by Linda Healan | Sep 4, 2019 | Blog
It’s September. The kids are back to school and summer vacations are over. It’s the time of the year when our clients start planning their PR budgets for 2020. What are some considerations for you to make when planning your company’s public relations budget? Here’s a list of a few to consider:
- Know your goals. Public Relations goals can be as few or as many as you need. Just be sure to be consistent with your business and marketing goals. Examples of these goals include increasing traffic to your website, increasing your share of voice, highlighting key customer accomplishments or introducing and utilizing new subject matter experts from your company. Whatever your goals are, make sure they are SMART specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely.
- Events Major events or trade shows such as HIMSS take a tremendous amount of planning and preparation to be a success. It’s important to budget for the additional work necessary to lead up to major conferences and in many cases that work can start four months in advance. Have you considered any special events your company would like to host at the tradeshow? Are you planning for press and analyst meetings and support from your PR team at the events? Have your marketing materials and key messages been updated to support any announcements you plan to make at the show? Don’t forget to include travel expenses as part of your budget.
- New Product Announcements Most technology companies have a schedule of when they can announce new products or product enhancements. New product announcements can sometimes be a heavier lift for your PR team. Planning in advance for any necessary analyst briefings is a great strategy. Have you considered a paid relationship with a key analyst as part to of your marketing or PR budget? What about a webinar to help promote your new product? There can be website and messaging enhancements needed around a new product announcement as well.
- Customer promotion Getting customers to agree to interviews or case studies is what the media desperately wants. But it doesn’t happen with a snap of the fingers. Having internal support to foster client relationships and educate them on the value of promoting their relationship with your company is key. And there is time involved in developing that customer story interviews, writing, editing, approvals and pitching those stories. It can take a lot of work. If you have customers that are willing to speak about their experience utilizing your technology, you need to have a strategy and budget in place to support this gold mine opportunity.
- Team Expertise When you begin working on your marketing/PR budget for 2020, it helps to have an industry-knowledgeable outside resource to bounce ideas off of. Your Amendola team can help you build an annual plan to help you achieve your public relations goals. As your PR partners, your team will have a great feel for what worked previously and what might be good opportunities to change things up to achieve great results in the coming year. Once you have a solid PR plan in place, it will be much easier to build out the PR section of your marketing budget.
Next January may seem like it’s a long way away, but in marketing-time it’s really not. Be sure you start planning now so you’re ready to hit the ground running in 2020.
by Brandon Glenn | Aug 28, 2019 | Blog
For establishing thought leadership, there are few more effective tools in the public relations toolbox than byline articles.
Like the opinion column in the editorial section of our increasingly vanishing newspapers, the byline presents an opportunity for the author to share her personal take on a topic that is generating media attention or controversy. Generally, a byline represents the best way for an executive to showcase and explain her viewpoint in an in-depth manner to a targeted B2B audience of industry peers.
But writing bylines can be tricky. Publications are increasingly inundated with contributions, and several have changed their business models, now treating contributed bylines more like advertising meaning if you want to play, you have to pay. That means the media outlets that still publish contributed content can afford to be more selective than ever in terms of what they will accept, and some bylines will inevitably be rejected by editors.
To ensure your byline article doesn’t quickly end up in editors’ trash folders, make sure to avoid the following common mistakes.
Too self-promotional: For those unfamiliar with the nuances of bylines, this may be the most difficult concept to grasp: It’s not about you. The vast majority of publications expect bylines to be vendor-neutral, meaning authors cannot sell, promote or generally even mention their own company, products or services. Rather than viewing a byline as a means of converting your go-to sales deck to paragraph form, consider it an opportunity to share an inside perspective on a specific, well-defined topic of interest from an experienced industry veteran.
Doesn’t deal with an industry problem: While most readers who come across your byline aren’t interested in learning the intimate details of the widgets your company sells, they are interested in learning about real problems their industry peers have encountered and the steps leaders have taken to overcome those problems. That’s where the real value of a byline is found, in the straight talk of one industry leader providing others with an inside story of a challenging situation that they struggled (at least initially) to conquer. Extra points are awarded for honesty, clarity, surprise or even controversy.
So for example, a byline on the topic of “why hospitals need to account for patient’s social determinants of health” doesn’t have a great chance of pick-up, because everyone knows that social determinants are important by now. In contrast, an author could get much more mileage from a byline topic such as “why hospitals’ social determinants initiatives are doomed to fail without A, B and C” because that’s a topic that may tell readers something they don’t already know.
Too long: Renowned prize-winning authors may have the luxury of slowly setting a scene by painting a picture with words, drawing the reader in with multiple anecdotes and examples and then getting to the meat of the story. Business executives who contribute content to health IT publications are rarely granted that indulgence. In other words, keep it short. The sweet spot for a byline is about 700 to 1,000 words, and most editors prefer the shorter end of the spectrum. A good rule of thumb: If your byline exceeds two pages of a Word document, it’s time to make some edits.
Bylines are a wonderful tool for demonstrating industry expertise and thought leadership, but they can quickly go off-the-rails if authors don’t incorporate best practices. To interest readers (and editors) in your unique viewpoint, remember the above guidelines.
by Stephanie Janard | Aug 14, 2019 | Blog
All of the below suggestions are offered by experienced publicists in the B2B arena, including myself and several colleagues at Amendola Communications. While we fully get that a public relations program is just one of many important contributions to creating a successful company along with a whip smart product development team, a terrific product, turbo-charged salespeople, and savvy marketing, to name a few each one of our recommendations below helps fuel these crucial moving parts even more. So here is what we’d prioritize if we had a few months in the driver’s seat
Item #1: Create a customer success library and keep it continuously restocked. Nothing will give you more credibility with prospects, investors, your own employees, and of course, the media, than the testimonials of thrilled customers. So as an established company with a solid customer roster of your own, why don’t you have more of these stories to broadcast to the world?
Most likely, it’s one of two primary reasons. Either your employees are too nervous to ask customers to participate in a case study, or there’s no real process in place to develop these strategic assets. And it does take a process. The next few items delve a little deeper into both of these challenges.
Item #2: Incentivize your employees to get customer success stories. Here’s the deal. The main reason employees aren’t going after customer success stories is out of fear that the customer will decline to participate. The product’s not fully in use yet they’ve run into some issues you get the idea. There is always a seemingly legitimate reason for putting off the request.
But what if getting customer success stories was part of the job description? And what if the pressure to obtain them was considerably lightened with the right tools and handsome bonuses?
One of our own most successful clients has made obtaining customer success stories part of the company’s official bonus structure. At last count, this client had more than 170 customer success stories! Money is a great motivator, people. We know this.
But money alone isn’t enough to create outstanding, detailed customer success stories
Item #3: Formalize and launch a customer adoption program. All good success stories have tangible results to report. And a customer adoption program is a terrific opportunity to establish with your customer what the metrics for success will be. From there, you can organize your efforts around seeing that the customer fully and productively adopts the appropriate components of your product to reach these targets. Typically these efforts include regular communication, benchmark reporting, and always available support. In person, on the phone, via email a combination of all three will be part of most top tier customer adoption programs.
And within a relatively short period of time, you should be able to have some successful results to report in a customer story. Oh, and couple of other significant benefits like increased customer satisfaction and retention.
Item #4: Create a “Customer Reference program.” My colleague Stacy State, a senior account director at Amendola, further advises making best use of customer testimonials by creating a spreadsheet or other document that houses:
- Clients who can provide quotes (organized based on product/location/benefit/challenge solved)
- Clients willing to be references (organized based on location, product/s, account manager, etc.)
- Clients who are willing to speak at trade shows and who will have the necessary presenting skills to do so
- Clients who allow onsite interviews of how your solution works in their setting
Item #5: Have talented storytellers on hand. Whether they reside in your in-house PR and marketing teams or with your agency partner, it’s essential that you are telling your product, company or customer story in human, attention-seizing terms. Identify and utilize those people who will be fearless at doing just that a surprisingly rare resource, by the way. Many people are intimidated by writing for corporate/business needs, and inevitably revert to “safe” corporate-speak and industry jargon.
But please listen to someone who has spent her entire career crafting stories for newspapers, companies, non-profits and others. Nothing will snuff the life out of a good story faster than peppering it with phrases like “ensure” and “going forward” and “operational efficiency.” So don’t do it! Invest in great writing. It will pay off for you, I promise.
Item #6: Develop a stable of charismatic thought leaders. There are some solid benefits to doing so. According to another colleague, Amendola senior account director Michelle Noteboom, “Once executives have established themselves as credible industry experts, media outlets will seek their opinions and be more receptive to covering company news.”
To make sure no single thought leader is stretched too thin, you’ll want to cultivate multiple spokespeople within your organization. But please don’t base this on their expertise alone. An effective thought leader is personable, warm, as good of a listener as he or she is a speaker, is eager to share knowledge, willing to participate in media training, and of course, is quickly responsive.
You can start cultivating potential thought leaders early on. My colleague and senior account director Philip Anast recommends: “Include external communications in an executive’s performance requirements, i.e. actually making it part of one’s job requirements to make oneself available for media interviews and garner media coverage.”
Item #7: Stop putting social media on the backburner. This recommendation comes courtesy of Amendola social media guru, Margaret Kelly. “In this day and age, don’t underestimate the impact of reaching clients in 280 characters with a clever phrase or video. The trick is to know your audience and social platforms. Messages on LinkedIn, where you’re likely to already be connected to C-suite members of other companies, may have more impact than messages on other platforms. If you’re trying to put sales in your pipeline, for example, LinkedIn is the best platform to engage your decision-makers,” Margaret observes.
No matter your platform, a social media program must be consistent to be successful. You can’t just flirt with social media it’s either all the way or not at all. But it takes time to see results. Viral sensations are usually the umpteenth attempt not the first, second, or even 50th.
Item #8: Break down the barriers between executives and the rest of us. Personally, I see a flatter hierarchy as the future of corporate business, but there will always be identified leaders within an organization. They need not be walled off as if their work is top secret. Account director and Amendola colleague Brandon Glenn has a great suggestion here.
“Conduct quarterly executive Q&As with employees. My old company used to do this every time quarterly earnings were released because we were public, but this could apply to any company. The idea is the executives get up in front of the company, deliver some prepared remarks about how things are going with the company financially, key business highlights, what was good about the last quarter, what they’re looking forward to in the next quarter, and so on. After, it’s opened up for employee questions, which can be asked live verbally or pre-submitted in written form,” Brandon explains.
Depending on the size of your company, consider also making everyone’s weekly work schedule transparent. Here at the agency we share our weekly projects on a common online document. It gives us all a sense of what our coworkers are working on, and is just a more helpful way to organize and be accountable for how we spend our time.
Item #9: Break down the barriers between sales and PR. Even quarterly meetings between sales and PR can make a big difference in the substance and quality of your PR messaging. My colleague Philip Anast notes, “Salespeople especially can give invaluable information to PR. They’re on the front lines of prospect interaction, so can bring a lot of the industry challenges to the fore, providing good fodder for thought leadership.”
Item #10: Break down the barriers between YOU and PR. Of course, there’s no need to micromanage PR if you have effective people overseeing it. But make time for media training and schedule monthly calls to touch base with your PR team. I’m actually surprised by how many CEOs are removed from their company’s public relations. While this demonstrates two important positives–trust in the people who oversee PR and a willingness to allow others in the organization to develop into thought leaders–a CEO who isn’t engaged in PR much at all can find herself or himself caught flatfooted at the most inopportune times when a good response is essential.
With that, my tenure running your company is over. Which is fine with me, because with these recommendations now in place, I can’t wait to get back to publicizing it!
by Philip Anast | Jul 31, 2019 | Blog
Even before English economist William Stanley Jevons and other 19th Century luminaries formalized the idea of marginal utility, business people grappled with sustaining customer desires for their goods and services.
While Jevons had commodities in mind, I believe marginal utility is relevant to PR programs, too, especially in our digital world. Keeping stakeholders informed with fresh, compelling news, perspectives and content is a necessity to maintain their interest and attention.
One key group with which to build and cultivate such relationships is industry analysts. These influencers are different than traditional members of the media and bloggers, and an organization’s approach to them must be different, too.
Here are six recommendations for building a strong analyst relations program – one that will create third-party validation for a healthcare company’s services and technologies:
Don’t treat analyst briefings and media interviews the same
- In a media interview, the reporter asks the questions, and the source answers them while bridging to her own messaging and agenda as the opportunities arise
- A successful analyst briefing, however, is a dialogue, where the client tries to gain as much insight from the analyst as the knowledge it imparts about its company, positioning, and go-to-market strategy
Work with analysts and their schedulers weeks in advance of desired briefings
- Unlike reporters that expect sources to be available on a moment’s notice for their assignments, industry analysts often work on longer lead times
- Use such lead times to orchestrate the objectives of your analyst briefing, even scripting what an ideal briefing looks like
- Follow scheduling protocols; often, analysts require a company to work with scheduling colleagues, and not directly, to secure briefings
Avoid lengthy PowerPoint presentations in the actual briefings
- Time is currency, and analyst briefings don’t happen with the same analyst firm frequently unless there is a paid relationship
- Provide a thorough background on your company from a strategic perspective and with the market clearly in mind, but leave the lengthy presentations as leave-behinds – or better yet, provide these materials ahead of the briefings (a requirement with some firms)
- Focus on how your offerings address current market needs and elicit analyst feedback; remember, industry analysts are experts in specific market segments, so leverage that expertise to the extent they’re willing to share their views
Avoid making product announcements the sole messaging points in briefings
- While product launches and technology enhancements are important to keep key stakeholders informed, use analyst encounters to discuss corporate positioning, larger market issues and company strategies
- That’s not to say analysts should not be briefed on new products, but put those products in the context of the challenges the sector is facing and the problems the new products solve
- Product details can be incorporated into PowerPoints, or via links to company web sites or microsites, for further study and reference
Gaining coverage in analyst reports should NOT be the only reason for engaging analysts
- For smaller HIT companies, securing feature coverage is often difficult
- However, a successful analyst relations program builds trust and credibility
- Over time, those benefits can accrue by having an analyst drop your company’s name with her own clients as a problem-solver worthy of industry consideration
- Securing an analyst as a media reference is another worthwhile pursuit, if the analyst is amenable
Don’t overplay your hand
- Unless there is a paid relationship in place, analysts customarily accept one, or maybe, two briefings from companies they cover in their market spaces each year
- Instead of inundating analysts with news releases and briefing requests, build a steady cadence of meaningful connections – perhaps even summarizing events in a quarterly e-newsletter
- Use industry conferences, such as HIMSS, to connect with analysts in-person
Keeping these recommendations in mind can produce rich analyst relationships and help companies advance their PR and marketing goals – even when they don’t have the means for paid relationships.
![[Your Business Name] Powered by Communication](https://acmarketingpr.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Your-Business-Name-–-Powered-by-Communication-1080x675.png)
by admin | Jul 24, 2019 | Blog
We’ve always heard that communication is key, but in today’s world it’s not only key it can make or break a business.
Nearly every minute of every workday we are communicating whether it’s internally with coworkers or trying to close the next big deal with a business prospect. We now have more communication vehicles than one could imagine. It’s becoming rare that people pick up a phone, much less engage in face-to-face meetings. Rather, most businesses rely on email, social media, media outlets, mobile apps, chat boxes, and texts.
Communication by the Numbers
According to one report, the costs of poor communication has hit $37 billion annually with large organizations (over 100,000 employees) reporting losses in productivity of $62.4 million per year. For a company with fewer than 100 employees, studies show a loss of $420,000 annually due to miscommunications.
Think what your company could achieve with $420,000 more a year.
While communication has always been a challenge for businesses, these astonishing statistics show just how much more an employee is overloaded in today’s workplace.
- Every day, 205.6 billion emails are sent; only one-third are opened [1]
- Americans spend 26 minutes a day texting and send 5.3 more texts than phone calls they make [2]
- 46% of employees leave a meeting not sure of what they are supposed to do next [2]
- 57% of projects fail due to breakdown in communications [3]
- 11 hours a week are wasted on poor email communications [3]
To make matters worse, studies have shown that different generations have different communication preferences. If you’re a millennial, you may be thinking IKR “send me a text, forget emails.” (That’s “I know, right?” for those of you who don’t speak text.) If you’re a baby boomer, you may just want to talk via phone or face-to-face.
So, how can you use the tools and methods available to you to better communication to co-workers and future partners or clients?
How to Succeed at Business Communications
Today everyone is bombarded with messages from social media, emails, and texts. To get the next deal or partnership for your company, it’s important to make every message count. How can you make sure your message is heard above the noise?
To succeed in today’s art of Business Communication, follow these simple steps:
- Actively listen and pay attention. Ignore the next email that just came in or the text that just appeared on your phone.
- Be empathetic and understanding. Everyone is managing multiple tasks and fires each day. Be aware that people aren’t starting their days from the same place every day.
- Assume good intent. Clients and prospects are busy just like you. Most people are focused on getting work done and doing what’s best. A brief response or delayed response does not mean that person is angry or ignoring you they are likely buried in priorities.
- Don’t make assumptions. You know what they say when you assume. With much communication happening in writing, it is easy to misread a comma or a text message gone bad.
- Be self-aware. Know your own emotions and if you have a reaction that you feel strongly about, double check where you are mentally and what you have going on around you before you respond.
- Ask questions. Work under the guidance that there are no dumb questions. If you don’t know what the person is communicating or you are confused, ask for clarification. Asking questions will ensure that you and the other person/s are on the same page.
In summary, communication takes practice. No one will ever get it right all the time. We leave you with these pearls of wisdom.
[1] https://www.bluesource.co.uk/knowledge-hub/20-astonishing-stats-business-communications/
[2] https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/280301
[3] http://blog.twoodo.com/1088/snackable-stats-about-company-communication-and-collaboration-today/
by Megan Smith | Jul 17, 2019 | Blog
Turn on the news today and you realize that crises come in multiple forms. Scandals, data breaches, natural disasters and public health concerns are just the tip of the iceberg.
The importance of having an actionable, tested plan with holding statements is well documented and understood. C-suite, IT, marketing, human resources and other departments all talk about it and recognize the ramifications of not having a plan.
While the need for a plan is not questioned, it is critical to assess where the charter for this plan starts and stops. If it is robust and forward-thinking, it should include an analysis of your current communications status, including evaluating your current brand reputation and acknowledging that your stakeholders’ perception of you now will impact you during moments of crisis.
If your company’s reputation is solid and you have built a brand that is trusted and transparent, customers and stakeholders will typically show you more goodwill during crisis periods. However, if your company is perceived as less than transparent, a crisis will only further deteriorate the brand. It is critical that your brand establish a solid reputation now so that in the long run so that you have more cachet with brand evangelists.
Another consideration of the plan is how far it should extend. After you have put out the immediate fire, should you go back to the status quo of how you were doing things before?
Absolutely not. Crisis management must extend well beyond the crisis itself and transform into a robust reputation management campaign. While having a good reputation to start with helps minimize damage, a crisis will undoubtedly impact your credibility with customers, prospects and stakeholders so you MUST have an initial plan ready for how to rebuild that trust.
Similar to the actual in-moment crisis management work, reputation rebuilding will be different in every scenario. However, you should think about how each type of crisis will impact audiences and plan potential tactics around it. For example, let’s take the case of a product recall impacting medicine that is administered to children. A few potential ways to rebuild trust include:
- A webpage that stays up for at least 6 months with all of the information about what was done to correct the issue, how customers should dispose of the product and all other essential information consumers should know.
- Public media engagements to talk about how you will prevent the issue going forward.
- Events including local townhalls and Twitter chats with consumers about the situation.
- If possible, a review by the FDA to formally show what was changed.
- Internal company townhalls to discuss the issue so that employees can be heard.
These are just five tactics; there are so many more that can take place. But as you can see the goal is to rebuild trust with ALL audiences once a crisis occurs.
For a crisis plan to be truly effective, you need to rebuild trust in the long-term, not just mitigate the issue in the moment.
