Bad Advertising Gets No Attention.
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Several years back AT&T did a quantitative study to measure the effectiveness of its public relations campaign and advertising. They discovered public relations produced as many long distance customers as its advertising. To add another star to the PR effort, it was significantly cheaper.
Whenever AT&T had a positive media mention, its sales increased and advertising was more effective. PR had a favorable impact on the most important aspect of marketing. Sales.
Public relations usually gets a smaller piece of the sales & marketing budget. But PR faces other obstacles.
Measurement. This isn’t the late 90’s when people threw money and resources at anything ending in .com. You gotta prove to the finance types that you add to the bottom line. Collecting news clippings and counting the number of times your company was mentioned on TV does nothing for management.
Even though advertising itself may have minimal effects, at least management can say “we know where and when the ad will appear.” Measureable results from a PR campaign are not instantaneous (unless you’re Paris Hilton) and don’t have a controllable start date.
The PR peeps are turning to scientific measurements to prove that they are in fact, money-makers. The three most common tools of PR research are:
• Survey Research : There are several groups that can be targeted for research: Executives, media demographic, and journalists. A media demographic study determines if the PR campaign reached its target audience. Journalist research is important. This concludes if journalists received the information they need and if there was anything else that can be done to accommodate them.
• Content Research : This can be a little subjective. How a company’s stories are played out in the media is analyzed. How many stories were there? What was the quality? Were they favorable and what was the tone?
Companies will analyze their stories against the competition to see where they stand. An example of this is John McCain’s gripe that Barack Obama receives much more media attention than he does. A situation like this is more apt to sway voters.
• Predictive Modeling : Researchers will gather data from several sources and create a picture of the marketplace. This data will asses the impact of advertising, PR, pricing, merchandising, competitive activity, seasonality and other factors. By analyzing how these factors have affected your business in the past…..you can plan for the future.
A good public relations campaign begins with a ……..let me rephrase that…….needs an objective.
Whom are you trying to reach with your message…..and what do you want the essence to be. Make sure your objectives are measureable. Since all media outlets are not interested in the same story; you have to target. There’s a media outlet for everything.
If Microsoft came out with new graphic design software package, they wouldn’t waste their time with the Wall Street Journal or Trading Technology News. They would be all over Graphic Designer Monthly.
Publicity will stir up interest in yourself, your product and your company. Done the right way, others will talk about who you are, what you have and why it’s important. And thanks to Al Gore, we have the internet. People will write about you and blog the discussion. Hopefully it’ll be all good. It’s a great way to monitor what the public thinks.
When pitching your interesting and newsworthy story to the media, here are some tips:
• Keep your attention getting & to-the-point press release to one page. I know you need at last 5 pages to tell the world how great your company is.….but don’t.
• Make sure the outlets that receive your release are related to your business. People magazine doesn’t give a squat you opened 3 factories in China, unless they're being run by Angelina Jolie and her twins.
• Don’t harass editors or reporters with phone calls. Email them with your contact details and mention you sent a release. Give an attention getting summary of what the story was about. If it’s of interest…they’ll contact you. Remember, they need news for their readers, and that news comes from people like you.
• If you have photos, visual aids or interesting statistics….send them.
• Pitch your story so it has broad appeal to that market. If your story is about a new truck design, how will that effect energy costs, logistics, shipping, different types of shippable goods…….
• Reporters need a source of material. Become that source. Don’t just send one story every six months. Send them frequently but make sure the stories will be of interest.
• Connect to the top stories. Headline stories now include: war, investing, banking, China, education, security, disaster relief, the economy, energy costs and more. Look for stories that are currently grabbing the headlines. How is your service or product relevant?
• Be honest and make sure your facts are correct.
• The analyst meeting. This is where the serious stuff happens. At these meetings executives discuss their firm’s finances, strategies, opportunities and problems. Industry analysts get to ask the questions.
Prepare a PowerPoint presentation takeaway with facts that will withstand scrutiny. Make sure the information you provide is clear and brings up interesting detail. After all, the analysts will be discussing their review with the media and your company will be subject to some buzz.
• Send press releases to bloggers. Bloggers? Which bloggers? The ones that dedicate their web site to writing about your industry and facilitate discussion. If your story is pertinent, bloggers will discuss them in their own context and share judgments with readers.
There are even web sites dedicated to the blogging of supply chain management.
• To maximize exposure of press releases.....incorporate key search phrases. If a reader does a web search for “fine leather goods from Italy”, search engines may pick up your story and drive interested readers’ right to your release.
Use your web site as a source for conversation. Some companies have blogs on their web site. I’ll admit it. Whenever I see a blog on a web site I always take the discussion with a grain of salt. I mean…it’s not like it’s a source of independent discussion. But for some reason, I always take a look.
This could be an area for employees to discuss what they do and how they’ve helped other customers. They could share ideas and give their own viewpoints on the industry. Engage discussion with customers.
Public relations are an art. It’s not emailing 500 press releases and hoping something will stick. It’s about getting a good story out to a relevant outlet. You want relevant because that’s where your prospects are.
Other good public relations ideas include live events for the press and letting certain reporters become beta-testers. If the product works as well as you say it does……pre-release buzz works wonders. Apple is an expert at that.
It’s been said that any PR is good PR. That might be a stretch; unless you find yourself on PerezHilton.com a lot. But good PR is worth its weight in gold. The buzz won’t last forever….so make sure your sales people jump all over it.
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