Michaela Kraft, marketing management at Philips Speech Processing, met with us to discuss her company’s recent social media initiative.

Dodge: Tell us a bit about Philips’ history, your current business model and the challenges you face.

Kraft: Philips Speech Processing, with its headquarters in Vienna, Austria is the worldwide market leader in the professional dictation market and the only company to design and manufacture a comprehensive range of digital dictation solutions as well as analog dictation products. Currently, the company employs around 170 people worldwide.

It is our goal to strengthen the #1 position in the professional digital dictation market. We strive to bring superior quality and sophisticated technology to the digital dictation market, thus providing “advanced solutions that work”. We drive new trends in the speech processing market, which is why we are constantly observing new technological developments and investigating their ability to bring real benefits for the different customers and end-users. The continuous evolution of our solution portfolio (hardware, software & services) for the digital dictation and voice capturing market is the foundation to strengthening our leading position. Outperforming market growth in our key countries and the entrance and growth in new markets is our first priority. We are proactively managing the migration from analog to digital dictation as well as from products to services and solutions.

Dodge: You recently began to leverage social media in conjunction with media relations outreach. Can you tell us a bit about that process and why you decided to make social media a priority?
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Key Points to Note in the ACO Regulations

I recently returned from the American Medical Group Association’s (AMGA) annual conference in DC where accountable care organizations (ACOs) were a hot topic of conversation. The long-awaited regulations regarding ACOs were published on March 31 so many folks were still trying to fully understand what the regulations entailed. Initially, I got the sense that most attendees were frustrated with what they had heard about the regulations and thought they were “really bad” – I heard other adjectives as well but “bad” gets the point across. As the conference continued and attendees began to better understand the rule and collaborate amongst themselves, the tone seemed to shift from “these are bad” to “we can fix them by participating during the comments period.”

So what about the rule needs to be fixed?
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So, your tagline isn’t really serving the purpose it was meant to, or to put it nicely, it’s full of gaping holes. Well, we’re here to help. We’ve outlined some steps below to help you start closing the gap.

Recognize its purpose. You need to understand what you’re trying to accomplish with your tagline. For most B2B companies—particularly in the healthcare industry–taglines need to provide a brief description of your business so that the audience understands the category you’re in and the benefit you offer.  

Know your company. Your tagline should represent the brand personality, resonate with the market and leave a lasting impression. A keen understanding of the messages you want to communicate to your audience is necessary before you can move forward.

Know your competitors. Your tagline should differentiate your brand in a sea sameness. To ensure that it does, you need to understand what your competitors are communicating to the marketplace.

Know your audience. Does your target audience understand industry jargon? So much so that you may need to ask them the appropriate term? Great! You should leverage that jargon throughout your messaging. Honestly, if your audience expects it and you don’t oblige, they may assume that you don’t really know what you’re talking about. But, if you’re using terms and language that your audience doesn’t understand, then you’re just digging more holes and assuming that your audience will fill them in.

Boil it all down. After you’ve compiled all of the necessary research, you’ve got to boil it all down into a couple words. Your market has a limited ability to grasp and retain a positioning strategy that’s too complex and will gravitate toward brands that are positioned in a clear and concise way. You want to ensure your brand is the one they’re gravitating towards.

Effective positioning not only requires solid market and competitive research but also the ability to transform complex messages into ones that are simple, effective and sustainable. You can rest assure your audience isn’t going to work to fill in the holes you leave in your messaging. If your tagline isn’t providing insight into what your company does, you’re losing out on a prime branding opportunity every time it’s seen.

Is your tagline full of holes?

Let’s play a game to find out. We’ve listed five brand slogans below that each represent well-known companies. See how many companies you can identify by their associated slogan.

“Don’t be evil.”

“Think different.”

“You’re potential. Our passion.”

“Be a force for good.”

“To give people the power to share and make the world more opened and connected.”

Having a hard time naming all of the companies? How about narrowing it down by industry, can you identify the industries of the companies represented above?

Wondering where in the world I found these slogans? In this article on CNN’s blog regarding the cheesiest tech slogans (check out the blog to see which companies the slogans belong to).

Now, think about your company’s slogan or tagline. If we would have substituted it in the list above, would your target audience have been able to answer these questions about your brand?

If you’re not confident that the answer is yes, then your tagline may be full of holes. The good news? Now you know. Acknowledging that there could be a problem – or holes in this case – is always the first step.

Check back for part 2 on this topic where we’ll provide tips for filling in the holes in your tagline. In the meantime, feel free to leave comments on your thoughts regarding the slogans above.

Social media marketing. It’s a hot topic that everyone’s talking about, especially as companies are evaluating their marketing strategies for 2010. The big question is: Are social media tactics really effective for B2B outreach?

Yes.

Didn’t expect such a clear-cut answer did you? If you think about it, it’s a no brainer. Social media provides you with a communication platform where you can observe and interact with your clients, prospective clients, editors and industry experts (and that’s just to name a few). Obviously, that’s something you want to take advantage of.

But the question lingers: Is the technology audience I’m trying to reach utilizing these platforms?

Yes. (more…)

A few weeks ago, we introduced you to Bing, Microsoft’s replacement for Live Search. Now, shortly after Yahoo and Microsoft announce they are going to join forces on the search engine front, Google is answering back with Caffeine, a faster and more accurate way to search the Web.

While the front end of the popular search engine will remain the same, Google has updated its infrastructure to include new indexing, ranking and crawling mechanisms. This translates to more accurate searching with greater indexing speed and more comprehensive results. (more…)