it’s a tool to wake people up to what’s new here.” A detailed article on the magazine’s effectiveness as a marketing tool appears in the September 2012 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

She offers the following tips to organize trade shows to do just that:

Stop thinking about trade shows in terms of sales and earnings: Instead, says Rudolph, think in terms of cementing customer relationships, building networks and advancing marketing goals.

Forget about flooding your trade shows with people: “Rather,” she says, “focus on the quality of your interactions with your attendees.”

Keep your trade show display clean: “Your message and your images must be simple and easy to digest,” says Rudolph. “Remember that while complex layouts and flashing lights may garner attention, people will miss out on your brand message and show purpose.”

Do some brainstorming in advance: This will help you create marketing initiatives to put in place before, during, and after the event, explains Rudolph. “Doing this will help you better engage people, build relationships and generate leads,” she declares.

Evaluate your display booth based on visibility, prominence, size, marketing requirements and your budget: “Make sure your booth is big enough for a comfortable show, but not so big as to make you look like a laughing stock,” she adds.

Work with top graphic designers: “Your graphics must effectively portray your key messages, thereby fulfilling your brand communications requirements,” Rudolph advises. “Establish design parameters for modular exhibition stands, brochures, banners and so on.”

Try to make your booth stand out: “You can try elevating it by a few feet above others, or build a mock-terrace for your event models and so on,” Rudolph suggests. “This will attract more prospects to your trade show display area.”

Design uniforms for booth staff: Use your brand colors; embroider or print your brand logo on their t-shirts for instant recall, Rudolph advises. Make sure your logo and byline are prominently displayed on all sides of the booth.

Carefully choose giveaways or promotional products: “Look for cost-effective giveaways that will both complement your company image and have high perceived value among your target prospects,” says Rudolph.

Print sufficient brochures and marketing materials for at least 1.5 times the number of people you expect: “Train your staff to point out valid points in the brochure while they introduce your brand and product to prospects,” Rudolph adds.

Source: Business 2 Community

Secure links: “For SEO this means reaching out to industry associations, loyal clients and other complementary businesses to encourage them to link to your site from areas like their blogs and resource pages,” Quipp explains. “This is a signal that search engines, such as Google, use in their rankings algorithms and will help to improve a website’s rankings.”

Update content regularly: Ensuring content is unique, compelling and fresh is key to keeping the attention of website visitors, says Quipp. “Consider blog posts, videos, images, webinars, eBooks, widgets, infographics, and primary research as ways to renew content on a regular basis,” he offers.

Show variety in content: Quipp cites a Forrester study which found that pages containing a mixture of text and video are 50 times more likely to rank higher in search results. “Make sure to include more than one type of content sharing per web page,” he advises.

Ensure the site is “social media optimized”: “With the growing influence that social media has on a company’s relationship with potential and existing customers, it’s vital to ensure all website pages have the company’s social profile icons (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest),” says Quipp. “These icons encourage and make it easy to share the information and increase the chance of it being found in a search.”

Use keywords in page titles: Ensure each website page has a title that is relevant and unique. “The title should contain keywords that are related to how the company wants its website — or that page — to be found through search,” notes Quipp.

Ensure main navigation links contain keywords: “It is important to include text links containing relevant keywords that reflect the way a business would want its primary pages to be found. (e.g. if you’re a dentist and want to rank for ‘Teeth Whitening,’ links to the teeth whitening page should say ‘teeth whitening’),” Quipp notes.

Offer unique and valuable content: “Content that is unique, user-friendly and valuable encourages sharing and gives Google the social signals needed to believe that the page does in fact deserve to rank in their search results,” Quipp explains. “In the future, search engines will put much more trust in such social signals and those producing great content will be the net beneficiaries.”

Source: thestar.com

E-commerce: Shorter subject lines drive clicks, and longer subject lines drive opens. Therefore, says Adestra, “marketers need to consider their objectives and then construct subject lines accordingly.” Subject lines with 70 characters also appear to provide a huge uplift in click-throughs. ‘Coupon’ and ‘voucher’ are out, and ‘% off’ and ‘summer sale’ are in.

Events: The best click-through rates come from 15 words/120 characters upwards. “Focus on the benefits of attending a given event — be it the exhibitors, speakers, show features or whatever makes the show special,” says Adestra.  The words ‘conference,’ ‘seminar’ and ‘webinar’ have much less impact than selling the benefits in the subject line. Mentioning price, discounts or using currency symbols can create a big uplift. Personalization is also important.

Publishing: “For publishers, the results are quite clear — a higher word count delivers more opens and click-through rates,” says Adestra. “Similar to the events sector, sell the benefits and give more information about what your e-mail contains, and your responses will increase.” “Newsletter” or “Forecast” or “Intelligence” are to be avoided, while “Bulletin” or “Alert” will see your rates increase. Cutting edge content — “Exclusive,” “Video” and “Interview” — are all positives.

Charity: Short subject lines drive both opens and response. “If it’s a donation campaign then this is critical,” Adestra cautions. “However, if it’s an awareness campaign then longer subject lines will drastically improve open rates.” The report says the words ‘appeal’ and ‘donate’ have lost their, well, appeal with recipients. Going back to basics with ‘give’ can increase results dramatically. Ironically, if you want to increase your opens by 41% mention ‘kittens,’ but it will drop 28% if you mention ‘children.’

B2B vs B2C: Quite simply, the more words the better for the B2B sector — anything over 16 words can deliver on both opens and clicks. For B2C, a 20-word subject line appears to be a clear winner, delivering a massive 115% uplift in open rates and 85% uplift in clicks over shorter subjects. “Be clear about what your e-mail is about and the trust of your recipients will follow,” says Adestra. Money talks in the B2B sector, with subject lines containing monetary symbols, monetary phrases such as “turnover,” “revenue” and “profit” achieving fantastic results. Avoid “B2B.” “business” and “industry.” Video content rules in the B2C sector, with the word “video” boosting open and click through rates dramatically. “Avoid ‘free’ and ‘half price;’opt for ‘% off’ instead and see the positive impact this makes,” says Adestra.

Source: Adestra

• Investors and Entrepreneurs: Find the start-ups and early-stage technologies with the best prospects for success — and make sure your investments bring higher than average returns.
• Analysts and Private Equity Professionals: Use the Guide’s unique information and data to ensure thorough due diligence and competitive analysis.
• Corporate and Government Technology Scouts: Find high-potential emerging technology solutions and acquisition targets – and get e-mail alerts to new opportunities in regular updates.
• TTO Directors and Staff: Enhance your market research capabilities and improve your office’s analysis of technology development and commercialization activity in specific sectors.
• Attorneys and Consultants: Tap into a new source of clients in the hot university start-up market, and use the free Excel database as an instant marketing contact list.

The 2012 Investor’s Guide to University Start-ups is the first detailed list and of university start-ups indexed by both growth stage and market sector. It brings together hard-to-find data from the high-potential, rapidly evolving university start-up market and organizes it into an easy-to-use directory. Through an arrangement with publisher Innovate Tech Ventures, E-News readers can purchase the Guide for just $575, a discount of more than $900 off the regular price. For more details and to order at this special rate, CLICK HERE.

• Trade show attendance and exhibiting success;
• Optimizing online presence;
• Incorporating PR into the technology marketing plan;
• Marketing the TTO within the campus community; and
• Leveraging external networks.

“There are two major types of trade shows — scientific and business,” noted Montse Capdevila, Director of Sales, Marketing and International Relations for Johns Hopkins Technology Transfer, who says works with an annual marketing budget of $30,000 – $35,000, which covers student interns, show attendance and general marketing, making it critical to choose the right show. “What’s good about a business show, like BIO, is that you can do partnering — but they’re expensive,” she observed. These events, she added, see a strong presence by business development scouts (who could meet with your faculty), while scientific meetings present the opportunity to provide portfolio overviews. “Strategize your final goals,” she advised. “Do you want deals, leads, or exposure for your office and connecting with as many people as possible — or all of the above?”

“We go to a lot of shows, but we don’t brand our office as much as we do tech-specific marketing,” added Andrew Morrow, technology marketing manager at the University of Minnesota’s Office of Technology Commercialization, which operates with a $50,000 marketing budget. “So partnering is great for us too; BIO and AUTM do a great job — you can set up an entire day of meetings.”

Another key question is whether or not to exhibit. Nicole Nair, senior marketing coordinator at the Office of Technology Management, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, recommended that if you decide to exhibit you should use a “pop-up booth,” comprised of printed graphic panels and a metal framework that all fold down into a small container. “They’re easy to use, you can ship them from show to show, and easy to assemble and disassemble,” she shared. “The last one we made was less than $2,000.” Often, she noted, people will try to sell you “extras” like electronic service monitors, labor, additional furniture, and so on. “Keep it simple,” she admonished.

“Bringing a booth does not always add that much value,” said Morrow. “Having two or three more people instead may add more value.”

There is value in other peoples’ booths, which is why Capdevila recommended ‘booth-crawling.’ “Although you often get sales representatives, once at a Pfizer booth we got a VP of Oncology, which led to him connecting us to all the people within Pfizer to whom we should pitch faculty and technology,” she shared. A detailed article on this webinar appears in the August 2012 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

Expertise: Do you know how to produce effective marketing videos? How is your camerawork, composition, lighting, sound? Can you edit, upload and embed your videos into your website? There are people who have devoted their education and careers to understanding and using video as professionals. “However, with easy to use tools people do their own videos all the time,” notes Dearborn. “And, with all the lower production value content we see on YouTube, audiences have developed a greater tolerance for less well produced video.” So, he suggests, “take the time to honestly assess the resources at hand to create and post the video yourself. If you have any reservations, you need a professional.”

Time: “Be realistic about the time it takes to produce good marketing video yourself,” says Dearborn. “Have you considered how long the writing, shooting, editing, hosting and embedding will take?” If you do not have the time, he offers, it may be well worth outsourcing it — for your own peace of mind, the others in your organization, and your customers.

Budget: Any do-it-yourself project can save money, Dearborn notes. And, if your resources are severely limited, you really have no choice but to do marketing videos on your own. “But if you have the budget, you are almost certain to get better results from a pro,” he adds.

Perspective: “In my opinion, this is the most significant reason to turn your project over to a pro,” Dearborn asserts. “I have never worked on a project where the content created by the business hasn’t been too wordy, too detailed, too historical — and says way more than the customer needs to hear. It’s really, really hard to look at what your business does from the outside-in, when you’re looking from the inside-out,” he continues. “An experienced, listening, and perceptive professional is likely to put the perspective in your video that will make it far more effective.”

Source: Business 2 Community

ALSO COMING SOON:

• TOMORROW, August 29: Shedding Light on Little Known and Costly Blind Spots for University Start-Ups
• Wednesday, September 12: Intellectual Property Law Essentials for Faculty and Student Inventors

Vancouver’s Brian Wong, the young founder and CEO of Kiip, suggests start-ups “understand the ‘why’” behind their business. “It’s much more important than just the ‘what,’” he says. “People need to understand the reasons behind your existence to believe in it as much as you; the more you can ‘inceptionize’ folks that are around you, the more they’ll be into believing the vision you’re tackling and helping you do that.”

Dario Melo, co-CEO of Vancouver’s Invoke Media, keeps it blunt: “Create the most amazing product, service, or experience. PR, social, ads, all come second,” he asserts.

Boris Wertz, an award-winning angel investor in Canadian Internet start-ups, affirms that new companies must figure out a communication strategy for the brand and product — and that this message “must be simple, clear, and differentiated. Users must understand right away what problem the product solves and why they should use it.”

A co-founder of Canadian start-up Food.ee, Jon Cartwright, advises marketers to “find people who are screaming for help solving their pain and then target your product and messaging to them.”

Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite, emphasizes building a marketing channel. “You need a way to communicate with your customers,” he says. “Whether that’s an e-mail list, a Twitter account, or a fan page, you need a way to distribute information down the road to the people who can help share your story.”

Montreal’s Ben Yoskovitz, a vice president with GoInstant, maintains that marketing does not play a huge role for a start-up until they know they’ve found a problem and are delivering an appropriate solution. At that point, he says it’s a good idea to set up analytics and learn to understand them. Then, experiment. “Try a blog, try social media marketing, etc.,” he suggests. “Try anything and everything, but do so with a goal in mind. ‘If I do X, it will result in Y.’ And make sure you can measure that properly, so you know what’s working and what’s not.”

Last but not least, for Perch’s Ian Walker, “storytelling is the most essential and critical part of building your audience.” He admits that you can’t build an audience overnight, but building it out the right away allows some of the most effective marketing to occur automatically.

Source: Techvibes

Understand online behavior or ‘Digital Body Language’ of your prospects: “You must focus on the needs of the buyer and facilitate their buying process, rather than pushing messages at them,” Krekstein advises. “With an understanding of the buyer’s behavior, we can determine through advanced analytic models which of those buyers are at a stage in their buying process where they are ready to engage with sales.”

Data quality and data management are necessary: As companies are interacting with buyers over a longer period of time, they need to ensure that they keep their data on those prospective buyers clean and up to date, says Krekstein. Analytics can aid in prescribing the “right” companies to target, inclusive of the “right” contacts to call, but require clean and up to date data to provide it. “This data will allow for a more ‘laser focused’ and targeted campaign, which will yield a higher ROI,” he declares.

Campaigns must be focused, relevant and multi-touch: Too often companies implement “generic” campaigns, which Krekstein says do not provide needed ROI. “Utilizing the various tips above you can focus and personalize your campaigns on relevant topics for prospects and engage them at the right time in their sales cycle,” he says. “This will alleviate wasted calling and allow sales people to ‘sell.’ With a ‘multi-touch’ approach (creative e-mail blast/call/e-mail blast/nurture) you can prioritize calling as well as increase your results in the short and long term.”

Campaign analysis is critical: “In any buying process there may be multiple campaigns, multiple buyers, and many months involved,” says Krekstein. “By analyzing the results of each campaign you can begin to understand how each of those campaigns influenced buyer behavior, and how the revenue achieved can be attributed across the many campaigns involved. This approach provides a much clearer view into campaign effectiveness, and allows for specific direction to your future campaigns and spending.”

Source: Business 2 Community

• Google Alerts: These should be a staple in your content marketing arsenal, says Bailey. “With this free tool, you can set up daily alerts for specific keywords,” he explains. “For example, I have an alert set up for the phrase ‘content marketing;’ every day Google sends me an email…” If you are struggling for ideas of things to write about in your blog, for example, you can choose something from your Google Alerts and write about it, he continues. “Just take the article, reference it in your post and write a response or synopsis of what the article is about,” Bailey suggests.
• Podcasts: “Not everyone in your target audience has the time to read through your blog posts or white papers,” notes Bailey. “However, some of them will take the time to listen to a podcast through their ear buds while working on other tasks.” Podcasts are much easier to develop than video, he adds. Here are a few ideas for possible podcasts:
• Podcast Interviews — Using a free service like Skype, you can do quick 5-15 minute phone interviews with industry experts or maybe with clients, says Bailey. Post these on your blog or in social media channels.
• Podcast Tips — Record yourself giving quick tips on certain products or services you offer. “While not as engaging as an interview, these are still easily digestible pieces of content that will be useful to certain members of your target audience,” Bailey explains.
• Team Podcasts — You can set up interviews in your office with team leaders to discuss certain initiatives or to discuss a new product coming online. “This gives a human voice to your team and is much more engaging than a typical white paper,” says Bailey.
• Create audio blog posts — These can be posted alone as a download or streaming audio piece on your blog, but Bailey recommends taking the time to transcribe the podcast or have it transcribed for you.
• Add to product and service pages — “Have an interview with someone involved in the development talk about the product or service in a podcast,” Bailey suggests.
• Online distribution — “Use podcasts in your content distribution to mix it up; you can include links to these in your social channels or in your e-mail newsletter,” says Bailey. “If the interviews or other content are good, you can add your podcast to iTunes as a download.”
• Fun Short Videos: This isn’t for everyone, Bailey cautions, but “If your audience isn’t a bunch of stuffed shirts, it can be quite effective.” This could be as simple as you sitting at your desk recording yourself with a web cam talking about what’s coming up in your organization. Or it could be you interviewing a co-worker about a specific project. “Remember, keep these short and interesting,” says Bailey. “Have some fun but always keep in mind that the goal is to deliver interesting and useful information to your target audience.”

Source: Business 2 Community

PLUS, COMING SOON:

• Wednesday, August 29: Shedding Light on Little Known and Costly Blind Spots for University Start-Ups
• Wednesday, September 19: New Post Grant Proceeding Rules: Adjusting to the New Reality

“This particular company is one of the first to have been formed out of this [DOE] initiative,” says Svetlana Shtrom, PhD, MBA, UCF’s director of technology commercialization, who notes that this particular competition was just the most recent in a series that her office has worked on with Mesdi.

“UCF received an award from DOE in a program called MegaWatt Ventures (http://megawattventures.com/) — a clean energy competition,” she explains. “The idea is to spin out technologies from universities to help students take their research out of their labs and create companies and commercialize them as they get out of school.”

In the first round, Shtrom continues, teams apply for the award. “One requirement, per DOE, is that every team has to have a student in it,” she says. “In that round we select 10 finalists, and each receives $10,000 to create a prototype or continue on with proof of principle studies.” The teams have six months for this phase, during which UCF provides mentorship, guiding the team through company formation, IP negotiation, and so forth, coaching them through the process so they’re ready for the final competition, for which the grand prize is $100,000. The final round is judged by technical experts and members of the VC community. 

“Mesdi was one of finalists; they got $10,000 and came in second,” Shtrom recalls. “We continued to work with them because they were spun out of UCF. They then entered and won a DOE regional competition and competed for the national prize (The National Clean Energy Business Plan Competition). The final phase was held in Washington, DC, in front of investors and industry experts.”

To help Mesdi with the voting competition, “we advertised all different ways to get more votes,” Shtrom says. “Internally we had an e-mail blast sent to everyone, asking for their support and reminding them to vote; you can vote several times,” notes marketing coordinator Julia Roberts. “I posted it to our home page on our website and also to Facebook.” 

‘It’ was an appeal that read as follows:

Please vote for Mesdi on Energy.gov! – Tuesday, May 29, 2012

UCF and the Mesdi team, a UCF clean energy startup company, needs your help. We have a chance to win the online voting portion of the Department of Energy National Clean Energy Business Plan Competition. Please visit this website and click the “like” button underneath the video: http://energy.gov/national-clean-energy-business-plan-competition/mesdi-systems

Thank you for your support!

Visitors who clicked on the link were sent to another page that includes a description of the company and its technology, along with the video presentation. The copy, which was composed by Roberts, appeared both on the UCF site and the Office of Research Commercialization site, to broaden its reach. A detailed article on the online vote campaign appears in the August 2012 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

• Go places! “Get into trade shows and as many other networking events as you can; don’t just market yourself online,” says Ray. “Don’t forget to bring a ton of business cards.”
• Talk: “Offer to speak at the next trade conference in your industry,” Ray suggests. “Try showcasing some of your products at an exhibition or sponsoring one. This is a great opportunity to be seen by potential customers.”
• Write content online the right way: Most people are tired of reading marketing drivel, says Ray; that’s why you have to be creative with your marketing strategy. “If you’re going to write about your product, write about something your product does without appearing to try to sell it,” he advises. “Don’t forget to join forums with customers that are interested in things related to your industry.”
• Use iReach or some other PR service: “Getting PR will really significantly boost your back links, traffic, and customer interest,” says Ray. “It costs very little ($130 on iReach) to get noticed.”

While many of these approaches do cost some money, “The price you end up paying is way less than the price of a marketing department,” Ray explains. “All the pieces of advice listed here are bona fide ways of getting some customers and sales into your hands without any pressure to them.”

Source: Business Insider

• Know the market: Who is your audience and how are they watching? “Knowing who will be most receptive to your video will make your production needs clearer,” Ratnanesan explains. “The happiest clients are the ones that know exactly what they need for their video. How will your segment be watching it? Tablets, mobile phones, computers and TVs are all highly utilized screens for consumers; knowing HOW your market watches will tell you how to engage them and strengthen your future web strategy.”
• Distribution options: Being everywhere is more possible than in the past, notes Ratnanesan. “With YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook and so on, consumers are now happy to watch video online and on social media, so take advantage of these distribution channels,” he recommends. “Distribution is more affordable now with online viral marketing also a possibility.”
• Make a quick impact and test, test, test: YouTube notes that the first 15 seconds of your video are the most important. Other estimates show that 20% of video consumers click away within 10 seconds. “The best and only way of improving this is by experimenting with options, but also making an impact within those first few seconds of a consumer’s attention span,” says Ratnanesan. “Talk with various producers about different video styles. Try animation, interviews and profiles; analyze what is getting the most clicks.”
• Push for clicks: Click-to-action in your video, Ratnenesan suggests. The easier it is for your consumer the more sales you’ll have. “‘Buy Now’ and ‘Learn More’ buttons turn engagement into sales,” he observes, but don’t be too pushy, and don’t let the prompts interfere with the viewing. “The more freedom you give your consumer and the easier you make it for them, the more likely they are to build a relationship,” he observes.
• Sharing is social: Make it easy for your consumer’s friends to know about you as well; think about how your video can be shared, recommends Ratnenesan. “‘Likes’, ‘Shares’ and recommendations are the new word of mouth — make it easy to share with one click,” he advises. “Show an embed code so users can easily put your video on blogs and so on. Analyze where your video is being shared; it will tell you more about your market.”

Source: Business 2 Community

“It’s clear from the pipeline that UVA researchers are doing incredibly innovative work with applications in a variety of commercial markets,” says Michael P. Straightiff, director of the school’s Licensing & Ventures Group. “We look forward to continuing to work with our partners to drive these products — and future collaborations — ahead.”

Source: Daily Progress

1. Increase a company’s corporate footprint.
2. Drive traffic to a company booth (generate leads).
3. Network with potential business partners.

Here are some social media tips he says will serve you well at the show:

Join the tradeshow provider’s social media groups: “Shows like the Rockwell Automation Fair and the Honeywell User Group set up Twitter and Facebook pages for their events,” Mandrusiak notes. “This is a great place to start collecting followers to your sites, and provide yet another conduit for communicating with trade show attendees.”

Post pictures often: “Post pictures of the booth, people at the booth, products, maybe a contest at the booth,” Mandrusiak suggests.

Trade shows are a fantastic time to unveil new products or features: There are typically tons of reporters around, but more importantly there is an opportunity for instant customer feedback, says Mandrusiak. “Most digital cameras can record video and some even have the ability to post that video right to Facebook and Twitter,” he adds. “People love companies that look for feedback, as it demonstrates to customers that they are valued.”

Publicize that you are on Twitter and Facebook right at the booth: “Most people that attend tradeshows will make a post to their favorite social network platform anyway; why not sign them up for yours right there and then?” Mandrusiak poses.

Take the time to get pictures posted from your partners and potential partners: “The trick to winning with social media at the trade show is by constantly pushing out relevant content,” Mandrusiak asserts. “Tagging the reps from a partner company in a Facebook photo post means that they will receive a notification about the picture. They will either make a comment, or share the photo through their network.”

Post to your blog at night when the trade show is done for the day: “Writing a blog post during a show simply means that you are taking time away from networking and selling,” Mandrusiak cautions. “If you have done your job correctly with Facebook and Twitter, then your blog post will take no more than 20 minutes once you finally hit your hotel room. The trick here is that you now have back links to photos, posts, and tweets that will drive traffic to your blog.”

Plan for a couple of interviews with key people at the show: Get a few minutes of video from some key people in your industry talking about the show and most of all your company, says Mandrusiak. Ask only one or two questions per person, he suggests.

Follow up with everyone who joins your networks: “Take a look at the companies that they follow,” says Mandrusiak. “See what publications they subscribe to, and send them a direct message. The direct message would be a thank you for following your company, and then ask them a question for feedback, or send them a link for a free download or demo.”

Take your new followers from being lukewarm leads to hot leads by getting them back in front of your product: “Schedule a webcast that fully demonstrates all the features of your product and position it as a Twitter and Facebook follower exclusive webcast only,” says Mandrusiak. “They will flock to it and give your salespeople the opportunity to demonstrate their product to an audience who wants to see it.”

Keep things consistent at every show that you attend:  “By making the show an experience by engaging customers, they will seek you out at future shows,” Mandrusiak predicts. “There are always the few booths that you remember after a show. Not always are they the biggest and flashiest, but they are the ones where people had a great experience. Be that experience every time.”

Source: AutomatedBuildings.com

Join us on August 29 for Shedding Light on Little Known and Costly Blind Spots for University Start-Ups, when our team will expose these risks and offer solid solutions in a webinar not only for TTO managers and staff, but which is designed to be shared with all faculty, students, and business leaders involved in your school’s start-up activity. For that reason, all live attendees will also receive a free DVD recording of the session for your training and education needs. And if you can’t attend the live event, you can still order the recorded version, which you can share with your entire start-up team, as well as budding entrepreneurs among your faculty and students. For complete program and faculty details, CLICK HERE.

ALSO COMING SOON:

• Wednesday, September 12: Intellectual Property Law Essentials for Faculty and Student Inventors
• Wednesday, September 19: New Post Grant Proceeding Rules: Adjusting to the New Reality

Develop a focused strategy: “Using custom landing pages allows you to craft your messaging and your strategy according to who you’re targeting,” Simmons explains. “If you’re a B2B company targeting real estate, then you need to tailor the page with real estate copy and imagery. If you’re targeting the Hispanic market with a specific ad campaign and you’re not translating the landing page, you’re missing out.”

Less is more: “Don’t think that you need to include every feature, benefit and technical specification that describes why you offer the very best product or service in your industry,” says Simmons. “Keep in mind the cardinal rule of online marketing: you have a very short timeframe to capture attention. Keep the text to a minimum; use a headline, short sub heading and bullets to communicate what you do and what’s in it for your customers.”

Have a single call-to-action: “Essentially, you want to explicitly tell visitors what it is you want them to do,” says Simmons. “If you’re selling a tangible product you want to make it easy for them to order and tell them to ‘order now.’ If you’re generating leads, you want to include a form to collect the necessary information.”

Use relevant imagery: The concept of imagery in landing pages can dramatically improve conversion rates, says Simmons. “You want to tailor images to the target audience,” he advises. “For example, if targeting real estate, then you should have images of buildings in the background where it makes sense.”

Test, rinse, repeat: “You have a number of elements to test with landing pages — headlines, sub headlines, bullets, images, button colors, and layout; are all elements that you should test in different configurations,” notes Simmons. “Once you find a setup that works, test it against an alternative setup. If you want to get fancy, you can do a multivariate test to run several elements against one another.”

Source: Business 2 Community

Although industry visits have been part of the university’s efforts for a number of years, Marketing Manager Allan Pritts explains that the program in its current form was only made possible by the reorganization of the university’s commercialization efforts. “In August of last year we created the University of Manchester Innovation Group, or UMI³ Ltd,” he notes. “We wanted to integrate our TTO and the Innovation Centre (incubator), so we now have both as operating divisions of UMI cubed. This enabled us to focus on this new program activity.”

Such visits had been part of the Innovation Centre’s activities in the past, notes Laura Etchells, PhD, project manager for UMI­­³. “They were probably not on such a great scale, and they were designed to assist the tenants within the incubator; now the forum is much more focused around activities within the university and uniting it with the external community,” she explains.

“We have 5,000 researchers and the TTO runs about 350 new inventions a year,” adds Pritts. “We have our usual ways of promoting new innovations, but we thought this would be a good way to engage global corporate communities to come and see the exciting innovations we have.”

A detailed article on the Entrepreneurship Forum appears in the August 2012 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

Turn Twitter followers into blog subscribers in two easy steps: “This is so elegant and simple I’m frankly jealous I didn’t think of it myself,” says Ratzlaff. “The author suggests creating a landing page on your blog for your Twitter followers who click through from your live bio link. That landing page has a special note to Twitter followers and gives a clear call to action about subscribing to the blog.”

The 10 Commandments for using Pinterest for Business: Written by Amy Porterfield, it outlines the why and the how of adding Pinterest icons to your website and other social media sites as well as using the Pin It bookmarklet. “The article also outlines how to connect your account to Facebook and more,” says Ratzlaff. “Pinterest now has more than 20 million users, up from 700,000 just a year ago. This is a massive social platform worthy of your attention for marketing.”

Foursquare’s ‘New Merchant Tools’: “Lauren Drell shares a step-by-step walk-through of the new merchant tools available for bricks and mortar businesses to use on Foursquare.” Ratzlaff says. “If you have a business where people can physically come and talk to you or buy a product, you should read this article and consider the high level of visibility and customer engagement possible with Foursquare.”

Add a transcript to YouTube videos for added SEO: “YouTube and Google index your title and tags, but did you know that by adding a transcript you make every single word you say in your video part of the indexed keywords?” Ratzlaff poses. “By the way, you can get a transcript of any video inexpensively through Fiverr.com, save it as a text file and voila, you’re a YouTube SEO pro.”

Source: Business Insider

• Increase your commercialization success rate
• Objectively assess and triage your technologies
• Invest your patent, R&D, and marketing budgets more productively
• Avoid the high costs of non-performing technology assets
• Take the guesswork and subjectivity out of investment decisions
• Justify your decisions to faculty and preserve faculty relationships
• Keep politics out of your decision-making
• Back a high percentage of winning technologies

The affordable TechAdvance tool has been carefully tested over years of development and is designed to provide a consistent, organized, and objective system for investing your limited resources in technologies with greatest chance for commercial success. It is available as both a print workbook and online module. For complete details, CLICK HERE.

Use boards to segment prospects: Pinterest lets users save pictures and videos to topical boards, Roggio explains. “These pin boards may be thought of as a form of customer segmentation, since Pinterest users may follow individual boards,” he notes. “For example, Michael’s, the specialty arts and crafts retailer, includes a board for baking enthusiasts called ‘Bake it’ and a separate board for wedding crafts called ‘Say I do.’ Folks that click from the Bake It board and arrive at the Michael’s site have segmented themselves, and Michael’s would be wise to use that information to further engage, perhaps offering a special discount for joining the baking e-mail list or similar, or showing different on-site merchandising based on which pin board a visitor came from.”

Be trendy: Pin what people are talking about: “When marketing on Pinterest, be a trendy pinner — meaning that the images and videos posted reflect what a business’s potential customers are talking about,” says Roggio. “For example, pinning images that relate to the Olympic games could be one way of giving Pinterest marketing a boost.”

Pin products, but use compelling photos: “Pinterest is like a gigantic wish list on which users pin product picture after product picture,” notes Roggio. “As such it can be a great place for online retailers to simply display their wares.”

Include a price: This tip is a bit more controversial, admits Roggio, “but if the ultimate goal is to close what some marketers call the ‘purchase gap’ and get someone to actually purchase an item and not just share pictures of it, the price clearly indicates that an item is for sale.”

Repin and comment to engage: Pinterest marketing should include interacting with other site users, says Roggio. “This means that marketers should regularly search the Pinterest site looking for material related to [your] industry segment,” he explains. “When something interesting and relevant is discovered, repin it giving credit to the original pinner. It can also be very effective to engage other users directly with comments and follows.”

Pin videos, too: “Photographs dominate Pinterest’s content, but remember that Pinterest supports pinning videos too,” notes Roggio.

Source: Practical eCommerce

“This particular company is one of the first to have been formed out of this [DOE] initiative,” says Svetlana Shtrom, PhD, MBA, director of technology commercialization, who notes that this particular competition was just the most recent in a series that her office has worked on with Mesdi.

The start-up was originally spawned from DOE-funded program UCF participated in called MegaWatt Ventures (http://megawattventures.com/). “The idea is to spin out technologies from universities to help students take their research out of their labs and create companies and commercialize them as they get out of school.” In the program’s first round, Shtrom continues, teams apply for the award. “In that round we select 10 finalists, and each receives $10,000 to create a prototype or continue on with proof of principle studies,” she explains. The teams have six months for this phase, during which UCF provides mentorship, guiding the team through company formation, IP negotiation, and coaching them through the process so they’re ready for the final competition — with a grand prize of $100,000. The final round is judged by technical experts and members of VC community. 

Mesdi was one of the finalists and came in second, Shtrom recalls. “We continued to work with them because they were spun out of UCF. They then entered and won a DOE regional competition and competed for the national prize (The National Clean Energy Business Plan Competition).”

To help Mesdi with the voting competition, says Shtrom, “we advertised all different ways to get more votes.”

“Internally we had an e-mail blast sent to everyone, asking for their support and reminding them to vote; you can vote several times,” notes marketing coordinator Julia Roberts. “I posted it to our home page on our website and also to Facebook.” These efforts included an appeal to vote for Mesdi and provided a link to the video featuring the start-up on the DOE’s competition website. 

Visitors who clicked on the link were sent to another page that includes a description of the company and its technology, along with the video presentation. The copy also appeared both on the UCF site and the Office of Research Commercialization site, to broaden its reach. In addition, a news release was posted on the Office of Research site asking for “likes.” A detailed article on the effort appears in the August 2012 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

Deviate from the norm: “Provide information not featured on other published pages,” suggests Benitez. “A quick Google search should show you the most popular information about your topic. You can either rewrite the ideas to put your own twist to them or write an entirely new idea in reaction to the popular ones to get a reaction.”

Dare to be different: Content that is “safe,” i.e. offers little or no resistance to popular belief, is barely read, says Benitez. “Turn the tables around by attacking the opinion of the many,” he advises. “Make a compelling case using substantial arguments to not only get people to read your post, but to also persuade them to take your side and spread the word.”

Target one keyword per post: Targeting multiple keywords in your content is similar to multi-tasking: by aiming to rank for all your keywords in a single post, you end up ranking for nothing, says Benitez. Instead, focus on one keyword for every post to maximize your rankings for a particular term. He suggests the following online resources: Zemanta, WordPress SEO by Yoast, and “100 Blog Post Ideas (Turn Your Brainstorming to Autopilot)” by Sean Platt.

Write for others: Benitez stresses the importance of reaching out to other bloggers and writing guest posts for their blogs. “Use the search operators when using Google to find relevant blogs within your industry that allow for guest posting,” he advises. “You could also sign up for an account at MyBlogGuest or BlogDash to pitch your content proposal directly to blog owners.”

Accommodate your audience: Make it easier for your readers to know when you have posted updates. Here’s how:

• Set up an RSS feed — Really Simple Syndication (RSS) lets you syndicate your content automatically online, Benitez explains. Your readers then can subscribe to your feed to receive blog updates using their RSS reader of choice.
• Set up a newsletter — “Instead of using an RSS reader to receive your latest blog posts, your readers can sign up using their e-mail addresses for updates,” says Benitez.
• Create social media accounts — Keep in touch with your fans and followers using your Twitter and Facebook fan page and build longer lasting and more intimate relationships with your audience, he suggests.

For the first two options you can sign up on FeedBurner or MailChimp for free to create an RSS feed or newsletter for your blog, notes Benitez. Once you have created an account, you can display a link on the sidebar or header area of your blog so users will easily see where to sign up to receive your updates.

Source: Business 2 Community

ALSO COMING SOON:

• Wednesday, August 29: Shedding Light on Little Known and Costly Blind Spots for University Start-Ups
• Wednesday, September 12: Intellectual Property Law Essentials for Faculty and Student Inventors
• Wednesday, September 19: New Post Grant Proceeding Rules: Adjusting to the New Reality

Clarify thoughts: “Before writing any business message, take the time to distill key points about your company,” says Hammer. “Can you describe your product or service clearly and succinctly? What qualities differentiate your offerings from others in the industry? How will customers benefit? If you can’t reply to these questions without hesitation, focus on developing clear explanations.”

Energize descriptions: Hammer notes that you can convey action through your words. “To create promotions with impact, for example, delete strings of adjectives,” she suggests. “Also, try to avoid overused descriptions like ‘hot’ and ‘best,’ which have lost their meaning. Instead, rely on verbs full of energy, such as ‘sparkle,’ ‘zip’ and ‘zoom.’ Pinpoint the specific advantages of products and services, and convey a sense of urgency — for example: ‘Save time and money now!’”

Create snapshots: “Clear words and messages have the ability to paint word pictures; vivid images leave impressions in customers’ minds, giving them a sense of your business and the people behind your operation,” Hammer notes. “A slick description often sends clients running to a competitor, whereas sincerity can build your reputation and inspire long-term loyalty.” Phrases like “family owned and operated” or “dedicated to giving back to the community,” she says, will help clients connect with your humanity and commitment.

Simplify sentences: Complexity and clutter make processing information difficult, so don’t pack multiple ideas into sentences, Hammer cautions. Make your thoughts easy to digest by using words that readers recognize, like ‘giant,’ rather than chasing them to a dictionary to define ‘behemoth.’ “Many don’t have the time and will stop reading at the first stumbling block,” she cautions. “Shorten each group of words — and know the importance of a period.”

Refine drafts: After drafting your promotion, review the wording with objectivity, Hammer advises. “Process the information as if you were a customer just learning about your business,” she suggests. “Slash every word that is confusing or unnecessary. Simplify and polish every word to help the essence of your company, identity and message rise to the top.”

Source: Entrepreneur

• Considers all of the variables that determine IP value;
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Created by nationally recognized IP law expert Ted Hagelin, the CAV Software yields clear and logical valuation results at an extremely low price when compared with other products or typical consulting fees. The pricing is designed to make valuation expertise more widely available and allow any organization, regardless of budget, to conduct valuation analyses in-house. Under a special agreement with 2Market Information, the CAV system is available for only $350. For complete details and an online demo, CLICK HERE >>>

Write keyword-rich titles: “A video title can dictate its click count,” says the company. “A good title provokes viewers to watch the video.” The more relevant the keywords in the title, the more likely it is that the video will appear in the first page organic ranking on Google.

Narrate a story: “Storytelling is the oldest form of communication and perhaps still the most effective,” the company emphasizes. “Instead of telling an audience what a service will do for them, explain the benefits through a story, which builds credibility and is simple to understand.” A story, they add, can come in a multitude of forms, ranging from a customer testimonial to an illustrated example of the service offered.

Take advantage of branding opportunities: As a viewer it’s easy to forget which company created the video, so place a logo in the corner of the video or display the logo at opportune times depending on the context of the video, Vid4Pro advises. The best video branding, they note, is unobtrusive yet impressionable.

Incite the viewer to perform an action: Top performing videos should call viewers to action to incite them to buy, read further, or call, says Vid4Pro.

Place the video with your target audience: “Where the video resides is just as important as creating the video itself,” the firm notes. “Videos should be on websites where the company’s target audience visits.” Hosting a B2B video on a dedicated online video platform for business videos can be more effective than YouTube, they add.

Source: PR Web

Press releases: There are a number of good press release services that are free, says Bruemmer, including PR.com, PRLog, PressRelease365 (which charges $24.95 but new registrations get $25 credit). “When creating your press release, consider these tips: Include key words your customers search for in a compelling headline; use keywords in the copy and headers; use headers to guide readers along; use supporting links and ensure your keyword links work; keep your boiler plate ‘About Us’ current; and use a compelling image to grab attention and interest,” she advises.

Blogging: “This is a great way to put fresh content on your site regularly, which is a key requirement for good search engine rankings,” notes Bruemmer. “You can use a free service from WordPress or Blogger.”

Social Media: “Join and participate in a niche social media site that’s relevant to your business,” she advises. “First, listen, and then start providing relevant, useful information. It won’t be long before you are rewarded with word-of-mouth referrals.”

Google+ Page: “Create a business page and follow other businesses in your product, or service niche,” Bruemmer advises. “Share informative content, linking to your Google+ profile from your website.”

Google+ local business listing: Recently, Bruemmer notes, Google Places became Google+ Local, so it’s important to claim, verify, and update your Google local listing.

More local listings: “Ensure your Bing Business Portal and Yahoo Local listings are up to date, as well as your free listings on YP.com and other information services like LocalEze and Info USA,” Bruemmer advises.

YouTube video exposure: “Create and upload a video with optimized title/description that demonstrates your products or provides helpful how-to information,” says Bruemmer. “Once uploaded, create a new, optimized page on your site to embed the video.”

Facebook business page: “Create a business page and begin to engage your prospects,” says Bruemmer. “You can also expand your presence by creating groups, events, and photo albums. Link to your Facebook profile from your site and allow visitors to like and share your content with a Like icon.”

Google Analytics: “Don’t hesitate to install this free program, which is easy to use and can provide invaluable information,” says Bruemmer. “You need to track visitor behavior on your site to ensure it is functioning properly and to make corrections where necessary.”

Twitter: “Start tweeting and networking with like-minded individuals; it can do wonders for your business or brand,” Bruemmer asserts.

Source: Top Ten Wholesale News

Evaluate your competitors’ keywords. “The easiest way to do this is by visiting their websites and taking a look at the source code on various pages, starting with their home page,” says Isca.

Follow these steps:

• Right click on the main content area of the page and select “View Page Source”
• Enter a command find function (command + f) and then enter “keywords”; use the arrow or Next tab to advance through search results on that page.

“This will quickly direct you to their meta keywords and other meta data, where you can observe the keyword phrases they’ve decided to target,” Isca explains.

Utilize the Google keywords tool. “There are a handful of paid keyword tools available online, but the good old standby for many marketing professionals, and one we support here at Weidert Group, is Google’s Keyword Tool,” Isca shares. The tool was designed for marketers to identify the right keywords for AdWord campaigns, he notes, but it can quickly inform you of the monthly search volume for a specific keyword or keyword phrase, both globally and locally (local meaning U.S. searches), the competitiveness of the keyword, and recommended alternatives.

Investigate current SERP rank. Once you’ve begun to assemble a list of target keywords based on your competitor research and evaluation in the Google Keyword Tool, it’s important to investigate how your website or blog is ranking for those specific keywords in the SERP for that particular search query, says Isca. This will quickly help you identify which keywords you should target first if you’re already ranking on page five or six of results, for example, rather than going for a bunch of keywords where you’re not even ranking in the top 100 results.

Source: Business 2 Community

Universities are now becoming a growing part of this debate. Research institutions are being courted by the aggregators like never before, and indeed a growing number are making “deals with the devil,” as some may put it. Some are partnering with large NPEs to monetize parts of their IP portfolios, and others are even making significant investments in the trolls’ businesses — a development that some observers say is antithetical to the research university’s mission.

To make sense of this confusing picture and provide an objective assessment of both the threats and the opportunities posed by the burgeoning NPE market, Technology Transfer Tactics has recruited two A-list experts for an intriguing and strategic webinar. Please join Jiaqing (Jack) Lu, PhD, CFA, Senior Economist and the Director of Economic Analysis for Applied Economics Consulting Group, Inc. and Marc S. Kaufman, Partner with Reed Smith, on Friday, July 27th for this controversial and lively interactive distance learning event: Mass Aggregators, NPEs and Patent Trolls: Threat, Opportunity or Both for University TTOs. Join your tech transfer professional colleagues and our expert panel to gain a full understanding of the NPE models and the options available to your university. For complete details and to register, CLICK HERE.

ALSO COMING SOON:

• TOMORROW, Wednesday, July 25: Drafting Win-Win Start-Up Licenses: An Interactive Workshop
• Thursday, August 9: Compliance Management and Fraud Prevention in Sponsored Research

List promos and events for your business. “Take note of your company’s special events and establish the content for your blog,” Benitez advises. “Create a yearly calendar using a spreadsheet and input the name of the events and the covered dates to have a concrete schedule to follow.”

Create an editorial calendar. The trick here, Benitez says, is to stick with your publishing schedule so that readers will not only learn more about your business, but also develop a habit of visiting your blog regularly for great content. For sales, list tips on how your customers can use the products on sale in your company. For events, mention the incentives that they will receive once attending your show or function. “If you have no events or sales to promote for that day, publish helpful and usable content that will nonetheless provide readers with practical information that they can use in their everyday lives while still keeping your business in mind,” says Benitez.

Publish posts diligently. “You have to be aware that your blog is an extension of your business — the posts found on your blog can affect the perception people have of your business,” notes Benitez. “Publishing haphazard content on your blog with reckless abandon may damage not only your blog, but also the image of your brand.” However, he adds, quality trumps quantity every time. “The point of writing for your blog is to put out fresh and useable content in the best possible manner so users can refer to in the future as a valuable resource,” Benitez explains.

Do your research. “Link or refer to authoritative sources to lay down the groundwork of your post,” Benitez suggests. “Read different articles online about the topic to have a better grasp of what people think or say about it.”

Write hypnotic headlines. “Emphasize the advantages that readers will get upon reading your article or create an air of mystery to your post through your title,” Benitez recommends.

Be as exhaustive as possible. “Although brevity is the soul of wit, going overboard with your blog posts has its benefits,” Benitez contends. “Making your content as epic as possible lets you cover a lot of ground about the topic, allowing you to target a wider audience.”

This is the first in a two-part series.

Source: Business 2 Community

 “We thought the conference would provide a lot of opportunities for our investigators — faculty, and especially post-doc research fellows,” says William M. Pierce, Jr., PhD, executive vice president for research and innovation at the University of Louisville. “We also saw it as a great opportunity to highlight the city and the region, especially since we have a whole host of core lab facilities. So we gave tours, and tried to impress upon them in particular that when they get their SBIR funding, one thing they can do is subcontract that to us.” 

Another more “radical” approach, he adds, was trying to convince visiting companies to actually move to Louisville. “To that end, we tried to highlight the ecosystem,” Pierce notes.

The Office for Commercialization and Economic Development at the University of Kentucky was also anxious to make the most of this opportunity. “Our work with Kentucky’s Innovation and Commercialization Centers (ICCs) involves partnering with The Bluegrass Business Development Partnership, a local economic development agency that works with local government and Commerce Lexington, an ICC,” explains Warren O. Nash, III, director of the Lexington Innovation and Commercialization Center and the Von Allmen Center for Entrepreneurship.

“Our goal was the same as that of NIH — to attract companies, entrepreneurs, and innovators to Kentucky,” adds Mahendra K. Jain, PhD, senior vice president and executive director of the non-profit Kentucky Science and Engineering Foundation.

“One goal was to have all these innovators and entrepreneurs look at the infrastructure Kentucky has, and what they might offer in terms of unique facilities or expertise,” Jain continues. “In addition to possibly interesting them in moving there, there’s also networking; nothing can be done these days yourself. You may even find yourself working with another company that in one sense could be considered your competitor, but who might have a unique product you can take advantage of.” A detailed article on using local events as marketing opportunities appears in the July 2012 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

Scope out the event hashtag: “While at the event, the hashtag provides a great way for organizers to monitor buzz, answer questions, and interact with the audience online,” notes Zeckman. “Prior to an event many of the people who plan on attending will use the event hashtag in their tweets to let others know that they will be there. I recommend monitoring this buzz in the days leading up to the event and connecting with those audience members prior to the event.”

Have an objective for the event: “In order to justify costs, time away from the office, or travel a plan of action is key,” says Zeckman. Examples of objectives might include:

• Recruiting
• New client acquisition
• Gathering blog & social media content

Arrive early, but don’t stay too late: “I like to get to any networking event as early as possible,” Zeckman shares. “The earlier you are, the more people you will typically meet, including those organizing the event. As a live blogger I also like to find a seat front and center so that I can pay attention, get some great Instagram photos, and participate as much as possible.”

Remember you’re at a professional event: “There is nothing wrong with having a good time with your fellow marketers, but don’t forget why you are there,” Zeckman advises. “You must remember that you are representing your company and that how you act is a reflection on your organization as a whole.”

If there is an opportunity to participate, take it! Audience participation can take on a variety of forms. Sometimes there will be a Q&A opportunity after a presentation, and other times your participation may include live Tweeting your heart out, notes Zeckman. “Whatever the participation opportunity may be, try if you can to get on board,” she suggests. “This presents a chance to mention what brand or company you are representing, as well as get your questions answered by an expert.”

Source: TopRank Blog

• Trade Secret Value Sources
• Trade Secret Floor Value
• Factors that Prolong Trade Secret Value
• Factors that Kill Trade Secrets
• Inadvertent Disclosures
• Trade Secret Agreement Terms

In Licensing Trade Secrets you’ll also find examples of actual license agreements that incorporate trade secrets. By reviewing these real-world documents, you’ll learn how other organization characterize and monetize their trade secrets and enhance the overall value of their technologies. For details and to order, CLICK HERE.

Work out what you’re good at. “Every business is an expert in their field . . . but you approach what you do in a particular way that marks you out from your competitors. This is your thought leadership sweet-spot,” says Griffiths. “There’s something your company does that no other company does, or does as well. That’s the territory you need to start marking out as your own.”

Mine your data. Over the years that you’ve been in business you’ve collected a lot of data — records of sales and inquiries, prices, costs of raw materials, and so on — which people in your industry will be very interested in, says Griffiths. In addition, “you have a huge database of customers whom you can survey using a free tool like Survey Monkey. If you can find the stories in among all this data that will capture the imagination of your target audience, or fill a gap in their knowledge, then you can produce a great piece of content that’s worthy of sharing and which will earn you brand kudos, links and social shares,” he asserts.

Repurpose, recycle and reuse. “That great chunk of data, that revolutionary idea, that fantastic infographic you produced, shouldn’t just be encapsulated in one piece of content and left to gather dust,” Griffiths notes. “Different content types appeal to different types of people, so why not make a video that walks people through that whitepaper you authored? Why not follow up that infographic with a blog post that analyses a particular aspect of it? Why not poll your blog readers on their opinions of it?”

Start promoting before you publish. “We all know that great content should be backed up by social media promotion, supplemental blog posts, direct contact with key people in your industry, inclusion in e-mail newsletters, promotional spots on your homepage and anything else you can think of to make sure it gets in front of as many people as possible,” says Griffiths. “What you might not know is that this process should start before you release the content. You could contact key bloggers in your field to whet their appetites or even offer them an exclusive sneak-peek, start a social media campaign with teaser facts or even pre-promote your new killer content on your blog.”

Plan, plan, plan but be flexible. Thought leadership is all about filling a content gap for your audience, about providing them with the content they need but which only you can offer, Griffiths explains. In order to be successful at this you need to publish regularly. “That means planning and putting together a content schedule that helps you build momentum, but also bear in mind that this is also a process of discovery and that you should always be looking for the next piece of killer content,” Griffiths advises. “That means listening to your audience: the feedback on your existing content, the social media sentiment, the blog comments, the poll results.”

Source: Business 2 Community

1. Optimize the identification process. Using Google or Twitter and other services like Twellow to identify influencers via keywords is time consuming, and it can be difficult to apply filters such as geographic region or minimum number of followers, notes Ogince. Enter influencer identification platforms SocMetrics, Traackr, and Appinions, which optimize the identification process and improve workflow efficiency. “For example, SocMetrics allows users to identify topical influencers, view the social footprint for each influencer, filter by geographic region, view influencer reach and engagement metrics and more,” he notes.

2. Build a relationship. “Avoid cold call pitch letters, and introduce yourself to the influencer at least four weeks in advance of the campaign,” Ogince advises. “It’s as simple as sending an intro e-mail or tweeting to establish a relationship and inform the influencer that you would like to work with him or her in the future. Be sure to keep in touch via Twitter, Linkedin and/or Facebook in the meantime.”

3. Investigate what works. When you are in the process of building a relationship, inquire about the influencer’s social graph and content preferences, Ogince suggests. Here are some questions to start with:

• What type of content do your readers prefer: video, photos, text, or audio?
• Is there a specific month or time period of the year that your content gets more views?
• What is the best way for me to reach out to you: phone, email, text, Twitter, or direct message?
• What is your audience demographic?
• Have you worked with other partners or brands before? If so, what was successful?
• Do you have any colleagues who would be interested in hearing from me?

4. Address social media compliance. The FTC requires all material connections to be disclosed with a documented process, notes Ogince. “Disclosure information gives brands authenticity and transparency,” he adds. “Leading the way and making it possible for brands is CMP.ly, a New York City-based social media compliance and disclosure platform. CMP.ly provides coded URLs and badges which link back to unique disclosures.”

5. Say NO to spreadsheets. “Using spreadsheets to track influencer profiles and communication notes is labor intensive and uneconomical,” Ogince asserts. “Social CRMs improve workflow efficiency, data security, and the ability to scale. Platforms like Batchbook, Nimble, and CRM365 give users detailed social profiles, advanced search capabilities, cloud-based access, user permission levels, and communication logs.”

6. Go pro and scale. “SocialChorus is an influencer activation platform that allows you to automate content distribution at scale,” Ogince shares. “The platform creates a branded microsite where influencers can login and access content to share in their social streams. A rewards system motivates influencers to participate and, best of all, a real-time dashboard tracks influencer actions and stats.”

7. Don’t forget about Instagram. Brands typically target influencers on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, but with more than 30 million users, Instagram can play with the big boys, too, Ogince notes. “Brands are leveraging emerging and established Instagram photographers to shoot events or share content,” he adds.

Source: Mashable

ALSO COMING SOON:

• Wednesday, July 25: Drafting Win-Win Start-Up Licenses: An Interactive Workshop
• Friday, July 27: Mass Aggregators, NPEs and Patent Trolls: Threat, Opportunity or Both for University TTOs
• Thursday, Ausgust 9: Compliance Management and Fraud Prevention in Sponsored Research

Make your app name short: It should be no more than two to four words, says the agency, so people don’t have to type a long name when they are searching. In addition, let the name speak for itself. “If people can’t get an idea of what the app does from its name, they have little to no reason to download it or remember it,” asserts Interaktiva. “Think about what goes through your customers’ mind when you name an app — for example, if you work for a running related company, your app should contain the words ‘run,’ ‘jog,’ ‘exercise’ or the like.”

Give your app a personalized tone: Individuals are downloading your app to their own mobile devices, which in itself makes the experience very personal, Interaktiva explains. Users are holding a smaller device in their hands, holding it close to their face and usually interacting by using their fingers. Use words like “you” or “my” and talk to the user as if it was a conversation between two people.

When designing an app, keep your targeted mobile device in mind: “If most people will be using it on a tablet, take advantage of the extra space,” says the agency. “If your app will be mostly be seen on smart phones, take advantage of swipe scrolling and use big beautiful buttons that scream out to be touched.” However, they note, your app will most likely be used on many different types of devices, so if possible, ensure the experience on each device plays up its specific strengths. For example, if some of your end mobile devices use a stylus and others use a touch screen, make sure your app can be easily used in both cases.

Beware of excessive notifications: “Whatever your app does, remember where it lives — in people’s pockets and purses,” Interaktiva notes. “This means your app pretty much goes everywhere your users go. Updating your app is a great way to add new features, but adding too many updates too often is a great way to annoy people.” The same applies to notifications, the agency adds. If notifications are built into your app, design them to only pop up when they are important. If you have a sound that goes with the notification, make the sound unique and not the same as a common ring tone or text alert, which can be confusing and irritating. Finally, make it easy to turn notifications off so if a user doesn’t like them, they can get rid of them.

Source: MarketWatch

Plan ahead: “If you have a content plan, create your content for a month in advance,” Murphy advises. “Write your e-mail newsletter and a month’s worth of blog posts and set the schedule to cover your time away so your subscribers never miss a beat.”

Automate: Although you probably can’t schedule a month of tweets or Facebook posts, you certainly can schedule several days worth when you are off getting rejuvenated, Murphy notes. “Scan your blog feeds a couple of evenings a week for content your audience will like and use Buffer or HootSuite to schedule them to go out at the most appropriate times for your target audience,” she suggests.

Get temporary help: “Offload tasks to others by hiring quality help through Elance,” says Murphy. “Elance makes it easy to find quality freelancers that can help you with your marketing activities.”

Evaluate your web presence: “Take advantage of this less crazy time and do a web presence analysis,” Murphy advises. “If your [organization] is not visible for your top keywords, put a plan in place to update the third component of inbound marketing, your search engine optimization. Include a review of your web content, looking for places that can be rewritten for specific keywords.”

Review your service offerings: Murphy suggests that if your business slows down this time of year, use the extra time to review your service offerings, add a new service or expand your existing services to provide more value. “Kick back on your deck with your tablet and use Evernote to start jotting down ideas,” she offers.

Support mobile: “Your customers and prospects are also taking time off, but that doesn’t mean they are disconnected,” declares Murphy. “Make sure your e-mail marketing and website supports mobile devices. While on vacation, I see many people on their tablets, checking e-mail and staying in touch. If your website isn’t easy to use with a table or smart phone, you could be driving your prospects and customers to your competition.”

Source: Business 2 Community

While the TTO is not always the primary contact point, the university and the TTO see such visits as an important part of their outreach mission. “We get requests from international delegations who happen to be in San Diego for specific reasons — sometimes conferences overlap — or they’re flying through to someplace else in the U.S. and want to visit our biotech facilities,” says Denise Lew, a UCSD senior licensing officer. “It’s a convenient stopover and we welcome them — especially ones that are already partnering with us or in conjunction with partnerships they may have with other departments here at UCSD.”

This is especially true with delegations from Asia, she continues, who almost always have to fly through Los Angeles. “They may want to increase their own effective outreach to California hubs for biotech, which would be San Diego or San Francisco,” notes Lew, “And we’re a 90-minute drive or an easy flight down.”

Like many TTOs, the one at UCSD has a standard set of slides that discuss the office, its activities, and featured technologies, but Lew says these dignitaries rarely see an “off the shelf” presentation. “We usually edit them for the allotted time and to target the interests of a particular group,” she notes. “A group from Europe, for example, may have different interests than a group from Asia, so we tailor the presentation to what the delegation’s purpose is. There’s always a reason why these foreign delegates are here, so we try to tailor the presentation to what they need.” A detailed article on UCSD’s outreach approach appears in the July 2012 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

“The University of Denver has a talented faculty and rich culture of research innovation,” said Cathryn Potter, associate provost for research at DU, in a statement announcing the arrangement. “We’re looking forward to working with the ICR to take our commercialization process to the next level.” ICR has existing relationships with the University of Colorado, the Colorado School of Mines and Colorado State University.

Source: The Denver Post

“I used to be president of the graduate student government here,” recalls Vijay N. Gadepally, a PhD candidate and chair of the Student Commercialization Board. “Last October we held an innovation forum to which we invited graduate students from around the state along with the state Board of Regents, the Chancellor, the Department of Economic Development and others for what we described as a think tank — to give the state ideas about what it could do to recruit and retain graduate students. As part of the forum we did surveys of students, and one question we asked was if they had ever thought about starting a company — and 80% said yes.” Conversely, he adds, only 20% said they were aware of the resources that were required to do that. “That really led to the idea of some student-led, peer-run effort in bringing about knowledge of what these resources are,” says Gadepally.

Following up on this concept, discussions with tech transfer leaders morphed into the idea of creating this student-led office. “We have about 12 people on the board — about half are graduate students and half are undergraduate students,” says Gadepally. “We also tried to get diversity among them — pharmacy, business, engineering, and so on.” The “50,000 foot goal” of the organization, he says, “is to increase the spirit of entrepreneurship and commercialization at the university.”

The board also came up with a number of sub-goals, including: Connecting students with existing resources; determining what new resources are required to promote student commercialization activity; and providing recommendations about those resources to the TCO and administration. A detailed article on the “student TTO” appears in the July 2012 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

Interact with the people you follow: “If you want to connect with your potential customers and subscribers, what better way than to tweet or message them directly once in a while?” offers Thompson. “Answer their questions or say something entertaining (using discretion of course). Even a simple ‘good day’ will suffice in some cases.”

Don’t automate messages: “One of the most annoying things you can do is send an automated message to your social media friends; it is lazy and tacky,” says Thompson. “It gives them a lousy first impression because it tells them you’re probably going to be one of those spammer types.”

Use social media tools: “If you don’t have the resources at this time to hire someone, use social media tools instead,” Thompson suggests. “These tools abound and they can help you successfully manage your accounts and lists. You might have to try out a few different tools to find the right mix for your needs.”

Follow back: “Why wouldn’t you want to look at what your potential customers are tweeting on a daily basis?” challenges Thompson. “Twitter is a marketing treasure trove. Your main goal is not to look like ‘the man’ just because a lot of people follow you and you only follow a few — the goal is to create a healthy communicative platform between you and your customers. Check your ego at the door.”

Use the 60/20/20 rule: Though not a hard and fast rule, a good guideline for content is that 60% of your messages to followers and fans should be interesting and entertaining, such as news, sayings, quotes and ideas; 20% should be strictly informative, such as blog posts from you and your colleagues; and the last 20% should be promotional.

Source: Business 2 Community

Measure what matters: Start by outlining the goals you are hoping to impact, and then determine the data you will need to measure your progress over time, Poston suggests.  Focus on capturing the data and then use that data to glean insights from it — by trending it in integrated dashboards.

Measure social data via integrated dashboards: Poston notes that there are a number of tools marketers can tap into, such as Ripples, Bit.ly, Edgerank Checker, and PinReach, that help you measure social marketing traction on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, respectively. “These tools make it easy to capture the data you need — but to make sense of it all, [Poston] recommends that marketers create integrated dashboards, via simple tools like Excel, where they can manipulate the data and create meaningful insights from it,” Lewis reports.

Use social data for competitive intelligence: Poston outlined a few tools to accomplish this: Google Analytics, extensions/plug-ins, Google Alerts, and saved searches. “For example, local businesses can utilize metrics from Foursquare, LinkedIn, and Yelp to tell them how their competition is doing,” notes Lewis. “Leslie also suggests using browser plug-ins to see how well your competition is doing online, with SEO for Chrome, W3Patrol, and the Regular Expression Checker being among her favorites.”

Beware of simple measures: Poston is not a big fan of simple measures like Klout, Buffer, or PeerIndex, Lewis observes. “Although these tools can give you some initial indication for the popularity of your social media presence, or that of your competitors, they fail to convey important measures such as true influence or engagement,” he explains. “Use these metrics sparingly and supplement their data with deeper data sources such as Google Analytics.”

To automate or not to automate: A common question from marketers is when to automate and when not to automate their social media metrics, says Lewis. “While Google Analytics’ automated report gives you a lot of useful information, you can get better information if you dig in and create individual reports around different goals and events,” he says. “Pull metrics data from Google Analytics into an excel spreadsheet and track other metrics that are external so you can see and measure the impact of your programs in one place.”

Source: Business 2 Community

ALSO COMING SOON:

• Thursday, July 19: Fueling the Entrepreneurial Fire: Identifying and Cultivating Future Business Creators
• Wednesday, July 25: Drafting Win-Win Start-Up Licenses: An Interactive Workshop
• Friday, July 27: Mass Aggregators, NPEs and Patent Trolls: Threat, Opportunity or Both for University TTOs

Connect with your audience: “More than anything else, the secret to writing a great speech is making sure that you know your audience and find the best way to connect with them,” says Cain. “Although delivery plays a critical role here, it’s the content being delivered that truly matters. Make sure that you tell a story with your speech, that you weave in a combination of humor and anecdotes where appropriate and that you personalize your message as much as possible.”

Repeat, repeat, and repeat again: People have limited attention spans — often as short as a few minutes — which is an important point to bear in mind when writing a speech, notes Cain. “In addition to keeping the length of your speech in check (remember, less really is more), make sure that you’re giving your audience plenty of cues about what they’re hearing,” he advises. “That means providing coming attractions by telling them what you’re going to talk about at the beginning of a speech as well as an executive summary of what you just told them at the end of the speech. It may seem redundant to you the speechwriter, but for an audience full of wandering minds, the repetition goes a long way to ensuring that key concepts register and sink in.”

Write like you talk: “Speeches shouldn’t contain the long sentences, complicated syntax, or sesquipedalian (case in point) words that lace much of our other writing,” Cain observes. “Instead, make sure that your speeches are written so that they are easy to deliver and follow.”

Keep it simple: “As a rule of thumb, make sure that you’re communicating no more than three main messages in any given speech,” says Cain. “Just as you want to keep the language you use relatively simple, the content also needs to be sharply focused so that your key points don’t get lost in a sea of less important details. Cram in too much and your audience won’t retain any of it.”

Always read it out loud: The best way to improve on your initial draft is to find a private place where you can read it out loud to yourself, Cain says. “Reading speeches out loud forces you to activate your ears and your mouth. Do so and you’ll be much more likely to catch the sentences that ramble on and the words and phrases that are difficult to pronounce,” he explains. “It’s also a great way to judge the cadence of the speech so that you can make changes until you’ve got it right.”

Source: Business 2 Community

Explain and justify your brand’s ‘Reason for Being’: The notion of an organization having a Big Idea, a story behind why it exists and how this matters, is increasingly important, notes Lundgaard. “Consumers don’t just want products,” he says. “They want to connect on an emotional and ethical level.”

Communicate your brand messages clearly and correctly: “It is not just the brand manager who is responsible for brand and messaging in a successful company,” Lundgaard says. “Everyone involved in building the business is producing external communications from sales, marketing, PR, corporate communications, even HR, production, accounts, indeed every department.” That’s why, he emphasizes, it is important everyone has access to your brand positioning documents and guidelines as well as the right logos, images, videos, templates, images, and so on.

Make sure your brand is consistent wherever it is seen: Pull your brand in the right direction and you increase brand consistency, Lundgaard notes. “It is equally important for communications and marketing departments to understand how to express a brand and its messages as it is for every employee, supplier and external agency employed,” he says, adding that with technologies like online brand management, it is becoming easier to control brand consistency. “When the brand, its assets, and everything associated with communicating its meaning is available to those responsible for building that brand, seamless communication is possible, whoever is doing it,” Lundgaard asserts.

Source: Econsultancy

“The idea is that there is no agenda, so we have no idea how this is going to go,” emcee Rich Sheridan, CEO of Menlo Innovation, said as he opened the conference on June 28^th. The idea of an UnConference is that the participants make the agenda at the opening session, and then move freely about the conference as it progresses. Sheridan opened the floor for people to recommend topics of discussion, and as people brought ideas forward they were placed on a schedule board on large sticky notes.

“The whole thing really came together in about four weeks,” Nisbet said. “And it was really a group effort with people here at tech transfer and business people in the community coming together to make it happen.”

Once the schedule was created, people could chose which discussions sounded interesting and either went to sessions, wandered between sessions, or simply found an empty space to network and schmooze with university professors, government officials, and other attendees. Initially, it seemed there was more time being spent at the food tables than in the open “sessions,” as people began to understand the unique and different feel of the event.

Slowly but surely, people began to open up and joined breakout sessions that ranged from “What holes are there in state support of start-ups?” to “How do we keep young people in Michigan when they look for summer internships?”

Walking around the room you could drift from a conversation about private helicopter taxis to the finer points of the legality of raising venture capital for a new company. “This was a great event. People here had a passion about the state of Michigan. They came and they stayed because they really wanted to share with each other and do something great,” Laura Schrader, CEO of 3D Biomatrix, said during the closing session. “The enthusiasm that everyone has here, if we could push this forward every day, it would be amazing.”

Source: AnnArbor.com

Universities are now becoming a growing part of this debate. Research institutions are being courted by the aggregators like never before, and indeed a growing number are making “deals with the devil,” as some may put it. Some are partnering with large NPEs to monetize parts of their IP portfolios, and others are even making significant investments in the trolls’ businesses — a development that some observers say is antithetical to the research university’s mission.

To make sense of this confusing picture and provide an objective assessment of both the threats and the opportunities posed by the burgeoning NPE market, Technology Transfer Tactics has recruited two A-list experts for an intriguing and strategic webinar. Please join Jiaqing (Jack) Lu, PhD, CFA, Senior Economist and the Director of Economic Analysis for Applied Economics Consulting Group, Inc. and Marc S. Kaufman, Partner with Reed Smith, on Friday July 27th for this controversial and lively interactive distance learning event: Mass Aggregators, NPEs and Patent Trolls: Threat, Opportunity or Both for University TTOs. Join your tech transfer professional colleagues and our expert panel to gain a full understanding of the NPE models and the options available to your university. For complete details and to register, CLICK HERE.

ALSO COMING IN JULY:

• Thursday, July 19: Fueling the Entrepreneurial Fire: Identifying and Cultivating Future Business Creators
• Wednesday, July 25: Drafting Win-Win Start-Up Licenses: An Interactive Workshop

“That’s been pretty constant,” says Farina. “The faculty has been at 300 for a long time, and we’ve had between 150 and 200 disclosures for the last 10 years.” The office was created in 1995, he notes, at which times disclosures were only at about 30 a year.

What has made the difference? “One of the most important parts of our model is to create and maintain great working relationships with faculty members, and building trust between them and our office,” says Farina. “It’s very tricky, and very hard for many TTOs to do, because we’re often seen as part of the administration and not really trustworthy.”

When faculty members come to the office with questions, he continues, “we don’t act like a bureaucratic entity where we tell them the policy says ‘x’ and we can’t do that,” says Farina. “Instead, our attitude has been, ‘Let’s see how we can help you achieve that goal within the constraints we have.”

This attitude is ingrained in the office culture, says Farina. “We have regular staff meetings every two weeks and people get that culture from seeing what happens and how it happens,” he explains. “The faculty members are the people we work for, and our goal is to facilitate anything they want to do.” A detailed article on the CalTech approach appears in the July 2012 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

Create a well-optimized WordPress blog: WordPress can be utilized as a blog as well as a full agency-style site, notes De Vivo. “There are hundreds of thousands of plug-ins available that help you automate many of the publishing and distribution processes,” she notes. “StudioPress is a site that offers professional looking themes that are well optimized.”

Make your blog mobile friendly: “Designing responsive websites means that you use CSS to change how a site is displayed across a variety of screens,” De Vivo explains. “Even though it’s only one design, if the page is viewed from a browser it resolves one way, from a smart phone, another, and so on. Google has publicly claimed that responsive sites have the most potential for ranking in their local search.”

Use SEO plug-ins: Using SEO plug-ins will help optimize your content for search, De Vivo says. “The top SEO plug-ins for WordPress include: WP SEO by Yoast, the AIO SEO Pack, Google Site Verification, WP Super Cache and Scribe SEO,” she shares. “Utilizing these plug-ins allows you to easily add keywords in your meta data, automatically creating XML sitemaps, interlink your pages, and much, much more.”

Create or claim your Google Plus local page: The Google feature formerly known as Google Places is now called Google Plus Local, notes De Vivo. The owner of the original Google Places page, she adds, can claim the page and manage it, while other users can rate the page. “When people in the user’s circle need a service, they will be given recommendations based on the preferences of their friends,” she notes. “Google Plus Local is extremely popular with vast reach, so if yours is a local business, you have to make sure your business listing is optimized.”

Social media incentives: “Using Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites to promote exclusive deals will help you grow your business,” says De Vivo. “Giving people incentives and contests to invite their friends to join will also help you grow.”

Cross post: “Dlvr.it and Twoogle are both indispensable resources for today’s businesses,” De Vivo asserts. “Dlvr.it takes your RSS feeds and delivers them to Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites. Twoogle takes those Twitter posts and delivers them to Google Plus. Cross posting will increase traffic dramatically and help to repurpose your content.”

Guest posts: De Vivo says writing guest blog posts can help you both increase your followers and friends, as well as links to your site. “Becoming a guest blogger on sites with high trust, popularity, and inbound links gives you a contextual link within the body of a page, while simultaneously getting your name out there,” she explains. “It also helps to diversify your traffic streams.”

Set up Ifttt to automate some sharing: “Ifttt automates tasks on social media sites; you simply link the sites and set up a trigger,” says De Vivo. “A good example is sharing Pinterest Pins on Twitter.”

Utilize videos: Videos have been proven to increase conversion rates, De Vivo notes. “Making a cool video will also drive more traffic to the site and help you find and keep customers,” she adds. “Make your videos fun, interesting, and different in order to garner attention and encourage sharing.”

“Following these steps will lead you to having a blog with high quality unique and curated content, with active social presences in the top social platforms,” De Vivo summarizes. “You will have a well optimized blog automatically distributing content to your social channels, encouraging users to like, pin, and retweet your content. These, in turn, will help you increase your rankings in the search engines as well as result in direct traffic from users and social sites.”

Source: Business 2 Community

As a partner in AZ Furnace, NAU Innovations, NAU’s technology commercialization office, will offer selected technologies and IP for licensing to entrepreneurs, with the intent that these technologies will form the basis for new high-potential start-ups.

AZ Furnace will offer high-potential start-up ventures a package worth more than $50,000 in cash and services. The package includes a $25,000 seed funding grant and six months of incubation space in either the ASU SkySong facility or at NAU’s partner incubator, the Northern Arizona Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (NACET).

“What we particularly like about the concept of AZ Furnace is that applicants can identify complementary or related technologies and then, for example, choose one of NAU’s technologies and one of ASU’s technologies and submit an application to start a business based on combining the two,” says Lesley Cephas, director of research development and technology transfer at NAU. “To my knowledge, this is the first program that will facilitate the ‘collaborative licensing’ of technologies coming out of Arizona’s various research institutions.”

AZ Furnace was developed by ASU Venture Catalyst, which is the ASU unit that works with start-ups from both inside and outside the university. The ASU Venture Catalyst and ASU SkySong are both strategic units of ASU’s Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development, the research arm of ASU.

Source: PRWeb

• Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Ltd. Partnership regarding the burden of proof in invalidity challenges
• Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S.A. regarding the standard for proving inducement to infringe
• The Fed Circuit’s en banc decision in Therasense, Inc. v. Becton Dickinson & Co. regarding the inequitable conduct standard
• Decisions on divided infringement and preparations for the en banc re-hearings of Akamai Tech., Inc. v. Limelight Networks, Inc. and McKesson Technologies Inc. v. Epic Systems Corp.
• Rulings in Tokai Corp. v. Easton Enters, Inc., In re Kao, and Innovention Toys, LLC v. MGA Entm’t, Inc. regarding obviousness.

The new tenth edition covers all the important Federal Circuit decisions through the end of 2011, including comprehensive analysis and discussion of:

• Bilski and the Federal Circuit’s developing reaction, which continues to shape the boundaries of patentable subject matter.
• i4i v. Microsoft, SEB v. Montgomery Ward, and Stanford v. Roche.
• Continuing developments in the standards for injunctive relief following the Supreme Court’s eBay decision.
• Willful infringement after the Federal Circuit’s en banc decision in Seagate.
• The en banc Ariad decision, which reaffirms the written description requirement of 35 U.S.C. §112 as being separate and distinct from the enablement requirement.
• The en banc Princo decision and the standards of patent misuse.

Patent prosecutors, litigators, in-house counsel, and licensing professional alike can count on this definitive, 1,708-page resource for guidance to distill the complex implications of Fed Circuit decisions. For more information, a complete Table of Contents, and to order, CLICK HERE.

• “Don’t worry so much about whether you are targeting Facebook, MySpace, Diaspora, Friendster, or Pinterest,” says Habermann. “The importance is not about how relevant they are to the entire world, but rather how relevant they are to you.”
• Don’t try to push messaging down the throat of your potential audience. “Instead, try to understand why they are there in the first place and how you can compliment and expand that experience,” Habermann suggests.
• Corporate messaging rarely works. “If you are part of some bureaucracy, you need to learn how to lean with your weight in the right places that will help build your brand and break down those walls,” Habermann advises. “Don’t stand in the rank and file . . . figure out how people can relate to you and how you can relate to them.”
• “I’ve many times heard that Instagram and Pinterest should only be used by brands with something ‘visual’ to sell. Baloney!” Habermann asserts. “Every company on planet earth has something visual to give to their audience. If you are willing to be creative and figure out what that is for your brand you will likely be rewarded far beyond your competition.”
• “If you can spend a little bit of money to help promote yourself in unchartered social media waters, be equally as willing to try different tactics and messaging in order to reach and better understand your potential base,” says Habermann. “This will pay off in your overall strategy and you’ll be wondering why it took you so long to get to that point in the first place.”

Source: Search Engine Watch

The site features a searchable, categorized database of NASA’s patents, a module for reaching out to a NASA technology transfer specialist, and articles about past successful commercialization of NASA technology. Historical and real-time data for NASA’s technology transfer program also are available.

“One of NASA’s highest priority goals is to streamline its technology transfer procedures, support additional government-industry collaboration and encourage the commercialization of novel technologies flowing from our federal laboratories,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in a statement. “One way NASA can streamline and increase the rate of aerospace technology transfer is through tools like NASA’s Technology Transfer Portal.”

A report released in March by NASA Inspector General Paul Martin assessed NASA’s technology commercialization efforts and said among other things that decreased funding and reductions in personnel have hindered NASA’s technology transfer efforts. Specifically, funding for technology transfer has decreased from $60 million in fiscal year 2004 to $19 million in FY 2012, while the number of patent attorneys at its Centers dropped from 29 to 19 over the same period. As a result, patent filings decreased by 37%. Martin’s report cites a number of “missed opportunities to transfer technologies from its research and development efforts and to maximize partnerships with other entities that could benefit from NASA-developed technologies.”

Despite the budget cuts, NASA project managers and other personnel responsible for executing NASA’s technology transfer processes could improve their effectiveness in identifying and planning for the transfer and commercialization of NASA technologies, according to Martin. Specifically, NASA personnel did not realize the transfer potential of some technological assets and project managers did not develop Technology Commercialization Plans that provide a methodology for identifying potential commercial partners.

Source: Network World

To help you understand the complexities of start-up licensing and consider a range of best practices and options — and ultimately craft agreements that both encourage start-up creation and protect the university and its IP — our Distance Learning Division has secured two top experts to guide you, sharing their proven strategies and tactics in a hands-on webinar workshop scheduled for Wednesday, July 25: Drafting Win-Win Start-Up Licenses: An Interactive Workshop. For complete program and faculty details or to register, CLICK HERE.

ALSO COMING SOON:

• Thursday, July 19: Fueling the Entrepreneurial Fire: Identifying and Cultivating Future Business Creators
• Friday, July 27: Mass Aggregators, NPEs and Patent Trolls: Threat, Opportunity or Both for University TTOs

“My role is to engage in marketing activities, and raise the university’s profile in terms of how we apply our know-how and how it has social and economic benefits, and something like an awards initiative seemed a good way.” explains Anna Seddon, who started the program three years ago. She handles marketing for The Enterprise Office, which supports Loughborough University’s commercially-focused based relationships with public and private sector organizations.

Such a program, she continues, works from both an internal and external marketing perspective. “Internally, one of the ways to do more activity is to persuade your academic audience that you value it; it’s a charm offensive,” Seddon explains.

Externally, she adds, there are many important audiences. “When government provides money for research activities they are very keen to show value,” notes Seddon. “We are helping companies become more productive, and improving things from a societal point of view. It’s a good way to showcase examples of what we do; we do a lot of work with hospitals, charities, and local councils as well as Ford, Rolls Royce, GE, Pepsi Cola, but also in the public sector. The message each time is that we engage with these partners externally, working on projects that deliver real benefits to them and here in the U.K.”

This year’s program recognizes not only inventors and their inventions, but researchers from the university who shared their expertise with external organizations to benefit both the organizations and society. The development of a safer seatbelt for pregnant women won the Intellectual Property Impact award for Professors Serpil and Memis Acar, whose research forms the basis of a new product that will soon be launched. And the Knowledge Transfer award went to Tom Jackson and Louise Cooke, who collaborated with the county police force to evaluate mobile device technology to help the force improve efficiency. 

Seddon believes the program is unique in the U.K. “I’ve not come across a similar program before,” she says, adding that the award categories reflect the mission of the university. “While we have an IP category, that is only one category,” notes Seddon. “That’s only one particular mechanism for what we do; lots of inventions may not be patentable. Our overarching aim is to say we have expertise at the university that is a benefit to the external society. We also want to recognize that we have knowledge transfer activity — we apply our expertise and partner with organizations that have strategic objectives to achieve. We’re also hugely proud of the fact that an unusually high number of our graduates set up companies, so we profile enterprises that are recognized too.” A detailed article on the Enterprise Awards program appears in the June 2012 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

Many of those punished have since redesigned and updated their websites, as well as checking to see that every page was correctly optimized and every back link checked carefully.

Some have reported improved search rankings as a result of their retooling, while others have not rejuvenated their previous positioning. “As a consequence, there currently seems to be two very different schools of thought among industry leaders about how next to proceed: sites should either follow Google’s guidelines to every last letter or forget about Google and concentrate on other channels,” notes Harris.

For those who think that the first option is better, he adds, Google has provided some very specific Webmaster Guidelines.  “The most valuable points to be extracted from the list should be fairly standard for anyone who endeavors to operate in an ethical, organic manner — but it is easy to overlook something which was done quite legitimately but that Google could well view in a different light,” cautions Harris.

He offers the following tips to avoid potential problems:

Don’t use hidden links and text: “Most people will know that hiding links and text to fool the search engines is a very old, Black Hat style trick: what many do not realize is that their website color scheme can make it appear that they are doing just that,” says Harris. “Primarily, this can happen in cases where there is no clear distinction between the background color of the page and the font color.”

Don’t use redirects and cloaking: Harris says the types of redirect that cause a problem are those which send users to a different page using a JavaScript link, which search engine crawlers cannot ‘see.’ “Cloaking is a similar practice, which sends users to a different URL or page than the one they requested,” he explains. “Even the most legitimate of websites sometimes do redirect users for genuine reasons, but this method is being penalized heavily by Google. Always use a 301 redirect!”

Don’t use doorway pages: Doorway pages are almost identical mass-produced pages, containing poor-quality content that is usually keyword stuffed with the intention of getting them ranked for a particular keyword or phrase, rather than offering any relevant information to the user. “Again, this practice is severely penalized by Google,” Harris warns.

Don’t use irrelevant keywords: “One thing that is definitely wrong in Google’s eyes is using keywords that have absolutely no relevance to the content of the page on which they can be found,” says Harris. “The simple solution is to never do this.”

Source: ClickThrough Marketing

• Company location
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• Primary contact personnel
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• Stages funded
• Total dollars under management

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1. Don’t schedule and split: Scheduling tweets with a platform such as HootSuite or Tweetdeck can be a great way to spread out your social sharing throughout the day. However, Desjarlais says that it’s important to pay attention to any responses your scheduled tweets may elicit — the follow-up conversation is just as important as the initial tweet, if not more so. “Hootsuite is a free platform that allows companies to schedule tweets for all accounts in one place,” Desjarlais notes. “That means that you won’t have to spend all day planning the next 140 characters to publish. However, check back hourly to see who has tweeted back at you. Twitter users have a short attention span, so it’s important to respond as quickly as possible.”

2. Sit in the stream: Desjarlais recommends that you get familiar with platforms that let you build streams around phrases or hashtags relevant to your company. That way, you’ve always got your ear to the social ground. “Hashtags are an excellent way to track conversation about a specific topic,” he says. “With Hootsuite, companies can create streams that track a specific hashtag, giving the account manager an easy way to find content and engage with other tweeters.”

3. Don’t rely on your handle: It’s the mark of a successful social company to have plenty of customers tweeting at you or about you using your Twitter handle, but you can’t rely on all users to do that. The solution? Enhanced listening techniques. “Topsy.com is a little-known website that lets users do real-time searches in the social web,” Desjarlais explains. “Do daily searches for your company’s name and narrow the search results to just tweets to see who is talking about your company but not @-mentioning you.”

4. Don’t be a social egomaniac:  “The last thing a company wants to do is spam their followers with tweets,” says Desjarlais. “Twitter is about sharing ideas, information and occasionally inspirational quotes in order to build a community around what the business offers. Try to tweet at least five times per day and dedicate one or two of those tweets to sending users back to your company’s website. Schedule those posts between 1:00 and 3:00 p.m. EST on the weekdays for the most engagement.”

5. Stay on track: Determining the return on investment of social networking can be a real challenge, especially for smaller organizations that don’t have the time or resources to dedicate to complex analytics. But Desjarlais says free tools are available to make that task just a bit easier. “The URL shortener Bitly lets users create shortened links for any URL available online,” says Desjarlais. “Sign up for a free Bitly account and create custom Bitly links or ‘bitmarks’ that can be used whenever you send users back to your company’s website. To see how many people have clicked the link, simply paste the URL with a ‘+’ at the end into your Internet browser to see up-to-date metrics.”

Source: Mashable

Make a plan: For many people, says Gilbert, the most difficult part of turning a blog into a book is actually putting the plan into action, rather than just thinking or talking about it. Make a goal to get it done, and work toward it daily, she advises.

Weed through posts: Obviously, not all posts are going to be worthy of publication in the book, so sift through them to determine which ones should be included in the selection to be published, says Gilbert.

Create a flow: Once the blog posts have been narrowed down, it will be important to consider how to create a good book flow with them, Gilbert shares. Some people may choose to stick with chronological order, while others may find that it makes more sense to group the entries by topic, or in some other way.

Determine the format: Options include print and e-book formats, Gilbert notes. “While some people choose one over the other, those who offer their work in both formats tend to sell more books,” she adds. “Consider which routes make the most sense for your situation.”

Promote the book: Gilbert says that your blog likely remains the best marketing avenue for selling the book version. “Readers may prefer to have the print book or eBook, which provides them with a more focused and uninterrupted opportunity to read your posts,” she explains.

Source: MarketWatch

“Initially, one of the reasons we built the capability to do more low-touch e-mail marketing was the recognition that even with the best licensing officers available — which is what we believe we have here — they can only be in so many places at once and can only know so many people,” Herskowitz explains. “So it was partially an experiment to see if there was a way to allow licensing officers to extend their reach in a more automated fashion.”

The traditional methods of maintaining relationships — including going to conferences and creating highly customized PowerPoint presentations, “is very labor intensive and is likely going to be the main driver of agreements, but you don’t know who you’re not reaching,” he continues.

In addition, says Herskowitz, the approach is designed to help maintain strong relationships with researchers in the face of the reality that more of their innovations receive a “no go” decision than a “go.”  “We wanted to let our faculty know that we give every invention the best shot possible,” he explains. “Afterwards we can go back to the faculty and say we filed a patent, held it for ‘x’ number of years, have gone to the following conferences, plus, here are 20 companies we sent an e-mail brief to and we had this response rate, this open rate, this click-through percentage to the site and nobody contacted us, so we’re pretty confident at that point we’ve done our best.”

With these benefits, he points out, “even if a technology is not licensed the program can be helpful.” A detailed article on Columbia’s e-mail marketing strategies appears in the June 2012 issue of Intellectual Property Marketing Advisor. For subscription information, CLICK HERE.

Focus on your target market: The purpose here is to make sure that when potential buyers read the testimonials, they can say “I have the same problem as these people and look at them now,” Antone explains.

Don’t just show the good ones: This is a tip you should use with extreme caution, says Antone, because if done the wrong way it can have negative effects. “The good thing here is that you can make it a constructive testimonial,” he notes. “If you show only positive ones, customers will be wondering what you are hiding which is not good.”

Use benefit headlines: What makes sure your headline is catchy? “There is no better way to do this than mentioning the benefits of your product — specifically the one that the customer giving the testimonial got,” says Antone.

Give life to your testimonials: Give your testimonials a personality, advises Antone. “Using the real name, using photos and giving other details are effective ways to do it (you may need to ask permission from your customers doing the testimonials),” he notes. “Using these real details increases the believability and reliability of your testimonials. It gives a sense of tangibility and therefore gains trust from potential customers more effectively.”

Make use of different media platforms: This can provide variability and build trust all the more from potential customers, says Antone. “Using audio and video testimonials are very effective because a visitor can hear or see the real person doing the testimonial,” he adds.

Provide lots of testimonials: “Make a goal of using at least 15 or so testimonials,” Antone suggests. “That number of testimonials is enough to convince your target market that your product is legit and can do what it says.”

Source: Business 2 Community

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ALSO COMING SOON:

• Tuesday, June 26: Low and No-Cost Solutions for Marketing University Innovations
• Wednesday, July 25: Drafting Win-Win Start-Up Licenses: An Interactive Workshop

Marshall offers the following tips that can help you ensure your online video makes the most of keyword optimization:

Use analytics to discover which keywords your users search: “All too often, a business or a brand will make the mistake of optimizing their website for keywords they think the user is searching for as opposed to the vocabulary that the potential client is actually using,” notes Marshall. “Google Analytics is a fantastic tool for uncovering customer search terms, and even better, you’ll very often come across specific questions that users ask.” Marshall recommends using the information from Google Analytics (or any other analytics package you have installed) and divide the search terms you find into:

• Those which match current content; and
• Those for which you don’t yet have any text or video content

“You can then make informed decisions about future video strategy based on capitalizing on content which already attracts a lot of views, or addressing search queries which you haven’t make any videos for as yet,” says Marshall.

Use a max of two keywords for each video or landing page: “I don’t mean just use one or two keywords like ‘London’ or ‘briefcase,’ but I suggest constructing your title, content and description around one topic rather than several,” Marshall explains. “For instance, if you create a video to promote one type of kitchen appliance, make the focus that particular model and its benefits rather than trying to include every other model you produce.”

Surround your on-site video with content: “We know that we need to help search engines like YouTube, Google and Bing recognize and understand what our video content is all about, and the very easiest way of doing that is to add copy to the video landing page,” says Marshall. This is actually a lot easier than it sounds, she says, especially if:

1. You’ve created the video script using the keyword targets found via your keyword research.
2. Without keyword stuffing, you make good use of the header tags on the page.
3. The URL includes the main target keyword (and the word video).
4. Comments are enabled (if applicable). Not only does this send the right signals to Google that the page is ‘active’ and encouraging user engagement, but the comments themselves may also include variations of the keywords you are targeting.
5. You link out to related target elsewhere on the site

Use the word “video” as much as possible: “If you want to rank for a highly competitive keyword, then adding ‘video’ may just give you the advantage over those who are not using video content as part of their marketing arsenal,” Marshall says.

Source: ReelSEO.com

Walk a mile in your customer’s shoes: “Do what feels right,” says Mario Schulzke, founder of IdeaMensch and senior director of digital strategy for WDCW. “Do what makes sense to you, and always think about the value you provide to your audience.” Specifically for mobile, Schulzke recommends that marketers walk in the shoes of their customers and prospects.

Think beyond a generic digital playbook: “What most people have,” according to Steve Mura, director of digital marketing for MillerCoors, “is what I call a generic digital playbook, meaning trying digital is important so ‘we’re going to use digital. We’re going to use Foursquare and Facebook and Google and all these folks.’” Mura strongly advises marketers to fully understand and apply only those technologies that will positively affect their company’s bottom line. “What they’re going to find is half of those things weren’t intended to build their businesses,” he explains.

Take a walk on the mobile side: Barbara Williams, who serves as global SEM and digital advertising lead for Xbox at Microsoft, says it’s time to get away from your desk. “If you’re not sure if you should be doing mobile, take a page out of a classic consumer research model and do ethnographic research,” she suggests. “Go to the store, go to the mall, go out to dinner, and sit back and watch people. And you see everyone is on their devices and they are spending quite a bit of time on their devices and they’re not making phone calls necessarily and they are not just doing SMS.” Beyond observing, Williams advises that marketers start applying what they’ve learned to their own business. “When you see that happening around you everywhere you go, think about, ‘How can I insert my product or my brand or my message into these experiences?’” she advises.

Dive in with transparency and thick skin: Terence Reis, a former Mobile Marketing Association managing director and the current director of operations and partner at Pontomobi Interactive, sees mobile as the vehicle to engender a value exchange between brands and their prospects and customers. If you’re not doing mobile, “you’re losing an opportunity to start a unique conversation with your customers,” said Reis. “You’ll find customers on mobile will start a conversation only if they trust you and they expect transparency and good services.”

Source: MarketingProfs

For Starbucks, the Facebook fans were 38% more likely than non-fans to buy a cup of joe in the four-week study period. Target saw a 21% boost during the same four weeks. The report was partly commissioned by Facebook, which is a comScore client. It focused on a group of web users who agreed to participate in the study – study design that experts say can artificially inflate results.

According to comScore, marketers should not merely attempt to acquire as many fans as possible on Facebook, but rather focus on their overall message and their broader social media marketing strategy. Initially acquiring fans is only the “initial springboard” of reaching fans and their friends with ads and other brand messages, the report comments.

Source: The Washington Post

Before you begin your strategy, or even if you have already dived in, says Mortimore, here are 9 considerations you should have established before reacting to your intuition:

1. Strategy before tactics: Decide who matters, Mortimore advises. “Without this concentration on an ideal target audience, your marketing strategy will often lack focus,” he explains.
2. Identify your ideal client: Does your client want what you have and do they value what you do? Further, are they willing to pay a premium for what you do? “More often than not, the perception of what we want a client to be just doesn’t match our demographics and pricing strategy,” Mortimore asserts.
3. Discover your core marketing message: “Your claim should be powerful and intentional and, once crafted, should quickly communicate the difference between you and your competitors,” says Mortimore. “Is it your service, price, product? Ask your clients first.”
4. Match your marketing message to your image: “Now that you have committed to your message, tell your story,” Mortimore advises. “Match your message to your logo, your phone message, your stationery, your customer service and create a consistent identity that reinforces your core market segment.”
5. Create products and services for every stage of client development: Develop a logical system for each stage of client support, says Mortimore — from introductory information, product testimonials, discount opportunities, loyalty program and ultimately to retention.
6. Produce marketing content that educates: “Support your message with content that builds trust and authenticity,” says Mortimore. “Try blogs, reviews, testimonials and relevant white papers. With the new power of social media, every business is now a publishing business, so you’ve got to start to think like one.”
7. Design a web presence that works day and night: Think of social media as supportive tools that reinforce your website, Mortimore suggests. “Your website is designed to showcase your content and still is your number one image builder,” he notes. “The word today on websites is simplicity and ease of navigation, but don’t forget to design ways to capture referrals and lead data.”
8. Get your entire team involved with marketing: “If you can find ways to motivate everyone in the organization to help grow the enterprise, think of what a machine you could create,” says Mortimore. “This motivation may take the form of goal setting, score keeping, incentives and a significant commitment on your part.”
9. Run advertising that gets results: “Even though you have made a commitment to invest serious resources to social media presence, traditional advertising should still be a part of your marketing mix,” says Mortimore. The beauty of social media, he adds, is the ability to change and rearrange as needed. “Marketers should not expect to get the entire methodology right the first time,” he shares. “Only when they continuously measure performance, optimize campaign elements, and repeat, can they ultimately fund the investments that provide the biggest returns for the business.”

Source: Herald and News

ALSO COMING SOON:

• Thursday, June 14: The Elimination and Creation of Defenses in the Wake of AIA
• Thursday, July 19: Fueling the Entrepreneurial Fire: Identifying and Cultivating Future Business Creators