Increasingly, clients are looking at ways to outsource big parts of the marketing, PR and/or marcom function. It’s a trend that current economic and technological underpinnings support and one that’s likely to to accelerate, so figuring out what works and what doesn’t should be on every manager’s to-do list.

Some things to consider: Read more …

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TechCrunch has a piece on Digital Telepathy, a San Diego-based PR firm that’s morphed into a services shop for web start-ups – and that’s a damned interesting evolution.
Is it the future of our industry? Not for lots of folks. But they are doing some things that are smart and worth paying attention to:

• The services are merged into simplified three-level offerings. PR agencies are notorious for over-complicating and over-customizing their business pitches, loading them up with so much gee-lookit-how-smart-we-are crap that a reasonable CEO can’t really figure out what he/she will get for the money.
• They’ve shifted their core offering from something vague and hard to quantify/understand (PR) to something simple that everyone gets immediately (Biz in a box!).
• They’ve instituted basic time lines so someone kicking the tires at the web site knows how long the process takes. Again, this is sort of a stark contrast to standard PR, where no one in their right mind wants to promise how soon they can get you on Oprah.

I know they’re in a whole other business now and so some of the comparisons to a pure PR agency are unfair. But it’s satisfying to see PR people who understood a lot of the shortcomings of the agency model and left ‘em by the side of the road as they evolved.

Greg

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I wrote this about 15 years ago and came across it while cleaning out some files. It’s a quick guide for those who have been through media training but who, right before a big interview, could benefit from having the basics repeated.

REMEMBER THE KEY DYNAMIC that takes place in any interview with the press: You know far more about your business and its relevant issues than any reporter you will encounter. If a reporter is being aggressive, he may be under deadline pressure or (more likely) is just covering up his lack of preparation and knowledge. You can use either to your advantage — helping him meet a deadline in a timely manner and/or educating the reporter during the interview in such a way that he’s ready to accept your key messages.
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This week’s outline continues the biz-dev theme, this time with a generic framework for lead segmentation. Although developed for colleagues in the consulting industry, slight variations have been used by salespeople in the industrial/manufacturing sectors, software marketing, and other areas.

Blah, blah, blah… why does anyone care about lead segmentation, right? Three reasons:

• You have to know how to deploy deploy marketing resources to the people most likely to buy… or you’ll fail.

• You have to let potential customers know what the next steps are and encourage them to take those steps… or you’ll fail.
• You have to have some idea yourself what a customer needs to know at each step of the sales cycle… or you’ll fail.

In other words, you need to divide the swamp/pie/universe/whatever of your customers into… segments. Here’s a quick way to do it.
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Business development (any sales function, actually) is a lot like dating. Or hooking up. Or whatever the kids call it these days.

• You can stand outside the supermarket, asking every passer-by to kiss you — but it’s hard work and you’re going to get slapped a lot on the way to that first kiss. (Corallary: People would rather go out with someone they know than with a stranger.)
• Politeness and attentiveness count.
• You hold hands before you kiss, and you kiss before things get busy.
• Once things do get serious, there’s a correlation between how well you knew each other beforehand and the success of the subsequent relationship.

All of this is a way of reinforcing the following points:
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Your choice of getting a good story for a reporter vs. getting client coverage has a lot to do with your approach to media relations.

Some practitioners are highly relationship driven; they’re at their best when they’re working with reporters with whom they have built up a trusted, long-term relationship. Within that relationship, they can accomplish great things on behalf of their clients.

Other practitioners rely far less on relationships and far more on over-the-top writing and pitching skills. Within this group, relationships with the media are fine, but lack of one doesn’t mean it’s a problem to get top-tier coverage.

Most practitioners use a mix of both approaches, but I’ve found colleagues tend to spend most time in one camp or the other over time.

If you’re a highly relationship-driven practitioner, it’ll force you to take a more strategic approach to your pitching — your coin of the realm consists of reporter relationships far more than pitches, and you don’t want to damage the relationships. If you’re a solo practitioner of this sort and have a client demanding voluminous hits for questionable stuff news, then the best approach may be to farm it out to someone who’s more of a pure pitchman.

On the other hand, if you’re more of a PowerPitcher™, then you fundamentally know that sometimes, you’re going to have a story that’s too subtle or too complex to get a lot of traction on because you’re essentially talking to strangers, and strangers don’t have a lot of time or patience. If you’re a solo practitioner and this is your strength, you trade strategic hits for raw volume sometimes, or partner with someone who’s much more relationship driven in their approach and has experience in the client’s space.

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