Are Your Publicity Clients Prospering?

PR Clients need to deliver more

I have written several blogs and articles about involving the publicity departments with the marketing departments. Well is finally catching on. But only in few situations, usually when a company cannot meet its sales goals.

publicity incentivesPublic relations firms need to step-up to their pr clients and request meetings with the marketing staff as well as the sales departments. Discussions about how each is handling their departments to increase sales will open conversations to work collectively. Competition is not going to get less, but more intense, no matter your industry.

We are seeing that end users (customers) are expecting more from manufacturers. For example, when you make a major purchase like an automobile, you expect more than the rebates. You may negotiate for free oil changes, or extra large tires, etc. When you buy furniture, or appliances, you expect the company to provide free shipping, or some other added incentive. One of our snack food clients will be offering an “instant rebate coupon” that is on the package. It is this type of quick gratification that customers are looking for.

At PowerPR, the company’s blog also had a comment about this. The blog titled "Publicity to a PublicCelebrate incentive that wants More". PowerPR’s clientele is mainly in the manufacturing industry, so they see this as a need for publicity people to get more creative with clients to help sell products. They refer to the extras as being “surprised”.

As professional publicity people we need to address issues like this in order to have clients gain more visible and favorable publicity. 

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Getting More Out Of Your Camapign

Mass media and Online Media


When you take advantage of the tools you have for publicity and marketing you can extend the life of a pr campaign a lot longer. This in turn will get you more publicity for pr clients and increase your product or service awareness.

How do you integrate the two?

One example is to make use of the print or TV campaign and integrate that into your web site. For example, Hardee’s, a known hamburger chain that is owned and operated by Carl’s Jr., made use of a clever TV campaign.

They, Hardee’s, is known for very large, monster burgers. This particular ad focused on their new Philly Cheese Steak ThickBurger. The web site home page was the platform of their new commercial. The commercial could be uploaded to an iPod, added to a MySpace.com page or sent to a friend. Hardee’s invited customers to comment on the TV spot.

This gets their customers involved with the product and gets the word out at the same time. Hardee’s had an email sign up form to become part of their loyalty marketing program, which has benefits.

This is one company that understands integration of publicity, web marketing and reaching mass media. They are one of the few to make this work for them. Other companies shy away from their publicity departments and marketing departments. Keeping them separate. This can only slow your process to gain favorable publicity.

Learn how to make use of these media. It can only help promote your company further.

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