Category Archives: Branding

Proactive Media Relations Will Increase Your Brand Visibility

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Companies should welcome and encourage attention from the media. If you aren’t getting press coverage, you should be taking steps to increase your company’s brand visibility.

The process begins with establishing and maintaining good relations with reporters, editors and broadcasters – on and offline. Good media relations are not one-shot events. They are relationships that you carefully build and maintain over time.

Media relations can help your company gain marketplace attention, providing clarity and credibility to help move your customers and prospects to buy your products and services; news stories will reinforce a positive brand image of your company.

The goal of a media relations program is to build business in your markets by creating an image of your company as the best provider of your type of products and services.

Your company can generate a considerable amount of good will, customer loyalty and new business by a proactive, continuing media relations program. To achieve this, you should actively seek media coverage on an ongoing basis, and not wait for reporters to call your business. Under a proactive media relations program, you will initiate contacts with the media on a regular basis.

Media Relations Requires Commitment From Top Management

A proactive program requires the commitment and involvement of top management; they need to be available to the media and cooperate with your public relations (PR) staff or an outside agency in seeking out media opportunities.

A successful media relations program includes routine announcements of personnel changes and promotions, calling attention to community projects, and promoting operations and activities unique to your company. It also requires positioning your company’s top managers as thought leaders in the community and your industry by offering comments and reactions to events that affect your industry and company.

A proactive program will build lasting relationships with reporters and editors, so that they will get in touch with your company when preparing stories and needing an expert opinion.

The key to becoming a reporter’s source of news is to follow these four simple rules. Know –

  • The publication, radio station or broadcast network that you are sending information to.
  • The reporter who would be the most interested in receiving your information.
  • When to call the reporter.
  • How to pitch a good story.

Developing a solid and effective media relations plan requires –

  • Researching past and current media coverage and public opinion of your company. You need to evaluate the overall market and factors that affect your organization.
  • Identifying and developing your goals and objectives for your communication efforts.
  • Determining your intended audience and what you want them to know.
  • Developing your message before contacting a member of the media. Make sure your message is easily understood, pertinent and motivating.
  • Knowing the right media source before you need them; this will allow you to reach your target audience.
  • Keeping the press informed of what is happening at your company and supplying information that allows them to write newsworthy content.

Media Relations is a Year-round Responsibility

Good media relations take place year-round with you exchanging and providing relevant and newsworthy information about your company to the media.

You need to measure the results of your communications to determine its effectiveness and any needed improvements. Over time, media coverage and placements will build and create awareness of your company and have a positive effect helping to generate sales.

Developing and carrying out an effective media relations publicity program takes a lot of work, and requires constant attention, measurement and evaluation. Yet, it’s well worth it!

Your Website: Center of Your Marketing Strategy

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Your website belongs at the center of your marketing strategy. It’s about connecting with customers, an activity that’s the core of every marketing effort.

Designing a website can be a real challenge. Design it well. Write less with informative content. Test it on a variety of platforms. Maintain it. Keep the content current.

A company that wants to develop a customer-centric website must develop a website strategy and development plan that takes into account your brand, customers, objectives and strategy.

Questions to Address

You need to know and understand your brand. What is compelling, attractive and unique that you are offering? What is your company’s image and reputation among its important stakeholders? How can these strengths be leveraged? What goals do you want to accomplish? How do you want your customer relationships to change?

What do you want your site to do? Be Informational, sales-based or lead-generating?
Or, a combination of these. You need to know your site’s purpose in order to structure it.

If you have to answer the above questions, it will assure that your web strategy is on target. Then and only then, you’ll be on the road to having the website that you envision and an effective marketing tool for building your brand and awareness.

Organization to Use

You need to organize your website so that it will be easy for your customers to accomplish their goals. Don’t confuse them by organizing it by what you like.

Consider your website like you do your office building, such as its location, frontage and interior. To ensure you reach your customers, you need a website that has curb appeal and is easy to navigate. Maximize your layout. You only have a few seconds to hold your customers interest or they’ll leave and not return.

What about the copy? Your website must have powerful words to keep your customers reading it. Address their problems, interests and the type of service that they will receive. And, take action; a call to action is a crucial to have. You need it to motivate a customer and to convert them into buying your product or service.

Be smart about your web design and navigation. Consider the pros and cons of elements and features that make it harder for search engines to index your site.

Other Considerations

There are many other questions to consider. Where will the site be hosted? Are there any technology limitations that need to be considered? How many pages? What types of content is needed? Do you need any forms? Contact, request information or request a quote? Do forms need to be dynamic or an email forms? Does your site need to interact with an ordering or fulfillment? Once a form is filled out, does it need to automatically send an e-mail notification? Does the site need content management? Who will write the copy? Will you use in-house or stock photography? What about search engine optimization? SEO is important for ranking well on searches and to keep ahead of your competitors?

An Investment in Your Brand

Think of your website as an investment in brand marketing, creating customer awareness. Know your strategy. Create good content. Lay out your site’s organization based on your target audience. Develop simple and intuitive navigation.

Ultimately having a great site is only half the building. You must drive traffic to your site. Optimize your site to boost your traffic and have a lead-capturing mechanism.
Concentrate on getting motivated prospects and valuable customers to visit your website.

A few simple informative key messages can increase your clicks and conversions. What about keywords? Are you using the right ones? If you do, you’ll attract visitors who will convert and not just thousands of random visitors.

What about updating your site and maintaining it? Your website can get old very fast. You must regularly put fresh content on your site. Take down old products and services, keep press releases current, and provide fresh and relevant information.

The key to developing a winning website is to clearly identify your goals and know what you want to accomplish. You should also consider working with a website firm that understands both the front end (what people see – the design and content) and the back end (what makes it work – building and development). And, if the firm is well grounded in brand marketing, even better!

Brand Strategy and Planning Set You Apart

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Brand dominance sets your company or organization apart from others in today’s globally competitive environment. Yet, having an excellent brand position doesn’t come easily or happen overnight.

Brand building is an ongoing, strategic process. Your brand blueprint – vision, positioning and touch points – and your brand voice – main messages, tone and images – come from the consistent connections and collaboration with your stakeholders online and off. Your brand serves as a powerful motivational tool for your stakeholders. Branding is a way to differentiate your company, product or service from competitors.

Exceptional brand performance takes strategy, planning and proactive maintenance. Implementing a strong, actionable brand plan is crucial to achieving standout performance in your market.

To ensure future growth and profitability, companies and organizations must continually build, strengthen and revitalize brand value. You must focus on the emotional aspects of your brand – the proposition, which should make a quick and intuitive emotional connection with an individual that creates awareness, consideration, influence, buy-in and loyalty.

Customer loyalty and commitment are key to brand success. To accomplish brand success, brand strategies need to be relevant, have a differentiated offer and reflect values that are credible and believable. Your brand’s promise must reflect that your product and service are top quality and the very best available.

You can’t rely on the functional differences of your products or services. People have too many choices. Differentiating and communicating your brand’s unique value is essential. You need to craft messages that stir up specific words when someone hears or sees your company’s name, products or services. It means having a personality that is unique and one that emotionally appeals to stakeholders. This includes intangible components such as your brand name, graphic representation, slogan, key descriptive phases, brand story and fresh content in your communications. A strong brand communicates a promise and expresses your unique value through powerful words and images.

Professionals are constantly looking for new ways to grow their organization’s brand image. Many are creating innovative ways for building their brand and pushing boundaries to influence customer-buying behavior. They are getting their messages across clearly and effectively in a fully integrated, multichannel plan that includes traditional marketing components and as well as online, such as e-marketing and social media.

An effective brand strategy creates the kind of loyalty that leaves customers indifferent to the advertising and marketing of your competitors. Well-focused and consistent attention to branding through favorable, memorable positioning of your products or services in the minds of stakeholders is the most effective way to compete.

A powerful brand strategy and program can prevent poor market awareness, insufficient recognition, weak customer retention, lack of loyalty, inadequate lead generation flow and longer-than-expected selling cycles. Consistent communications are imperative to the success and life of your brand.

Whether you are a new or established business, one looking to refresh or strengthen your brand, your brand identity is crucial to your organization’s continued success.