For entrepreneurs I always encourage taking a deep breath and turning off the “I know I need…” switch. What’s the “I know I need…” switch? It’s the switch that stops all the assumptions and daydreams related to promotion and marketing that many entrepreneurs have. You can’t wait to put your first ad in the phone book or the local paper - or set up your website. I say, “Flip the switch! You haven’t asked the tough questions yet!”

Marketing, public relations, corporate communications and even advertising should revolve around someone else besides you the business owner. It should revolve around the customer. Who do you really want to do business with? Where are they? What do they do? read? listen to? see? visit? play? Who do they work with, talk to, live near etc.? Profiling your customer - the one you really want, the one who has the time, money and inclination to do business with you may seem like a breeze. But when you really start hashing through your answers, you might be surprised by what you find.

In working with individual clients and organizations, I’ve found that the answer to many of the questions above help you establish the core of your marketing and promotion plan. Why advertise in the local paper if 90% of your target market doesn’t subscribe? Perhaps dollars are best spent in creating a key event rather than radio spot advertising - it will all depend on what helps you reach your target audience AND tell your story.

Take a few days to really get to know your customers or potential customers. Let the information you gather guide your outreach strategies and see where that takes you before you commit to spending your hard earned dollars in a medium that has low return on investment.

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Vibrant Resource

Sarah Zink’s “Not Everyone With a Checkbook is Your Customer” is a fantastic book that I had the privilege of working on in part. Sarah’s no-nonsense approach to disecting your target audience is a proven success.

It’s available at Amazon.com or you can always reach out to Sarah herself for some dynamic training.

For example, don’t order those business cards before you have your website domain registered. Don’t register the domain name until you’ve developed a solid branding plan for your business. The benefits of fully developing a plan before you start your public relations or marketing efforts (of any kind) are immeasurable.

In the weeks ahead I’ll be blogging about important things business owners and managers need to consider relative to their branding, marketing and public relations efforts. Hope you’ll stop back in and share your ideas and experiences.

TRD

In regards to using Ad Value or Gross Rating Points, professionals should only use this measure to evaluate share of impressions and share of discussion as compared to competitors/peers in market.
Editorial coverage is proven to more directly correlate and influence with public opinion. Therefore should carry more weight than Ad Value or GRP.

When using media measures, quantity vs. quality plays a significant role in tracking perception and action shifts.

Quantitative media measures are documenting:
- Column inches
- Impressions/Frequency
- Focus on target demographic
These measures indicate share of discussion and can support objectives intended to reach specific targets.

Qualitative media measures are ranking:
- Positive/Negative Tone
- Placement
- Use of Message
- Trend Analysis
- Tiered media values
These measures indicate perceived value and should correlate with community/target perception and not corporate values.

Outcome objectives are used with an established benchmark. Benchmarks can be established w/available data, using available mechanisms to generate data through statistics and Before & After studies are often very useful. Outcome objectives utilize tactics with specific calls to action. Successful implementation of these objectives will demonstrate tangible results that can most likely be tracked statistically.

MEASUREMENT GOALS:

- Measure strategically for tangible results that prove impact
- Measure in financial terms the impact of efforts on:
1. Reputation,
2. Bottom line and
3. Ability to conduct business

ESTABLISHING MEASURABLE OBJECTIVES:

Acknowledging the difference in Output and Outcome-based objectives is critical for successful objective implementation. Output objectives are essentially to-do list objectives based on getting the job done and media placement. Outcome objectives are based more in strategic tactics used to achieve desired results. Outcome objectives can be broken down further into attitudinal and behavior objectives, which are measured differently.

In order to be measurable, all objectives must have:
1. Defined audience focus
2. Defined measurement tactic
3. Time component
4. Acknowledged achievability

For evaluation and tracking, objectives should be classified in one of six categories:
1. Reputation/Awareness
2. Sales/Action
3. Recall Awareness/Decision Support
4. Recruiting/Retention
5. Investment Perception
6. Persuasion/Issue Management

It’s been a while since I cracked open the old Creative Whack Pack. It’s a great tool to inspire your thinking whether you’re working on a new article for your newsletter or brainstorming a new marketing idea. Today’s draw of the cards led me to “Try A Random Idea”. The challenge was to open any book at random, put your finger down on a word and consider how that word relates to what you’re doing. What random ideas can you try?

I think this is a great way to shake out the cobwebs when it comes to communicating, especially if you find yourself in a bit of a communications rut. I know that it is so easy to fall into doing the same old thing whether it’s corresponding with your customers, writing the company newsletter or even blogging. The idea of choosing a random word can really work - even if you do what I did, and land on the word “the”.

At first I was tempted to flip pages and do this again, until I found a better, more stimulating word. But that wouldn’t be really exercising my brain and my creative muscle now would it? Think about “the“. How can you incorporate that into what you’re communicating about your company, cause or self? For me, it made me start listing out ways I can focus on being “THE” PR Chick in my professional community. What are some simple steps that would propel me into top-of-mind awareness in my field? Got ‘em. Okay, next. What about my clients? “THE” All About You Recovery Salon. What will it take to position them as “THE” place to go when you’ve got cancer recovery needs. It brought me back to thinking about their brand flywheel we developed and focusing on the personality traits that make this team amazing.

And of course, I love etymologies, the roots of words and their evolutionary development. So I hopped over to webster.com to check out “the” and lo and behold, you’ve got to scroll down the page to get everything on this seemingly simple word. So that got me thinking about the breadth and depth of the projects I have on hand. This simple word has now encouraged me to take a step back from each project I have on my plate and consider whether or not the work I have planned really communicates the diversity, uniqueness and intrinsic value associated with each client, product and project.

The power of “the”- a Random Idea that has really stirred up my creative juices.

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Vibrant Resource: It isn’t the first time and it won’t be the last, that I highly recommend Roger vonOech’s “Creative Whack Pack” or just about anything from Creative Think.

Vibrant Challenge: Try this exercise today. Then mark your calendar or set a reminder for 30 days from now. Do it again and see how it helps. Let me know how it works out for you!

Seeing this picture again did get me thinking. Are the cobwebs and dust gathering on your end of the phone line? By that, I mean, are you picking up the line to ring the client? What is your customer care strategy?

Note here that I used two distinct words. Not “service”, but rather “care“. And not your “philosophy”, but rather your “strategy“. Because when it gets right down to it, it’s not what you think you do for and communicate to your clients - it’s what you actually say and do. Right down to the way you greet them on the phone, to your voice mail, to your voice mail return time, to your follow up plan, to your regularly scheduled communications strategy….

Wait, you say you don’t have a regularly scheduled communications strategy with your clients? Ahhhem. Dear reader, dear reader you must. You simply must! And yes, I do know it’s easy to slip off the communications bandwagon. I’ll admit it, I’ve let follow-up calls or check-in calls slip by me, I am human and so are you. So let’s make a plan.

Whether you choose a formal means of communicating regularly with leads, colleagues, clients and former clients such as newsletters or e-campaigns or you choose to pick up the phone every Thursday morning for an hour and make a round of hello calls- you need to choose something. I cannot emphasize enough that whatever you choose should fit the personality of your company or yourself. When it comes to frequency, that’s where we stop thinking of ourselves and start thinking of our customers. How often can we stay in touch without being annoying? I recommend you consider the depth and breadth of your service to said person or company to help you make that decision.

Should you choose a more formal means of communication, please be sure you tap in to the most talent you have on hand. If that’s calling your favorite PR Chick to get you started with email templates or writing guidelines and key words so be it. Make sure that whomever is in charge of your regularly scheduled communication pieces internally has the ability to communicate in “The Voice” of your company, has a good eye for editing and has the ability to identify when they’ve reached the limits of their capabilities and/or work load. There is nothing worse than getting any newsletter (e or otherwise) that is so slapped together you wonder whether someone’s child did it for extra-credit.

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Vibrant Resource: Constant Contact continues to be a very cost-effective way to introduce yourself and your business into the e-mail newsletter arena. It is also a great tool for other marketing strategies. While there are certainly more robust platforms for e-marketing, I recommend Constant Contact as a great starting point.

Vibrant Challenge: I challenge you to do an apathy check on yourself and your team when it comes to truly caring about your relationship with your customers. Are you communicating not only that you appreciate and care about their business, but also communicate the benefits of your continued partnership? Do the self-check. Analyze your results. Create strategies to improve or enhance.

Kudos to those who attended and thanks again for the opportunity to share my passion, creating a living brand. I’m currently developing a webinar that you’ll hear more about soon on that very topic.

I’ve written here before about the power of integration and consistency. But you’ll be hearing more from me this month on brand self-awareness, and how public relations tools can help you communicate based on your self-awareness.

Stay tuned dear readers.

In a former position, I had the opportunity to work with a great agency (MARC USA) on a re-branding project. From their dynamic team I learned the concept of making sure that your brand embraces three primary categories: Personality, Benefits and Difference.

It’s incorporating these three elements into each and every communications piece, message, speech, website etc. that allows for complete integration of your brand. I know I’ve posted about brand integration before, and I probably will again. But it’s only because it is so vitally important to being an authentic communicator, which I firmly believe translates into a stronger customer base and greater top-of-mind awareness.

So what are you doing that integrates the personality of your company, the benefits of your company and the point of differentiation of your company in what you’re doing today. I’m serious. What are you doing today? How are you communicating these important traits. Do you know what they are? If not, take some time - at least 30 minutes to put your mind to it. You’ll be surprised what you might find.

As we prepare to move in to 2008, Vibrant PR will continue to exist my dearies! Hooray! I will be available for consultations and creative strategy sessions primarily, as I focus full-time resources with another company.