Persuasion

Open beak, insert foot

Twitter is a great channel for communicating quickly.  That doesn’t mean you can ignore the advice your parents gave you as a child:  put your brain in gear before opening your mouth.

Someone should have told this to Kenneth Cole, who tweeted an ill-timed self-promotion, and was taken to task for it.

Read about it here.

Words that should be banned

From the time we’re kids, we’re taught that there are certain words you just can’t say.  Those of us who had a hard time sticking to the rules usually had them reinforced with a bar of soap.

  We certainly don’t recommend censorship, but we do believe there are certain words that should be banned from corporate messaging. 

We’re in good company.  David Meerman Scott developed his “Gobbledygook Manifesto” to demonstrate his frustration with companies that speak in jargon or with over-used words. According to Meerman Scott, the top five overused words by corporations are: next-generation, flexible, robust, world class and scalable. 

We have our own list of “banned words” that we enforce during messaging workshops with our clients.  It’s hard work, but we believe there are better ways to say what you do by focusing on how you benefit customers.

Our banned words include:

Award-winning
Best
Cutting-edge
Empower
Ground-breaking
Innovative
Integration
Leading
Mission critical
Next-generation
Revolutionary
Strategic partnership
World-class

What words would you add to this list?

PR drives revenue

If you think that public relations is just for brand building, you’re wrong.  PR also can be an inexpensive and very effective way of filling your sales pipeline and keeping it full. 

This isn’t theoretical.  We have clients who are “revenue marketers,” and measure every aspect of their marketing program, including PR.  These clients can say definitely that PR is a major drivers of sales leads for their B2B businesses.  In fact, one of our clients determined that PR contributes to about 70 percent of her sales leads. 

To work, companies need to change the way they think about PR.  PR is not just for brand building or to blast news.  Here are the steps we take to ensure a steady pipeline of leads for our clients:

 

• Integrate PR with marketing.  This includes the integration of messages, campaigns and technology to measure the effectiveness of PR activities.  PR and marketing need to plan their efforts together for the biggest impact.
• Create ways to drive actions.  Give potential customers a reason to interact with your company.  We’ve found one of the best ways is to offer really good content, such as a white paper, video link, newsletter, etc.  Use unique links and keep sign up easy by asking only for basic information, such as name and email.
• Link everything.  Create links back to content from every source possible.  This includes putting links in articles, blog posts, tweets, Facebook, etc.
• Show, don’t tell.  Demonstrate your expertise by highlighting how you’ve helped customers.  Develop customer case studies that include strong metrics and a good story.  Place these testimonials to the media, post them on your blog, and send out via social media channels.  Always include a unique link back to your website.
• Measure, analyze and refine.  Measure the success of every effort by identifying how many prospects came to your website and where they came from.  Unique links will help with this.  Take it a step further and track each prospect all the way through the sales pipeline.  With this information, refine your PR program so it focuses on those channels that bring in the best leads.

 

Celebrate our anniversary; win an iPad

This year, Clarus Communications celebrates its 13th year in business. 

We have grown thanks to the unwavering support of our clients and friends, who have been a tremendous source of referrals for us.

To mark this occasion, we’d like to give YOU a gift.

Through March 31, 2011, we’re rewarding you for rewarding us:

• Refer us a new retainer client and get an Apple iPad 32G with Wi-fi or a $500 Visa gift card.  
• Refer us a new messaging workshop client and get a $100 Visa gift card.

Simply email us at info@teamclarus.com with contact information for anyone you think could use our services.  We’ll take it from there.  If your referral becomes our client, we'll send you a gift!

Thank you for your support over the years.  We wouldn’t be here today without you!

Thank you for suing us

That's the headline on Taco Bell full-page ads that ran today in major newspapers including Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Chicago Tribune.   

For anyone who believes in the power of messaging, this is a triumph.  

Accused of putting small amounts of beef in their tacos, the fast food chain stepped up and boldly responded to the accusations by telling their story using their messaging.

Read more about the ads here.

What do clients want from their PR agencies?

As with all clients and suppliers, if PR agencies want to keep their clients for the long term they must communicate with them regularly and relevantly and offer good value, according to a blog on PRmoment.com. Clients also want to work with the best that the agency has to offer.

The entire blog can be found here.

What do you want from your PR agency?

 

Six easy ways to be an effective PR partner

By Guest Blogger Carissa Newton

I have managed public relations in a wide range of capacities over the years.  As part of a large corporation, I've seen PR used conservatively to send out announcements and manage any crisis that would arise.  As I moved into smaller, more entrepreneurial organizations, I partnered with a number of PR firms.  Now as a Clarus Communications partner, I have seen our efforts gaining traction and producing real results.

As a result, I’m becoming a better partner to our PR firm.  I can see that my participation in the process impacts the results of our ongoing activities. 

Here are six tips I would give to any organization looking to leverage their public relations efforts:

1. Become ONE with your messaging:  This may seem simple, but once our company’s messaging was ingrained in my vocabulary, it became simple to bring the story back to who we are, what we do and why we are different.  It's also amazing to me how everyone in a company begins to speak the same language once you have a solid messaging platform.  A top-notch public relations firm will make messaging one of your first activities upon engagement.
2. The early bird gets the worm:  I have always worked to be the first in a lot of areas....maybe it has something to do with being first-born.  Either way, this concept is key to harnessing the power of your PR efforts.  Be the first to talk about trends, be the first to respond to a reporter’s inquiry, be the first to put your opinion out, and be ready to jump at a moment’s notice for your PR firm.  They can secure exclusive opportunities if you are ready and willing.
3. Share even the most mundane things:  When you work in a business day in and day out, it’s surprising how jaded you can become as to what is interesting or worthy of media coverage.  Communicate often with your PR partner to ensure that you are sharing even some of the day-to-day  occurrences, because that is often where the golden nuggets lie. What’s happening with your customers?  Are you getting asked the same question often?  Are you observing something in the industry you have an opinion about?  No matter how tired you may be of talking about a subject, others are interested and might learn from it.
4. Become a storyteller:  Not fiction-based of course, but learn to capture your customer's stories and put in place a method to gain their approval to tell that story.  The best marketing can be telling the story of how someone else uses your product or service.  Get that story, and you will get media placements and create credibility with your audience.
5. Repeat, repost and repurpose:  This can be tough for us marketers because we value creativity and something new.  However, your audiences get their information from different places, so make sure you blanket the same information in different channels.  Don't be afraid to share and repost content from media placements and other sources where your ideas, products, best practices or customer stories are featured.  
6. Measure and monitor every step:  The whole purpose behind public relations is to build your brand, create awareness and drive business.  Do you know if you are effectively reaching those goals?  Are you monitoring your inbound traffic generated by PR?  If not, make it a habit to do so and you will begin to see trends and learn what works most effectively with the audiences you are trying to reach.

Carissa Newton is director of marketing at Delivra, one of the original email service providers.

Testimonials build sales and goodwill

There are few things more valuable to a company than brand awareness and reputation.  The goodwill generated through a carefully managed brand is a true asset that adds to the value of the company.

One of the best tools we’ve found to help build brand awareness and reputation is the testimonial. 

Usually provided by a customer, the testimonial is a vehicle for people to express how and why they think well of you.  Testimonials can influence a purchase, reinforce a decision and garner a good deal of attention in the media and elsewhere.

We encourage our clients to use testimonials in a number of ways, including in media interviews, as sales collateral and in social media efforts.  
 
A good customer testimonial includes four key ingredients:

1. Credibility.  Comments and experiences described in a testimonial must be authentic and reflect the customer’s true feelings.
2. Metrics.  There must be some measurable benefit to working with you.  Ideally this includes hard metrics: increase in sales or revenues, a decrease in risk, etc.
3. Specifics.  Delve into the nitty-gritty.  The testimonial should detail a before-and-after scenario that shows the progression of your relationship.  Ask your customers a combination of closed- and open-ended questions to bring out good quotes.
4. Approval.  Make your customers understand how testimonials will be used.  Will they be quoted in the media, part of a Website, included in a new business proposal?  Gain official approval of the finished testimonial.

Finally, develop a library of testimonials that come from multiple sources, different industries, varying geographies or different sized companies.  The best time to get testimonials from customers is when you don’t have an immediate need for them.

The Power of PR....keeps going and going

By Guest Blogger Carissa Newton

If you had asked me what impact public relations made on my marketing eight to 10 years ago, I would not have had an answer.  In my former corporate marketing position, public relations was a "have to do," but I didn’t really think it made an impact.

My opinion has changed.  Over the last few years, I have worked with three very entrepreneurial companies and witnessed the power of public relations firsthand.   PR is now  a “must” to get our name out and to keep the buzz going.  

While PR is a necessity, it isn’t always an easy sell to upper management unfamiliar with how to measure the impact of PR.

You  must think of PR differently.  I’ve found that by combining PR with online marketing, the impact is significant and measurable. 

At my company, we do both inbound and outbound marketing.  Inbound leads can come from phone calls, the Web or referrals.  With every PR event/placement we generate, I can see a direct correlation with a spike in our inbound traffic.  In fact, we have seen our inbound leads increase by over 70 percent and our average account values have more than doubled by adding PR to the marketing mix!

Clearly, PR brings power to my brand, my company and our message.

Do people call and say they learned about us through our PR?  No, but it’s easy to see the contribution PR makes.  Our inbound traffic typically is twice our outbound reach, thanks to PR.

Inbound marketing is the optimum type of lead generation.  By focusing 80 percent of our marketing on generating inbound leads, we can more than double our results.   PR is the “energizer bunny” of marketing: it keeps our results going...and going...and going.

Carissa Newton is director of marketing at Delivra, one of the original email service providers.

Marketing by the numbers: Where does public relations fit?

By Guest Blogger Jill Snyder

I did something recently with my 2011 marketing budget that I thought was fun. I guess it’s fun if you are a revenue marketer so I better qualify that statement. I prepared my detailed marketing budget in Excel, and while working on my budget for next year I decided to add three new columns to the right side of my spreadsheet:
 

1. Cost of doing business--The first column I labeled "cost of doing business." For each line item in my budget I asked the question "will this expense generate revenue or is it a cost of doing business."  It's best if we face the fact that not everything we do in marketing generates revenue (ouch...that hurts).  Items like brochures, folders, holiday cards, etc, don't generate revenue on their own, so those costs go in the “cost of doing business” column.
2. Revenue generating--If the line item in your budget is a ‘revenue generating’ marketing tactic, the total amount for the year for this item should go in this column. Events, e-marketing, webinars, etc., go into this column. There may be some facets of marketing that may have dollars in both of your new columns. Take for example public relations.  Although most of my PR investment does go into the ‘revenue generating’ column (and yours should too…if not you need to talk to Clarus Communications), I do realize that some public relations activities are executed as ‘air cover’ about the company in general, and I put those expenses in the ‘cost of doing business’ column.
3. Expected revenue--The purpose of this column is to identify the amount of revenue that should be generated from this line item activity. For every dollar invested in revenue generating marketing tactics, you should get a return of x% of the investment. You may want $10 of revenue for every $1 of marketing expense, or higher or lower based on the business and market you are in. This number may not always be available to you, but talk to your finance department if you don’t know it and come up with a number you can at least begin to work with. For our example, let’s stick with a 10-times return on each dollar invested. So, this column is a simple formula of taking what’s in the ‘revenue generating’ column and dividing it by .10.  You will quickly see the amount of revenue this marketing tactic needs to generate.

With these three new columns, you now have the ability to:

• Quickly see how much revenue your marketing budget as a whole should produce.
• See the return needed from each of your marketing tactics.
• Throughout the year, you have a quick way to determine if you should invest in a marketing campaign…or maybe swap out one campaign for another based on how the investment might pan out.

Jill Snyder is an outsourced CMO and a respected expert on revenue marketing.