My Book: Efficient Marketing – a guide to more customers and revenue

I’m currently working on the writing of my Book on Efficient Marketing. The book will contain my insights of marketing gained from the study of Business Psychology, E-Business, Viral Marketing and several “Marketing Gurus” (like Jay Abraham, Dan Kennedy, Jay Levinson….) . The emphasize of the book will be on efficient strategies and best practise examples that companies can use to make their marketing more efficient, bond more customers and generate more revenue.

So far I’m working on these 13 different chapters:

3 Ways Companies can make more profit

The Net Promoter Score – what role play loyal customers for your company

The Long Tail Concept – sell more in your niche

The Tipping Point – spread your products and messages

Create Consumer Evangelists

How to manage Word of Mouth / Word of Marketing

Virale PR – make your PR more efficient

Web 2.0 and efficient

Psychological strategies you can use for your marketing and advertising

Efficient advertising

How to marketing and communicate your USP

Integrated Communication

Trends and how you can use them

Back from my Marketing Projects in Spain

Since last week I’m back from 11 intense days, consisting of 2 marketing / media projects and experiencing Spanish culture.

The first project took place in Barcelona where we (around 30 marketing and media students & practitioners) discussed the role of new media, marketing and public relations and how to integrate it into future projects and NGO work. Since the day temperature Barcelona was around 22 degrees, we had a quite good time there.

The second project had the name YANG Debate, was hosted by the Fundación Galicia Europa in Santiago de Compostella and had over 90 students and professionals as participants. I was mostly involved in discussing ideas and plans on how to improve the communication policies of the European Parliament and how to use “Mass Media” and other PR-Tools in order to spread subjects like European values and identities into different communities (no matter which field – Business or Politics, effective communication is the key if you want to reach people minds).

Here is the description of the Yang Project:

The YANG project is organized within the framework of the
European program "Europe for Citizens", in order to obtain the contribution of young Europeans on the nature and form that the European Union should adopt, in a moment in which Europe must redefine itself to confront the challenges of a more and more interconnected world.

The accomplishment of this project, that will be developed through a simulation of an European Parliament, precise of young motivated people interested in the European subjects and policies.

Follow UP Diplomatic Seminar & Intercultural Dialogue

I’m just back from my 2 weeks Seminar Travel through Turkey (Ankara and Istanbul) and Romania / Sibiu (cultural capital 2007).

In Ankara I attended a very interesting 8 day Seminar about Diplomacy and Negotiation. Our speakers and trainers consisted of high rank international Diplomats (such as the Norwegian ambassador in turkey or the former Turkish ambassador in the United States), Government Speakers, Journalists and University Professors (we had a video conference in the US Embassy with Prof. Dr. Daniel Druckman who wrote several books on the topic of Negotiation and Mediation).

The topics covered the themes of:
- Psychology of Conflict and Negotiations
- Lobbying Strategies
- Manners and Elements of Protocol
- The role of the media and how to use it for Communication
- Public Communication in Diplomacy
- Transatlantic Relations and Networking

After the Diplomatic Seminar I went to a Seminar on Intercultural Communication in Sibiu / Romania. We had a very good time, did a lot of things for future Networking and worked on subjects like:

- New ways and means of Communication
- Intercultural Awareness
- Cultural and self cultural awareness

All in all very interesting and productive.

Diplomatic Seminar in Ankara

I will be in Ankara for the next week, participating at the Diplomatic Seminar hosted by AEGEE Ankara and the AEGEE International Politics Working Group.

The seminar will be very interesting – we will have excellent speaker and trainers, like:
- Faruk Loğoğlu - Member of Turkish Foreign Ministry
- Cecilie Landsverk - Norwegian Ambassador in Ankara or
- Egemen Bagış - Advisory Board Chairman, Istanbul

The seminar will include workshops and trainings about:
- Dynamics of Diplomacy
- Manners and Elements of Protocol
- Role of Media
- Psychology of Conflict and Negotiations
- ....

After the Diplomatic Seminar, I will go to Sibiu – which is the Cultural capital 2007 (at least they told us that ;->) and will attend a training on Intercultural communication, which also sounds very interesting and enhancing.

6th European Summer Academy on Bioethics 2007

For the next 2 weeks I will be at the 6th European Summer Academy on Bioethics in and around Ludwigshafen / Germany. Although Bioethics is not quite my topic – I’m very impressed by the level and quality of the speakers for this Summer Academy. There will be over 20 different high level professors and practitioners from 16 different countries (from Isreal, USA to UK) teaching us (50 participants from all over the world) all what is important to know about Bioethics, Biotechnology and the newest trends in this area.

From the Business perspective it is interesting to see how the question of ethics in our society and in companies is being discussed by big group of international people. From my perspective it is a necessary question. Since we have entered the age of globalisation, companies and the media play a very important role in most western societies. The search for ethics and the right standards for communication, doing business and building relationships play a vital part in our lives. This Academy contributes to it.

Thesis is finished

I`m really happy to announce, that after good 6 months intense research, 50 books of study and a lot of practical application - I have finally finished my thesis on "Viral Marketing - Psychological Foundations and Application in Brand Management".

The topic is very interesting - since it is in my opinion the future of marketing, it will change the way people and companies will do Business with each other. Look forward for future projects in this and other fields.

Follow Up Media and Citizenship Seminar Ireland

I am just back from my two week journey to Ireland. Again we were around 30 professionals from all over Europe, discussing about different matters of NGOs, Media, PR and Project Management.

The Seminar itself was quite interesting – here is the description:

Media and Citizenship is divided into three parts, the first part "Strategic Planning" will provide participants with the knowledge and know-how for creating effective and long-lasting communication actions. Participants will learn to implement successful communication and activities to improve their local realities.

The second part is mostly made up of simulation workshops where participants will be asked to work on one media project.

Participants will learn how to effectively plan press releases, communication campaigns, press conferences and attract the attention of the media on particular issues, and at the same time how to effectively and strategically plan both short and long term actions for the improvement of their local realities.

The training gave a lot of knowledge and information on how to use different tools and means of communication to spread your message to different target groups in very efficient ways. Also the Media part was very interesting, it teached me how biased and manipulative different ways of media communications can be and what an NGO or Company should do, to use this knowledge in an ethical way. Finally the group and the trainers were very professional and I look forward for future meetings and cooperation.

Follow Up Negotiation Days in Poznan

I`m just back from my exiting trip through Poland. I visited the 4th edition of the Negoation Days, they provided me a lot of insights into myself and other people. For me it was especially interesting to combine my existing knowledge about NLP, Coaching and Negotiation with the knowledge of the trainers and participants and to work in international and diverse teams (as usual I was the only German / international participant at the workshops)

During the 3 days I attended the workshops about effective Teambuilding, Coaching and applied Negotiation Strategies, run by the trainers Clay Lowe, Peter Feeth and Chris Walker.
Also very interesting was the opening lecture which was run by the CEO of the Negotiation Academy Europe about “Strategies and Personality Types in Negotiation”.

There are also an interesting videos about the Leadership Seminar of Peter and Clay.

Negotiation Days in Poznan

I will go to the Negotiation Days in Poznan / Poland in 1 week. This training focuses upon bringing students and internation companies together to share some knowledge and provide effective coaching for the students.

The organizers of AEGEE Poznan told me, that their will be a variety of interesting companies and speakers, for example from Harvard Business School…

So if some of you are interested in these topics too – maybe we will see each other in Poznan.

Follow UP Mediation Training and Conflict Management Seminar

What I really liked about this seminar was the diversity of the participants and trainers. We were again around 30 young Europeans from UK to Azerbaijan and had a really great and interesting time while learning about European Identity, Mediation in Conflict Situations and Negotiation Techniques.

The main topic of the seminar was „All different – all equal“ – which was perfect, cause if you have 30 people from different countries you expect some conflicts, headed discussions and an exchange of a lot of ideas. I really liked it and can recommend it to everybody who wants to learn more about applied psychology, intercultural communication and team building. Let`s use the skills for the future.

You can visit the website at: http://www.mt.u2.pl/

Here is a short description of the seminar:
In the past years people in Europe had to experience that also in Europe conflicts can escalate and that Human Rights are not equally treated in every country. This seminar aims at bringing together young Europeans with different perspectives on conflicts and to educate them in mediating conflicts in order to strengthen a “peace network” that crosses religious, ethnic, and geographic boundaries. Thus they shall be able to take an active stand in defending human rights and contributing to a Europe that fulfils the slogan “united in diversity”.

Follow Up AEGEE TV Media School in Eindhoven

As you may have read, I participated at the AEGEE Media School organized by AEGEE TV and AEGEE Eindhoven. I have to say it was a really great event – thanks to all the organizers, trainers and participants.

The setting of European Students Week (which had over 320 students from all the world as participants) was perfect, cause we had a great training ground to practise our new movie making skills. The movies we made (around 20) should be soon at http://www.aegee.tv/ - they are really worth watching, this I can promise ;->.

As a result of the Project sessions we also came up with some future project ideas for AEGEE TV. The ideas were about improving the PR of AEGEE with movies, about Video Journalism and about an
AEGEE TV Summer University (you can download the notes about the ideas here).

I liked especially the idea about making a “corporate” AEGEE movie, that we can show to students (for getting them interested in AEGEE and recruiting them) and to companies (to promote AEGEE, it’s values and to raise funds).

All we would need for that would be:
1. a script & storyboard
- what things should be in the movie
- who should be in the movie
- how long should it be (3minutes?)
- what core messages should be conveyed (AEGEE USP)
2. a budget
3. a motivated team with time and proper equipment

Lets see what happens in the future with this ideas…

PRESS II Follow Up - Next steps

The entry will be about the issues that we found about AEGEE.
It is a follow up of the discussions & mentor sessions we had during the Public Relations European School about how to improve AEGEE and bring it to the next level.

The basic idea is to start some projects about these issues in order to make AEGEE more successful as an NGO, more visible and stronger.

I added two documents about the SWOT Analyis that we did and my summary on (future) projects that we could start in order to improve AEGEE , make it more professional & efficient.