Category Archives: PR Marketing Strategies

How Many Press Releases Do You Send Out Per Month?

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Your pr marketing strategy should include a series of press releases each month. So what is the total number of press releases to send per month? We recommend at least three per month. You don’t want to issue the same release every other week, but rather find a new angle, or create new releases each week.

publicity press releasesWe do not recommend flooding the media with dozens of press releases, especially if they are not newsworthy. That will get you negative publicity and probably be recognized as a pest to the media.

Your pr marketing strategies should outline for your pr clients a series of releases to meet the objectives of your publicity campaign. For example, if a pr client is introducing a new product, that warrants a press release. When the product has an impact, or makes an improvement to something, this can be another press release. Basically, follow through with the first press release to see how you can continue to get media attention. Reporters and publishers need good content and stories for their readers, so when writing your pr clients press releases, give them solid information that will want readers to learn more.

Keep away from “sales writing”. Press releases need to be informative, give features as to why the product or service was developed. Tell how it will affect the market, or industry. That is what reporters are looking for in their publications.

If you need help in getting your pr marketing strategy, or publicity campaign in gear, give us a call. We have the contact and expertise to get you noticed. Make the call; it can be the step you take that advances you ahead of the competition.

Do You Have A Blogger On Staff?

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More and more major corporations are hiring staff bloggers, now being titled Chief Bloggers. This is proof that blogging is making a serious impact on corporations as well as small to mid-size companies.

No longer considered a trend but now part of the business daily activity, business blogging is a mainstay for pr clients as well as any company that has a pr marketing strategy. Publicity professionals have seen the positive results that blogging has and are finally asking pr clients to add daily business blogging to their pr marketing campaign. Several high profile corporations see the need to blog. A few of these corporations are Coca-Cola, Kodak, and Marriott to mention a few. According to a recent article in Advertising Age, over 11% of the Fortune 500 companies have corporate blogs. Smart publicity professionals know how critical a publicity campaign with blogging can have on a company’s branded image. It is now more important than before to get the word out and the best way to do this is having your own business blog site.

More aggressive business blogs are from Kodak. An article in Blog Herald, dated April 3, 2008, describes that Kodak has two business blog sites and hired chief bloggers to maintain them. Blogging should be part of your pr client’s business tools. No longer can it be taken as a part-time or as a pass-time project. Just ask CEO-President Jonathan Schwartz on Sun Microsystems. He has helped direct the company and improved the image with his business blogging. This doesn’t mean that the CEO, or owner needs to do the blogging. But many of the top executives direct their chief bloggers on the topics or give approval before a blog is posted. This may seem staged in some ways, but as I said before, it is a pr marketing strategy that is making a strong impact on business. Make sure your pr client, or company is using their blog site to keep that branded name in front of customers.

Blogging or Press Releases, which is better?

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With all the activity and “publicity” that business blogging has received this past year, pr clients, and publicity professionals are clamoring to get a blog site for themselves and companies. Is having a business blog the best choice or just a publicity campaign the way to go?

Good question, but there isn’t one answer. First you need to do some soul searching about what it is you arebusiness blogging, blog sites trying to achieve. If you are a pr client that has a product to launch, or a service to promote, then a publicity campaign is what you need. With that said, let’s back up a second. Keeping in mind that publicity press releases are good, an article is best. Look at your pr marketing strategies that you are developing. While you may not get an article in a publication, or it may be a few months before that reporter gets your article published, then consider incorporating a business blog site to further the exposure. The blog will also get you noticed sooner. And you have more control as to what can be said. Unlike an ad, you don’t want your business blog site to be all commercial. Keep to the facts, make it interesting and give some examples as to why this new product can improve things like a person’s lifestyle, or a company’s profits. Basically, make it productive, not a sales pitch.

This brings us back to creating a solid pr marketing strategy for your pr client, or company. Make sure that your pr marketing strategies include a well-planned publicity campaign. This should consist of a business blog, a promotional program, a series of press releases and an article that can be submitted to reporters, editors and publishers in your industry. I read an article called “Is your press release passive?” Other tips on good pr writing can be found at their main site. This touches on a few important issues in writing releases. This can also be a simple guide in writing your blog for that new product or service. business blogging, blog sites

So what have you learned in this blog? Hopefully that a business blog is as important as your publicity campaign. Ok, I need to now explain that just having a blog on the web doesn’t get you noticed. It requires a lot of backend marketing. A couple of years ago, a simple blog site was all you needed and it got a lot of attention. Today, you need to market your business blog site. That brings me to our company, Carson Marketing, Inc. We can market your business blog site. If you do not have a business blog, then we can help put your company into the blog sphere so that you get noticed. Give us a call. We’re just 10 numbers away at 949-477-9400 to making you a successful blogger.

Are You Optimizing Your Email Campaign?

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When creating a pr marketing strategy for an email campaign, you want to make sure it is delivered. That can be a problem if you are not using proper email best business practices.

No matter the type of email campaign, or the size of your list, you should follow the best business practices and strategies.email campaigns One tip is to earn the trust of the ISP’s. Why? Think of your own in box, or junk mail. If your ISP let all mail through, you would probably receive hundreds more of junk mail a day. Internet Service providers protect their customers from spam, or junk by providing standard protocols and policies that block unsolicited bulk mail. Wouldn’t that be great if our Post Office had a similar program? I would like that!

Ok, back to getting optimized email campaigns. To make sure your list is valid, follow these few rules:

Have relevant lists

Make sure your recipients are allowing your messages

Have a professional email that is well-designed

Be sure to use email authentication

These are the basis of getting your pr marketing strategy campaign to be professional. If you need to know how to get authentication, then check out Sender Policy Framework (SPF). If you have specific questions about the basics, or doing a roll-out email campaign, check out the FAQ here. Remember, potential customers are just like you, no one wants to be hammered with hundreds of junk email, so make sure your message is something customers would like to know more about. Email marketing builds or destroys a company’s reputation. Read my blog that talks about “email reputation” to learn more.

Business Blogging Makes Great PR

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If you are still wondering how to get your company, or pr client noticed, then look at Business Blogging. It is one of the strongest pr marketingbusiness blogging, blog sites strategies you can implement. It takes some work, but the rewards are great. First you need to realize that just having a blog site isn’t going to make things happen overnight. You need a plan, you need to understand how the blog world works, and then your business blogging will all come together.

There are dozens of companies claiming to do blog marketing sites. Only a few truly understand how this mysterious cyberworld can get you noticed. We are one of those companies who have surrounded ourselves with many of the top developers and marketers that know how a pr clients web site can become listed or ranked very high on Google and Yahoo, as well as MSN. There isn’t any top-secret formula, just a lot of planning, consistency and hard work. Like any other web site, a business blog site may take a few weeks to get indexed with the search engines.

To make your blog site more business provide the visitors opportunities to make comments on the site. Have an area that they can signup for your company newsletter, or download and article that relates to your industry. If you need assistance in getting a solid blog site that gets noticed, call George Carson. He can help with the development and the web marketing.

If you want to do other publicity activity to get noticed, then consider these other tried and true efforts. Many of them I have spoken about, but sometimes when you read it by other publicity professionals, you might listen more. These are just a few suggestions I saw that was written in an article called “How to Get killer PR“.

• Attend Events. Introduce yourself to other business people, check to see if there is a special area for networking at these events, or if they have guest speakers.

• Find something that makes you unique, a compelling theme (as the writer states). Find the strengths and uniqueness and talk to reporters about those qualifications

• Be accessible. When anyone form the press calls, or sends you an email, you need to respond in a timely manner. That doesn’t mean when you are ready, it usually means within a couple of hours or sooner.

These few tips are common sense, but often not used. Make your publicity part of your overall business plan. It should include the blogging as well as the many other campaign elements I have spoken about in the past. Look at topics on my blog like “How to write a Marketing Plan“, or “Write a Press Release for the Media Not Your Company”; another good article is “Where to send your press release”.

If you are serious about developing a blog campaign, check out “Social Media Keeps Growing…” and “Internet Marketing Tips“.

Now get back to your business blogging.

What Advertising Marketing Strategies Are You Using?

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Advertising agencies and publicity professionals use different advertising marketingPR Marketing Strategy strategies to promote a pr clients products or services. Do you know what marketing strategies are being developed for your company? If you are not sure, then use this information as a guide to get a better understanding of what marketing strategies are about.

First, if you Google the term “advertising marketing strategies“, you will see that Wikipedia defines it into three main areas. They are:

1-Weak Strategies

2-Middle Strength Strategies

3-Strong Strategies

I want to concentrate on the strong strategies in this blog. When you see an ad campaign, or even a publicity campaign, and you feel good about it. That’s what strong strategies are about. It gets to the inner feelings of someone. An example would be, in wikipedia, the Geico commercial. Although it does have the qualities of a strong marketing strategy, I do not feel it is the best example. Not everyone feels good about or relates favorably to that the little Geico character.

Think of yourself when buying something that you really liked, such as a new car, or when you booked that vacation to Hawaii. It made you feel good. And why did you buy that specific car, or plan that special location for your trip? It is because you felt good about it when you were first exposed to the campaign. It was the creative marketing, or pr marketing strategy, or the special publicity surrounding the product that started to give you these great feelings.

As the definition says, creative strategies promote great publicity campaigns and sales promotions. So now that you, as a pr client, or even a publicity professional, know what the advertising marketing strategies are, start using them to improve your campaign. It can only make it better.

How Important Is Branded Keywords?

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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.

How To Create Branding

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This is a topic that can always be spoken about. Mainly because most pr clients, advertisers, and publicity agencies do not fully understand how to create a branding campaign, or build a brand product.

It starts with a plan. A Marketing Plan would be best. Inside the plan should be the different marketing strategies that outline in detail what your company goals are to be achieved and what will it take to attain those goals. So how does this relate to BRANDING? Glad you asked. It is just one small part of your pr marketing strategy.branding campaign

When you or your advertising agency creates a campaign for your product, or company image, consider what it is you are trying to achieve. If it is to be memorable, or have humor, or be a serious campaign, then this is how the branding will start. Branding also starts from within a company. From the CEO, to the president, to the office receptionist. But that’s another area of branding that we can discuss later.

Let’s get back to your ad campaign, or publicity campaign. If the idea that is presented looks good, feels good, but you as the pr client just says “that could be our competitors ad if you take out our logo”. Well, consider this, are they using that campaign, or that slogan, or those images. If not, then maybe you are in the old school. Just as I read in Brandweek, an article called “The Doing of the Thing”, by Mike Wolfsohn, points out that this type of thinking can make you be left behind the competition, instead of being the competition. He uses several examples; one in particular is the MasterCard “Priceless” campaign. While the competition, Visa, is trying to position them as the card that is used everywhere, MasterCard takes the personal approach making it more emotional. Anyone of the other card companies could have used that as their idea, but MasterCard did it.

So don’t throw out an idea because you feel the campaign is too generic, make it your brand, make it become your slogan, or image. That is one way to start building a brand. To learn how to create a brand in more detail, give George Carson a call. He can get you noticed so that YOU become the competition. Call him at 949-477-9400.

Is Your Media Based On Demographics? If So, Re-Think Your PR Marketing Strategy.

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The old way to identify a pr marketing strategy or media profile was to check the TV programs, or the radio station and place your ad accordingly to the age, and type of people you wanted to reach. That is what the media rep would tell you. This was also true for print media. But now you need to re-think how you buy media.

If your pr marketing strategy, or media plan is based on the old school of demographics, then you are probably wastingdemographic study money. Today, the new media of social networking, as well as the more sophisticated means of identifying demographics for traditional media has changed, and for the better. Let’s say your pr marketing strategy is to reach the average male/female in the mid 20″s to late 30’s. You would probably think that MTV is the best deal. What if you had a client that wanted to reach an older demographic (over 40-45), would you consider MTV, probably not. But think again. MTV actually has only 36% of its audience is in the 18-34 age category.

Here is another example of how we “used to think”. Let’s look at ESPN. Usually a heavy male and football station, but times have changed so has the demographics. No longer it is a male dominated station. Over 24% of women watch ESPN.

Want to hear another wild statistic. How about the AARP.org web site? What are your first thoughts when you see the letters AARP? Old, grey hairs, and probably in an assisted living complex, right? You would probably create a pr marketing strategy of 55+ targeted at this audience. Not true anymore. Over 46% of the AARP site visitors are under 55 years of age.

It is getting more difficult to find and target your media when you use the old school of thinking. Internet media is more focused on specific demos, and actually reach the people you want. And it is monitored easier. You can find more of these facts and a lot of great information in an article called “Time to give up on demographics”. Well written, and makes a lot of sense.

Do your research and check out other media sources for the latest ways of making sure that your pr marketing strategy is on target.

It is best you start thinking of habits, rather than age, or gender. Buying habits or viewing habits will be a good pr marketing strategy not the old school of buying media.

How To Write A Marketing Plan

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WHERE DO YOU START?

If you have never written a marketing plan, then you can use this as a basis to begin. I urge you to work with a professional marketing individual to help implement the marketing plan if you do not have anyone in your company with the knowledge and experience.

I talked about creating a pr marketing strategy in a recent blog for a company, and that you should first have a marketing plan in place in order to begin your marketing strategy. Many PR Clients think if they just put together a simple plan, or a strategy, they will succeed. This is a crapshoot. You might get by for a short time, but without a definite marketing plan, it is possible to fail. Some of the reasons will be evident when you see what it takes to write a solid marketing plan.

If you think that marketing is selling or advertising, then you are wrong! Marketing concentrates on customers and what they need (or want). Customers are the essence of marketing – they are the source of sales and profits. Now that this is said, let’s move onto the writing.

The marketing plan should be for your company, not a copy or extraction of other plans and fit it into your company. You need to do your own research. These are a few of the things you need to know before writing the marketing plan.

• List who are your competitors

• Do you know your potential customers (create a profile of your customer base. Whether you are a B2B business, or retail, a profile should be identified.

• Describe your product(s) or services that are offered

• Know your actual costs and what will it take to get this to market. To do this list your entire overhead and other operating costs to know what profit margins you need to survive and grow.

Once you have gathered this critical information you still need to do more research. For example, you need do the following:

• analysis of your current market
• your business objectives
• key strategies
• steps to achieving your objectives
• proposed budget
• timing

After you have all these facts, you can now begin to do an outline of the marketing plan. Then you can start doing the writing.

As you can see, if you have not written a plan, it takes a lot of serious research and objectivity. I highly recommend hiring a marketing professional to guide you along so the plan is something that is designed to help your company grow, rather than adding information you “think is best” and might not point your company in the right direction. If you need help, call George Carson at Carson Marketing, Inc. He will get you going and prepare you in handling your next level of growth.