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.

The Global Economy is Starting to Reopen – The Guide Below Will Point You In the Right Direction as You Assess What’s Next in Your Marketing Blueprint

It felt as if there were roughly 108 days in April. During this time, you were likely inundated with messaging from marketers giving you advice on what to do during the Coronavirus Pandemic. Our own blog post written on March 23^rd discussed how to engage your audience during disruptive times. The post contained resources on how to perform a quick check on your brands’ public relations and integrated marketing messaging during the global pandemic. But, what comes next?

As the global economy reopens and consumers start to venture out to shop in retail stores and go back to their favorite dine-in restaurants, what are the best strategies or methods for the Business to business (B2B) professional services business community to move forward and adapt to our new normal?

Business to business buyers are usually informed purchasers and have educated themselves on the specific topic or service they are seeking to source for their companies. They are also usually tech-savvy and have often done their competitive homework. The role of the brand manager of a professional services company is to understand this and be effective in helping support the sales team and leading the overall B2B lead generation strategy. This, in turn, embraces the enterprise-level support of the company’s Profit & Loss statement (P&L).

A cohesiveness of this level is often harder than it sounds to achieve. But, to accomplish a harmonized association between marketing and sales, a brand can succeed by becoming an industry disruptor, especially in a time when industry disruptors have an unusual opportunity to make a difference and lead by example.

Some marketers in the business to business professional services realm will seize this opportunity; others will wait out the current events with the hope they can reboot when “things calm down.” Though, it will be the active makers, the doers, movers and changers, those who take dynamic steps now, who build marketing foundations today for a stronger economy tomorrow.

Now is the time, a time when trust and authenticity are truly meaningful.

“Understanding the intent of what information your potential customer or client seeks is the secret sauce to a long-standing recipe in the family of MarCom strategies.”

Discovery & Assessment – Our firm is one of the few full-service public relations firms in the field that requires and provides a comprehensive discovery and assessment process be performed for any company considering our public relations, advertising, digital marketing, branding or integrated marketing services. It is imperative to start with this type of process to navigate today’s competitive market. It can be as simple as creating an informal SWOT analysis, or it can go as deep as developing a complex matrix to chart out your brand’s unique situation analysis, position and needs.

Our team begins by developing a discovery questionnaire that allows us to become familiar with your company, your objectives for growth, the services you offer, and more. We also start conducting intelligence research by performing a website audit, evaluating your current share of brand voice and media coverage, and uncovering your existing digital presence. We may ask you to grant us permission to evaluate your Google Analytics and / or Google Search Console account properties, so we can better understand your existing referral sources and traffic flow.

We then conduct an in-depth Q&A session to review your existing audiences and customer / client demographics. Our team incorporates the entirety of this information into a proposed plan which can serve as a public relations and integrated marketing roadmap for your brand. This is how the strategies and tactile methods see their start and, thus, can be implemented for almost any business to business company.

Multi-Pronged Approach – B2B organizations must deploy a diverse range of marketing channels to reach prospects and convert them to sales. Some that can go unattended include business and industry trade publications and journals, blogs or podcasts, B2B product forums and review websites as well as industry association newsletters and applicable social media channels. It is important to note that not all social media channels are the best for B2B audiences. LinkedIn is one of the most productive business networking sites. But, research has shown that other social media channels can also be impactful, though this varies by industry.

 The voice and tone for messaging can also vary by platform. The one-size-fits-all approach to modern marketing will not work because purchasers and decision-makers today are informed buyers. Account-based marketing (ABM) can help with this. (ABM) combines technological insights from SaaS (software as a service) type products with intelligence from humans to create a tailored approach to marketing and sales. It is a great way to align your sales and marketing strategies and / or teams and it gives you the ability to communicate properly with high-value accounts. This method can often take longer to develop, but the results and ROI it yields are almost always higher.

Personalizing your public relations and integrated marketing strategies to include ABM is a way to approach your B2B business development process, whereas you can treat each prospect company as an individual market.

Industry Positioning via Thought Leadership – The collective knowledge within your company is often your best asset. Key account sales representatives or professional services marketing managers usually understand the needs of your prospects the most. Harnessing the knowledge of these experts can prove to be a powerful tool. The challenge of corralling knowledge from these company resources is often difficult because they are busy with their corporate roles, away on business travel, or attending industry trade shows. Our firm has developed a proven process to gently but surely extract the needed information from these individuals.

 The strategy we use is to ensure they have the tools necessary to provide information in a way that is most streamlined for them and their schedules. We develop a set of questions and answers for the company expert, analyst or adviser who would prefer to write content for an industry thought leadership piece or informative blog post in the evenings or while in between conference sessions in their hotel rooms. For those who do not wish to write out their expert knowledge, we often interview them as if we were members of the media, recording and transcribing the calls. Then, our team drafts the article or whitepaper into Associated Press (AP) style and prepares it for final fact-checking before we distribute it to the media.

The other ways we develop our clients’ content depends on the marketing channel, but this provides an example of a solid “best practice” each marketer should make an ongoing action item.

Analyzing the Data & Results – Business to business purchases are usually more complex than the average consumer purchase. Using technology together with proper marketing and public relations methods is vital to a successful program.

 Accountants are about the only people I know who enjoy combing through rows and rows of data to find the missing formula. Thankfully, today there are several excellent solutions that can process marketing-related data and the results derived from successful – and even not-so-successful campaigns – to help adjust the strategies and benchmark progress for adapting and making any necessary changes.

HubSpot is one of the top platforms to use to create a successful data-driven inbound marketing and B2B lead generation program for your business or brand. We are a certified HubSpot inbound agency and work to stay updated with our continuing education and certifications. It is our job to keep up with the technological advancements as the industry changes. This allows us to assist our clients with their own data-based marketing to produce higher quantities of inbound leads.

We utilize on-average eight or ten different marketing technology platforms in conjunction with our services. However, platforms are most results-oriented with people behind them. Our team has developed in-house proprietary processes to evaluate the results we achieve for our clients. We recommend HubSpot as an excellent first choice for any company getting started or for a company that would like to increase their B2B outreach efforts. An example of one of the unique features on HubSpot is dynamic or “smart” content that can be utilized in email marketing campaigns. Smart content is content that can be customized to change based on the specific contact or lead. These can be subject lines or offers to name a few.

The real benefit of these helpful marketing platforms is establishing key metrics to track the progress of your marketing goals. Deciding which metrics are most suited for your specific marketing campaigns involves well-defined marketing goals, from reach objectives to quarterly and annual sales targets. As you identify these aspirations, your metrics or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) should be measurable. Sometimes the algorithms can change and thus the analytics can change, so be prepared to adjust as time goes on as flexibility is ever important.

One of the most common concerns we hear from business to business companies is the fear of a missed opportunity or not understanding what the most impactful way is to spend marketing and public relations dollars, all while yielding the highest ROI and generating success. Each B2B brand or company has its own set of unique needs. Following the above four steps is a sound way to go about developing your strategy.

One thing is for certain; humans are resilient, and markets will rebound. This is the perfect time to adapt to a changing marketplace, and the change itself is bound to create new connections and engagements for your company.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions you have or if you would like to discuss our process we’ve named “Effectual Strategy at Work”.

Current events today are unprecedented. The coronavirus has caused chaos for many lives and businesses in ways that are nothing short of disruptive- for many, alarming or possibly even frightening.

If you are like us, you want to stay abreast of the latest and evolving news about COVID-19. Yet, the constant barrage of coronavirus information and updates is generating a level of stress some have never experienced.

Given your first priority is safeguarding your loved ones and home, and that you have created a safe and healthy environment for yourself and those in your care, perhaps your thoughts or worries are also wandering to business. If so, you are not alone. For businesses across most industries, pressing concerns include possible effects COVID-19 could have on first and second quarters’ revenue and profitability.

While the situation is undoubtedly serious, and it requires our full-and-upright attention, we would suggest that communication focus and ingenuity are two essential elements for keeping your business relevant in these distracting times.

Whether you are a business owner, member of an executive or leadership team or a communications professional, being proactive and strategic is imperative for unifying your messaging. In times of crises, internal and external communications for your business or brand need to convey clear and consistent information.

From a marketing communications perspective, being proactive is essential to cut through the noise and maintain open lines of communication to and with your target audiences.

Digital Dividends

For those of you who are facing canceled business events at venues, trade shows, design centers, or other onsite encounters, consider contrasting your marketing engagement strategies. Start by tackling the chasm in physical networking by implementing new digital marketing tactics. Whether you have an active digital marketing program or not, these times call for a vastly more robust approach to digital and viral connections.

Digital marketing has given rise to the restructured marketing of brands, products and services by implemented digital methods. Fueled through mobile phones, devices and desktops, a surge in screen-to-screen messaging, for now, can replace face-to-face networking. Best of all, when things calm – and they will – one result can be a stronger union of digital and in-person marketing for you or your sales and marketing teams.

For the foreseeable future, online display advertising, paid and unpaid social media, video series, Google Ad Campaigns, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, and, yes, sometimes Facebook Ads Manager can act as a foundation for business-to-business, business-to-consumer and business-to-community outreach.

If you’ve implemented these tools in the past, now is the time to revisit how, where and when to supplement your marketing plan with them. Increase their presence and frequency in your day-to-day promotions, or start by adding them to the marketing mix.

Then, there are automated marketing programs, inbound leads generators and thought-leadership webinars, along with other best-in-practice digital mediums. Productive marketing plans involve initiating these tactile virtual events and activities for branding, regardless of canceled onsite events and meetings. Stretch your marketing muscles with a host of highly creative digital connections, and harness the power of reaching more qualified and quantified targets. Not only will this advance your brands share of voice, you’ll gain new prospects for sales by reaching them for the first time or exponential ways.

The current necessity for increasing engagement with target audiences is also rife for developing a strategy with the newly popular social video marketing, which is a digital content and distribution method driven with the support of influencers. Influencer marketing offers one type of beneficial “halo effect,” which involves a positive perception of a product, service or brand by having relatable, similar experiences, or given the optimistic view or opinion of another. Influencer marketing serves real results for brands and businesses when deployed, monitored and managed across pertinent digital platforms and online channels.

Start by identifying top influencers in your area of marketing and business. Assess their online and digital presences, gauging which could act as trusted authorities or ambassadors of your brand. When you create your influencer program, the single-most critical factor is to stay focused on exactly how your carefully selected influencers will endorse the professional services you provide to your clients, or the products you sell to your customers. These digital communications can be utilized for blogs, social media, e-newsletters, infographics, images, photos, online testimonials, online reviews, and the list goes on.

Digital Dialogs

Having suddenly entered this era of critical mass-messaging to your important audiences, we recommend the best means of developing corporate or brand messages is to concentrate on being authentic, empathetic, professional, and clear. This is the time to follow your company’s brand and messaging standards like never before.

If you do not have brand or messaging standards, read the rest of this article and then schedule a meeting with your marketing and executive teams, or with your public relations agency. Conceptualize, draft, review, and refine a set of guidelines, copy and content for your business’ communications, spanning diverse segments within your internal and external contact databases.  

Choose prudently the ways in which to communicate online by generating an advanced schedule of timely and valuable insights your business has to offer. Information-packed e-newsletters, online educational sessions, virtual product displays, satisfied-client case study videos, and Facebook Live are only the cusp of many available digital platforms you can put to use to accomplish digital connectivity.

Your personnel can post and share the information with your customer groups, sales prospects, vendors, media members, and others. The result will yield digital engagement that replaces the in-person interactions that have been lost by canceled conferences, trade shows and networking events.

Digital Decisions: Where To Go From Here?

Digital marketing can be a persuasive instrument to expertly reach wide-ranging contacts from the comfort and safety of your desk or home office. Properly managed, it can be a marketing teams’ roadmap to incorporating digital platforms, strategies and messaging power that will maximize promotions and publicity.

But, many marketers have only yet to implement one or two facets of digital marketing, whereas the reality involves vast prospects to maximize the concept. If well planned and judiciously activated, your digital marketing communications will help you reach and win new customers or clients, as well as sell consumer products and professional services.

With the pressing current events of today, all of us are distracted and concerned. Though, most, if not all of us, are online throughout the day (and night). Connectivity and the chance to interact are just a click away.

We are rooting for you as you invoke focus and ingenuity for building and maintaining new or boosted digital connectivity with your target audiences today and in the weeks to follow. If you need professional consultation and public relations support, we are here for you. Connect with us about your digital marketing, crisis communications, publicity, or just to digitally say hello.

Be well,

The team at Eberly & Collard Public Relations

 

What is public relations? Why does my company need it? What does a publicist do?

These are a few of the most common questions publicists are asked. Though you can find answers to these questions and more on our FAQ page, we wanted to dig even deeper and take you on a journey through a day in the life of a publicist. If you’re looking for some insight into public relations and how it can benefit your business, take a look at these five things you might not know a publicist does – and can do for you – on a day-to-day basis.

1. Secure Media Coverage: As publicists, we are always strategizing how to develop compelling, newsworthy stories that will help garner positive media coverage for our clients. It is essential for publicists to establish relationships with key media members and know how to deliver a well-timed, targeted story, news or concept pitch as these factors directly impact the success of a press campaign.

Ultimately, an effective press campaign results in media coverage, which can build your brand’s reputation, generate credibility and attract new business. Take stock of the press coverage your business has had during the last year, two years, or longer. If you continue to watch your competitors take the stronger share of voice, it is time to explore new publicity opportunities.

Work with a public relations firm that has a proven track record of solid media coverage placements and creative media kits for its clients. A true publicist spends the better part of his or her day rolling out press campaigns and managing media relations on behalf of clients. Consider how much time and attention are needed to secure published and on-air publicity, and build an annual budget that maintains consistent media coverage for your company, corporate news, products, or professional services.

2. Integrated Marketing: In today’s PR world, publicists often manage integrated marketing campaigns in addition to traditional press campaigns. An integrated marketing strategy utilizes a customized recipe of public relations, marketing, digital marketing and advertising to promote and drive sales of a company’s products or services. On the other hand, a traditional press campaign is focused on managing the reputation, relationships and communication between a company and its customers, stakeholders or others.

Where integrated marketing is concerned, your publicist oversees a range of campaigns and projects across the marketing spectrum most or all days of the week, often adjusting goals and objectives for underperforming results.

As with any strategic plan that is put into place, someone should supervise and navigate the process daily to keep activities on track. This is where a professional publicist comes into play. Whether you are targeting businesses or consumers, turn to publicists to take your brand awareness, loyalty and conversions to the next level with integrated marketing.

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): As the digital landscape progresses, it is increasingly important to build your online presence. If you want your brand’s message, products and services to show up in search engine results, SEO can help. Publicists understand how to optimize content with keywords and phrases that are tailored to the intent of your target audiences.

If SEO is part of your overall PR strategy, your publicist will dedicate time each day monitoring your website’s position in Google and other key search engines; overseeing a robust Google Ads campaign for your business or brand; optimizing your social media channels; and tracking key metrics, such as organic traffic, bounce rate and click-through rate. By utilizing SEO, publicists can help increase your online visibility, reach your potential customers/clients and drive traffic to your website.

4. Establish Thought Leadership: PR is a powerful tool for developing a strong reputation as an industry-savvy thought leader. By engaging the media, publicists look to utilize press releases with true news about you and your personnel, brand or business to generate media coverage or publicity that positions you as an expert or analyst in your field of practice or expertise.

Then, there are articles publicists write that cover any number of expert topics within your knowledge base. These articles quote you across a range of professional and engaging subject matter you can share with your industry, clients or follower base. Publicists’ relationships with the media make publication of the articles not only possible, but strategically placed. Though, thought leadership does not stop there.

A combination of carefully orchestrated social media content, speaking engagements, blogs, bylined articles, Q&As, and white papers to create earned media opportunities give voice to and communicate credibility for your company’s leadership. Simply put, we leverage your knowledge and expertise to position you as a go-to authority within your business-to-business targets and industry or among applicable consumer markets.

5. Generate Leads: Is lead generation the job of the publicist? Some say yes, some say no. The way we look at it is, PR is a tool that can work in tandem with your marketing and business development efforts to support lead generation. We, as publicists, craft strategic content and messaging tactics for your brand and business during our day’s work to foster trust and integrity with your target audiences. This, in turn, generates leads and new business conversions for your business.

Talk to a publicist about your specific targets’ demographics, geographics and psychographics. Discuss what has worked and that which has not worked in terms of reaching and interfacing with your leads and prospects. From a viable publicist, you should expect a strategy that considers your past, existing and forecasted business development efforts.

For our clients, we conduct assessments of these precise facets of sales prospecting to guide them toward unearthing more qualified and quantified leads. A formal research and discovery process reveals gaps and issues that have kept our clients from successfully achieving maximum marketability. From there, we brainstorm and create annual public relations program plans that act as the roadmaps for publicity and promotion, equating to converting leads into sales and revenue for them.

If your publicist isn’t focusing your public relations with a diverse approach or in ways that support your sales efforts, you may want to reboot.

Whether you’re looking to gain a better understanding of public relations or exploring the next step of retaining a firm, we hope this insight sheds some light upon the ways in which publicists provide brand benefits for their clients.

Our firm works with full fervor towards the realization of our clients’ branding, public relations and integrated marketing objectives. Contact us to learn more about our process and how we jump start our clients’ publicity.

We’re currently living in the era of convenience; everything we could ever want, or need is usually accessible through a one-stop-shop experience. Need a loaf of bread and a new pair of shoes? Why go through the inconvenience of finding a bakery and a footwear store, when you can get both in an expedited manner via Amazon?

In business terms, some marketers tend to seek the “quick-fix” solutions to address their brands’ needs. We have all seen them; there are near-countless marketing support offers found online and through consulting specialists who work in one capacity or another, some being legitimate and others gimmicks. However, most savvy marketing pros agree that while the “quick-fix” promotional tactics and one-time consultants satisfy short-term deadlines, they supply less benefit for the all-important long-term sales and marketing.

In this age of efficiency, and era of infinite lists of marketing action items, strategic marketers focus on both micro-marketing daily deadlines as well as macro-marketing extended views that keep brands on target for the long haul. This can require highly skilled and specialized marketers, unified as a talented marketing team; some would say, an army.

With constantly growing marketing “to do” lists needing accomplished each day – not to mention missed opportunities caused by the “just not enough time” challenge – corporate (or in-house) marketing personnel generate this kind of valuable support by retaining “full-service” agencies.

What is a full-service agency?

A full-service agency is an entirely client-centric concept, where an agency offers all forms of marketing, public relations, and advertising services under one roof. Although Eberly & Collard is a public relations agency at its roots, we also offer digital marketing, branding, advertising planning and creative, media relations, and more. As a client of a full-service agency, you can opt for the agency to handle every aspects of your integrated marketing, or just a few. The full-service agency is entirely flexible in catering to a business’ or brand’s marketing needs and can concentrate on both requirements and creative.

This, of course, is in opposition to the specialty agency, which is an agency that only offers a single marketing and / or advertising service. To draw from a previous example in explaining the specialty agency, imagine if Amazon exclusively sold footwear and nothing else.

Having a full-service agency is essential when executing a fully-integrated marketing strategy.

Many businesses now strive to have a fully-integrated marketing strategy, meaning that all facets of their marketing (advertising, digital, public relations, etc.), are nearly seamless. However, creating and cultivating a full-integrated communication strategy using only a single specialty agency, or multiple specialty agencies, can be nearly impossible. The difficulties of integrating multiple strategies, when each service is handled by a different agency, often creates gray areas that postpone any kind of marketing plan. While synergy among various agencies is indeed possible, a streamlined fully-service agency approach produces efficiencies and effectiveness in terms of output and results in addition to costs.

For example, let’s say you’re a business owner, and you have hired one agency to handle your social media, and another to manage advertising (both buying and creative planning). In this scenario, if you ever wanted to creatively concept, plan and purchase a sponsored (paid) Instagram campaign, who would hold the responsibility? After this is determined, it is likely both agencies would work together on this project, which could lead to additional costs for you.

At Eberly & Collard Public Relations, our advertising, social media and digital marketing departments, and others like the public / media relations team, already work with each other on a daily basis and are just down the hall from each other, making communication completely streamlined. And, not to mention, when working with a full-service agency, you can be certain that each department will be on the same page when planning multi-channel campaigns, which ultimately leads to a cohesive and consistent brand-voice across all media platforms being utilized.What if I’m only interested in public relations, or a single marketing service, for my business or brand?

A commonly held misconception surrounding full-service agencies is the higher cost that comes with agencies offering more than one service. However, one of the clear advantages of a full-service agency is its ability to conform to your business’ specific marketing and media needs which saves time, and time is money.

Are you only interested in one of a full-service agency’s services? In our book this is completely fine. By signing a contract for only one of an agency’s services, you are not simultaneously agreeing to pay for all its services; the true flexibility of the full-service agency is that it can essentially offer what a specialty agency can offer, which is expert guidance in only one area of marketing. Though, as your marketing plans evolve and expand, your full-service agency is at hand to provide additional services, teams and strategies; whereas, a specialty agency can only deliver on the one area of marketing upon which it focuses.

Although public relations has traditionally been the cornerstone of our agency, at Eberly & Collard Public Relations, we are full-service and integrated marketing agency, and are confident in our abilities to service any client-need using any form of marketing. If you would like to learn more about the outcomes a full-service agency can yield for your business or brand, let us know your thoughts in the comments section below, or contact us via the Contact page of our blog and website.

 

 

As marketers, we are working with more and more data each day. I would never have guessed seventeen years ago when we started our firm that data and the science and analysis of data would be such a large part of marketing. I find, as a lover of all things technology and as a science major that I really do love the aspects of data and being able to dig into the granular world of marketing analytics. A market analysis studies the attractiveness and the dynamics of a specified marketing area or discipline. This combined with the initial findings uncovered from a brands S.W.O.T (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) can yield the effectiveness of your marketing or public relations efforts.

Yes, there are many, many ways to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and this is a topic that would take several in-depth blog posts to fully cover but I recently read an article in Inc. magazine and it reminded me that many businesses may not have time to read through an in-depth article and could benefit from having a few quick tips to use as a general guideline. So here are four easy and quick ways to do it your self. If you find yourself searching for more and would like a deeper investigation into what is needed to take your brand awareness to the next level, please give us a call or contact us to get started.

Bounce Rate – the definition of bounce rate at defined by Google is “the percentage of visitors who enter the site and then leave rather than continuing to view other pages within the same site”. If your bounce rate is under 40% then you are in good shape.  If not, then this is an indicator that once they get to your website they thought it was going to be something different or the content and user website experience (UX) needs to be improved. This cold be improved with different forms of messaging, updated site copy or even a website navigation update. Again, these are just quick simple ideas for improvement and may not always be applicable or could be entirely different based on your own brands’s marketing needs.

Organic Traffic from Search – Well, like I said, I could say enough about this specific topic alone long enough that your coffee would get cold. In short, the ultimate goal here is to develop engaging content for your targeted audience. When they are searching for topics and keyword phrases that match your brands product or service offerings you want them to find your website.  You’ll also want to see a steady increase over time when viewing this metric in your analytics dashboard.

Click Through Rate – I bet you have heard of the term “sales funnel” or “customer journey”. These terms were originally derived to explain the process a lead goes through when interacting with a brand from initial inception to actual purchase. It visually can be thought of as a funnel. We often use the term “from consideration to conversion” to describe the process. The strategy is to guide them toward that conversion. Today’s consumer wants help and guidance through this process and will go elsewhere if we do not support them in this capacity. You can set up segments in your analytics program to monitor the flow-through behavior throughout the stage.

E-Commerce Conversions – Today, you can employ marketing automation software to use cookies and track the “journey” your site visitor takes. Where do they go after they leave your site, what are their purchasing habits. Mapping this unique path across every touchpoint can hep you better understand the unique needs of your customers as well as use built-in triggers or automation to direct them along the patch and to take desired actions. Just because a blog reader or site visitor did not purchase something today does not mean that they should or did not have a good brand experience. They may return again at a later date and purchase based on the experience they had today.

I hope these quick tips were useful for you and a means to at least get you started asking yourself the right questions. You should always be thinking of ways to benchmark your success and be flexible enough to challenge the way you are currently marketing. Our firm enjoys the challenge of creating new opportunities and successes for our clients’. Call us to learn more about our process and how we get started working with new clients.

Branding can be defined in a few ways across marketing disciplines, but our firm describes branding as the touch-points through which your company is seen from your customers’ or clients’ perspectives. At Eberly & Collard, we work with brands to help define a set of brand standards for our clients, so they, and, us, on their behalf, can use those standards as a baseline guide for marketing communication.

The purpose of branding is to simply and easily help your customers understand what you have to offer and how your specific product or service is different. But this is not only a USP (unique selling proposition); it is the combination of all the ways your brand can communicate what it stands for and provides. A case study that showcases our branding work can be found here.

We take the responsibility of branding for clients seriously, and this is why we are honored to be recognized as a top Branding Agency on DesignRush.

Thank you, DesignRush, for including our firm in the list this year!