Public Relations

Effective Strategy Questions

Effective Strategy Questions

Garth Beyer

Communication Strategy

1) What’s the ultimate objective? Can you cut it down to 3-5 words?

2) Who is it you want to communicate with?

3) What do you want them to do? What action should they take after hearing from you?

4) What’s in it for them? Is there a reward to taking that action?

5) This will help you decide the best time to send an email. When is the best time to send your message? And where? Perhaps it’s not email.

6) What is the best tone for this message? Does it align with your voice on other platforms?

7) What’s the central idea? What’s your one word? What’s the point?

 

Stay Positive & Is This Strategy The Best Strategy?

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20 Ways To Boost Your Client Connection

20 Ways To Boost Your Client Connection

Garth Beyer

Surf Bro

PR freelancing has its downfalls, but one particular positive piece about it I love is the chance to connect with a client (be it a person, a business, or perhaps an actual PR agency). Here are 20 ways you can honor, strengthen, and leverage that connection.

1) Do one unexpected thing a week for them.

2) Ask for promo gear. (shirts, mugs, pens, etc,.)

3) Work with, not for.

4) Have their birthdays written on your calendar.

5) Connect them with other like-minded people they have yet to meet.

6) Ask a lot of questions – business and personal.

7) Write blog posts for them without being requested to.

8) Post on review sites. (Must love & trust your client)

9) Share your weekend goodies with them Monday morning. (cookies, cakes, dip, etc,.)

10) Be forward and transparent about your experience working with them. (Keep a work journal they can view anytime)

11) Fire the clients consuming 80 percent or more of your time, energy, money, etc,. (Unless, of course, you only have one client…)

12) Meet up on their turf.

13) Meet up on your turf.

14) Meet up outside each others’ turfs.

15) Friend as many other employees or team members of theirs as possible.

16) Remind them each week of what you’re thankful for.

17) Be forward with what you see is working annnd what you see isn’t.

18) Challenge them.

19) Always have one piece of the puzzle you work on together.

20) Consider at the end of the day.

 

Stay Positive & Every Business Is In The Business Of Connecting

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Reaching The Market Outside Your Home Town

Reaching The Market Outside Your Home Town

Garth Beyer

Marketing Outreach

This is a longer post than I usually write. You could easily skip it and respond to the notification awaiting you on your phone. Alas, I hope you find this as practical, if not more.

We’re All Marketers

I’ve never understood PR folk talking about “outreach” in their own community. To me, that’s inreach, as in, easily in reach; as in, if your business is remarkable enough, the success of it will have enough momentum to touch all those in reach. A great business has inreach built in. Steven P. Dennis calls the hometown diehard fans of a business the obsessive core. Marketers, therefore, are for reaching out beyond the core.

Business plan = inreach.

Marketing = outreach.

Clear? Now let’s tackle the outreach by going over a few tools every marketer needs to understand to reach the market outside their zone, their base, their marked territory.

Not Your Average Advertising

As complicated as Facebook advertising is to understand, it’s quite easy to use to target consumers outside common ground.

Say you’re marketing MobCraft Beer to a state other than Wisconsin where they are based and a current Wisconsin resident follows Mobcraft’s FB page. This follower also has a few out-of-state friends she regularly interacts with. Facebook’s advertising algorithm will pick them up and advertise directly, noting to them there Wisconsin resident friend has liked MobCraft Beer’s FB page and they should too.

All social network advertising, not just social media networks are taking into consideration the value of connections, of handshakes, of conversations over the value of eyeballs. You don’t want the mass, anyway. You want those who matter. Right? Advertising isn’t what it used to be. (That’s a good thing for us marketers.)

Working Email and Mailing Address Lists

There’s no reason not to be A/B testing.

A/B testing in its most simplified definition is trying two different things and seeing which works better. Does a zen-like website page get more click-throughs than a collage-designed page? Will a handwritten card with a great photo on the front work better than a brochure? Will emailing small-time bloggers be more effective than a press release to those in authority? It’s time to find out.

Test and measure, test and measure.

And remember: Don’t get on the scale unless you’re willing to change your diet and exercise routine and don’t change your diet and exercise routine unless you will regularly step on the scale. Test and measure.

Surfing the Internet

If I’m not doing some grunt work, I know I’m not doing the best marketing I can. No matter what client I’m working with, I search on multiple search engines to find forums, blogs, and other places where the tribes have gathered. (And, yes, I go into the depths of Google, far beyond the first, second and third pages of results.) The long tail matters. Every small tribe matters.

A smart place to start is Reddit. A fellow PR daily contributor, Mickie Kennedy wrote a short bit on how to use Reddit for PR.

Through surfing the Internet, you’ll realize very quickly (if you haven’t already) how critical being human is. Most online tribes are skeptical; they will downvote blatant advertising and seek clarification of credibility before they upvote, make a purchase or share what you offer.

You’ll also learn (if you haven’t already) those who are the most loyal to brands are the most likely to turn their shoulder to a brand if they feel the outreach is robotic, if they believe the email they received is the same email everyone else on the list received, if they think you’re just in it for the money or job security or because it’s what your boss told you to do.

Moreover, Outreach has Changed/Improved/Realligned

When I get a pitch that tells me I am part of a company’s ‘blogger outreach program,’ it feels condescending to me. My inclination is to get bristly with the person doing the pitching. Other social journalists feel the same way.” – Shel Israel

Now, I wouldn’t be the first to say you have permission to market to everyone, but why would you need 10,000 strangers when you can make 10 friends, 10 people who trust you, 10 acquaintances who respect you, 10 passionate folk who need you.

Permission is one thing, participation is another. Participation is what matters. Find the 10 avid bloggers who need your product or service and connect with them. Find 10 die-hard craft beer drinkers and get on a Google Hangout together. Successful outreach rarely comes from a single click of “send;” it comes from continuous care, effort, and conversation. There’s another obsessive core out there. Reach out to them.

Successful outreach has improved since the days of mass advertising. It’s not about eye balls anymore; it’s about eye contact.

Now is your chance to build your tribe, to establish connections that matter. As for my last PR/marketing tip: never refer to people you are reaching out to as your target market, as part of your outreach program, as part of your market. They are not a special case because they are outside your hometown, your normal campaign realm, your regular target market. They are all strangers at first, then friends, then customers, no matter what geographical market they are in.

 

Stay Positive & Only Reach Out If You Plan To Truly Lift Someone Up

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PR Freelancers Don’t Neglect The Last Phase

Garth Beyer

Public Relations Phase

A PR strategy can be broken down into three phases. The last, the most important and often neglected.

1) Ideation

Write down everything. Brainstorm. Read about other products’ PR strategies (not just similar brands to the one you’re working with). Talk with a different person each day and ask for help. You can do it alone, but you can do it better with others’ help. Here’s a site I read a lot when brainstorming.

2) Evaluation

No one loves to redo something because they forgot a piece. Nor does anyone enjoy scrapping work they’ve spent hours on because while it may be good work, it doesn’t fit the overall strategy. Evaluation is easy, but dealing with the criticism may prove difficult to handle. You can get attached once you start creating, not before.

3) Creation

Here’s the spot a lot of PR freelancers neglect before pitching their strategy. It’s easy to suggest a business sends out a newsletter. It’s much more difficult to write that newsletter yourself. It’s easy to suggest how to use Twitter and Facebook, but much harder to think of 30 tweets or 24 Facebook posts they can use. It’s easy to suggest building a clock a bird pops out of each hour and sings, but … you get the idea. No business wants to hear what they should do they want to see it. After all, they are hiring you to do it, not just think about doing it.

 

Stay Positive & Go Create Something Special

The Problem With Free Work

Garth Beyer

I’m working with a group to write  and create a new marketing/branding/insert-buzzword-here strategy for a 2 billion dollar a year profiting business. I don’t have an issue sharing the biggest problem with working with this client because my group is doing it for free.

The problem with free services like what my group is doing is you may – and it’s very likely you do – care more about the success of your effort than the client does. From your perspective of having nothing to lose, you can push boundaries, dance on the edge of remarkable and generally roll with any interesting idea you come up with.

From the client’s perspective, if they have nothing to lose, then why waste their time digging up extra information for you, loaning a few of their products to you or giving you a trial of their service.

I’ll show a perfect example below (spelling mistakes kept) from an email I sent to the client asking questions my group needed to know the answers to so we can reestablish the brand. Two takeaways. First, if they were memorable answers, you would be able to guess the brand, but I bet you can’t. Second, the client has given us nothing more to work from.

Is it stopping us? No. Is it holding us back from doing the best we can do. Definitely.

 

Stay Positive & Read On (founder’s name and business’s name altered)

 

Q1. Can you elaborate on Benjamin Gray’s statement that Le Croy makes customers feel “a little like coming home”?

Benjamin Gray just wanted to treat our customers like family and make them feel that Le Croy was a place for them to depend on for quality apparel.

Q2. What do you think is the “extra mile” you go for customers?

We make sure their products are top quality, we answer their calls, emails and social messages, if they have an issue we try to resolve it as quickly as possible, and sometimes we find someone that is not expecting to hear from us and surpise/delight them with new product or special items to say thank you.

Q3. Who are some influential people who wear your brand? Who in pop culture would you consider partnering with?

I don’t have the answer to this one today.

Q4. Can you list some causes your brand supports?

insert link to website

Q5. What are you currently doing with the email addresses you have of customers. Just a newsletter? Can you tell us more how you decide how often to send out an email regarding sales?

We send email daily, segmented by Men’s, Women’s, Kid’s and School Uniform. Home is a secondary message on many emails. We focus majority of contacts on driving sales for the business. Highlighting products that are relevant for the time period. We share promotions when they exist, we usually have 2-3 promotions a week.

Q6. What does wearing Le Croy clothes make people feel?

Clothes that make me look great, good quality, preppy dependable style, ties to nautical.

Q7. Why should the consumers care about Le Croy?

Releavnt styles, quality and great value.

Q8. What is the purpose of Le Croy’s PR Twitter account?

Le Croy has two Twitter account, one is the PR handle. The PR handle is to share news about Le Croy and events that Le Croy is participating in.

Q9. Lastly, we would like to know how each pair of insert company’s jeans is constructed. If you can tell us what materials you use? How the materials are acquired? Where the jeans are sewn together? As well as the creative process in designing the jeans?

I do not have this answer at this time

*To give the benefit of the doubt here. Perhaps this business is transitioning into a new economy layout and doesn’t have answers to the new untraditional marketing strategy basics. Regardless, telling us so would make it much easier to help them than acting like their brand is concrete and perfect.

**What do you think Le Croy could have done better to give us what we need to develop the best marketing strategy for them? What critiques do you have for my group and I? Share your input in the comments section below.

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

Five Minutes Ago

Garth Beyer

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Can anyone relate, that as kids, you were impatient? You couldn’t quite understand why you had to wait in the grocery line so long, or wait in the car while your parents went into a store, or wait for your sibling to get out of basketball practice, or wait for this, or wait for that.

No need to raise your hands with this question, how many have you have been told to have patience? Or that patience is a virtue? Or to just be patient?

We grew up being told over and over to be patient, to wait, to not rush. I’m actually happy to break the news to you … we were taught wrong. Patience is not a virtue – yes, from time to time we can benefit from it but that is simply because as we are being patient, as we wait, our expectations of the result slowly lower so that by the time what we were being patient about happens, we’re just happy it finally happened!

Let’s start with a story. I recently went on a tour of different public relations industries in Chicago with the Public Relations Student Society of America. We all want to be public relations specialists and journalists. I’ve been in the writing industry for quite some time and have some strong contacts here in Madison. While on the trip I got to talking with a girl who is a senior at UW Madison, getting her degree in Journalism. She wants to work in the magazine industry. We talked a lot about it and I mentioned to her that I knew a couple people in Madison in the magazine industry that I could connect her with. We talked it over and I said if she emailed me some examples of her writing, I would review them and then if they met my standards, I would recommend her to the contacts I know. I figured that weekend she would email me. She didn’t. Being forgiving, I sent her a message reminding her I was willing to help her out any way I could and to send me a piece of content. She never did.

This is how I see it. She had patience. She figured if I was willing to help her then she didn’t need to get me an example of her writing right away. Then, as she put it off fear sank in. That’s what happens when you’re patient: fear sinks in, always.

As she waited, taking her time to respond to me, her mind gave her dozens of reasons why she shouldn’t ship me her writing, her art. She began to doubt me because I’m a student too. Maybe her ego told her she wanted to do this on her own. Regardless, if she had reacted immediately, sent me her writing, she could be making progress. But she didn’t. Inaction always proceeds patience.

One last note on the pitfalls of patience. Many people use patience to think things over, to ask better questions, to contemplate the situation, to work their brain. To that I have one thing to say, doing so sparks more fear than certainty. Instead of being patient and letting that happen, that’s why we have what is called an “experience”, that’s why we have evaluations, that’s why we have feedback. If we always do the checking before finishing, we will never finish, never follow through, and never send that email.

Let’s take a different look at impatience, specifically, the benefits of it. In my writing, I always end with saying a reminder to Stay Positive & something else that relates to what I wrote about. Being impatient is one of the greatest actions you can take to stay positive. When you are impatient, you always expect the positive, the best case scenario. You don’t have time for road bumps, detours, or anything else getting in your way. In other words, when you are impatient, you never focus on what you don’t want. And in the case that something problematic does arise, there is no sulking in it, you fix it fast and move on. Impatience will get you places more often than it will prevent you from reaching them. When you’re focused and positive, those are traits of someone unstoppable.

“We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavoring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic … sometimes you just get in there and just force yourself to work, and maybe something good will come out.” – Russian orchestrator, Peter Tchaikovsky

 

Stay Positive & Impatience Credits You To Choose Conventionality

Garth E. Beyer

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