The Old Rules vs. the New Rules - ReachForce Book Club
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008In the first chapter of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, David Meerman Scott really lays the framework for the old school way of running marketing and PR. In case you have not yet received your book or didn’t get a chance to start reading, here are the old rules given by Scott:
The Old Rules of Marketing
- Marketing simply meant advertising (and branding).
- Advertising needed to appeal to the masses.
- Advertising relied on interrupting people to get them to pay attention to a message.
- Advertising was one-way: company-to-consumer.
- Advertising was exclusively about selling products.
- Advertising was based on campaigns that had a limited life.
- Creativity was deemed the most important component to advertising.
- It was more important for the ad agency to win advertising awards than for the client to win new customers.
- Advertising and PR were separate disciplines run by different people with separate goals, strategies and measurement criteria.
The Old Rules of PR
- The only way to get ink was through the media
- Companies communicated to journalists via press releases.
- Nobody saw the actual press releases except for a handful of reporters and editors.
- Companies had to have significant news before they were allowed to write a press release.
- Jargon was okay because the journalists all understood it.
- You weren’t supposed to send a release unless it included quotes from third parties, such as customers, analysts, and experts.
- The only way buyers would learn about the press release’s content was if the media wrote a story about it.
- The only way to measure the effectiveness of press releases was through “clip books,” which noted each time the media deigned to pick up a company’s release.
- PR and Marketing were separate disciplines run by different people with separate goals, strategies, and measurement techniques.
I’ll admit, I am really too young to remember the days of the old rules. Do any of you out there who have been doing this a while really think that your organization functioned like this? To me, smaller companies have always had to be renegade and with the advent of the web now really have the venue they have been waiting for.
Here are what Scott outlines as the new rules:
The New Rules of Marketing and PR
- Marketing is more than just advertising
- PR is for more than just a mainstream media audience.
- You are what you publish
- People want authenticity, not spin.
- People want participation, not propaganda
- Instead of causing one-way interruption, marketing is about delivering content at just the precise moment your audience needs it.
- Marketers must shift their thinking from main-stream marketing to the masses to a strategy of reaching vast numbers of underserved audiences via the Web.
- PR is not about your boss seeing your company on TV. It’s about your buyers seeing your company on the web.
- Marketing is not about your agency winning awards. It’s about your organization winning business.
- The internet has made public relations public again, after years of almost exclusive focus on media.
- Companies must drive people into the purchasing process with great online content.
- Blogs, podcasts, e-books, news releases, and other forms of online content let organizations communicate directly with buyers in a from they appreciate.
- On the Web, the lines between maketing and PR have blurred.
Although I would say I am far from old school, I can’t say I am still completely hip to all of the new rules. I hope that as a group we can learn from David Meerman Scott and from each other. Since the publishing of this book there have been even more advances and new technologies via the web which I hope we can help teach each other about. What do you hope to learn from reading this book and participating in the book club?
Keyword Optimization for Press Releases - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #116
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008Keyword optimization on your website has become standard operating procedure for most marketers. But are you optimizing your press releases with keywords? Here are a few reasons why you should:
- If you are posting your press releases to your website (and you should be), it is probably the freshest content. Google gives precedence to new content (that is why blogs rank so highly in search engine results).
- Press releases and news articles rank very highly on Google. The more keyword rich your press releases are, the better they will rank in Google.
- Press releases are not just for the press. Make it easy for prospects/bloggers/analysts/media to find you wherever they are searching.
Don’t know where to start to find the right keywords? Check out these tips from MarketingProfs: Four Steps to Writing Search-Engine-Optimized Press Releases (I highly recommend the entire article) by Kim Cornwall Malseed:
- Find out what keywords successful competitors are using
- Read articles written by target journalists
- Survey your PR and Marketing department personnel
- Survey your Web site development team
- Survey product development personnel and executive management,
- Many press release distribution services (PRNewswire, MarketWire, etc.) have SEO features. Use them a few times (the companies usually permit you to do a free trial) and track results to get an idea of which keywords are most popular.
Also, be sure to avoid gobbledygook, those over-used industry words like “flexible,” “scalable” and “market-leading” so aptly named gobbledygook by David Meerman Scott.
After you have written your press release and think you have optimized all necessary keywords, put it to the test. HubSpot recently announced Press Release Grader, a free online tool to rate your press release. “Press Release Grader rates a press release based on a checklist of criteria – from content and structure, to search optimization and link analysis. The free tool is designed to optimize a press release so it can be found more easily by media, bloggers, customers and prospects. Press Release Grader provides an analysis and recommendations that will help you improve the way your press release is structured.”
As it is for most marketing tactics, in the end it is all about testing and re-testing to find what works best for your audience. I am sure I am missing a lot here. Anyone have any more tips?
Social Media Leading Questions
Thursday, June 19th, 2008Social Media is one of the hottest topics in B2B Marketing right now. I interviewed a variety of marketers at MarketingProfs B2B Forum. Check out this video to see what marketers from Marketo, HubSpot, Manticore, Enspire Learning and IDC have to say. See how they answered the following questions:
- Do you participate in social media both personally and professionally?
- How do you think social media is changing B2B PR strategies?
How would you answer those questions?
Go Direct With PR - Write Your Own Coverage - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #98
Monday, May 12th, 2008TechCrunch published an excellent mini-tutorial on how to develop and distribute press releases in a Web 2.0 world. Why should you care? After all, who reads press releases? Well, according to the Tech Crunch article, a recent Outsell study highlighted that over 51% of IT professionals reported that they get their news from press releases in Yahoo and Google news over trade journals!
Tech Crunch advises, and BreakingPoint just witnessed (with our May 9th announcement) that “the trick for this new breed of press releases is to write it as the article you want to read.” Because, if you’ve done a good job, very often that is exactly what will be published.
Here’s another gem: “When implemented with calls and links to action, and if they read in a way that’s compelling to people aka customers, you’ll find that they’re usually compelled to act.”
The TechCrunch post is a must-read. And, here are a few other tips on getting better press release pickup in last week’s blog post, Using Press Releases to Drive Web Traffic and Leads.
Using Press Releases to Drive Web Traffic and Leads - B2B Marketing and Sales Tip #97
Friday, May 9th, 2008If you’re like me, you pour a lot of time and effort into wordsmithing press releases. It’s important to get the message just right. Then you go back and forth with executives and/or partners to make sure all parties are happy with the messages. It can take days or weeks and become frustrating.
Sadly, if you’re not taking advantage of new ways to publish your own content online, chances are nobody’s reading the results of all of that hard work. Or, so says David Meerman Scott. In his recent post entitled Top 10 PR tips, Scott’s #1 piece of advice is “The old ways to get noticed were to buy expensive advertising and beg the media to write about you and your products. The best way to get noticed today is to publish great content online.”
At BreakingPoint, we just completed a major agreement with a strategic partner. Of course, we wanted to get the broadest possible coverage for the news. And, we didn’t want to count on just the traditional methods for getting the word out. So, Kyle (www.engageinpr.com) and I sat down to brainstorm all of the ways we could get the word out about the news and build nice inbound links for SEO. All of the ways beyond traditional media, that is.
Here’s what we came up with. Did we miss anything?
- Distribute the release via a wire service like MarketWire, Business Wire, PRWeb or PRNewswire.
- Include video or audio interviews with the wire service post to get pickup on a wide variety of sites like Odeo.
- Post a supporting video on YouTube.
- Develop a chart or image that supports the release and post to Flickr.
- Blog about it on your own blog and your partner’s blog.
- Reach out to other bloggers to conduct a Q&A about the news.
- Promote via StumbleUpon.
- Create a Google AdWords or Yahoo campaign using the headline of the release – promote using traditional PPC ads and contextual advertising.
- Send out the link to your LinkedIn or Facebook friends to help you spread the word.
- Post your blog post to sites like Reddit, Digg, etc.
- Include it in your RSS feeds – both press release and blog RSS feeds.
- Send out a tweet to your Twitter following.
- Hold a webinar to discuss the reasons behind the news.
- Turn the release into an educational article and post it to www.scribd.com or www.ezinearticles.com.
- Embed the headline and a link in your email signature.
- Include it in your own newsletter or magazine.
- Post it to your customer support site.
- Send the release to relevant user groups or professional organizations.
- Use a free press release posting service such as:
http://www.free-news-release.com/
http://www.freepressreleases.co.uk/
http://www.i-newswire.com/
http://www.prleap.com/
(I’ve never tried these but heard they are good for SEO. Anyone had success with them?)
20. Oh yeah, pitch it to the press.
Extreme Makeover - B2B Style
Monday, January 14th, 2008What do you do when you know that your company’s current logo and branding are no longer a fit? There are many costs and challenges associated with revamping or reinventing a corporate brand but do the benefits outweigh? At ReachForce, we decided the timing was right for an allover makeover for our brand. We launched a new website today! You can check it out at www.reachforce.com.
For us, the timing made sense as we also made a big announcement today of our Series B Financing. With this announcemnt, we are proving that ReachForce is a more established company. We felt like the old look and feel just did not fit our new growth.
Would love to hear your feedback on our new look!
Breaking News - Length of Headlines in Google Shortened
Tuesday, October 16th, 2007This week, Google alerted Business Wire that press release headlines should not exceed 22 words. That’s eight words shorter than what we were told months ago. “An ideal headline should be between two and 22 words,” advises the search engine giant. Read more at BusinessWired.
The B2B Lead Podcast #4 – Adapt or Die – Marketing and PR in the Blogosphere and New Media
Monday, October 15th, 2007As new media has pushed its way into B2B marketing, many marketing departments reacted by hiring a specialist to tackle these new forms of marketing and PR, especially blogs. But as these new media have come to replace many traditional media and really become now media, all marketers need to accept blogging and twitter and YouTube and become educated, so that not just one member of your marketing organization understands these communities. In this podcast, I interview Josh Dilworth to discuss the changing landscape of marketing and PR in new media.
The B2B Lead Podcast #3 – Making a Viral Campaign Successful - Seeding
Monday, October 15th, 2007The thought of undertaking a viral campaign may seem a bit daunting. But say you have created the perfect video, now how do you actually get the right people to view it and pass it on – the whole point of a viral campaign. In this podcast, listen to my interview with Josh Dilworth at Porter Novelli to explore how detailed planning and execution of the seeding component made my viral campaign at NetQoS a major success.
B2B Sales and Marketing Tip #16 – B2B Marketing Campaign Watch – Lessons Learned in B2B Viral Marketing
Thursday, September 6th, 2007B2B Marketing Campaign Watch – ReachForce Customer Shares Lessons Learned in B2B Viral Marketing
ReachForce customer, NetQoS, was recently honored by Marketing Sherpa for an innovative B2B Viral Marketing program that continues to generate a steady stream of B2B leads for the company. Read about it in the Marketing Sherpa Hall of Fame. The campaign involved a blend of new media, traditional public relations, blogger relations, demand generation, and an elaborate seeding campaign. NetQoS placed the video on YouTube and Google Video, as well as on more targeted sites such as Digg, Techmeme, Brightcove, Grouper, Motionbox, DailyMotion, GoFish and Veoh. At that point, the viral effect took over netting 66,000+ views on YouTube, numerous press mentions, pickup by the popular TechCrunch tech blog, and more than 1,800 downloads, some of which have already turned into sales meetings. O’Neal will speak about how the leads from the Viral campaign compared to traditional Marketing Campaign leads and how she is leveraging Deliberate Marketing techniques to increase the value of those leads at the upcoming Marketing Sherpa B-to-B Demand Generation Summit this fall. More details coming soon on The B2B Lead blog.
