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!

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

Twitter PR

The buzz around Twitter is spectacular!! Everywhere I turn I hear about it….

What have they done to accomplish this? Well here is what has not been done:

-No marketing campaign

-No advertising campaign

Twitter has one of the best PR campaigns I have ever seen…. word of mouth and buzz which has rapidly build interest, reach and users!! The real estate value of Twitter must be going through the roof by the day!

This shows how you can use social media communications and tools like Twitter to get people talking and create buzz that can be targeted to an audience and result in huge amounts of demand, interest and reach.

If used effectively, any company can benefit from this exact strategy t0 generate reach, sales and revenue. PR is what does it.

Best

-Robert Cornish