By Leo Valiquette
If “location, location, location” is the axiom of real estate agents, then “reference customers, reference customers, reference customers” is the public relations equivalent.
Customers who have deployed a vendor’s product or service provide validation and demonstrate uptake in the market. They can speak in dollars and cents terms about why they adopted a particular product and the benefits and return on investment they have derived from it. This, more often than not, will make an editor sit up and take notice.
I’ve seen promising editorial opportunities with big name media outlets drift away for the simple reason that a client could not provide a happy customer willing to stand up and provide that third-party endorsement.
But is having the platinum, diamond-encrusted reference customer eager to shout your praises from the rooftops the ticket to piles of positive media coverage?
It certainly helps. However, that customer story must still be developed and presented in a manner that fits the current editorial needs of the media being targeted.
One of our clients, for example, has an enthusiastic reference customer on board who can articulate the pain points that were addressed by our client’s product and how it contributed to the overall growth and success of the customer’s business during a dramatic market boom.
However, the industry in which both client and customer operate is, like so many others right now, experiencing a downturn. Several of the media that I contacted no longer have the appetite for the growth and success story that was the obvious angle to pursue during the market upswing. That’s yesterday’s news. The angle that is timely and relevant now is how the customer is going to weather the downturn and how our client’s product will provide the operational efficiencies and cost savings that will improve margins and boost the bottom line.
As one editor put it, “It’s easy to succeed during a boom. The real test of a company’s viability is how it survives a downturn.” For many media outlets, that’s the story that is relevant now. Can we deliver that angle? Yes. But only by directly contacting the media most important to our client with a solid story angle and having an informal chat with each editor were we able to determine what elements of the reference customer’s story are the most important to garner the ink we want for our client.
By Danny Sullivan
At inmedia, we frequently position ourselves against those whose perspective is that PR is “all about relationships.” And, while I wholeheartedly stand by our mantra that it is the ability to convey a story and not the relationship that dictates PR success, it cannot be denied that relationships are still important. They are even more relevant from the perspective of a PR firm’s clients than for the PR firm itself. PR firms come and go but, assuming a company sticks around, its relationship with its target media will last forever.
This week, one of my clients traveled to New York to meet face to face with a group of editors from a key trade publication that covers his company’s market. Was this meeting at the request of the editors? No, we brokered it from our end. Was it for an article they were working on? No. So why was this meeting happening? Simple. It was for the relationship.
While our client had some exposure to the publication, the relationship was very much the domain of inmedia, the PR firm. This is, of course, perfectly understandable – the very reason you have a PR firm is to maintain your relationship with the media, and this remains a core part of our business – but huge value can be gained on all sides from extending the media relationship to include the client at a deeper level.
So what happened in this meeting in New York? Well, they shot the breeze. Discussed the state of the industry, talked a bit about the company and what was going on with it, but no hard pitches for stories, no Q&A, no pressure to come up with the goods.
So where was the value in this meeting, you might ask. Why not ask my client, who left the meeting full of enthusiasm for the people he had just met, and excited about the future prospects for working with them. Or why not ask the editors, who expressed delight at the meeting and a desire to do so again at some point in the near future. Value was seen on all sides from a meeting that accomplished little in hard results.
Sure, inmedia could have handled this meeting ourselves, but our preoccupation with achieving results for clients would no doubt have created a different atmosphere. Sometimes stepping back from the day-to-day hard selling of stories and constant attempts to generate coverage can result in a far more rewarding result – a blooming relationship.
By Leo Valiquette
Despite all the hype, hoopla and debate around social media as a marketing and public relations tool, there is one even more fundamental aspect of the Web that is far more pervasive: the search.
It seems weird to say “the search” without putting “Google” in there, but there are other services available to dig up information, Wikipedia being the most obvious. It used to be that information was power, now it’s an avalanche that overwhelms us. Intelligence is what’s important: the ability to filter through the overload to determine what is useful and chart trends or patterns that have meaning and relevance.
When all that information is so readily available and convenient, it’s easy to take it at face value without looking deeper and doing some good old-fashioned digging to verify facts and the credibility of the source. For a journalist on deadline eager to wrap up a story, it can be a trap. Take the example cited by Drew Benvie at Drew B’s take on tech PR, in which a fictional athlete was presented in an article as an actual person, thanks to a bogus profile on Wikipedia.
That’s not to suggest that Wikipedia is not a valid research tool, but it is vulnerable to abuse and demonstrates the importance of verifying facts and cross-referencing any online source of information.
For organizations sensitive to how their brand or image is being presented to the world, it is definitely important to keep an eye on such online information portals to ensure the accuracy of whatever information is being presented about them.
And while there are valid questions about the veracity of online information, what about the value of obtaining media coverage online instead of in print?
As a newspaper editor with only so many inches of space in the print product but much more on the website, I would often hear the complaint that running a story only online was somehow inferior to running it in print.
Sure, there is tactile satisfaction to be had in handling ink-stained paper, but it should be amply evident by now that content online lives far longer and reaches a far larger audience than the processed corpses of trees. In the newspaper business, I would get feedback on stories from readers on other continents after the content appeared online. The print product, on the other hand, was distributed in only one city. You do the math.
Kevin Dugan at the Bad Pitch Blog shares my sentiment and offers a video clip to help make the point.
By Leo Valiquette
How we communicate is just as important as what we communicate. And by “how” I don’t mean what tool should be drawn from the social media toolbox. I mean the language we use that either demonstrates frankness, sincerity and honesty, or obvious self-interest that will only push away your listeners. Timing is also key. It’s much easier to engage in dialogue with someone if they don’t feel your agenda is pressuring the conversation. If you only speak with someone when you expect or need something from them, you’ve conveyed the impression that this is nothing more than transactional relationship. Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. Hardly the foundation for a long and fruitful association.
Today’s picks from the Blogosphere all touch on these points.
The first comes from Collective Conversation, where Kellie Major cites the example of a CEO who, in an address to his staff about cuts, demonstrates clearly and sincerely how he shares his employees’ pain.
In contrast, Joseph Thornley at Pro PR presents a somewhat different attempt at communication from the C-suite. In this case, it is RBC head honcho Gordon Nixon trying to reassure the bank’s customers that all is still right with the world and with the Canadian banking industry. Or is it really just a piece of self-promotional fluff that should have been distributed as a press release? You decide.
Lastly, we have words from the horse’s mouth about how to, and how not to, begin a dialogue with a journalist at Bulldog Reporter from Michael Singer, West Coast news editor for InformationWeek.com. And, no surprise here, he says waiting until you have a news release to peddle is not the best approach. He goes on to offer a number of other tips to keep in mind when chasing media on behalf of a client and how to make appropriate use of such avenues as Twitter.
By Danny Sullivan
“It is early days, but it’s already clear that 2009 will be a crucial year for news media.”
Cautionary words from the Financial Times’ chief exec, John Ridder, as Brand Republic reports today that the business newspaper giant is laying off 80 staff, while still intending to expand its online presence. Coupled with other recent news of woes at major newspapers, including the New York Times and Canada’s Globe and Mail, one wonders if the writing is finally on the wall for print-based media.
Okay, maybe it’s not that likely. Granted, there is still a significant demand from the public for a physical medium by which to consume the news, but the survival of news media depends on more than subscriptions. Advertising is the key, especially among the technology trade media, where the majority of print magazine titles are free to qualifying subscribers, but it seems that companies increasingly seem to prefer the online option when it comes to spending their advertising dollars in a downturn. Certainly, the consensus is that print advertising is set for significant decline this year.
Douglas McIntyre on 24/7 Wall Street seems to think there’s a good chance that 2009 could see the end of a host of big names, with a drop in advertising seen as the key factor. “At least a dozen major magazines had ad page decreases of more than 20 per cent last year,” he states.
Perhaps it’s too early to speak of the death of print but, without advertising to support it and little sign of when this might change, the prospect becomes more real every day.
