PR

Add All The Public Relations Curb Appeal You Want

Garth Beyer

You’re a realtor. If the house is a log cabin and you’re trying to appeal to a more modernistic Le Corbusier-type of consumer, sprucing up the curb, the walkway, the mailbox won’t do it.

Companies who are labeled with a target consumer, don’t often grab hold of someone new outside of the described (and perceived) demographic. (And that’s okay!)

Apple might pick up some 60+ year olds, but do they really contribute to the success of Apple?

Hot Topic might get a preppy teenager to come in the store by advertising polos, but is it a smart use of space for the possibility of reaching a different demographic member?

Lands’ End might try appealing to a younger generation of women, but will the advertising strategy work?

Many businesses throw themselves under the bus by trying to be something they are not, by trying to wiggle their way into the minds of a different demographic. What happens? They end up ignoring the strength of the tribe they already have. Curb appeal may grab the attention of difference consumers, but at the same time it confuses your current ones.

At some point you have to realize you need to create a new product to reach the new target audience (if that’s really what you want). At some point, no amount of curb appeal will attract the number of new customers you hope for.

My advice when you know you’re at the end of the rope, tie a knot.

Praise your current market. Instead of paving a new pathway to the house, add more to it. Give back to existing customers. If your business is a traditional one, drop the idea of a mobile app and revert back to rewarding those who share through word of mouth and refer you to friends.

Apple is successful because they admire the early adopters. Hot Topic is still open because everything is still black and they have CDs. Lands’ End will grow more if they create a referral program for consecutive consumers rather than telling 20-year-olds what they should be wearing (without changing the style of the product, merely its curb appeal).

I’m a PR strategist who prides himself in being honest. Can you get new customers? Certainly. Can you get the number of new customers you want (or will need once you start confusing your existing/returning ones)? No.

Sometimes it’s easier, better, cheaper to build a new house than to add to the curb appeal of the one you own. (Especially when the one you own is beautiful as it is!) Plus, it’s more fun to create a new product that fits the target audience you want than to stretch the fabrics of the current product. Sooner or later, it won’t fit your consumer base, and that’s when you crumble.

 

Stay Positive & Tie A Knot And Show It Off

Better Ideas Than Meeting Spec

Garth Beyer
  • Surpassing spec.
  • Spending a few nights building a new strategy plan and pitching it.
  • Finding ways to deliver promises faster.
  • Adding more or something different. Being generous. Giving goofball gifts.
  • Taking two minutes to make the message more personal and empathetic.
  • Showing clients the fun you had developing their plan.
  • Making larger promises and then surpassing them by over delivering.
  • Hiring a better editor.
  • Scraping the plan of mediocrity and tasks of ill-used time.
  • Trying something new.

 

Stay Positive & Meeting Spec Isn’t Good Enough (More on good enough)

More Than Just A Roll

Garth Beyer

There’s something special about business and branding that I’ve always loved. It’s the pinnacle moment when a business goes from profiting from just one product or one rote service, to offering other products or services. Let me break it down for you.

Business 1 only sells product X. Product X is incredible, it’s what business 1 is known for. Business 1’s brand is completely based on product X. People are obsessed with product X.

Business 1 can certainly continue selling product X without seeing a deficit. There’s no need to change, no need to add anything, no need to appeal to a larger market. But, they decide to. (My favorite part about PR is promoting this transition.) Now Business 1 sells product Y and Z based off of product X.Airwick-Cinnabon

What if I told you Business 1 is Cinnabon, product X is the Cinnabon roll and now product Y and Z are Cinnabon air freshener and Cinnabon Vodka.

In one of my most popular blog posts, I wrote about offering variety; it is better to create original products than more flavors of one. Cinnabon has done just that by creating new products rather than creating different flavored Cinnabon rolls.

I tip my hat to Cinnabon. Kat Cole knows what she’s doing. However, I’m still upset that I can’t order orange juice with my Cinnabon anymore. I guess I’ll survive.

 
Stay Positive & There’s More To Variety Than Just Flavor

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The Pickier You Are

Garth Beyer

Pick the Gold

Here’s a piece of advice you won’t buy (until you finish reading the post): don’t be the agency with the most accounts, don’t be the client service team with the most clients, don’t be the business that tries to appeal to the masses.

If you’re shooting for success, whether it’s in entrepreneurship or freelance, you have two options. You can be the best in terms of producing a select few outstanding accounts/clients/products or you can be the best in terms of producing the most accounts/clients/products.

With the latter, you sacrifice a lot. You take on clients who don’t have high expectations of themselves. You end up running client services for clients you don’t care about. You create products without any heart, without a story worth buying.

With the former, quite plainly, you get to practice your best. Now, I can’t express enough how important it is to define success for yourself. Even if it’s an assorted list of things, feelings or goals. You don’t need some four paragraph structured mission statement. Life isn’t cut and dry enough for that to work anyway. To define success is to understand what being the best really means.

Success – or growth of that matter – are not always by the numbers. Think of yourself as a publisher. Do you take on 5,000 novels a year, pushing them out the door as quickly as possible? Or do you get picky and cater to the 100 novels that are sure bestsellers?

This example is about to get interesting, so keep up.

Perhaps you’re going into PR. Are PR agencies looking to hire as many aspiring specialists as possible to build the agency up? Or are they going to seek the few specialists who actually represent their title of “special”its? Let’s flip this around now.

You’re looking for a job in PR. Are you going to shotgun your résumé to all the big agencies that run through new interns like a laundry list? Or are you going to seek the small agency that pours every drop of their heart into the work they do (after all, they have the time since they aren’t trying to baby an intern a week)?

You have an option to be remarkable, to be picky.

 

Stay Positive & Why Waste It?

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Long Form Vs Short Form

Long Form Vs Short Form

Garth Beyer

Long form

I made a not-so-pretty big mistake when I started my blog. I wrote long form posts, I wrote tall orders, I wrote laundry lists instead of a few bullet points. I wrote posts that would take four minutes or longer to read. That was a mistake.

For any business, a blog is essential, press releases are essential, newsletters and other forms to update people are essential.

Getting the length of them right – even more essential.

Now I can get away with writing a long form post. I couldn’t before because I didn’t have any true fans, no passionate customers, no connected friends to what I was writing about.

Think of the websites that you go on to read, whether it’s for news, fiction or self-help. Now filter through the authors and pick which ones you would read a five-minute post if they wrote it. Your list of authors dwindles, doesn’t it?

When writing anything, knowing how to write to your audience is everything, but knowing how also means knowing how long or how short you can make it so they will read.

New readers, new customers, new fans, new friends, new strangers – none of them will spend their time reading a long form piece from you. 140 characters to 200 words is about all you have to work with.

Let me make something clear. I don’t think the internet has made us incapable of focusing our attention on something longer than two minutes. I simply think that it’s more difficult than ever to have a true and passionate follower.

Well worth the work though.

 

Stay Positive & Tell Me Again Who Your Focus Is On

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Every. Word. Matters.

Garth Beyer

I came across this agency’s website this evening. I love their message and nearly, just nearly, do I love their motto.

Words

“We are fearless. Inventive. Humanistic.”

Am I the only one that thinks the word humanistic looks, sounds and feels opposite of what it’s meant to? Why not shorten it. “We are fearless. Inventive. Human.”

Every word matters. You would never say your were humanly over the weekend. Nor would you say you were humanistic. Then again, I guess making mistakes like this is only human.