How Small Business Can Use Free Public Relations

“PR plants the seed. Advertising harvests the crop”. Al Ries

A small business’s reputation, profitability, and even its continued existence can depend on the degree to which its targeted "publics" (audiences) support it.  Using public relations (PR) is often missed by small business, says blogger Doug Hay.

Public relations is the tool to shape public opinion-both inside and outside the business. This often calls for "telling the story of the business" and forwarding its positioning. For example, a local restaurant with great food will get more new business from a positive review in a local newspaper (print and website) or magazine than paid ads. A company with a new software program for small business can get great publicity from an article in a magazine targeted to small biz.

PR is free and is much more believable than advertising.

This starts with a press release that will go to the media (e.g. local newspaper, magazine, etc).  Here are the steps to get a review or article or press release published:

1. The target public (audience) is determined i.e. who do you want to communicate to and what is the purpose of the communication.  E.g. A dentist opens who an office with a specialty of children’s services would want to reach local Moms (target audience). So what publications in print and online do moms read?

2. Research is undertaken on the subject of the press release. Get the facts as reporters may call with questions or to get additional information.

3. The release is written keeping in mind it must be newsworthy:

• It should have a strong news angle such as an event, important information, new discovery, drama, human interest or local angle.  e.g. the children's dentist release, there could be new information about fighting cavities.

• It must have a broad, wide-ranging interest to the target audience

• The release needs to be written in a journalistic style—not a marketing piece. It must be objective. The release needs to educate and inform not just SELL a product.  Give them the who, what, where and why.

4. Distribute the press release:

• Broad distribution using a press release service such as Market Wire who can get the release out to regional, national or international media outlets. This type of distribution is utilized to get the release picked up by as many newspapers (both print and online) and other media as possible. This is the most expensive option and would only be used if the release needs to get out to large numbers of people in several areas.

• Targeted distribution such as an industry trade magazine. In this case, the media is typically contacted in advance to find out what type of material they are looking for and other details.

• Local distribution – email it to your local newspapers, magazines, radio stations and TV.

5. Add the release to the company web site section called Media Room or  News Room i.e. an on-line media kit. This allows journalists to get more information on the company, the business owners and your products.

The media room should also have a summary of the company, bios of the owners, product details, pictures, etc.

6. Follow up in person to get the editors to publish the release as an article. You can easily search the Internet to see if it got published in an online edition.  You can set up a Google alert to track mentions of your business, product names and managers. As needed call the journalist to see if they need additional information but don’t be pushy—reporters hate that.

Once the press release is published, you can add links to your press room on the website.

Using public relations as a tool for small business marketing is often overlooked but could be the best promotion you could do.

New Technology Requires a New Market Research Paradigm

Karlene Lukovitz reports for Marketing Daily that while the Internet and social media are a potential boon to market researchers, they've also raised concerns and ongoing debate about methodology and the ability to project results.
Now, one social media-based research firm is charging into the fray with a report that maintains that today's empowered consumers and marketers' need for faster, actionable insights requires an approach that combines the strengths of newer, "humanistic" approaches with those of traditional, experimentally-based research.
The principals of Communispace, which employs relatively small (generally 300 - 500) proprietary communities for market research clients such as The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo and GlaxoSmithKline, say that their goal is to encourage industry conversation about the "trade-offs" involved in the two approaches and how to best leverage both, given the now "blurred" boundaries between marketing and customer research. They maintain that it's time to stop equating research quality with scientific "purity," and use brand-transparent community engagement to generate insights and explore nuances of consumer attitudes and preferences on an ongoing basis, while using traditional blind, episodic, experimental research designs for confirmation and testing purposes. This means shifting our focus -- aiming not for the perfect, bias-free study, but for an approach that pragmatically applies a range of methods to generate and test hypotheses.

While some might well point out that a firm engaged in offering proprietary online community research is bound to have its own biases, in an interview with Marketing Daily, Wittes Schlack and Austin pointed out that the report includes examples and comments from consumer market researchers based on their own experiences, and stressed that Communispace is advocating achieving a pragmatic integration of approaches that reflects 21st-century realities, rather than an either/or mentality.
Humanistic or "consumer-focused" online/social media-driven research enables an "ongoing discovery process" that allows consumers and the brand to explore new questions and issues as they arise naturally from a conversation, the Communispace report notes. In contrast, "top-down, researcher-centric" methods are most useful for "confirming what is already known or suspected," since these methods by definition "do not expand a problem space, nor do they generate knowledge outside of the researcher's frame of reference."

While concerns about the ability to project results to a general population, and the risks of bias or "group think" in brand-transparent scenarios in which consumers interact, are understandable based on the traditional research mindset, they fail to take into account changing real-world dynamics. Given that most consumers are now online, the Internet population is rapidly becoming the general population and the artificial environment of blind-sponsorship studies conflicts with the reality that "today's consumers do continually influence one another."

Contrary to intuitive assumptions that consumers are reluctant to be honest or critical of a brand or product idea if the sponsorship is transparent, a "natural," conversational environment that encourages consumers to be active collaborators rather than study subjects leads to greater candor as the relationship progresses. When people feel involved, they feel ownership toward the brand, and they are frank because they don't want you to make mistakes that will undermine the product or brand. Having an intimate conversation with consumers provides a more revealing, true-to-life picture.