How To Reinvent Your Business During And After The Pandemic

Businesses are starting to reopen, and many small to medium size businesses are concerned they cannot survive if their clientele has to be at a minimum to enter their facilities. Not all businesses can work remotely, and those who can, should also consider how to reinvent themselves to respond to the new way consumers will be purchasing their products and services.

We are witnessing how several major companies have reinvented their business. From automotive manufacturers to the apparel industry they are converting their factories to produce essential wearable’s providing products that protect first responders and consumers. Retailers and service businesses need to understand they too can reinvent themselves and realize there are different avenues available to survive in this new changing economy.

Think Outside The Box

Examples of businesses adapting are gyms and physical trainers. Several have created online programs for people to stay in shape. Exercise programs, some free, are being offered online. This helps current members know they are benefiting from their membership. Several doctors and wellness centers are doing telemedicine for non-emergency patients. Many traditional brick ‘n mortar stores are now getting aggressive by selling products online. Curbside service is only a small step for retailers to hopefully remain open. You need to think outside the typical box and be creative. Remember, every business today is experiencing similar problems, so team up with other companies to expand your opportunities.

Reinventing Does Work

A critical industry hit very hard are restaurants. My suggestion for this industry is to have online celebrations for anniversaries, birthdays, and office parties. Restaurants can deliver specially prepared meals and have an online video party for those celebrating that special time. An alternative idea could be for smaller restaurants to contact businesses in their area, like real estate agencies and sell prepared “congratulation meals” for the new homeowners when they move in. Bakeries and pastry shops should collaborate with restaurants to offer desserts with the meals. This can be especially effective when someone is having a celebration making it a very memorable occasion.

Expand Your Opportunities

Retailers who sell auto parts, home furnishing, appliances, clothing, jewelry, window coverings and even boutique shops could do tie-in programs with organizations or related businesses in their community. Offering discounts should not be your primary

marketing strategy. These are short-lived programs. Instead, work with other non-competitive businesses, which is a stronger and more powerful way to gain attention and establish customer loyalty. It becomes a win-win-win for everyone.

Keep Your Brand Visible

One of the most productive and cost efficient ways to re-build a business is by keeping your name in front of current and potential customers. Using social media is an excellent way to communicate. Be active on all platforms—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and even LinkedIn. Do postings to let customers know what you are doing, such as; how you are making the environment safer for them, special promotions you are offering, tie-in promotions with other businesses, new services offered, community events, and more. Another good idea is to post articles about how your products/services can improve or help customers add more value to their lives. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes, and ask yourself “what would you want to know about that business?”

Be open-minded. Be creative. Think forward, not backward and you will discover how productive it can be when you reinvent your business.

POWERFUL Press Release–part 2

The Headline. And when to use a Subhead.

Of the 5Ws, the headline is the most important. When creating the headline, make it effective. Use this guide: Be Informative; Keep it Short; and Make it Relevant.

It’s ok to be creative, but not so much that it sounds like an ad, or too creative that it sounds untrue. Don’t mislead or make false claims.

Headline Examples

“Incredible Technology Boosts Mileage For Diesel Engines”. This is too sensational. Is the technology really incredible? What is the amount of the Boost? And is the technology new?

Stay away from headlines such as, “Limited Time Only! Amazing Deals On Step Ladders From The RV Ladder Store! Only $299!”

Although extreme, this does happen. Businesses get excited about their sales, or discounted products thinking it’s newsworthy.

Headlines should be 60-80 characters. Use a subhead to further explain the news. Subheads have added information to support the headline and not intended to be a stand-alone title. Here is an example.

Headline: “New York Couple Wins a Yamaha Quad at the Charity RV Show Last Month”

Subhead: “This is the first time Bill and Kathy Jones entered a contest and won”

Headline tips:

  • Make the headline impossible to ignore. Keep away from false claims and over sensational words.
  • Create interest so the journalist will want to continue reading the release.
  • Check for spelling errors. This is critical. Don’t just rely on spell check, proof read your headline for accuracy and clarity. Have someone else also proofread.

Body of the release

The opening paragraph should be concise. Use the 5Ws in this section. Keep the first few sentences short and to the point. The next paragraphs should fully explain the purpose of your release. Keep it informative. If you use quotes, they should be from someone prominent or important to the company.

End the release with “For more information, visit https://www.yourwebsite.com, or call Tim Daly at (555) 555-1111.

The boilerplate is a short paragraph that explains the identity of the company and what it does.

When to submit your release

As a general rule, Monday is a very busy media day and Friday reporters are usually finishing up stories. Wednesday and Thursday are typically good days to send your release. Tuesdays are also good. No matter what day you choose, always send releases before 9 am Eastern Time.

SEO Press releases

Yes, even press releases should be optimized. When not sending your release directly to a journalist, but to online news, using keywords and phrases will increase your rankings. Choose specific wording your customers type when they search for your type of product or service. The Internet can help you reach your target customer. In this case, your release becomes a mini webpage. Don’t “stuff” too many key phrases into the release. Stick to the guidelines we discussed, just optimize it. Include a photo(s) or video when possible. This will increase visibility and rankings.

Learn How To Write POWERFUL Press Releases

Part 1 of 2 in a series

When it comes to writing a press release for your business, you should understand what it requires for an editor, reporter, or any journalist to even want to read what you send them. Keep in mind a press release is a way to introduce your business/product or service to the media. If there is interest, the release could turn into a story, or be published. Before I get into the heart of powerful press release writing, let me make a few points very clear.

  • There isn’t a “secret” formula to writing a press release. It’s knowing and using the 5 Ws in your releases: What. Who. Where. When. Why.
  • A press release is NOT an advertisement. Keep away from “selling” your product or service. Don’t write a release the same as you would an ad. Your release is going to the media, not potential or existing customers.
  • Releases are NOT articles. Look at articles in your trade and consumer media. These are not press releases, but stories.

No two businesses are the same, and this is also true of press releases. The only formula that applies is having a headline, dateline, opening paragraph, body paragraphs, boilerplate and contact information.

Do’s and Don’ts

The news media has a list of do’s and don’ts when receiving press releases:

Make sure it is newsworthy. Examples are:

  • announcing a new product or service
  • working with a charity
  • making a charitable contribution
  • starting as new division or acquiring another company
  • releasing a study about your industry and how it affects your business
  • sponsoring an event, or having a grand opening
  • taking your company public, or announcing stock offerings
  • rebranding or reorganizing your company
  • hiring a new executive
  • hosting a seminar
  • opening a new office or relocating your headquarters

These are just a few of the types of releases considered by the media to be newsworthy. Read and study other published releases, not all of them are good, but it will help you understand what that specific publication considers to be newsworthy.

  • Limit the use of adjectives and adverbs. Stay away from adjectives such as “exciting”, “fabulous”, or “revolutionary” to mention a few. Using adverbs like “really”, “extremely”, or “very” do not enhance the release, but will get it tossed.
  • Don’t use exclamation marks.
  • When making a statement or an opinion, be sure to support it.

Providing facts or referring to other studies or experts, it will give the release credibility.

  • Write your release to match the audience. If you’re announcing a new product make sure it is sent to media specific to that industry. It’s ok to modify the release to apply to different industries.

In Part 2 we will discuss catchy headlines, the best day of the week to distribute a release, how to make your release SEO ready, and how to rank high using keywords and phrases.

Mobile Ad Formats That Work The Best

You see them every time you open a social media app. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and a slew of others are all hoping to get the attention of the user. For several months advertisers have been testing various ad formats measuring their effectiveness. These range from standard (static) ads, animated gifs to videos. Without reading further, which format would you guess has the most impact and effectiveness? Before you read further, take a guess. Ok, let’s explore the results and see if your guess is in line with the survey.

A recent survey conducted by KARGO and MediaScience tested the three formats–standard, animated (gifs) and video to learn how consumers reacted to these different formats by gauging the fixation times and follow-up looks. At first you might not be surprised that videos do have a high “user look”, but in reality, animated ranked higher in all categories surveyed. The categories were: Users Looked At, Seconds Looked, Fixations, and Follow-Up Looks.

My guess is the animated gifs, or short animations are pleasing (most of the time) and do not take long to view. On the other hand, while videos were gaining popularity last year, and they still are a powerful way to tell a story, they become too long taking away our precious time to see other social media posts, etc. Like all survey’s, it will depend on the subject matter. For example if you are into auto racing, or fashion design, food preparation/recipes you might watch an entire video because of your interests. But then again, if you are in a hurry, you might say to yourself “I’ll go back and watch it later”…well that usually doesn’t happen.

But don’t discount the standard or video formats. The reason, all three formats when tested in the survey were close in percentages in the different categories. For example, when users were asked to “recall” the brands they saw, 42% remembered the animated format while 33% remembered the videos and 32% the standard. Even in the “Users Looked At” category this is how they ranked.

• Standard 64%
• Animated 74%
• Video 54%

And to make this more interesting, 18% of those surveyed thought videos were annoying, yet felt (37%) it was entertaining, compared to animated with 9% saying annoying and 14% said it was entertaining. As we get deeper into the study we see videos ranked higher in “creative” 54% vs 27% for animated. So who gets the “Golden Award”? Ask a creative and they say they do, ask a marketer and they want to take the credit. No matter what you do, the bottom line is to use some form of movement in your format. Why? Because it will get the attention of the user and if your creative is good, it just might get them to enjoy what they see and click on that link to learn more about your product or service.

When your company is serious about getting results, give George Carson a call. He knows how to #MakeGreatThingsHappen.

Good-Bye to another social media: Google+ to close down

Yes, even the “big” dominant media like Google recognize when it’s time to let go.
Hard to believe that it was only 7 years ago when Google decided to challenge all the social networking sites by launching its Google+.

If you are still active with Google+ you will have a few months to make your last postings before the social network is closed down. Google claims it will close in August 2019, but to be safe, I recommend quitting sooner than later.

So why did this giant company decide to call it quits? Several reasons. For one, Google+ had issues with its privacy bug. Hundreds of thousands of users had their data exposed to third-party developers back in March. But like Facebook, Google would not report the problem immediately because they didn’t want to bring attention to any regulatory scrutiny that could damage their reputation.

If you want to believe Google’s reason, they saw a big drop in usage and engagement, saying, and I quote “90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds”. Yeah, that’s another good reason!

From various sources I’ve read, it is safe to say that Google+ and +1 buttons will have no impact on rankings going forward. I hope that means Google Search will no longer look to see if your business was an active user and we can finally be ranked by our social networking, postings, podcasts, backlinks, etc.

Another reason you should feel ok, Google has admitted that today they do not use personalization in search. What that says is Google+ would show your personal assets, photos, emails, etc. that were based on your Google+ account directly in the search results. If you recall, Google suggested that searchers take their social conversations to Google+. It was a way Google was trying to drive more conversations to their social network.

With all the pressure Google put on social network users to post on their network, the more people rejected being told they had to do this or their rankings could be affected. Some businesses caved in, others chose to not be bullied. Another example you might remember. Google My Business. That name was replaced by Google Places, which later was replaced by Google+. Do you see how Google was trying to manipulate us?

Maybe this should be a lesson that all businesses can learn from. Don’t force something to work when the market isn’t buying your product or service. Look around and see how to better serve customers than make them want what you offer.

Get a “Tune-Up” of your social networks to see how they can be more effective for your business. Give George Carson a call.

How often do you update your website?

Boy, that’s a great question. Too often we find ourselves too busy or cannot find anyone at the company to take on this important responsibility. The answer is at least once per quarter–that refers to the website, not blogs. Even if you think your blog is enough, it isn’t.

You might think updating your company website is a waste of time and a lot of work, and maybe overkill to do this every quarter. But keep in mind, it is the “content” of your website with the proper back-links that help keep your rankings at the top of all search engines. You don’t need to change or update every page each time. I’m sure if you review your site every quarter, you will see that somethings can be improved and updated. It’s important to keep the site fresh. For example, you might be offering your products or services in a local or regional area, like Orange County. Updating this information will attract those businesses wanting to know who in their area offers the products/services that you do. Clients/customers will visit more often when you maintain the site with new content. That’s one reason why companies have blog pages within their website. But that alone isn’t enough to give the SEO’s a reason to rank your site higher.

Sometimes it’s just changing some photos to keep the pages fresh. One other thing, make sure that you title your photos. This helps the SEO’s “see” your content and that can help your rankings as well.

Publicity Orange CountyJust recently we realized it was time for us to update our own site. So we reviewed what our agency has been doing these past few years and decided to change the entire site–the look, navigation and update the services we offer. Even though we have been known as the publicity agency in Orange County, we wanted to remind those outside the area we have done national programs as well. So if you haven’t taken the time to look at your site, maybe it’s time to re-think the look and feel, or just update the photos of the staff.

Need help in designing or developing a new website? Give us a call for a no non-sense FREE evaluation of what it will take to “Get You Noticed”. Call George Carson today at 949-477-9400, or visit our new website for additional information: http://www.carsonmarketinginc.com

8 Points To Grow Your Business

grow-your-businessUntitled-1

Have a plan

Businesses are always seeking new clients and most companies do so without a plan or use a process to find new clients. Making 100 sales calls per month isn’t productive anymore when you consider the odds to close new business is about 1% at best. New business development programs have been around for decades. Yet we keep searching for a full proof system that doesn’t require effort.

Maybe it’s time to stop searching, and time to begin with a plan or process that will help your business today. For those who want to grow their business, use these 8 tips. You might be surprised how these tips (reminders) can help your business grow this year.

1-   Existing Clients Bring More Business.

After we close a new client, typically we move on to look for the next new client. This is time consuming and not always rewarding.

Existing clients can bring you more business. For example, ask what their goals are and see how you can help them reach those goals. In turn, they just might buy more from you. Also, when you ask them for referrals, you might be surprised to see how eager they are to help you.

2-   Go Beyond What Is Expected.

Providing the goods and services to your existing clients is the easy part. Go one step further. Show interest in their industry and learn more about it. Use your network, or contacts to see if someone might be a good match for your client.

3-   Painkillers Remove Headaches.

pills

Learn how to listen to your customers

It doesn’t matter what type of business or service you provide, the reason why a client does business with you is to remove their pain. So become a “listener.” Whether you are at a cocktail party, an event or other social gathering, let a potential, or existing clients vent their pain. This might sound strange, but gaining their loyalty and being there to listen will show you are interested. Who knows, you might just have a solution to lessen their pain.

4-   Power Partners.

Surround yourself with similar businesses. Ask how they built their customer base and what things they did right and wrong. Ask how they improved their sales and if they have a new business development program. You may not get all the answers you are looking for, but you can learn from their mistakes to avoid those pitfalls.

Another great business source are your vendors. Ask them who they know that could use your products or services. It’s ok to request an introduction, just make sure you are offering your vendor an incentive. It can be a finder fee after you make that new sale, or a gift card to a nice restaurant.

5-   Networking Face-to-Face.

Belonging to groups online, such as LinkedIn is fine. But the best way to find new business is through the traditional face-to-face meetings. Some people call these one-on-one meetings. The point is to meet prospects in person, while keeping your online social network active.

6-   Elevator Speech.

This is the most known term in business, the elevator speech. Unfortunately most sales people, even business owners cannot explain their business in a short 30-second speech. Probably because we want to tell everything about our business fearing we might miss something in a short introduction. One way to better understand the elevator speech is to ask your self what would you put on a billboard, or say in a 30-second TV commercial. I recommend having two maybe three different elevator speeches. They can be written for specific markets, or industries. Then use the one that is most appropriate.

7-   Get Noticed. Stand Out in the Crowd.

standingout

Make yourself and business known

No matter how successful or popular a business or person might be, they are continually marketing themselves through all forms of media: print, broadcast, mailers, and social media. A day almost doesn’t go by without reading about Apple, UPS, Taylor Swift, or Kim Kardashian to name a few.

This doesn’t mean you have to spend millions, or invent the first smart phone to get noticed. You need to be creative. Join a local community program or offer your spare time to a charity. If you are a B2B company, or B2C, you can use social media to build your awareness. Using publicity is another inexpensive form of media that will get you noticed.

8-   Do Your Homework Before Making Any Contact.

Know what the company is selling, if they have more than one location, who their competition is, and where they fit into their market are just a few things to know before making that first sales call. Being knowledgeable about their company can give you the advantage over your competition.

These tips might sound like reminders, and they are, and you’re probably saying, “I have used a few of these in the past”, well, that’s the problem. These should be used all the time. So why aren’t you using them? Now get your team together and make this part of your new business development program.

If you need further help in growing your business to the next level, give George Carson a call at 949-477-9400 or you could wait until your competitors call him first!

Local publicity can bring increase sales and awareness

Your publicity campaign should include local publicity media. This could be an Orange County publicity campaign, or a local media publication, such as the LA or OC Business Journals. Some local publicity is targeted to a specific audience, suchlocal and regional publicity as Children’s Resource Directory, which goes to all the Orange County outlets. It’s designed to help parents in this region find good sources for their children, whether it be about child upbringing, health issues, or the arts (music, dance, etc).

PR clients need to stay in touch with their local community programs. It is one method to gain local publicity. Although the rewards may not be immediate, you will see an increase in loyal customers.  Another method is to distribute press releases in your local publications. This is just one form of building a solid local publicity campaign. The Internet now offers a wide variety of web sites to further build upon this local branding campaign. Many of the local community publications have on-line web sites. In addition; you can find many regional and local sites that target your specific market.

So the next time you begin to plan your publicity campaign, be sure to have local publicity as part of the overall program. We have found this to be very rewarding for many of our clients. Especially now when pr clients are looking for ways to increase sales, but maintain a tight budget. If your publicity campaign needs some local direction, give George Carson a call. His Carson Marketing, Inc company has the expertise to get your company noticed which in turn will create more customers.

Look who’s got a “hot” search engine!

If you have been reading my blogs you already know about www.cuil.com. It’s neat and has some great features to envy Google. But there is another search engine that most people do not even realize exists. It’s http://search.twitter.com

Yes, Twitter actually has a very good search and gives good results. You can get local publicity information. Unlike Google, or Cuil, or Yahoo, this offers a different type of searching. For example, an article titled ” Twitter Search Will Be Powerful” by Joe twitter searchMarchese explains his experience. When the earthquake happened in Southern CA the other day, he did a Google search to get more info. Joe had just landed and was eager to find more about the local news in Orange County and Los Angeles and level of the quake. Google provided hundreds of sites, but nothing current to that day’s event. Then he tried Twitter. The search allowed him to read people’s reaction to the quake. He was able to see/read the effects of the earthquake immediately. This is how local publicity in Orange County, or Los Angeles can be accesses immediately.

This is not to say Google, or Yahoo, or even Cuil cannot offer this information. It now shows us that search has become more than an encyclopedia of pages, but can now become a tool for other uses. Twitter is opening the door to new search. And according to Joe, he believes that Google (or someone else) will purchase Twitter to gain this feature it doesn’t offer. Sounds right to me. Joe wrote an article in March about his perspective on this.

Remember, what we thought was a new way to do things just a couple of years ago, actually just last year, is old news. This fast paced social media is teaching us that we are going to see new territories and discoveries opening up shortly. Who knows, this blog site just might become old news next year, and I’ll be communicating in a different platform.

If you want to keep on track with social marketing, do it now. Call George Carson today. 949-477-9400.

How to easily optimize your web site

Yeah, this is a topic that seems to appear everywhere, from local orange county publicity sites to national web marketers. But it still needs to be repeated, even if you only do one of these important rules to keep your web site optimized and search engine friendly, you will be ahead of the competition.

You can find a lot of information about SEO optimization on the web. If you do a search in Google for the words “seo optimization” you get over 6 million searches. Too many to read, and which ones do you choose? You can’t seo optimizingonly select the top 5 or 8 searches, because most of those only give a definition of seo’s. Well, I’ll make this simple and easy enough for any local publicity agency or even a novice web designer to do.

It’s no secret but here are the basic rules to keeping the web site fresh and seo friendly:

1- Keyword and keyphrases. Although many web marketers might dispute the fact that keywords and keyphrases may not be the pr marketing strategy to use, it still holds a lot of attention for seo’s and their methods of rankings. To keep your keywords and phrases current, you need to do some research. It is necessary to find what are the most requested terms/words for your specific industry and place them into your meta keyword/phrases. But do not overload or stuff your keyword, meaning do not put more than 12 to 15. This is what I recommend. Otherwise the seo’s will move you down the rankings.

2. Page titles. Very, very important. Do this correctly and it will pay off. Each title should be different for each page, and include the keywords you use. The best way to understand using titles is to think of yourself looking through books at a library. If the title helps you to stop and look deeper into that book because it relates to what you age looking for, then that’s how the titles work in your web site for the search engines.

3. Meta description. Similar to your page titles, these help the seo’s provide the description to your listings. Each page of your site should have its own meta description. Keep in mind to not have the description be more than 155 words. This is one of the areas that you can control since the seo’s will grab your descriptions for the listings.

4. Keeping the site fresh. You should make it a point to refresh the site every 3 or 4 months. Not change the site, but modify the text, refresh the keywords, and re-visit how the elements are positioned on the site. Then after doing this, re-submit the site to all the seo’s and directories.

There are many other things that will help keep your site listed and ranked high, for example these would be: a) blogging, b) publicity releases, c) articles published, d) RSS feeds, e) social networking, f)  have an on-going pr marketing strategy plan to assure the site meets it’s goals, just to list a few.

There are over a billion sites/pages and millions added everyday. If you do not have an on-going web marketing plan, then it’s time to implement one. Do you need professional help that is affordable? Give George Carson a call at 949-477-9400. Carson Marketing, Inc has been helping pr clients with their web marketing needs for over 10 years.