How to INCREASE your brand awareness without increasing your budget

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When the economy worsens it seems companies, pr clients as well, always cut back on everything, and that includes advertising. If you want to increase your brand awareness without increasing your ad budget–and actually reduce your budget, then read on. This approach works great for local pr clients and national pr clients.

In today’s tough economic times, the companies that will survive are the ones who continue increase brand awarenesstheir marketing and brand awareness. You can do this by spending less money than your current ad budget! How? With a creative publicity campaign. Being a publicity professional since 1980, I recommend starting an aggressive local publicity campaign. This should be a series of publicity releases and submission of articles to the media, etc. Then continue with a social media network campaign and a web marketing/publicity campaign. Those are the main elements. To be successful during these difficult times, you need to be consistent. Other things smart publicity professionals would recommend would be your blog site. Start making your blogs work closely with your web site.

Did you realize that I haven’t said to “spend any media money”? Rather than spending media money (print, TV, radio, banners, keywords), allocate 50% of your advertising budget for publicity. Don’t get caught up in buying keywords, or key phrases either. The money you allocate to the local publicity or regional publicity campaign will generate more awareness than the media budget. That’s smart marketing. Impelmenting this will get your pr clients web site listed in all the major search engines. And in return that will create traffic and increase sales. Knowing how to put this all together could be a challenge. In the long run, even if you hire a professional publicity company, like Carson Marketing, Inc., the costs will be much, much less than the media money you would spend just to get “limited” awareness. A well-designed publicity campaign will garner many months of awareness while building your brand. Then as the economy improves, your company will be the one customers will remember and continue purchasing from.

How To Get Free Publicity

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Ok, you want to know how do you get free publicity, right? It isn’t easy. You just completed your pr marketing strategies for next year and included publicity as part of the plan. Now you arefree publicity looking at getting free publicity as part of the marketing strategy. Well, there are no special formulas, trick words, or how you “optimize” your press release that will garner you all that free publicity. When you think about this topic, what is free? Are you willing to not pay someone to write a press release, or pay a pr distribution company, like business wire, to submit your releases? What about the do-it-yourself approach? Sure, if you don’t value your time or pay yourself anything, then I guess you got the release for free. That still leaves the media. If you do not have the contacts, your release, or article may never get published.

When people say they got “FREE publicity”, ask them if they paid for any of the services I just mentioned. In reality, free refers to the media. Unless you pay for an advertorial, or a press release to be published, then it is free. Unlike an ad, which you pay for that space (this even includes traditional publications, online media, social networks, etc) publicity is something that editors will allow to be printed in their media without cost. You need to realize that the editor, or publisher has the right to refuse, or publish any releases or articles. Whether it is about a new product, or service, it is up to that publication if they want to run it.

So how do you really get Free PR? Hire a professional company that knows how to write press releases/articles and has the media contacts, Then you may get the FREE PR everyone is bragging about. If your company wants free publicity and can’t do it in-house, give Carson Marketing, Inc a call.

Successful Email Marketing Strategies

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Companies need to use “street smart marketing techniques” during these difficult times. One smart strategy is to re-think how you reach customers. If you are a pr client, thenemail marketing strategies consider Email Marketing. It can be one of those marketing strategies that prove to be a winner for your company. But you need to understand how to use this tool effectively. You can get lost on what to do. If you search the words “Email Marketing” in Google you will get over 52 million searches.

Just like a solid publicity campaign, email marketing should have a plan. Here are a few tips.

1- Offer something of value. Don’t fall into the trap of discounting. Most emails will be shouting the price cuts, or discounts in the subject line. Instead provide value, such as information, or use the subject line to mention how your product or service provides helpful tips, or increases their profit margins.

2- Start a discussion. The first and last things we do in any day is check our emails. Just like a social network posts questions, try this in your email. It could be something that is passed along and soon your company is the focal point of that topic/product.

3- Follow-ups. Use email to follow up to a customer who made a recent purchase. Ask them about their experience with the sale, or with the product order. Get customers involved, it will show them you care.

These are just a few tips to creating a successful email marketing campaign. It still is one of the most powerful marketing strategy tools that a pr client can use during this difficult business climate. So start to make things happen. Use email marketing wisely and see the results. If you need help, call George Carson at Carson Marketing, Inc. He can be reached at 949-477-9400.

How To Create Affordable Web Site Marketing

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If you don’t have a web site marketing strategy, then it’s time to sit down and write one. You can’t do affordable web site marketing without a pr marketing strategy plan. To help you get started, let me provide you these tips.affordable web site marketing

1- Is Your Web Site Google Friendly? Since Google is the grandaddy of search engines, all others will follow this practice. Make sure the site is well designed. Not just with graphics, but well structured. That means all links are working, and pointing the the correct source that relates to the topic of your web page. Make sure it has ease of navigation for users.

2- Optimize from the inside out. More than just adding keywords and phrases. You need to research what are the best keywords for your market, product or service. This changes frequently, so make sure you update this information at least every quarter. Be sure that the title pages make sense. These should be part of your keyword strategy campaign.

3- Link relevance. Are the links to your site and from your site relevant? Just having hundreds of inbound links from sites that are not related to your site can lead to lower positioning on the search engines.Fewer higher ranked sites that link back are better than hundreds of low ranked sites.

These are just a few tips to get an affordable web site marketing campaign together. It will require some solid and serious commitment to maintain a web marketing strategy. Once you have this in place, then you can begin an aggressive pr marketing campaign that includes social networks, blog and podcasting as well as a publicity online press release and article campaign.

How To Write A Press Release For Publishing

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There can never be enough said about writing a good press release.

Most pr clients, pr agencies, and publicity professionals try to overwrite press releases. By that I mean, they want press release writingto produce dozens of press releases to justify their existence and their fees. Without a series of press releases, most publicity professionals, and pr agencies will not survive. I don’t believe in writing just to write for the sake of a retainer fee. It is best to have a solid pr plan that includes a lot of other publicity activities, but that’s another topic.

Let’s get into writing good press releases that will get published.

1- The trap most press releases fall into is no relevance. Too often they do not have information that relates to any specific industry, or the information is a sales pitch. Keep away for phrases such as “out-of-this-world”, “amazing”, “wild”, etc. When writing, try to see it through a journalistic view. How would a reporter, or editor react to your release?

2- What’s important to the consumer or market? Give factual information that will explain why your product or service will have to help the consumer, or improve a situation in the market. Write for your audience.

3- Provide all the necessary contact information. This should include all the people that an editor, or reporter can contact should they want more information, or to follow up.

4- The HEADLINE. Make sure it is not storytelling. It should create interest without being too creative

5- Main paragraph. This is important. It needs to quickly explain and tell– who–what–where–and why of your press release. Most editors will only read the first or second paragraph, so make sure all the important information is in this part.

6- Main body. Now you can further explain with support data about the product or service.

7- Summary. It is ok to repeat some of the information that you had in the first paragraph. Just don’t repeat every word. Always close with the name, address and phone number of the company the press release is about.

Finally, keep the press release short. Some publicity professionals feel they get paid for each word. So they tend to write 2 or 3 or more pages. If the information is that technical, or requires a lot of explaining, then create a short version to get the attention of an editor to contact you for further information. Remember, editors get thousands of releases and if you make it difficult to read, or too long to say what is important, your release becomes recycle paper. I suggest you keep a press release down to 400 and no more than 500 words. Fewer than 400 is best. If you need more help go to this site, which provides information on press release formatting:  http://www.press-release-writing.com/press-release-template.htm.

B2B Web Marketing with Publicity Marketing

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You can surf the web all day and find article after article about B2B web marketing. Only a few will explain how to combine that with the power of your publicity marketing campaign.web marketing

Let me give you some of that inside scoop.

YOUR SITE

B2B web marketing needs to begin within the “core” structure of a company’s web site. As shown in this simplified illustration, a pr clients web site is the starting point. Now lets see how each phase works:

SEO

From there you build outward to the SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I have spoken about this many times. This consists of keyword research, meta tag and content, link building. It was said that over 75% of clicks are ORGANIC searches, not paid links. So you see how important this phase is. Hang on, were getting to publicity.

SEM

Then comes the SEM (Search Engine Marketing). As powerful as Google is with it’s AdWords campaign, you should also consider using Yahoo Search Marketing as part of this SEM.

LOCAL MARKETING

The heart of most B2B web marketing sites. Although we all want to be world wide, you should use local networking to build your B2B web site. There are local marketing tools like Marchex Adhere to help start your local campaign. Ok, here is where you begin to include local publicity.

PUBLICITY

This should now be the emphasis of your pr clients campaign. A solid local and national publicity campaign should include press releases, articles in various media, and seminars. That’s only part of it. Be sure you research the online media. These will include social networks, as well as online media news outlets.

EMAIL MARKETING

Not too far behind your publicity campaign should be an email marketing strategy campaign. There are two main methods: eNewsletter and email blasts. The eNewsletter should be listed on your B2B web site for customers to sign up to receive them. The email blast, although can be costly, should be used when targeting a specific market or industry group.

Ok, I don’t expect any pr client, or pr agency to handle this type of B2B marketing, but some of them do try and fail. If you need a professional publicity agency that knows this stuff, call George Carson at 949-477-9400.We have been helping B2B companies grow through unconventional marketing techniques. Let us get you noticed.

Is Your Web Site Working For You?

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If you are a pr client, or have an eCommerce web site, is it getting traffic? Is the traffic converting to sales, or leads for your business? Is your site listed on the first page of Google, or Yahoo? Do you know the Page Rank?

These are important questions, and you as a pr client, or an eCommerce client should take seriously. If any of these are problems, then re-think your web site. Here are a few tips to make sure that your web site is consumer, or B2B ready.web site media

1- DESIGN. Believe it or not, a poor design will actually hurt you. The SEO”s reject poor design sites for indexing. Also, customers will run away fast if the site is hard to read, confusing, and the graphics are screaming for attention.

2- WEB LAYOUT. If you have a lot products, or services to offer, make sure customers can find everything easily. And your content needs to be something your customers will enjoy reading.

3- NAVIGATION. This goes hand-in-hand with the design and layout. When those are done correctly, then the navigation should be clear and concise, or customers will get lost and you will loose business.

Bottom-line– have a professional work on your web site. If you already have a site then package design and printingmake sure it meets these simple tips. If not, contact a web designer, one who understands marketing. Otherwise, they may just create a nice design for them to enter in a web site contest, and doesn’t meet your needs. After all this is completed, then the optimizing is next. If you are serious about building customers on the web, make sure web marketing is part of your advertising and marketing plan.

And this all relates to publicity. A great looking site will generate positive publicity. A poorly designed and difficult site will also generate publicity. Which type of publicity do you want for your web site?

New Google Tool Can Improve Your Publicity Campaign

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Every marketer, and publicity professional wants to keep update with the newest tools to help their pr clients, whether being a local publicity client in Orange County, to a national pr client, get the best publicity campaign available. Well, another new tool from Google can help. It is not a submission for releases, but instead it is a tool that helps find errors called crawl errors on a pr clients web site.

You’re probably saying how does this help with improving a publicity campaign? Well, it does. An article by Jason lee Miller gives a good example about “Google Helps Find Missing Links“. missing and broken web linksOk, maybe not directly if you are a publicity professional. But this gives you the opportunity to work with the IT staff, or the webmaster. Why? Because if a web site has broken links, the SEO’s, like Google, Yahoo will punish your site. This can cause you to fall many pages back on a listing, even loose a listing altogether.

By knowing about this web tool, it makes any pr professional smarter knowing how the web works. Because if you post your pr clients press releases on the web site and the site gets poor ranking (due to broken links) then it is time and money wasted. This is even more true when visitors or media visit the site. Broken links are not liked by anyone, especially anyone in the media– editors, reporters, etc.

Protect your pr clients publicity by including this into your pr marketing strategy. It can only improve your relationship with clients. And in this touch economy, loosing a client can be very costly. If you need help with your web site, then give George Carson a call at Carson Marketing, Inc. (949) 477-9400.

Social Media Gets Bigger With Yahoo

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Here we go again! Another attempt at social media, but this time it is one of the giant Internet companies, Yahoo. It is not well known, but Yahoo did an attempt at social media called Mash. It “crashed andsocial media networks failed” on September 29, 2008. This shows you that just because you have a fat piggy bank with unlimited resources, you can fail. To be effective with your pr marketing strategies you need to know this.

Unlike Google who used “Blogging” to get social with it’s “Follow this Blog” link, Yahoo tried being another Facebook, or MySpace. Now Yahoo has learned a lesson and has re-invented itself in terms of social and blogging. This time Yahooo  is claiming to be more of a social destination. According Stoneham, who says the following about the new yahoo social direction:

I want to make it clear that this new profile is not intended to be a new social destination on Yahoo!. Rather, our plan is to integrate “social” as a central dimension into the services you use every day. For example, if you’re on Yahoo! Messenger 9.0, you’re already seeing Yahoo! Buzz, Mybloglog, and Twitter updates as part of your friends’ status messages. Soon you’ll see social capabilities added elsewhere across Yahoo!, beginning with places where you start your day. The new homepage we’re testing will soon have an application that lets you stay up to date with what your friends are doing across the Web. And Yahoo! Mail will be delivering a smarter inbox, displaying emails from your most important connections first.

Developing a pr marketing strategy for your pr clients, or if you are a pr client, don’t feel these attempts are showing a crowded market for social networks. I still feel the industry is growing and maturing. Yes, there will be fallouts, and that in turn builds a stronger understanding of where the next level of social networks is going. In my opinion, it is going to be more “business” related. There will always be consumer sides to social, but the business community is hungry for this as well, but on a mature level. So keep your pr marketing strategies in touch with the changes and keep an eye open for new social BUSINESS networks, it is only a matter of time, and the time is not far off.

How To Get High Ranking On Google

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It is no surprise that one of the most effective methods is to have a solid pr marketing strategy that consists of published press releases. I am not saying this because I am a publicity professional and use publicity to promote my pr clients web sites as well as their products and services. On the contrary. I feel that there is a wall that separates the people in the IT web department and those in the publicity department. This is true in advertising agencies, publicity agencies and at pr clients.web site ranking

For some reason the people in these departments do not like to share their information, nor help each other. That’s because each wants to show how great they are. Well, if they work together, they might be more productive and more successful for pr clients, or themselves.

Ok, time to get into the meat of high ranking on Google. To get your web site ranked high on Google, or any of the other major SEO’s such as Yahoo and MSN, you need some background on how this process works.

Ever wonder when you do a search and type a keyword or phrase into Google how all those results pop up? It starts with a massive “index“. That is where the Google crawlers begin their search. Google uses Googlebots that search updated pages on their index, as well as new site. There are billions of pages on the web and this process isn’t easy even for a Googlebot.

A query is found by Google by matching the results to your query that are the most relevant. There are over 200 factors that rate this, and PageRank is only one of them. This brings in publicity. Yeah, a long way around to get here, but it’s important to know in simple terms how the process works. Since you now know the basics of website page rankings, now you can use this to improve the publicity releases you write. Remember what I said several days ago, that a press release needs to be optimized as well in order to help your web site get higher ranking–listing. Knowing that relevancy is important, make sure you have good content in your press releases and they are submitted to all the proper online media outlets.

You should look into having a professional publicity person help with the distribution if you want to get noticed and ranked/listed higher on Google. Remember, I’m here if you need the help to get your company noticed in a positive way. Just contact George Carson at Carson Marketing, Inc.