Accelerating international
growth with perfectly tuned
communications
Enterprise Ireland
eBusiness Workshop
Kilkenny, March 2019
Presenter:
Ed Field, Managing Director, Maverick ( Maverick-intl.com )

Clear, engaging, persuasive, comprehensive communications.
A solid communications foundation. Perfectly tuned to align with your sweet spot
prospects’ perceptions, needs and journey.
A proven marketing engine.
Reach, engage and nurture your sweet spot prospects. Build a successful, sustainable
set of marketing activities.
An effective sales engine.
The people, systems and processes to convert.
1,2,3 to drive sales and growth
1.
2.
3.

This Session
Step #1
An executive’s guide to developing perfectly tuned market facing communications.

Some Key Brand & Communications
touch points
• Website
• Social media channels and presence on third party websites
• Sales materials, sales people, proposal documentation
• Publications, press releases, advertising, direct mail
• Trade show stand and experience, promotional materials
• Customer onboarding, training, support and service materials and people
• Vehicles, buildings, packaging, work wear, stationery, email signatures

In today’s digital world,
perfectly tuned branding
and communications can
spark extraordinary gains
for your organisation.

Dedicated to fuelling success for ambitious,
B2B companies and brands.
Since 2005.

No matter how
complicated your
business, service or
product, the outward
expression should
always be clear
and simple.

Simplicity is the
ultimate sophistication“ Leonardo da Vinci

How clear is your
broadcast? Are
your prospects
hearing you
clearly or is your
message lost in
the noise?

The single biggest
problem in
communication
is the illusion that
it has taken place.
“
George Bernard Shaw

The Challenge
Needing sharper tools to
break new markets.
Carey Glass

Results.
Traction in the US market. Significant and accelerating sales.
“We are now getting in front of the exact architects and
glazing partners that we had been continuously
struggling to engage.”
Michael Carew, North American Sales Director, Carey Glass

With the same business strategy,
the same products and services,
and the same people, you can
achieve significantly better results.

You can now cut through the clutter, reach
anyone, anywhere and engage, educate,
excite and amaze.Raise Your Expectations

When a sweet prospect who has never heard of your brand lands on your
website, be it the homepage or any other page, there is an immediate, less
than one second, very positive first impression made, consciously and sub-
consciously. You’ve immediately begun to build trust and you’ve sparked
interest, they are ready to explore more.
1-second impact

When the prospect explores a little further, for example on your website, you
are hitting on all their key touch points. All perfectly tuned to their
perceptions, needs and concerns – trust is building further, they are more and
more impressed, they are really excited that you have exactly what they need,
they take the next step.
60-second engagement

Expect an increased flow of educated, warm, fully engaged prospects.
Expect shorter sales cycles, higher conversion rates, reduced sales effort and
more sweet spot clients.
Engaged Prospects

How?

There is a way

Stage 1: Prepare the ground
Stage 2: Establish the foundations
Stage 3: Develop a plan
Stage 4: Rethink brand identity and style
Stage 5: Create and collate the ingredients
Stage 6: Build a customer-centric website
Stage 7: Develop compelling sales supports
Stage 8: On-board and go-live
Stage 9: Nurture and evolve
9 Stages

Ensure business strategy is clear
The clearer the strategy, the easier it is to produce on-message, on-brand, effective
communications.
Audit current communications
A brief, independent, expert assessment can help bring all on-board.
Research - Understand your audience’s perceptions,
needs and buying behaviours
Research all three thoroughly as this awareness underpins everything.
Research - Examine best-in-class
Take inspiration from the best communicators in your space or in related sectors.
What can you learn from them at a macro and a micro level?
1. Prepare the ground

Clarify the facts
Clearly establish:
1. what you do
2. for whom
3. how you do it
4. how it’s different
5. what value it provides
Before you work on how to say it, be sure you’re crystal clear on what to say.
Forget about the language initially, just get the facts straight; crafting the copy
will come later.
2. Establish the foundations

Define your brand personality
Re-examine and re-define your brand personality, which needs to be true to the
company and tuned to resonate with your audiences.
An example:
2. Establish the foundations

The key facets to XXXX’s personality. Everything we do and say, and how we present
ourselves reflects this personality. The shared personality of the product and the
company. The look, the sound, the message, the experience
• Solid, established, trusted - and therefore confident, clear, concise. A confident tone of voice. Clear,
concise communications. Not trying too hard, not over egging the sales language and behaviour.
• Best-in-class. From the ground up, a complete, deep, enterprise solution. Must look, sound and act like
‘best-in-class’ in every aspects of the operation.
• Easy to understand, easy to deploy, easy to use and highly (or easy to) scalable. But not light, this is
deep and powerful and used in a highly regulated, complex, demanding environment.
• Intelligent – An intelligent company, intelligent people, and an intelligent product. We look, sound and
act like a progressive, professional, impressive, innovative company. It’s evident that our people are
experts in their field. The product looks, and is, very smart – a very well thought out, feature rich,
intelligent application.
Define your brand personality

• Fits with the pharma, biotech, medical device world – precise, technical. For engineers – we’re
accessible, use their technical terms, understand their world, we fit the world of big, advanced highly
regulated manufacturing. The language, imagery and stories for engineers.
• We’re partners/enablers. Listening, understanding, and collaborating. We lead with the technology
but we support with the people. So our comms materials you can see some images of people
collaborating together.
• Accessible, supportive and ready to help. Here to help, approachable, authentic, flexible, available. In
our comms you can see our people – approachable, genuine, professional but authentic. We’re not
some big, distant corporate.
• International – in tune with North American & Northern European. In our tone, visual style, imagery,
client stories, contact info.
Define your brand personality

Define your purpose, your ‘why’:
People first engage with why you do
what you do, not what or how. A
brand with purpose is a more
powerful one.
See Simon Sinek’s TED talk.
2. Establish the foundations

Define your purpose
Our purpose is to help protect our clients’ people, environment,
materials and reputation.
How we do that by:
• staying specialist in our niche
• ensuring that every client gets the precise storage solution they need
• staying fully committed to our total-quality solution

Define position:
Your prospects’ minds are busy. You
can only own a tiny spot, if anything.
What’s the lead idea or attribute you
want to be known for?
Once identified, deliver sustained messaging and stories that connect your brand with
this position. Burn that connection into the mind of your audience. For a short,
succinct lesson about the power of positioning, read ‘Positioning’ by Al Ries & Jack
Trout.
2. Establish the foundations

The professionals.
The complete, robust solution.
The only fully-digitised solution.
Positioning - Examples

Craft a succinct value proposition
The value proposition is a distillation of all the key facts you have clarified
and is aligned with your purpose. It can be helpful to first summaries the key
facts into one line under each of these heading, then condense into one
statement.
1. what you do
2. for whom
3. how you do it
4. how it’s different
5. what value it provides.
2. Establish the foundations

We help our clients our clients run clean, safe, compliant and efficient operations,
while minimising their environmental impact. We do that by aligning all that’s
required to deliver an expert, dependable, professional service.
We enable faster, easier, smarter inbound and outbound communications for
clients with demanding requirements. Allowing them to more easily and more
dynamically, connect and communicate with their people and their clients. We do
that through our purpose-build, omni-channel communications platform, with
baked-in compliance, CRM integration, and all backed by excellent support.
A specialist, purpose-built, enterprise software solution that enables
life sciences companies to smoothly and completely transition from cumbersome
paper-based validation to smarter, faster and easier digitised validation.
Succinct Value Proposition - Examples

Draw up a succinct, top-level plan for your brand and
communications development. With the foundations established,
you can define what is to be produced, who will undertake those
tasks, the roadmap, timeline, and investment required.
Communications development plan to include:
• Overview of website requirements
• Outline scope for photography & videography
• Outline scope for copy development
• Outline scope for all other sales supports
3. Develop a plan

P’s
Capture all in one document.

Brand identity
Is your current brand identity in line with your newly
defined brand personality?
Visual style
Develop a distinctive, on-brand, well-worked visual
style.
4. Rethink brand identity & style

Stage 1: Prepare the ground
Stage 2: Establish the foundations
Stage 3: Develop a plan
Stage 4: Rethink brand identity and style
Stage 5: Create and collate the ingredients
Stage 6: Build a customer-centric website
Stage 7: Develop compelling sales supports
Stage 8: On-board and go-live
Stage 9: Nurture and evolve
9 Stages

Craft clear, compelling copy
Write for the website first, then re-purpose that content for other needs. Create
copy that’s clear, relevant, true, human and digestible.
Crafting copy for:
• Lead messaging
• Full pitch
• Stories
• Facts, stats, creds, proof
• Product and service detail
• Etc.
5. Create & collate the ingredients

Build a bank of images to illuminate all you need
to communicate.
• Photography
• Stock photography
• Icons
• Illustrations
• Treated screenshots
• Explainer graphics
5. Create & collate the ingredients

Build a video library
Quality video is a powerful medium. It’s excellent for:
✓ pitching
✓ telling client stories
✓ demonstrating how your solution works
✓ sharing knowledge
Determine the value of each piece and invest accordingly. Again, ensure you have a
clear, well developed plan for each video before anyone lifts a camera.
5. Create & collate the ingredients

Plan the website - wireframing
Fully define a plan for every page, panel and
feature on the website.
Add all copy to the wireframes, as well as
detailed design and technical notes.
Don’t proceed beyond this stage until all
stakeholders are on board.
6. Build a customer-centric website

Design the website
Each webpage template is designed
following the defined visual style and
wireframes and working with the
image bank. A simple site might need
6 to 10 templates, a larger site might
require 10 to 30.
6. Build a customer-
centric website

Build the website
A complete, as planned, fully tested,
responsive website should emerge in 4 to 10
weeks, depending on the scale of the site and
the size of the development team.
6. Build a customer-centric website

Re-purpose all the design and messaging you’ve already
developed to quickly create compelling sales decks, trade
show stands, brochures etc.
7. Developing compelling sales supports

Bring everyone on-board
It’s vital to now bring everyone on-board with this thinking, tone, style and
message, especially management, sales, and service.
Go-live
Decide on, and prepare for, the day where all the old disappears and all the new
appears. Avoid carrying out changes piecemeal and ensure every detail of the
new is fully implemented.
8. On-board & go live

Maintain Quality & Consistency
Ensure all experiences, touch points, messaging, people and materials stay on-
brand. Inconsistency damages trust, both consciously and sub-consciously.
Keep developing
More stories, more images, more video, more website features and content,
more sales supports.
Lifespan?
The 9-stage approach outlined here should deliver a brand identity, visual style
and website that should not require major overhaul for years.
9. Nurture & evolve

Stage 1: Prepare the ground
Stage 2: Establish the foundations
Stage 3: Develop a plan
Stage 4: Rethink brand identity and style
Stage 5: Create and collate the ingredients
Stage 6: Build a customer-centric website
Stage 7: Develop compelling sales supports
Stage 8: On-board and go-live
Stage 9: Nurture and evolve
9 Stages

Simple can be harder than
complex: You have to work hard
to get your thinking clean, to
make it simple. But it’s worth it
in the end because once you get
there, you can move mountains.
“
Steve Jobs

Moving from commodity to brand.
With the same business strategy, the same
products and services, and the same people,
you can achieve significantly better results.

LSM

The Challenge
Production orientation to marketing
orientation. From commodity to
brand.
LSM

Results.
From commodity to brand.
“There has been an immediate impact on every audience and every conversation we are
having. Overnight we’ve changed the perception of our organisation and our products –
in a very positive way. We’ve shifted from selling a commodity to selling a brand. I was
unsure of the value of this exercise, but now, just two weeks after roll-out, all the signals
are telling me that we absolutely did the right thing.”
John Cummins, Managing Director, LSM

Your prospects are crying out for a clear
voice to cut through the static and connect
with their need.
Be the one.

Accelerating international
growth with perfectly tuned
communications
Enterprise Ireland
eBusiness Workshop
Kilkenny, March 2019
Presenter:
Ed Field, Managing Director, Maverick ( Maverick-intl.com )