The New Rules of Marketing and PR: Book Review (Part 3)

The New Rules of Marketing and PR, written by David Meerman Scott, a Businessweek bestseller, provides people with valuable insight into how to use social media, blogs, news releases, online video and viral marketing to reach buyers directly.  Meerman talks about all the hottest insider tips on the latest tools and techniques so readers could confidently market any product, service or idea.  After reading this book, I have provided an outline of the main ideas that Scott touches upon.  However, I encourage every marketer, company or anyone else looking to learn about the evolving marketing industry and strategies to read this book.  Scott goes through every one of these strategies with details and examples that makes it very easy for anyone, those with or without a marketing background, to understand and implement in their own endeavors.   

This is a continuation of the previous posting.


Pitching to the media
Barraging large groups of journalists with indiscriminate PR materials is not a good strategy to get reports and editors to pay attention to you.  First, pay attention to what individual reporters write about and then write specific and targeted pitches crafted for them that consists of information that is useful to them.  Start a relationship with influential bloggers by commenting on their entries.  Then, develop your own blog, which gives your company a place in the media community, and publish information that generates interest of reporters and bloggers.  Here are some tips on how to pitch to the media:

• Target one reporters at a time.
• Help the journalists understand the big picture.
• Explain how customers use your product or work with your organization.
• Do not send email attachments unless asked.
• Follow up promptly with potential contacts.
• It is a two-way street - journalists need you to pitch to them.

Search engine marketing
Build content for your buyer personas, content that talks about the problems they face, in the words and phrases they actually use.  Search engine marketing consists of appealing to search engine algorithms, such as the URL you use, placement of certain words within your content, tags, metadata, inbound links etc.  It is ineffective to try and reach buyers with broad, general search terms, instead use long-tail keywords.  The best approach is to create separate search engine marketing programs for dozens, hundreds or even tens of thousands of specific search terms that people might actually search on.  Create a unique identity for yourself, your product and your company in order to stand out from the crowd and rise to prominence on search engines.  It is important to build landing pages that have specific content to enlighten and inform the people who just clicked over to your site from the search engine.  To optimize your website for search engine marketing, it is important to keep these landing page guidelines in mind:

• Make the landing page short and the graphics simple.
• Create the page with your company's look, feel and tone.
• Write from the prospect's point of view.
• A landing page is communications not advertising.
• Provide a quote from a happy customer.
• Make the landing page a self-contained unit.
• Make the call-to-action clear and easy to respond to.
• Use multiple calls-to-action.
• Ask only for necessary information.
• Do not forget to follow up. 

Getting started 
Upon getting started with online marketing, implement all these ideas in bits and pieces.  Think about how you might selectively experiment with the ideas in these pages rather than fret about coordinating them all and trying to get everything right on the first go.  To begin your buyer persona research, read the publications that your buyers read, perhaps attend a webinar that they attend, read a few of the blogs in the space and perhaps interview a few buyers.  Add a few pages of targeted thought leadership content for your buyer personas to an already existing website.  Read blogs in your market, begin to comment on them and then start your own blog.  Earn attention online by using the ideas throughout this book, create something interesting and publish it online for free: a YouTube video, blog, research report, series of photos, Twitter stream, e-book, Facebook fan page or other pieces of web content.

It doesn't matter what line of work you're in or what group of buyers you are trying to reach - you can harness the power of the web to reach your target audience directly.  Be like the people that Scott talks about in The New Rules of Marketing and PR and get out there and make it happen!

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: Book Review (Part 2)

[By Sarah Faglio]

The New Rules of Marketing and PR, written by David Meerman Scott, a Businessweek bestseller, provides people with valuable insight into how to use social media, blogs, news releases, online video and viral marketing to reach buyers directly.  Meerman talks about all the hottest insider tips on the latest tools and techniques so readers could confidently market any product, service or idea.  After reading this book, I have provided an outline of the main ideas that Scott touches upon.  However, I encourage every marketer, company or anyone else looking to learn about the evolving marketing industry and strategies to read this book.  Scott goes through every one of these strategies with details and examples that makes it very easy for anyone, those with or without a marketing background, to understand and implement in their own endeavors.   

This is a continuation of the previous posting.

  
Thought Leadership Content 
White papers are written for a business audience, defines a problem, and offers a solution, but does not pitch a particular company or product.  E-books are PDF formatted documents of a little intrigue that solves a problem for your buyer personas.  Podcasts consists of flip videos that allow marketers to be ready to interview customers, employees and industry analysts.  It is also easy to quickly post videos, such as short clips showing how your products are made or used onto your website or blog.  Other examples of leadership content include: e-mail newsletters, webinars, wikis, research and survey reports,  photos, images, graphs, charts, blogs, audio and video.  Gobbledygook consists of overused phrases, industry jargon and overused language that has becoming meaningless.  Instead, it is important to write content for your buyers by providing information to Internet browsers when they need it, which can lead to a long and profitable relationship with your company.  Psychologists have shown that people learn better with different forms of media, therefore it is necessary to have messages in as many formats as possible.

Social Networking Sites
People join Facebook groups because they want to stay informed, but on their own time.  The best way to maintain a Facebook group is to make valuable information available.  People can post information to these group themselves, actively taking a part in the brand, as well as easily recommend the posts to others.  When it comes Twitter, you have to put yourself out there as an interested member of the community.  It takes time to build a following, but the best way to get people to pay attention to you is to participate by following others and responding to them as you would in a blogosphere.  To make the most out of social networking sites for marketing, it is important to keep these suggestions in mind:

• Target a specific audience.
• Be a thought leader.
• Be authentic and transparent.
• Create lots of links.
• Encourage people to contact you.
• Participate.
• Make it easy to find you.
• Experiment.

Blogging Tips

• Easy to use blogging software.
• Custom graphical image as your masthead.
• Turn on comments feature.
• Use captcha to prevent spamming.
• RSS capability.
• About page.
• Participate in online community,
• Do not write excessively about your company and products or services.

Blogging Ethics

• Transparency.  Do not pretend to be someone you aren't.
• Privacy.  Do not blog about something that was disclosed to you.
• Disclosure.  Disclose anything that is a conflict of interest.
• Truthfulness.  Do not lie.
• Credit.  Give credit to other bloggers. 

News Releases
Do not just send news releases when big news is happening, instead find good reasons to send them all the time.  Instead of just targeting a handful of journalists, create news releases that appeal directly to your buyers and drive them into the sales process.  Include offers that compel consumers to respond to your release in some way.  Place links in releases to deliver potential customers to landing pages on your website.  Optimize news release delivery for search and browsing, such as writing releases that are replete with keyword-rich copy.  Add social media tags for Technorati, Digg and Del.icio.us so your release will be found by users as well. 


News release distribution services make it possible to spread to online news services such as Yahoo!, Google and Bing.  It is important to create content for your buyers by thinking, speaking and writing like your customers do and focus on words and phrases that your buyers use.  As a search engine marketing tool, news releases are only as valuable as the keywords and phrases that are contained in them.  Post releases on your website, since high-quality news release content brands a company or a non-profit as a busy market player, an active expert in the industry and a trusted resource to turn to.   

Online Media Room
News release pages on your website update more often than most other parts of a typical website.  Search engine algorithms tend to rank news release pages among the highest on your website, driving traffic there first.  Newsroom sections are should always be updated with fresh content, not only with stories about your company, but about your industry, customers and the community in which your company does business.  This content should also include videos and photos to enhance the appeal of the news release.  It is important to write for the needs of the buyers and journalists (or bloggers) instead of the needs of those who own the other parts of your organization's website.  Be sure to take bloggers seriously by granting interviews and acquiesce requests made by these strong online influences.  Consider potential users of the online media room and what content will be valuable to them.  Press kits contain background materials about your company, which helps journalists write stories.  Calendar events list the conferences, executive appearances and tradeshow events that your company participates in.  This shows that your company is active in your industry and helps to build your corporate credibility.  RSS subscription pages are used as part of the online media room as a primary way to deliver news release content.  

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: Book Review (Part 1)

[By Sarah Faglio]

The New Rules of Marketing and PR, written by David Meerman Scott, a Businessweek bestseller, provides people with valuable insight into how to use social media, blogs, news releases, online video and viral marketing to reach buyers directly.  Meerman talks about all the hottest insider tips on the latest tools and techniques so readers could confidently market any product, service or idea.  After reading this book, I have provided an outline of the main ideas that Scott touches upon.  However, I encourage every marketer, company or anyone else looking to learn about the evolving marketing industry and strategies to read this book.  Scott goes through every one of these strategies with details and examples that makes it very easy for anyone, those with or without a marketing background, to understand and implement in their own endeavors.

The book starts with an engaging forward by Robert Scoble who commented on his work for Microsoft and how he used some of the strategies mentioned throughout the book.

Websites
Scott begins with examples from TV ads for cars and how websites have shown to be more useful since potential buyers read consumer feedback instead of advertisements.  The Internet allows companies to reach niche buyers with targeted messages at the fraction of the cost.  Instead of being a one-way interruption, the web provides useful content at the precise moment buyers need it.

Press Releases
Press releases shared directly to the company's potential customers or clients, allow them to communicate directly with buyers instead of just focusing on the media (reporters and editors).  Companies need to understand and research the keywords and phrases that their buyers are using to search for their products or services.  After developing a keyword list, micro-campaigns, such as direct-to-consumer news releases, can be used to drive buyers to pages complete with the content that they are seeking.  Optimizing press releases with relevant keywording helps them to appear in search results - reaching buyers directly.  In a web-interconnected world, content drives action and people do their own research online on products or services they are looking to purchase.  Valuable content contributes to the education of the marketplace and press releases have the opportunity to highlight expert ideas and stories. 

Valuable Content
Website visitors want content and valuable content that describes their issues/problems and offers potential solutions.  Companies need to write content such as this while always keeping in mind that they are writing for their target audience and their needs.  Web content directly contributes to an organization's online reputation by showing thought leadership in a marketplace of ideas.  Podcasts, or YouTube videos, for products or services have a visual impact on viewers.  People can also create videos of your products and share them on their own sites - which could help build your brand and exemplify useability of your products.  When marketing a commodity product, creating interesting information can lead to people finding it, sharing your ideas as well as tell your stories.  When marketing a brand, the first thing to do is to be genuine in communicating what the brand is about, which contributes to the overall personality of the brand.  He describes the world wide rave as creating something valuable that people want to share as well as making it easy for them to do so.  When creating content it is important to keep these suggestions in mind when writing:

• No one cares about your product.  You need to share remarkable or interesting content that helps to solve a problem.
• No coercion.
• Lose control.
• Be involved.
• Create triggers that encourage people to share.
• Drive people to your stuff via search engines.
• Make stuff available for free online.

 

Content is king for websites.  Companies achieve productive use of their content by pulling together various buyer markets, media and products into one comprehensive place (their website).  Segment buyers and appeal to them based on their needs, instead of just talking about your product or service.  Basic research on buyers can help you learn a great deal about them, making your marketing more effective by knowing what they read and how to attract their buyer personas.  Effective search engine marketing strategies are created by knowing words and phrases that buyers use, essentially helping to develop a positive relationships with them online.


Internet Forums and Blogging
Companies can contribute to discussions in Internet forums, while making sure to keep sale conversations offline in order to gain trust from active participants.  Bloggers take a role in information dissemination by harnessing millions of conversations online.  These communities make it easier for companies to monitor what people say about you, while also allowing you to participate in conversations by commenting on other blogs.  Companies could also work with bloggers who write about their industry, or shape conversations by creating or writing their own blogs.