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December 15, 2016 By Kelly Kirkendoll

Business Planning: Don’t Skip the Inside Job

As I approach the 14th year running my own business, I am practicing what I preach, creating a marketing and business development plan for the new year.

Writing my own marketing plan is SO MUCH MORE DIFFICULT than doing the same for my clients. Why? Because it’s much easier to see the forest from the trees when it’s not your forest and they aren’t your trees!

But I’m pushing through. As I do, I realize – again – that when you run your own company (or department or team), you must also step back and analyze yourself. Success and growth in business is as much an inside job as an outside one.

So, in addition to analyzing numbers and outlining Thrive PR’s goals, target markets and action steps, I’m making myself dig deeper to answer questions about myself …

Beyond Revenue Goals
Beyond gross and net revenue goals, what else do I want for my business next year? In the next 5 years? Do I want to grow the company in size and scope? Do I want to narrow our focus?

As for me, how do I want to grow as a person and a professional in the coming years? Where can I improve? What strengths am I not fully utilizing?

Asking myself these kinds of questions – and giving myself quiet time to reflect and answer them – I’ve gained several insights, including:

• Among the things I cherish most about owning my own business are my relationships with my clients and colleagues. I am proud that many of Thrive PR’s clients have been with us for 5-10 years. With longevity, however, can come complacency – on our part and the clients’. We can easily slip into not meeting as often as we did in the early years, scope creep and doing things the way we’ve always done them. So, one of my goals for the new year is to approach each client as if they’re brand new, looking at them through a fresh lens.

• As I look back on my career so far – from my corporate America days to my 6-year stint as the PR/Marketing Director for a management consulting firm to the last 14 running Thrive – I’ve realized that I love new challenges. In fact, I thrive on them (pun intended). So, another goal I’ve set for 2017 is to challenge myself more and push myself outside my comfort zone in a variety of ways (from speaking opportunities to professional development to new projects and opportunities).

What about you? In addition to revenue goals, what are your objectives for yourself and your business next year? How do you want to grow?

Beyond the Basics
In the wake of the dot-com bubble bust, I was laid off shortly before Christmas in 2002. Not long after, I started Thrive PR. My “why” at the time was simple and crystal clear: to pay my mortgage, keep the lights on and put food on the table.

As I moved from survival mode to thrive mode (pun intended, again), Thrive PR’s mission evolved and moved beyond Maslow’s lowest hierarchy of needs. Our why became: to spread the word about our clients’ awesome products and services to help their companies grow.

But beyond the basics … and beyond my company’s mission, what is my personal why?

I haven’t won the lottery yet, so the basic needs (food, shelter, warmth) are still there, joined by needs and wants like kids’ college expenses, health insurance, retirement savings and a love for eating out.

I could cover those needs working in corporate America again. So, why do I run my own business instead? Specifically, why Thrive PR?

I wish I could report that the answers I came up with are lofty or prophetic. However, they’re all things my mom could have told you about me when I was a kid: I get bored easily, I love to write, I am passionate about causes I believe in, deadlines motivate me and I like being my own boss.

In other words, I have created my own dream job. I can’t possibly get bored (we work with clients across a wide array of industries); I get to, basically, write for a living; I love promoting clients I believe in; I work well on deadline and I get to be my own boss (kind of).

What is YOUR why? Why do you run your own business?

Favorite Things
When we run our own business, we wear many hats – from CEO to janitor and various roles in between (typically at the same time). It can seem like a luxury to stop and take time to plan, dream and ask ourselves things like – which clients do I enjoy the most and what’s my favorite work?

This year, I made myself analyze the work I do. What makes the work itself enjoyable for me? Is it the client? The industry? The task?

What I learned is that my favorite work is:
• Collaborative
• Creative
• Challenging
• Impactful
• Appreciated

Another goal for 2017? Do more work that fits the description above!

What is YOUR favorite work? Why?

Write Your Way to Your Dreams
When I was only a year into my career, working as a competitive analyst for Sprint in Kansas City, I wrote down that within 3 years, I wanted to work in product marketing. Guess what? Two years later, at home on maternity leave with my first baby, I received a call offering me a new job within the company … in product marketing!

Since then, I have made a habit of writing down my goals toward the end of each year. Sometimes, I don’t have a plan to make them happen; sometimes I do. Either way, I get them on paper.

I encourage you to write down all your answers to the questions above. I can’t promise it will make all your dreams come true, but I can promise that it will provide some clarity and increase the chances of your goals becoming a reality.

Wishing you a happy and prosperous 2017!
Kelly

November 23, 2016 By Kelly Kirkendoll

Marketing in 2017 – A Quick Marketing Audit to Help You Prioritize and Plan

2017 will be here before you know it. Here’s a quick list to help you audit your current marketing efforts, plan and prioritize for the new year ahead:

Planning and Positioning

Have we taken a hard look lately at who our target market is? Who are our best customers and why? Who do we want to target in 2017?
Is our company positioned, in terms of our marketing and public image, to go after our target market?
What are our top 3 marketing and public relations goals in 2017? What kind of plan do we have in place to make those goals happen?

Website

Is our website up-to-date in terms of words and photos? Hint: if the copyright at the bottom of your page still says 2014 or 2015, it probably hasn’t been updated in a while.
Does our website LOOK old and outdated? Maybe it’s up-to-date in terms of words and photos, but is the overall “look” of our site showing its age?
Does our website have a responsive design? In other words, does it scale to the size of the user’s screen (computer, tablet, mobile phone)? This kind of design is better for your visitors AND it’s better for your google search rankings. Read more here.

Social Media

If we’re on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or others, did we take a “build it and they will come” approach? Or are we posting to social media regularly? Are our posts garnering engagement? Is the company’s profile on each channel up-to-date?
Are we spread too thin on social media? If we don’t have the bandwidth to stay active across 2-5 social media channels, is there one we should really focus on in 2017?
Are we advertising on our business Facebook page? If not, can we allocate some funds to Facebook advertising in 2017 to improve our results? If we are already advertising on Facebook, have we analyzed our results?

Marketing Materials

If we pull out all our print and online marketing materials (i.e., brochures, business cards, website, etc.) and look at them together, do they look like they came from the same company? Do we use the same logo, colors and other branding elements in all of them … or do they look like distant cousins? Or, worse yet, competing companies?
Are our materials up-to-date in terms of content? Have we expanded to new markets, opened new locations and/or rolled out new products or services that aren’t included?
Do our marketing materials look outdated?

Public and Community Relations

Has our company won awards, contributed to the community or had other good news that we just aren’t letting people know about?
Do I or members of my team have unique knowledge we could share to help our target market and spread the word about the solutions we provide? Could we do that via our blog, our enewsletter and/or articles we write for industry media channels?
Is our company active in the community in any way? Are there opportunities to give back that we’d like to explore in 2017 that match our company’s vision, values and target market?

In-Person Marketing

Have we pulled back on networking meetings and other opportunities this year? Are there organizations we should get more involved with, in person, next year?
Are there opportunities for us to share solutions, knowledge and lessons learned via speaking engagements? Do we have any presentations we can create or update? If we have experience speaking to organizations, do we mention this on our company website, LinkedIn profile or to organizations we are part of?
Are there trade shows or other events where we can get in front of our target market by attending, speaking and/or exhibiting at them?

July 8, 2016 By Kelly Kirkendoll

Websites 101: What Business Owners Need to Know About Building a Website

I have been getting a lot of questions lately about the core components of websites, as more clients build new, updated and/or revamped sites. I figure they aren’t the only ones with these types of questions, so I thought an article with a short website primer would be helpful to everyone.

Home Sweet Home

When you’re building a home, you need an address, land to build it on and the actual house. The same holds true for a website. Your domain name is your address (i.e., www.thrivepublicrelations.com); your website host is your land (i.e., Blue Host, GoDaddy, etc.); and the website platform (i.e., WordPress, GoDaddy, etc.) is where you select and build your floorplan, walls, floor, ceiling, cabinets, doors, windows, etc. that becomes your “home.” You must have all 3.

You can purchase your domain name from a variety of sources (Alldomains, Godaddy and many more). In some cases, you can purchase your domain through the same company that hosts your website (like BlueHost and Godaddy), although you definitely don’t need to, and there are some experts who suggest using different companies for your domain and hosting to help guard your site against hackers. And finally, you need to select a professional website developer to create your site.

Content is King

Before you select a company to build your website, understand which website platform they are using and ensure that it has a content management system that is easy to use. A content management system (CMS) is the back-end part of your site that you or someone on your team can log into and easily (or not-so-easily, depending on the CMS) update the words and photos on your web pages. It’s also important to identify who on your team will have access to and the responsibility for keeping your website up-to-date over time.

The next task – and the one that overwhelms many companies and stalls their website project – is to determine your site’s content: the words, flow/navigation and images that will tell your story the way you want it told and provide the information your visitors need.

What’s Google Got to Do with It?

Now more than ever, Google also loves and prioritizes quality content – content that is relevant, natural, unique and updated. They are in the business of serving up search results to their users, and the way they keep their customers (and their #1 search engine ranking) is to continue providing the most relevant search results possible.

Content is the most important part of your SEO (search engine optimization) strategy. Before you worry about anything else related to SEO, make sure your website’s content is written well. Quality content is king – for your website visitors and for Google. Resist the old, outdated tactic of key word stuffing. Google will now penalize you if you’re just filling your web pages full of key words, rather than natural content.

Can You See Me Now?

Speaking of Google, it also cares whether your website is mobile-friendly. If they deem that your website is not, it will impact your search results when someone is searching on a mobile device. Need to test your site? Go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/.

According to Google, a page is eligible for the “mobile-friendly” label if it meets the following criteria as detected by Googlebot:

Avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash
Uses text that is readable without zooming
Sizes content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom
Places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped

There are 2 ways to accomplish a mobile-friendly website. The first is to create a mobile version of your website. Most companies who had recently invested a lot of time and money into their existing non-mobile-friendly website when Google made the “mobile-friendly” change in 2015 opted to go this route (including us at Thrive PR), at least temporarily. The second way is to create a new website with a responsive design (note: we just finished doing this for our own website).

No new website should be built without a “responsive design,” which simply means that the website is crafted using technology to automatically respond to the user’s screen size — from desktops to laptops to tablets and mobile phones. This goes beyond pleasing Google by providing your visitors with an easier way to see and use all the content on your website, no matter which device they’re using.

Final Word

If you’ve ever worked or talked with me, it’s likely you’ve heard me say, “Don’t compete with yourself.” It’s difficult enough to establish your brand, get the word out about your company and stay top of mind with your prospects and customers. Don’t make it more difficult for yourself by not being consistent across ALL your marketing materials, including your website. Your site’s look, feel and content should match the way you present yourself anywhere and everywhere else. Don’t compete with yourself by acting and looking like one company online … and another offline.

July 21, 2015 By Kelly Kirkendoll

NEW Facebook Feature “See First” Lets Users Take Back Control of Their News Feed: Oppty for Businesses

In the earlier days of Facebook, if a user “Liked” a business page, that page’s posts typically showed up in the follower’s news feed. Then Facebook went public…and things changed. Facebook altered their news feed algorithm and introduced advertising for business pages. Businesses then had to advertise (“boost”) their posts in order for them to show up in more than a small percentage of their followers’ news feeds. Compelling, engaging content also became more important than ever — users who engaged the most with a page were more likely (but not guaranteed) to see more of that page’s posts in their news feed.

Now there is a new Facebook feature just introduced in the U.S. called “See First.”

As a Facebook user, it gives you much more control over what you’re seeing in your Facebook news feed by allowing you to prioritize which friends and pages you’d like to see updates from first. No more missing posts from your favorite friends and pages!

As a business owner or nonprofit leader with a business Facebook page, it gives you an opportunity to ask your followers to “See First” you…getting more of your great content in front of those who want it.

Here’s how it works:

On Your Computer

1) Go to the business or organization’s page you like (such as Thrive PR)

2) Go to the box where it says “Liked” with the thumbs up icon

3) Hover over that box and then click “See First” so you’ll be sure to see that page’s posts in your news feed. That’s all!

On Your IOS Device

(note: this feature should be available on Android devices very soon)

1. Make sure you have the most recent version of the Facebook iPhone app installed

2. Open the app and click “More” on the bottom right of the screen

3. Scroll down to “Settings” and click “News Feed Preferences”

4. Then, click “Prioritize Who to See First”

5. Finally, click on all friends and pages (like Thrive PR) you’d like to see at the top of your feed

Facebook changes often, so stay tuned for further tweaks or changes to this new app. Click here to subscribe to our enewsletter.

October 27, 2014 By Kelly Kirkendoll

How to Select a Good SEO Company and Avoid Bad SEO that Could Get You Banned by Google

Recently, a trade association we work with learned that its members were affected by some underhanded, deceptive search engine optimization (SEO) techniques by a shady SEO provider. The SEO provider, hired by a non-member company in their industry, littered YouTube with multiple copies of the same video, tagging members’ company names, in order to deceptively drive web search engine traffic their own way.

SEO is important to most businesses these days, and there are a lot of SEO companies out there that can help (or harm) a business as it tries to increase its search rankings. But how do you spot a bad SEO company? How do you select a good one?

In general, good SEO companies will use techniques that are ethical and involve no deception. This can take time and money, but the results can make it worth it. Bad SEO companies, on the other hand, often employ deceptive practices that are not approved by search engines, which can result in a site eventually being banned, de-indexed or penalized through lower rankings. Any short-term gain received by bad, deceptive SEO practices is NOT worth this kind of risk.

Bad SEO (or what some call black hat SEO) techniques include keyword stuffing, doorway and cloaked pages, link farming, hidden texts and links, and blog comment spamming. Good SEO (or what some call white hat SEO) techniques include research, analysis, re-writing meta tags to be more relevant, content improvement and web redesign.

Below are several tips and red flags to help you recognize a bad SEO company and avoid getting scammed:

1. They Offer Free Trial Services…and Want Access to Your Website.

Companies using this tactic may make you an offer to try their services free for 30 days, if you’ll just give them access to your site. This is a red flag. Don’t do it. Never give your website login info to anyone offering you a free trial or to anyone else you do not know and trust.

2. You Were Made Aware of the Company Only through Email.

Unsolicited SEO offers via email or a cold call should give you pause. Spammers often use spiders to crawl for a list of URLs and email addresses, so when you get an unsolicited offer via email from someone who claims to have visited your site, be wary and realize that may not be entirely true. Do your research before hiring any SEO company.

3. Their Services are Under Priced or Overpriced.

Beware of really inexpensive SEO service offers from sites like Fiverr and Elance. Good SEO takes time, expertise and working within the rules. Be leery of someone offering services at a significantly low (or high) price.

4. They Make Promises and Guarantees About First Page (or First Rank) Positions on Google or Other Search Engines.

Good, effective SEO cannot be done quickly, unless it is done using bad practices. It takes time, research and likely some rework on your website to do it well. Do not do business with anyone that promises a particular page rank or page ranking in a short time frame. Ranking is done periodically by Google, not on a daily basis, and nothing you can do will speed up the process. It can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months for a page to get ranked, and your ranking is also impacted by other sites’ rankings.

5. You Are Promised Hundreds (or Thousands) of Links to Your Site.

Lahle Wolfe, CEO of LA Wolfe Marketing says: “Any links you get from such claims are more likely to hurt your site than to help it. Building links too fast to the wrong sites is considered black hat SEO and could damage the credibility of your website in search engines. If Google catches you building links with black hat strategies, your site will be penalized or blacklisted.” Instead, she recommends spending time building your own quality in-bound links by offering meaningful content and suggests avoiding reciprocal linking (an old SEO tactic that is no longer a good idea). “Robots are smart and know when you are trying to cheat the system,” she advises.

6. Companies That Are Not Easy to Reach and/or Will Not Answer Your Questions.

Ask questions (and lots of them). If you get the runaround or get told the answer is a “trade secret technique,” look elsewhere. You are hiring experience, not trade secrets when you work with an SEO company. You should also be able to easily find the SEO company – online, via phone (and not just a cell phone) or meet with them in person. You should also know who is going to do the majority of the work. Will it be done in-house or will it be outsourced to people in another country? Will they answer these questions?

7. The Company Does Not Easily Refer You to Past Clients.

Ask for referrals. If the company refuses, is hesitant or only gives you a couple references, it may be best to look elsewhere for SEO help. It may be that the SEO company is to blame for the deceptive videos pumped out on YouTube that affected our client’s members, but the company they did the SEO work for will be the one reported and harmed. It’s important to choose carefully and to have a clear understanding of what the SEO company will be doing for you and their techniques.

Note: This article was adapted from an article we originally wrote for the North Texas Roofing Contractors Association.

August 25, 2014 By Kelly Kirkendoll

Don’t Waste a Conference Experience: 6 Lessons Learned

I attended a business conference earlier this month, and I had to drag myself there, kicking and screaming. Why? Oh, I was busy…I had too much work to do…I had family members who needed me… The excuses went on. Luckily, I hate to waste money, and I knew this about myself when I committed and paid for the conference 6 months ago.

So I had to go…and I’m glad I did.

Here are a few things I learned (or re-learned) that I hope to remember throughout the year:

1) Get outta your comfort zone. Find a way to get out of your comfort zone more often. Go to a conference, speaker event or something that puts you in a different setting and focused on you and/or your business at least once per year (ideally, once per quarter). It forces you to step back, look at things from a different angle, learn new information and approaches, meet new people and grow. For me, if I haven’t done anything dynamic in a long time, I begin to forget that I can. Shaking myself up and forcing myself out of my comfort zone always propels me and my business forward!

2) Take stock of your WHY. It’s easy to get caught up in the busy-ness of our business. We can lose touch with why we started our business in the first place, what we love to do the most and who we love to work with the most. Give yourself time — away from your desk, phone and computer — to re-examine your “why” from time-to-time.

3) Work on yourself first. Oftentimes, it isn’t a lack of skills, knowledge, experience or exposure that is holding us back in our business — it’s us. We can get in our own way and don’t even realize it. So when you want to work on and grow your business, look at yourself first. Are there places where fear is holding you back? Where you aren’t dreaming big enough? Where you need to make an adjustment? Where you can outsource some of the busy-ness off your plate so you have more time to lead, invent, strategize, develop, sell or expand?

4) Don’t sit with the same people. Even though I’m an extravert, I can also be shy sometimes. At a conference, I’m much more comfortable finding one or two people to sit, talk, laugh and compare notes with the entire time. I have several good friends across North America I have made this way. But at this most recent conference, while I did hit it off particularly well with a few women I now call friends, I forced myself to sit next to new people at almost every session and meal. The result? I met a LOT more people and learned much more this way. Beyond the conference and in a broader context, this can be applied to any kind of networking or socializing I do.

5) Follow up…and do it early. When I make new connections, the sooner I follow up and follow through, the better. It’s easy to get caught back up in work, life and my normal routine. The sooner I follow up (or make a plan to do so), the more likely I won’t end up putting this important step off.

6) Take action. It’s great to get fired up, motivated and inspired. But it’s mostly a waste if you don’t translate all of that into ACTION. Make an action item list for yourself (or at least start it) before you even leave the conference or event. Is there an action you can take immediately? I have 10 on my list, and I have already been able to check off several of them!

July 16, 2014 By Kelly Kirkendoll

Beware of Pay-for-Play “Media Coverage” and Award Scams

A client of ours was recently notified that they won a prestigious award. It seemed legitimate, and the website looked genuine…until we did a little digging. The organization wrote a press release about our client, which was as non-specific as a horoscope, and after more digging, we found that they would charge our client a fee for it if they “accepted” the award. They also wanted hundreds of dollars for award plaques and certificates. It turned out to be a scam; bad press forced them to shut down and rename several times under numerous DBAs.

More common, we see clients get approached with an offer that provides the opportunity to be interviewed by a TV or radio host, if the client would just pay thousands of dollars to “cover expenses.” Throughout the past 11 years, we have seen clients tempted by these offers, but, fortunately, they have brought them to us to research before responding.

If you get approached by an award, radio or TV program opportunity, what should you do? If you have a PR or Marketing consultant, forward the information to them. If not, we recommend the following:

1) Ask: are they charging you a fee? Most salespeople pushing this type of pay-for-play offer will try to sidestep this question. If they do, that’s a big red flag.

2) If there is a fee, is it obvious that it is paid-for programming? Or, are they trying to make it look like real, earned media coverage? Legitimate news sources do not ask a guest to pay fees in order to be interviewed, and legitimate, paid-for advertising is obvious about it (an advertorial, for example, is clearly marked as an advertorial).

3) Research the program, host, award, etc.online. Add the word “scam” at the end of the name in your online search. If it’s a scam-like offer, you’ll most likely find sites and discussions from other businesses who took the bait and were disappointed or angry about the outcome.

4) Ask: when will the program or interview be aired and where? The biggest complaints we see, after someone has paid thousands of dollars, is that their video or radio interview was aired when nobody would be watching or listening.

5) Realize that there is no silver bullet and that a $50,000 paid-for TV spot with a well-known, retired politician, for example, that airs at odd times and odd places is not going to catapult your business across the tipping point.

Need more advice? Contact us at kelly@thrivepublicrelations.com or 972.330.2882.

May 20, 2014 By Kelly Kirkendoll

Social Media Dos and Don’ts for Your Business

Business owners and nonprofit leaders are busy with an endless supply of tasks, priorities and challenges that they must juggle each day. In the midst of it all, marketing is a key component to growing and sustaining their organizations, but with more communication and marketing channels than ever before, it can all become overwhelming, especially when it comes to social media marketing.

Whether a company manages its social media in-house or works with a PR and communications professional, these 10 social media dos and don’ts are helpful to keep in mind:

Don’t

Ignore social media as part of your marketing/communications mix
Look at social media as separate from your other communication efforts (it should be integrated with all of your PR, marketing and communication efforts)
Put all your marketing eggs in the social media basket (social media is important, but there is no single magic marketing bullet)
Post willy-nilly
Forget to proof your posts. Good grammar and spelling matter – they build trust and credibility.
Assume that the youngest person on your team is automatically the best person to manage your social media
Let someone manage your social media who does not: 1) understand your business, 2) understand your branding, marketing and communications strategy or 3) have good writing and grammar skills
Put your hand in every social media channel all at once to start
Make every post all about promoting your company (it’s called “social” media for a reason – no one wants to talk to the guy at the party who only boasts about himself all night…)
Post images you don’t have the right to publish

Integrate your social media marketing and make it part of your overall marketing communications plan
When starting social media, pick one or two social media channels that make the most sense for your business and target market
Monitor your social media pages; engage and respond appropriately and quickly to those who interact with you
Proof your posts and responses – good grammar and spelling build trust and credibility
Consider investing in social media advertising, especially for your business facebook page
Use a “single voice” that fits your brand when posting and responding, even if several different people are responsible for your social media
Share relevant, helpful and interesting content that appeals to your target market
Post regularly and consistently
Monitor your posts to gauge the type that engage your audience the most
Post photos and branded graphics (photos garner more engagement on Facebook than any other type of post; a photo added to a tweet boosts retweets on Twitter)

January 1, 2014 By Kelly Kirkendoll

Ten Things I’ve Learned after a Decade in Business, from Kelly Kirkendoll, Owner of Thrive PR

Thrive PR celebrated its 10-year anniversary in 2013. As we start the New Year and a new decade of service to clients, I’m reflecting for a moment before I dive deep into the busy first quarter…

First, I want to extend my gratitude to the clients we have worked with through the years. To ALL of you, I say THANK YOU! I take what we do and how we serve our clients very personally, and I am proud to call you my friends, partners and colleagues.

At the end of a decade in business, I have learned a few things about owning and running a business. In honor of the last 10 years, here are 10 of those:

1) Always remember the “why” of your business or organization. It’s easy to get distracted, side-tracked or worried as you face challenges and opportunities, but taking a moment to remember WHY you do what you do will keep you centered and focused as you make decisions.

2) Fill your team with people who care about your why! Skills, talent and knowledge are important; equally important are passion, enthusiasm and dedication.

3) Stay focused on your target market. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. It’s o.k. if everyone doesn’t buy from you – you don’t want everyone (really)!

4) Don’t sweat the natural ebbs and flows. Recessions happen. So do recoveries. Don’t allow yourself to get distracted or deterred by negative chatter or temporary setbacks.

5) Take time to work ON your business…not just in it. And make your own business a client: for example, if you own a spa, take time for spa services; if you own a PR/Marketing company, take time to market yourself; if you are a plumber, take time to fix your own pipes. The cobbler would have been more successful if his children had worn shoes!

6) Be consistent – in your service, communication, invoicing, branding, messaging…everything.

7) It’s o.k. to look around at what others are doing, but just long enough to learn. Don’t get distracted by comparisons, and don’t imitate anyone. Learn from others, but be yourself.

8) When it comes to new ventures, new approaches and new ideas, avoid the extremes of 1) analysis paralysis and 2) randomly throwing spaghetti against the wall hoping that something will stick. The sweet spot is in the middle with smart risks, strategic planning, steady progress and consistent efforts.

9) Always say thank you.

10) Have fun! Working hard and having fun are not mutually exclusive as you run and grow your business.

Bonus lesson: always proofread! Good writing, grammar and spelling build trust and credibility.

I also want to thank my team members over the years, specifically: Natalie (my original right-hand person, who relocated to Nashville several years ago) and current team members Coleen, Laura and Jessi. Being part of a PR and Communications business can be unpredictable, fast-paced and full of deadlines. You meet these challenges with good humor, good ideas and a dedication to a job well done that is not easy to find.

Happy New Year and Many Successes to All of You in 2014 and Beyond!

Kelly

December 3, 2013 By Kelly Kirkendoll

10 Tips for Getting (and Staying) Top of Mind With Customers

We all want more clients, but how do we get them? And then, how do we keep them?

If they don’t know about you, they can’t buy from you, so building awareness is key to gaining clients. If they don’t remember you, they won’t buy from you, so being “top of mind” is equally important (for both new and past or existing customers). And, finally, unless you are top of mind AND they prefer you (TOMP – top of mind preference), they’ll give their business to someone else.

In addition to providing a stellar product or service, here are 10 tips we suggest for getting (and staying!) top of mind with customers and clients:

1) Start with your target market in mind. Who are they? Spend your precious resources (time, money and energy) going after the customers you want to attract (and keep).

2) Assess your brand. Does your branding speak to and appeal to your target market? Does it still resonate with who you are, what you provide and what makes you unique? Are you “competing with yourself” with branding and marketing efforts that are not consistent?

3) Assess your current website. It’s your calling card, your online brochure and a sales tool. Is your website’s branding consistent with your other branded efforts and materials? Is it up to date in terms of look, layout and content? Does it tell your unique story? Is it filled with industry jargon and claims everyone else could make? De-jargon it, tell your story and explain your claims.

4) Do you have newsworthy events or stories you could let the media know about? Are you involved in the community? Let people know what you are doing – via your website, social media channels and, if appropriate, the media.

5) Social media. Don’t ignore social media as a tool to get and stay top of mind with your target market (and those who could refer you). If you haven’t already, start with 1 social media channel…and do it well. Don’t make the mistake of thinking “if I build it they will come.” Stay active. And remember that it’s called SOCIAL media. Be social – engage, participate and respond.

6) More on social media: be where your target market is. If you are a B2B company (a business selling to businesses), LinkedIn is a natural choice. But remember that your customers’ targets may be consumers…so they will be more active where consumers are, such as facebook.

7) Pictures are powerful. Use them – on social media, on your website and in email marketing.

8) Assess your marketing materials, advertising and other marketing efforts. Are your efforts speaking to your target market, in terms of content and images? Could your advertising be refined to more narrowly go after your target market? For example, if your target market is primarily men and you’re doing general radio advertising, could you reach a higher concentration of your target market if you advertised during a sports radio program?

9) Where does your target market go to network for their business? The chamber? A trade association? Get involved where they are – join, sponsor, advertise, volunteer, speak, network.

10) Email marketing. Are you communicating with potential, past and existing customers via email or an eNewsletter? Many companies shy away from email as a tool because they don’t want to bombard their database. And yet others DO bombard people. There’s a nice place in the middle…especially when you provide tips, links to helpful articles and special offers.