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We will share how to truly evaluate how well your company is marketing itself. When it comes down to actually evaluating PR initiatives, organizations aren't exactly sure. Marketing and PR is considered > intangible in terms of its ROI and associating an actual matrix to its value. Companies know that they need it but consider it a gray area when it comes to setting expectations for their in-house team as well as for their public relation agency, if they have one.Here are just a few of the questions we will consider along with the importance of why we are considering them: Is your company vision clearly mapped out for today and for future products and/or services as a context for all company communications?Have you developed your company's key messages for each unique audience and defined competitive differentiators?Are you utilizing a matrix to measure the overall success in communicating the company's key messages effectively?Are you getting placements in at least 50% of relevant editorial opportunities? How do you know?In producing third-party endorsements, customer testimonials, and success studies, how are you marketing them?Are you actively seeking award opportunities? How many awards have you received so far this year?Have you conducted a perception study to understand how your key constituents perceive your company?We will provide a "How To" PR guide and explain the importance of measuring the results. PR performance measurement encompasses a measure of business value, of strategic alignment and of marketing efficiency. It can seem too abstract to fit easily into a concrete measurement like it does for sales but through our 10 plus years of PR experience, we definitely have seen the PR measurement matrix evolve. Our presentation will help organizations get a handle on setting PR expectations as well as how to successfully fulfill those expectations. We are excited to share with the group through our experience, industry research and customer stories on how organizations are able to evaluate what PR investments they should make along with how to measure their outcome and success.
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Marketing & PR Food for Thought
By Valerie Harding
Ripple Effect Communications
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Presenter
• Over the last 12 years, Valerie Harding, who heads up Ripple Effect Communications, has been spearheading PR and Marketing campaigns for software and technology providers that serve the manufacturing sector including, utilities, building automation and medical device.
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Agenda
• Traditional PR vs. What’s working today• Cover Key Marketing/PR Questions• Thought leadership Positioning• Developing Trends• Three Case in Points• Break Out Session 1• Recap• Break Out Session 2• Conclude
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Traditional PR vs. PR TodayWhat’s Changing – What’s not?
• Press releases• Media Tours• Press Kit Development• Analyst Relations• Editorial Calendars• Pro-active Pitches• Webinars/Podcasts• Shows/Conferences/Summits/Networking Events• Speaking Opportunities• Awards• Social Media/Blogs/Communities• Thought Leadership
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Food for Thought: MessagingKey Questions
• Is your company vision clearly mapped out for today and for future products and/or services as a context for all company communications?
• Have you developed clear and differentiated value propositions for your company's key messages and positioning in your market?
• How are you leveraging your key messages and competitive proof points with your target audience?
• Do you re-evaluate your company’s key messages and proof points every six months?
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Food for Thought: Measurement
• Are you utilizing a matrix to measure the overall success in communicating the company's key messages effectively?
• How do you measure Marketing/PR effectiveness?
• Do you re-align your messaging/positioning to support your quarterly corporate objectives (sales growth, vertical targets, business development, channel management)
• Have you conducted a perception study to understand how your key constituents perceive your company?
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Food for Thought: PR Logistics
• Are you getting placements in at least 50% of relevant editorial opportunities?
• How often are you making a press or news announcements?
• How many times a month do you appear in journals, magazines, trades?
• How many third-party endorsements, customer testimonials, and success studies do you release a year?
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Food for Thought: Leverage Success Stories
• How do you leverage success studies/testimonials?
• How many awards have you won in a year’s time?
• Have you taken advantage of at least two speaking opportunities?
• Have you written at least two thought leadership by-lined articles within the last 6 months?
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What exactly is a Thought Leader?
"Thought Leaders" are said to be people (or firms) who are recognized among their peers for innovative ideas; who confidently promote those ideas; and who earn recognition from the outside world that they deeply understand their business, the needs of their clients, and the broader marketplace in which they operate. (Paraphrased from www.wikipedia.com)
Thought leadership breaks down into a couple key areas: it must be visionary, looks at the future, it must be provocative and it must put the needs of the customer first. –Mark Pershoff, Sr. Director of Cisco’s Executive Thought leadership
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Food for Thought: Thought Leadership
• Have you developed a thought leadership roadmap?
• Do journalists and editors come to you as a source?
• Are you generating one proactive pitch campaign per month to promote a thought leadership position?
• What are you doing with the competitive and industry intelligence you’re gathering?
• How are you leveraging analyst relationships?
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Food for Thought: How to Develop a TrendWhat Does Your Competition Miss?
• Whatever it is, it could have your name on it. Look for a niche to own.– Tip: It's a good idea to see what is not being done well - or at all -
by your competitors. ind something that isn't being covered and really does need to be addressed.
• Find something that isn't being covered and really needs to be addressed.
• Remember sometimes there's a good reason why no one is addressing a given niche already. Approach with a skeptical but open mind.
• Develop and Evangelizing your own trend using the media, analysts, speaking opps. and forming associations.
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Benefits to positioning your company/key executives as thought leaders
• Prospects put themselves further into the sales cycle– Shortening the sales cycle
• Changes occur with the pattern and terms from how people buy from you
• Diminish Price resistance• Prospects experience your value before buying
– view you as a visionary, feel secure they making the right choice
• Increase in media placements and requests– The Media views you/your company as a source
• Search Marketing find-ability– Great content works well for search engines and customers
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Food for Thought: Challenges
• Marketing Resources (time, money, people)• No Incentive/Recognition (no reward for TL activities and
whose responsibility is it anyway)• Lack of Process (most are new at developing a TL
methodology)• Secrecy (can’t talk about clients or ideas or give proof)• Burdensome Approval Process (red tape)• Preceived Value (not sure how much value to place on
TL campaigns)
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Food for Thought: 6 Keys to Developing a Thought Leadership Image
1. Cultivate Press Relationship
2. Write, Take a Position
3. Spread the Word - Be viewed as a source
4. Speak
5. Use Your Website
6. Unlock Your White Papers
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Food for Thought: 3 Key Cases Studies
• Industrial Automation Communications (Kepware)– Executive Thought Leadership Branding
• Network Management and Automation (Cisco)– Corporate Wide Thought Leadership
• Production Lifecycle Management (Omnify)– By-Product Thought Leadership
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Food for Thought: Case in Point 1
• Kepware Technologies Thought leadership roadmap• Develop trend stories/position President as a visionary• Select the thought leadership position: secure at least
10-12 articles on angles to support your thought leadership messages
• Result: media becomes pro-active in contacting President and viewing him as a source
• Result: Requested to byline columns in 2-3 publications regularly
• Result: Contacted by Forbes Magazine to be part of their Boston’s Best in Business - the May 9, 2011 Edition
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Food for Thought: Case in Point 2
• CISCO -entire senior team is organized around the promotion of Cisco as a thought leader in technology
• Earning credibility by creating intelligence that places company objectives second to the goals of educating prospects
• Every Cisco executive must establish and nurture a thought leadership position
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Food for Thought: Case in Point 3 Thinking Out of Box
• Omnify Software provides PLM Solutions• Clean Technology Leadership Position
– Byproduct; smart technology initiatives– How technology is spurring faster product development in
cleantech– Omnify to support technology vendors in their smart technology
initiatives– First PLM vendor to address clean technology sector
• How did Omnify do it?– First PLM vendor to address clean technology sector– Secured 14 articles in publications that cover engineering
design, clean technology, smart grid, embedded system design, CAD, M2M, etc.
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Food for Thought: Break Out Session
• 15 Minute Exercise• Think and jot down your top industry or technology
trends (not more than 3 trends)• Pick the one that is most of important to you today• Draft 5 -10 sentences or bullets on how does your
product/services address those trends• What are you proof points? Why is this a trend? Will
you be able to provide supporting materials, market sizing, analyst viewpoint, customer example, etc.
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Food for Thought: A Thought Leaders’ Position
• Don’t go after a market unless you have something authentic and valuable to offer, without something spun from the passion you hold within your area of expertise, it’s nearly impossible to educate others and sustain a thought leadership position without developing a ongoing relationship with your market which includes all constituents. One just does not work without other.
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Break Out Session
• 15 minutes -- Break into small groups of 3
• Share your thought leadership trends with your peers
• Does it resonate? Is it compelling? Gather feedback and your peers’ perception
• It is important to be able to communicate your ideas in a fast and easy way that people can understand quickly. Make the complicated simple. Not simplistic, but simple so that people can understand.
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Food for Thought: Small GroupsAbstracts for Thought Leadership Piece
• Your Targets: What verticals? what industries? Who is/are the audience(s)?
• Can you conduct this exercise every 3 months in order to develop one thought leadership byliner a quarter?
• It needs to be on topic or trend that your customers care about
• Your leadership message/position translates to about 8 -10 articles published within a 3 month period
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Food for Thought: Commitment and Results
• What it [thought leadership] tends to do is pull people in, rather than pushing to get people to come talk to you.
• Commit! So you have to say, "I'm going to now commit to it over the long term to actually achieve the benefits of becoming a thought leader."
• Wait! It takes a while before that happens. You have to understand that, and decide that you're going to stick with it, whether or not it works right away.
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Food for Thought: Leadership Success Measurement
o New revenue/clients/partners by the campaign
• What sales/partners were initiated through the thought leadership program?
o Lead generation results
• How many strong leads can be tied back to a specific marketing program?
o Audience response
• How did clients and prospects respond to the program?
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Food for Thought: Ripple Effect’s Lessons Learned
• Companies must re-think their strategy for staying competitive
• Leverage complimentary solutions/services/partners– Tip: To get something you never had, you have to try something
you never tried.
• A Thought Leadership Strategy is the key component in bringing any company’s visibility up to the next echelon!
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Food for Thought: Book Suggestions
• Measure What Matters: Online Tools For Understanding Customers, Social Media, Engagement, and Key Relationships by Katie Delahaye Paine
• Sustainable Thought Leadership: How to build awareness and credibility to support business by Sari Aapola
• The Art of Original Thinking: The Making of a Thought Leader by Jan Phillips
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Food for Thought
Thank You!
Valerie Harding
Ripple Effect Communications
Tel: 617-536-8887
Email: [email protected]
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