Archives for May 2020

In today’s digital world, social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools for businesses to promote their products and services. There are 3.8 billion active social media users worldwide, according to We Are Social and Hootsuite’s Digital 2020 report. With more people using social media than ever before, and the number of users continuing to increase year after year, a social media marketing plan is essential for businesses looking to stay relevant, grow online presences, connect with their target audiences, and stand out from the competition.

Here are four key steps to developing an effective social media marketing plan for your business.

Step 1: Define your goals.

The first step to any social media marketing plan is to clearly define what you want to achieve through your social media marketing efforts. When setting social media goals, it is important to align them with your overall public relations and marketing plan.

Helpful tip: Follow the S.M.A.R.T. goal-setting framework to ensure each goal you establish is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely.For inspiration, here are some examples of what your goals could be:

– Build brand awareness and loyalty.

A social media plan can help your brand become more known and reach potential customers or clients. If your goal is for your audience to gain familiarity and loyalty with your brand, make sure to post content regularly and engage with your audience frequently.

– Increase engagement with current and potential customers/clients.

To gain traction and interaction on your social media channels, you must also be willing to engage with your audience. Liking, commenting, sharing, and responding are all great ways to show your audience you are interested and listening to what they have to say. The more you engage with your audience in authentic and beneficial ways, the more attention and engagement they will give back to you.

– Drive website traffic.

Sharing content from your website and blog on social media offers your audience a chance to learn more about your business, products or services. Always incorporate a link to the respective webpage or blog post to ensure your audience is being led back to your website. Hyperlink them with vanity words that clearly specify the intended web page content. Consider also using UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) codes for these links, so you will be able to see which links produce the best click-through rates to other pages on your website.

– Generate leads and sales.

If you are looking to acquire more leads and increase sales, you can leverage social media to turn your audience into paying customers. A well-constructed social media plan will allow you to interact with new, potential customers and provide an answer or solution to their questions or needs. Once they come to see your business and your social channels as valuable resources, you will have generated a probable lead.

Step 2: Research your target audience.

After you have set specific goals for your plan, you should research your target audience to determine their interests and needs, and discover how to engage with them.

What are the demographics for your target audience? What topics are they interested in? Which social media channels do they actively use? What types of content do they interact with?

While you may already know your target audience, how do you make sure you are keeping your content relevant? Evaluate the topics you have covered to determine which are resonating with your audience most. Then, increase the frequency and conceptualize new, creative ways to continue covering those topics. Another idea to consider is sending a survey to your target audience, asking what types of content they have enjoyed the most or feedback about what they would like to see more of.

Answering these questions will help you better understand your target audience, and give you the insight you need to tailor your content to their interests and needs. Engaging content that resonates with your audience will draw them closer to your brand and the products or services you offer. Use your social content to inspire them to act by emailing or otherwise contacting you.

Step 3: Build your brand voice.

Some brands are known for being humorous and witty on social media, whereas others are commended for being friendly and helpful. The common denominator of their success is that they use a distinctive brand voice to communicate consistently across social media channels.

Establishing a unique brand voice is a key component of your social media marketing plan. Start by thinking about how you want to reflect your brand values when delivering messages to your social media audience. Then, identify two or three words that describe your brand, and keep them in mind to ensure your social media content remains on-brand.

Whether it is a post, comment, direct message, or other form of content, use your descriptors as the basis of everything you publish. Doing so will help cultivate the connection between your brand and audience, grow a loyal following, and stand out among your competitors.

HubSpot is a great example of how a B2B brand can combine professionalism with personality through a distinct brand voice on social media. The company’s brand voice is clear, genuine and witty, which offers its audience educational, relatable and entertaining content. Study their and others’ social media channels to gain perspective. Don’t forget to view your competitors’ social media and gauge their pros and cons, as this will offer insight about your own strategy.

Maintaining a consistent and memorable voice will help you tell your brand’s story as well as connect and engage with your audience.

Step 4: Track your progress and adjust your plan as needed.

Once your social media marketing plan has been implemented, you should track the progress and measure the performance of your social content based upon your goals. Doing so will help determine if your plan is on track to be successful, or if it needs to be improved or adjusted.

The key metrics you should plan to measure include follower growth, impressions, engagement rate, clicks, shares, mentions, sentiment, and conversion rates, among others. Each social media platform offers its own, built-in analytics. But, there are also a variety of additional social media analytics tools available online, such as Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Google Analytics, among others, that offer deeper insight into how your content is performing. Your public relations or marketing firm should also be providing you with this data and working with you to mold and manage your creative plan.

A successful social media marketing plan takes time to develop and refine, but it is an essential element necessary for your business to thrive in the digital world. If you are not yet utilizing social media to benefit your business, you should consider following the four steps above or contacting a marketing and public relations agency to assist you in creating a customized plan. Contact us to learn more about how we help our clients with social media strategy, content creation and audience engagement.

Why Public Relations remains essential in a business climate that is constantly redefining what the word “essential” means.

Since early-spring, business leaders across the globe have reevaluated many aspects of their daily operations, especially their procedures and practices labeled as “non-essential.” It may seem that many have their own interpretations of the phrase. But, at Eberly & Collard Public Relations, a top national public relations firm, we truly believe that as a business, there are few things more essential than a fully integrated public relations agency. After all, it was Bill Gates who once said, “If I was down to my last dollar, I’d spend it on public relations.”

In-person communication is now out of the picture for my business. What now?

If you’re looking for someone to explain the importance of public relations, or the functions of public relations, the current challenges some business are facing at the moment provide an excellent explanation.

Without the face-to-face interaction that once forged valuable relationships between your business and future customers and clients, the need for a shift towards digital marketing and public relations increases exponentially. However, digital marketing, social media and other digital-based mediums, without the aid of a full-service public relations firm, can be very difficult to start from scratch, and highly time consuming.

That said, digital mediums are, without a doubt, where you should be focusing your public relations and marketing plan at the moment. The reason being: Without strong digital marketing, media outreach efforts and social media during these times, your business and brand are simply not seen in this current business environment. That is, you are not visible to the media or possible new clients or customers without any sort of digital marketing or public relations plan in place.

Navigating the new-normal through multiple aspects of Public Relations.

The coming months will force brands and businesses across the globe to conduct their new-business outreach, brand-building and outbound marketing in an entirely different way. This may sound challenging; but, for us at ECPR, we look forward to developing new, creative digital media strategies for current and future clients. As a matter of fact, we put together a guide for businesses to use when navigating in “disruptive” times, such as these.

The guide, which laid out the best strategies or methods for businesses to move forward and adapt to the “new-normal,” was a detailed resource for the initial re-opening of the global economy, so we thought we’d also put together a handful of easy-to-digest takeaways for your public relations strategy moving forward. Each of the following are standard components for effective communication in public relations, but adjusted per our “new normal,” and aimed to increase your digital footprint.

1. Social Media

At some point in time, it was unwisely determined that social media, in general, was more of a priority for business-to-consumer (B2C) brands, and less valuable for business-to-business (B2B) brands. Given our current limits on in-person connectivity, this couldn’t be further from the truth! Though some social channels are certainly more geared towards B2C, B2B or direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands, now is the time to connect with your audiences, clients and / or customers via creative social media campaigns across multiple social platforms!

In these modern times, social media is one of the most immediate methods of PR when connecting with new clients or customers. It is also a great way to connect with current clients / customers, whether it be to let them know it’s still business as usual for you, despite working remotely, or if you have a new product / service that was originally slated to be released at a now-cancelled event.

B2B companies should, rather quickly, make the push towards strengthening their social media channels, and begin viewing them as “essential” facets of their public relations strategy. If you’re a product manufacturer that sells to other businesses, the indefinite cancellation of trade events across the globe has likely put a damper on your sales and marketing.

Trade events and shows were typically when future clients and customers could see your product, learn about pricing, and acquire the knowledge they needed to know to make an informed decision about your product and / or service. Without this valuable opportunity to market your product in-person, for now, we’d advise turning to a relatively easy-to-use, inexpensive component of social media: video.

Utilizing video via social media once required a camera, tripod, expensive recording equipment, and, in some cases, new staff to edit the video; this is no longer the case, with tools such as Facebook Live (literally) at your fingertips.

Facebook Live, or any type of video-sharing on your social media channels, is a tool that can work for a B2B product or service in two powerful ways. On one hand, you are able to provide a physical example of your product, or a face-to-face-like description of your service, in the most immediate kind of format. On the other hand, you are giving your audience, which, in this case, would be your social media followers, a glimpse of your own personality, something that would, otherwise, only be seen in-person.

For many B2B companies, personality in digital marketing can be withheld, or suppressed. However, people (and other businesses) are feeling vulnerable at the moment, and they want the people they work with to, in some way, exemplify and align with their own beliefs, and make their lives easier.

Whether you’re a product manufacturer or a software company, we’d recommend using tools like Facebook Live to offer your social media audience helpful tips that are related to your respective industry. Each week, one or two of your team members could go live for a couple minutes and offer your company’s advice or tips on a certain topic. However, it’s important to use content standards so all of these social media-broadcasted videos follow and adhere to predetermined standards.

2. Media Outreach: Editorial

If you have recently picked up and read a print publication or checked out the home page of your favorite online news source, you have noticed the headlines are a bit monotonous at the moment.

This, of course, is not all that unexpected, given current circumstances. But, through our own agency’s relationships with various publishing groups, we have learned that editors of publications are looking for, and wanting, positive headlines and news for their publications.

This is a perfect opportunity to creatively position your products or services with trade publications that are actively looking for more news to deliver to their readership. Now, that’s not to say they are striving to change the topic of their content from the most timely global news; rather, they are looking to support their respective industries served through sharing highly-relevant information with their readership. Trade media editorial, specifically, is highly trusted information, directly delivered to target audiences without the need for any face-to-face communication. When published in an admired, respected publication through editorial media coverage, your credibility can increase exponentially.

To get published in the trade-media at the moment, though, editors are looking for stories that can captivate their readers and provide highly relevant information. Despite most publications being filled with less-than-great news recently, we’ve found editors are looking for new trends being forged in their respective industries through innovations in digital technology.Take manufacturing for example. If you’re a product manufacturer with strong digital capabilities, now is the time to publicize your company’s achievements. Editors, for the coming months, will be writing many stories about facilities shutting down due to staffing issues from stay-at-home orders, and the like. However, if your manufacturing facility is highly digitized, and nearly autonomous, it’s likely stay-at-home orders didn’t affect your production, and you could operate fully with just a skeleton staff.

Currently, stories like these are highly sought after by trade media. Not only does this represent a dramatic (and interesting) shift in the way we manufacture products, but it offers the readers of publications a glimpse at what a socially distanced manufacturing sector looks like.

3. Building Brand Voice through Owned Media

Though social media is considered “owned media,” this public relations essential is, more-or-less, referring to native, website-based content. Through highly creative, brand-driven owned media, such as a company blog, brands and businesses are able to amplify their brand-voice and message.

In order to fully understand the importance of blogs, in the context of our current global economy, one must first understand the intent of a potential customer or client looking to attain a particular product or service. For the time being, any face-to-face meetings are going to be tricky for B2B or B2C client / customer acquisition. Services like Zoom allow us to meet “face-to-face,” in a sense, but first impressions about your business are now being formed via your website, and how its content portrays your brand and / or business.

The concepts of brand-image and brand voice, as portrayed through native content, are especially essential, as the usual process of new business acquisition will be vastly different for the time being. No longer are the times of multiple, in-person meetings where people get to “know” others. Now, judgements can be made based on digital, owned media alone, further emphasizing our thesis that owned media, through native content, is essential.

Brand-image and brand-voice, no longer having the platform of brick and mortar or trade shows / events, uniquely position the blog as an essential component of public relations and digital marketing. Blogs are an excellent manifestation of brand DNA, in that, the word “blog” alone implies a certain, more honest connectivity. The blog almost serves as a business’ journal, and offers potential customers or clients a unique, “unfiltered” perspective on your product or service otherwise unattainable.

As a matter of fact, it might be a good idea to begin directing potential, new business traffic directly to your blog instead of the homepage of your website.

For example, if you were looking to inquire about the professional services of a company you are thinking of hiring, and wanted an unadulterated glimpse at the company’s values and culture without meeting them in person, which of the following statements are you most drawn to?

–       To learn more about our company, here’s a link to our website:

–       To learn more about our company, here’s a link to our blog:

In the first sentence above, the word “website” seems a bit cold and unaffectionate, and in most cases, the homepage of many a website is filled with jargon and marketing copy.

However, by offering potential new clients or customers a look at your “blog,” you are taking them directly to the nucleus of your brand’s DNA.

4. Miscellaneous Facets of Digital Marketing

In addition to the three essential public relations assets, there are many directions you can take via digital marketing that are rooted in screen-to-screen messaging.

Like we discussed in our March 2020 blog, entitled, “Engaging your Target Audiences in Disruptive Times,” digital assets such as Google Ad Campaigns, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are highly valuable to develop to reach new clients and consumers.

What’s the reason behind each digital asset’s value? It is no secret that screen time has recently increased significantly across the globe and among all age demographics. But, even as restrictions are loosening, we do not forecast a decrease in the use of smart phones and other devices any time soon. So, unless you foresee people abandoning their mobile devices in the near future, now is the time to ramp-up your digital marketing for optimizing your search engine performance.

According to recent data on the subject, mobile searches have been increasing drastically over the past few years, and recently have exceeded those of desktop searches. So, if mobile SEO wasn’t trending before, it is most certainly now an essential aspect of digital marketing to consider. Not to mention, increasing investment into mobile SEO improves the ranking of your business’ content in general.

Google, which is used by approximately 95 percent of people as their preferred search engine, recently switched to a mobile-first index. This means Google is using a web page’s mobile content to ultimately determine its search engine ranking, and if you aren’t ranking well after mobile SEO, it’s likely you aren’t ranking well in general.

This idea of mobile SEO, too, returns back to our idea of being “seen” in the eyes of potential clients or customers during this time. By fully utilizing your mobile SEO, you are reaching your target audience where they are, which is at home, and on their phones.

However, pandemic or not, people are highly drawn to gathering information from their smartphones for both business and pleasure. This will all be over relatively soon, and people will continue searching for product and services on their smartphones, so the importance of mobile SEO will remain consistent.

In the coming months, we will certainly see companies with strong, digital strategies in place appear from the fog, so to speak, in good shape, and possibly with a few new clients or customers on board. It is companies like these that understand the essential and resilient nature of public relations services, especially during volatile economic moments.

The importance of public relations, in our experience as a public relations and integrated marketing communications agency, has always been an unwavering principle for our firm. ECPR is a team of professional communicators, and it is our wish to assist any brand or business looking to reach their ideal clients and customers, digitally, as we all live and thrive in the new-normal of doing business.

Pursuing name or brand recognition and seeking impactful connections with others has always been the vanguard of business leaders and marketers. The endeavor began in fledgling form and has evolved into today’s essential protocol of multifaceted marketing to engage quality leads that can be converted to sales, known as Demand Generation.

Nearly a century in the making, the early mantra, “Win Friends and Influence People” verged on an initial reputation of being almost too avantgarde. But, when the mindset swiftly took hold, it became a roadmap for the ambitious that led to global acquaintance with relationship-building and, eventually, branding.

This preliminary networking mentality was an awakening that morphed into yesteryear’s traditional public relations, involving business leaders’ strategic efforts to create mutually beneficial associations, productive forms of public influence and dynamic methods for communications management.

As many business to business marketers know, present-day marketing is breaking the mold with modernized, innovative and strategic approaches for merging marketing activities and sales goals. These demand generation tactics involve meticulously tracing the customer journey from peaked interest in a service or product to initial engagement with a brand, and onto pipeline, affinity and, ultimately, conversion.

Supply and Demand or Demand and Supply?

For those who begin and end their days with the responsibility of Marketing Communications or the charge to oversee the ways in which Public Relations begets leads and prospects, never have there been quite so many challenges as the current time. The day-to-day expectations are steep. Top of mind and listed on nearly every agenda are Search Engine Results, click-through rates, brand persona, and earned-owned-paid media, all while collecting, measuring and reporting data-driven analytics that make a real difference in the bottom line.

Admittedly, many marketers agree it can be easy to get caught up in the mounting marketing tasks waiting for their boxes to be checked before looming deadlines. Also, up front and center, current events are unearthing our well-made business plans for the new year and a new decade.

Notwithstanding, this can be a time of active evolution and positive progression for brands and businesses. For the go-getter and ever-determined marketers, challenges bring about change, and change engenders solutions.

A proactive shift in thinking and a close look at the overarching objective for most any business to business marketing strategy reveals the core of marketing: Creating interest in and generating demand for products and/or services.

There is undeniably much involved in the sales and marketing process; however, whether products or services, producing demand for available supply is where it all begins.

Demand Generation: Defined.

What is Demand Generation?

The first tangible result of successful marketing is gleaning the interest and attention of qualified leads. Think about the utter power of quality leads versus the volume of leads. Start with this as your initial target mindset, conceptualizing it as the warm-up sprint. View it as the starting line to build long-term business to business relationships.

Having vetted the inherent meaning of “Demand Generation,” Eberly & Collard Public Relations defines it as the inventive and strategic practice of creating interest in and demand for a business’ products and/or services.

Managing business to business Demand Generation involves Lead Generation tactics that engage or enlighten company leaders, decision-makers, buyers, or vendor procurement managers with supportive and nurturing content. This is an element of Lead Generation vs. Demand Generation. The concept is to garner the attention of targeted sales prospects by offering information and edification to solve problems or issues they are facing.

This is with the all-important assumption the prospect or lead and the marketer are both fully cognizant of the problem, and the marketer’s solution will provide unique insight, ideas and support in the form of usable assets.

Everyone with business to business sales goals to meet has interest in simplifying their internal processes, uncovering tricks-of-the-trade, streamlining or minimizing action items that stand in the way of progress, and sourcing content that informs and improves results. Demand Generation strategies allow you to be their new go-to source of valuable, need-to-know information.

Our own offered helpmate, take a look at these brainstormed ways to kick-off Demand Generation marketing for your products and/or services.

1.) Define and Resonate.

While product manufacturers or professional service providers often think they have a clear understanding of their clients, it is worth remembering target audiences and market segments constantly change. Annual or quarterly customer and lead category assessments, combined with competitive intelligence studies, maintain valuable intel that can be put to work in making more productive connections.

Product marketing and professional services public relations are based upon a close union between brands and their customers and clients. Knowing in-depth information about them is essential.

Defining the personas of existing and potential clients, along with the context in which they work, is critical in understanding their needs. Staying in tune with the challenges and issues they experience yields a host of ways to help them, while introducing your brand. This should already be a component to your business to business public relations strategies.

Create a scheduled content strategy to distribute information, white papers, templates, infographics, industry trends, sector-focused data charts and graphs, royalty free photos, unique ideas, newsletters, blogs, and other solutions that will engage and draw them to your business.

Self-publish, post, send, and give away these in-demand resources, and suddenly your business and brand will become a paramount resource for leads and prospects.

2.) Appeal and Delight.

If your business to business marketing strategy does not include Demand Generation, chances are the foundation of your inbound marketing is cracked. Because Demand Generation produces awareness and interest in a business’ existence, thought-leadership and expertise, the core of Demand Generation is the precursor to inbound leads.

Everyone prefers to procure professional services or purchase products from businesses and people they like and trust. When there are multiple competitive options from which to choose, buyers are going to sign contracts or place orders with those whom they believe are most appealing. If a marketable service or product holds comparative value, or even sometimes is a close runner-up, decision-makers will be led to give their business to the provider that satisfies or gratifies them the most.

Since your frequent customer and lead category assessments will reveal your audience’s needs, create tools and materials of value that provide equipage or data to address their challenges. Make a practice of this in lieu of sending continuous, overly promotional offers to your targets. Appealing resources lead to higher open-email rates than repetitive promo offers, every time.

Think of this as the phrase to cultivate and nurture new contacts or those long-time qualified leads who are just not yet ready to become a client. Give them reasons to keep your social media channels and blog in their feeds. Entertain and, yes, entice them by surprising them with the unexpected article or research study you think they may find interesting.

Use the plug-ins and prompting tools in your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to follow-up. Go for the long throw, and maximize the enterprise applications focused on customer and lead management, analytics applications and marketing automation.

3.) Pain Points and Healing.  

What does a Demand Generation manager do? He or she provides an advanced and gratis healing effect to subdue the common “pains” of potential customers or clients.

Among oversight of marketing strategy, Demand Generation leaders use their skillsets to harvest and develop short-term interactions with contacts and prospects, with the goal of converting them to leads and new customers or clients. They do so by offering attention-grabbing, curative assets and informational collateral.

They do not, however, assume their target audiences are itching to buy their products and/or services. Rather, Demand Generation managers build website traffic and incoming volume of inquiries, which are established by sparking the attention and earning the trust of targeted business to business contacts.

The concept resides in the model that indirect outreach often speaks louder than the direct, at least at the onset. When it comes to being successful in B2B marketing, communicating solutions rather than product lists or service descriptions has an astounding power to build brand reputation and win new business.

Assuming your CRM program is used to add, track, monitor, and foster your prospects, the next step is to point out that you understand the pain points that keep them up at night. When you communicate your understanding of the business struggles with which they deal on a day-to-day basis, a personalized link is established.

Couple this with the courtesy of pertinent case studies, provisional theories and your mindful interpretation of the situation with high-level acuity. Act with the “4-S” principle: Support them by supplying a sampling of your serviceability; then, rinse and repeat. In many cases, they will be all ears.

4.) Reach and Rescue.   

An unequivocal way to make your Demand Generation strategy produce results is reaching targets with screen time. Find them where they dwell. Now, more than ever, the majority of business professionals seek resources, data and suppliers of products and services online.

Work with your in-house team and demand generation agency to produce informative videos that highlight trends or subject-matter from your internal thought-leaders. Convey categorically distinctive insights and relevant commentary from an analyst perspective.

Take this a step deeper to plan and host a webinar series. Envision the goal of connectivity; when it makes sense, think beyond the masses. It is wise to invite segmented contacts specific to intentional webinar topics that echo your ingenuity, and reinforce the originality of your products and/or service. Safeguard each presentation’s theme holds unparalleled value to the audience. Videos and webinars should clearly offer relatable knowledge, viewpoints and anecdotes backed by data and research findings.

Record the webinars and supplement them with audio podcasts or video podcasts, making them available online. Distribute them via email campaigns with graphically designed landing pages, inviting recipients to download them. During and following campaign deployment, maintain an easy-to-find “Ask us questions” or “Connect with us now” online chat option. Utilize social media channels and blog posts rife with link-backs to germane pages of your website.

Enlist your sales, marketing and leadership teams as well as your public relations firm to collaborate in developing real-time video, webinar and podcast strategies, as the amalgamation of concepts and angles will prove far more effective than going it alone.

Screen time is key, but combining all forms of digital marketing with creative advertising and innovative publicity is the means to a rock-hard, integrated approach.

Manufacturing these beneficial resources opens the door to reaching potentially qualified leads, and delivering them as accessible commodities offers a form of rescue for those in need of such content.

Leads and Order.

There are numerous ways to increase business to business leads. Known lead generation strategies range from optimizing content that informs and engages possible prospects, to investing in automation technology and enacting outbound and inbound marketing. All deserve careful consideration and credence as part of the process, as long as they are accomplished in order of viability.

Start with solid footing. These four proven strategies to increase sales are the underpinning and groundwork for evoking Demand Generation.