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Why And How To Jumpstart Your Brand Strategy With The Power Of PR

February 11, 2021 No Comments

“What is the difference between branding, marketing and PR, anyway?” People regularly ask me this question, and although the lines have been blurred in recent years, there is an easy way to differentiate between the three:

Branding: Who am I?

Marketing: What am I telling my customers about myself? (This could be through ads, bulletin boards and marketing materials.)

PR: What are other trusted sources saying about me?

Although all elements are key to securing brand success, I’ve found that the one that speaks the loudest to those looking to invest in your brand (like a customer, retailer or investor) is a third-party endorsement. That includes awards, testimonies, a genuine social community and press. In other words: PR.

Although branding is the foundation of any company, people confuse marketing and PR the most and frequently question their purpose.

Large enterprises are often guilty of siloing PR and marketing teams, which makes it more difficult to unify the brand’s real message. That is why PR and marketing have to work together using a holistic approach that keeps both teams on the same page. When done right, the synergy between PR and marketing can give your brand a lot of horsepower.

The digital world makes the differences between PR and marketing less clear; however, there are two sides to every coin, and they need to coexist in order to build a balanced and longstanding business.

The Differences Between PR And Marketing

So, how is PR different from marketing? It comes down to three major points.

1. Press Versus Consumer Relationships

Traditionally, PR was about forming relationships with journalists and media outlets. Marketing, on the other hand, focused more on product promotion, ads and a brand’s relationship with shoppers.

But we have to keep in mind that PR has evolved quite a lot over time. It’s not uncommon for a PR team to oversee influencer marketing, social media and customer-facing content. This is where PR and branding teams tend to overlap and need to collaborate.

2. Reach

Marketing is the art of creating an identity: It’s your logo and colors, as well as the mood and feeling behind your brand. Good branding, however, can’t bring in customers by itself.

PR is where brands actually increase their reach by putting the product or service in the hands of their consumers with well-placed messaging. In an ideal world, branding and the way you market yourself attracts customers to you. PR, on the other hand, entices them to stay.

3. Identity Versus Perception

Marketing creates your business’s identity, but PR shapes public perception of that identity. When you need to create, maintain and protect your perception in the public eye, it’s PR you need.

Three Ways PR And Marketing Should Work Together

PR and marketing are separate disciplines that often bleed together. But good PR can give a big boost to marketing, remove obstacles and solidify your presence in the market.

Even if you’re a small business, you can create a strong, unique brand with a little help from PR. Score more coverage, amplify your efforts and spend very little money doing it with these three brand-boosting PR strategies.

1. Audience Amplification

Who are you speaking to? Audience is everything when you’re trying to make a name for yourself, and who you’re engaging with matters. Your audience should dictate everything from your content format to your language choices.

Your marketing is your message; PR gives your story a stage, a microphone and “puts butts in the seats.”

Your PR strategy should ensure your brand stands out to the right people in the right place. It is the foundation that the brand is built on and the reputation that makes you proud and trusted.

2. Perception And Image

You’ve created a brand, but how do your customers really feel about your brand identity? After all, there’s a reason why some shoppers adore brands like Trader Joe’s and feel lukewarm about big box stores.

Your PR should tell the right story — the one that showcases your values and sets the right tone with shoppers. Instead of crossing your fingers and hoping your audience loves your brand, create a PR strategy that gives you more influence over your place in the market with powerful storytelling.

3. Brand Authority

Authority is hard to measure, but it’s still incredibly important. Make sure your PR strategy boosts the authority behind your brand. It should establish you as a thought leader and trusted investment.

Marketing alone isn’t necessarily strategic and thoughtful. PR, however, is all about strategy and creating a communication plan and playbook to grow your influence methodically. Brand authority will not only net you more press and boost trust with shoppers, but it can also prevent image issues before they happen.

The Bottom Line

PR and marketing make it possible for businesses of all sizes to compete in a dog-eat-dog world. While marketing makes your identity and values clear, you still need a solid PR strategy behind it to boost your influence. Understand the three ways branding and PR should work together so you can forge a positive image in the public’s mind from the start.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Lydia Vargo

Lydia is a key contributor to brands’ ongoing success as VP of Global Strategic Accounts at ChicExecs. Read Lydia Vargo’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

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Why The Best PR Works Hand In Hand With Sales

December 10, 2019 No Comments

By Leslie Licano

You might think that public relations and sales are two separate facets of your business, but you may be surprised to hear that PR works best in direct collaboration with sales to create one congruent experience for your customer. Here are a few ways in which PR and sales can work together.

Sharing Information: Your sales team is out in the field every day getting tremendous feedback and insight into your target market. Why let all that good information remain siloed? Let your sales team help inform the PR strategy by sharing insights, such as what your target market cares about, what they’re reading and what resonates with them. This might help develop a pitch, drive story angles and even identify new media outlets.

Exposure Is Good For All: It’s hard being a salesperson, especially when initially getting in the door to introduce the company. However, PR can lay the groundwork by helping your company get exposure. Instead of getting, “You’re calling from where?” from customers, how refreshing would it be for your salespeople to reach out to a target market that’s already familiar with the brand?

Building Credibility: Thought leadership is the name, and credibility is the game! When your leaders are featured in reputable publications, it can open the door for sales, as it proves that the company is at the top of its game and knows what it’s talking about.

Following Up: Coming up with a reason to follow up can be a struggle for your sales team. However, a PR win, such as a placement in a publication or thought leadership feature, can be a great lead-in to reopening a conversation. Sales teams can forward these wins with a note saying they thought the client might be interested in the information.

Creating Social Content: PR wins are also a great item to promote on social media. Because they provide such valuable third-party credibility, most companies will share their media placements online to increase exposure for wins. Many also invest in “boosting” the posts to reach specific target audiences or decision-makers. Right message, right audiences, right time.

Website Content: Any articles that don’t secure placement in a publication can be featured on your website. This type of content can become a part of the lead generation funnel, guiding potential customers to your website, helping to collect emails and providing more leads for your sales team.

As Seen On: When a PR firm secures a placement that has a big name attached, such as being featured in Oprah’s magazine or on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the company will be able to include that in their marketing. This can be a very high-performing strategy that can really help the sales team tie everything together for the customer.

PR And Sales, Unite!

Gather the team, and start generating some business. These are just a few ways in which PR and sales can work together to help grow revenue and build business. Make sure that your sales team knows what placements are at their disposal and how they can use PR content to their advantage. Additionally, any insights your sales team would like to provide will surely be appreciated.

By Leslie Licano

Co-Founder of Beyond Fifteen Communications, a SoCal PR and communications firm known for taking clients beyond their 15 minutes of fame.

Sourced from Forbes

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Budgeting for Advertising and PR for a Small Company

August 28, 2019 No Comments

Sourced from Inc.

It’s a testing and assessing game.

As the old question goes, “If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Well, I want to update it: “If you have a great product, but no one knows about it, then what’s the point?”

I’m proud of my e-liquid, so I want to get the word out to my demographic. How else will they know about it? But budgeting for marketing can be tricky, especially for a small business, so I have to switch my trucker hat for my thinking cap or else I might rush into spending too rashly.

So what is the right amount to budget for marketing when you own a small business? Should you focus on ads or public relations? I’m going to break it down for you.

Advertising vs. PR

Before I get into how to budget, let me define my terms. Advertising is what you project to the world, as in a social media ad that says, “Hey, check out my new e-liquid.” PR involves more of a subtle dance with the community. You want to interact with your consumers and get them to fall in love with your product, and then they can tell the world how awesome it is.

Case in point: Spending money on a billboard at a music festival is advertising, but showing up at the festival and giving out samples is PR. By interacting directly with the public, you can create a buzz. Who knows? You might even make a splash in the local paper, which creates another wave of PR momentum.

Setting Your Budget

When it comes to marketing, you usually get what you pay for. It’s a numbers game, and it scales to fit the size of your business and the scope of your growth. According to marketing communications consultant Caron Beesley in a post on the U.S. Small Business Administration’s blog, many businesses set aside 2-3% of their revenue for “run-rate marketing and up to 3-5% for start-up marketing.” The percentage can vary by industry, the size of your company and what stage it’s in, of course. Retail businesses in their early years, for example, spend as much as 20% of sales on marketing. After all, you’ve got to create a spark before you can ignite your dreams.

Setting a marketing budget can be different for small businesses like mine. “As a general rule, small businesses with revenues less than $5 million should allocate 7-8% of their revenues to marketing,” Beesley writes. That number might even double when you’re first building your brand to account for trial and error, video production and other ancillary factors.

PR is an entirely different beast from advertising, even when it comes to budgeting. Ideally, PR and advertising should each have their own individual budget. I recommend testing some advertising and PR strategies to find out what works best for your brand before you decide how to divvy up your budget. Try putting a small advertisement in a magazine that shares the same customer base as your product.

Or better yet, think of some free or low-cost PR options. In my case, extreme sports events, car shows and concerts are all places where I’ve created some word of mouth by showing up and introducing my product to attendees.

Is It Working?

This is a question to ask early and often as you determine how to allocate your marketing budget. Check the data on where the traffic to your website is coming from and how much of that traffic is converting to sales, and then assess your return on investment before heavily investing in any specific advertising channel or form of PR. If people are seeing your social media ads but ignoring them, for example, then they’re worthless. Ditch the lower performing ads, and determine where your advertising dollars may be better spent.

In conclusion, budgeting for PR and advertising is a testing and assessing game. Some products resonate with people through PR better than they do through an advertisement, but in my experience, trial and error is the best way to find out where you should be spending your money.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Young Entrepreneur Council @yec

By Colbey Pfund, co-founder of LFNT Distribution

Colbey Pfund is co-founder of LFNT Distribution, a leading international distributor of premium eliquid.

Sourced from Inc.

In News

How to Use Content Marketing for PR and Social Media Success

March 15, 2019 No Comments

By Wendy Marx

The value of content marketing for PR and social media has become a slam dunk when it comes to digital marketing. And as new networks and platforms emerge, it becomes even more essential.

And if we had any doubts, a new study from Brunswick shows that investors and analysts are making decisions based on the digital content of executives and companies.

The consultancy’s annual Digital Investor Survey tracks the digital behavior of investors and analysts around the world in terms of communications, research and information-gathering.

How Important Is a Digital Presence?

In a word…Crucial.

For instance, according to the survey, 90% of investors use digital platforms and channels to investigate companies and the issues surrounding them. Another 70% reported that they have made investment decisions based on digital research. These statistics prove a direct link between your content and communications and how willing people are to invest in your brand — aka, your bottom line.

You can almost guarantee that others who are looking to do business with your company will do the same. You need a digital presence to greet them at the door, so to speak, and give them a good first impression of your company.

And we do not mean just a static website. We are talking about a rich digital identity that make your brand stand out, such as a regular blog, social media presence, and search engine optimization.

“Building an effective individual digital profile is not just an essential component in a successful investor relations strategy, it is now a necessity for maintaining shareholder value and competing with peers that are more active in digital and social media,” Brunswick partner Marshall Manson told the Holmes Report.

If your brand is not available on a digital platform, such as a blog, to not mince words — you’re impacting your bottom line.

“As an industry we’ve always wondered, Mason continued, “but the research makes it absolutely clear: there’s a line between great communications and business performance.”

What Should You Do?

Knowing the crucial role of digital marketing, it’s essential to maintain your digital marketing and social media channels. Which translates to solidifying your content marketing.

Search engines and online publishers like blogs are the most used digital sources for investors. Social media platforms are also important with LinkedIn the favorite with 63% of investors using the platform for research, and Twitter the second most used platform at 55% of investors.

Wherever you go on the internet, you can’t ignore the role that content plays — whether it’s a blog shared on social media, visual graphics in your PR campaigns, or a video that you use to promote your brand across multiple channels. All of this and more falls under the content umbrella.

But this involves more than just creating content. You need to pay attention to content marketing trends, from blogs to social media, to public relations and ROI.

Brunswick provides three recommendations for communicators:

Ensure senior executives use digital and social to reach and engage investors, particularly LinkedIn.
Expand your digital universe to include podcasts, which are underutilized.
Maintain your SEO and content materials.

To give your content marketing a leg up for social media and public relations, we’ve expanded these three areas into 4 easy ways for you to

We’ve laid out 4 easy ways to use content marketing for social media and public relations. These methods will help you strengthen your communications strategy.

4 Ways to Use Content Marketing for PR and Social Media

1. Write and Maintain a Blog

For the past decade, businesses and entrepreneurs have been urged to maintain a regular blog. Not only does it show evidence of expertise, but it also directs people back to your brand time and time again.

And we now have even more proof of the value of blogging. The Brunswick survey showed that 61% of investors and analysts used blogs to make investment decisions and recommendations.

Blogging helps to boost your digital presence, not just on your site, but also on social. For instance, it gives you original content to post on your social media profiles. This original content bolsters your reputation and points your audience back to your website for more original content.

Note: Because of the very visual nature of social media, you need to include visual graphics when you post to social media. This includes blog images, infographics, and even videos to attract your audience.

Your blog is one of the top places where you can promote all of your media gems. This includes media interviews, major company-wide news, and awards. It is a great in-house platform to allow your audience to share in your brand’s triumphs. As a side perk, posting this kind of news strengthens your reputation as a top-shelf brand.

2. Invest in SEO

Search engines are one of the most heavily-used platforms for research — as proved by the 65% of people who use it to research investment opportunities, according to Brunswick. This makes sense, since who hasn’t tapped into engines like Google or Bing to find answers to questions or learn more about a brand?

Because of the heavily-guarded algorithms that ensure top-quality content on search engines. these platforms have gained a level of trust that few other platforms match. In fact, in Brunswick’s survey, search engines were trusted slightly less than The New York Times but above CNN when it came to trust.

Audiences know that not just any joe-blow with a computer can make his or her way onto that first page slot — it takes domain authority, link-building, and other strategies to get there.

SEO is a crucial part of today’s content marketing trends — and can be used to empower your PR and social media. Think of your latest bit of news or your campaign. When you build up your site’s authority through SEO and use the right keywords, you have the potential to expand your visibility and gain the trust of your audience.

3. Create a Podcast

Brunswick’s survey reported that 48% of investors said that they used podcasts for information about a brand. But sadly, podcasts are often forgotten when we discuss content marketing trends and strategies. And what a loss that is.

Podcasts were listed as the third most popular content (after search engines and blogs) used to make investment decisions.

While podcasts are among the most powerful pieces of content a brand can produce, they are also one of the most under-utilized. As a brand, you should give serious consideration to how podcasts could fit into your

Podcasts are a great place to promote your PR and social media. For instance, why not discuss a subject on your podcast and point your audience to your social media profile for more information? Have some company news or a PR campaign that you would like to promote? Use your podcast to get your audience excited about it.

4. Leverage LinkedIn in Your Strategy

In the past, many brands have relegated their LinkedIn maintenance to their HR teams. But what once started as a simple professional networking site has blossomed into a lot more.

Brands are realizing the far-reaching value of LinkedIn in the business landscape. It is now used as a publishing platform, to share company news, and as a place where prospective buyers and investors vet companies.

What makes LinkedIn so valuable? It’s trust factor. Indeed, Brunswick reports it to be the most trusted social network with a score of +26, which is on par with media outlets like CNBC. In an age where fake news is talked about seemingly all the time, this shows just how valuable LinkedIn is as a platform and a resource for your brand.

And if you’re still not convinced, consider that 48% percent of investors said that they used LinkedIn as part of their research into companies.

Take the time to familiarize yourself with LinkedIn’s best practices. This includes engaging with groups and communities and publishing regular content on the network’s publishing platform.

By Wendy Marx

Sourced from Business 2 Community

In News

Trust: The PR Theme Of 2018

January 15, 2018 No Comments

By Beth Monaghan

The PR theme of 2018 will be informed by the tumult of 2017, the year we unearthed all the dirt and eroded all the trust. Where to begin? While Facebook was testifying in Congressional hearings about how a company with Kremlin ties spent $100,000 in ads during the 2016 presidential campaign, the #MeToo campaign was raging in the wake of sexual harassment and abuse allegations against Harvey Weinstein and then, it seemed, almost every other white man in power.

Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick was pushed out, VCs faced accusations ranging from putting their hands up female entrepreneurs’ skirts to sexual slavery (OK, that one was 2016, but still). It got so bad that some VCs signed a decency pledge. I wish I was making this stuff up. Meanwhile, Dove put out an ad that appeared to be blatantly racist and President Trump accused both sides of being at fault in the white supremacist march in Charlottesville.

Equifax experienced a massive data breach, Wells Fargo suffered a fake accounts scandal. United Airlines characterized what looked like an assault as a “re-accommodation” of the passenger. Sean Spicer asked the Washington Post for a correction because he said he was not huddling “in” but “among” the bushes before a press conference about the Comey firing. The Department of Education issued tweets with multiple misspellings, and the folks at the National Parks Service (supposedly) created their own social media handles so they could tell the truth, birthing the “alt-” social media movement.

Women marched. Immigrants marched. Scientists marched. I could go on for pages, but you get the idea. We have alternative facts to go along with our fake news. Did a shark really swim down the road in Houston after the hurricane? Did Hillary Clinton really run a child sex ring from a local Washington, D.C., pizza place during the 2016 campaign? No and no.

Trust is uncertain. Ev Williams, Twitter’s co-founder said that tech firms will compete for trust. He’s right about tech, and it goes further than that. Trust is at stake for every single organization in America, which means it will have an impact on every single PR strategy for the coming year.

These will be the factors at play:

Businesses will take more stands. As InkHouse Chief Content Officer Tina Cassidy and I wrote earlier this year, businesses are the new battleground states. Customers, employees and investors are speaking with their values as well as their wallets. While they care about cool features and great customer service, they care more about what matters.

Crisis plans will get overhauls. Response times have shrunk from hours to minutes, and statements have gone from paragraphs to tweets. Truth matters. Authenticity matters. Words matter. And timing is everything. If you wait, you might not be in business much longer.

Data will be required to back up ideas. We’ve been enthusiastic about data storytelling for a long time, and it’s more important than ever. The marketing surveys that can be skewed will undergo more scrutiny as reporters and customers favor the certainty of real data about real customers.

The sales funnel is collapsing. Decisions to buy or to hate are made in seconds, in one click, especially for consumer products. Business-to-business companies still have time to work on the sales funnel to move their customers from awareness to interest, engagement and finally purchase. But those attention spans are waning. We have too many things to scroll through on Facebook and Instagram and, oh look, President Trump is tweeting again. Marketers will need to make a connection, make it fast and make the decision to purchase as mindless as a click.

Validation will come from affiliation and authenticity, not dollars. On social media, we’ve long known that audiences cannot be built organically anymore. The algorithms have prevented it in favor of the ads that produce revenue. This doesn’t mean we should throw earnest and honest strategies out the window. It means that we should find like-minded people and organizations and support one another by sharing content. We should use paid strategies with integrity to amplify honest content with real data, not to trick people into clicking.

PR people have always had a responsibility to tell the truth. We’ve gotten bad reputations as spin doctors and shills, but those strategies never worked in the first place and they sure won’t work in the future. Good PR strategies must be based on real data, real stories and authentic points of view. They have to matter to the real people each organization contains within its orbit. It will be about connection, not convincing. It will be about truth, not alternative facts. It will be about what’s real, not what we imagine might be real in the future. Facts. Proof. Validation. Connection. Amplification.

By Beth Monaghan

Beth is the CEO of InkHouse and has been recognized as one of the “Top Women in PR.”

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Creating Your 2018 Marketing Budget [Guide]

August 31, 2017 No Comments

By Mark Schmukler

Where to Focus Your Annual Marketing Spend

It’s never too early to start working on your company’s marketing plan for the upcoming year – just ask the accounting department. For B2B and B2C marketers alike, there are many conversations to be had about the impact your budget will have on your marketing capabilities and strategy.

Use this guide to assess your company’s current marketing practices and discover the marketing methods you may want to introduce in next year’s plan. After all, your 2018 budget is likely an untapped resource for your marketing team and might allow for optimization, integration and innovation. Did we overdo it on the buzzwords? In any case, use this guide to get a jump start on your 2018 marketing budget and determine what tactics you should incorporate to make the year a successful one.

Step 1: Analyze and Benchmark Past Marketing Successes

Marketing is a balancing act and when you’re trying to increase qualified leads, it should never be a guessing game. To develop a truly successful marketing plan, you first have to look back at marketing plans from years past.

Use data from Google Analytics, your email marketing service and your marketing automation system to understand what sources are driving the most leads. Once you have tangible numbers, you can identify which sources contribute the highest percentage of total revenue via leads and conversions.

After you’ve collected year-over-year analytics data from each marketing channel and their corresponding sales metrics, you should ask yourself two simple but important questions:

What’s working?
What’s not working?

Unfortunately, each marketing tactic cannot be evaluated in the same way. While print ads offer circulation data, you can’t determine the exact number of readers who flipped through a publication’s pages. On the other hand, display advertising can provide definitive findings as to the size of the audience, the amount of impressions and click data.

Do your best to prioritize marketing tactics based on an unbiased review of their performance each year. When analyzing performance, try to maintain a holistic view of your business. What outside factors are influencing business development besides marketing? The loss of a key employee or the emergence of a new local competitor could be to blame.

Return on marketing investment (ROMI) can be tough to navigate, but with persistent research, you can optimize the channels that are working in your favor and pull back marketing spend on the tactics that aren’t.

Step 2: Determine 2018 Marketing Goals

Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the success of your past and current tactical marketing plans, it’s time to determine your 2018 marketing goals. After all, you can’t take a road trip if you don’t know where you’re headed.

Your marketing goals should be strategic objectives that are quantifiable and specific.

Define your goals on multiple levels; start from the top by determining your short and long-term business objectives. With this information, you can understand the amount of revenue you will need to achieve those goals and therefore the number of new leads you will need to generate. This is where the fun starts. Armed with these numbers and your data from step one, you can begin to break down these goals even further, setting success measurements for each marketing channel and tactic.

For tactical goals, be specific in terms of budget and results. How much are you willing to spend on this tactic? How many clicks or new leads do you expect this tactic to generate? Here’s an example:

Channel: Digital marketing
Platform: Google AdWords
Tactic: PPC campaign
Spend: $3,000/month
Goal: 500 clicks, 30 conversions

It’s important to establish objectives, but there should be some element of flexibility. Many factors that will impact progress toward your goals are constantly in flux, such as the cost associated with certain keywords and ad groups on Google AdWords.

Keep in mind that circumstances may change throughout the year and budgets may have to be adjusted. If your current structure does not allow for budgetary changes, your goals and expectations should be altered accordingly.

Step 3: Consider Marketing Channel Options

There are multiple marketing channels to choose from when creating your 2018 plan, but most marketers will recommend an integrated approach. If your budget is tight, it may be in your best interest to focus investments on one or two channels. Here are a few channels that every modern marketer should consider:

Digital Marketing
- Website development: Investing in development can go a long way. Whether you’re starting from scratch to create a new website or you’re improving an existing one, users can always appreciate a site that has top-notch UX and updated features.
- Display advertising & pay-per-click (PPC): Advertising via search engines and partner websites is becoming increasingly commonplace as technology advances. Display advertising is an economical online advertising method, offering the opportunity to display graphic banner ads on website categories of your choosing. PPC, while more costly, is extremely customizable; advertisers can specify bids, ad copy, display time of day, location targeting and more.
- Email marketing: A standard among most companies in 2017, there are still realms to explore in the world of email marketing. Experiment with email workflows to capture leads and incorporate responsive elements to heighten engagement metrics.
- Social media advertising: For marketers who have established a strong social media presence for their company, social media advertising is an excellent tactic to incorporate. LinkedIn is the most beneficial for B2B marketers (especially its new InMail advertising option), while Facebook suits B2C marketers.
- Search engine optimization (SEO): Optimizing your website for search engines is becoming increasingly important. How many times do you Google per day?

PR & Social Media

Public relations and social media marketing are standard for most B2B and B2C businesses. To take your editorial calendar to the next level, put down the press release and consider adding a new method to the mix.

Content marketing is a tactic that has grown in popularity in the past few years; this avenue allows companies to produce in-depth industry content that draws in a new, more targeted audience.

Content marketing is especially useful in the B2B space because industry content may not be as readily available to interested consumers. This content not only serves as quality editorial copy on-site, but it also has the potential to be leveraged for lead nurturing and demand generation purposes.

Traditional Marketing Channels

Traditional marketing methods have been a staple in the industry for decades and most are still in use. Direct mail, event marketing, television spots and print advertising are just a few tactics that are still a core focus for many marketers.

But be wary of opting for traditional methods unless you can prove that the tactics will result in strong leads. If not, they may not be worth the significant investment.

Step 4: Prioritize Your Needs

This is the hard part. Marketing on every platform is be the ideal circumstance, but for small to medium sized business (SMBs), this may not be realistic.

To prioritize your marketing needs, start with the most costly endeavors. Choose the tactic that is the most effective at driving leads and go from there.

Once you’ve incorporated the tactics that require the most spend, you can balance the rest of your budget with more cost-effective tactics.

Most B2B and B2C marketers find that working with an agency is helpful in determining the best marketing mix. For most of our clients, the marketing channel priorities that garner the most online success include:

PPC campaigns
Content marketing
SEO

Ultimately, there’s no magic formula. Your marketing budget should be a mix of different methods, based on the resources you’re working with and the audience you’re trying to reach.

This guide should serve as a starting point for your 2018 marketing planning and help you bring increased exposure for your business in the new year.

By Mark Schmukler.

Sourced from Marketing Insider Group

In News

Fortune 500 CEOs Still Largely Suck at Social Media

June 14, 2017 No Comments

Only 40% Have a Social Media Presence.

By MediaStreet staff writers.

Engagement with social media remains flat, despite influx of new group of leaders among Fortune 500.

Domo and CEO.com released their fifth annual study on the social media habits of Fortune 500 CEOs.

After studying statistics from 2016, the Social CEO Report showed that while the social media habits of Fortune 500 CEOs have moderately improved over the past five years, they are still sputtering.

The report shows that despite 75 chief executive changes occurring in this group in 2016, these new Fortune 500 leaders had no significant impact on the group’s total social media report card.

One of the winners: Apple’s Tim Cook has the most Twitter followers – surpassing that of Warren Buffett and Marc Benioff.

This new report found that only 40 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs on the list were active on at least one of six major social networks in 2016 (Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube), a slight increase from 2015. Of the Fortune 500 CEOs that use social media, 69 are active on more than one channel, and just 15 are active on more than two.

Only 40 Fortune 500 CEOs (8 percent) have a Facebook page, down from 57 in 2015. Of those, 32 were inactive for the last quarter of 2016. LinkedIn, which was acquired for $26.2 billion by Microsoft in 2016, remained the preferred social media “onramp” channel for Fortune 500 CEOs and LinkedIn’s Influencer program features some of the most active leaders on social media. In 2016, 35 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs were using the platform, a three percent increase from 2015.

Just 36 Fortune 500 CEOs have Twitter accounts, but it remains one of the most actively used channels – with 70 percent of that group regularly using the platform in 2016, compared to 62 percent last year. Both Instagram and Google+ had modest gains in Fortune 500 CEOs with accounts since 2015, despite very little use of these channels.

New channels for video emerged in 2016. Facebook Live, LinkedIn Influencer videos and Twitter’s Periscope joined YouTube as social video platforms. Meanwhile Vine, also owned by Twitter, shuttered in 2016. These accounts are typically owned by corporate marketing and have featured their top brass, but Fortune 500 CEOs typically do not have their own accounts.

Other notable findings from the study include:

Expedia’s Dara Khosrowshahi is the only Fortune 500 CEO to use five social networks.
Apple’s Tim Cook has the most Twitter followers – surpassing that of Warren Buffett and Marc Benioff.
More than 40 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are featured on their company’s YouTube channel.
Executives from the technology, retail, media and entertainment sectors were most active on social channels in 2016.

To view the full 2016 Social CEO Report, visit: https://www.domo.com/learn/2016-social-ceo-report

In News

Traditional Forms of Media Coverage Still Valued Over Advertising

June 8, 2017 No Comments

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

In an age where digital media is constantly changing, public relations practitioners and business professionals still see the benefits of traditional media coverage. This is according to study conducted by researchers at the University of Georgia.

The study finds those who use news sources to convey certain information about their products prefer independent media coverage.

Lynne Sallot is a professor of public relations of Journalism and Mass Communication. She says, “We have this intuitive idea that getting our messages covered by the news media makes those messages more credible than when we put them out there ourselves. Everyone believes this, but it’s been difficult to prove it.”

Independent media coverage is a more traditional form of news content like a TV broadcast, newspaper article or radio show, whereas more controlled sources of media are paid media such as advertisements or an organisation’s own website.

Pauline Howes is an associate professor of communications, and conducted the research. She says, “When asked directly, public relations practitioners and businesspeople in this study said they see independent media coverage as more credible than controlled, or paid, media. This seems to support the value of news coverage as part of a communications plan.

“Both types of communication are used by businesspeople, but an independent source may be viewed by audiences as having more credibility because it is not controlled or influenced by the subject of a story.”

When determining what goes into a business’s story, the editors and producers behind these independent news sources have no vested interest in the company or its products.

Differing from past experimental studies, this research looked at real world perceptions by interviewing public relation practitioners as well as business professionals.

Says Sallot, “There is some truth that to some audiences, messages covered by the media are more important. Until now, most of the research has suggested that that’s not true.”

Because of the conducted interviews, Howes and Sallot were able to get more personal feedback from those in the field. This study supported the belief that corporate/ PR messages that are carried by news media do have enhanced news credibility.

In News

Why and how to measure your PR efforts

January 18, 2017 No Comments

By Gini Dietrich.

Every field needs metrics; PR simply requires a distinct approach to its particular benchmarks.

To measure PR, you must go into your Google Analytics account, your CRM and your marketing automation tools. You must also set up reports to track metrics.

First and foremost, you should set up benchmarks to provide context for those metrics and measure PR effectively. Benchmarks are essential to:

Setting expectations
Setting goals
Optimizing performance
Getting better results

You cannot know where you’re going until you know where you’re starting, and benchmarks identify those starting points. It’s not overly complex; you can keep your PR benchmarks simple.

Here’s an example: In 2010, we hired a marketing resident to help us expand our blog. We had zero idea what kind of growth to expect because we hadn’t tracked anything yet.

We set goals and got to work. This is what they looked like:

There are two things wrong with those benchmarks:

They are all vanity metrics.
Revenue isn’t mentioned.

They gave us a starting point, though, helping us to set goals for 75 days and get to work.

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We didn’t overthink it; we simply looked at where we were in May 2010 and where we wanted to go—and we crushed most of them. After the 75 days, we looked at what we’d accomplished and then set significant goals (and factored in revenue).

How to set benchmarks

Two very important benchmarks you want to set up front are:

Your website or blog’s domain authority
Your Google rankings on key search terms

To find your domain authority, go to Open Site Explorer tool and enter your URL. It’s important to note that these rankings adjust slowly, updating once or twice per month. You are not going to see overnight results here, but it is crucial to benchmark where you are right now.

If you are going to set a goal for three months or less, set it from three to six points higher than it is right now. Then look at your Google rankings for your top 10 priority keywords.

For instance, we want to rank for “PR metrics” and a blog post I wrote recently has that keyword, though it’s not yet on the first page of results. However, two other blog posts are on that first page—in the fourth and fifth spots. My benchmark, then, for PR metrics is four and five, with a goal to increase those to one and two.

Setting benchmarks and understanding what it takes to attain them is essential to proving you can measure PR.

Ask yourself, what’s not working?

Now that you have your key benchmarks set, it’s time to look at what’s amiss. It’s important to look at our failures with as much pride and gusto as we do the wins. There is so much to learn.

Let’s say you tried hard to get featured in Product Hunt, but it didn’t happen. Ask yourself:

Why didn’t it work?
Is there a lesson that can apply to getting in The New York Times or your leading industry blog?
Why didn’t you win any awards that you applied for last year? It’s (hopefully) not because your product sucks.
Are your award applications written in a way that’s positioning you poorly against other applicants?
Are you submitting for awards you’re not qualified for?

Look at all the ways you’ve failed to achieve your PR goals, and ask why. You do this in every other area of your business, so why are you not doing this in PR?

A version of this article originally appeared on Spin Sucks.

By Gini Dietrich

Sourced from Ragan’s PR Daily

In News

30 jobs in the PR and marketing world

December 14, 2016 No Comments

By Clare Lane.

To succeed as a content marketer in today’s demanding communications climate, pros must have a hybrid skillset.

According to research from Fractl, nearly half of the content marketing jobs on Indeed.com call for both technical and creative skills. To find success, an ideal marketer should be both a technician and an artist.

Here’s how those traits can set you apart from your competitors:

Creativity and ingenuity

More and more, employers want employees with creative flair.

From Fractl:

Creative skills differ from practical, technical skills because they’re less tangible and more conceptual. Our study ranks the top five creative skills as writing, marketing strategy, content strategy, thought leadership, and brand development. Such skills are best learned through hands-on training, often acquired through experience; however, marketers can also learn from authoritative industry resources.

Technological knowhow

Although many emerging marketers regularly use technology, Fractl data say they lack relevant technical skills.

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Even if you have minimal experience with Google Analytics, recruiters advise mentioning that in an interview or presenting it prominently on your résumé.

Here are a few other in-demand tech skills:

Our study ranks SEO, HTML, Google Analytics, CSS, and programming as the most common technical skills that today’s content marketers need to master.

Consider yourself a tech guru or creative leader? Santa Clara, California-based Apple is seeking acontent marketing manager to write and produce various types of downloadable content. Applicants should understand how to build and manage a rich content calendar that can attract a qualified audience to Apple blog posts, white papers, reports, webinars, videos and infographics.

Not the job for you? See what else we have in our weekly professional pickings:

Content marketing specialist— Plated (New York)

Website coordinator/digital engagement— Feeding America (Illinois)

Advertising copywriter— Coral Gables Advertising Agency (Florida)

Corporate media manager— Lynn Hazan and Associates (New York)

Communications associate— Google (California)

Freelance online editor— The Education and Training Foundation (United Kingdom)

Content producer— Northwestern University (Illinois)

Senior marketing specialist— Milestone Systems (Oregon)

SEO writer—On Target Media (Nevada)

Marketing manager— Greencheck Group (Wisconsin)

Public relations coordinator— Viacom (New York)