Thoughts on leading your organization—and the market—through public relations, social media and other forms of communication.

June 17, 2009

Measuring The Value

Last week we met with a combined group of finance and marketing executives to discuss the value of financial and marketing communication investments.

Originally inspired by a finance exec asking about the "ROI of Marketing," the discussion during the SlideShare presentation below focused on:

  • Why measure?
  • The importance of baselines (how else can we measure progress?).
  • The notion that value occurs at the intersection of:
    • Monetary impact
    • Utility delivered
    • Reputation earned
  • What to measure.
  • How to apply the results.

    Share your thoughts ...

  • Why is measurement the "holy grail" of marketing?
  • What success have you enjoyed through measuring the value of your programs?
  • What advice to you have for helping to create mutual respect between finance and marketing?

    Posted by Tony Morse at 12:43 PM
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    June 10, 2009

    Facebook Launches Vanity URLs - Do you need to grab your brand's name?

    By now, your organization probably has one or more Facebook profiles or fan pages. Here's some important news from the site:

    Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you'll be able to choose a username for your Facebook account to easily direct friends, family, and coworkers to your profile.

    Currently, Facebook-profile URLs are long and contain many parameters. For example, John Doe's URL might read:

    www.facebook.com/.php?id=123456789

    Beginning Friday, Facebook members (including businesses) will be able to choose a "vanity" URL, providing an easier way to share your profile and allow people (and search engines) to find you. For example, John Doe's new URL might read:
    www.facebook.com/johndoe

    What to Do
    If your company has a Facebook profile or fan page, you should take advantage of your own vanity URL - both for branding purposes and to prevent someone else from hijacking your company's name. Facebook has provided businesses the opportunity to do this ahead of the launch. Just fill out this form and someone from the Facebook team should be in touch with you.

    A more detailed overview of this topic can be found on the Facebook blog.

    Ultimately, unique/custom URLs go beyond Facebook making your Web properties more memorable and findable and giving users an idea of who you are and what you're about. In a cluttered world of over 100 million Web sites, this can be a small differentiator with a big impact.

    Posted by Jason Swartz at 2:36 PM
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    June 5, 2009

    Did you hear that? Me, too.

    In a recent post I shared how a few Tweets about a situation with Amazon demonstrated that people are listening. In the B2B marketing world, similar things are happening on LinkedIn.

    This week, one of our clients announced a relationship with a leading airline and several of our team shared the news through our social networks. One team member shared an article in a LinkedIn group. That led to a discussion and an opportunity for our client's CTO to correct a misperception about their technology. The discussion piqued the interest of a researcher who offered to include our client in an industry report. More exposure. More street cred.

    So, what are the valuable lessons here?

    • Sharing articles on a social network can create incremental (or even exponential results).
    • Everyone should play a role in distributing information on behalf of your company, your clients and friends of your company.
    • People really are listening and looking for useful information and then discussing it online.
    • Social networking is critical, even for B2B companies.
    • The conversation about you will go on with or without you, so you'd better be tuned in to the groups out there.

    What are other lessons to be learned here?

    What do you think you will do differently?

    Posted by Tony Morse at 3:37 PM
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    June 1, 2009

    Interesting bits from PRSA Counselors Academy #CA2009 so far

    Attending the Public Relations Society of America Counselors Academy Spring Conference -- so far some really good content. A couple of tidbits:

    • Like most media channels, word-of-mouth is moving vertical as evidenced by the success of SheSpeaks -- a very interesting Word-of-Mouth firm focusing on female influencers
    • Lots of companies adopting a model for social media that's very similar to Padilla's -- Listen, Engage, Initiate.
    • Interesting discussions about measurement of advertising and news coverage from VMS -- one blinding glimpse of the obvious that I hadn't considered was the impact that news coverage (and other public relations outputs) has on the effectiveness of the advertising. "Strong public relations creates a condition for advertising to be more effective. Poor public relations will bring ad effectiveness way down." Interesting.
    • Amazing how many ad agencies don't consider the quality of the ad when documenting impressions. Imagine giving both a positive and negative article in the New York Times the same level of value.
    • In a panel now talking about specialization. The consensus is that larger agencies are making every effort possible to "look smaller" by focusing on specialties and creating "flanker brands."
    • Looking forward to the keynote by Robert Stephens of Geek Squad, who's going to talk about how the brand was built through public relations prior to the purchase by BestBuy.

    Posted by Matt Kucharski at 11:56 AM
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    May 27, 2009

    Why would I opt in to Wal-Mart e-alerts??

    Okay, maybe it's just me, but I think we need to apply a little bit more logic to the use of syndicated alerts by retailers.

    The other day I got an email from Wal-Mart (how they got my address, one only knows) with a "Special Invitation." Here's the actual copy:

    "At Walmart, we value customers like you. We want you to be the first to know about our wide assortment of new products, Every Day Low Prices and featured values -- available online and at your local store. Watch for our emails in your inbox, and start saving. Visit Walmart.com today." (Side note -- the company's branding police need to pay attention to the Wal-Mart/Walmart thing). But I digress.

    Let me think about this. I haven't been in a Wal-Mart in about 5 years, but NOW I can sign up so Wal-Mart can email me to let me know about the great new products available there. I've got nothing against the store, but come on -- do I really need Wal-Mart to notify me when they're selling something new?

    I don't get it. Someone enlighten me. Is this really a good use of e-mail alerts?


    Posted by Matt Kucharski at 10:53 AM
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