Let’s Clarify What the Job is….

While there are many talented, smart and creative people and firms out there for PR, Advertising and Marketing I have found that many have deviated off course from what the job truly is, what the goals really are and what the clients really need.

Creative ideas and bright ideas are absolutely vital however, they must push forward the end goal – sales and revenue. In this day and age this is not a nice thing to have, it’s a must. That sounds like a simple thing to say and a common and basic knowledge but I see examples everyday that are clearly off-course and not forwarding client goals.

Here’s an examples:

A Facebook widget or video game – look, I like to have fun as much as the next guy and I am guilty of downloading a game or two on my iPhone for sure but here’s the thing… what is the clear goal for the Facebook Game? How are you measuring it? Are you getting reach, interest, sales? There were many many many bright ideas during the 1995-97 period for dot com companies and ideas that sounded cool which distracted millions from the actual goals of what a company must do – which is produce sales of their product or service and generate revenue. It’s not a negotiable point.

The job of any PR agency, marketing firm or advertising agency is simple – create an idea, execute a strategy and communicate with the clients target public audience in order to make the client known to them, create interest and generate actual reach that can be used to assist the sales team and further the company growth and revenue. That’s it! If you have been sold on something other than this, well then they probably are creative geniuses but they are not serving your best interest.

Now is the time to get back to basics while the shift of traditional media continues to become less effective and new media is the vital way to communicate with the massive audiecne that is online using the interest that is now intertwined into every aspect of their lives from laptops to iphones. We must focus on people, relationships, what they need and want and how to communciate with them, service them better and build, cultivate and nurture those relationships in order to generate long term clients.

If you focus on the audience and the clear goals of your company to drive sales and revenue your PR, Marketing or Advetrising efforts will be dramatically improved. Don’t lose sight of the goal. Every tweet should have the goal in mind. Every facebook post should reflect the goal. Every blog article, press release, banner ad, video, photo gallery etc should have the goal clearly in mind and being systematically executed.

-Robert Cornish

Richter10.2 Media Group

http://www.richter10point2.com

The Fundamental Change

Currently the marketing, PR and advertising world is experiencing one of the most dramatic evolutions over the past 100 – 200 years in what traditionally were “tried and true” methods.

I am not sure too many people and professionals fully understand this. I deal with many companies, CEO’s and CMO’s on a daily basis and across the board there seems to be some level of awkwardness and discomfort with the rapid changes.

Over the past 100 to 200 years there have been very workable and fundamental ideas related to how marketing, PR and advertising basically worked and reached a specific audience. There were specific rules and methods to execute strategies that had workable formulas such as positioning, how to write ad copy, how to grab attention via posters, billboards and TV commercials etc. Basic marketing fundamentals like what the typical percent of response will be from a marketing campaign via direct mail, etc.

While all these methodologies worked extremely well all the way up to close to now, unbelievably…. they no longer do. These methods and ideas have run their course and have essentially gone through the stages of infancy from the beginning idea to maturity to dated and now obsolete. It’s incredible to even think about and seasoned professionals clearly seem uncomfortable about it. Speaking to an experienced CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) who wants to still work off of, and hang on to, these old ideas can be rather frustrating as they try to apply something that is obsolete to a new way of thinking.

So what is relevant?

With New Media (social media, etc.) the way to communicate and engage an audience is different. It’s a conversation. It’s on-going and most of how the audience wants to be reached or is receptive to is being decided by the audience – not the marketing, advertising or PR firm. This is a very authentic and transparent approach. We aren’t trying to “spin” a story, we aren’t trying to scream a message and button at the audience to get a response and we aren’t trying to have the audience see a message 7-9 times so they will “act” So what are we trying to do?

We are focused on using new media tools (social media) as a platform to communicate with a specific target audience geared toward your company and use PR to build relations (relationships) with that target audience in order to spark conversations, increase word of mouth, generate buzz and result in interest and reach for the companies’ products or services via acceptance from that target audience.

We are authentically reaching out to get involved with the audience and make a company known to them to build awareness, brand loyalty and stay on the target audiences radar to in turn increase the sales and revenue.

I am sure you would agree that people are more inclined to do business with companies they:

1. Know
2. Like
3. Feel Comfortable With
4. Trust
5. Have a Relationship

Think this through for a second; think of a company you do business with or a person you do business with and then think about why? I am betting it’s because you know them or have a relationship with them or you personally like them or trust them. These ideas are the very essence of why new media (social media) is so powerful. It aligns with the basic way people buy and how sales typically occur.

Now I am not at all talking about spamming people on social media sites or being the “salesperson” that annoys everyone on Facebook! The idea here is to make it natural and in a PR way encompasses engagement, conversations, building new connections, making yourself known and ultimately building real relationships from a given target audience that is desirable to your company that will result in interest in reach for the company and therefore sales and revenue.

It’s not easy. It takes time and knowhow, but, when done correctly, it’s the most effective strategy you, or your company, could possibly apply in today’s market – just ask the audience!

It’s time to look at how you are going about generating new clients…

More and more I have been running into clients who are running into problems with their promotional strategies to drive in new business. I spoke to a business owner last week who was spending $5000-$6000 per month of marketing, postcards and radio and is getting little to no return.

 

I can’t help but scratch my head and wonder why anyone continues to pay huge amounts of money on loss leader advertising and marketing campaigns with little to no net results.

 

The only way that I know of that any sale is made is through generating interest which is the result of being able to effectively “get in front” of a prospective client either through a phone call, referral, email or in person meeting and introduction. So the idea is, how do you get in front of your target prospects to make an introduction and gain interest in your product or service?

 

If you really look at it, the majority of all business owner and potential buyers are currently online so this accounts for a massive public to go after. The fact is that the internet is one huge networking and prospecting pool! Why bother looking elsewhere? Your prospective clients are online and the only reason they are not buying your product or service is because they don’t know about you yet!

 

By effectively using the internet in every aspect, you could have more business than you know what to do with. Your problem won’t be prospects but how to organize them and service them. 

The only two things you should be focused on when it comes to bringing in new prospects to sell are generating massive attention online to promote and gain interest and get your salespeople to sell to all of these prospects!! Simple!

 

Forget the other options and forms of “promotion”, your future clients are online, every one of them. Get their attention and interest them in what you offer and your really won’t have a “lack of business” or “lack of sales” problem.

 

Robert Cornish

www.whywebpr.com

robert@richter10point2.com

The movie promotion strategy…

I was just reading several different magazines that all had the same person in each magazine and while reading I thought about the different demographics of each magazine. I was wondering why this particular celebrity was in the magazine I was reading because it didn’t seem to relate; and then it occurred to me that the strategy is to gain the attention of every single media outlet and demographic to promote their new and upcoming movie.

I realize this may sound like a “no brainer” sort of speak however I hadn’t thought of it before. I am now thinking about what a brilliant strategy Hollywood applies to promote their new up and coming movies and how they seem to be absolutely recession proof. Take a look at it yourself and you can start to think about how you are currently promoting your company in comparison to how you SHOULD be promoting your company….on a Hollywood scale!!!

Let’s look at it for a minute, here are some of the strategies Hollywood applies to promote a new movie:

• An article with the lead actor in the movie in every single magazine they can be featured in
• Newspaper articles, reviews and advertisements
• Billboards
• Park Benches
• Postcards
• TV Commercials
• Internet Banners
• Websites
• MySpace
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Posters on the side of buses
• Taxi cab signs on top
• Posters in movie theaters
• Trailers on every media rich site online

Just think for a second if you didn’t think about how much this all costs but what it would mean to your company and your bottom-line. Imagine creating this level of attention and controlling all of these medias to generate interest in your company. 

This level of promotion would drive in sales and revenue on a massive scale. Now, take a second and look at what you are currently doing to promote your company, really look at it. How are you promoting? 

Now although you may not be able to afford the same strategy Hollywood applies to promoting new movies, there are ways to gain a massive amount of attention and promote your company online that serve the same purpose and cost a fraction in comparison. While the entire world is going online for everything they need both business and personal, it is absolutely vital to utilize the internet to promote your company and get the attention needed to drive in sales and boost revenue. 

Take a full Web PR strategy as an example, this can include:

• Company blogs

• Articles

• Web Video

• Press Releases

• Communication tools

• Social Media outlets

• Press Kits

• RSS Feeds

This is just to name a few, now imagine if your company had a thorough quality Web PR campaign strategy that put your company name in a huge amount of pockets online to dramatically increase attention and actively make your company known which resulted in generating interest, reaches, sales and revenue. 

What is your online strategy now? Do you have a campaign in place? 

When there are little or big dips in the economy, the safest path to surviving is to dramatically increase your promotional actions that help to increase your sales actions and steadily increase your revenue. I realize that most people start cutting back and contracting their promotion efforts but those same people typically go out of business all together. 

From recent news I have read on some of the latest movies, Iron Man ($314M Gross), Indiana Jones ($317M Gross) and Tropic Thunder ($120M Gross), it doesn’t appear that the economy has affected Hollywood in any way which leads me to the idea of promoting your company on a Hollywood scale to gain a massive amount of attention and generate interest to drive in sales and run revenue through the roof while sailing your way through the “bad economy”

By Robert Cornish

Managing Director of Richter10.2 Media Group

www.whywebpr.com

Client Acquisition…..

There are many many ways to acquire new clients as a company, some difficult that require a lot of effort and persistence and some methods can be very effortless if done smartly and strategically.

I wanted to mention a few of the latter….

Here is a first thought, if you are trying to acquire new clients, the first step in doing so is name out who your target public actually is. In other words, who typically buys your product or service. This will be your easiest sale and most likely to buy. This is an important step if you want to make your life easier as it applies to sales. So here are few items to think about and use…

People like to do business with who they know, which means if they know you because you are neighbors or you went to high school together then the chances of them using you for a service or to buy product that they actually need are much greater. Just think about every time you purchased something, if you know a dentist and you need your teeth cleaned, chances are you are going to call the person you know. So with that said, there are ways to use this strategy online to become someone your target public “knows”. How about the many social media sites, by having your bio, picture and info about yourself etc, once you make connections, people feel they know you and will be more inclined to go to you for what they need.

Another item to think about is the fact of how many people there are in the world that most likely need your product or service but never buy from you simply on the basis that they don’t know about you and have never heard about you. There is millions of potential clients out there for your product or service yet they will never buy from you because you are unknown to them. So how can you make yourself known to this huge pool of potential buyers? Well, for starters I am guessing that every person you know has a computer and has an internet connection which means they are all online. With that said, all you have to do is figure out how to harness the vast reach of the internet to be able to make yourself known and to get in front or introduced to these people. That’s it!! Just make your product or service known to your potential public using the huge reach and easy access of the internet and drive sales through the roof.

The key objective for any company is to make relations with your target public in order to control and increase revenue growth. Don’t waste time on people who are never going to need or buy your service or product, make relations with your target public to introduce yourself and create huge amounts of sales opportunities. 

Now, you can go about it in a passive manner (ads, keywords etc) and hope that someone types in the correct keyword or clicks on your ad that hopefully caught their attention so they can land on your site and hopefully call you. Or you can take an ACTIVE approach to prospecting and go out and find your target public demographic online, make an introduction, build relations and create reaches that results in sales for your company. Go and find the business, make your product or service known and get reaches to sell. Simple. 

In order to execute the above steps, it is vitally important to use all of the tools and methods available today to broadly get attention, make yourself known and be visible online as well as actively using the tools to find your target public to make relations with. 

Go out and get the business and take an active approach to boosting your sales!

Robert Cornish

Managing Director

Richter10.2 Media Group

www.richter10point2.com

Attention is Income

The concept of attention is a drastically underestimated element in most companies, CEO’s and business people’s mind. While gauging ROI for a given promotional strategy be it marketing, advertising or PR, many people fail to take into account the power of attention and what that means to the company and why it is absolutely an intrinsic value item that must be looked at to calculate ROI.

The amount of attention a company can attract will directly relate to how well that company does. To the degree that you have “heard of” a company will dictate how well they are doing.
Have you ever heard of GE? How about Virgin? Geico? BMW? They all get a huge amount of attention for their brands. They are all a “heard of” quantity. Yet I speak to companies daily that won’t allocate funds to their brand and attention in order to become a “heard of” quantity because they can’t figure out the ROI. The fact is that their target public audience may need or want their products or services right this second but – they have never “heard of them”. These companies are failing to get a sufficient amount of attention in order to become a known quantity.

image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/crystalflickr/190713106/

Get attention and you will gain clients, customers and revenue, period.
You can never get enough attention. It’s something that must be pushed and expanded week after week. Your public audience needs to know about you. They need to “hear about you”. If they don’t, it will be rather difficult to cultivate new business.

The amount of attention you are attracting will affect your bottom-line. Get the word out! Put your company in the spotlight.
The ways to do this are unlimited with the internet these days. Her

e are a few ideas:

- Social Media
- Blogs
- Videos- Press Releases- Photos
- Events- Twitter
- Status Updates
- Comments
- Websites
- Bookmarking
- RSS Feeds
- Advertisements- Recommendations- Mobile Apps
- Communities
To the degree that you are failing to fully utilize the above, you are missing or losing business and hurting your bottom-line revenue.

Make a point to expand the attention you get week after week and watch your sales and revenue grow

http://richter10point2.com

Social Media FAQ

As a company, we recently gathered and combined all of the frequently asked questions about new media PR and social media we are commonly asked and composed the answers.

We have found there is a lot of confusion among companies on the use of social media, what the ROI is and how a company can effectively leverage these tools as a strategy to improve their bottom-line.

Here are the answers to the questions - http://www.richter10point2.com/faq/

If you have any questions or would like to discuss how we can help develop a new media PR strategy for your company, please get in touch anytime.

Now is the time to step up the attention your company is getting and attract interest to build reach and sales. A comprehensive new media PR strategy that is well coordinated and executed will out-perform any other option out there. We look forward to hearing from you.

 

-Richter10.2 Media Group

Personal Contact

The value of personal contact in this day and age is incredibly high. So many businesses have automated processes and have lost touch with people, relationships and what clients, consumers and customers really want or need.

Yes – it’s a little time consuming to add a personal touch. I can’t tell you how many “out of the office” email replies I get, automated phone messages and thank you for contacting our company auto messages. It seems most businesses have lost sight of what PR, relationships and ultimately sales is all about – people and personal contact with those people

If you are looking to grab someone’s attention, take the time to find out a little about them and make your message personal. As an example, I went to San Francisco this past week and went to a small niche cupcake boutique called “Kara’s Cupcakes”, it is a fantastic cupcake shop and so I grabbed a business card. When I came home I made a point to send them a simple introduction message to introduce our agency to them and in the message the first line read something like this – “I spent the last week in San Francisco and stopped by your store in Ghiradelli Square, I loved your cupcakes and wanted to introduce our agency to you…..

Personal attention and contact gets’s noticed and stands out more than anything else. It also get’s a far better response!

This requires someone who understands PR and how to make relations with companies and people. PR and relationships are the powerful foundations that can dramatically improve your sales. Try this the next time you are prospecting another company or person and figure out how to add a level of personal touch to make your communication authentic.

-Robert Cornish

Find out what we do … http://richter10point2.com

Which Social Media Sites Should I be On?

This is absolutely a personal decision and will vary depending on who you are and who you are trying to reach. For instance, a band and a stock broker could equally benefit from Social Media, but would use different sites and methods to do so.

The first key point in choosing which sites to use is deciding exactly what you want to share and who you want to share it with.

Next, you should think with comprehensive profiles and the four main types of content you will be sharing: video, photo, status messages and blog posts. Ideally, you would incorporate each of these regularly into your Social Media presence and plan to have a presence on at least one site that specializes in each. Following this, a simple yet extremely effective strategy would be to have a Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube and Twitter account, as well as a blog, in your Social Media Campaign.

Lastly, you have to know how much time you can allot to your Social Media efforts.

It is vital to plan the size of your Social Media presence according to what you can comfortably maintain. It is exponentially better to have some key sites always up-to-date than many that are outdated.

Although it is the case that sometimes updating your network can fall to the bottom of the to-do list, in order to be successful at all, you have to keep your profiles up-to-date. Therefore, it is a great idea to make Social Media part of your daily routine, just like checking your emails. If you can only allot 15 minutes each day, realize that 40 different profiles to update is not for you.

So, with a little research and following the three simple points above, you can choose the correct sites that will give you the greatest chance of success.

Relations Sales

This week I was interviewed for a press release that is going out about our agency and while I was being interviewed I thought of the fundamental difference between successful use of a new media PR strategy using social media and every other approach such as traditional media, web marketing, banner ads and on and on which I will go over in a second.

First I wanted to discuss sales. I deal with companies both large and small every single day and have found uniformly that sales is a weak area for those companies. Many companies have been trying to create sales using tricky marketing, smartly targeted advertisements, funny or witty campaigns to hopefully grab attention etc. However, sales is and always has been and will always be about relationships. You have to reach out to the target public (audience) that you want to sell to, make yourself and company known to them and build a relationship somehow to then develop into a sale once you have authentically discovered what that person or company truly needs.

I see time and time again that companies and people are being sold on widgets, marketing ploys etc to hopefully stay fresh in their prospective clients minds and then hopefully that will do the trick and they will magically buy from them. While some of these methods may work to grab attention, there is no avoiding the fact that if you want to sell any person or company, you must 1. truly understand that company or person to understand how revenue flows, what the problems are and how to solve them and 2. you must build a relationship with the person or company that is authentic and built around trust.

Sales happens to be one of our strong suits as a company and I can attest that I follow these actions:

1. Seek the target market I am going after to make a connection somehow

2. Make some kind of introduction to work toward creating a relationship and starting a conversation

3. Really address the prospects needs and wants and work to learn about the prospects company to understand how they make income, what works, what doesn’t etc. Typically by the time I am done this step I feel the prospects company could hire me for sales the next day and I would smoothly start selling for them. Know them that well and you will close them.

4. Build the relationship – be authentic (in other words, be yourself) and work to maintain a very open communication with the prospect. Don’t just jam your ideas down their throat, listen and engage in a lot of back and forth conversation.

5. Address the problems accurately and propose the solution to work toward agreement both ways. Once you can come to an agreement based on what is being proposed, you can then comfortably ask for the sale.

Our agency works on these points everyday and because of this we can deliver our services to our clients far better than most creative agencies due to the fundamental difference that we don’t just create smart campaigns or pretty graphics for our clients, we intimately understand their companies, how the revenue flows, how they make sales and what the key problems are. From there we can cater entirely to them using new media as a platform to attain their goals and objectives with a clearly laid out strategy that is built around real world practicality – sales. We know that the reason any company invests in any PR, marketing or advertising strategy is to boost sales and revenue which would be impossible to attain unless their was a crystal clear understanding of how they sell and how revenue is created for that company.

But the secret behind sales is relationships. You can’t make a sale if you haven’t first made relations with a target public. It’s not an overnight thing, building relations is authentic, it’s transparent and it takes time. Go and try this out to fine tune your sales strategy and you will see for yourself that if you 1. identify a target public you would like to go after and 2. make relations with them and build your pipeline making relations with people and companies developing these relationships into sales one by one, you will see your income dramatically improve.

If you have any questions about how to build relations with a target public, feel welcome to contact me directly http://whywebpr.com/robertcornish

A Simple Guide to Social Media in Business

As you may have already figured out, I am a strong believer of social media in business. I use Twitter and Facebook and blogs every day in my job, and you can too. Here are a few tips and tools to getting yourself started in the social media world.

Social Media for Business Resources

http://courtspencer.wordpress.com/2009/07/22/twitter-is-time-well-spent-not-money-well-spent/ <– Twitter is time well spent, not money.

http://enovapr2.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/its-the-law-2-0/<–Web 2 .0, social media guide.

http://blog.neoco.com/2009/07/22/a-z-of-social-media-this-is-actually-pretty-good/ <– the A-Z of Social Media

http://jeffbullas.com/2009/07/22/5-steps-to-optimize-your-email-for-social-media/ <– 5 steps to Optimize your email with Social Media

http://www.richter10point2.com/buildyourown <– Build your own WebPR campaign!

http://www.whywebpr.com/alimagnano <– My Social Media Press Kit

Ali Magnano
Director of PR
Richter10.2 Media Group
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5 Perfect Snacks to Munch on During Your Workday

After a little research, I found the 5 perfect snacks for you to munch on during the workday, and to get you going. Because who doesn’t get hungry while sitting at their desk all day? It’s inevitable. So you might as well be a little prepared! But these snacks, over other unhealthier snacks like chips and candy, will keep you alert and feeling great.

1)Hard – Boiled Eggs
Rich in protein and will help raise your energy level to get you going!

2)String Cheese
Tasty and easy to eat while you’re at work.

3)Yogurt or Cottage Cheese
Something about yogurt or cottage cheese is very filling, and its also good for you! You can get little to-go cups of either of these at the grocery store.

4)Animal Crackers
These little crackers are the solution to your sweet tooth, and are lower in calories than most other treats.

5)Mixed Nuts
Cashews, almonds, peanuts, walnuts, or all of them! Throw in some dried fruit and raisins to add a little something extra, and this can be munched on all day.

Ali Magnano
Director of PR
Richter10.2 Media Group
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Statistics from President Obama’s Social Media Campaign

Obama and Social Media

Internet Usage in United States

United States Population: 303,824,646
Internet Usage: 220,141,969
Growth from 2000-2008: 130.9%
Stats from Internet WorldStats (Census, Nielson)

Facebook
Obama: 2,379,102 supporters
McCain: 620,359 supporters
Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

MySpace
Obama: Friends: 833,161
McCain: Friends: 217,811
Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain

YouTube
Obama: 1792 videos uploaded since Nov 2006, Subscribers: 114,559 (uploads about 4 a day), Channel Views: 18,413,110
McCain: 329 videos uploaded since Feb 2007 (uploads about 2 a day), Subscribers: 28,419, Channel Views: 2,032,993
Obama has 403% more subscribers than McCainObama has 905% more viewers than McCain

Twitter
Obama: @barackobama has 112,474 followers
McCain: @JohnMcCain (is it real?) 4,603 followers
Obama has 240 times more followers in Twitter than McCain

It is clear that Obama has dominated social media activity. Enough said

Check out how to build your own Web PR campaign here.

Ali Magnano
Director of PR
Richter10.2 Media Group
Visit our Site