Public Relations

How to use public relations to support every stage of the sales funnel

March 4, 2010 By Emily Leary 1 Comment

This is a guest post from Bryony Thomas, Chief Clear Thinker, Clear Thought Consulting Ltd.

Most people initially think of public relations as a technique for generating awareness for their products or services. This is absolutely true, but if this is the only way that you’re using your public relations effort, you’re missing a trick in squeezing every ounce of value from your marketing budget.

In considered purchases, people move through a process of decision-making. At each stage, you have an opportunity to influence whether they continue through to purchase from you, or choose to look elsewhere.

Using Kotler’s model of rational decision-making, here are some ideas for using PR at every stage in the process.

Generating awareness: In addition to getting the word out through press coverage, you can also:

Add key phrases to your press releases that people are likely to use as search phrases.
Post links to your news coverage on your LinkedIn status, Twitter feed, etc.
Add comments against online news stories that your audience is likely to read.

Generating interest: This is about getting people to take the next step of not only knowing who you are, but of being interested in what you have to say:

Use decent coverage as an insert for direct mail or email (NB You’ll need permission).
Use snippets of coverage you achieve in your promotional materials.
Post a response to a news item as a blog, YouTube video, etc.

Standing up to evaluation: When people are evaluating your products or services against the competition, you can:

Point them to positive news coverage.
Use a news story as the basis for a live Q&A or webinar.

Supporting the trial process: When someone is assessing your products and services in detail, you can:

Add PR quotes in your proposal documents to substantiate your claims.
Use press coverage as a reason to drop someone a line when they’re trialling.

Encouraging adoption: At the point where people part with significant money, public relations can:

Create a feel-good factor amongst the wider decision-makers reducing chances of them saying no.

Generating re-purchase and loyalty: If they’ve bought once, you can:

Drop them a line with positive coverage on what they’ve bought for that all-important post-purchase reassurance.
Keep them up-to-date on new offerings by sending them links to press coverage – often more compelling than blatant sales material.

With a bit of thought, you can make more of your PR coverage. This is particularly true if you have a social media set-up in place that allows you to make intelligent re-use of the coverage you’ve worked hard to secure.

For more on this and a few more ideas, you can watch a 10-minute tutorial on how PR supports the sales funnel on the Clear Thought website.

Are you a blogger? March is Be My Guest month, and we’re encouraging bloggers from all over the world to swap posts and reach new audiences. See Be My Guest for more information.

Filed Under: Featured, Guest posts, Marketing, Public Relations Tagged With: Marketing, pr, Public Relations, sales, sales funnel

How to kill a news release in five easy steps

February 3, 2010 By Emily Leary 7 Comments

doa toe tag press release

Planning to put out a press release to publicise your latest business development, promotion or event? Hoping to stand out against the hundreds of releases each of your target journalists receives every day?

Stop, take a deep breath and read these five steps to killing it stone dead before you even hit send.

1. Mass mail your entire address book

Don’t waste time tailoring your release to be relevant to the target publications. In fact, don’t even bother building a database of journalists to whom the story should be interesting. Just drop your entire little black book into the BCC field and hit send! Better yet, use the CC field so that every editor can see just who has received your bit of PR gold. Your release is sure to hit the bin faster than you can hit Select All.

Or, if you’d prefer not to be blacklisted by half the publications in the country:

Decide on a target market (those you want to reach).
Figure out which publications they read.
Write a release which is relevant and interesting to those publications and therefore, their readerships.
Create a distribution list that targets only the specific journalists at said publications who actually cover that kind of story.
Never ever use the CC field. For multiple recipients, always, always BCC.
Ideally, send individual emails that show an awareness of each journalist’s interests, preferences and recent work.

2. Waffle

Journalists have jobs like the rest of us. When they get your email, they may well be on deadline and they’ll almost certainly be pushed for time. If you want to be ignored, waffle for all you’re worth. Make your release several pages long and be sure to avoid getting to the point until well past the bottom of the first screen of text.

Of course, if you don’t want to kill your release, you might try coming up with a clear headline that highlights the main point, keeping your release under one screen of text, and using bullet points at the top to pull out the most salient points.

3. Pile on the jargon

So you’re sending this to small business magazines and your business is IT. In that case, you shouldn’t explain any terms. Keep the acronym soup thick by piling on the ILMs, MDMs and NFCs and throw in an unhealthy helping of near-meaningless phrases such as ‘synergistic architectural solutions’. If your release can’t even be understood, it’s sure to be DOA.

No one, anywhere likes to read unintelligible ramblings disguised as promotional material. Unless you’re purposely writing your release for a specialist publication where it makes sense to use certain industry specific terms, then aim to use words that someone with no prior knowledge of the subject would understand.

4. Don’t fact check or proofread…at all

This is a simple one. To ensure nothing you say in the release is taken seriously in the least, DO NOT read through to check for errors. A few glaring errors can neatly cast doubt on the whole thing and your release will be safely ignored in no time.

In reality, of course, you should always get someone else to read through your release before distribution, correcting spelling errors and fact checking references so that it is totally error free. Mistakes will still happen, so I’m not suggesting your release will bomb with one tiny typo in it, but if it’s full of them, it’s to the detriment of your credibility, so check, check and check again.

5. Write about how great you are

If you really don’t want your release to be considered for even a moment, make sure it contains absolutely zero news, but plenty of information about how great your company is, including info on how your last few customers said they loved your new pencil promotion, and a few paragraphs on the fact that you have a dress down Friday. To totally bomb, remember to include real housekeeping details, such as how you always get your tax return in on time.

Incredibly, to be considered newsworthy, a news release needs to contain some element of…news. It’s never possible to be 100% sure a release will be of interest to your recipients, but research helps.

Go back to those target publications and have another read, and another, and another.
Get to know what represents a real story, and what doesn’t.
Think about whether you really believe readers would be interested in your story. The answer should always be a confident, yes!

In writing this post, I’m not in any way implying that I’m perfect, or that you need to be. Journalists are not finicky villains and they will forgive small mistakes – but they don’t have the time to plough through impossible releases.

We all have a job to do, so let’s do it the best that we can.

Filed Under: Featured, Public Relations Tagged With: bad pitch, gaffe, News, news release, press release, wrong

Spam wars: saving PR from itself

January 28, 2010 By Emily Leary 3 Comments

spam public relations

A campaign against the level of irrelevant material circulated by PRs has been launched under the heading ‘An Inconvenient PR Truth‘. And the associated findings do not make pretty reading for the industry.

Release distribution service RealWire (who are leading this latest campaign) launched a survey late last year to look at just how widespread the problem of press release spam really is.

Respondents were people who receive news releases on a daily basis, including journalists, editors, bloggers and publishers.

Levels of irrelevance

The report estimates that 1.7 billion irrelevant news release emails are received by UK and US journalists every year. The survey suggests that more than three quarters (78%) of news releases issued are not relevant to the recipient, and over half (55%) of respondents stated that they have blocked some distributors due to high levels of irrelevance.

The average number of news releases received per respondent per day was 54, but 18% of respondents receive over 100 releases a day. Most worryingly, 57% of respondents stated that 80% of the releases that they receive are irrelevant, whilst 23% said that a ludicrous 96% of releases received are irrelevant.

Acceptable levels of irrelevance

When it came to opinions on what constitutes acceptable levels of irrelevance, the results varied greatly. Whilst 37% stated that they would consider it acceptable if no more than half the releases they received were irrelevant, 27% considered it acceptable if less than 2 in 10 releases proved relevant.

Welcome topics

The survey also asked about what kind of news releases are popular, and which are unpopular. Whilst the most popular subjects include product and market-related releases, the unpopular topics cited included office openings, job appointments, awards, financial results, and client and/or customer wins.

The personal touch

Respondents were asked about their feelings when it came to how news releases are addressed – do they mind receiving something that has clearly been mass-mailed provided that it is relevant, or do they prefer emails that are addressed to them?

The survey’s results show that 25% of respondents prefer releases to be addressed to them and furthermore, that 33% prefer emails that come from a named individual.

Taking action

These findings won’t come as a surprise to many in the industry. Since the advent of technology that allows huge mailing lists to be created at the click of a button, online PR spam has been a serious issue.

Back in June, I blogged about a survey revealing the extent of PR spam:

Of course, it’s now relatively easy to set oneself up as a PR professional, buy access to a media database and start churning out releases in all directions. Spam exists in every industry – why should PR be any different? They say spam accounts for some 90-95% of all emails sent, so it’s not really surprising that journalists are being targeted.

There’s little doubt that spam is rife, and that it is eroding the PR industry’s ability to communicate effectively, so what does An Inconvenient PR Truth propose to do about it?

The Bill of Rights

In a bid to improve PR practice with regards to relevance, An Inconvenient PR Truth has released a ‘Bill of Rights’, arguing that the industry should address the research findings by respecting the rights of recipients, which include:

‘Permission required’ – only send releases to those who have given permission directly or publicly.
‘Timely unsubscribe’ – stop sending releases when asked.
‘Don’t rely on media lists exclusively’ – research independently to target accurately.
‘Read publication first’ – know what a person writes about and how before you approach them.
‘Categorise interests in detail’ – don’t target broad categories such as ‘finance’ or ‘technology’

The campaign calls on all those in the industry to sign up to the bill, in the hope of improving irrelevance levels and reducing ‘pollution’ in the PR industry.

Will it work?

After chatting with @AdamVincenzini, @AdParker and @KerryMG about this on Twitter this morning, my feeling is that many people know they spam and don’t care. For that group, I doubt they’ll be moved from their old ways.

But for the young and/or naive who don’t know any better, this could help change perception, and with the backing of some leaders in the PR world, could improve the industry as a whole. Let’s hope so anyway.

To find out more about the campaign, visit An Inconvenient PR Truth.

Addition: There is an interesting post on how journalists could tackle the issue of PR spam over on Max Tatton-Brown’s blog.

Filed Under: Featured, Public Relations Tagged With: good practice, industry, irrelevance, pr, Public Relations, relevance, wire distribution

Getting good PR out of the big freeze

January 20, 2010 By Emily Leary 3 Comments

Broken glass

The ‘big freeze’ that struck the UK earlier this month undoubtedly had a negative impact upon business. With people unable to get to work and vital deliveries delayed, the cumulative loss to UK enterprise is predicted to top £1 billion.

Nevertheless, some businesses ploughed on through the terrible conditions and got good PR out of the bad weather.

Here, in no particular order, is a selection of examples:

1. Positive Computing, based in Berkshire, were relatively unaffected by the bad weather, with managing director Julian Lewis able to run the business from home whilst keeping in touch with his home working staff. In fact, according to the resulting press report, the bad weather saw demand for the company’s expertise – setting up remote workers – soar.

2. Internet telephony service Skype made the press repeatedly, being cited as a vital tool for many business looking to avoid having to cancel meetings or lose contact with clients.

3. The workers at Cleveland Potash salt mine sacrificed large parts of their Christmas break to ensure that the incredible demand for salt was met. Indeed, some even worked on Christmas Day, winning some positive press.

4. Despite schools and nurseries being closed across the UK, some remained open. Indeed, Daisy Chains Day Nursery in Flint, Wales even went as far as to accommodate extra children from other nurseries that had been closed, winning favour with the media and, no doubt, parents.

5. Outsourcery, a communications and hosted IT company, garnered some positive publicity when they reported a 20% increase in enquiries over the cold snap as small and medium sized businesses looked to for communications solutions to the problems caused by the snow.

The lesson here: good PR practice isn’t just about making announcements when you have a new product or service, it’s about keeping an eagle eye on current events (local and national) and being ready to make a comment or provide additional information wherever relevant.

Did you manage to get positive press for yourself or a client during the freeze? Please add your stories in the comments section below.

(Hat tip to Marketing Donut for giving me the idea for this post)

Filed Under: Featured, Public Relations Tagged With: bad weather, big freeze, frozen Britain, good PR, pr opportunities, snow, uk snow, uk weather

Are you getting value from your PR agency?

January 18, 2010 By Emily Leary 4 Comments

Tick boxes

The latest update of the Bellwether Report, published today, shows that whilst marketing spend declined for the ninth quarter running, PR budgets saw a slower rate of decline in the final quarter of 2009 compared to the previous quarter – from 24.4% down to just 4%. The report also shows that the rate of budget trimming in the industry is at its slowest since the first quarter of 2008.

Whilst times are undoubtedly still tough, these results suggest the industry can be optimistic about the year ahead, with marketing spend predicted to increase in 2010.

For those in the PR industry, the report underlines the importance of providing a service that delivers strong results and offers value for money. Whilst the green shoots of recovery are perhaps starting to surface, the recession continues to hit people and businesses hard and there is no guarantee that the renewed optimism within the PR industry will be replicated elsewhere.

Despite these positive findings, the purse strings of the average UK business are still a lot tighter than they used to be when it comes to budgeting for PR and marketing campaigns, and many might well still opt for the cheapest option rather than best option in this climate.

For businesses tempted to engage the services of a PR agency, finding the balance between value and price can be tough. Before you leap on the cheapest option on the table, here are some questions to help put ‘value’ in perspective:

Is saving money worth the risk?

If a painter does a bad job, you can always get someone better in to make it as good as new. The risk involved in opting for the cheapest provider is relatively low. Not so in marketing, where the risk of damage is much greater.

Any PR work undertaken will reflect on both your product and your company as a whole, helping to determine their success or failure potentially well beyond the duration of the campaign.

Is the pricing of the service blinding you to the true value?

Some agencies might seem expensive, while others might seem cheap, but neither is necessarily an indication of the quality of the service they offer.

Look at each option on the table and consider the agency’s track record and exactly what they are offering first. Once you have a sense of the hierarchy of quality, compare this against the prices. Is the cheapest agency offering the lowest value? You might be surprised, but equally you might simply find proof of the old adage, “you get what you pay for.”

Can the potential return on investment justify a higher spend?

While larger companies tend to have a tried and tested formula for setting the budget around a product or service launch, many smaller firms will simply set their budget based on a combination of what they feel they can afford at the time, balanced against the mean cost put forward by competing providers.

When you have all of your quotes in front of you, assess the potential return from each proposed campaign. In many cases, getting value for money may mean spending more, but you will get a better return in terms of campaign reach, support and quality. Pound for pound, the value could be higher.

Put simply, when setting your marketing/PR budget this year, remember: you’re not just paying for the hours worked, you’re also paying for the contacts, the support, the experts and, most importantly, the results.

Filed Under: Featured, Marketing, Public Relations Tagged With: budgets, competition, cost, pr, Public Relations, recession, value, Writing

Emily Cagle Communications is recruiting

October 15, 2009 By Emily Leary Leave a Comment

Crowd silhouette

We’re looking for the brightest rising star in the region to come and join our vibrant agency as we continue to win clients nationwide.

If you want to be part of an exciting, growing company, this could be the job for you.

Emily Cagle Communications specialises in public relations and copywriting. We’ve been trading for 14 months and are now looking for an experienced full-time PR account manager to join our team in Lincoln.

You’ll work at our bright, spacious offices in central Lincoln, getting hands-on with a host of exciting clients, ranging from tiny start-ups to established national brands.

You will have:

experience at account manager level
experience working with clients in the service industries, especially HR, legal and financial services
excellent attention to detail
accomplished writing skills
confident telephone manner and experience working with journalists
a good book of media contacts
an ability to take ownership of projects and drive them forward
a love of, and commitment to, public relations

In return, we can offer:

a competitive salary, based on experience
in-house and external training
a fun, fast-paced work environment

To apply, please send a covering letter of no more than 350 words along with your CV to info[at]emilycagle[dot]co[dot]uk.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Filed Under: Public Relations Tagged With: east midlands, expansion, jobs, lincoln, Lincolnshire, pr, Public Relations, recruitment, vacancy

The first and the last word in charity adoption

September 25, 2009 By Emily Leary 3 Comments

As is pretty obvious from the title of this blog, words are my business. I spend most of my waking hours choosing them carefully, writing them out, looking back through them, talking them through with colleagues, clients and friends, tweaking an adjective here and an imperative there to (hopefully) produce the perfect copy.

So, when I came across the Adopt a Word initiative that allows you to ‘adopt’ a word for charity, my first thought was, “What word shall I get?” and my second was, “What a great idea!”

I’ve written about fundraising and the importance of a theme/activity that inspires people before, and the Adopt a Word concept strikes me as a little bit of genius. Everyone I mentioned it to knew immediately which word or words they wanted most.

Head over to the Adopt a Word website and you’ll see that this project has plenty going for it: a concept you can get on board with, a worthy cause, celebrity endorsement (lots of), and even merchandise to show off your newly adopted word.

All funds raised go to I CAN, the creators of the project. I CAN is the children’s communication charity, which aims to ensure that no child is left behind because of a difficulty speaking or understanding.

Its mission:

“To make sure that everyone in contact with children knows how important communication is, what a communication problem looks like, and what they can do to help.”

So, the core concept – words – is very closely tied to the charity it supports. The Adopt a Word concept gets prospective donors thinking about words, and realising how much they value communication, which helps to highlight the importance of the I CAN cause – excellent stuff.

Clare Horwood , Head of Individual Giving  at I CAN,  was kind enough to run me through the background to the project:

“Adopt a Word is one of our fundraising campaigns to raise money from individuals. Alternative gifts are a great way for charities to increase their donations, but it’s a fairly crowded market.

“Obviously, we can’t use goats or pandas so words, which are at the heart of our cause and the building blocks of communication were the natural choice.

“By putting words up for adoption we hope to make their importance understood in the context of children with communication difficulties. Also, because words have such a broad appeal it means we can extend our reach beyond the traditional donor and way out into the twitterverse!”

The initiative has been running since October 2008, but recently received a boost when Stephen Fry purchased ‘wordy’, sparking a flood of donations. I think with another push on social media and via more traditional marketing and PR channels, it could receive much wider exposure.

Adopt a Word’s Twitter persona (@adoptaword) is starting to make waves but as with any initiative, there will be areas for improvement and the guys at I CAN are (unsurprisingly) great to communicate with, so I’m betting all suggestions are welcome.

Personally, I have suggested adding PayPal as a payment option and adding a button so that people can push a message to Twitter about their adoption. What do you think?

(Thank you to @reedwords for making me aware of this. And in case you’re wondering, I bought ‘social’)

Filed Under: Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media, Writing Tagged With: charity, communications, giving, Marketing, pr, Public Relations, words

Great expectations: getting real about sponsorship

September 9, 2009 By Emily Leary 1 Comment

Today, MarketingDonut.co.uk have kindly published my guest post on maintaining realistic expectations when sponsoring a cause, event or initiative.

Here’s an excerpt:

At this point, you might start seeking coverage in your own industry’s ‘trade publications’, but here’s a warning:

In most cases, the media simply don’t view sponsorships themselves as newsworthy.

Visit “Expose yourself properly: No story means no PR” now to read the full post.

Filed Under: Events, Featured, Guest posts, Public Relations Tagged With: coverage, expectations, exposure, guest post, media, pr, Public Relations, sponsorship

Diagnosing weak marketing: a good cause for heart failure

August 10, 2009 By Emily Leary 13 Comments

The £1 Challenge was a noble idea: get one million people to donate just £1 in the space of four months to raise £1m for the British Heart Foundation. In the end, however, the attempt was dubbed by its organiser, Steve Trister, as a “catastrophic failure”, raising just £2,329 and receiving very little media coverage.

Raising over £2k for charity is not to be sniffed at, but it is a long way from the £1m target, and in the video from Steve that draws a curtain over the challenge, he is visibly disappointed.

From my perspective as a marketer, here are the main five reasons I think the campaign failed to launch:

1. Uninspiring challenge

The idea of raising £1m is interesting but, frankly, a bike ride is not. The tie in between healthy exercise and healthy hearts is a no brainer, but there was no stunt to inspire the hearts and minds of the national press and social media trend setters. A campaign like this needs to be visual and exciting from the outset – the £1m target was not an exciting enough concept by itself.

2. Local cause

Steve suggests that perhaps a cancer charity would have fared better, but I think it was the locality that was the problem. An international charity would have encouraged international donations, and thus broadened the reach of the campaign. That said, if the UK media and online community had got behind it, I believe it could still have succeeded with a UK cause.

3. Lack of celebrity

Steve Trister seems like a great guy with some great ideas, but he’s not a known face. Journalists are looking for a hook that will interest the masses, and a famous face early on could have helped the cause. Some celebrity endorsement was secured, but it was low key, and too late.

4. Over-reliance on social media

There were lots of earnest social media users helping to promote the cause in the beginning, but without the PR to support it, this ran out of steam. Some press coverage would have ignited and reignited public interest and helped drive the campaign on.

5. Lack of planning

Steve acknowledges himself that the campaign could have been a success with more planning. The problem is, when everyone is donating their services for free, there is only so many hours they can realistically offer. Strong media relations was needed in the months before campaign went public to get nationals to back the cause and help launch it with a bang.

Steve has promised to come back with another challenge in six months, and I wish him luck – I just hope he spends the next six months taking his own advice and planning carefully to make the next challenge a full-blooded success.

Filed Under: Events, Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media Tagged With: campaign, charity, failure, fund raising, Public Relations, £1 challenge

What price news?

August 6, 2009 By Emily Leary Leave a Comment

So, Rupert Murdoch wants to charge for all online content from News Corp, which includes The Times and The Sun.

On the one hand, eyeballs are increasingly moving online, so this form of news has to be monetised if publications are to pay journalists’ wages. On the other, news is everywhere, from an abundance of sources, so should the chosen few really have the right to charge? More significantly, would you pay to retain the right to read, or simply go elsewhere?

I posed these questions over on Facebook, and I think the answers are worth reproducing here as they pretty neatly tackle the key issues.

Protecting copyright

David Bennett picked up on the associated copyright implications of charging for access to online content:

My take is that If news costs to produce, why shouldn’t the producer be entitled to charge for it if there is a demand?

I notice that the final para of the article in the Guardian states ‘He accepted that there could be a need for furious litigation to prevent stories and photographs being copied elsewhere: “We’ll be asserting our copyright at every point.”

And that I think is the nub – easy and unauthorized redistribution on the web.

So, how will News Corp police the passing of information it uncovers into the public domain? We can’t own news, just the way it’s presented.

A little rewording and the pulling together of a few additional sources and bloggers could easily push the content into the free domain with little danger of being prosecuted, successfully at least, for copyright theft.

The micro-payment holy grail

But people seem to like their news primarily from the big, established sources with professional journalists. And, as David points out, we already pay for printed media, so how will this pay-per-view system be implemented? And can it be implemented successfully?

Gaz Bailey doesn’t think so:

This is good news as far as I’m concerned, certainly regards the Sun and The [News of the World].

Adopting this model will cut the number of people accessing the content down to the much smaller number who are prepared to pay for it removing more casual readers from the pool, and if NewsCorp et al plan to litigate against anybody they perceive to be recycling ‘their’ content, God forbid that might actually clean the internet up of cretinous celebrity news a bit.

Wayne Smallman has fewer doubts about the micro-payment model in theory, but questions whether it can work it practice:

Now that micro-payments are both practical and acceptable, the idea is doable, but I just can’t see this working somehow.

As a businessman, I totally agree with Murdock’s intention of making money from the web. They are producing the news, so why not?

In practice, and when competing with blogging, micro-blogging and social media, it’s hard to make a business case for what is mostly free.

The genie is out of the bottle…

Subscription model?

So, if we accept that news is worth paying for, says Darren Gallagher, the question is, how much is it worth?

Everything will eventually end up, in majority, online. So paying for online news is a natural progression. Free newspapers are becoming a thing of the past, especially high quality ones.

So the real question is, how much are you willing to pay for news? I personally, would be willing to pay a subscription to access the paper I buy daily, but instead of picking it up from the newsagents, accessing it online.

This is because I trust the quality of the articles, editorial opinion and the overall content. I also believe that journalists should be paid for their content. So I wouldn’t begrudge paying a subscription one little bit, as long as the standard remained high.

And Rob Bennett points out that the subscription model is already working out rather well for one media giant:

There is, of course one organisation out there now who have the resources to produce totally ‘free’ regional, national and international content (TV and web) to the same level and volume as News Corp by forcing every television owner in a very large country to pay for the content it produces whether they watch it or not. I currently subscribe to the BBC for £139.50 a year.

Personally, I wouldn’t really mind a pay-per-click model since the cost would be reasonably weighted in favour of the sources I like best and use most. Yet, subscription seems the more likely model since News Corp needs to ensure a minimum bottom line.

In the end, the proof will be in the pudding. No doubt ‘old media’ will be watching with bated breath to see if News Corp can pull this off. And if it does, there can be little doubt that the rest will follow suit.

Filed Under: Copywriting, News, Public Relations, Writing Tagged With: journalism, micro-payments, news corporation, newspapers, online news, Social Media