NewsBusiness

As a general rule we advise clients to go for real editorial coverage rather than take advertorial coverage wherever possible.

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Why? Well, most people know that advertorial has been paid for and treat it as if it were a normal ad. However it is possible to get into the ‘advertorial’ section of a newspaper without having to pay. Last year we sent a media release out for a client and got a call back from the advertorial team at a metro newspaper wanting more information. We forwarded the call to the client to decide whether to pay for this, but it turned out that this was going to be genuine editorial coverage and no money changed hands. After the article appeared I called the contact at the paper and asked how this worked – she explained that some editorial space is reserved for advertisers in that particular section, but that if they don’t receive any editorial information from advertisers they need to fill the space – hence the call.

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So – if you do get a call from the advertorial section, just check – you might be about to get regular editorial coverage, not a sales job!

Following on from today’s email tip, the same two second rule pretty much applies to websites and how people surf the web.

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So it is critical that when a visitor arrives at your website, you present them with all of the reasons why they should stay on your site, contact you or buy something from you, as soon as they arrive. In practice this means putting all of the important information ‘above the fold’ ie on that part of your website that appears on the computer screen without the visitor having to scroll down. Of course this depends on all sorts of things, like screen resolution, size of screen, browser type etc, so clearly the most important stuff needs to appear right at the top of the page.

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The sorts of things you might look at putting ‘above the fold’ could include: short description of your line of business, ‘credibility’ information such as high profile endorsements, media coverage and powerful testimonials, and any guarantees you offer. The precise mix will depend on what business you are in, but the ‘above the fold’ rule for the important information still applies to all websites.

Email is a vital business communications tool, but it is important to realise how people read emails, particularly newsletter-style emails.

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Just think about how you go through your email inbox – skim reading is probably the order of the day and many may not get read at all. Jakob Nielsen, the web usability guru, reckons that 2 seconds is all you’ve got to persuade someone to continue reading your email. What does this mean? Well, it probably means that the days of fine-tuning a beautifully designed email newsletter with ten plus long articles are gone. Today people are interested in sound bites and short hints and tips.

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Of course the good news with this is that writing a regular email is a lot easier if you’re just sending out a paragraph or two. This doesn’t mean that you can’t use email as an introduction to a longer article or explanation on your website – it just means that the presentation of the email has to fit in with the recipient’s need to find out pretty quickly if the email is worth reading, or if it links to interesting articles worth clicking through to.

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This article on this very subject on the Sydney Morning Herald website from 2004 still holds true today.

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This 10 page report on why you should consider a PR-focused approach to marketing is now available for download from the News Equals Business website.

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Here is the link: Ditch your marketing… and do PR instead

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And here is a short excerpt from the report:

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PR does not have to be too hard or too expensive, and following a few simple guidelines and looking for PR opportunities on a regular basis, for example once a month, will almost certainly increase the profile of your business, and at very little cost.

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Also, before testing any PR-focused marketing, it is a good idea to review all of your existing marketing strategies so you have a clear idea where most of your sales are coming from. You may find you are spending a disproportionate amount of your marketing budget on under or non-performing methods that you can easily cancel with little or no effect on your sales.

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If you have a website it’s also a good idea to review your visit stats – see how many people are coming in and how many of them are actually converting to customers. Then you have a base from which to measure the effectiveness of your PR activity.

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In the past there has always been a clear distinction between ‘marketing’ and ‘PR’. Today, for all of the reasons we’ve already outlined, that distinction has become blurred. In fact it doesn’t really exist any more. For example, it used to be the case that media releases were sent only to the media – now many organisations send media releases out to the media and to their client base/mailing list and online via online news services. Marketing tools that are based around ‘information’ and ‘content’ and getting this out are as much PR tools as marketing tools. So perhaps this new approach to marketing might be called PR Marketing! Not PR/Marketing or PR – Marketing, but ‘PR Marketing’.