Public Relations

Clients love the idea of getting attention from the media; that is, until a reporter or assignment editor calls, especially in a crisis situation. When the clients finds out it means sitting down face-to-face with someone who is actually recording every word they say, white-knuckle time sets in.

Here are a few tips for easing those fears:

• Know your message. Identify your three key points; stick to them; don’t be afraid of repeating them; don’t get sidetracked.
• Be the victor not the victim. You know more about your subject than media do; an interview is an opportunity, not a threat; you can turn their negative into your positive, or at least paint a balanced picture; be businesslike – it’s better to be respected than liked. This is most definitely how NOT to deal with a reporter.
• Prepare and rehearse. Think of all likely difficult questions for a requested interview – and know your answers.
• Know what the media want. Research the reporter who will be conducting the interview. Will he be aggressive and in your face? Will she smile while asking tough questions? Don’t “answer” questions but “respond” to them to say what you want to say.
• Admit your mistakes. Americans love to forgive. Don’t cover up; someone will always dig out the truth. Always “regret” actions rather than being “sorry” for them – that implies guilt.
• Be humble and confident but not arrogant. Stay calm under duress. An aggressive interviewer gains you public sympathy. If you don’t know the answer, say so. Keep it simple; listen to questions carefully; don’t fill silences – it puts the onus upon the interviewer.
• Don’t refuse to take difficult phone calls. But give yourself thinking time (“I’ll phone you back in ten minutes”); never say “no comment” – it implies guilt; it provides a vacuum to allow the media to invent their own “truth.”

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All the creative marketing and clever public relations programs in the world won’t be successful long-term unless:

• You offer a product or service for which there is a sustainable market because you solve a problem, satisfy a desire or meet a need.
• You offer your product or service at a price that exceeds its perceived value to the customer.
• You practice exceptional customer service.

Before embarking on expensive, time-consuming campaigns, make sure your business fit this profile.

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The temptation for many small businesses owners is to entice customers with “the lowest prices.” After all, everyone is looking for a bargain, right?

Competing on price might result in some short-term success, but it ignores the categories in which you can distinguish yourself long-term: value, quality, knowledge, customer service, training, and the ability to solve problems, to name just a few. Competing on price alone causes customers to see you – and your competition – as offering identical products and/or services.

Sure, offering the lowest price can help you close a sale, but does it gain you a loyal customer, one who will return time and again to buy from you? In reality, all you’ve done is complete a cold, calculated transaction, another line on the balance sheet. There’s a huge difference between completing a transaction and building a relationship with your customers.

Maybe that “customer” will return if you continue to offer the lowest price. And if the competitor down the street lowers his price? Well, goodbye customer. Are you going to lower your price to woo that customer back? Will they ever feel comfortable paying full price again?

Here’s a suggestion…don’t focus on price. Instead, listen to your customers, learn what they need, how you can make their lives easier and more satisfying. Price should be the last thing you talk about. If you can solve a problem or fulfill a need, price is almost irrelevant.

Your job as the business owner is to find out what the customer wants and needs. Ask lots of questions, then use the benefits of your product or service to show how you can save the customer time and money, or make their life easier and better.

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While most email marketers spend considerable time crafting their messages and managing their lists, little thought is given to the timing of their email. However, a recent study by Pivotal Veracity suggests that the timing of your email is equally important.

Pivotal Veracity’s Engagement Index Q1-Q309 report found that the average elapsed time between when messages are first sent and when they are first seen has grown from 23.2 hours in January 2009 to 25.9 hours in August. “If you’re mailing time sensitive email campaigns you should consider that the average consumer would not see your email for more than 24 hours,” according to the report.

The time between when a consumer sees the message and when he or she reacts is also growing longer, the company found. This suggests that timing is becoming more important than ever as email marketers find themselves competing for customers’ attention, not only against other email messages and spam but also social media and mobile phone content.

Time of day is also important in the success of an email campaign. If it is B2B, morning is an optimal time, as most desk-bound workers start their day by going through their email inbox, according to B2B Marketing Magazine. The problem with morning is that recipients could be more focused on the priorities of the day than your message.

As the day progresses, users tend to have more intermittent interactions with email – shorter in duration than the start-of-the-day episode, the magazine said. Between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., users are likely to have five individual episodes of three-to-five minutes apiece, compared to the 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. period when they are more likely to have a single episode that is substantially longer. “On the face of it, this would appear not to work in the marketer’s favor, but your message may be the welcome distraction from an otherwise busy day,” according to the magazine.

Pivotal Veracity’s Email Engagement Index is based on multiple proprietary data sources that are aggregated and analyzed monthly across authenticated mailer domains.

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Want to know the quickest, easiest way to alienate you hard-earned email distribution list?

Bombard them with irrelevant, self-serving, poorly designed emails. It’s a recipe for a quick click of the “delete” or worse yet, the “spam” button.

As the email marketing industry has become more sophisticated, so too have the expectations of your recipients. They want to be educated, informed and entertained. If you do that consistently, they won’t mind the occasional sales pitch dropped in, especially if you are offering products and services they need and want at a price that meets or exceeds their perceived value.

Here are five tips to keep in mind when planning and executing your next email campaign:

Focus on being relevant and offering value: Keep your customers’ needs in mind. Will they appreciate what you are sending? Will they understand its value? Keep the message simple and the layout clean so there are no distractions.

Make It Eye-Catching: The process of getting someone to read and react to your email starts with an intriguing Subject Line and a familiar From Line. Even if those two critical components are on target, you still have only a few seconds to catch and hold your readers’ interest. Think of it like a billboard on a superhighway. Make sure your brand is easily identifiable, the offer is clear, and the call to action strong.

Be a Tease: Use only one or two paragraphs from a longer article, then drive traffic to your website by including a “Read More” tag. Snippets are easier on the eye and don’t discourage readers by forcing them to plow through dense mountains of information.

Opt-Ins Are Like Gold: The temptation might be to build your list quickly with unscrupulous tactics on the theory that bigger is better. Resist that temptation at all costs. Better to send your emails to a smaller list of people who actually want to read them than to a bunch of faceless email addresses. Consistently poor deliverability is a no-no for most email service providers.

Take Time to Build Your List: Highlight the benefits of being subscriber, then give people an easy way to sign up to receive your emails. Offer an incentive — a special report, a discount, or some other tangible product – to encourage people to subscribe. It may take longer that buying lists or using using shady tactics to harvest email address, but the results will be far better in the long run.

Here’s the bottom line – quality will be rewarded, quantity will not. If your ISP doesn’t flag you as a spammer, your recipients will ignore you. Either way, your email campaign will fall flat and you’ll be left wondering why.

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