Posted by Robert Celaschi on Wed, Mar 10, 2010
Can you get reporters at top-tier business publications to take you seriously? Of course you can.
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Take a hint from the classic Five W’s that a reporter or blogger needs to put in a story
Not every B2B marketer has worked previously as a news reporter. Few news reporters have ever worked in a marketing consulting company.
Is it any wonder that sometimes the two don’t get along very well?
That’s only the half of it. Say you are an account assistant in your mid-20s, pitching ideas to the top-tier business publications with reporters who have been covering your client’s industry since you were in junior high school. Can you get them to take you seriously?
Of course you can.
One key is to pitch with authority rather than bravado. Take a hint from the classic Five W’s that a reporter or blogger needs to put in a story, then gather some information yourself.
Who
Within the publications or blogs, who writes about your industry? Names are important, so get them right. I’ve known several co-workers who would save the most outrageous misspellings of their own names and tape them to their computer monitors. You can bet they remembered who sent the worst howlers.
What
Now you know who covers your industry. But what aspects does each person cover? Some may look only at the stocks of public companies in your industry. Others may look only at new products. In this age of layoffs, one person may have to do it all. Know before you pitch.
When
Even with the Internet available 24/7 to showcase their prose, writers and bloggers have deadlines. Find out what they are. They may have special reports of publications scheduled throughout the year. See if they’ve posted that editorial calendar online. If you are trying to get them to interview the CEO of your client company, first make sure the CEO will be there to pick up the phone or see any incoming email.
Where
Some organizations cover the world, others cover only the United States, still others stick to a region. If you want to get a Boston company noticed, don’t waste the time of a writer who only covers Northern California -- unless the Boston company is opening a San Francisco office, or just landed venture capital from a firm in Silicon Valley.
Why
Readers turn to business publications for a reason. Usually, they are looking for a way to make money. How is your pitch going to help the readers do that? Nail this one and you can get a writer’s attention fast. Remember, a story doesn’t have to be a profile of the client company. If the client CEO can speak as an industry expert about current trends, that’s gold.
Proceed with caution
Those are some Do’s. Here are a few Don’ts:
- Don’t rush things. Research takes time, but it’s a good investment. You may discover that you don’t have anything right now that’s likely to interest your target writers. It’s better to wait until you do, instead of annoying them with an idea that’s off the mark. Likewise, good relationships take time to build. The salty reporter has to learn to trust you. And you have to learn to trust Old Salty. It won’t happen on the first phone call or email.
- Don’t ask, “Will the story be positive?” For one thing, what’s positive to you might be negative to someone else. Suppose office space is getting cheaper to rent. That’s negative if you own a building, but positive if you are looking for space. A good reporter will write an honest story and let readers love or hate the facts as they wish. But even if a reporter knows what kind of reaction to expect, that might change during the reporting as new facts come to light. So don’t expect the writer to know how your client will be perceived.
- Don’t be a control freak. Guide, yes. Control, no. Let’s say the reporter asks you about something the company would rather keep quiet for right now. You might be tempted to say, “If you hold off, we’ll give you an exclusive.” The problem is, you can’t really control that. Think about it: The reporter already heard about it. So the story already is floating out there. How are you supposed to control whether somebody else gets wind of it? Reporters want to report news, not the CEO’s second-day reaction to a story that somebody else ran with while the first reporter was waiting for you to give the green light.
Now get out there and win one
Follow these simple tips ... and you still won’t bat a thousand. Nobody does. Even Old Salty strikes out sometimes when he’s pitching an idea to his editors.
Your thoughts?
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Wed, Feb 17, 2010
Blogging for SEO = mind numbing boredom
In my experience, one of the biggest hurdles any blog, newsletter, website has to overcome is sheer boredom. So much content that's pushed out -- especially stuff written with SEO in mind -- is mind numbingly boring.
Blog content is for blog readers. Readers like new and different. Readers are easily bored.
It's tempting to keep churning out "top ten ways to blah blah blah" stuff, packing it with keywords -- or to keep churning out announcements, packing it with marketing messages.
I do some of that, somewhat guiltily, knowing it's more boring than the other stuff. It's a continuing battle for me when it comes to the content balance at this blog.
Being controversial = being rude?
One thing that's not boring is being controversial. But does that mean being rude? No!
I think this is the breakdown:
Bad idea:
- Ad hominems
- Offensive jokes
- Mocking/ sarcasm
- Posting/commenting with the intent of embarrassing someone or winning an argument
Good idea:
- Frank
- Edgy
- Direct
- Transparent
- Admitting one's own weaknesses/ uncertainty when appropriate
- Posting/commenting with the intent of helping
I have a friend who's really good at walking this line in his blog posts.
What's not boring?
What else isn't mind numbingly boring? Perhaps doing more on this blog regarding...
- Screw ups
- Disasters
- Flops
- Failures
- Blunders
- Mistakes
- Backfires
I think that may be our theme here on this blog, in 2010.
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Thu, Nov 19, 2009
Zap weak email content for higher ROI
By
Rebekah DonaldsonEmail newsletters don’t cost much to create, they give people something to look forward to,
and they keep your name top of mind. That’s especially important if you have a
long sales cycle.
Like every other aspect
of B2B marketing, there are right ways and wrong ways to creating an email
newsletter. Keep these tips in mind, and you’ll consistently produce a winner:
Flip It
Traditionally, corporate newsletters are like mini press releases squished together. As in, "here's what we did/ are doing/ will do."
But unless you do really interesting things or you're super cool like Steve Jobs, that's not a great hook for a conversation with clients.
It's better to keep the focus on
the client, not on your company. Give them valuable and relevant information
that helps them work smarter, stay abreast of latest trends, or justify that
they’ve made the right choice by working with you.
What Isn't Boring?
Examples of items that often play well:
- Comparisons of products or services in your space
- Customer stories ("they faced x... they did y... they achieved z")
- Previews or reviews ("X is a useful book/ workshop/ guide because...")
- Human interest stories (especially about executives at the companies you serve)
- Advance notice ("next month this new executive brief will go public; here is a sneak peek...")
- Online resources they
can access (on your site and elsewhere)
- Reader
responses to surveys or previous newsletter content ("some readers disagreed with our article on blah... they have a point there")
Don't Worry About Filling Up Your Newsletter
If it seems like a lot of
work to fill a newsletter, here’s the good news: You don’t have to fill it! Details coming in my next post about email marketing...
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Wed, Nov 11, 2009
Using 2010 best practices to engage prospects
and speed up sales
By Rebekah Donaldson
Hats off to
Meg Arnold,
Laura Good, and other members of the Sarta team for producing yesterday's seminar
2010 Trends in Marketing and PR.
2010 email trends we discussed
- Prospects have control - adapt to succeed
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Email is competing with social media for attention
- Is email obsolete because of social media? (no)
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Far and away email is most popular for sharing
- Email marketing budgets are up
Top 4 tips to improve email results
2010 PR trends we discussed
-
Adapt to succeed
- Microphone vs interactive PR
- Is PR obsolete because of social media? (no)
- PR is social
- "
Someone always pays"
- "'Solution’ is not the solution"
Top 4 tips for improving PR results
- Steadily
produce good content
- Know
your top 10 keywords
- Write
optimized press releases
- Point
to helpful landing pages
Get my slide deck.
(I also posted it using LinkedIn's presentation sharing app, here.)
Audience questions
My co-presenters Donna Chabrier and Ryan McCann were great. Authentic, insightful, and quick on their feet.
Being
quick on one's feet was important because the audience was not taking
our advice lying down! There were great questions during the session,
and lots of post-seminar dialogue. I hope we can continue the Q&A
in the comments section.
Special thanks
Laura Good did a great job pulling the event together. She has created a Twitter list of tweeters who came. Thanks Donna and Josh Morgan for recommending me as a speaker. Thanks to my colleague Robert Celaschi - though thousands of miles away yesterday, he was very helpful. And thanks Todd Lebo for access to the MarketingSherpa 2010 Email
Benchmark Report.
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Mon, Oct 12, 2009
National Business Group On Health publishes "Choosing the Right Hospital" toolkit with our help
By Molla Donaldson, DrPH, MS and Rebekah Donaldson
With all the talk of health reform, one issue that keeps coming up is that people should have access to affordable quality care. But how can we know what quality of care is when it is so complex? Part of the answer is to make quality of care information publicly available. Another part is to take the language of quality ("mortality" "risk" "variation" etc.) and translate it to plain English.
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See the Toolkit and Employer's Guide we helped write. What do you think? Please comment in the Comments area below. |
The National Business Group on Health has published “Choosing the Right Hospital,” an online toolkit developed to help people choose the hospital where they are likely to receive the best care. Molla Donaldson and I helped prepare it, under the leadership of National Business Group on Health President Helen Darling, and Director of Benchmarking & Analysis Karen Marlo.
We also developed a guide for Human Resources officers to help employees use the guide.
“We are grateful that Molla and Rebekah were able to lend their expertise to the development of these valuable tools for employers and employees alike,” said Darling. “Helping employees understand the importance of using quality hospitals and providing them with tools to do just that is imperative to improving the safety of care in our hospitals and helping to control health care costs.”
The National Business Group on Health is an association of many of the country’s largest self-insured businesses. Their website and publications provide a large employers’ perspective on national health policy issues and practical solutions to its members’ most important health care problems.
Through this project, I (Rebekah) learned how frequently medication errors, surgical mishaps, and other patient safety issues occur. The Institute of Medicine (with Molla’s help in 2000) alerted the public to medical errors almost 10 years ago in a widely publicized report. There was great hope that safety would improve. But in a follow up study, the federal government’s 2008 National Healthcare Quality Report found that hospital patient safety measures have worsened by nearly 1 percent each year for the past six years.
When people can choose a hospital, it is most likely based on their insurance, where their doctor practices, and advice from family and friends – but this information may not be accurate. There are good web sites now, and our work tried to make it easier to understand the quality and safety information–and what patients themselves report — at the federal government’s site, Hospital Compare.
We’ve written in the past about how organizations do well by doing good. The National Business Group on Health has merged doing well with doing good. Choosing the Right Hospital helps everyone compare quality and safety. We believe that the more people know about and insist on safe care, the more likely it is that health care will improve.
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(Note: comments were imported 11/6/09 during migration from Wordpress)
Posted by Robert Celaschi on Thu, Oct 01, 2009
Have pity for the poor sentence that is asked to do too much
By Robert Celaschi
I did promise not to get all grammatical in these blog posts, and I'm not going to bring out the chalkboard today. I'll only make a quick mention of nouns and verbs. You can say a lot with just a pair of nouns and a verb.
You probably remember: A noun is a thing, and a verb is what the thing does. If you have a company - for instance, Niftycorp - that's a noun. If you introduce a product, "introduce" is a verb. And "product"? That's another noun.
Now, in a product announcement you need a few additional words or else you'll sound like Tonto: "Mmmm, Kemosabe. Niftycorp introduces product." But watch out when you start loading up the sentence with details.
Here’s how it typically starts. Your company is announcing its brand new line of framdoodles. You start writing,
“Niftycorp has introduced its new line of framdoodles.”
It’s better than Tonto, but still not very good. It does tell me what the product is, but it doesn’t tell me what’s so new and special about it. So you expand it to,
“Niftycorp has introduced its new line of color-coded framdoodles.”
Ah, that’s good. Of course we have to include our trademarked product name:
“Niftycorp has introduced its new line of Framtastik® color-coded framdoodles.”
Oh, and don’t forget that the Big Boss wants us to play up the product’s durability.
“Niftycorp has introduced its new line of Framtastik® shock-resistant, color-coded framdoodles.”
But wait, there’s more!
While you were writing all that, a few more important people have weighed in with their suggestions. Before long, you have an announcement that says,
“Niftycorp has introduced its new line of Framtastik® shock-resistant, color-coded, industrial strength, environmentally friendly, anodized, high-throughput, permeable framdoodles.”
Of course, you can’t pass up a chance to tout the company itself. And you need to identify your target audience. And you want to show the company’s reach.
So:
“Niftycorp, the leading provider of provision leadership solutions to the cost-object deliverables industry in the greater tri-state metroplex, has introduced its new line of Framtastik® shock-resistant, color-coded, industrial strength, environmentally friendly, anodized, high-throughput, permeable framdoodles.”
If you can’t tell yet what’s wrong with that, try reading the sentence out loud. Now try doing it in one breath.
Yes, you have many important points to convey. But when you try to make everything stand out as important, nothing stands out as important. So start with a couple of nouns and a verb. Lightly sprinkle them with one or two ultra-important bits of information, like the product name and what’s new about it. Save the other important information for later sentences.
Your turn!
Pick up some of your marketing materials and read them out loud. Do you start stumbling over sentences that are trying to do too much? Do you run out of breath? If so, take a deep breath and start splitting the message into manageable loads.
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Robert has been a business journalist for 22 years, both as a reporter and an editor. He joined Business Communications Group in 2005.
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Need help?
Get help to make marketing materials that encourage prospects to take the next step.
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Mon, Sep 21, 2009
By Rebekah E. Donaldson
We’ve all heard the phrase, “You get what you pay for.” The truth is, sometimes you get a lot less than you pay for.
This is the first in a seven-part series of articles to help you get what you pay for when you choose a marketing agency. I’ll start today with a decision tree that shows the five key decision points. As the series progresses, I’ll show you a framework that CEOs can use to sort out the answers. In later articles I touch on the various types of marketers in the industry. You’ll also find 11 questions to ask an agency – with an example of what counts as a good answer (“pass”), and what counts as baloney (“fail”), for each. And in my seventh article in this series I’ll give five warnings, each of which begins, “Why to watch out if you hear…“
Outsourcing marketing – opportunities and threats
On the one hand, you need effective marketing because of competition and economic conditions; on the other hand, you risk:
- Wasting money
- Wasting time
- Making a bad impression on customers and internal stakeholders if marketing poorly represents the company
The real risk of taking the wrong path
A lot of marketing-related companies are vying for your attention — and your money. Cash vacuums like Google Adwords. Thousands of marketers with consulting practices. Marketing automation software companies, web hosts, email marketing tools, graphic designers, online directories, multimedia companies, social media sites and dozens of other types of vendors.
Fig 1 - Picking a marketing consultant decision tree |
Five key decision points – overview
After you resolve to do more effective marketing, you need to decide:
1. Do we need professional marketing help?
This decision is easy to overlook. After all, vendors like Google Adwords include campaign set-up and support, so why not take their free advice? Or, why not redouble your efforts with mailers and telemarketing, which produce a trickle of leads? That just requires bigger lists and more investment in the same types of marketing as before.
In this series I outline why not. And if you do need professional marketing help, you need to decide:
2. Do we need to outsource marketing or should we keep this in-house?
In 2009-2010, talent of all kinds can be had at bargain prices. But maybe you feel ambitious. Perhaps you’re up to managing marketing directly?
If you are interested in outsourcing, you may wonder:
3. Do we need a formal RFP process to look for a consultant?
There are some benefits to doing a traditional request for proposals. But that process can take months to complete.
If you can arrive at a short list more quickly and easily on your own using search engines, social media and referrals, what sort of professional marketers should make the list?
4. What kind of agency do we need — specialists or an all-in-one firm?
Specialists in marketing subdisciplines are critical to overall marketing success — but it’s risky to grasp at individual tactics (see also our Six Marketing Gotchas CEOs Can Avoid ebook). If you decide you need a firm to be accountable for helping you move the needle for your firm (not just hit marketing-centric numbers), you’ll need to decide:
5. Who should we pick — what do we ask to ensure we get the best agency?
Some folks grapple with what I think of as “early” decisions, like whether to outsource. Others skip the early decisions and go straight to weighing one resource over another.
Now that you see the path we’ll be following, we’ll start looking at the individual elements in more detail. If you haven’t already, please subscribe by email.
Posted by Robert Celaschi on Mon, Sep 14, 2009
By Robert Celaschi
Something strange happens to people when they send marketing email. They’ll take a powerful, persuasive marketing message, and torpedo the whole thing by slapping a lousy subject line on it.
What makes it really strange is that the email might contain a press release or other message with a really great headline. The sender could have cut and pasted it. But no, instead they type a vague or garbled mess of words that makes me shrug and move on.
I’ll confess I’m sometimes guilty of sloppy subject lines. I’ve struggled and sweated to craft the right message. I’ve set the right tone. I’ve targeted the right people. I’m ready to press the “send” button and then — oh, yeah, gotta put some kind of subject line on this puppy. Zip-zip-zip, done. Instead, I should take even more care with those precious few words that may determine whether the email even gets opened.
Let’s look at a half-dozen real subject lines that real marketing people emailed to me in the past month.
Subj: New Dilemma For Small Business Car Leases After Unemployment
Huh? Let’s see: I gather that there’s a new dilemma of some sort. For whom? Small Business Car Leases After Unemployment. Uhhhhhhh, sorry, does not compute. This one would work better with a simple colon after “Business.” Not great, but better. The story is about businesses transferring the leases on company cars, because they’ve laid off so many of the workers who used to drive them.
Subj: Non-Profit
That’s it, just “Non-Profit.” There are a lot of nonprofits out there. They do a lot of different things. I had to dig way, way down to discover that this nonprofit is a foundation that helps children. They are holding a fund-raiser this month in Miami. If I hadn’t picked this as an example for the blog post, I wouldn’t have bothered to find out any of that.
Subj: Survey: A Quarter of Firms Scaling Back Training
A direct hit. Tells me everything I need to get started. Now I’ll open the email and find out the details. Whoops — turns out that while 26 percent are cutting back their training programs, 28 percent have expanded. But, hey, they got me to read it.
Subj: Boston – Social Media Capital?
I don’t like questions for subject lines. Why are you asking me? Don’t you already know? If not, go do some more research and get back to me.
Subj: Time for Change in Credit Card Game
Maybe it is indeed time for a change in the credit card game, but since I have no idea what this means, it’s hard to say. The easy fix here would have been to condense the first line of the enclosed press release: Consumers now can say “no” to credit card interest rate hikes.
Subj: July home sales increased 12 percent; median home price declined 19.6 percent
This one delivers. I feel like a double winner, because I learn about sales volume and about price. This is about the California housing market, by the way. Bad news if you are a seller with a fat mortgage.
Your turn!
OK, you get the idea. Now take a look at the email you’ve sent in the past month. If someone didn’t already know your message, would they get the right idea from the subject line?
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Robert has been a business journalist for 22 years, both as a reporter and an editor. He joined Business Communications Group in 2005.
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Get help to make marketing materials that encourage prospects to take the next step.
Posted by Robert Celaschi on Thu, Aug 13, 2009
By Robert Celaschi
I won't buy your product or service if you don't tell me what it is.
Fun and games!
Here’s a fun game:
Guess what each company is selling, using these lines from their press releases.
“…an expert in the image solution arena.”
“This is a result of an improved customer focus and strong actions to improve our solution competitiveness.”
“… delivers business-aligned solutions
“… a provider of mobility solutions”
And my favorite of the moment:
“… a trusted solutions provider to customers in manufacturing, health care, financial services, public safety, transportation & logistics, and other industries.”
Believe it or not, these companies sell specific things: elevators, servers, computer consulting services, camera phones, iPhone applications.
Drifting off message
I know how we got here. Back in the mists of the 20th century, some truly brilliant marketing folks got the idea that their company did more than push a product out the door; the product actually solved a problem for their customers.
“Mr. Customer, we aren’t just selling you a widget polisher, we are providing a solution to your scuffed-widget problem.”
But somewhere along the way, companies got so fixated on “solution” that they forgot to say what they are selling.
Think about the marketing material you are writing right now. When it falls into my hands, it may be the first time I have run across your company, and I’d really like to know what business you are in. But I don’t have time to play detective. Tell me the specific product or service, preferably near the start.
If you want to call it a “solution” later on, that’s fine.
Reality check
Here’s your homework assignment: Pick up some of your marketing materials and look at them through the eyes of someone who never heard of your company. Is it clear from the start what you are offering? Or are you merely providing vague “solutions” for an undefined problem?
Get help
We design and copywrite marketing materials that encourage prospects to take the next step.
Posted by Robert Celaschi on Mon, Jul 06, 2009
By Robert Celaschi
Copywriting marketing materials? The challenge is to ensure prospects are informed, not befuddled. An expert marketing copywriter gives tips on speaking their language.
Fans of Steve Martin might remember his plumber joke, supposedly told for the benefit of all the plumbers in the audience. It’s actually a joke about the disaster of using language that people won’t understand.
The joke
“This lawn supervisor was out on a sprinkler maintenance job, and he started working on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom seven-inch gangly wrench. Just then this little apprentice leaned over and said, ‘You can’t work on a Findlay sprinkler head with a Langstrom seven-inch wrench.’ Well, this infuriated the supervisor, so he went and got Volume 14 of the Kinsley manual, and he reads to him and says, ‘The Langstrom seven-inch wrench can be used with the Findlay sprocket.’ Just then the little apprentice leaned over and says, ‘It says sprocket, not socket!’”
[Worried pause.]
“Were these plumbers supposed to be here this show?”
Hitting the mark with marketing materials
When you are putting together materials to market your company, think about the audience you are reaching out to. When you talk about “plants,” will they assume you mean botanical or manufacturing? When you mention the AIA, will they know which AIA you mean? There is an American Institue of Architects, an Aerospace Industries Association, and other groups going by the same initials.
If your target audience is new to your product or service, help them get on board. They won’t be impressed if you dive right in with details about Langstrom wrenches and Findlay sprockets. They’ll be baffled, and they’ll go looking for some other company that they can understand.
On the other hand, your target audience may know more about Findlay sprockets than you do. In that case, they’ll appreciate you using their language. If you oversimplify your pitch, they might think you don’t respect their expertise.
Marketing copywriter’s reality check
There’s no standard formula for finding the middle ground between talking down to your audience and talking over their heads. But there’s one good test to see whether you’ve hit the mark: Ask them. Show a rough draft to a few people in your target market and ask them what they think.
Have you tested your marketing materials with someone in your target audience? Are there times when you need separate materials for the newbies and the veterans in your audience? Please comment.
Help with marketing materials
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