Carson and Company

Web sites are more than places to buy electronic products, or collect information about a company. All industries, including the medical field, understand how important it is to have a visible image on the Internet as part of their pr marketing strategies.

Recently our company, Carson Marketing, Inc., was contracted to design a web site for a board certified internist. The web site was created for Dr. Hedyeh Golshan. Unlike the typical site that is sometimes difficult to find what you are looking for, this site is geared to be extremely user friendly. The clean graphics, and bright, yet subtle colors, creates a strong image for the doctor. We used her photo on the main page so that patients can feel they have a personal relationship with the name. This was all part of the pr marketing strategy we used in developing the web site.

The site is simple, with few pages, but enough information to help those seeking a medical doctor, like Dr. Golshan, to feel comfortable enough to further contact the doctor to arrange for an appointment. When discussing the site development with our pr client, we made sure to communicate in the site what was necessary for potential patient’s to know. This included listing a chart that shows the provider ID# for the different insurance plans. As simple as this sounds, it has helped those seeking a doctor by eliminating unnecessary phone calls to Dr. Golshan’s office asking for the doctor’s ID#’s.

So how does this all fit into a publicity campaign? As I have been saying for years, “Publicity is Everywhere”. That includes a pr clients web site. The Internet may be your only visible contact with potential, and existing customers, clients, or in this case, a patient. Having a clean and uplifting web site can enhance a company’s image and establish a branding identity. If your company needs to freshen up an existing web site, or need a new web site, call George Carson at 949-477-9400. Our creative and web marketing programs are designed to get you noticed!

PR Clients should use their web sites more often as a publicity tool. If you are a pr client and you have a publicity agency, then be sure to include web marketing into your pr marketing strategy campaign.

Why do publicity professionals choose to not use a pr clients web site in their publicity strategy just doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe publicity professionals are not secure with cyber marketing. Or they feel more in control doing traditional publicity such as press releases, articles, press conferences, or other promotions. These are great, but if a pr client has a web site, why not include that as part of the pr marketing strategy? Yes, it does take a lot of work, planning and coordinating the web marketing of a web site. But then again, like I said, many pr companies, or publicity professionals rather not go into areas unfamiliar because it takes more work than they want to do.

I’m not saying that all publicity firms do this or ignore a pr clients web site. It just seems common business sense to me to include cyber marketing to drive traffic to a site. This in turn will build awareness, increase sales, and will build branding for any pr client.

Ok, let’s get to some things you can easily do to market your web site as part of your publicity campaign.

First, are you a local company, such as a local Orange County, or Chicago business? If so, you can target regional customers by using Google’s “geographic box”. The Google algorithm has the smarts to determine the query calls for results that are local. If you have several locations across the US, this works for each area you have a location. An example would be if you type the words “Orange County Publicity Agency“, or “Chicago gyms”, you will see at least 10 results with maps showing these businesses.

Second would be do a series of press releases to reach specific local areas. This sounds like more work to write a main release, then custom tailor it to fit different geographic regions, but it works.

These are just two ways to do web marketing. There are many others, including, business blogging, article submissions, offering webinars on your web site, and more. Try these, if your publicity professional just isn’t ready to make this work for you, call me, George Carson. I’ll make sure you get noticed! Carson Marketing, Inc, 949-477-9400.

I’m sure all of you know what a “tagline” is, right? Well, if you are not sure, then visit Wikipedia for their true definition.

A good tagline is one that is used with a company name, or logo. PR Clients are constantly searching for the right tagline that meets their philosophy, or helps set them apart from the competition. Companies that succeed in finding the right tagline are usually copied. For example the Nike tagline, or slogan as it is sometimes referred to, is “Just Do It”. What about the milk tagline, know what that one is? Right, “Got Milk“. But is seems that pr clients get tired of these and feel a need to change it every few years. That is something all advertising agencies and publicity professionals need to consider. If your pr client feels it is time to change, be sure you do your homework. Do they really need to do this? Are their customers thinking of them as an old company, or stale in their products/service because of the tagline? If so then maybe it is time to change.

An article in marketing pros discussed this in brief. The article mentioned Tate Linden, author of Stokefire blog, said many companies are not quite sure what a tagline is supposed to do. If that is the case, then maybe they don’t need or shouldn’t have one.

Just like those successful taglines, Just Do It, and Got Milk. Everyone was placing their logo, or name with these tags. Another person, Spike Jones says “never pick a tagline that just anyone can use” He goes on to say if you can easily place the tagline with another company logo, then it isn’t a good tagline.

I agree in most cases, but if you are able to conquer the market with a generic tagline like Just Do It, everyone knows you stole that from Nike.

Taglines are not just for pr clients and their companies. Look at TV shows, like The X-Files. Their tagline was “The truth is out there”. The shorter the tagline, the easier it is to remember.

So does your pr client need a tagline? Or do they already have one but are not using it wisely, or are they not including it in all their pr marketing strategies? If that is the case, maybe you need to promote the tagline with their name. As publicity professionals, and marketing agencies, it is up to you to guide yourr pr clients in making the right decision. If not, then someone else might take away that business from you. Need help, give me, George Carson a call. I’ll make sure you keep that pr client with taglines that work for them.

Your pr marketing strategy should include a series of press releases each month. So what is the total number of press releases to send per month? We recommend at least three per month. You don’t want to issue the same release every other week, but rather find a new angle, or create new releases each week.

We do not recommend flooding the media with dozens of press releases, especially if they are not newsworthy. That will get you negative publicity and probably be recognized as a pest to the media.

Your pr marketing strategies should outline for your pr clients a series of releases to meet the objectives of your publicity campaign. For example, if a pr client is introducing a new product, that warrants a press release. When the product has an impact, or makes an improvement to something, this can be another press release. Basically, follow through with the first press release to see how you can continue to get media attention. Reporters and publishers need good content and stories for their readers, so when writing your pr clients press releases, give them solid information that will want readers to learn more.

Keep away from “sales writing”. Press releases need to be informative, give features as to why the product or service was developed. Tell how it will affect the market, or industry. That is what reporters are looking for in their publications.

If you need help in getting your pr marketing strategy, or publicity campaign in gear, give us a call. We have the contact and expertise to get you noticed. Make the call; it can be the step you take that advances you ahead of the competition.

People are asking me to help define or give them examples of what is a business blog. When I wrote the previous “Business Blogging is Great PR” blog, I figured by now most pr clients and publicity professionals as well as advertising agencies know the difference between a personal blog site and a company or business blog site.

First, you do know what a blog is, right? Ok, let’s move. There are basically two types of blog sites: “personal blogs” and “business blogs”. The personal blog is where any individual can write about any topic, such as the weather, their favorite pet, their life experiences, or whatever they wish. Yes, sometimes it is a gripe about their job, or a problem they had with a manufacturer’s product. But that is one person voicing their thoughts. These personal blogs are set up by the individual.

A Business Blog can be similar, meaning it is one person’s opinion, or thoughts, but it relates to an actual product, or a company. You need to know that there are two types of business blogs. One is on the Internet that anyone can read and see. The other is internal blog sites set up at companies. Usually these are created by large corporations. The blogs are usually intended for employees to voice their comments internally, within a company, not readable to the outside world.

To help illustrate a business blog, look at these site. I saw them referenced at About.com:

• Gizmodo

• Google Blog

• Jupiter Research

• Loosetooth.com Shop Blog

You will see that each is different but they are all business related. One may do a review on a product, while another tells people about their store and what it offers. Sometimes a blog is written by the company for anyone to read to attract employees or make people feel good about the company. A couple of examples of these blog sites would be Google Blog, and GM’s FastLane Blog.

Learn how to start using a business blog. PR Clients and all publicity professionals need to get ahold of this powerful media and make it work for them. For additional tips, visit the site “to improve your blog“. It has a few more helpful suggestions. If you need help to build a company blog, or want to learn more, call George Carson at 949-477-9400, or visit our Carson marketing, Inc. web site.

If you are still wondering how to get your company, or pr client noticed, then look at Business Blogging. It is one of the strongest pr marketing strategies you can implement. It takes some work, but the rewards are great. First you need to realize that just having a blog site isn’t going to make things happen overnight. You need a plan, you need to understand how the blog world works, and then your business blogging will all come together.

There are dozens of companies claiming to do blog marketing sites. Only a few truly understand how this mysterious cyberworld can get you noticed. We are one of those companies who have surrounded ourselves with many of the top developers and marketers that know how a pr clients web site can become listed or ranked very high on Google and Yahoo, as well as MSN. There isn’t any top-secret formula, just a lot of planning, consistency and hard work. Like any other web site, a business blog site may take a few weeks to get indexed with the search engines.

To make your blog site more business provide the visitors opportunities to make comments on the site. Have an area that they can signup for your company newsletter, or download and article that relates to your industry. If you need assistance in getting a solid blog site that gets noticed, call George Carson. He can help with the development and the web marketing.

If you want to do other publicity activity to get noticed, then consider these other tried and true efforts. Many of them I have spoken about, but sometimes when you read it by other publicity professionals, you might listen more. These are just a few suggestions I saw that was written in an article called “How to Get killer PR“.

• Attend Events. Introduce yourself to other business people, check to see if there is a special area for networking at these events, or if they have guest speakers.

• Find something that makes you unique, a compelling theme (as the writer states). Find the strengths and uniqueness and talk to reporters about those qualifications

• Be accessible. When anyone form the press calls, or sends you an email, you need to respond in a timely manner. That doesn’t mean when you are ready, it usually means within a couple of hours or sooner.

These few tips are common sense, but often not used. Make your publicity part of your overall business plan. It should include the blogging as well as the many other campaign elements I have spoken about in the past. Look at topics on my blog like “How to write a Marketing Plan“, or “Write a Press Release for the Media Not Your Company”; another good article is “Where to send your press release”.

If you are serious about developing a blog campaign, check out “Social Media Keeps Growing…” and “Internet Marketing Tips“.

Now get back to your business blogging.

Advertising agencies and publicity professionals use different advertising marketing strategies to promote a pr clients products or services. Do you know what marketing strategies are being developed for your company? If you are not sure, then use this information as a guide to get a better understanding of what marketing strategies are about.

First, if you Google the term “advertising marketing strategies“, you will see that Wikipedia defines it into three main areas. They are:

1-Weak Strategies

2-Middle Strength Strategies

3-Strong Strategies

I want to concentrate on the strong strategies in this blog. When you see an ad campaign, or even a publicity campaign, and you feel good about it. That’s what strong strategies are about. It gets to the inner feelings of someone. An example would be, in wikipedia, the Geico commercial. Although it does have the qualities of a strong marketing strategy, I do not feel it is the best example. Not everyone feels good about or relates favorably to that the little Geico character.

Think of yourself when buying something that you really liked, such as a new car, or when you booked that vacation to Hawaii. It made you feel good. And why did you buy that specific car, or plan that special location for your trip? It is because you felt good about it when you were first exposed to the campaign. It was the creative marketing, or pr marketing strategy, or the special publicity surrounding the product that started to give you these great feelings.

As the definition says, creative strategies promote great publicity campaigns and sales promotions. So now that you, as a pr client, or even a publicity professional, know what the advertising marketing strategies are, start using them to improve your campaign. It can only make it better.

It seems like everyone is writing something. Either in a blog, or a social media site, personal web sites, and of course business newsletters. Does this mean that companies, or businesses should not have a newsletter because there is too much to read? Simple answer-NO. Whether you are a pr client, a local publicity agency in Orange County, or a national food manufacturer, you need to have a company newsletter. Not just a newsletter, but one that your clients, customers, or prospects can read because it has value.

That is the keyword. Your business newsletter (sometimes referred to as a company newsletter) should become a must-read publication. Using the Internet, this is a cost effective and affordable way to promote your company. PR Clients as well as professional publicity people know that writing to their industry can be rewarding. Your newsletter needs to have rich content. Make the newsletter entertaining. Possibly consider having a questionnaire, or take a poll about a topic that relates to your industry. This gets clients and customers involved. And it is one of the best publicity programs that any pr client can produce in-house.

If you are a pr client, or a publicity professional and are not comfortable in writing newsletters, just Google the words “how to write a newsletter’ and see all the resources. One site in particular is called right-writing. You can start with any of these sites as a guide to get the process going for your company. Having a newsletter available for download is much easier than writing a blog everyday. It may not be as strong of a marketing tool for pr clients as a blog site, but it is better to have one rather than nothing.

For those publicity professionals who are creating pr marketing strategies for pr clients, then consider writing a monthly business newsletter for your pr clients. I also recommend that all clients begin with a business newsletter, and then develop a blog site. This can be an internal, or external site. Remember, if you are unable to produce your own in-house publicity newsletter campaign, then give us a call. We will get you noticed.

With all the hype and interest of the Internet, you would think it has the lion share of media dollars. Instead it seems that pr clients, media buyers, and pr marketing strategies are still embracing old habits of media—broadcast (TV and radio).

It surprised me a little since I see a lot of pr clients, as well as ad agencies placing millions of dollars into the Internet with ads, keywords, social media money, etc. But I think you need to evaluate what is really happening. First, we are in an election year. And actually last year had many legislative issues that the people voted on which fuels the media in the strongest markets through TV and radio. That could be why these past 18 months have shown a surge in traditional broadcast media buying. There is a great article in iMedia Connection that has a graph and explains further, by the author, his viewpoint on this topic. The title of his article is “Get more relevant with niche media”

If you are seeking different ways to grow your business, then maybe this is the time to get noticed. Start developing a social network, a company blog site, or begin using your web site to attract more customers. When one segment of an industry such as TV or radio are scarce with ads of your competitors, then switch back. But keep in mind that timing is everything. If you are a B2B company, or a retailer, or a manufacturer, then check to make sure you are not promoting, advertising your company in a down time. Such as Christmas, unless you are selling hi-tech stuff, or toys.

We are now entering a heavy media buying season for political campaign advertising, re-think where you spend your marketing and advertising dollars. I would recommend that you look into establishing an online campaign. These are much less costly than a TV campaign. And it will generate a lot of customers, as well as create a branding position for your company or products. PR Clients need to be more sensitive to this as do media buying agencies, media buyers and advertising agencies. This goes for publicity professionals as well. PR Agencies need to better understand how to use online publicity as a means to be visible for pr clients. While the broadcast media gets hammered with political campaigns, then immediately following is the holiday season, promotions now can be the best time to develop that needed online campaign.

Take advantage of the next six months by establishing your company to be positioned on the first page of all the major search engines. Even at the top, maybe the top three positions. And it is possible to do this without purchasing a lot of keywords. I can’t go into how to do that in this short blog, but I will be more than happy to explain how to do this effectively and get results. Just call me, George Carson, at 949-477-9400.

When developing your pr marketing strategy for your web site, ask yourself, is buying my branded name as a keyword important?

We recently had this asked by one of our pr clients. The answer isn’t a simple yes, or no. You might think, wait, my product or company name is important, how can you say it isn’t. The reason to consider buying it or not, is purely an emotional decision, mixed with a business decision. To help me further explain this pr marketing strategy, I read an article in iMediaConnection that is titled “5 Reasons to pay for branded keywords“. The five reasons are based on a study he uses to show ten top companies, and lists those who do, and those who do not. For example you would think that McDonalds would purchase their keyword with Google, wrong. What about IBM, wrong again. Both of these companies, along with Intel do not purchase their branded names as keywords on Google, or any other search engines.

So why aren’t these big companies buying their names as keywords. Here are a few of their reasons:

• “We are already in the number one slot in the natural search results, so why waste the money?”
• “We have not integrated search into all of our marketing campaigns.”
• “We believe other companies should not be allowed to bid on our branded terms, so we take the same approach.”
• “We have not given it much thought.”

So as you can see, this may or may not be a good reason for you or even the big guys. But it is their decision. The article points out good arguments why you should consider buying the keywords. They are:

1- Consumer Behavior

2- Your competition will

3- More control, there are two others, check them out on the article.

Yet other major companies like Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Toyota and Mercedes-Benz do purchase their branded keywords. I usually tend to tell my clients, if you can budget purchasing your branded keywords, then it is a good pr marketing strategy to do so. Most companies are not worldwide and should make the decision to do it or not, before their competition does and they have no choice to make.

To learn more about web marketing, or to improve your pr marketing strategy, give Carson Marketing, Inc. a call. They can get your site noticed and positioned high on Google, Yahoo, and MSN, among many others.