Deal qualification process for public relations

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hello and welcome to the webinar PR kickstart create your PR plan for 2012 my name is Kim La Rochelle and I will guide you through the presentation today this webinar is being recorded so to keep a good quality of sound your lines have been muted but if you have any questions please use the message box on the bottom right-hand side of your screen before we get started let me tell you briefly about us so our agency Dennis Rasso public relations is made of 40 members that you can see there on your screen and we work with a whole range of different kinds and different industries and what we do essentially is help them stand out in the corporate jungle so every company has a good story to tell and what we do is help them tell their story there's so much noise out there you need to stand out if you want to cut through the clutter and make sure your customers hear about you and eventually buy your products or your services so I'll tell you a little bit more about public relations in a minute but this is who our agencies and this is me commercial I am a peer mentor I'm passionate about educating and mentoring people on all aspects of public relations but I have a particular interest in helping small business owners understand how they can use public relations for their business so this whole webinar series of which today's the first session as part of this effort of making public relations more accessible to the small business market so that tells you a little bit more about who we are now let's have a look at what we're going to go through today a bit of a nightlight outline so to start with we'll look at what is public relations and the elements of a PR plan what should be included in there and then we're going to go through each of these elements starting with setting the PR objectives public relations objectives we'll look at your target audiences how to identify them then we'll look at creating strong and impactful key messages for your business will then look at the whole PR tool box so the different initiatives you can put in place to promote your business and last but not least we'll look at the public relations plan structure and I'll give you a good example of that so let's get started first of all let's look briefly at what public relations actually is as I mentioned previously there's a lot of information and competition in a marketplace so it's really important for organizations like yours to standout you need to be different you know be the Apple among the oranges from that photo give your customers a reason to go to you rather than going to your competitors that's essentially what you're trying to do on a day to day basis so how does public relations actually help you stand out it helps you by using effective consistent and continuous communication let me explain it's effective because we use the right messages for the right target market and the right channels of communication then there needs to be consistency in the communication that is put out there about your organization so that people associate various initiatives you're doing to the one and only business so for example if they hear about your business on radio and then have a look at your Facebook page and go on your website there needs to be a consistent of language being used everywhere so that people can go oh yeah this is that business I remember now and last but not least it's only through continuously being in touch with your target market that your efforts will actually have an impact it's really through that repetition through reading about you hearing about you over and over again that your customers will start remembering about you so it's very important to keep that communication going on a consistent basis so it is effective consistent and continuous communication will lead to raised awareness of your organization and that happens over time public relations is not a quick fix the same way that communication is not a quick fix you need to keep communicating with your potential customers over time for it to have an impact let me show you a diagram here that explains this a little bit further so if we look at the impact public relations can have on your business we see that by making your business more visible in the marketplace through for example media coverage social media interactions and so on we create greater awareness for your business and then by using the right messages in those communications put out there you can also increase understanding or comprehension about your products or services your philosophy your brand everything that is stand for and that's on you when people can actually start forming an opinion about your organization you know an attitude and that attitude whether it's positive or negative will actually impact on their behavior so the behavior to buy or not to buy your products and services and obviously that has an impact on your bottom line and those business results so if we want to make all this happen we need a communication plan or a public relations plan so what actually is in a public relations plan first you need to have a budget in mind because this is going to impact on what actually you're going to do if you have obviously a greater budget you might be able to do more things then a PR plan includes the objectives of your program your target audiences some key messages for those target audiences the PR activities of public relations activities and these includes the channels you will use the strategies or tactics then you need a timeline and some evaluation methods to make sure that you're reaching your objectives so I'm going to go through each of these in more detail starting with the objectives so the first step in putting a public relations plan together is to identify your objectives what are you actually trying to achieve what's your big picture what's your goal it's really important to have this clear in your mind otherwise how are you going to know that you've achieved what you wanted to achieve so you can ask yourself a few questions to help you set your objectives and the first one is who are my target audiences Who am I trying to reach out to who do I want to influence is it my customers my staff my suppliers my sources of referral my partner's my distributors who actually is it and once you've identified those ask yourself what do they actually think or feel about my brand my organization my products my services right now what do they think and feel the next question to ask yourself is what do they know so do you think and feel a certain thing but they might know different things and are these things actually correct are they appropriate in terms of what your business wants them to know the next question is how are they currently acting towards or interacting with my business and once you've identified all these these answers what do you actually want to change or achieve what do you want them to think or know about your products and services how would you like them to interact with your brand and very important when do you want to achieve your objectives by so all these questions will really help you not out what your objectives should be for your business so if I come back to the image I showed you before the objectives will normally be related to outputs outcomes or business results so I'll show you examples for each types of each type of objectives starting with output the output objectives are focused on the results of a specific activity for example by the end of June 2012 to increase my Facebook Likes from 200 to 1000 another example could be by the end of 2012 to reach out to 2 million people through media coverage about my business or to you have 5 articles published about my business so these objectives are very quantitative and they come as a straightforward result of a specific activity you're doing on the other hand outcome objectives are more qualitative so it's about raising awareness or understanding of your organization for example let's pretend I'm a health and well-being center and I offer meditation classes my target market is working months in my local community so it's retaking with them and talking with my clients I realized that these working moms don't really understand why they should take another hour of they're already very busy day to come and meditate at my centre so my objective becomes to raise awareness of the health benefits of meditation among working moms in my community over the next 6 months so this is very qualitative and it's all about the awareness and the understanding you want to create about your business or your services last but not least objectives that are based on business results are for example to add $500,000 in PR attributable cells in 2012 now to be able to measure an objective like this you need to have a very detailed sales process with leads that are qualified in terms of where they come from and even then someone may have read about your business in the newspaper so through public relations and then they decided to Google your business name then you might ask them oh how did you find out about us and the answer is probably going to be oh I just googled your business name and completely forgot that in the first place they were made aware of your business through media coverage so through public relations so you see how a direct link between public relations and the bottom line is very difficult to measure and prove so these are a few examples for you to take on board in terms of setting your PR objectives the next element of a PR plan public relations plan is your target audiences you need to know who obviously you want to reach out to you with your ideal client for example there are different types of target audiences and they're not always going to be your customers it could be your staff your partner's your associates your suppliers your sources of referrals or shareholders distributors the list is really is really broad so ask yourself who you're trying to influence in terms of your target audiences you also want to look at gender their age their socio-economic background where they live their interests might be relevant as well the more precise you can be in terms of identifying your target audiences the more detailed and specific you'll be able to be with your public relations activities and obviously therefore they're also going to be more impactful so it's very important a couple of examples of target audiences it could be that you're trying to reach out to CEOs of companies with a turnover between 10 and 20 million dollars located in Australia or it could be that you're trying to reach out you actually workingman between 25 and 40 years old living in Brisbane Metro because you've got a gym in Brisbane and you're targeting mainly men around that age so the third step in putting a PR plan together is to develop your key messages key messages are clear concise consistent description of your organization so they're not a slogan or an advertising pitch they're really factual statements about your business your products or your services and they're those statements that you would like your target audiences to remember about your business so different target audiences may require different key messages for example if you have a franchise system of health clubs you might like to have a key message for potential franchisees and that key message would be about the work/life balance and freedom a franchise owner can gain by joining your system but your key message for your customers would be totally different it would revolved revolve around the variety of equipment or classes the offer or how safe or clean your clubs are for example so you need to be tailoring your key messages depending on your target audiences and what do you actually do with these key messages you use them everywhere this should be on your website in your corporate material in your media releases in your newsletters any promotion you're doing and the reason for that is I explained before that public relations how it works is through effective consistent and continuous communication well it's the those key messages health in terms of that consistency of key messages because you're describing your business in using the same language over and over again in all different places like your website your corporate material and so on and so forth you're creating that consistency which people can relate it to you once you have your your objectives the target audiences and key messages for each of your target audiences you're ready to think of effective public relations activities to promote your business and that's really my favorite part because that's when you can be creative and think about really the best way to get out there that's that's the fun part really so I'm gonna go through what I call the PR tool box so they all the initiatives you could think of doing to get your key messages out to your target audiences the first one is the one that most people think of when they think of public relations and that's media coverage so media coverage is an article or an interview you haven't had to pay for the journalists decided to write or talk about your business because it is newsworthy it's relevant and interesting for their readers of yours so it's not advertising you haven't paid for it media coverage has a lot more credibility than advertising because people know that when they see an ad that the company actually controlled every word that was on that ad so people buy the newspaper for example to read the news not to read the ads so media coverage has a lot more credibility and there are many many ways to gain media coverage such as using case studies surveys thought leadership articles launching a new product having an event and many more I'll be actually talking about these means of gaining media coverage and how to liaise with journalists and how to write a media release at our next week's webinar and I'll give you the details at the end of this webinar they are quite a few opportunities online in the past few years online has really boomed and it's fantastic for for business and particularly for small businesses because they are very cost effective and there's a cheap means of promoting your business online first and foremost with your website it's your shop front to the world so you have to make sure that it's as effective as it can be then social media for most of it it's free which is brilliant and it's a great way to generate engagement with your target audiences I'll be speaking about website and social media that is linked in Facebook and Twitter in upcoming webinars and I'll mention that as well at the end blogs are excellent to showcase your expertise and in newsletters they're just a fantastic way to stay in touch with your target audiences on their regular basis so these are some of the ways to get your business on there online the next tool in our toolbox is Awards so winning an award is like giving your business a stamp of approval the words add credibility to your business because someone else has decided you deserve this recognition and have a look around you there may be various awards in your industry or there's quite a few business awards or they there could be also some local awards where you could enter your business and it could be that your customers have to vote for you as well so have a bit of a look around and you know when you win an award it's a fantastic opportunity to try and gain some media coverage about it so you can actually make the most of it the next activity on the list is events events are twofold you can participate in events such as expose and trade shows and that really helps you get in touch in front of your target audience or you can create your own events for example if you are a business consulting services you might like to hold breakfast seminars on various business related topics and you could invite your clients and potential clients and ask your clients to bring a contact so it's a really great way to showcase your expertise you could also another way of creating an event is you could partner up with a complimentary service to use to add more value to your event so let me give you an example I have a couple of times one of them is a chiropractor and the other one is an energy healer and they decided to hold a well-being seminar together so the benefit of that is they could combine the efforts obviously where two of them to promote their similar they could also combine their database which is brilliant so they could go out to a bigger target market and so it was a very cost effective main for them of putting their message on there and it was really successful they ended up running more than in one seminar so that's one thing to look at how can you partner up with to provide more value to your clients next activity is sponsorship so have a look in your local community for example there could be some local sports team you could sponsor or a charity or an event or an award and sponsorship doesn't always mean giving your dollar it could be that you offer your services or your products for free for example so have a look at that because sponsorship can really help create goodwill for your business next is networking so building connections is very important to any business so networking should definitely be part of your initiatives it could be a network in your industry or a business network for example a local the local Chamber of Commerce as well so have a look at what's around and then pick the ones that would be the best for your business speaking opportunities like speaking at an event like a local Chamber of Commerce or trade event or business function or a show for example the a great way of building up your credibility as an expert in your field it's someone is someone else he said we really like what you're doing and how you're presenting and we'd like you to come present in front of our group so you again they have that stamp of approval and from that speaking opportunity you may be able to get some media coverage you may be able to create an article based on what you're going to speak about or announce that you're going to be speaking at an event issues management if there are risks within your organization that could lead to negative media coverage then these potential risks the potential issues have to be identified and they have to be identified early so that you can react really quickly if something bad happens and key messages have to be to be developed for each of these issues so issue management is very important in public relations particularly for those organizations in high risk like for example the food industry or the airlines for example corporate material is essential particularly for face-to-face meetings or when you're at an event so that's a pretty straightforward one and finally one thing that can easily be forgotten if you work in a small organization particularly is your employee communication your staff even if you only have one your staff are crucial to the success of your business so they should really be taken into consideration in your communication plan so now that you've got all the elements of a PR plan let's have a look at what actually a communication plan or PR plan looks like here's a template for you so the first step is to look at to write down your objective so what you're trying to achieve in other words with this communication done then you can write down what target market you're trying to reach out to you to achieve your objectives and what key message you want to use for that target market then in the table in the channels column you write what medium will you be targeting is it your local newspaper Facebook business group I'll you I'll give you an example of a feel that communication plan in a minute in terms of PR activities it's what will you actually be doing will you announce your new service through a media release seek is speaking engagement there's a lot of social media strategy the tactics what are each of the steps you need to touch for example put the media list together gather all the information right the media release send the media relays call the journalists and who's going to be responsible for that to make sure that it actually happens and when is it do you buy to make sure that it happens on time so you can then write how you will evaluate your objectives for example the amount of media coverage or the tone of each article like positive or negative tone the number of social media fans and so on and so forth so let's have a look at an example I've put together for you in this example I'm an example I I used before a few minutes ago wellbeing Center I'm called well-being health center and our firm meditation classes particularly to working moms my objective is to raise awareness of the health benefits of meditation among working moms in my community over the next six months my target public is working months between 30 and 45 living in and around my local community my key message what I want to get across to these working months is that well-being health center my business offers a range of meditation classes specifically designed for working mothers to help improve their energy level focus patience efficiency and immune system what do I want to do to achieve this objective the first thing I'm thinking of is liaising with the media and the activities I want to do is there write an article on the benefits of meditation for women's magazines another activity I want to do is write a guest post on a popular blog for working month and I also want to organize a coffee catch up with my local newspaper to see how I could get a bit more involved in a local newspaper so in terms of the tactics I need to do I've just taken the first activity as an example I need to put the media list together gather all the information I need write the article send the article and then call it a few key journalists to maybe offer them more information or images or an interview for example who's responsible for that well me I have to do it myself so that's fine and my deadlines because I want to make sure that it happens and deadlines for each activity so each tactic another Channel I'd like to get into is Facebook because there's a lot of working moms on Facebook so that's a brilliant one to target one of the activities I want to do is first create a Facebook page and then also want to run a competition so my tactics for this first activity of creating a Facebook page one I wanna sign up to Facebook because I'm not action Facebook yet and then I want to research similar status pages I want to know what other centers similar to mine are doing on Facebook so I can maybe find some IDs as well then I will develop a series of posts I could put up on my page for the first two weeks so that I'm really ready to go when I have my business page up and running then I will create my business baby and once all this is done and I've got a couple of posts on my page I'll send an email to my clients my friends my family to my whole database of contacts to invite them to like my page and obviously I will keep posting regularly and respond to comments now who's responsible for this me and I've also got my colleague Steve who's a lot more social media savvy and who likes going on Facebook so I thought I would involve him in that project and then I have my deadlines as well that I want to stick to another channel I might like to use is organizing a free event and my activity is a well-being seminar for working months and I've decided I would try to find a partner to organize this similar to really add value to it and so that I can reach out to a broader audience my steps tactics are once you identify the partners who could add value to my similar and meet with them and discuss the details then we need to pick a bite a terminal location and we need to organize our schedule for the event then I'll prepare an announcement for the local newspaper because a lot of local newspapers have a calendar of events and if you're holding your free event they will most likely put your event in their pages then you might like to send an invitation to your database of contacts and also create an event on Facebook so you can invite people through Facebook to attend your event and you will prepare your presentation and prepare feedback form as well because you want to get some feedback from your participants after the presentation you'll also meet with your partners to you rehearse and then you send a reminder to your attendees about the event and finally oh you have a very successful event and then you collect all the feedback from your attendees and for this event you would also have all the people responsible for each tactic and all the deadlines now how are you going to evaluate this I've just put some examples here in terms of the media it could be the number of articles published and the time is so positive or negative of each article for Facebook it could be the number of fans and the level of interaction on your Facebook page seeing that the interactions are increasing they have to die and that the interactions are positive as well that people are making positive comments in terms of the free event you might like to look at the quantity and the quality of media coverage to enhance the seminar the number of attendees and the quality of feedback you've received on your feedback form so that gives you a bit of an example of communication plans based on one objective and you would obviously repeat this for each objective you have for your business once you have your communication plan you might like to combine all your promotional activities in one document like this one so it's an Excel spreadsheet similar to a Gantt chart if you have heard of that time before and on this spreadsheet you see a weight of the year each activity the tasks the timeline and who's responsible for what so for example my new product medialis has to be drafted approved distributed during weeks commencing 16th and so I think in 23rd of January you might also like to put on this program specific campaigns you're running it throughout the year for example if you have an autumn campaign coming up in March or there may be some seasonal changes that affect your business say the start of winter is a peak period for you so you might like to highlight winter in your calendar and the reason why you do that as well is because the media outlets partically magazines have very long deadlines of three months so you need to keep in mind that if you want to get in a magazine for your autumn campaign in March you need to contain that lines in three months ahead of time so it's really important to have a broad view of what's coming up in the year so you can plan in time you might also like to add in this this spreadsheet not only your public relations activities but other marketing things that you're doing if you're doing some direct mailing for example if you're attending some trade shows as well if you're advertising so really put everything there so you can have a really good look at what's coming up in your business so that's essentially how you get a public relations plan together for your business some key points I'd like you to take into consideration one have a plan otherwise you're going to do everything on an ad-hoc basis you're going to miss out on opportunities and you won't get the results you want to get or actually you probably won't know what results you want to get which isn't much better so have a plan second key point ask your loyal customers if you have an idea for example of holding an event but you're not sure if it's gonna take off ask your customers do a little survey they're gonna tell you do your customers so they actually know it what they want so don't be afraid and don't be afraid to try you can only improve by trying different things so get out there and try different things and most importantly monitor and that just as needed that's how you're going to find out what works and what doesn't work and you can keep improving over time so that's it for the main content of the webinar I know it's a lot to take in but hopefully I managed to get the main points across now we all accessed a lot of very valuable information to help us grow or transform our businesses but until we do anything with this information it's really only amounts to hot air so what I'd really like you to do and right now each of you is to be one action point from this presentation you will commit to taking on board over in the next week I'll give you a few seconds to think about it and write it down I hope everyone has fun something if you'd like to share your key point with me I would be your your action points with me I would be delighted to hear about it and hear about how you went in terms of implementing it so you will see on the last slide my email address please feel free to email me and send me your action item and I'll be more than happy to to read and respond now before we conclude we have a few more webinars coming up so I'd like to highlight them to you quickly next week we have generate media coverage for your business so we will look at how you can identify a newsworthy story in your organization how you should liaise with the media and how to write a media release the following week on the 15th of February we will cover the essential components of a great website so how can you make sure your customers come back to your website what's what are the basics important in our site on the 29th of February I'll discuss LinkedIn as a business tool how can you make the most of it if you're if you are not on LinkedIn or if you're on LinkedIn but really not really on LinkedIn because you only have a basic profile and it's probably not complete or you don't know how to use it this webinar is ideal for you and finally on the 7th of March I will look at Facebook and Twitter and how you can use them for your business so all these webinars are held from 12 o'clock to 1 p.m. Sydney time these four webinars are $95 plus GST each or you can buy the whole package of four and say $45 and all the details are on our website so you can go to WWD RTR calm a you thank you very much for your attendance today if you have any questions or comments you can contact me via Twitter LinkedIn Facebook or email there's no shortage of means to get in touch with me now when this webinar closes you will be redirected to a short questionnaire so I would really appreciate you taking two minutes of your time to answer the five questions and give me your feedback on this presentation on this and I wish you all a great rest of your day bye bye