|
|
|
ASPonline.com >
ASP Forum
|
ASP Forum
How should I spend my public relations budget?
"Top management wants to make our maintenance and professional
services offerings more visible, so they put $20,000 in my budget
for 'public relations.' However, I just met with the company's PR
people, and their ideas are pretty worthless. Any advice?"
—Jan from Jersey City
Dear Jan:
We passed this question on to two marketing experts who've actually
done support-related public relations (yes, a few such people
actually exist). Result: two very different perspectives.
First, Jordan Karpowitz, who recommends a "piggyback" strategy:
"With a PR budget of $20,000, you'll want to focus on specific goals
and leverage what everyone else is doing. Whether it's increasing
customer awareness and satisfaction, raising your group's profile in
the industry or improving internal attitudes, careful planning and
the right professionals can help you achieve your PR goals. Here are
some piggybacking ideas to start with:
"Messaging--Develop messages about your service offerings to include
in every press release, product brochure, presentation, white paper,
you name it. This can range from a brief tag line statement about
the quality or breadth of your service offerings to a more detailed
outline of which service options are available. Bottom line--It's
your job to ensure that the company and its products aren't promoted
without also promoting the "world-class service" that backs it up.
"Reviews--Suggest that product PR people lobby to have service
offerings included in product reviews. Competitive products often
match up feature for feature, so if you are confident about your
company's service performance, this could be the category that puts
you over the top to become the "editor's choice." What product PR
person wouldn't go for that competitive advantage?
"Next, look inside your own group. For example, if you’re attending
a trade show use a portion of the PR dollars to pitch executive
speaking engagements, prepare a presentation and schedule and manage
editorial appointments. With this activity you’ve raised the profile
of your executive and begun building important relationships with
opinion leaders who cover your company.
"Finally, it's worthwhile to work with a PR professional to develop
and carry out a communications plan in support of your goal. Try
looking beyond the PR agency the rest of your company uses. Many
service groups find that contracting with one or more independent
professionals on a free-lance basis is much more cost effective.
For $80-100 per hour you can find experienced PR professionals who
are happy to work with smaller budgets. Call for a background in
marketing services and success in areas you want to pursue."
—Jordan Ensign Karpowitz jordan@ensignpr.com
Ensign Public Relations
609/688-9224
Alison Harris disagrees: Her emphasis would be on boosting
awareness within the support group's existing customer base:
"You’re in a tough spot. It’s difficult when upper management all
of the sudden decides to emphasize a neglected area, but provides
little, if any direction as to how to define success. The good
news is, you do have some funding, however limited. But it sounds
like you are going to have to determine what your eventual goal
should be from this campaign, and will need to be responsible for
proving its success to management.
"First, I don’t think traditional public relations (press releases,
bylined story opportunities, trade show speaking gigs, etc.) is the
right route. You need something that falls into the marketing
communications category. With your $20,000 budget, direct mail
would be too pricey, so I’d go the e-mail route. I’d recommend
developing an e-mail newsletter with articles on maintenance and
professional service that are of real use to your customer base.
Articles could include alternate uses of your products, tips on
installing maintenance patches, customer examples, fix of the month,
etc. You get the point.
"Use your captive customer e-mail list for distribution. Spend your
$20,000 to get professional help developing your format and design.
If you can use your internal PR team to help write content, your
budget will stretch further. And, this assumes that you’ll have
some sort of support from your internal IS team with HTML email
distribution.
"In the newsletter, find ways to engage customer interaction: a
free Palm for the best customer-contributed story, a discount on a
particular maintenance service, or a chance to win a free
professional service. Ask readers to submit questions which your
staff can answer in the newsletter. For the first issue or two,
pull ideas from your FAQ file to get it rolling.
"Add a link to sign up for the newsletter from the service and
support page of your Web site. Encourage readers to submit ideas
on what content they’d like. And, every issue, do a mini-profile
on a particular service that you’d like to emphasize, with a link
to your web site to learn more, or a link to a salesperson so
they can buy.
"Track these reader responses to show management how many people
are reading and responding to the newsletter. In that way, you can
measure how effective it has been. Who knows? After your budget is
gone, readers may demand that you keep your newsletter back on
line!"
—Alison Harris Alison@harrismediaservices.com
Harris Media Services www.harrismediaservices.com/
207/829-4500
[Other comments and suggestions about this topic? Send me an
email and we'll post your
feedback.]
|
|
|
