Sustainability marketing for Earth Day

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Earth Day is April 22, and some brands have taken a cue from the event to raise awareness about the environment and to show how they contribute to the health of the planet. It’s a more obvious fit for some brands than others. 

The online discount retailer, BLINQ, normally appeals to consumers looking for low prices. But come April, which it identifies as “earth month,” it stresses that it is not just about saving money but saving the planet. 

 The BLINQ blog says, “Most items on our website are overstock or returned goods that would have otherwise been tossed — regardless of the condition they are in! That means every time you shop on BLINQ, you’re doing your part to help reduce waste.” 

Still that applies all year round, so for this month, the retailer announced that it partnered with Trees.org to donate a tree for every BLINQ order. In case the pricing is not enticing enough, they also offer customers a bonus of feeling good about the impact of their purchase: “Every order supports sustainability.” 

That’s a real value proposition for some customers, according to a recent Nielsen report. "Sustainability sells," is what it found. 

Read more in 

Go Green: Sustainablility Marketing

Women in Tech: the glass is about a quarter full

Takeaway: Although women currently hold only about 25% of tech positions in the U.S., numbers are growing and many women are working to reduce this gender gap.

Assessing the state of women in tech does present a kind of half-full – or, more precisely, quarter-full – glass perspective. There is definitely still a marked gap in terms of representation in the field and even pay. However, there are also signs of movement in the right direction. So while we do mind the gap, we should also look at what works to narrow it down. 

Read more in Minding the Gender Gap: 10 Facts about Women in Tech

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Keeping it real in telling your marketing story

Just like in the realm of B2C, effective storytelling is fundamental to marketing in B2B. The key differentiator for brands is to make the stories not about how amazing they are but about the amazing results the businesses that use their solutions are able to achieve. That’s the key to a subtle shift in messaging at Dell Technologies. 

As we saw in "B2B Marketing: Who’s Your Hero?" this is exactly what brands should be doing in drawing on the stories of heroic journeys, in which a magical object can be brought back into the hero’s world to solve what appeared to be an insurmountable labor. Accordingly,  Dell Technologies is now showcasing its “Let’s Make it Real" effort, in the context of the real world where heroic businesses are applying the magic of its technology. 

Dell Technologies launched the “Let’s Make it Real” brand campaign on March 27. While the tagline dates back three years, the brand decided to take a new direction, in shifting away from the stage setting that puts the spotlight on digital transformation as magic to real-world scenarios in which digital transformation can have a magical effect. 

The following video represents the brand message Dell Technologies used in the commercial that aired last year.

Actor Jeffrey Wright presents the special effects, in a theater, that go with the defining message: “‘Magic can’t make digital transformation happen. But we can. Let’s make it real.’”  

Read more in: 

B2B Storytelling That Keeps it Real

Related post: https://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2019/03/casting-hero-of-your-story.html

A dozen women high up in tech

Ada Lovelace, credited with writing the first computer algorithm.

Takeaway: While men still dominate the top positions in tech, there are women who have worked hard to attain top positions, driving innovative technology and directing successful businesses. Often, they not only step into an existing business, but create or co-found a new commercial concept.

Look at any list of the top names in tech, and you will invariably notice that women are very much outnumbered, often representing only a third at best. To find the women who have risen through the ranks, you may have to look at the lists that are devoted to women specifically. There are a number of them, and this list cannot take them all into account. Instead, it presents a dozen. Some of the names are very well known, and some are less so.

Whether they have worked their way up the ranks of a well-established business, have developed a completely innovative concept that forms the basis of a new one, or have the vision to realize which new tech company they should be investing in, they all are highly accomplished in their field. So as not to appear to rank them in order of importance, they are simply presented in alphabetical order. 

Read more in 

12 Top Women in Tech Right Now

Casting the hero of your story

Recently I spoke with Ken Rutsky, author of Launching to Leading: How B2B Market Leaders Create Flashmobs, Marshal Parades, and Ignite Movements, about what what goes into successful B2B marketing. One of the biggest misconceptions people have, he said, is that all they need is the right tech. 

While tech does indeed play a role in data-driven marketing, Rutsky considers it only one third of the story. And getting the story right is actually the key thing in effectively connecting with B2B customers, just as it is for B2C customers. 

Who’s the hero in your marketing story? 

from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/
The_golden_fleece_and_the_heroes_who_lived_before_Achilles_%281921%29_%2814763705761%29.jpg

From the tales of Homer to comic books and films like Star Wars,  and even Disney’s Moana, stories of a hero’s journey remain persistently popular. Rutsky credits Joseph Campbell’s 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, for breaking down the steps involved in such stories. 

Rutsky quotes Campbell's summary of the journey story on p. 95 of his own book: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” 

In his own words, Rutsky described it as the hero’s perilous journey far from home to bring “a magical gift” to improve his own world. Such stories are a great way for marketers to present a product or service that will solve a persistent problem for the business customer. And they often do so, but what they tend to get wrong is the casting of the hero. 

Read more in B2B Marketing: Who’s Your Hero?

Voice for Marketing

Voice is set to become a necessity for driving site traffic and a ticket to increased conversion

Businesses that want to drive traffic to their site have had to learn how to optimize for search and then how to optimize for mobile. Now they are going to have another medium to consider: optimizing for voice search.

“Voice tech is on the rise and will continue to grow,” said Dan Drapeau, Head of Technology at Blue Fountain Media, in a phone interview. He compared its transition to mainstream connection to that of social media and mobile.

Read more in 

Why Marketers Should Be Thinking About Voice

Tips for Aspiring Data Scientists

Kaggle graph

Data scientist ranks as the best job for 2019 in America on Glassdoor. With a median base salary of $108,000 and a job satisfaction rank of 4.3 out of 5, plus a fair number of openings predicted, that is not surprising. The question is: What does one have to do to get on track to qualify for this job?

To find out, we looked for the advice given to those who seek to get on this career track. Much comes down to the hard skills in coding and math. But that strong computation alone doesn’t cut it. Successful data scientists also need to be able to speak to business people on their own terms, which calls for the capabilities associated with soft skills and leadership.

Read more in 12 Key Tips for Learning Data Science