You might be surprised how absolutely different things sometimes can have a common ground. You can learn from anything in the world, just look and analyze. Eventually, the ability to listen and draw conclusions is what matters and what differs a great marketer from a good one.

Let’s see how today’s case with the Greek ‘NO’ can be used to upgrade our marketing skills (or to refresh it) and show marketing lessons ‘in action’.

1. Extend the brand messaging

Brand consistency is the key. Remember, it is always achieved over the long time. Establish a clear message and continue to deliver it constantly. Start by creating a clear identity of what your brand stands for and apply it across all your products, even if they are vastly different.

Wondering how it all works? Think about Coca Cola, Nike or McDonald’s – I’m sure there is one or two particular messages in your mind right now.

Practically, it means to use the same message in all your marketing materials, across all communication channels and alongside your entire conversion flow. When launching AdWords campaign, make sure your landing page has the same promise as your ad banner. Your call-to-action should be the same. And no, you don’t want to use that black banner only because of its bright color. In this case, make sure your brand color is also black.

One example of the greatness at consistent design across all channels is Dropbox, the cloud-based sharing platform. Try to find Dropbox message without their brand logo – you will fail. Their blue box is behind all of the brand’s designs – whether it’s their home page, 404 page, adwords ad banner or e-mail notification. Well done!

Another example of a perfect message match was found in the RBC brand’s Facebook community. Here is their Facebook marketing post:

And here is a landing page linked to this post:

This is how message match is supposed to be done.

Don’t be lazy to create a new landing page for your every new marketing campaign to communicate your UCP (Unique Campaign Proposition). Especially when all this can be done quickly with the help of a reliable web development team.

2. Landing page optimization is important

Even when you launch a new landing page every day (or more often), it doesn’t mean you have rights to overlook small details and gaps in its design and user elements. Below you will see a very brief ‘checklist’.

– Your perfect attention ratio is 1:1

Attention ratio is the ratio of links on the page (interaction points) to the number of CTA (call-to-actions) on the same page.

On your home page you will always have an attention ratio between 20:1 to 40:1, which means that you have 1 desired action (Request a quote) and 19-39 distracting actions (Learn more, Our services, E-mail, etc.).

On your perfect landing page, designed for a specific campaign (UCP, remember?) your attention ratio must be 1:1. This is why you should never drive traffic to your home page from the paid marketing channels.

– Button placement is important

There are at least 4 characteristics of high-converting CTA buttons you should always keep in your mind:

1. Your action button should look like a button. It’s just that simple. Not like a text. Not like a memes. Not like a black hole.
2. Your action button should have compelling copy. But try to keep it simple (the word ‘get’ is the most effective).
3. Place it in the path of the user. This is what called a logical placement.
4. Use a contrasting color to draw the user’s eye to it.

– Don’t crowd your form and remove all unnecessary fields

As Steve Jobs put it, “Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.” Your landing form should be simple. Remember, that each extra field may decrease the conversion rate of your contact form. If you have to add extra field – make sure to monitor and test the changes in conversion all the time during your campaign.

– Don’t let your CTA fall below the fold

This is the gold rule of every marketer: you want your CTA to be placed on the first screen.

Although there are always exceptions. You should know about a correlation between the complexity of the product/offer and the optimal placement of the CTA. It means that, when the product/offer is complex, and the prospect has to digest a lot of information in order to make a decision, positioning the CTA lower on the page generally works best.

3. Always ask your team what they think

Sometimes to solve an important task, it’s simply not enough to rely on the opinion of only one person (which is you). Running efficient marketing meetings and ability to ask right people and right questions is very important.

Here are few tips to make your marketing team’s meeting efficient:

• Keep it on time.
• Don’t let them bring their laptops.
• Give a break every 30-60 minutes.
• Finish every meeting with action items.

4. Media coverage is everything

To get your company known, you must capture media attention on your products and services. There are lots of techniques you can use to get media coverage. Below you will find the most common steps you need to follow.

1) Develop your one sentence pitch

Make sure you can answer what you company business is about in only one sentence. Here is a quick template to test if you already got it – try to fill the gaps:

My Company [name] is developing [product/offer] to help [your target audience] [solve a problem] with [a secret sauce, your main selling point].

Can you make it? Go ahead to the next step then.

2) Make a list of the most relevant reporters to your business

Well, this is the main part of work. There are lots of ways to create/find lists of reporters. One of them is simply to google it. For example, if you are running a tech startup, google for ‘startup pr’. Then see what reporters write about startups and add them to your list (read their bios, social profiles, other articles, etc. to make sure this is the right person).

3) Create an e-mail pitch

To create a compelling e-mail copy, that will stand out among other hundreds of e-mails and will draw attention of reporters, takes a lot of time and efforts. See below the most important points you e-mail pitch should contain:

• the way your company relates to the reporters’ previous news;
• information about your company (its name, website, description, founders’ bios, date of launch;
• information about your competitors (and the reasons why you are better);
• funding data;
• links to previous media coverage.

Email should be 200 words or less. 88% of writers prefer a pitch be less than 200 words.

4) Find the best time and reach out to reporters

Quick stats: 69% of reporters prefer to be pitched in the morning. Your goal here is to make sure you’re the most recent e-mail in their inbox when they check their email in the morning.

Hope it makes sense. Remember, that the most important thing is to constantly learn and understand new lessons, that you face during your everyday life.