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It’s All About the Details

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Details have been on my mind lately – you know, the nuances in life that make life, well – interesting. I thought this topic would be a personal blog post, because the details that have stood out to me recently have been pretty personal. One of our three dogs passed away recently – a sad first for our family – and while the event itself was huge, it’s the little things that stand out the most in regards to his absence. The way my youngest son still pushes his plate back from the edge of the table because the dog used to steal his food, the empty chair in our bedroom where we’d find him every morning, the fact that I can put bird seed in my bird feeders again and not have to worry that the dog will eat it. These and many other little details are what remind me every day of the bigger loss.

So how does this post end up here, on our agency’s blog? Because it has occurred to me that it’s the details that matter in business, too. The big events are certainly the most memorable – winning new clients, watching the first sale come through, unveiling your new brand or opening a new store. But it’s the little details in between all these larger situations that really matter – and the little details that help you not only to keep your business up and running, but to beat the competition.

Are you thinking about the little details? Once you win a customer or a client, are you welcoming them and thanking them for their business? Does your website make an interaction with your company pleasant and easy, or are you making prospects work too hard to become a customer? Can they easily find what they are looking for? Do you have a waiting room that’s comfortable or stark? Do you think about simple yet “nice touches” that would make a prospect want to do business with you over a similar competitor?

Once you win a customer or a client, are you communicating with them regularly – but not more than they want? Do you know how your customers prefer to be contacted and how often? Have you asked? When you’re following up with a prospect, do you make them feel personally wanted as a customer? Just this week, a company followed up with me based on an interaction at a trade show (good) but I was turned off by the method (bad) of follow up and it made me not want to do business with them. I understand that companies need to maximize time – that sales leads have to be captured and plopped into databases (we’ve worked with enough sales and marketing software clients – Landslide, Salesnet, RightNow, Genius, etc. – to understand how it works and why). And maybe I’m naive, or expecting too much – but as technology gets better, it seems to me it could also help companies to at least appear to be more personable in sales. When I receive a sales email that’s claiming to understand my business, and want my business, but is clearly a generated “next step” email from a sales automation software solution, I feel insulted – not really wanted as a customer. When they use my login name as the lead – which appears as “christine” because I rarely capitalize when I’m signing up for something online – it’s obvious. It’s a little, tiny detail, right? But to me – it’s a detail that turned me off from doing business with this company. A little detail that turned into a lost sale.

On the flip side, we’ve got a client who – even as they’ve grown from startup to public company – calls each prospect when they trial a product. I remember the first time I tried Constant Contact – the call startled me – it literally happened within minutes of me entering my information online. I didn’t need help but you know what? Knowing that if I did – especially in this day and age of electronic communication – I could get a human on the phone, was a nice touch. It stood out – the call was brief, to the point and not intrusive. I was impressed – and that was before they were a client.

An experience that falls somewhere in between these two is a recent interaction with our bank. They recently upgraded some services for us and assigned a personal Account Manager (great!). He emailed and called me to introduce himself, which was good, but the little details that were missing, some that I felt could have made me a happier customer (and not feeling like a call was wasting my time), were some suggestions or thoughtful interaction. The introduction, in my opinion, could have included something more along the lines of, “We noticed you often do this, and we think this change will make your life easier – do you want to learn more?” It didn’t need to be anything complicated, but just something that showed a personal touch about my business and my banking habits that demonstrate you care about me specifically as a customer.

In PR, one of the biggest complaints reporters have always had is that they receive off-topic, automated emails from PR executives. PR teams do this – using software to automate email blasts – because time is money in our business, literally. Not only can you move faster and thus work on more clients and charge more hours, but the more pitches you get out, the longer a “We Pitched” list you can give to a client, right? Well, I guess that may be true – but the little details, taking the time to pitch a reporter with a custom email or call, mentioning personal details that remind them you know them or you at least know their work and read what they write – are more likely to yield big results. Would a client rather have a long list of “We pitched 100 reporters” – but no coverage results – or a shorter list of “We pitched 10 key publications and here’s the result – 10 quality feature articles”? I’m guessing the latter.

So take time to think about the details today. Whether it’s how you sell, how you service or how you build your business – branding, HR, promotion, etc. – caring about the little details can make a big difference.

How do you incorporate the little details in your daily business?

What’s Wrong With Your PR?

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Do you know the answer to this before you start researching a new PR firm to hire? Have you taken a good look at your current program and working relationship and truly understand what needs to improve? Do you have a plan for integrating PR with other marketing elements?

In meetings with prospects I’ve found that many don’t. They don’t know what’s wrong with their PR, only that they “need something more.” They don’t have a plan for integrating PR with other forms of marketing – in fact, many times they’ve never even thought about the connection. But all marketing should be integrated and PR should support and work to promote every other element in your marketing arsenal.

If you head into a working relationship without a firm idea of what you want improved, it’s difficult to expect your PR firm to deliver results that will meet your – or the Board’s – expectations. Many times the C-suite has a very narrow view of what PR means to them – usually top of mind is media relations, although these days word-of-mouth is also becoming a unit of measurement for them, thanks to social media.

Every agency has been in a new business meeting where the prospect has brought out a list of what the last agency didn’t do. They don’t necessarily correlate this to what they thought the agency should have done – and I’ve found that rarely, if ever, do they have a clear and definitive overview on where the agency fell short in regards to specific metrics or promised goals.

Before you change agencies or look for a new firm for the first time, ask yourself:

– How do I define PR?

– What specifically has been missing that’s driving us to hire a PR firm?

– How do I expect PR to integrate into my overall marketing plan? What about sales? Customer service? Other areas of our business?

– What specific programs do I want in my PR campaign?

– How will I measure the success of those programs; of the campaign overall?

– How much do I expect the PR firm to manage and do my resources align with this expectation – honestly?

– What benchmark metrics do I have to give the PR firm to begin – so they can plan and measure accordingly?

– What characteristics do I want in my PR team? What do I like about the people I work with now?

– What attributes do I want in a PR firm? Big name? All senior team? Boutique or conglomerate? What’s my experience been in the past with each and what were the pros and cons?

– What have my trusted colleagues experienced – good and bad – in working with a PR firm and how can I avoid those same mistakes?

– What role do I want to play in managing the PR firm? Side-by-side colleague and teammate? Hands off manager?

– What matters most to me? What matters most to my boss(es)? Are we on the same page with how we’ll define success in working with a PR firm?

Many times this last point is one of the biggest snags in a successful agency/client relationship. Too many times the day-to-day executive tasked with managing the PR firm does not clearly understand how the CMO, VP of Marketing or other C-level executives will define success. And when they’re not on the same page, it’s pretty impossible for the PR firm to be successful. And that brings me to one final point – who’s in charge of your PR internally? Do you respect them? Do you trust them? Did you hire the right person for the job? Start there – because if you haven’t, you’re not only wasting money on their salary, but you’ll be throwing dollars out the window for a PR firm to fail, too.

So, what’s wrong with your PR? And how do you plan to fix it – or how have you in the past? Please share your experiences in the comments so our readers can benefit from your wisdom.

Social Media is a Fad … Like Websites Don’t Matter

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Today I heard at least three different people comment that social media is a fad. Although they were positioning it in jest, there was also a bit of questioning in their tone. So let me ask you this:

– Do you use email?
– How often do you IM?
– Do you have a website? What about a blog?
– Are online ads still around?
– Do you Google?
– Have you tried Bing?

Social media isn’t any more of a fad than these very technologies that you and I and millions of others use every day. “It’s just a fad” – unless you’re talking about fashion and style – tends to come from resistant-to-change-and-scared-of-being-left-behind people. I remember when instant messaging was first used in the office of my PR agency back in the early 90s. A lot of people complained about it and said they’d never use it, what was the point when you could just pick up the phone, etc. Personally, I think they were just terrified of IM’ing messages to the wrong person (which was always an enlightening event usually resulting in insults), but eventually they came around to understanding that IM offered a different kind of value than the phone. And one that they wanted.

Similarly, we used to represent a provider of ad blocking software. This was hot stuff in the mid- to late 90s, as many people hate online ads and even more predicted the demise of the online ad market altogether. Yeah, I think we know how that worked out (if I had a dime for every start up business plan I’ve read where advertising is the revenue model….).

Social media isn’t going anywhere. It’s not a fad. Sure the hype will die down – but that’s a good thing. Once the novelty wears off and growth steadies, the market will shake out, the less useful technologies will fade away, the user demographics will be easier to plan around, and we’ll all have a clearer picture of what value it all brings to business.

What do you think?

What is Value? It Depends on Who You Ask

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The word value might seem like a straight forward term but in
reality, it’s very subjective. Those of us in the PR agency business
can appreciate this as we balance multiple clients and work hard every
day to provide value to them – which can be, and often is, very
different from client to client. You  may experience this in your own
job if you’re a part of a larger division or company where multiple
decision makers need to see what you do every day as valuable. As you
look up the hierarchy, what constitutes as value can differ from layer
to layer, person to person. So how do you ensure that you are providing
the best value you can – and to the right people (the ones that
ultimately make the decision on your job, your future, your daily work
life)?

Even
when you do figure out what each person in the decision tree sees as
valuable, it can change. For example, often times PR agencies are
replaced when a new addition  – usually a VP or Director of Marketing –
is hired by a client. Alternately, you may get a new boss who has been
assigned to come in and “shake things up.” Although you may have met
all of the objectives of value for your previous contact, the new one
will hold you to their own standards of value and ROI. If someone’s
been assigned to come in and do more than fill some shoes – but rather,
make change and find problems – they will be looking very carefully at
everything you do. And while a more experienced person wouldn’t make
sweeping changes without first truly understanding what needed to be
fixed – and wouldn’t make changes just for the sake of making changes –
often times no matter how hard you’ve worked or how many goals you
previously met, they just won’t meet the new boss’s expectations of
value and your job will change (or, worst case scenario, be eliminated).

So what can you do to ensure you are always adding value to the
myriad of decision makers in your work life? First – and most obvious –
is to communicate. Sit down with each person who is responsible for
providing input or making decisions about your job (or firm) and ask
them, “How do you define value?” and “What can I do to be more valuable
to you on a daily basis.?” More importantly, be ready to express some
of your own ideas on how you have provided value in the past – tie it
to specific ROI such as sales, customer retention or effective company
policies. Secondly, don’t stop asking. Do this often and repeat. Change
happens in the corporate world at a rapid pace (or sometimes, a snail’s
pace… which can mean you’re thinking and acting before your company
or client is ready) and you need to have your pulse on the pace. Tie
your performance to previous discussions and outlines of value provided
to you by your former client contact or boss – and ensure that they
clearly correlate “This is what I was told was valuable and needed;
here’s how I achieved it.” Next, ask questions – “If this value is no
longer important, what is? What changes are you making and why – I want
to understand so I can also make the appropriate changes and continue
to deliver the right value to this organization.”

The bottom line – don’t assume you know what’s valuable in the minds
of all decision makers. It takes constant communication, consistent
measurement of your own performance (don’t just rely on others to do
this for you) and a certain tact for tooting your own horn to ensure
that your value is clear to all decision makers. Don’t leave it up to
others to communicate how valuable you are – and don’t ever look at it
as a job that’s complete.

How do you ensure that  you understand the value expected of your
agency or your position, and how do you juggle the expectations of
multiple audiences?

 

Love Your Accountant? PR Firm? Vet? Last Day for Make A Referral Week to Help SMBs!

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As a small business, and one that often promotes relevant technologies, product and services, we are passionate about supporting the SMB community. Small businesses are the crux of our economy – stimulating new ideas, new jobs and new creations every day. So we wanted to remind you that today marks the last day to make a referral on “Make a Referral Week” –  an entrepreneurial approach to stimulating the small business economy one referred business at a time.

“The goal for the week is to generate 1000 referred leads to 1000 deserving small businesses in an effort to highlight the impact of a simple action that could blossom into millions of dollars in new business,” writes John Jantsch, creator of the effort and author of Duct Tape Marketing. We couldn’t agree more, so please, join the cause – show the power of referrals and make one here, today.

 

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Can You Afford Not to Demand Excellence?

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I recently had a conversation with an industry colleague who works on the client side. During that conversation, which took place at a marketing conference, he shared with me his experience at a certain other interactive conference last year: “One awesome week-long party paid for by my company. No real business takes place in terms of ROI. I can’t wait to go back.”

burning-wasting-money-600Huh? With that mentality, no wonder marketing is often the first line item when companies are facing budget cuts.

But wait a minute – aren’t you responsible for ensuring excellence for your company across the board at all times? In this day and age of record unemployment, pay cuts, “turning out the lights,” and more work with less resources, can you afford this sort of mentality on your workforce? Do you have any idea what the marketing department does with its budget? Are you assessing and measuring and demanding excellence on a weekly basis?

More importantly, if you have a marketing department spending money on events, travel, conferences and tradeshows, are you really measuring the ROI of such efforts? Do you assess the cost of the show (in full) and what it yielded for results? Do you pay attention to who’s going, what they’re doing and the expected results? Do you compare these investments to other marketing activities? Can you afford not to have such checks and balances in place these days?

Mind you, this was no multi-billion dollar company – although even they, too, are being affected by this global recession. This was a start up in a precarious and competitive industry. In other words, that kind of irresponsible mentality (like #11 here) shouldn’t be difficult to spot. But if you’re not paying attention – and not demanding results from every investment – then it could be missed. And such ignorance could cost you not only money, but perhaps a future layoff or worse.

Take the time to assess all of your  marketing activities – not just SEO or PR or advertising – but the dollars spent on every activity online and off. Demand excellence in everything and set parameters for employees. Prioritize in advance – know which activities yield the best results and which could easily be diminished with minimal impact.

Can you draw a direct line to results or positive ROI for each  marketing activity? If not, can you afford not to demand excellence and results across the board? I didn’t think so.

Shut Up and Listen

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I have had a lot of conversations about PR over the years with prospects, clients and partners. Some of my favorite stories are when they share their other PR experiences. In fact, inquiring about experiences with other agencies – both good and bad – is one of the first questions we ask any prospect. We can learn so much by the answer to just that one question.

More often than not, it seems that PR executives make the mistake of talking too much and listening too little. I noticed this from the very beginning of my career. I would slump in embarrassment during client meetings when two account executives would not only talk over each other – as though the one who talked the most demanded the most importance – but they would consistently interrupt the client as well. It’s something I have never forgotten.

One of the most effective ways to connect with any audience is to show them that you care. One of the easiest ways to show someone that you care is to listen. One of the best ways to listen is to actively participate in the conversation – by both asking questions and repeating what you’ve heard. It’s also a fantastic way to learn new things.

I see the same mistake happening in a lot of the social media marketing taking place across social networks. It’s bad enough that so many companies are using Twitter and Facebook as a glorified news stream rather than a give and take community, but the so-called social media experts and “social marketing gurus” are making matters worse by constantly streaming their own thoughts but rarely replying, conversing or engaging their followers – often because they consider themselves newbie-Internet celebrities and can’t be bothered. To make matters worse, these type of marketers and PR hounds are using the latest “auto follower” services – a pyramid-like scheme that can increase your followers “by up to 300 per day!” Again, this has nothing to do with engaging or listening and it certainly doesn’t mean that these “gurus” know how to get other people – the RIGHT people – to listen to you or your brand value proposition.

not-listening

I also see so many PR professionals who don’t want to ask questions in meetings because they feel – especially in a pitch – that they are supposed to have all the answers already. (Or, sometimes, their egos rival everyone’s in the room.) This is a classic problem with marketers and PR executives – they think asking questions shows weakness. I highly disagree – I think it shows interest, intelligence and strategic thinking.

If you’re not asking questions, you are subtly saying that you don’t care. How else will you learn about what your customers want? How do you ensure that you are headed in the right direction with your products or services? How will you uncover additional nuggets of information that might not seem obvious in a one-sided conversation?

The  next time you find yourself in a conversation or – better yet – a sales pitch – think about what questions you can ask about the person or company to whom you are speaking. Ask them questions about themselves or what they offer and get them talking about what they’re passionate about. Really listen to the answers. Repeat them and ask more. I guarantee that the other party will walk away thinking you were an extremely interesting person and brilliant conversationalist.

Pssst, We’re Recruiting, Spread the Word

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I’m happy to say that we’re on the hunt for some new, innovative employees. I wanted to spread the word as much as possible, so in addition to updating our careers page on the web site, I interrupt our regularly-scheduled blogging to share the following details. Thanks in advance for passing it along.

Are you a PR 2.0 expert with proven experience in both traditional programs and new media? PerkettPR is recruiting!

PerkettPR is seeking Account Strategists who can demonstrate the proven ability to run traditional PR programs such as media relations, customer/partner programs, speaking engagements, events initiatives and grassroots campaigns, as well as new media and digital production: social media campaigns, video, podcasts, etc.

Specifically, you must:

  • have a minimum of five years related experience
  • demonstrate results or case studies in PR and new media as well as client service
  • be comfortable – experience preferred – working from a home office
  • have experience in technology but demonstrate a willingness to work in industries such as healthcare, fashion, travel, entertainment. If you have specific experience to bring to the table, please highlight it
  • have an entrepreneurial spirit
  • show us why you are a standout – what will you teach us?
  • do your homework – communicate your understanding of who we are, our culture and how we are unique in the industry

Ideally, you will:

  • have a sense of humor – for fun and for sanity!
  • be in or near Boston, NYC, San Francisco or Detroit
  • not lead with “why I want to work from home”
  • have PR agency experience or client service experience
  • be creative in how and where you apply/show us your work
  • understand the bigger picture and give us an idea of how you will not only help deliver the best client service but help our organization grow and innovate

BIG HINT: if you follow @PerkettPR on Twitter and DM us that you have sent a resume, it will be more noticeable…

Submit your details to careers(at)perkettpr(dot)com and in the subject line, please indicate the position (Account Strategist) and location, (Boston, NY, Detroit or San Francisco). Visit our website for more details. Thanks for reading.

Beating a Dead Social Media Horse

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I’ve been suffering a bit of blogger’s block lately – finding a motivational topic difficult to come by and even harder, something everyone’s not already talking about. So I reached out to my Twitter community and asked for ideas. I received some interesting feedback but one that caught me by surprise was from @Britrock, who suggested I write “about topics that are beaten to death and why the subject is so popular?”

So here I am and the subject is of course, social media. It’s absolutely beaten to death – yet unsolved – and it’s so popular because no one can quite agree on its definition, its impact, its value, its future or even its present. Not everyone is bought into the “concept” and even when businesses are, they are unsure who to trust – who really “gets it” from a business value perspective and understands that it’s more strategic than creating a Facebook fan page and some cool videos?

We do know that it’s currently the hot buzzword in business. Oh, and it’s supposedly killing off entire industries such as PR, advertising and traditional media.

Social media is such a broad term, subject to the individual definition of everyone who mentions it. Some people think it means digital production, others think it means blogger relations and currently, Wikipedia defines it as “online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies.”

Businesses are trying to define its value, executives/celebrities/political figures are trying to understand how to use it, and “experts” galore are casting the FUD factor all over in hopes of capitalizing on the currently-hot trend. It’s talked about so much but in the end, I think it’s simple.

Social media is talking with – not at – those who matter to you, your brand, your business. It’s such a simple concept but it’s difficult for businesses to embrace because we’ve spent so many years just pushing messages out one way. Brands didn’t necessarily want to listen – they just wanted to dictate thought and influence opinions. Ad agencies would create sleek – and sometimes stupid – ads that people would mostly chat about the day after each year’s Super Bowl. If brands got lucky they’d hit a word-of-mouth winner like “Where’s the Beef” or “Aflac.” PR teams wrote press releases full of fluffy words that real people would never say, and no one really cared as long as it grabbed some attention and resulted in media coverage.

But now, things are different. With “social media,” consumers can not only post, dissect and analyze your words, they can create their own commercials about your product. They can write full blog posts about your press release and how silly it sounds and encourage others to create their own “fluffy words list” underneath it. They can create and promote “I hate your product” fan pages on Facebook and in just seconds, tell 25,000 people with 140 words how frustrated they are.


Or, how happy they are.

And here’s the thing – because they’re not actually trying to sell anything, they’re probably going to get more people to listen to them than a big brand standing on its own soap box. (Hence the illusion that PR and ad industries will suffer – rather, they will evolve – but that’s another blog post.) So what can you as a brand or a business do?

This brings me back to my definition of social media – talking with and not at. Clients very often come to us when something negative is said about them in a blog or on a social site like Twitter. Of course we analyze each instance but very often we encourage clients to engage with the naysayer – and this is a very difficult thing for businesses to get comfortable with. They don’t want to stir the pot or seem disingenuous. But when you have an issue with someone in your life, don’t you address the situation? Communicate? Discuss? That’s what social media is allowing us businesses to do in a way never before possible. You can fight or ignore it, or you can embrace and benefit from it.

Social media allows you to communicate directly with your customers and prospects. It gives you a platform to spark discussions that showcase your thought leadership or tell a customer story in a more visual and interactive way than ever before. It gives you a chance to share content among a community that you can see is relevant based on the discussions already taking place.

No, you can’t control it – but you can participate in, and positively influence, discussions. And if having happy customers tell others about you is valuable to you, (or showing prospects that you care about their opinion, or fixing a problem someone is having with your product, or lowering attrition, or showcasing your thought leadership, or winning a new client because they see so many other influencers engaging with you, etc.) then there’s your answer to social media ROI.

Tom Foremski Takes a Closer Look at the Changing PR Industry

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A while ago we wrote a post asking readers what they thought the PR industry could be doing better. I’ll be honest, I was a little dissapointed with the return – only a few readers commented. So I’m hoping now that Tom Foremski – veteran business journalist, author of Silicon Valley Watcher and host of Fridays with Foremski – is asking, more business, tech and marketing industry executives will pay attention and speak up.

Tom regularly writes on business, technology and media – including many posts about what the PR industry is doing – both right and wrong. One of his most recent PR musings, “The New Rules in PR – The Old Model is Dead,” reflects on how “the PR industry has run out of road.” This particular post caught my eye because he talks about social media – “there is no such thing as social media” – and what PR agencies are seeing change as a result.

Tom is turning this post into a series over the next couple of weeks, where he’ll taking a closer look at these changes. He says “I’m particularly interested in the extent of ‘social media’ expertise among the PR agencies. I’ll be looking to see who in the agencies is active in blogging, Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube, etc. Is it the senior people or is it junior staff? How often do they update, how much traffic do they get? What’s the quality of their content?”

So please, clients, prospects, partners, readers, industry colleagues – speak up. Let Tom know your opinion and thoughts on the changing PR industry and whether you think these types of activities are important. Are PR firms delivering good content? Do they understand how and where to promote it?  What do you expect from your agency these days? What’s going well, what’s missing? What keeps you up at night when you think about your own PR campaigns?

I’m sure he’d be happy to hear from you – and smart agencies will heed his findings. I know I’ll be paying close attention.