Elizabeth Ferranini, of enterpriseleadership.org, explains how and why your customers can do your best marketing for you. As a progressive marketing communications consultant for over 13 years Ferranini has successfully led tech companies to utilize the powerful voices of both their customers and their CEOs and CIOs to connect with their markets.
Using new media channels, such as podcasting, can be both effective and relatively inexpensive, especially if you begin with this new approach to capturing and promoting the satisfied customer's message.
Ferranini explains that to develop truly effective marketing and PR strategies for your start-up the value proposition you develop for your product and your company must align with your customer's value proposition. The first step is listening to your customers, whether they are paying customers or beta testers. Your responsiveness to their criticism, as well as really hearing their perspective on the value of your product rather than trying to impose your own vision on them, is critical to the success of your marketing. The creation of this relationship and two-way flow of communication is key.
Ferranini explains the value of case studies in this kind of strategy, and provides some nuts and bolts to building useful case studies. Get to the heart of the real pain the customer was experiencing, and how your product provided the solution.
Elizabeth M. Ferrarini, who lives outside of Boston, has 13 years of progressive marketing communications experience handling public relations activities, analysts relations, branding, lead generation, and collateral and advertising in three areas: agencies, inside companies, and a consulting practice with both emerging and Fortune 500 companies. During the six years she worked at two technology-based public relations agencies, Ferrarini managed the day-to-day relationships with clients, supervised the work of account teams, pitched new business, and carried out a lot of writing tasks, and logistics tasks, such as media tours, participation atconferences, or special events. She is currently building virtual thought-leadership communities for IT executives of Fortune 1000 companies (seewww.enterpriseleadership.org), as well as producing podcasts for that site.
Her corporate public relations experience includes working for two dynamic emerging companies -- HighGround Systems and Precise Software. For example, by executing on her plan of evangelizing the concept of storage resource management, she helped the executives at HighGround Systems, bought by Sun Microsystems, to raise the company’s visibility and, and in turnincrease its valuation. At Precise Software's Storage Division, she increased press activities by 400percent by creating a comprehensive customer communications program. Company sales went from $6million to more than $25 million.
Her work in media relations also includes teaching undergraduate courses at Northeastern University's school or journalism and pitching her two trade booksto the national media. She have gotten placements in publications around the world and has appeared onnumerous national television shows. She is the author
of Confessions of an Infomaniac (Sybex), the first book about life online, and Infomania - The Guide to Essential Electronic Services (published by HoughtonMifflin). Infomania won several writing awards.
Her articles about security, storage, networking, service level management, and other related topics demonstrate her knowledge of IT and her ability to communicate effectively with everyone from senior IT end users to industry analysts and financial analysts who cover IT.
Her education consists of a B.S. in Technical Journalism from Suffolk University, a M.S. in Communications Management from Simmons College, and a certificate in investor relations from Bentley College.
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This free podcast is from our Talking Portraits with Tom Parish series.
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