This series breaks down different marketing tactics to help you determine which ones will best support your marketing strategy.

Public relations is a powerful and inexpensive way to reach your target audience.

Historian Daniel J. Boorstin once said: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.” It’s clever, but not entirely accurate. The truth is the greatest product or service won’t sell if no one knows about it.

Generally speaking, public relations (aka PR) refers to the strategic placement of news and articles in media that are popular with your target audience, such as newspapers and magazines or television and radio programs. Its purpose is to increase awareness, educate, inform and influence public perceptions about your product, service or business. The increased awareness and positive perceptions should result in additional sales, but not in a direct way, as with advertising where you purchase media space to promote your message.

But PR also includes a variety of non-media activities aimed at raising your profile, like newsletters, speaking engagements, charitable activities and special events. For instance, I’ve had clients successfully position themselves as experts in their field by speaking at trade shows and conferences, as well as teaching workshops.

So should your business incorporate public relations as part of its marketing strategy? Let’s weigh its strengths and weaknesses.

Pros of Public Relations

What makes PR messages so powerful? When a story, article or announcement about your business appears in the media – which is perceived as an independent third party – it implies a subtle endorsement. In this way you gain credibility in the eyes of consumers.

Is this media manipulation? Not at all, so long as your topic is sufficiently newsworthy. In fact, media outlets and influencers (like popular blogs) are always looking for leads to help them produce interesting, timely stories. PR helps to fill that need.

And PR is relatively inexpensive compared to other forms of marketing, especially advertising. When your budget’s on the low end but you still need to reach a broad audience, PR is a great way to go. This could explain why spending on public relations and related services continues to climb, according to a number of studies. With the right person on staff, it can even be handled effectively in-house.

Even better, public relations material like polls and top-ten tips can be recycled and reused in various formats, squeezing even more from your investment.

Cons of Public Relations

One downside of PR is that you can’t control the message once the media chooses to run it. You can’t predict when a story will appear, or if it appears at all. It all depends on the timeliness of the subject, the availability of space or time, and the relationship you or your PR professional have with each editor.

And editors or producers have final say on what shape the story takes. On rare occasions, a biased editor with an axe to grind can put a negative spin on your story and depict your business in a poor light.

One more potential hurdle: If the topic of your story is time-sensitive, you’ll have to plan ahead to ensure it appears when it’s needed. Most publications schedule feature content weeks or months in advance, though they’ll usually supply an editorial calendar to guide you. (Blogs can be more flexible.)

Quick Tips for Effective PR

Sometimes it helps to have a PR professional in your corner. But if you’re ready to tackle the next campaign yourself, keep these tips in mind:

1. Think like an editor. When evaluating your press release or story pitch, every editor or producer wants to know just one thing: Is this relevant and interesting to my audience? Tie your story to an industry trend, a timely event or a topical subject when possible. Conducting surveys or providing tips for readers are sure winners in getting published, while also positioning you as an expert in your field.
2. Focus on hard facts. Yes, you want publicity, but you won’t get good coverage by singing your own praises. Save your sales pitch for your other marketing tactics. Stick to cold, hard facts and keep it objective, unless you’re quoting a source or writing an opinion piece.
3. Polish that press release. When composing press releases, don’t be boring. Try to come up with creative headlines and intro paragraphs that really grab the reader. And mention the most important facts early – many times the headline and first paragraph are the only things an editor will read.
4. Recycle your PR. Getting media coverage is just the beginning. Talk it up on your blog and social media pages. Mention it in your email newsletter. Create a “Press” page to feature it on your website. The more your name is out there, the more apt it is to be fresh in the minds of current and prospective clients.

Need more tips on marketing tactics? Read the previous post in this series:

Your Marketing Toolbox: Advertising

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Advertising – an important component of
your marketing toolbox.

We’ve talked about the importance of integrated marketing – tying all of your tactics together under one unified strategy. But how do you know you’ve chosen the right tactics in the first place?

Different marketing tools come with different strengths and weaknesses, and different price tags, too. You have to strike the right balance between staying on budget and choosing the best tools to reach your objectives. So in this blog series we’ll break down the most common marketing tactics and discuss how, where and why (or why not) to use them. First up: Advertising.

We’re all familiar with advertising. It’s everywhere – television, radio, newspapers and magazines, outdoors and even inside public restrooms. (We’ll cover online advertising later.) It makes us laugh, think, sometimes groan and – most importantly – crack open our wallets.

Advertising can generate leads and direct sales (Act Now!), though it’s just as often used to build brand awareness or rejigger a company’s image. There are few better ways to announce a new product or service. Yet big corporations like Coke may spend millions every year even when they have nothing new to sell.

No company has been as successful as Coco-Cola in building positive brand awareness through advertising.

Research suggests businesses are spending less on traditional advertising and reallocating budgets to online marketing. But that also means you’ll find less competition in traditional media outlets. And when it’s done right, people pay attention.

That’s why advertising still holds an important position in many marketing plans. Next we’ll look at some pros and cons to help you decide if it’s right for your next campaign.

Pros of Advertising

With advertising, you have complete control of the message. You decide when and where it will appear, unlike PR efforts which are subject to the whims of editors and publishers.

Traditional advertising can also reach more people in more places than newer forms of marketing because it doesn’t require active participation, like social media or websites in which your customers must actively engage and interact with your sales message. Print advertising is a particularly good way to target niche markets.

And there’s no doubting the power of a truly creative advertising campaign. Remember Old Spice? The company revived its outdated brand with a series of clever commercials featuring “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.”

Cons of Advertising

Here’s the bad news: advertising will cost you. It’s expensive relative to most other forms of marketing. Media outlets can be somewhat capricious when it comes to setting ad rates, though most will cut deals below the listed rate.

No matter where it appears, advertising also requires plenty of repetition. An old advertising rule of thumb says that viewers must read or see your ad seven times before it makes an impression. One or two ads, no matter how well targeted, won’t make an impact in a cluttered marketplace.

Lastly, unless your ad is designed to generate leads and direct sales, it can be difficult to measure your return on investment. As retail tycoon John Wanamaker once quipped: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is I don’t know which half.”

Tips to Get More from Your Advertising

If you decide to advertise (or more likely when), here are a few tips to help you get the most from this tactic:

1. Choose media outlets carefully. Does the outlet appeal to your target demographic? How many people will it reach? Is it aligned with your brand, goals and strategy? All things considered, is it the most cost-effective option?
2. Negotiate ad rates. Factors like competing outlets, ad placement, the size of your business, the time an ad runs and how often it runs can all be used to leverage lower rates. Don’t be afraid to haggle.
3. Make it creative. Effective advertising relies on creativity more than the other tactics we’ll discuss. If it doesn’t make a dent in the consumer’s consciousness, great ad placement won’t mean much.
4. Include a response mechanism. You may want to ask your audience to take some action that helps you gauge the ad’s effectiveness. For example, calling a particular toll-free phone number, visiting a specific web page for more information, or entering a unique code – anything you can use to track responses.

How have you used advertising in your marketing campaigns? Is it currently part of your marketing plan? Share your story in the comments below.

A few small changes can have a big impact on your email performance

The key to successful email marketing is analyzing each campaign to see how messages perform, and how they can be optimized to perform better. It’s an important but time-consuming task that often gets put on the back burner. Luckily, two leading marketing companies have crunched the numbers so you don’t have to.

MailChimp and Hubspot have analyzed 9.5 billion emails, providing an in-depth look at how people read email and what’s working in email marketing today. MailChimp’s Email Genome Project scans the messages its 600,000 users send, looking for ways to improve its service and curb spam. The results provide some surprising insights, as well as some actionable takeaways.

Here’s a rundown of the most interesting points:

1. Format your emails for mobile. 81% of users reported reading email on mobile devices.
2. Personalize your emails. Personalized emails using the recipient’s first name perform better than those that don’t. The same held true for using company names.
3. Make emails visually appealing. 88% percent of people prefer HTML emails to plain text. And 65% preferred emails that contained mostly images.
4. Don’t be afraid of links. More links in an email can slightly increase click-through rates (CTRs), as well as decrease unsubscribes.
5. Segment your lists. No surprise here, but clickthrough rates improve when email lists are segmented to provide more relevant content to the right people at the right time.
6. Know what day to send. What day is the best day to send your email? It turns out more recipients click-through an email on Saturdays and Sundays than any other day of the week (9-10% CTR). Fridays were second-best (5%), while emails sent on Tuesdays performed the worst (4%). Monday and Tuesday are also the biggest day for unsubscribes.
7. Know what hour to send, too. What about the time of day? It may surprise you to learn that emails sent around 6 a.m. do better. Not surprisingly, 4 p.m. is the worst time to bother busy people with email.
8. Send as many as it takes to get the job done. While it sounds counterintuitive, the more emails sent in a month, the less likely people are to unsubscribe. One email a month produced an unsubscribe rate of .7%, while 30 generated just .1%. But make sure your content is relevant to your audience, and offers are ones they really want.
9. Content converts. Emails offering webinars, white papers, reports or downloads consistently outperformed those that don’t. Tell them it’s FREE and it works even better, by about 1.5%.
10. Your button text matters. A simple “Click Here” beat out all other text in earning clicks. The next best was “Go,” followed by “Submit,” “Download” and “Register.”

While the huge number of emails studied makes this data compelling, it’s important to look at your own results, too. What works for the average email may not generate the same response with your lists or your industry.

But then again it might. The next time you’re preparing an email campaign, test some of the variables above, and you could see your click-throughs and conversions jump through the roof.

Some other blog posts on email marketing you may find interesting:

Why email marketing is better than social media

How to grow you email list

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