DIY PR by Penny Haywood Calder

I'm all in favour of business networking, and word of mouth is the most effective type of publicity, but it is limited to relatively small numbers because it is a one-to-one form of communications.

The grand-daddy of the one-to-many approach is media relations (both online and offline media), not only because it delivers the big numbers, but it also carries a powerful media editorial endorsement.



Like an award (which makes you forever an award-winning business) you can use a media accolade on all your publicity materials: as seen on TV/in the FT.com…. This confers a lot of credibility on your business and inspires confidence.



And we are talking of reaching very large numbers indeed: thousands of people.

Every town has a collection of local media, from community radio, newspapers, online sites and local interest magazines onwards, so look out for outlets for your news.

And don't forget the newsletters and blogs for the business clubs and the trade press relevant to you and your business.



Add a few of these up: it would take you several lifetimes to network with that lot. A really good story could reach them all in one single day!




For every person who contacted the business as a result of reading or hearing about you through the media, there were thousands in various stages of near readiness to buy, who needed a few more nudges with information and contact to finally land the sale.



That's why PR needs to work alongside marketing and sales.

• PR raises awareness and confers credibility.


• Marketing describes the features and benefits of your offerings and decides how to position them in the market (positioning for price, gaps in the market, distribution etc versus your competitors).


• Sales matches the benefits to an individual buyer's particular needs and handles the mechanics of the sale and after sales service liaison. And manages the relationship to get customer referrals and case studies to further boost your business.

Labels: DIY PR, Edinburgh, marketing, media relations, on and offline PR, online PR and marketing, Penny Haywood, sales

Caffeine is the codename for Google's new search engine. An early version has been released to web developers for testing and feedback.

Most of the clever stuff is under the bonnet so users will notice little obvious change, although results should be faster.

But what is it likely to do to your optimised web pages? The good news is that you don't need to be a pro to find out. A web developer has set up very neat solution: www.comparegoogle.com - a side-by-side comparison site of the top Google results for your nominated terms and your website.

I ran our clients' search terms on the comparitor. All of them had been performing well in the top 20 for some months on organic search alone. And all of them performed slightly better on the caffeinated version, so I'm looking forward to a pepped up Google.

Labels: on and offline PR, online PR, SEO

The PR, sales and marketing touches that nudge a prospective customer into making a buy decision go something like this, although at any stage, a particularly strong recommendation from a trusted person or a respected media source (on or offline) can accelerate the process dramatically. As can 'clicking' with someone who has already got a well-developed need for your product or services and has already done a fair amount of research.

A potential customer stumbles across your website in an unrelated search (touch 1) and think 'that's interesting'. They may even save your URL in their favourites. Then forget all about it until a blog they're following recommends you (touch 2), but the phone rings and they get side-tracked.

Then they notice a piece about you in a trade or consumer publication (on or offline). Or on Face-book, Twitter etc (touch 3). Since this is the third time your name has come up, they start to remember you (the memory likes to work in groups of three, which is why triads are so popular and memorable in speeches and any writing).

So they note down the name and look up your website (touch 4).

If the page they land on takes them to something interesting (instead of a pretty picture or a wait for flash to download) that crucially also contains an easy call to action on the page, you may well accelerate them on to the next touch.

Activating the call to action does what it says on the tin. A call to action is an exhortation to take action accompanied by an easy way to initiate the next step in the sales dialogue: click on an email address for further info, or a Skype call button etc) (touch 5). If they respond to a call to action, they have seriously entered your sales pipeline and are now a qualified or 'hot' sales prospect and should be tagged as such in your database or CRM program (such as www.salesforce.com).

You respond to their enquiry with further marketing information (touch 6). Plus an invitation to another call to action (touch 7) - maybe a special offer, a white paper to download, a newsletter to subscribe to (collecting their info into a permission-based database if you didn't capture it at touch 6).

Now you have their permission (always with an easy unsubscribe route and backed by a good data privacy management system following good data protection practices - see http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk) you can embark on a relationship-building series of exchanges (touches 8 onwards).

Depending on the nature of your product or service and your communications strategy and company ethos, your company's marketing and sales materials will flow alongside these relationship building exchanges, via automated responses, information provision and further calls to action and website interactions. Larger sales and service contracts may have to be reeled in via a tendering system or individual sales exchanges on the telephone, presentations at meetings, or via mail or email.

Looking backwards through this process, are there any points where your PR, sales and marketing could be strengthened? Are there any points where the sales process ceases to flow? Points where you lose them?

Next time we'll look at a point where around a quarter of online sales can be lost.

Labels: boosting your business, business promotion, ecommerce., marketing, media relations, on and offline PR, online businesses, online marketing, PR sales and marketing, PR sales and marketing synergy

If you want to be found online (and if you're trading online, why shouldn't you?), one of the best things ways to boost your website content is to create an online news room on your site. It's a great opportunity to post wonderfully rich and detailed search engine content. Creating your very own online newsroom is too good an opportunity to miss, but even larger companies with PR advisers often miss out on this. And web designers that say they offer search services have actually asked me what an online news room is, and what should it contain.

But that's fine, because it means there's all the more chance for you to romp up the search engine results if you do use an online newsroom to build up your content.
It's not the only way to build up content. In fact, an embedded blog, like this one, is one of the fastest methods you can use to make an impact on your search engine performance.

But an online news room not only adds to your other content. It is really important if you want media coverage to point back to your site. Since most online media coverage is very highly rated because of the massive amount of content they carry: a link from them to you is a powerful booster to your own site rankings.
Plus good quality media recommendations carry the vital editorial endorsement factor, which is like a super-charged testimonial. If you get a good media comment, it's wise to quote it again and again, at every opportunity, as it will carry a lot of weight.

How does an online news room work?

The reason online newsrooms work is because reporters rarely read news releases these days: they are swamped by them. But they do what anyone does when they need information. When they're asked by an editor to write about a topic, they turn to Google to search for relevant information. So it really matters that you put useful content about key issues that are relevant to your industry up there in your online news room.

The online news room allows you to put up all your news releases and articles, plus background on your company, bios of key people etc. It builds up into a large body of highly relevant search engine friendly content that will help the media write about you. And boost your website performance in online searches.

You can also add product and service background information. In fact anything a journalist might be interested in. Of course, if you have press kits, they should go up. And photos (but be sure to have a link or a request form for high resolution images as web pictures are far too small for print media). Maybe you run events that the media would be interested in? Or have good blogs, videos or pod casts that can be linked to? And financial information that you are willing to disclose - maybe about your backers (with their approval, of course).

But it's not just for the media. If you run the analytics, it's amazing how many ordinary site visitors like to see what you're putting out to the media. The online news room is a very popular page on a website. That means you are communicating your company progress and background to all sorts of useful people: potential recruits, investors and clients, plus suppliers and advisers. In fact, everyone involved with you. Existing staff, friends and family, for example, will all be better able to recommend your business if they can tap into good quality information on the site. Especially if it is distilled into media-friendly factual nuggets stripped of all the marketing BS.

It's really important that people can find their way round the information in the news room, so it has to be search-able. A recent survey of journalists in the US showed well over 90% needed news search-ability on a site. At the most basic level you can put up a list of headlines with jump links to the release text below, but that will only cover a screen-shot sized list of headlines. Anything more needs to be properly search able, but it is not rocket science as Google has a 'search this site' option you can highlight. I'm sure your web designer will come up with something more elegant if you wish.

Good PR people should be able to come up with an inexhaustible supply of ideas for releases to keep your newsroom fuelled.

Labels: media relations, on and offline PR, online news room, online news rooms, online PR, PR 2.0

Chances are you have already made a fair investment of time and money in some aspect of the golden promotional trio: sales, marketing and PR. But you may be struggling to know what's effective?

The standard advice is to monitor what works, then do more of it! And of course there's a lot of truth in the saying: "you can't manage what you haven't measured". But it's easier said than done.

If you ask customers at the point of sale how they heard of you, most people will stop after one answer: probably the most recent thing that brought them to you. Now that is an important clue, but would they have bought if you hadn't come recommended (word of mouth, or in the media, or online)?

Would they have bought if your website was out-of date or the branding wasn't attractive and the brand values consistent?

In most cases the 'buy' decision is a complex balance between:

• Your profile and reputation (PR), plus
• A clear understanding and attraction to what you are selling (marketing and branding) plus
• A good sales process to ensure lots of referrals and to clinch the deal efficiently.

Plenty of people will offer clever tools to monitor what works for you, but you'll only really find out by talking to customers and getting their feedback on all aspects of your sales, marketing and PR.

Plus you'll pick up invaluable feedback and ideas for developing your products and services in response to demand and for new markets.

Labels: marketing, on and offline PR, PR, PR sales and marketing, PR sales and marketing synergy, sales

We work with businesses of all sizes. Over the last 22 years. I've noticed the main difference between the smaller and the larger business is that many small to medium businesses don't think they have a marketing budget, but they always turn out to have spent a fair amount: they just aren't tracking it effectively. Some will flatly deny having a sales or PR budget.

If you're one of them, try adding up all the money and the time you spent in the last 12 months on any of these, you have the makings of your time/money budget:

• the website,
• taking a 'special deal' in a directory or an advertising feature,
• your membership subs & meeting fees plus time for attending networking events, the online directory listings and forums, plus social networking sites,
• writing sales proposals,
• PowerPoint presentations,
• responding to sales enquiries
• encouraging referrals from customers or complementary businesses
• signage for a building and/or vehicle
• maybe some Pay Per Click experiments?
• or a promo item?
• marketing materials - folders, leaflets, brochures?
• a mailing list?
• email fliers
• a newsletter?
• a blog?
• photos,
• videos or pod casts
• local sponsorship in kind?
• stalls at trade fairs
• other sales, marketing, PR promotional activity?

Chances are you have already made a fair investment of time and money in some aspect of the golden promotional trio: sales, marketing and PR. Use that as the baseline, and think how you could improve that spend of time and money in the next financial year.

One of the most valuable things you can do to further your business is to think about how you can find out more about your customers and how they found you, so you can concentrate resources on the things that are proven to work. It's much better to record feedback rather than rely on memory because we often remember more about encounters with emotional content.

Years ago, local shopkeepers in my high street said they had mainly elderly customers and were worried about their reliance on a dying breed of customer. But when they were asked to tick age groups of customers and record comments, it turned out there were at least as many busy mums, who actually spent more, but they hadn't talked as much so they failed to make much impression and weren't remembered.

Labels: budgeting for PR, marketing, on and offline PR, PR, PR sales and marketing, PR sales and marketing synergy, sales