public relations

November 23, 2016 By Kelly Kirkendoll Haffner

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Does our website LOOK old and outdated?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Do our marketing materials look outdated?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?

October 27, 2014 By Kelly Kirkendoll Haffner

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.

July 16, 2014 By Kelly Kirkendoll Haffner

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.

December 3, 2013 By Kelly Kirkendoll Haffner

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.