According to a book review by the Gallop Management Journal, "New Book Reveals Why Consumers Bond With Brands," "The pursuit of brand devotion has driven companies to spend many millions of dollars every year on advertising, celebrity endorsements, loyalty programs, and fancy web sites. The result? Most companies still aren't emotionally connecting with their customers...This research demonstrates that customer satisfaction is woefully insufficient when the goal is an ongoing exclusive relationship between a customer and a brand."
Like many businesses today, not-for-profit business are facing challenging times when it comes to attracting new donors, re-upping past donors, and getting by with thin budgets and staff.
One of the first rules of publicizing an event is telling people about it. Obvious, right? But so many businesses and organizations don't follow this rule. Public relations presents a simple, free way to get the word out about your event: write and submit a calendar item. Here are the steps to doing that:
As a company, we used to stress over gift-giving, wondering what gifts of appreciation we could give to our allies, friends, and family that would be well received and communicate how much we value them. As with many things, the answer came when we looked inward.
Have you ever spent hours working on a project, maybe even working with several vendors, and when you bring the final draft to your boss or client for approval, they want it tweaked so much so that you're practically back at square one? "Ahhhhhh!" Over the years, we've learned a lot about approval processes, so here are our six secrets to getting fast, easy approvals.
Good PR often involves calling out your publics to events, whether fun or serious. The best events begin with a solid plan. The following is an outline for a plan that will help you have a high impact event with minimal hassles.
Recently, several businesses have asked us to develop employee relations plans for them. These are astute companies not only from the perspective of creating a "happy work family," but also because employees make the best ambassadors. A solid employee relations plan must address the following factors that influence staff morale and productivity:
You know those brochures you had printed up last year, the ones that are stacked in the supply room? Those are a good example of the oft forgotten PR step: distribution. There have been hundreds of times over the years that clients have asked us to create collaterals for them, from giveaways to rack cards, fact sheets, etc. and when we ask them, "Who are you going to give them to and how?" there's usually either a blank stare or a vague answer like, "Our customers, you know, we'll hand them out."
Our How to Write a Fact Sheet post has consistently been one of our most popular tips over the past few years. To follow up on that, we wanted to provide you with our top three rules for a powerful fact sheet. It is important to note here that a fact sheet is an introductory educational piece that spurs initial action, such as requesting more information, checking out a website, visiting a store, etc.
The rules below are essential though often over-looked, yet, if followed, they are sure to boost the communication of your key messages to your target publics.