Archive for June, 2008
June 9th, 2008
For most companies, it’s difficult to objectively evaluate the cause-and-effect relationship marketing has on its bottom line. It can be extremely time-consuming and resource-intensive to review current and previous marketing initiatives, messaging and collateral. It can also be discouraging if you find that combined, the marketing activities have failed to offer a consistent message or target the appropriate audience for your product or service.
Taking the time yourself, or having a marketing audit conducted by a third party, can prove to be tremendously valuable in developing initiatives and ideas going forward to drive awareness, and ultimately generate revenue.
Here are some initial tips in undertaking a marketing audit:
* Make a list and physically review all of the marketing materials developed over the past three to five years, including advertisements, articles, quotes, press releases, event/conference participation, and outlined plans.
* Identify the audience targeted and message with each marketing initiative.
* Develop a “gap-analysis” of how/if the activities have impacted the target audience. A gap-analysis means identifying which pieces most successfully market your brand to the appropriate audience.
Based on your results, review what previous initiatives could be leveraged again and work together to reinforce your brand.
June 6th, 2008
Ever wonder why you stumble on businesses named A-1 this or A-1 that?
It goes back to the golden, or should I say yellow, days of marketing.
The extent of many marketing plans for several generations of small businesses was a listing in the Yellow Pages. A company named “A1 something or other” would be right at the top of that list in phonebook and theoretically the first to get called.
Sound familiar?
(Hint: search engine rankings)
Unfortunately, your rankings on a search engine are not returned alphabetically. (Google returns just under 16 million sites for “A-1” – and many of those involve steak sauce).
Keep in mind that to younger (and most likely all future) generations, if your business isn’t on the internet, it doesn’t exist. Furthermore, without being found on a search engine it’s difficult to get noticed on the Web.
Getting better rankings on search engines is a tricky process. There are books written on the subject that have as many pages as this blog has words – and just as many companies out there willing to “improve” your search-engine rankings for a fee.
There are a few simple things you can do to improve your website’s ranking.
First, submit your website to the search engines. It takes only moments on sites like Google and Yahoo! to submit your url – and then they will know you’re there.
Content is extremely important. Having good, relevant content with regular updates makes search engines happy. Make sure there are keywords on your site that relate to what you do, and how you want search engines to notice you.
Get linked. Search engines “crawl” the net and check out just about every link on every page. The more pages that link back to you, the better. Yes, paid advertisements link back to your site, but so do cleverly placed links on blogs, forums, press releases, articles and so on. Sometimes, just politely asking the webmaster from another site for link is all it takes as long as your site has something to offer their readers.
You could spend hours, days, or make a career out of improving rankings in search engine results. Take these tips to heart and remember that your company’s website, and its rankings on search engines, should always be part of your overall marketing plan.
June 5th, 2008
“Show me a PR person who is ‘accurate’ and ‘truthful,’ and I’ll show you a PR person who is unemployed. The reason companies or governments hire oodles of PR people is because PR people are trained to be slickly untruthful or half-truthful.” That is a quote from CBS Sunday Morning legal analyst Andrew Cohen’s commentary on Sunday, June 1. PRSA responded by calling Cohen’s challenge to the industry’s professionalism and integrity “one of the most blatant in at least a decade”. While I believe Cohen’s comments and views of the PR profession are over-generalized and out of date, it brings up an important issue we cannot ignore. Ironically, sometimes the greatest public perception challenges PR practitioners face is dealing with their own professional reputations.
The ethical and professional standards of PR have come a long way since the P.T. Barnum “any press is good press” days of manipulation and press agents. Now using a two-way asymmetric model of communication, PR professionals make continuous efforts to be honest and ethical to increase their credibility with the public and media. Today we uphold the idea that looking after the best interest of the public is also in the best interest of the organization.
It is a good idea to establish your own professional ethics before you start a PR career. To give some guidance, PRSA has a code of ethics that their members must abide to. There may be a time in your career when a client asks you to complete a task that conflicts with your personal and professional standards. If you refuse the task you may gain a clear picture of the people you work with and determine how you are valued within the organization. While accepting the task will label you as a team player, you will also go down with the team if you are caught being dishonest.
June 3rd, 2008
No matter what time of the year or the product or service your organization offers, a marketing planning process forces companies to think “anew” in regard to developing strategic plans and marketing initiatives.
But, for many organizations, the same marketing efforts are applied year after year. Individuals and departments work within the boundaries, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Why, after all, would an organization want to focus considerable efforts to adopt a new marketing or strategic agenda and possibly cannibalize their efforts which have worked so well in the past?
Because if you don’t, your competition will.
Now is the best time to review what your organization outlined for 2004 and decide if there are new ideas to explore and new avenues of growth or opportunities for the organization.
Many companies remain skeptical of these new initiatives, afraid of risking the unknown. Obviously, it’s important to question anything new, but it’s also decisively deadly not to take some risks and cannibalize your current efforts to develop new ones. This can be done by bringing in an outside source, or developing a mid-year brainstorming session for members of the marketing and communications staff, to develop an entirely new plan of action.
Don’t fear the unknown. Leave that to the competition.
Next Posts
