How Important Is Branded Keywords?

When developing your pr marketing strategy for your web site, ask yourself, is buying my branded name as a keyword important?

We recently had this asked by one of our pr clients. The answer isn’t abranding keywords simple yes, or no. You might think, wait, my product or company name is important, how can you say it isn’t. The reason to consider buying it or not, is purely an emotional decision, mixed with a business decision. To help me further explain this pr marketing strategy, I read an article in iMediaConnection that is titled “5 Reasons to pay for branded keywords“. The five reasons are based on a study he uses to show ten top companies, and lists those who do, and those who do not. For example you would think that McDonalds would purchase their keyword with Google, wrong. What about IBM, wrong again. Both of these companies, along with Intel do not purchase their branded names as keywords on Google, or any other search engines.

So why aren’t these big companies buying their names as keywords. Here are a few of their reasons:

• “We are already in the number one slot in the natural search results, so why waste the money?”
• “We have not integrated search into all of our marketing campaigns.”
• “We believe other companies should not be allowed to bid on our branded terms, so we take the same approach.”
• “We have not given it much thought.”

So as you can see, this may or may not be a good reason for you or even the big guys. But it is their decision. The article points out good arguments why you should consider buying the keywords. They are:

1- Consumer Behavior

2- Your competition will

3- More control, there are two others, check them out on the article.

Yet other major companies like Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Toyota and Mercedes-Benz do purchase their branded keywords. I usually tend to tell my clients, if you can budget purchasing your branded keywords, then it is a good pr marketing strategy to do so. Most companies are not worldwide and should make the decision to do it or not, before their competition does and they have no choice to make.

To learn more about web marketing, or to improve your pr marketing strategy, give Carson Marketing, Inc. a call. They can get your site noticed and positioned high on Google, Yahoo, and MSN, among many others.

Social Media. Do You Know How To Do It Right?

There is a lot of buzz around on how a company should embark on a social media campaign. Some pr marketing strategies have already proven poorly, while other pr marketing strategies are successful.

So what makes one pr client succeed and another falter? Do they need to spend more money? Do they need a blog site? Are they aware of their audience and what they want? It is knowing how to do it right! In a recent article by blogger BL Ochman, she gets right to the core of many issues that are causing serious problems for pr clients not knowing how to so social media.

Does anyone have the answers? Yes, everyone seems to, but who is right? As much as BL Ochman illustrates the right from wrongs in campaigns, you cannot completely know if it is going to work until you implement the marketing campaign. I do agree with her that if you haven’t been doing social media, and are using old pr marketing strategies, then you better hire a blogger or media specialist who understands the workings of social media. That sounds easy enough. But large companies like FORD proved that you could spend $60 million and still not get it right. They need to go outside of the ad agency. Go to the consumers who are blogging about them. Basically, they need a street-smart marketing program. Only through this type of research can any company survive the constant changes consumers experience everyday.

So are you doing it right? If not, look to someone who can direct you to a social media program that can make your company reach its goals.

Newsletters Tips for Publicity

Another great topic is newsletters. They are excellent communicators to keep potential pr clients and customers aware of the products and services offered.pr newsletters

It doesn’t matter if you are a national pr client, or local publicity Orange County agency, newsletters should be included in your web marketing campaign. Newsletters need to be on-going, just like any ad campaign, or publicity campaign. When you start a publicity newsletter for your pr client, or are doing one for your Publicity Orange County Agency, make sure someone is assigned to handle the task.

Writing Tips for Newsletters:

  • Tip for the month. No matter the industry, it is easy to develop at least a dozen tips to help pr clients or customers improve their business.
  • Have examples of how these tips have helped a pr client or how a publicity campaign has created awareness for your service or products.
  • Create a TO-DO list. Make a list of important things that will help a pr client during an interview, or how to prepare a press kit.

If you use your web site as the main vehicle for marketing the newsletter, be sure to capture some information about the company signing up for it. Most important, have someone follow up to the newsletter list every 6 months to make sure that contact is still at the company. Keeping your data current is as important as the information you write.

Email Marketing and PR

Using this with publicity can stimulate more awareness

You can’t just ignore it, and it isn’t going to go away, it’s email marketing!

email marketing and publicityWe all get more than our share of junk mail and a lot of unnecessary mail that seems at times, overwhelming. But the true fact about email marketing is that it does work.

This may not sound to you like a way to attract customers, or build a publicity awareness campaign. But the facts are real, people do respond to and read their emails.

Ok, I am not saying to drop all your pr efforts or publicity campaign that is about to launch. I want to make pr clients and pr agencies realize there is a very large population that likes to read their email. And almost 100% of them have requested to be on that email list.  So it is time to grab that publicity campaign notebook, go through all the projects and see if email marketing is on that list. If not, consider adding email marketing for your pr clients, or your marketing campaigns that include publicity.

To help put this in some perspective, I saw an article that is titled "How to get the best ROI from your Email". The author gets to the point and shows that for every dollar spent on email, the return is $57.25. Unlike other mail programs where it is $22.52 return on every dollar.

This is a suggestion for those publicity savvy people, pr clients and professional pr agencies to realize they have another pr tool waiting to be implemented.

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