This on-demand webinar provides an in-depth look at 6 strategies for ensuring PR campaign success, for agencies, organizations, and non-profits alike.
Guest presenter, Stan Steinreich, delves into each of his recommendations, providing practical tips, success stories, and tricks to overcoming those obstacles that are holding your campaigns back.
In this on-demand webinar, you’ll learn: how to develop more targeted PR strategies, sharpen key messages to achieve a more robust response, take control of multiple media platforms to achieve desired results, and seed program elements to track those results.
Webinar Transcript:
We’re very happy to welcome
today’s guest presenter and Stan Steinreich
he’s the president and CEO of stein
Wright’s communications in Manhattan
thanks for being with us today Stan
thanks Richard I appreciate it
great to have you so good morning
everyone and and thank you to Bulldog
reporter for this opportunity I thought
let me just say a couple things about
you just one introduce you for
everybody’s Stan knows a thing or two
about creating great campaigns but he
began his own consultancy in 2003 after
more than 20 years experience creating
and implementing global corporate
communications programs for some of the
biggest of the big guns including
Edelman Fleshman Hillard and
burson-marsteller and before that he was
a journalist with some of their big guns
including the New York Times and ABC
News okay we’re going to get started
with Stan here in just one minute but
let me first tell you that he will be
responding to your questions following
his presentation today so if you have
one for him at any point during the
event just click on the Q&A; icon in the
top right corner of your screen and type
in your inquiry there we’re going
hold all the QA and so after Stan is
finished with his formal presentation
but we will try to get to everyone’s
questions so please do ask away okay and
now without further ado let’s get
started with today’s presentation and
learn some tips for building better
campaigns and here is Stan Stein right
thanks again so what I thought I
wouldn’t do by way of a little
introduction to this presentation and
the six tips that I’ll provide you with
is this give you a little bit of history
you know one of the things when we found
it our current agency and one of the
areas that we specialized in at least
domestically is what we call mid-market
companies so those doing somewhere
between a hundred one hundred million
and a billion in sales obviously we have
not-for-profits or higher Ed’s that fall
into that category as well but part of
the reason for structuring this approach
and creating campaigns that deliver
tangible results in ROI is because in
that category it tends to be a more
entrepreneurial type company and one of
the things that I learned in my 20 years
or so with the top agencies let’s call
it top five at the time is that while
many of them had the ability to spend
two or three months learning about a
client preparing a lot of materials and
things like that
one of our learnings in the mid market
type company domestically is that they
historically didn’t have the patience
nor the budget to make that kind of an
investment so we saw very quickly that
for our marketplace which we believe
obviously is the dominant share of the
market particularly in the United States
as well as you know Western Europe or
even in the Mideast in Africa will find
actually those are top-tier companies at
that turnover rate but nonetheless we
had to develop a different type of
program and a different type of an
approach to be successful for those
companies so that’s really what sort of
led us to this platform and and where we
are
today and I’ll give you some examples as
we walk through the various components
you know to our approach so first of all
we sort of begin with a checklist and
for each of these I will obviously give
you a little bit more background behind
it but the most important thing is
having a clear objective for every
campaign that you start and I’m going to
give credit to this my last large agency
role I was at Edelman and worked very
closely with Richard Edelman their CEO
and I’ll never forget when I came in you
know I’d spent years at Birth person and
fly should not fly shman and there it
wasn’t uncommon that we’d have multiple
objectives to a campaign and I think it
was my first presentation with Richard
you know he took a pen and he started
Xing out you know these multiple
objectives and he said to me you know
wait a minute you know every company has
a very clear and a core objective to
what they want to achieve and I’ll tell
you that that’s really where I honed a
lot of my new business skills and I
think that’s because it resonated with
clients a client typically or even your
organization if your in-house has a very
narrow and a very specific objective now
as the PR the communications
professional you may not know it you
know fully you may not understand it may
take a little bit of development to get
there but we believe that it’s critical
that you understand what the objective
of the program is so that you’ll
ultimately be able to build your
campaign so that you can hit that
objective for the client the second
point is you have to do your homework
for building the strategy and the
tactics for success so just getting
publicity for a client or just getting
social media engagement you know in and
of itself again is not a strategy and
for that matter it’s not going to
necessarily get you to your objective so
really again drilling down and doing
research and I’ll talk a little bit
about some of the means of the methods
do that but the homework has to be done
in order for your programs to ultimately
be successful the next thing is you need
to be clear on your budget and/or
resources so in other words don’t try to
do more then your funding allows so
again you know let’s let’s spend another
moment on that you know if you only have
$5,000 or you only have a certain number
of people to spend on a specific project
that’s okay
but you just have to build the right
program around that obviously if you
have $50,000 there’s probably a lot more
that you can do but again I think that
you have to be realistic so whether
that’s internally in a corporation in
terms of how many people and how much
manpower you can pull whether it’s on
the agency side and determining how much
you can do for a realistic budget I
think that that’s very very important
and I think that that conversation also
has to take place sometimes it’s a very
uncomfortable conversation but again
what we have found is when there’s a
disconnect it turns out to be actually
an awful conversation at the end because
there’s historically some disappointment
so you want to get out in front of them
stay singularly focused on the objective
and follow the tactical roadmap don’t be
hijacked by divergence or tangents so
again you know we’ve all heard the
phrase you know that the best place
plans don’t necessarily turn out that
way so what I’m not suggesting here by
the way is to not have flexibility and
to not be able to correct the program
which may not be going in the right
direction for one reason or another but
what I’m saying as many times as we
begin and launch a program there will be
inputs from people that either want more
to be done maybe want to extend certain
things along the way
and while we’re talking about that and
while we’re planning about that
potentially it takes our eye off the
ball it takes our resources off of what
we’re really trying to achieve
and again it can lead to a failure or
it’s not meeting the success that that
we’re looking to achieve so you have to
be very you know you very bridget is a
term I’m thinking of but that you know
that may be a little strong but you want
to stay singularly focused on what that
objective was when you started at the at
the opening gates set clear goals for a
realistic return on investment and there
always must be a defined ROI so again
the definition of ROI can be very very
broad it could be you know if you’re
doing a campaign and hiring employees
the recruitment that’s fine to make that
objective it could be sales of the
particular product that’s fine as well
if you’re in a not-for-profit it could
be fundraising goals but it is very very
important to be able to determine that
ROI and more importantly as PR
professionals we shouldn’t be afraid to
commit to an objective that has numbers
in it you know I’ll tell you that when
we take employees from other agencies
who’ve never had to do this kind of
commitment before I’ll tell you there’s
always an initial hesitancy about doing
that now you know and there’s good
reason by the way for the hesitancy you
know if a campaign doesn’t work you
could be held responsible but one of the
things that I would always tell you is
that who would hire a lawyer who would
tell them at the outset I don’t want to
commit to how your case is going to turn
out who would go to a doctor who would
say to you I don’t want to commit you
know whether or not you’re going to get
better
now obviously any professional there are
reasons why things don’t work out
but you certainly want to hire a
professional who because of their
experience with other clients similar to
you have achieved certain results and
therefore we should be able to say to
clients emphatically that look if you
follow our approach we’ve done an
analysis of what you want to have done
so again whether that’s an internal
client if your in-house or whether it’s
an external client if you’re in a
you can see we should have the ability
to say if we follow this roadmap if we
follow this program the outcome should
be we should be able to help you achieve
that result and I think I think that we
should have the confidence in ourselves
that we can indeed do that for clients
finally merchandise the program success
this is another thing that I’d find kind
of interesting you know about PR
practitioners by the way in all levels
that you know we are certainly apt to
send you know reports to clients and
things like that but really do we really
talk about what the success has meant to
the client in a meaningful way and in a
lot of cases we don’t spend enough time
really merchandising that success so you
know we at our firm spend a fair amount
of time on client reporting to make sure
that we’re really illuminating all the
key elements that have been successful
for that for that organization so let’s
talk about specific objectives so
identify what your organization or your
client wants to achieve with a public
relations campaign so is it increased
sales the ability to recruit additional
employees it might be strengthening the
corporate brand for increase M&A;
activity IPOs financing etc it might be
fundraising goals for not
not-for-profits I think that this has to
be a robust discussion with management
and it has to happen early on in the
campaign as I said before there are
times when some organizations don’t have
these objectives in mind or if they have
them in mind they’re afraid to actually
put some numbers to them you know again
I don’t think that we should be afraid
of that I think we should encourage the
transparency in the understanding and I
think that when we know what those
object
bizarre we’re going to be able to do a
better job to the client I think that
also in many cases when you have this
dialogue you know people are going to
tell you multiple objectives because I
think in many ways that’s actually human
nature a lot of us think that we go into
you know various business endeavors with
a lot of things in mind but again it’s
our job by asking good questions and by
having experience to be able to narrow
that focus down to a single objective
now what happens if there’s just sort of
a refusal you know to commit to a single
objective or there’s an inability to do
that my recommendation to you would be
to prioritize so it’s to say to whoever
your client is on the other side let’s
let’s put a list together of what those
objectives would be in your mind and
then to have a conversation about how do
we prioritize them what’s the most
important what’s the least important and
why and I think again as you have that
dialogue you’re going to learn an awful
lot about what they want to achieve and
it’s going to make your program stronger
in terms of how you build it and how you
execute it so again here’s here just are
just some bullets for you to absorb
addition in addition to what I said it’s
not uncommon you know that they will
articulate more than one goal even more
than one objective so don’t be surprised
by that don’t be surprised if it’s
difficult for your client contact two to
narrow that down but again it’s our goal
and I’m sorry to enroll to try to funnel
that information into a clear objective
or set of priorities the other thing is
most organizations do not have the
budget to execute against multiple
strategies or multiple objectives so I
think that
you know putting another fence around
this program you know if someone were to
say to you yeah of course it’s about
increased sales but as long as we’re
doing this program you know I want to
recruit let’s say millennial employees
and oh by the way you know we are going
to do a financing or an IPO six months
down the road so all of those things
together well here’s why that’s not
really possible to do because when we
get to the tactical part of our program
you’re not going to have the budget to
necessarily hit all those audiences and
hit them effectively so if you’re if you
don’t have that list of prioritization
you’re going to find yourself coming up
short later and you might have some
disappointment on the client side that
you haven’t achieved all those goals
when in fact it was never really a
budget to be able to facilitate that for
you so let’s talk about the process
really you can put the process
essentially in two to two key buckets
you have strategic planning and the
three kind of key areas under that or
research building a gap analysis and key
message development and I’ll talk now
more about each one of those so research
can be qualitative or quantitative you
also have to be careful with some
organizations with regard to the term
research again one of the things that
we’ve learned over the years is that
while every client every company wants
you to be strategic a lot of
organizations the minute you drop the
word research it’s like oh my goodness
you know that means this is going to
take a lot of time and a lot of studying
and all I want to do the only reason
that you guys are here is I want you to
start work and start getting me the
results that I want
excusing and so you have to be careful
in terms of that word research and in
some cases even you know quantify what
you mean by it so that the the client
that you’re dealing with will understand
that better so many companies have a lot
of data that’s available to you to look
at sometimes they don’t know by the way
that they have all the data that they
really do and I’ll give you a kind of a
good example of that when we’ll go into
a client and a client will say to us on
on let’s say the consumer product side
you know well we’ve been known as a
value oriented wine for many many years
but we’re now coming out with a new
luxury line of goods and we have this
actually quite a bit in our home
furnishings practice one of the things
that we’re able to do to help the client
along is we’ll say to them look you know
what are the trend lines that you see
why are you getting into this business
tell us a little bit about your customer
base and where they are today if they
can’t answer that question a great way
for you to get some of that information
is to have them do an analysis of their
credit card data so for example you know
how many Centurion cards from Amex are
being charged or Visa black are being
charged for their products you know how
many platinum Amex cards are being
charged to the products and where is
that taking place what’s the geography
of that is it more nationwide is it
contained to urban areas who are the
dealers who are carrying the product
again let’s understand a little bit
about the retailers so the client may
say to you I don’t have the data but
they really there is a lot of data
available it’s our job to kind of mind
that to come up with what they have in
other cases there may be a quantitative
research that you can do so again we
recently launched the product nationally
the client had a very interesting
platform
that they wanted to to work with they
basically wanted to celebrate everyday
heroes in America and they wanted to
talk about how their product would help
those heroes perform there was no data
or research really available because
nobody in this particular space had ever
used that as a platform before it was a
client that was a relative startup very
experienced people but a relative
startup and what we said to them was so
let’s do some research but we can do a
lot of the study with one of the
national polling companies for those of
you that don’t know what an omnibus
study is it’s a it’s a national survey
that goes out on a regular basis most of
the large research companies do this and
you can buy a series of questions so you
don’t have to buy a full study which is
obviously pretty expensive and it takes
a fair amount of time to design and get
the research analyzed but we said you
can buy a few questions and then we can
use that as a platform because again
it’s very credible because these are
well-regarded companies that do that and
the client was sort of thrilled it was a
relatively modest cost for them to do
that
it took a relatively short period of
time to do it and it helped us really
launch the program with some more teeth
than we would have had without doing it
so that research phase is important
another thing is to make sure that you
set some sort of an orientation or
debrief whether that’s with an internal
audience or whether that’s with a an
external client or you really can ask
very good questions about the business
about the product you know about the
direction and also about the history of
what they’ve done that will all help you
you know we use here a very basic SWOT
analysis so we will we will filter all
that information all those inputs down
into a strengths weaknesses
opportunities and threats chart
you know for those of you again that are
not familiar with what strengths and
weaknesses can go hand-in-hand the
strengths can become a weakness and
likewise a weakness can grow into a
strength and opportunity and threats are
very very similar as well in terms of
their interchangeability but when you
start logging the data points on to a
SWOT analysis and then to begin to
discriminate them down and do some
editing it makes your research platform
become very very sharp and clear and
hence you’ll be able to build your
program from there we then take the data
and the research and through the SWOT
analysis we’re able to build a gap
analysis now what’s important in our
business in terms of a gap analysis is
we want to have a clear understanding of
where the client the company or the
organization is today and then we want
to take a look at through the program
that we’re building and the timeframe
that we’re building it in where that
client wants to be within a certain
window of time now my recommendation if
we use some kind of norms is that
typically a program or a larger campaign
is going to probably take about a year
to fully execute and fully develop and
then there’s always going to be kind of
an added halo after that program dies or
you move on from that program of another
several months so typically in the
building of a gap we’re not only going
to look at a clear articulation of where
that company or business is today but
where they want to be about 18 months
from now and so that’s going to give us
again the gap that we can look at very
very clearly to build a ladder and a
bridge from where we are today to where
we are tomorrow the next element in
strategic planning is key messages I
can’t overemphasize how important it is
for any program and any platform so
whether we’re doing social media digital
media whether we’re doing media
relations whether it
public affairs whatever it might be that
there be key messages on every
initiative that you do without them you
run the risk of having inconsistent
messages out of the marketplace which is
never helpful
and you also have may develop what Lima
Nicole message friction meaning a
message that you’re giving to one
audience may actually hurt or not be as
effective with another audience and
again that leads to inconsistency and
problems in the marketplace so again by
doing all the homework in bullets one
and bullet two by the time you get to
those key messages again it should be
rather apparent and my bed is in most
organizations what we also find which is
rather interesting is that the client or
the contact person on the other side
probably has some sense of what those
key messages are now again it might not
be as tightly worded and written as we
as communications professionals would
like it may not lie it may not have all
the proof points that we may actually
need but the reality is that they
probably will articulate a fair amount
of the content that you’re going to need
structurally the way we do key messages
is very very standardized meaning we
have a slug that goes on top it’s
typically it’s a word to three words
more of a phrase we typically then put
under that a sentence or two which will
more clearly articulate what it is we’re
saying in that slug and then we’ll
typically run at least three or four
proof points underneath underneath that
and what’s the reason for that
architecture so the slug we typically
find the more senior executive that
we’re working with is not going to
memorize a script okay they are they’re
going to remember those key words and
those key phrases the actual sentences
that are the modifiers underneath
are actually things that we’re going to
use in content development so we’re
going to use them as quotes we’re going
to maybe use them as testimonials for
something that we’re doing we might use
it for social media in some fashion and
then the proof points really force us to
determine you know is that message valid
can we play it out by virtue of things
that are going on in our organization so
so that will be the key we’ll go under
each key message also psychologists have
basically told us over the years that
keeping key messages to three is pretty
critical that most audience can on
audiences can absorb more than three key
messages at any one time so now we’ve
done our strategic planning and let’s
move into strategic recommendations so
here it’s important to remember that as
communications professionals we have a
host of opportunities to deliver to
clients and particularly today there are
many many ways for us to achieve
objectives you know when I began of a
business and we actually use fax
machines and we used to send press
releases by mail
you know we’ve obviously grown a long
way since then and so the tools that you
have today really have never been more
broad why I put media relations up top
is I’m still a believer that our core
competency in terms of what we do today
is media professional as public
relations professionals is still media
relations when you look at some of the
other things that listed below employee
comm social media advertising
communication sponsorships and even in
some cases crisis communications there
are other industries which actually have
stepped over the fence and come into our
world over the years and so you know
that doesn’t remain anymore necessarily
the excute exclusive purview of public
relations firms but
Media Relations still is our core
competency now obviously social media
today in digital you know reaching
digital audiences is a big part of that
media relations universe so again it’s
grown you know from just the New York
Times and ABC News
but media relations still remains a core
competency the other thing is
historically it’s the most effective and
efficient from a campaign perspective
it’s probably still one of the least
expensive ways for companies and
organizations to get their messages out
by using earned media so again that’s
obviously one you know one tactic that
you have in your toolkit next is
employee communications now again as
part of any 360 degree campaign that
you’re going to do you want to make sure
that employees in in an organization are
booted up on what the message is what
the initiative is and remember that
they’re your ambassadors so each of
those employees have hundreds of people
today that they interact with you know
whether that’s on social media whether
that’s in their communities and so if
you turn them into brand or
organizational ambassadors you have a
very very powerful force of people in
the marketplace so again you know
utilize employee communications and
motivation when it makes sense for your
program social media you know I we can
talk about that for an incredibly long
period of time I think that the
importance of social media only
continues to grow today and doing it in
a strategic way is also becoming more of
the dialog in corporations and so so
again at every program really should
have a social media component and it
should be more robust by the way then
just Facebook and Twitter you know but
go beyond that where your geographies
and where your abilities your graphical
abilities and photography enable you to
do that advertising here I’m really
talking about more institutional
advertising than I am
retail and consumer you know but again
that can be and should be a part of some
programs Community Relations again you
have a bunch of tactics that you can use
in that regard in terms of letting
communities know and communities I would
define very broadly that can be digital
communities and it can also be very much
a retail program of neighborhoods and
places around a company’s business a
corporation their plants etc sponsorship
opportunities again that is a great way
for you to buy in to significant
programs and take advantage of a variety
of opportunities there as well
lastly crisis communications should be a
part of every strategy to what extent
really depends on the program that
you’re doing but you should always be
prepared should there be issues that
might arise in your program defining the
ROI
there’s nothing more important than a
consensus on what the return on
investment for your program should be it
should be tangible and trackable lead
sales donations etc don’t be afraid to
make commitments and have confidence and
what you can achieve so let me give you
some examples of things which we have
done with clients you know we do a fair
amount of work in the direct response
television business we work with a large
purveyor of watches and jewelry jewelry
moderately priced in that space we
recently had a story that moved with one
of their products on The Associated
Press wire within 90 minutes they sold
out of 7,000 units online how did we
learn
interestingly enough we have we didn’t
even catch the AP story fast enough the
client called us and said if you guys do
something with that bracelet because
literally all of a sudden we’ve just
sold out of it obviously as we
backtracked into it we found out that
the AP story did run and the consumer
response was huge now
again because we knew that that was one
of their objectives and because we built
our messaging around that very narrowly
they had a tremendously good result for
a not-for-profit we helped them achieve
a two million dollar donation what
happened was we did a very strategic
placement in the Wall Street Journal of
a story about another donor
and that actually smoked out a donor
from San Diego who was not aware of that
organization before in the first drop he
gave a donation of five hundred thousand
six months later he was so happy with
that organization that he gave them
another 1.5 million dollars for another
for a higher end client we began work
with one of their professors who had a
fantastic national platform on a
specific topic and our team had done a
variety of media placements we for
example how to cover story in the New
York Times Sunday magazine he was
regularly quoted in the Wall Street
Journal we went to the client we said
this would be a fascinating idea not
only to continue the work what we’re
doing with that professor individually
but to scale that out and actually make
it a university platform in their
messaging we suggested to them that they
do a full research study which they did
and for several years we promoted that
research study it became really the
benchmark a study in terms of this
particular category and then we helped
them figure out how to merchandise that
more broadly to the guidance counselor
community and other again communities
and stakeholder groups
in the first year they increase their
application based by 30% in the second
year they added an additional 40% so in
a two year period of time the number of
applications significantly rose for that
University when we were doing a media
tour with president of the university
actually gave us credit for really
moving them in that direction it was
wonderful to hear so again don’t be
afraid of defining ROI it can be
incredibly successful and meaningful and
really solidify your relationship so
even if you’re somebody in-house in an
organization your value will grow
tremendously if you’re not not only able
to deliver wonderful results from a
communication perspective but just
imagine if you’re adding to sales
imagine if you’re adding to fundraising
again how much more critical you become
to that organization merchandise your
success so again don’t be bashful you
know if you do good work
let your management and colleagues know
what you do what you deliver reports
copies of media coverage traffic reports
to website and web sites and social
media sites and do it quickly and do it
carefully so really think about you know
everything from if it’s in print what
pages it on you know in that newspaper
you know what’s not only the circulation
and the readership what’s the BPM if
it’s broadcast you know was it on in the
a block of a particular show social
media what was the what was the full
reach of your audience so not only how
many likes you had and things like that
but what was the reach how many eyeballs
potentially saw that so crop and
properly merchandising your success
today you know is going to help you get
funding and management buy-in for
tomorrow and so you know again it will
make you a much stronger practitioner in
your organization much more respect
and give you many many more
opportunities so let me thank you for
this portion of the of the presentation
and you know I will turn it I’ll turn it
over back to Richard for Q&A; I’m
actually going to step in here while
we’re just waiting for Richard to jump
on so my name is dawn I’m here from
agility PR solutions who is the proud
sponsor of these this webinar series
from Bulldog reporter I wanted to first
thank Stan for the the great insights
and information that he’s been sharing
on this webinar a lot of practical
advice and strategies for improving your
your PR campaigns and as you mentioned
both in terms of measuring that ROI and
monitoring and monitoring and
merchandising that success a big part of
that that you need is a tool to help you
monitor so things like Google Alerts are
going to pick up some of the key things
but you’re going to miss some things
like perhaps conversations on Twitter
and/or you won’t have the information it
will be harder to pull together
information in terms of that circulation
or where things specifically appeared
with one of our solutions agility plus
we make it easy for you to quickly put
in some keywords track specific markets
and information and keywords that are in
your messages to determine how much of
your messages have gotten traction in
the market we also have a full-service
monitoring solution where we actually do
the monitoring and provide you with
brief reports either for specific
campaigns say or just in general a daily
news brief and this is all done human
curated and where we
not only the go through and remove all
the duplicates but our media experts as
well can tone the covers and tell you
whether or not it’s a negative or
positive as well as we can help with
more complex measurement if you get into
things like quality of coverage and
going beyond just you know how many what
the circulation or where a mention of
your company was to determine you know
was this in a publication that your
audience reads how good was the presence
of your mention within it and did they
pick up some of those key messages that
you so clearly outlined um after
following span strategies so if you’d
like to learn more about our monitoring
solutions either your self service or
the full-service solution please go to
agility PR comm and you can request
either a demo of our media monitoring
solutions or just read more about them
there I think we have Richard back on
now and yeah hi there why thank you
great to open up for question yes we’re
going to take some Q&A; now for Stan and
Stan let me reiterate with dawn –
fantastic points you made some very
high-level insights about putting
together a great campaign I know all of
our listeners are very involved in
campaigns and it never hurts to get some
empirical if you will insights about how
to put those together in the best way
and you touched on some some great
topics I have one question in the queue
right now let me first remind everybody
if you have a question for Stan please
go ahead and and click on the Q&A; icon
top right corner of the screen there and
shoot it on over to us Stan this
question is from Kathy and she you were
talking about ROI there a bit and she
wants to ask could you give some
specific even being examples especially
perhaps for professional services
because you point thousand sales are
usually more relationship based and
can’t really be used
proof of ROI sure so I will tell you
that one of the things that I’m gonna
answer in two ways
so Kathy I’m going to first answer
generally on b2b and then I’ll give you
an example on professional service more
directly but generally on b2b we do a
lot of that and again what we find is
with with messaging and programs that we
do we can help a client even at a
tradeshow bring leads of people into
their showroom so it might not be actual
closing of sales but we can get people
into a into a showroom and and track
traffic that’s come in as a result of
the program that we’ve done so might not
be the closing of sales with actual
numbers but we can do it with traffic
now specifically we have helped two law
firms over the years enter a new new
space this was in actually direct
response television and what we did is
by creating it was primarily a thought
leadership program and it was media
based so we did a lot with byline
opportunities and Abed’s
and we found that the partners of those
law firms is become experts in their
industry we were also overtime able to
get them on panels you know add some of
these industry conferences as well which
did lead to sales opportunities for them
what I would add is a caveat to that is
sometimes in professional service you
know the word sales is almost a dirty
word you know I think the sales approach
is much different in professional
service it’s very similar you know for
example to what we do as a PR firm or
any PR firm for that matter meaning you
know we want to sell a client a solution
and we want them to come to us not
necessarily for the typical motivation
that a normal sales process would follow
my recommendation to you is if you have
a targeted thought leadership program
that identifies the partners or the
areas that you want to focus on and you
get that message out effectively that
that will lead something tangible down
the road all right Stan that’s great
good insights there thank you for the
question Kathy and we have another one
here from Paula an interesting question
here she wants to know Stan if you have
a sample the highlights that you offer
to management I guess this is referring
to your merchandising posts campaign
strategy because the high level
structure she says sounds great
do you have something that you can share
with with with us we actually have a few
that you know a few different samples
because again it’s fairly broad of what
we do so logistically I’m not quite sure
how we’ll do that but I’m happy to add
that on to the presentation or whatnot
you know after today if that’s helpful
then we will provide you with the
contact information so you can connect
with her and provide examples terrific
ok great ok
Thank You Paula for that question and
here’s another one from Janine another
quick reminder we have another couple of
minutes for Q&A; so I get your questions
in if you have one
janine asks more of a tools based
question stand what program do you use
for your strategic plan and follow-up
project management tool simply a word
doc or smartsheet excel what would you
what do you recommend
sure so so we actually don’t use an
off-the-shelf tool we’ve created some
proprietary models which tend to work
well for our team and and depending on
again what the assignment is I mean
certainly there’s some social media
tools that we will use you know and
they’re they’re sort of common
marketplace ones you know we use
something called asana for example on
creative services are that particular
unit for us finds that to be very very
successful but you know what I would
tell you
you know I don’t think you necessarily
need to buy something off the shelf but
create you know what’s right for your
organization sometimes doing it you know
just more simply it’s appreciated by
everyone that it means that they don’t
have to go to another app or to another
website to get the information sometimes
it’s just easier for you to create your
own model right okay good great great
inside there thank you Paul
Stan and thank you Janine for that
question we don’t have any more
questions in the queue right now so
we’ll give you another minute or two to
get one in there should you have one and
I want to ask you Stan you were
mentioning are then worth the kind of
post campaign merchandising success
angle that you use you don’t hear that
mentioned all the time about how to how
to take care of a campaign and
capitalize on the success after the fact
and I was wonder if you could talk a
little bit more about that maybe some of
the specific specific tactics you
recommend to get them to get them the
optimal results out of that so you know
again I’ll give you an example of
something that recently happened we we
did a major opening of the of a building
for a client now the client actually had
two manufacturing companies and had a
larger building or the program that we
did was very very broad-based it was it
was both media relations it was
advertising it was community relations
it was creative services developing
brochures and things like that our team
did an incredibly comprehensive report
we were actually able to track people
that showed up at parties were able to
do an analysis of what the quality of
some of those people who came in or the
types of organizations and companies on
the media relations side we gave them a
detailed report we gave them a social
media report it actually helped us sell
another program to the client the client
was so incredibly impressed
with the reporting which it was not
harden not not terribly time-consuming
on our part but again you know I think
what a lot of what a lot of folks do in
our business is they they will
transactionally let their client you
know know what’s happened so they’ll
forward them a google alerts you know or
they’ll forward them some pictures or
something like that but they don’t
quantify it and I and I think you know
again we have to remember is whether
we’re in-house or whether we’re at an
agency our client typically is a
business person of some sort and and
they’re used to seeing you know results
that are pretty specific
you know if they oversee the sales
organization they’re looking at leads
they’re looking at closing they’re
looking at you know sales numbers going
up and down if you’re the CFO they’re
looking at profitability you know so we
shouldn’t think that we get a pass as
communications professionals you know to
only send them articles you know or send
them clippings I think we have to
understand that again if we go back to
that you know thinking about business
objective our goal is to help the
organization move forward in the same
way that the salespeople do or the same
way that the fundraising people do we
use different tools different tactics
you know we have different expertise but
when we report back to our client
contact in a way that they’re used to
it’s incredibly powerful for the respect
that you’re going to get and for the
additional opportunities they’re going
to give you because you’re speaking
their language so those are the kinds of
tools that we try to put together when
we report back down our clients
fantastic that’s a great example and a
great explanation of how that would work
best
wonderful all right Stan thank you and
we don’t have any other questions in the
queue right now so I think we’re going
to go ahead and wrap up the events now a
lot of insights for us all to ingest and
think about so I want to thank again
Stan Stein right of standar of Stein
right Communications
for all that insightful commentary and
the excellent high-level points that he
made and as Don mentioned you will be
receiving a recording of this event to
share or we listen within the next 48
hours so keep an eye out for that this
Bulldog reporter webinar series is
brought to you by agility TR solutions
and you can check out the new bulldog
reporter site over there at agility TR
comm slash PR – news so take a look let
us know what you think remember to check
out agility PR comm for the services
that dawn talked about shortly ago and
we look forward to seeing you all again
for our next Industry Insights event
that is going to be on June 13th Tuesday
June 13th at noon Eastern Time our yes
for that our yet for that event is going
to be Jonah Berger
who’s the author of invisible influence
the hidden forces that shape behavior
Jonah’s going to talk about a few
different things including why word of
mouth is more effective than advertising
so that sounds like a very compelling
event so please be sure to join us then
and we will see you all then and I want
to thank everyone for listening and have
a great day