* Financial PR – providing information to business reporters

* Consumer/lifestyle PR – gaining exposure for a particular product or service, rather than using advertising or in combination with advertising

* Crisis PR – a rebuttal of negative accusations or information (If not handled correctly, truthfully and tactifully, your PR can turn into a very nasty and negative scenario as evidenced by this example with BP. Click link to experience the negative repurcussions)
BP CRISIS OIL SPILL

* Industry PR – providing news and information to trade publications or trade related organizations and news outlets

* Government PR – engaging government departments to influence policymaking

In the industry today, it is very critical for PR personnel to learn and know the importance of new media outlets. New media outlets will include blogs, social networking sites, as well as Internet radio. PR personnel must know that using these new media outlets are ways to directly send messages to their target audiences. PR tactics are extremely important as you want to attract target audiences by using the information gathered about that audience so you can direct a custom-message to them using tools such as social mediums or other technology. How do you find out what is appealing you may ask? Methods used to find out what is appealing to target audiences include the use of surveys, conducting research or even focus groups.

Before releasing your PR news, you must first identify your target audience. You must tailor every message to appeal to that audience. The audience can be a general, nationwide or worldwide audience, but typically, it is a segment of the population like Women ages 35 to 50.

After determining who your audience is for the PR announcement, you must have some tools at your disposal in your PR arsenal. Some traditional tools include press releases and media kits which are sent out to generate positive press on behalf of the organization. Other widely-used tools include brochures, newsletters and annual reports. Increasingly, companies are utilizing interactive social media outlets, such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook, as tools in their public relations campaigns. Unlike the traditional tools which allowed for only one-way communication, social media outlets allow the organization to engage in two-way communication, and receive immediate feedback from their target audiences. One of the most popular and traditional tools used by public relations professionals is a press kit, also known as a media kit. A press kit is usually a folder that consists of promotional materials that give information about a product, event, organization, business, or even a person. Included would be backgrounders or biographies, fact sheets, press releases (or media releases), media alerts, brochures, newsletters, photographs with captions, copies of any media clips, social mediums, and sample products potentially. With the way that the industry has changed, many organizations may have a website with a link, “Press Room” which would have online versions of these pieces.

Your perception within the marketplace is the lifeblood of keeping your market-share and gaining new market-share. It sounds so cliche, but “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” Most importantly, you want to have a say in that message for the first impression.

The question for you and your business today is, Do you want to have input in what people and organizations are saying about your business or do you want to allow the messages to be controlled by third-parties aside from your company? Princeton Marketing provides PR services and will tailor a PR plan within your strategic marketing plan that best achieves the goals and objectives set forth by the business and its principals. Princeton Marketing can also help you monitor what is being reported about your business in the various news and media outlets through a specific monitoring service. Please contact us if you have questions about PR and how to have us help you with your PR needs.

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Business cultures are developed with or without your input. As long as more than one person works at your company, a business culture will develop. If you are recruiting new people into your business, it is important for them to fit the culture of the business or they will not be happy and chances are, neither will you. I am not saying they must endure an environment that plays with beach balls and slides down slides to get to their meetings but it they do not buy into the company’s vision statement or mission statement, they are not a good fit. Adding Culture Points will allow that recruit and even current employees to understand what it is your company stands for. If they are not written down for all to see, how do they know?

So you have an employee manual, but in that manual does it say: Our company is committed to the environment and with this commitment strives to use sustainable materials, recycle and use eco-friendly products from our suppliers and I too will be mindful of waste? Or does it say I consistently learn, grow and master so that I can help my fellow team members and clients learn, grow and master too? These points are really valuable to helping your employees and new recruits understand what is valuable to the company and what is expected of them. If they buy into these culture points, they are going to help achieve them and be the next leaders in the company to promote and grow them.

Of course, only if they know about them. And most employees don’t and most new recruits don’t. So after a period of time, what was once a very important part of the business culture falls off and you turn around and don’t recognize the business. Why? Because the new blood created a new culture.

As your marketing partner, PMG can benefit from knowing a company’s Culture Points which leads to better campaign development, cause marketing partnerships and brand maintenance.

Business culture points are important to your marketing efforts for synergy and consistency. If your marketing message is different from what the company culture is then problems can develop.

Case in point: Company A culture points and value statements claim good enough isn’t. We always deliver products and services of exceptional quality that add value and provide the utmost in customer service. However, when you enter their stores the registers are empty and no one seems to be in the store to offer assistance. When you do find a worker, they look distracted and do not know the product in question nor are they willing to provide you with help to make a buying decision.

What happened?

The employee is not buying into the company’s Culture Points or they have not seen them. Any marketing/ad efforts are wasted because you must have conversion traffic and not just traffic.

Conversion at the point of sale is vital to the success of any marketing/ad program. If you do not think you know your company’s conversion rates or how to improve customer service, hire a business coach to help.

PMG can help you increase traffic and offer strategies on increasing sales conversions. A business coach can offer assistance with getting the team to buy into your Culture Points and getting the right team in place.

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To combat website staleness here are a few things you can do:

1. The first is to simply update the existing pages with new content. This can be anything from a new welcome to your site to new product or service information. Pretty much any new and relevant content can be helpful.

2. Add new pages to your site. Much like adding new information to a current page, it gives visitors and search engines something new to look at. It also has the advantage of having a brand new page with new keywords out on the web. Just make sure the page is relevant to your site content.

There is one word of caution, adding pages is great but the site can quickly turn into a monster. Too many pages can make the site awkward to update and maintain. Too many pages can also clutter your website or make it difficult to navigate

3. Host a blog or news section. This is the most time consuming of the options but can be the most effective. It gives you a relatively easy way to get new content on your site, but is something you have to keep updated. There is almost nothing that can send a viewer away from your site faster then an non-updated blog.

No matter how you choose to get new content on your website, jut make sure to keep it fresh and updated often.

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Choose the media based on the marketing strategy.

Broadcast TV – To reach the masses with a single :30 spot. Reach is the goal.

Radio – To reach narrowed, targeted, niche groups of people with frequency being the goal.

Trade Publications – One business talking to another.
Cable TV – “Radio with pictures.” Same goal – same objective.
Consumer Magazines – To reach upscale people in their leisure time with high ticketed items.

Outdoor – A “reminder” medium. Similar to a :10 spot in broadcast. Good to reach the masses with reach and frequency the goal.

Internet – Reaches the world! Genuine mass medium in real time.

This post was originally presented on 11-9-09 on our old blog.

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So many companies are searching for ways to bring new customers into their business and convert to sales. An easy and basic skill is one of the first points of contact, the phone. So many people are turned off to a company just by the manner in which they are greeted when calling into the company. How do you treat callers? If you have an automated phone system that takes 3-4 steps to get the prospect to leave a message, is that a message in itself? Are you really saying my business is going to make you jump through hoops when working with us? What about keeping someone on hold for a few minutes? Will it be perceived that the customers will experience a long wait for your services in the future?

If your receptionist is having an off day, and is short to your callers do you think they will call back? You never know if that next call will end up being your best customer. Make learning basic phone skills a priority for all customer relations, receptionists and sales staff to master. This basic but often neglected skill set can make a prospect choose your company over someone else.

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It is very important that you create content for your website that visitors will find informative and useful. Content is still king if you want to be discovered in search results. Some planned thought processes and content investments in your website will have your site rank better in the search engines.  Search engines still remain an important factor for your site to be discovered by customers and prospects. All search engines are looking to provide relevant content to their users.

Many people create hundreds and hundreds of pages of content without anything really being useful as “Relevant” content. These sites are typically loaded with ads and profitable for the owners, but provide very little in the form of usable content to the users. Google has made changes to search parameters in previous years to have a better balance in the playing field for most businesses and content companies. Their goal is to improve search results for the end user and to also to get rid of spam sites. Google has announced another update to search algorithms for their search engine to help level the playing field. These changes should be implemented in the next few weeks to months according to Matt Cutts from Google.

Along with marketing the search content, your site will need social marketing. What is now happening is that many people are asking their friends about product and service recommendations, and thus making it extremely important for your products and services to be found on social sites. The random searches for products and services are still very important, but now the social outlets are another important factor for having your products and services being discovered by customers and prospects. A local search study showed how much social media influences consumer decisions and it’s a big driver for their decision making. If one of their connections also recommends the product, the percentage went up to almost 73%.

Google and Facebook remain as the top 2 visited sites on the web. Digital media is dominating product purchase research, and with smartphones in more than 50% of mobile subscriber hands, the consumer is armed with mobile technology to access information, compare prices, or find product recommendations and reviews at any given moment. They will access the research and tell others by posting to their personal pages about a product or service. This provides instant results with others on the social platform.  The users will share for a number of reasons including but not limited to the following: announcing a great deal they found, bragging about something they found(ego), asking for recommendations about one product versus another, connecting with friends as part of their daily routine, blowing off steam about an experience, or just because it’s so easy to share. No matter their reason, they are talking and sharing.

Princeton Marketing will help your business effectively create, implement, and maintain a search and social marketing program within your marketing strategy. We are a Greensboro, NC based marketing firm that works with clients locally, regionally and nationally.

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