Effective, Ongoing Public Relations

Good public relations (PR) is a carefully planned, sustained effort to establish a corporate identity, maintain credibility and promote communication between an organization and its public. In other words, it’s keeping your name and good deeds out in front of the public.

Many people think press release when thinking about PR. Press releases are good and do have their place, but one of the major functions of PR is media relations. This is maintenance of an ongoing relationship with the media. Developing an ongoing relationship with media in your industry will encourage a reporter to get in touch via phone or e-mail with the spokesperson for your company, when stories are written about your industry. It includes being mentioned and quoted in stories related to your industry, placing stories exclusively about your company and obtaining speaking engagements for appropriate people within the organization. Third party endorsement by the media sells integrity, quality and extraordinary service like no advertisement can.

Public relations is an ongoing, proactive process and hard work. It means getting the word of the positive, newsworthy item that happens at your business to the media so that they, in turn, will tell the story to their audiences — your potential customers. When this happens successfully, the end result is publicity.

Good publicity is any news that is of potential interest to the people in your community or industry. People make news. Employee promotions and awards make news. Events make news — business opening, special promotions, anniversary celebrations, participation in or sponsorship of a community event. Innovations are news — a new product, a new service.

The more your customers read, see and hear about your company’s accomplishments, achievements and activities, the greater the awareness of you and your business in the local community and industry, and a better image will result.

Awareness and a good image are what can set your company ahead of its competitors.

When someone makes a claim, you typically say, “How do you know?” The reply you most likely will hear is “I read it” not I heard it in a commercial. PR has the power to persuade the public.

Defining and Protecting Your Brand’s Image

Image may be one of the most overused and misunderstood terms in branding.

The perception of your image has marketing implications that are significant and important to the success of your business. Strongly branded organizations maximize their value through effective management of their brand and image. Companies that succeed build relationships with stakeholders that transcend products and services. The stronger your brand, the clearer the position it occupies in their minds.

What is image? Image is created –

• Through the presentation of your company, its products and services to the market through advertising and promotions
• Across your portrayal of your organization through your corporate communications, publicity and public relations efforts
• By the actual package, product or service design and delivery
• In the course of your actions with employees, community, public affairs and your customer service

Your image is basically shorthand for your brand and what your company is all about to your audiences. With all the volume of competing images, you need to have something that strikes a chord with your stakeholders in a simple, concise way. Your brand creates a belief about what your company delivers to them.

The purpose of branding is to articulate your brand’s promise – your promise to your company’s stakeholders. It is a way to differentiate your company, products and services from competitors, and to highlight a personality that is both unique and appealing. It is a multifaceted, multilayered process and discipline. It’s much more than simply marketing slogans and icons.

Well-focused and consistent attention to branding is the most effective way to compete, to rise above the noise and become a factor in your industry. It has taken on a greater significance as companies now see their brands as assets – as valuable and as tangible as their factories and patents. It’s the cornerstone upon which brand equity is built.

Managing your identity so it is an accurate reflection of your company’s image is an ongoing process. Brand management has sound disciplines that make significant differences for how well a brand is protected and presented. It means focusing on the big picture – the brand’s essence, mapping out competitors in your brand’s category, identifying new obstacles or opportunities to ensure building your brand’s value. Brand management is the ultimate protector of profit margins.

Developing and reinforcing your brand takes four steps –

Identify your brand – All the distinctive elements associated with your products and services must be identified. Why customers care or should care about what it is you offer and what makes it different from your competitors. This is the identity that you are creating for your customers.

Build your brand – After the distinctive elements are identified, it must be framed in succinct messages that people can understand and relate to. This will reinforce your brand.

Promote the brand – What good is a message if no one hears it? Your company must make a strong pledge to consistently market its products or services, and, over time, to solidify its identity in customers’ minds.

Be your brand – The message is chosen; marketing, advertising and public relations campaigns are busy promoting it. The entire organization also must be living it. There must be a direct connection between your brand and the customer’s experience – when he / she walks in your door, talks to your sales team and purchases your product or service. A strong brand identity that creates your desired image is essential for success, no matter what the size of your company.

Powerful and consistent branding has a unified look, recognizable image and concrete messages that communicate key aspects of who your company is and what it is doing.

Brand development starts with clearly defining your brand position via a unique value proposition. Your brand’s promise of value should create an emotion in a person and build value in their mind.

Positioning a brand relies on strong research surrounding your competitive landscape and your target market’s needs. You must clearly uncover and define the attitudes and preferences surrounding this need. Understanding your brand opportunities is very important. Only with clarity, will you be able to fine-tune your brand’s position to capture the best marketplace opportunity that your company can attain for its products or services.

Your brand slogan is key to your brand positioning. It should clearly define – what business your brand is in, what makes it different and why customers should value this difference and remain loyal to your products and services. It must be a strong promise of value to encourage customers to buy your brand and not go with a competitor. Your slogan must communicate your value story in a few words or phrase. A strategically positioned brand becomes known for the business it is in and its unique value.

Your brand logo intrinsically symbolizes this value. Once your brand is established and you have a well-defined and known brand position, your logo standing by itself will symbolize your unique proposition of value.

Your key messages or brand story should bring your unique value proposition to life. Your messages should make your brand name and slogan believable and easily understood by your stakeholders. Typically, it is a distinctive, one-line umbrella statement supported by few other sentences that create a picture of truth in the minds of your target audiences. Your brand story will be used in many mediums – online and offline – such as press kits, press releases, sales materials, marketing collateral, Website, blog, social media, e-mails and other communication channels.

Whatever time and effort is required to complete the evaluation of your image and brand process, it is well worth the effort. Your image, supported by your brand, is critical to your market positioning strategy and its success. The image projected must convey the competitive posture of your company. To assure that your current strategies and communications clearly reflect your company’s goals, get feedback and input from your various audiences. Do their perceptions and interpretations reflect the image you had intended?

You need to continually assess and monitor your image perception on a regular basis, identify trends and changes over time and the influence of any new efforts made to alter your image in the marketplace.

Your organization’s image is critical to your company’s long-term success. Make sure you know who all of your audiences are and how to appeal to them. Prioritize your audiences in order of need to know. Select the most appropriate means of communicating with each audience, keeping in mind key differences.

Communicating your corporate identity as envisioned by top management must begin within the organization and should involve employees in a team effort.

Deepening your brand and extending its reach takes proactive, ongoing management of your brand and image. You should put in place good planning, incorporating sound actionable strategies for enhancing and adapting your corporate image to meet your long-term goals. If you do, you will be well on your way to aligning your brand toward the image that you want others to have of your company, its products and services.

Is Your Company’s Color Sending a Hidden Message?

Most marketers understand that the consistent use of color in advertising and marketing plays a huge role in memory recall. For example, most of us understand that the persistent use of red in advertising for Coca-Cola® is done in hopes that whenever the color red is seen it will remind us of the soft drink.

However, colors are often associated with moods and meanings, and can instantly convey a message like no other communication medium. They can have different meanings depending on culture, situation or industry, and are perceived at a subliminal level, i.e., most people do not consciously think about the associations, but their perceptions of a company are often influenced by them.

Many times not enough consideration is given to the selection of color. Perhaps your company’s color was selected because it is the owner’s favorite, or a designer’s. Since color associations are processed on a subliminal level, it is important to know and understand what those associations are so that you can select colors that will send the right message.

Ultimately, you should select colors based on the emotion and image you want to evoke in each target market throughout the world. The following color descriptions generally hold true for the U.S., but colors have strong cultural associations and inferences that may differ widely from one place to another globally. Make sure you research and understand this when advertising and marketing for each location.

Warm Colors
Warm colors include red, yellow, orange and all their variations. They are the colors of the sun and fire, and generally evoke power, energy and passion.

Red is the color of energy. It can increase your heart rate, cause you to breathe faster and raise blood pressure. This physical response often associates red with passion and aggression. It is highly visible and as such is often used to represent danger. It symbolizes energy, action, courage, passion, vitality, danger and indebtedness. Use red when you want to catch attention, add energy, inspire action, or evoke confidence and protection.

Orange is the color of enthusiasm. Combined from fiery red and cheerful yellow, orange is said to be a healing color and is often used in lighter shades (peach) in the healthcare industry. It symbolizes vitality, endurance, fun, creativity, luck, curiosity and exploration. Use orange to spice things up, to increase creativity or add fun and whimsy.

Yellow is the color of happiness. As the color of sunshine, yellow symbolizes warmth, energy, light, optimism, wisdom and joy. Bright yellow is the easiest color to see, so is often used as an attention getter. Historically, yellow has been used to indicate honor and loyalty. But, be cautious when using yellow, it also has a history of representing cowardice, caution, sickness and jealousy. Use yellow when you want to increase clarity, promote sharper concentration or evoke happiness and joy.

Cool Colors
Cool colors include purple, blue, green and all their variations. They are the colors of water and nature and generally thought of as more conservative.

Purple is the color of royalty. Combined from passionate red and tranquil blue, purple is representative of balance. It symbolizes sophistication, spirituality, peace, magic, mystery, nobility, luxury and royalty. Purple is often a favorite of children and creative people. Use purple when you want to evoke imagination, balance, importance, romance, nostalgia and calm.

Blue is the color of trust. Associated with the color of the sky and sea, blue symbolizes serenity, dependability, security and strength. Blue is often a favorite of conservative people and financial institutions as it has a calming effect and inspires trust. Use blue when you want to evoke calm, relaxation, communication, solitude and peace. Avoid blue when promoting food as it suppresses the appetite.

Green is the color of nature. It is associated with growth, freshness and fertility. Its meaning can vary depending on the shade with deep greens associated with wealth and prestige and lighter greens associated with healing and calm. Green symbolizes life, learning, growth, balance and harmony. Use green when you want to evoke balance, growth, prosperity, safety, wealth and money.

Neutrals
Neutral colors include brown, black, white and all their variations. They are often used as the backdrop in design and their meanings affected by the colors that surround them.

Brown is the color of the earth. While associated with simplicity, durability and stability you must be cautious when using brown as it can be perceived as dirty. Some shades of brown, such as taupe and beige can have an upscale look and are often used in home interiors. Brown gives a feeling of solidity, however too much brown can be dull and boring. Use brown when you want to evoke warmth, comfort, wholesomeness, stability and dependability.

Black is the serious color. Strictly speaking, black is the absence of color and represents emptiness. Used as a negative, black is associated with death, fear and uncertainty. As a positive it is associated with mystery, formality, sophistication and power and is often chosen to represent expensive products. Use black when you want to create drama, be bold, evoke emptiness or the unknown.

White is the color of purity. Strictly speaking, white is the presence of all color and represents wholeness, completeness, openness and truth. White is considered to be the color of perfection and is often used to represent cleanliness. It is frequently used in healthcare, scientific and charitable organizations. Use white when you want to evoke clarity, organization, new beginnings, freshness and purity.

What Makes Good Design?

Can anyone become a great designer with the right tools? Can good design be purchased from a box, downloaded in a software program, or installed from a template online?

As much as we would all like to believe that there is some magic pill or program out there that can take your message and turn it into a professional and effective design, it just isn’t so. First impressions matter and good design creates a message with an impact that is quick to understand and has a purpose. Good design is the craft of creating solutions for customers and clients faced with a communication challenge or a story that needs to be told. It’s the craft of balancing brand, business and the information hierarchy, and assembling them into an organized and effective message.

Good design is the making of a few hundred intricate choices that build on each other in the process. It starts with defining a goal, and determining what information and branding elements should be used to create a solution to that goal. It’s then determining where the challenges are, and how to turn those challenges into positive assets to create a message that inspires and leads to an action. Preferably a sale.

Great content, or copy, is a good place to start, but it takes training and experience to shape typography, color theory, white space, and an information hierarchy, to name a few, to create a sophisticated and successful solution. The goal should be to create a message that executes your desired purpose. Here’s a tip: look away, then look back at the piece again quickly. What is the first thing you see? Where does your eye go to immediately? A well-designed piece will not leave that aspect to chance. It is almost a science on how to direct the viewer’s attention around the page to send a very clear message. And that message should come across quickly, and cleverly too, if it is appropriate. Your eye should ultimately end up at a clear call to action. Invariably, this would include company name, and of course, contact information.

What mood or feeling is your piece trying to portray? Do the colors inspire, calm and relax, make you excited with anticipation, or portray stability and dependability? Colors can be subtle or bold. They are just as important as the copy, maybe more so, because of the emotional responses they create so instantaneously. Is there enough open space, also known as white space, to give the viewer’s eyes a rest, producing a sense of calmness and sophistication, if that is the desired effect. If you want to create a sense of endless adventure, maybe the approach should be an overwhelming amount of imagery, or a busy page. It’s all part of the responses and reactions you are trying to create.

Is there balance, for solidity and strength, or a deliberately weighted element to draw attention and create excitement? Is there a sense of movement? Good design can use shapes, balance and weight to anchor or complement, to create motion or movement, or to mystify and tease the viewing experience. Good design is the execution of skilled visual direction with a purpose.

And then there’s typography, or typefaces, and how to use them. It takes experience and time to get to know how each font has a quality, or character, of its own. Pun intended. Bold or soft, bright or calm, busy or clean, there are infinite combinations that can present a unique message with each design. With the experienced and craftful use of graphic elements, along with purposeful direction and precise execution, good design can be timeless.

It’s All About the Service

Good customer service is all about bringing customers back. It’s about sending them away happy – happy enough to pass along positive feedback to others.

Recently, I called the “Help Desk” of one of our service providers. The customer service I received was not what I’d call customer friendly, but rather it was condescending. Needless to say, it left a very bad impression – so much so that I’m not anxious to call back.

Occurrences like this reinforce how not to be, but rather to listen to customers and suggest how to meet their needs or solve a problem. If a client has a concern or complaint, it’s important to address it, solve it and make sure that customer leaves with a feeling that you care about them and have met their needs.

My first job experience was in our family-owned business and my father was my first job coach. He taught me the basics of customer service that I have carried throughout my career. They are simple, but important values – greet people with a smile, treat others with respect, be courteous, look for ways to be helpful, go the extra mile if necessary. That respect in turn comes back to you and builds customer loyalty.

Good customer service is about forming a relationship with customers and sustaining that relationship. It’s making sure someone is answering the phone in person. Your voice on the phone is sometimes the only impression of your company a caller will get. When customers visit your place of business, make sure they leave feeling positive. Whether on a phone call or in person, tone is one of the most important factors in verbal communication. The wrong tone can throw off the meaning you are trying to convey.

Being reliable is essential to forming and keeping a good relationship. The saying, “don’t make promises you can’t keep” is key to good customer service. Keep appointments, meet deadlines, provide the service you promise, be consistent, and keep in communication. Follow up with a customer when a job is completed or after a purchase has been made.

Bottom line, treat customers with the same respect and courtesy that you would like to receive. It’s basic, but providing good customer service is basic.

It goes without saying – if a customer does not get good customer service, they will be reluctant to do business with you again.