The New Rules of Marketing and PR. David Meerman Scott
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new rules of PR are that anybody who wants to be the leader has to have news coming out,” says Jim Peterson, president of The Concrete Network. The company’s ongoing marketing and PR program includes a series of articles on the site; free online catalogs for categories such as countertops, pool decks, patios, and driveways; and photo galleries for potential customers to check out what is available. As a result of all of the terrific content, The Concrete Network gets more than 10 times the traffic of any other site in the concrete industry, according to Peterson. An important component of the site’s content is the beautiful photos drawn from “Earth’s largest collection of decorative concrete photos.” For example, there are dozens of photos of just concrete patios.7
As president of The Concrete Network, Peterson is that rare executive who understands the power of content marketing, search engine optimization, and images to reach buyers directly and drive business. What is his advice to other company presidents and CEOs? “Every business has information that can contribute to the education of the marketplace. You need to ask yourself, ‘How can I get that information out there?’ You have to have a bit longer view and have a sense of how your business will be better down the line. For example, we created an entire series of buyer guides, because we knew that they would be valuable to the market. You need to think about how it will benefit your business and then commit to it, understanding that nothing is an overnight thing.”
Peterson also suggests getting help from an expert to get started with a program. “Don’t sit there and leave this [as] just a part of your list of good intentions,” he says. “Businesses will live or die on original content. If you are creating truly useful content for customers, you’re going to be seen in a great light and with a great spirit—you’re setting the table for new business. But the vast majority of businesses don’t seem to care. At The Concrete Network, we’re on a mission. Get down to the essence of what your product solves and write good stories about that and publish them online.”
You’ve got to love it. If content sells concrete, content can sell what you have to offer, too!
The Long Tail of PR
In PR, it’s not about clip books. It’s about reaching our buyers.
I was vice president of marketing and PR for two publicly traded companies, and I’ve done it the old way. It doesn’t work anymore. But the new rules do work—really well.
Instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars per month on a media relations program that tries to convince a handful of reporters at select magazines, newspapers, and TV stations to cover us, we should be targeting the plugged-in bloggers, online news sites, micropublications, public speakers, analysts, and consultants who reach the targeted audiences who are looking for what we have to offer. Better yet, we no longer even need to wait for someone with a media voice to write about us at all. With social media, we communicate directly with our audience, bypassing the media filter completely. We have the power to create our own media brand in the niche of our own choosing. It’s about being found on Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and niche content sites. Instead of writing press releases only when we have big news—releases that reach just a handful of journalists—we should be using techniques like newsjacking that highlight our expert ideas and stories. You will learn about newsjacking in Chapter 21.
To succeed in long-tail marketing and PR, we need to adopt different criteria for success. In the book world, everyone used to say, “If I can only get on Oprah, I’ll be a success.” Sure, I would have liked to be on The Oprah Winfrey Show, too. But instead of focusing countless (and probably fruitless) hours on a potential blockbuster of a TV appearance, wouldn’t it be a better strategy to have lots of people reviewing your book in smaller publications that reach the specific audiences who buy books like yours? Oprah was a long shot, but right now bloggers would love to hear from you. Oprah ignored 100 books a day, but bloggers run to their mailboxes to see what interesting things might be in there. Sure, it would be great to have your business profiled in Fortune or the Financial Times. But instead of putting all of your public relations efforts into that one potential PR blockbuster (a mention in the major business press), wouldn’t it be better to get dozens of the most influential bloggers and analysts to tell your story directly to the niche markets that are looking for what you have to offer?
The New Rules of Marketing and PR
If you’ve been nodding your head excitedly while reading about what some of these companies are up to, then the new rules are for you. In the next chapter, I offer interesting case studies of companies that have been successful with the new rules. In each case example, I’ve interviewed a particular person from that organization so we can learn directly from them. Following are chapters on specific areas of online content (such as blogging, online video, and social networking) and then more detailed how-to chapters. But before we move on, let me explicitly state the new rules of marketing and PR that we’ll discuss throughout the rest of the book:
Marketing is more than just advertising.
PR is for more than just a mainstream media audience.
You are what you publish.
People want authenticity, not spin.
People want participation, not propaganda.
Instead of causing one-way interruption, marketing is about delivering content at just the precise moment your audience needs it.
Marketers must shift their thinking from mainstream marketing to the masses to a strategy of reaching vast numbers of underserved audiences via the web.
PR is not about your boss seeing your company on TV. It’s about your buyers seeing your company on the web.
Marketing is not about your agency winning awards. It’s about your organization winning business.
The Internet has made public relations public again, after years of almost exclusive focus on media.
Companies must drive people into the purchasing process with great online content.
Blogs, online video, e-books, news releases, and other forms of online content let organizations communicate directly with buyers in a form they appreciate.
Buyers want information in language they understand, not gobbledygook-laden jargon.
Social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn allow people all over the world to share content and connect with the people and companies they do business with.
In our always-on world, buyers expect instant, 24/7 communications.
On the web, the lines between marketing and PR (and sales and service, too) have blurred.
The Convergence of Marketing and PR on the Web
As I originally wrote this list and edited it down, I was struck by how important one particular concept was to any successful online strategy to reach buyers directly: This concept is the convergence of marketing and PR. In an offline world, marketing and PR are separate departments with different people and different skill sets, but this is not the case on the web. What’s the difference between what Amazon, Spotify, and Netflix are doing to reach customers via online marketing and what The Concrete Network does? There’s not much difference. How is the news that Open Cycle creates itself and posts on the site different from a story on Bicycling magazine’s website? It isn’t. And when a buyer is researching your product category by using a search engine, does it really matter if the first exposure is a hit on your website, a news release your organization sent, a magazine article, or a post on your blog? I’d argue that it doesn’t matter. Whereas I presented two separate lists for The Old Rules of Marketing and The Old Rules