7 Words that Can Put You in Ruin

Twenty-five years ago this month the iconic phrase, “If you build it, he will come,” was whispered on the silver screen in the baseball-themed movie, Field of Dreams. Starring Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones, the film had an unintentional, yet profoundly negative, impact on the perception of marketing. For a quarter century, business owners have manipulated the story line in their minds. They twisted those seven little words and repeated in their own heads, “If I build it, they will come.” They decide all they have to do is listen to their inner voice, lay down some bricks and mortar, and customers will flock to buy their widgets, services, tacos, or whatever. They enjoy their specialty and decide that marketing (paid media placements) and PR (unpaid media placements) are not necessary.
 
I'm working with a manufacturing company with a sales team that, before we started working together a year ago, couldn't clearly define its value proposition or tell the company's story. The company was built through the founder's great relationships with contractors, but 30 years after founding his business, the market place changed. Competition was closing in, spreading erroneous information, and the company was losing bids. After 12 months of building the company's communication playbook and executing new strategies, my client is making a comeback. We developed a game plan and strategically hit the target audience right between the eyes using multiple methods. We've created a fan base, and the founder increased the company's sales goal by 30 percent.

Field of Dreams has a great storyline filled with drama and mystery, but that memorable catch phrase, forgive the pun, is what box office movies are made of, not big business.

What You Did in the Sixth Grade

You sat at your desk, sharpened pencil in hand, and watched as your teacher wrote the rules on comma usage and apostrophes on the blackboard. You dutifully memorized the list of prepositions, and wrote carefully on your wide rule notebook paper that you will never end a sentence with one of those words. These rules have served you well your entire life. However, many of those standards, much like the clothes you wore during adolescence, are out of date. If you don’t stay current, you

look as if showed up to work today sporting a polyester leisure suit.

Don’t take my word for it. Check out the list below with links to sage grammarians.

Two spaces after a period – Stop it now!

Ending a sentence with a preposition – Not the offense it once was, or ever was. Worth taking a look at. (Although my fingers did have a hard time ending a sentence with at. It didn’t get any easier the second time I did it.)

Adding an apostrophe s to a word that ends in s – (ie. James’s book.) This is still hard for me to accept. The extra s appears awkward, and seems as unnecessary as wearing suspenders and a belt.

Capitalization of a salutation, or a complementary close – No change here, but the following is a common mistake:

Best Regards,
John Doe

I figured it was time to clear up the specifics of this rule.

The hard part is being bold enough to change. When do you compensate for others? You want to appear fashion-forward, not ignorant. I’ve seen people get fist-pounding mad about ending a sentence with a prepositions, “Didn’t you go to school? That’s not correct!” This is why it is important to remember your audience. Afraid to end a sentence with a preposition in your peer reviewed case study? Fair enough, but if you’re running an ad campaign targeting the youth of America, keep it casual.

If only the English language had slick ad campaigns with good looking models informing all of us of the latest style changes.

Look, commas have a new cover girl!

6 Points to Winning Fans for Economic Development

I recently completed a public relations and marketing plan for a North Texas community interested in growing its tax base. Economic development has its fans, but not everyone in the community is a cheerleader for growth. Some homeowners want things to stay the same. Others are frustrated that new restaurants and stores aren't coming in fast enough. Six days before the big game seemed like the prime time to list tips for scoring points with the public.

The one thing every PR/Markeitng Plan must have

Never has it been easier to create a whiz-bang public relations plan. There are more tools available than ever before. Start with media placements, events, newsletters, brochures, and sales sheets. Then juice it with social media. Link it, hash tag it, post it, make it tweet and tumble. Do these things and your company will see more profits, and be more highly regarded.

Right?

Maybe not.

The critical element in all of this is measurement. Was it the whiz, or the bang that made customers react to your efforts? How does someone know if all the moving parts had an impact? Which caused the biggest reaction? What should you keep doing? What needs to be scrapped, or changed? The hype comes easily, the value is harder to define. 

All of these things are great, but the most critical element is measurement. This can be click through rates on your email blasts, amount of media coverage, increased phone calls, unique URLs created placed in your brochures, and much more. If your campaign is generating likes, follows, phone calls and more – congratulations! But, if all that noise isn’t supporting your long term goals, or increasing your profits – it is time to re-evaluate.

The business development process that works

My face was flush as my feet dangled high in the air. I was five years old, gripping the cold metal handle of a seesaw, and staring down at my older sister. I shouted at her to let me down. She complied by standing up abruptly. My seat slammed down to earth, smacking my backside and bruising my tender ego.  

Today, as a business owner, I have a new position on a teeter totter that has nothing to do with child’s play. Each day work productivity faces off against business development. Devoting time to billing hours is easy to justify, and so is shirking a networking event or putting off a blog post for one more week. But I have to manage my own business development as I would a client’s, or I would have no business – or credibility. I created the following framework to avoid the whack of financial stress brought on by an immediate, unexpected shift in my work load.

Sales sheet – I use a simple Excel spreadsheet to track the contacts I make each day. It includes the name, date and method of contact I used for each individual. My goal is to contact five people every business day.

Blog – writing posts requires the most time and creativity. 

Newsletter – my electronic newsletter goes out monthly (usually). I share case studies and demonstrate my abilities.

Social media – I’ve taken a different approach to Facebook and Twitter. Rather than have hundreds of followers, I’m interested in an engaged audience group. This keeps the process manageable for me, and gives me quality over quantity.

Networking – I target different groups each month.

Volunteering –  I volunteer because I enjoy making a difference. Meeting new people and creating new relationships is a side benefit.

Nothing listed above is revolutionary, but the routine creates a sense of balance and keeps my business from slamming into the ground. 

Snagging Headlines from Sex Scandals and Superheroes

A high-profile sex scandal and comic book superheroes have gripped news coverage in San Diego for most of the summer. The mayor's alleged indiscretions dominated news coverage, while the city played host to Comic Con, a huge international entertainment convention.

The task of getting news coverage in the midst of all this drama felt like a job for Wonder Woman, or at least someone who owned a cape and matching boots. My client, Ducerus  - a national college planning company based in San Diego, gave me the assignment of getting coverage on back to school savings tips for families sending their kids to college.  

Here's how this ordinary mild-mannered PR professional persevered on the quest to get media attention:  

-I focused on parenting magazines, education and consumer reporters. Not everyone was writing about the salacious happenings inside city hall. I stayed away from general assignment reporters – they’re assigned the news of the day.

-I made it easy. I asked a local magazine, if they would be willing to accept a back to school story with my client’s byline. They did!

-I turned up the heat. Back to school is a timely story angle, but has a short time frame. I stayed on top of pitches and follow-ups.

I managed to get results without the use of a cape or super power. Ducerus was featured in the
San Diego Union Tribune, local television stations and a parent's magazine. The story was also picked up in LA and other stations across the country. As an additional bonus, a successful pitch was made to Yahoo! News. That story should run within the next couple of weeks.

  

Make a Flyer that Gets You Business

A friend asked me to review her new flyer while we talked on the phone. This wasn’t the scheduled topic of our conversation, but it was a simple request and I really wanted to see what she had developed. She emailed it to me and we sat in awkward silence as we waited for her creation to appear on my screen. Her team spent a lot of time on it she told me. She really thought I would like it.

When I fixed my eyes on the flyer, I saw what I’ve seen so many times before – a great design that was consumed by a copious amount of content. “It’s very comprehensive,” I said. A quick glance told me there were nearly 1,000 words on the page in front of me. This wasn’t a flyer, it was an essay.



This flyer uses bullet points and a fun design to
make for easy reading.

Flyers are a great resource. You can have one written, designed and produced inexpensively in a matter of hours. The problem is a lot of flyers don't get read because the message isn't clear. The business owner wants to tell their customers everything about what they do and answer every possible question. That’s asking a lot of one sheet of paper. A flyer should serve as a written elevator pitch - quickly and easily digested by anyone.

The most successful flyers can be read aloud in about 15 seconds. Here's three tips for making better flyers.

1. Determine the call to action. What do you want people to do? Call for an appointment, come into the store for a special offer. Decide the desired response and lead with that in your text.

2. Make the copy brief and use bullet points. Does it pass the 15 second test?

3. Know your audience. Are you selling to mothers, business professionals, teens? Make sure the design relates to them, and doesn’t detract from your core message.

Bonus tip: Read every flyer that comes your way. How quickly can you determine what the seller wants you to do? Can you find the contact information? Could you explain it to your neighbor after just an initial glance?

An impressive flyer can be found anywhere - even your front porch. My doorbell rang and to my surprise the man standing before me handed me a flyer that was far better than his competition. He used bullet points to describe his landscaping services, included a couple of pictures and made his contact information easy to find. Can you recall the last flyer you received from a landscaper? Before that moment, neither could I.

One might argue that a landscaper has a simple message to deliver, and therefore his flyer was easier to produce. But you should be able to describe your business, no matter how complex, in the same manner to anyone. You may not cut grass, or trim the hedges, but you sell something to a group of people. If you can’t explain what you deliver in quick fashion, nobody else can either.