Message Control

by Bart Levy Have you ever seen a slide presentation with graphics zooming in and out, with so much information on a slide you couldn’t possibly read it, or illegible fonts and funky colors? Ever seen a presentation that left you scratching your head because the message was so confused? What about a logo that’s been stretched or squeezed to fit a space with some weird color because the corporate color clashes with the background? It’s a marketer’s nightmare. Have you ever been given a prepared slide deck and given it just a little tweak to better suit your personal presentation style? Now imagine everyone on your sales team doing that.Your carefully crafted corporate message may be getting tweaked into something you did not intend – implying product capabilities that aren’t quite accurate or making promises that you are not going to be able to keep. What does that do for your corporate image? That’s not a marketing problem, that’s a corporate problem that could become a legal problem. Review your sales and marketing materials Are they accurate? Are they honest? Are they up to date? Do your marketing materials reflect what you want to sell or do they highlight why a buyer should want to buy? In other words, your marketing information should let the prospect know you care about the same things they care about. Do your sales materials discuss features and specs in ways that are easy to read and even compare to other products? Are the graphic elements clean, up to date, easy to read and within the boundaries set by your brand guidelines? Communication review...

What goes around…

After nearly 6 months of planning, it’s hard to believe 2013 RVA Startup Weekend has come and gone. NimblePitch was a proud sponsor of the event and our CEO, Greg Hofbauer, was the chair of the organizing committee. “This year proved to be another exhilarating, exhausting, super-charged 54 hours of exploring the ideas of 14 teams which may one day become household names. While many of these ideas may not become the next big thing, this event is really about bringing the Richmond entrepreneurial community closer together. It provides a high-energy, risk-free way for new entrepreneurs to test the waters and discover the strong support network our community has built”, according to Greg. As a startup, we at NimblePitch are very grateful for the time and expertise that have come our way – and continue to come our way. It is nice to be able to share what we’ve learned and to know that we may have contributed to someone else’s success. Have you had someone give you the right advice at the right time or in some other way give you a hand when you needed it? Don’t forget to pay it...