June 13th, 2008 08:40am
Carrie Skogsberg
While recently browsing around the PRSA site we came across a rather startling article - the Philadelphia Daily News and Philadelphia Inquirer went overboard to test the success of advertising in their print and online publications. They ran fake ads for a made-up airline called Derrie-Air (ha ha!), a company that promises green flight practices based on the weight of the passengers. As Editor & Publisher Magazine reported Monday, a story in the Inquirer revealed that the ads for “Derrie-Air” drew a higher-than-usual response, with a 1.25-percent “click-through rate” for the online version, compared to a national click-through average of just 0.05 percent.
A little astounding? The reason the click-thru rates were so high was not only because of the power of print and online advertising - it was the message. If you name an airline “Derrie-Air,” people are going to look twice, which still shows how important messaging is in the industry.
Our issue with this is that a newspaper’s job is to inform its public with the facts - and even an advertising department needs to follow some ethics along those lines. Shouldn’t they be able to prove their success with their existing clients? Don’t they have to provide a return-on-investment for the costly price of advertising? If they want to sell ads they should be able to provide true statistics, not ones they had to create with a fake company.
In the end, it goes back to the core of public relations and marketing know-how - if you have the right message, people are going to listen, and maybe even get off of their “derrie-airs” and do something about it.
June 11th, 2008 05:00pm
Bill Swick
This week, Steve Jobs announced the second generation of the iPhone and love him or hate him, those folks at Apple get it.
Despite the huge cool factor that surrounded the first iPhone, the complaints about it (too expensive, too slow on the network, battery) seemed to steal the show, especially when you consider all of that hype that led up to it.
One of the first rules of marketing is to listen to your customer and Apple listened last year when the first iPhone was released. Many of the complaints about the first iPhone became Jobs’ shopping list to the engineers for the new phone coming in July.
As a marketer, paying attention to your customers is as important as anything you can do. A complaint about your product or service isn’t all bad: it is your call to step into action to make it that much better.
Consumers will sometimes tell you exactly what they want. It’s your job to listen.
June 10th, 2008 05:15pm
Kylie Crull
Media kits remain to be an effective tool to communicate to consumers through the media. They can communicate your organization’s message while also introducing or reinforcing a relationship with the media. While the design aesthetics are an important component of media kits, its internal contents will be responsible for achieving your organization’s goal of increased media attention and awareness.
Media kits can contain the following:
• News releases. You can include basic and special event releases.
• Backgrounder (or one-page fact sheet) about event, company or both.
• Biographies of key people in the organization.
• Organization’s brochure or catalog.
• Survey, study or report that is relevant to your organization and its mission.
• Photos
• Electronic versions of press materials and images
All materials should be available via email and on your organization’s Web site as some media prefer to receive information electronically. Be cautious about sending samples of your product, as many media personnel have strict ethical rules about accepting free gifts. Assembling and sending media kits can be very costly so make the most out of your investment and follow up with the media to confirm the receipt of the kit and see if they have any outstanding questions or interest in your product or organization.
June 9th, 2008 03:54pm
Rebecca Kopf
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 12:42pm
Bill Swick
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 12:00pm
Kylie Crull
“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 02:48pm
Rebecca Kopf
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.
May 30th, 2008 04:39pm
Bill Swick
All too often good PR is tarnished by bad PR.
The biggest challenge in public relations is always finding that story. In fact, that’s also a big problem that faces many of the journalists and editors that PR people deal with on a daily basis. We all need that story to survive.
Advertising that is squashed into something that looks like a press release – or worse, a news release that struggles to find a point at all – doesn’t do anyone any good.
When you’re writing a press release or pitching a story to the media, take a step back and don’t just think about what you want that release to achieve for you. Look at it from the point of view of the editor or even the target reader you are trying to reach. Why should they care?
Making your press releases/media pitches newsworthy will improve your placement results dramatically. The better the story, the better your coverage will be.
This sometimes means taking that all important step back to look at different angles. Keep asking yourself why should ____ care?
Besides, a habit of sending out bad press releases is the best way to ensure a spot in an editor’s wastebasket.
May 28th, 2008 03:55pm
Kylie Crull
Whether solving a plaguing company problem or starting a new campaign, strategic planning will help you stay goal-oriented to help save time and effort. When implemented correctly, your strategic plan should allow you to show hard evidence of your effectiveness and establish criteria to judge the success or failure of the plan. Detailed and complete background research should be complete before you start the plan.
The first step is to state your goal. It should be long-term and spell out the overall outcome of the plan and what coordinated effort is needed to accomplish the goal.
The second step in strategic planning is to state the objectives. More specific than the goal, objectives should detail the knowledge, opinion or behavioral outcomes you want to achieve for each the publics included in your plan. The objectives should have measurable outcomes. An example is: Increase the program’s awareness among target audience by 25 percent.
The third step is to determine what strategies should be implemented to help reach the plan’s objectives. The last step in strategic planning is to carry out tactics. This is the operational stage of the plan where you begin concrete actions or decisions to implement the strategies.
May 27th, 2008 01:34pm
Rebecca Kopf
Often companies or organizations are frustrated because they’ve issued dozens of news releases but with no pick up on their story. While there is no golden rule to gaining that coverage, really knowing the media is the single most important guideline you can follow to assist in your efforts.
Each media vehicle and each market has specific requirements and needs, whether you are looking for coverage with local, regional or national broadcast or print media, or if you are seeking exposure in trade or vertical publications.
Television: Think visuals! Television can tell your story better with pictures or graphics and it certainly makes it more interesting to viewers than talking heads. Also, become acquainted with the station’s public affairs programs (e.g. morning, noon and weekend shows) for guest spot opportunities.
Radio: Know their format and demographics. Pitching an interview or story about a business-to-business issue is not of interest to a radio station with a format centered on teenagers.
Print: Get to know the sections and sub-sections of the publication. Each offer up a slightly different readership and focus. Where does your story fit?
Keeping these ideas in mind when approaching the media will help you develop better relations with them and assist in gaining the coverage you are seeking.
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