NewsBusiness

This is an interesting clip from author of ‘Here Comes Everybody’ Clay Shirky, who explains what he means by ‘cognitive surplus’ – it’s the extra time you get to do things when you’re not watching TV. It’s a 17 minute video, so not short. So just pick a TV show you don’t want to watch and watch this instead.

I originally saw this on Laughing Squid, following a link from one of Seth Godin’s emails.

It all used to be so simple. Newspapers, TV and the radio ran the news, and businesses used conventional advertising alongside editorial to generate business. Both editorial and advertising ‘worked’ and there was rarely any crossover between the two.

Now conventional media is threatened by the perceived free-for-all that the internet has delivered, the ‘citizen journalists’ rival the TV and the newspapers from their back bedrooms, and advertising seems to have lost its effectiveness as viewers, readers and listeners stop paying attention.

This is bad news if you are a conventional media outlet or a conventional business, but great news if you’re prepared to jump into the news business, at least in terms of spreading the news about your business!

If people are no longer responding as enthusiastically to sales messages, everyone continues to be interested in information – and more and more information – about ‘things’. The internet allows us to research products, services and companies ad nauseam before making a decision to buy. This means that potential customers are now much better ‘qualified’ when they (finally) contact you, since they have found out most of what they needed to know. And the businesses that win these customers are the ones that have the most information on the internet about what they do. This information – in the broadest sense of the word – is ‘news’.

So if you’re currently in a position where there is not much ‘news’ out there about your business, how do you go about rectifying the situation?

• Start telling people your news

The easiiest way of doing this is with a regular (ie at least once a month) email newsletter or update. It doesn’t really matter what you call it, as long as it goes out regularly and is primarily informational, that is it’s not just a sales pitch. And if you put a signup box on your website with enough good reasons as to why anyone would want to receive your newsletter, you can grow your list.

• Start updating your website with this news

Search engines give preferential treatment to websites that a) have a lot of content on them and that b) are updated regularly. You can score on both counts by putting your newsletter articles up in full text on your website every time you send it.

• Start sending some of this news out to ‘the media’

Don’t expect great results from sending news releases out to your local paper or to a national TV station, unless you have worked out why either of these outlets would want to cover your story. Instead look at your story and work out which media outlets would really like it. The best places may be industry journals or specialist magazines or websites.

Any positive coverage online will not only drive people to your website, it will probably generate inbound links which will help your website’s search engine rankings.  Any positive coverage offline will also drive people to your website (whether or not the web address is mentioned) and will raise the profile of your business much more effectively than any advertising can.

Have you been following the progress of the proposed law to extend the Do Not Call Register to business? The register, originally set up to allow consumers to opt out of telemarketing cold calls, is due to be extended to protect businesses as well. This move will severely hamper those businesses that still rely on cold calling to generate leads and sales.

The Council of Small Business of Australia (COSBOA) and the Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA) are lobbying the government to abandon, or at least amend, the proposed legislation, saying that it could cost companies up to $108 million in the first year, as they’ll have to spend time and resources checking who is and isn’t on the register.

COSBOA also claims that the law will unfairly penalise small or new businesses that do not have already established customer databases. The government is pushing the bill to go through, in the words of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, to stop “unwanted calls and faxes… wasting valuable business resources.”

The new legislation is expected to cover telephone calls and faxes.

In our view this type of ‘blanket bombing’ marketing is a very inefficient way to drive sales, and the legislation is probably good news as much for the companies that are (or were contemplating) using it as it is for the people it has been designed to protect. Cold calling telemarketing (and your author has done his fair share of this in his time!) has always been very much a numbers game and probably the worst example of ‘pursuit marketing’. ‘Attraction marketing’ (ie PR Marketing) is generally much more effective and, dare we say it, more enjoyable.

I’d be very interested to hear your comments on this.

If you’re not one of the 7.9 million people that have seen this video of an iPhone being ‘blended’, here it is. Google ‘Will It Blend’ to find out how this video infomercial went viral and helped put Blendtec and its founder, Tom Dickson, on the map.

1) Let’s call the local paper – they’ll run a story on us.

Almost a knee jerk reaction from many businesses when the subject of getting media coverage comes up is “Why don’t we get something in <name of local rag>?”.

Here’s why the local paper isn’t always the best place to start. Local papers (in Australia at least) can be up to 80% advertising and syndicated content, that is generic items on eg weather/horoscopes/car reviews which are shared across many titles by the newspaper publisher.

That can leave sometimes only 10-15 pages for the local editor. Once you take away local politics, police reports and the local sports pages, that leaves very few other pages to fill. Now factor in the fact that many local businesses will be thinking the same way (“Let’s call the local paper”) and you can understand that the editor is likely to be besieged by local businesses wanting coverage – some even demanding it!

And if you do succeed in getting coverage, how helpful is that to your business? Is your market really only people who live in the local area? And do your prospective customers read your local paper? Do they expect to find your type of business mentioned in it? (see Sin 4)

There can certainly be times when coverage in the local paper is beneficial. Just ask yourself the questions above and also bear in mind that, for a story to be relevant, it has to have a strong local theme, which you will need to emphasise. And if you have a good photo opportunity, so much the better (see our previous post on this).

2) Yes – we had some coverage. Two years ago.

How many times have you visited a restaurant and spotted a press clipping stuck on the wall or counter. You bend down to read it and, seeing it’s a bit dog eared, look at the date and realise it’s several years old. Who knows, the whole kitchen staff might have moved on since then! Many businesses think that once they’ve got an article in the paper, that’s it, game over. Instead, think about whether there are stories you can get out every month, not just every few years.

3) We didn’t get any calls from that article.

With all of your marketing efforts, including media coverage, you have to see what works and what doesn’t. But remember that most newspapers (unlike magazines) are skipped through and binned the same day.  Unless the person reading the item is very interested indeed in your product or service at that exact moment, you’re unlikely to get a call.

So is media coverage useless then? Not at all. Firstly, those people that read the article (assuming it’s positive coverage) will remember what they read and may talk about it with other people. Secondly, if you let your existing clients know that you were covered in the press (with that press cutting in the shop/restaurant or perhaps on your website or in a newsletter), they will think more highly of you and be more confident in their choice of your business as a customer. And they will be more willing to refer people to you. And that subtle shift in attitude is very helpful for you – you are in their eyes a more ‘credible’ business!

4) Who’s our target market? Anyone with a pulse.

When you’re big game fishing you don’t stick a maggot on the hook. I don’t know much about fishing, but the same principle applies to marketing. Until you know who your ‘perfect client’ is, it’s incredibly difficult to work out how to promote your business effectively. Once you do know your perfect client, you know what they read, what they watch and listen to, what sites they visit on the internet, which newsletters (email or otherwise) they subscribe to, you know where your marketing efforts are best spent.

You know where to advertise and you know where you should aim to get editorial coverage. You also know which other (non competing) businesses service your target market and who you could perhaps joint venture with. So pick your niche, find your perfect customers, and market to them, and them alone (see our previous post on the perfect client).

5) You’re from which paper? And you want to speak to the CEO? He’s not available right now.

When the media wants to talk to someone in your business, this is an opportunity to establish your business as a leader or expert in the field. If it’s a ‘bad news’ story, it’s a chance to put your side of the picture. If a journalist can’t speak to the person they want to speak to, they’ll move on to another business (perhaps your competitor) where they can talk to the right person or, if it’s about your company and it’s a ‘bad news’ story, they’ll present only one side of the argument, with a pointed comment that there was ‘no comment’ from you. Wised up CEOs are happy to talk the media at any time, and their support team are under instructions to pass media calls straight through to them.

6) Why would we want to send our customers an email? They know what we do.

One word. Engagement. It applies to your current customers, your future customers, your past customers, your employees. If people are ‘engaged’, you have their attention. If you don’t, somebody else does. And in the context of your service or product, that somebody else is your competition.

You need to stay in touch with all of your business contacts – associates, suppliers as well as customers and prospects, as a guide, at least once a month. Not to sell them anything, just to keep them informed of any new products or services you have, pass on some of your expertise in your field, celebrate successes, ask their opinion. Just letting people know on a regular basis that you’re still there, still offering the same (or new) things, still happy to help them by selling them your service/product, increases the likelihood that, when they need what you sell, they’ll come to you, not go elsewhere. Leave it too long and you’ll lose them.

(Six months after setting up NewsBusiness I sent an email to all my previous business associates – within half an hour I received a call and had a contract for some work. Not a bad result from a few emails)

7) We operate in a very price sensitive market. We can’t put our prices up.

You have to put your prices up. Unless you are a large established business, it is almost impossible to survive in a ‘commoditised’ market. Larger businesses have the buying power and the resources to enter a price war and win. A smaller business generally cannot compete on price (unless it has a completely new ‘game changing’ model) and so must compete on service or quality, eg speed/attention to detail etc. Find out what your ‘perfect client’ wants (ask them) and give it to them. Offer a standard service plus a premium service. Price the premium service at least three times higher than the standard service.

Pricing sends a message to the consumer of the likely worth or quality of an item (irrespective of its actual quality). Individuals will pay premium prices for perceived better quality or rare items. Anecdotally, two different research projects have shown that:

• putting prices up by 20% results in no/minimal loss of existing customers
• ~6% of any customer base is prepared to pay up to 5 times the standard price of an item for a premium version

To echo the advice of Seth Godin (and many other marketing commentators), you have to pick your niche and focus on giving a service to that niche that no one else can give.

Reading time <7 mins

I first saw this trailer for Jerry Seinfeld’s ‘Comedian’ film several years ago and thought it was really funny. I’ve just rediscovered it on YouTube and I’m still laughing at it so thought it was worth sharing. There’s no real business analogy here, except perhaps that the voiceover artist featured – Hal Douglas, and another famous voiceover guy, Don LaFontaine – made the movie trailer voiceover industry their own, a real industry niche if there ever was one.

PS I never saw the film – was it any good?

This is my iPhone. It won’t get mixed up with anybody else’s, and nobody is likely to want to steal it, as you can probably see the shattered screen where it fell on a sharp rock when I dropped it. Over six months ago.

I was pretty cheesed off when it happened and when I picked it up I didn’t think it would be broken, but I’d forgotten that Apple makes the touchscreens out of glass. Real glass.

My first thought was to switch it on and make sure it worked – and it did. And it still does.

If I’m trying to read something on the screen it’s sometimes a little hard, but apart from that and the obvious lack of aesthetics, it functions exactly the same as it did before.

The case you can see on it did not stop the screen from smashing, but it did come with a little clear plastic film to put over the screen, and the only modification I’ve made since is to use one of these to stop getting shards of glass in my ear.

Nice story, but what has it got to do with marketing or public relations? It’s all about the brand. I am a late convert to Apple and, after getting a MacBook couldn’t wait to get the phone, even though I knew it didn’t have all the bells and whistles I wanted.

That the iPhone has turned out to be the massive success it has is (in my opinion) down to two things:

1. Apple’s ability to appeal to people’s sense of style (many of whom are already their customers – and avid fans) and
2. To a vast population of programmers who have developed little programs – ‘apps’ – to work on the phone. These are either free or can be bought on iTunes for dollars and cents, and do all sorts of things you never knew you needed on a phone. And quite a few things that are really useful indeed.

Apple have leveraged their brand so that their customers just ‘want’ one, despite the fact that there are, out there, technically, better featured phones.

I’m still, on balance, ‘happy’ with my phone and choice of the iPhone. As and when I get a new phone I’m just thinking of upgrading to the new one. I’m also happy that the phone still works after being smashed, and in a funny way I think this is a credit to the brand. Although I’d have preferred it not to smash so easily, I’m pretty impressed that it still works, half a year down the track.

The moral of the story?
How can you build your reputation/brand so that people just ‘want one’? You must provide something (that people want) that nobody else can provide. And it doesn’t harm to have a customer base of ‘raving fans’.

(Reading time <3mins)

Just read this post by “New Rules of Marketing & PR” author David Meerman Scott on the dangers of using stock photography on your website – everyone uses the same images. In the article he refers to the image of one particular person that crops up on a number of websites – and I’m sure you’ve noticed this too – we have! Why not use photos of people that actually work at your business? I’d be interested to hear any comments on this.

Here is David Meerman Scott’s article:

Who the hell are these people?

This quote, from chief Executive of WebDynamic Dominic Gamble, on the importance of getting people to your site over and above just building it.

Interestingly, none of the points in the article talk about what is said on a website – the words. Do web developers assume this is part of the brief – or do they assume the client will come up with the words?

Read the whole article on smartcompany – 10 things your web developer must have

As people continue to debate the usefulness of Twitter from a business perspective, and as Twitter continues to think about what it can do to help businesses and in the process make money from the application, we can only speak from our own experience here at NewsBusiness.

Here are a few things we have been using Twitter for:

Looking for business

Over the past month or so, every week we have been typing into the search box “PR Brisbane” to see what comes up. Most of what appears is not relevant (unless we wanted a job in PR), but we have come across two Twitter users who tweeted that they needed a PR firm. So we replied. So far neither has actually turned into a client, but its early days yet!

In fact the other evening at a PR/marketing network event I was speaking with someone in web design who said that their firm had had around 4 new contracts through Twitter. Interestingly, the contacts had come through individuals who worked at the firm on their personal Twitter accounts, not from a corporate Twitter account.

When we get our first client over the line from Twitter, we’ll certainly let you know.

Brand monitoring

Want to know if anyone is talking about your business on Twitter? As above, just type your business name into the search box and see what comes up. I did this recently for a large multinational brand and came across some comments made by someone in Brisbane directly of interest to a colleague who works with that company. If you know what’s being said, particularly if it’s not complimentary, you can do something about it (see our previous post).

Meeting gurus

The other day I was sitting at my desk working when the Tweetdeck application I have in the background chirped and I checked my “Tweets”. A digital media guru I follow (@cameronreilly) was in a cafe about 100m away and had just complained about the coffee. I nipped down to say hi and he ended up buying me a beer (it was a Friday) and we had a very interesting conversation. If the cafe had been on Twitter (or perhaps their PR/marketing people) they might have been able to respond to a complaint that (in theory) could have been read by all of Cameron’s 9,653 followers.

By the way…

You don’t actually have to be registered with Twitter to search messages – you can do this straight from the Twitter home page. So, unless you want to be able to respond to people from within Twitter, you can do most of the things above without signing up or being an active participant in the system.