One of the smartest marketing investments you can make is creating a compelling set of modular presentation slides that can be leveraged across a diverse set of audiences and speaking opportunities. TREW Marketing has provided this service to many clients, and have seen the benefits first-hand:

Efficient.  Rather than starting from scratch for each presentation, save that time by removing slides that are not relevant and making minor adjustments to improve relevancy for the audience.  Every re-use is time saved.  You can even use the core presentation on your website or on LinkedIn (through SlideShare) for additional exposure.

Consistent.  By utilizing a common set of slides, rather than creating new for each presentation opportunity, you are much more likely to be consistent with your messages.  

Impactful.  Because of the thoughtful, creative and thorough work you put into creating the core presentation, your slides are more compelling, professional, and error-free.  This presentation will have a much greater impact than that set of slides you used to throw together last-minute before a big opportunity.

Sounds pretty cool.  What is the process?

1.  Engage TREW Marketing.  Collaborating with a 3rd party helps you hone your core messages, taking out possibly ambiguity and weak or in-the-weeds info.  Our perspective is both fresh and informed by decades of experience in business communications.

2.  Start from where you are.  Do you have presentation material, even that one great slide that you think would be good to include?  Often clients will supply 4-6 presentations or other documents for us to pull information from.

3.  Outline all possible audiences.  Which modules are needed for each audience?  How much overlap is there between audiences?

4.  Pull in stakeholders.  Core presentations should have a long, active life, but only if everyone is on board.  Key stakeholders, such as leadership, need input and approval to the content

5.  Test and rework.  Give the presentation a time or two, then meet back up for tweaking.  

6.  Integrate into marketing outlets.  Through the presentation development process, often strategy may change direction or other big decisions are made.  These likely have an impact on messaging used in other media vehicles, such as the web.  Be thoughtful of changes that may be needed in these areas.

Interested in creating a core presentation for your company or organization?  Contact TREW Marketing at info@trewmarketing.com to get started.

PR seems so simple – you have a cool new product so you write a press release, send it to the editor or reporter covering your space, and the coverage starts pouring in, right? Unfortunately – or fortunately for readers who expect quality content that is vetted by experts – that is not how it works.

But it is also not magic – there are some simple yet important things you can do to increase coverage for your products and company. Here are our TREW 10 best practices to follow to increase your coverage, not in any particular order:

1. Focus

2. Speak in English

3. Tie it to industry news or trends

4. What about the web?

5. Don’t skimp on photography

6. Follow-up and make it compelling

7. Do whatever it takes

8. Deliver content suited to coverage type

9. Stay engaged

1. Focus

• I know all 27 features of your new product are really , really important, but I’m sorry to say, the rest of the world doesn’t have time to learn about all 27
• you have to be able to sell your product in a news release headline or 30 minute editor meeting, so you have to decide what you will lead with – what is the most compelling, new, differentiated feature that will be most interesting to the market?
• once you decide what this it, make it your headline
• another way to think about this that I often ask clients is, if you could write the headline for your story in the top magazine you want coverage in, what would it be?
• remember, headlines are usually around 8 words or less!

2. Speak in English

• don’t assume the editors who receive your product news understand all your company and/or industry acronyms or will think you’re smarter by using language that is incomprehensible to the average engineer outside of your company
• keep the language simple and fluff-free, explaining what your product does, who (specifically) will want it, why it is unique, and how it will be used (application examples)

3. Tie it to industry news or trends

• editors are in the news and education business - in the technical fields, they are charged with covering breaking technology and innovation news and helping readers understand how it may impact them in their jobs
• having examples of products or services that relate to a new trend or technology will be very interesting for editors
• ask yourself if  your product is related to a new OS, a new chipset, and new approach?
• if you can tie your new product into the larger market trends, it can really help set your product apart from the crowd of hundreds and even thousands of news releases they receive

4. What about the web?

• if you do all the work to write your press release, and you identify the key editors to pitch it to, and they actually open the email and read it, you have made it past a big barrier to coverage
• the next thing an editor will do is go to your website to read more about the product, look at demos of it, see what other customers are saying about it, and search for more technical information to complement your news release
• if your website is not up-to-date with additional information about the product, you may have just lost your chances for coverage
• on the other hand, if you have compelling, complementary information that further helps them understand the product and its unique uses, this can increase your chances of coverage

5. Don’t skimp on photography

• people, even engineers, like looking at pictures, and magazine publishers and editors, especially in the technical space, are eager to get good photography that makes turning the pages of their publication appealing to their readers
• help editors make their book look great – give them high quality product and application photography and greatly increase your chances of getting covered in the book
• if you have a product announcement that represents continuous improvement, vs. groundbreaking new innovation, and therefore is not as newsworthy, but you have great photography, you greatly increase your chances of that evolutionary product being covered

6. Follow-up and make it compelling

• emailing a news release to an editor and/or mailing them the hard copy and photography is not enough, you have to followup with a phone call
• however, when you call, don’t start with, “did you get my news release?” – this is the worst question you could ask an editor, who gets hundreds if not thousands a month
• rather, introduce yourself and your company, and then say your headline, “We announced a new product this week that is the first of it’s kind for XYZ” and offer to answer any additional questions they may have on your product, or the related trends he may ask about
• offer to re-send them the news release and digital photography so they don’t have to spend time trying to re-find it

7. Do whatever it takes

• an editor is constantly on deadline while also being inundated with new information, so making their job as easy as possible is key to getting their attention
• if you sent the editor your news release, but in your followup call they said they didn’t get it, immediately offer to resend it by whatever means they prefer
• if they want you to overnight it, then overnight it
• if they want the photography burned on a DVD, then burn it on a DVD
• if they tell you how they prefer to receive materials, make note of it so they don’t have to tell you again

8. Deliver content suited to coverage type

• there are different types of product coverage – clips and features
• product clips are usually printed toward the back of the book and include a short write-up and (sometimes) a photo - for this type of coverage, you want to keep your entire release under 500 words, and even shorter if possible – the more you prioritize the most important aspects of the new product and cut out the rest, the better chance you have of the editor using your release verbatim
• product feature stories are editor-written, usually closer to the front of the book, are given more space (maybe 1/3, 1/2 or even sometimes a full page), and may include multiple larger photos or images - you would target this coverage for more significant product launches, and your release may be longer, with whole paragraphs attributed to key features of the new product; in these, you may also want a quote, or even a few short case study write-ups, from customers who are using your new product successfully in their application, and you may also include a technical white paper describing more in-depth details about the benefits of the product or how it is used to accompany your release
• for product feature stories, you almost always will need to schedule a conference call with the editor, and ideally you would meet them in person so you can do an actual demonstration of the new product in action

9. Stay engaged

• if the only time an editor hears from you is when you think you have big news, your coverage results are likely going to decrease greatly over time
• on the other hand, if you work to build a long-term relationship with key editors in your space, it can become a win-win for you and the editor
• editors have deadlines every single day for articles they need to write and topics they need to cover for their readers; the more trusted contacts they have to give them sound advice and opinions on technology, trends, standards, products, etc, the more successful they can be; if you can become a go-to person for them, by the law of numbers, you will be aware and available for more opportunities to be covered
• editors are human, and appreciate feedback; if you like what you read from them, tell them; if you read something interesting that you think they’d like to see, send it to them
• take a long-term relationship approach and it will not only pay dividends for your coverage over time – assuming your products are coverage-worthy – but it will be more meaningful and you will be more successful promoting your company

We love helping companies with product launches - message development, press tour preparation, product demos, materials development, and helping ensure they get a return on all the R&D investment by getting the word out effectively and efficiently to the target audiences.

To learn more about these tips, and other important best practices such as how to take advantage of PR for search or preparing for a press tour or editor presentation, post your comment here.

A message map is a framework used to create compelling, relevant messages for various audience segments and for organizational alignment.  Whether you are launching your company, introducing the next big product/service, or preparing for other major marketing campaigns, messaging mapping is an important step in communicating effectively.

There are numerous variations of message map frameworks out there, some very basic and some quite elaborate and complex.  For the purpose of this introductory blog, I will cover the basic, core elements of a message map, applying them to a massively-popular fictitious company called Wendy’s Widgets (WW).

WW is about to launch a major software upgrade.  They have determined the launch date and key marketing activities, leading with an industry trade show.  To prepare for these activities, product management, sales, and marketing meet to create a message map.  Here are the steps they will follow:

1. Identify key audience segments. Because the launch coincides with an industry trade show, there are several distinct groups of people that the WW staff will be targeting, including media, investors, existing customers, and potential customers.
2. Discuss high-level goals for the audience segment. What do we want from the audience? Product sales?  Media coverage?  Word-of-mouth references?  What are potential roadblocks in the path to achieving these goals?
3. Discuss core messages and speaking points. How can this software be used?  What are major benefits and features of the software?  How is the software uniquely differentiated from competitive products?  How will this software change the industry landscape?  Does the software represent a business shift for WW?   Does it have implications to other WW products?  What major companies are using this software?
4. Map key message to audience segments. Existing and potential customers will be more interested in benefits and features, while investors want context of how the product enhances/changes the business.

Snapshot of a Message Map Summary

Once the group has vetted their WW software upgrade message map, they may choose to test their messages with a limited group of their target audiences.  The completed message map will be leveraged across multiple marketing activities, such as press releases, articles, direct marketing, advertising, and presentations.  It will also be distributed to sales to gain full alignment behind messages.

As the WW software launch is underway, marketing will measure results of individual activities and gather input from sales.  This may lead to messaging tweaks and changes.

Way to go, Wendy’s Widgets, in using message maps to develop and hone messages, forge organizational alignment, and ultimately grow software revenue.

TREW Marketing often facilitates the message mapping process for clients.  If you are interested in learning more about this service, please contact us at info@trewmarketing.com.

In Part I of this two-part post on social media (SM), I briefly covered the key features of Facebook and Twitter, and I gave some examples of their uses. Today, I want to provide another great example of a business use of TWitter, briefly review LinkedIn, and end with our recommendations and references of how businesses should and do use SM tools to achieve their goals. I also include other examples and a few really helpful articles.

A recent situation involving the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) provides a very real and effective use of Twitter. The CDC has been on high-alert since late April dealing with swine flu. In another post about swine flu, I talked about responding to the media during a crisis. Today, I want to focus on another aspect - the CDC’s very effective use of Twitter to communicate to the public. On May 5th, when I took the screen shot below, @CDCemergency, the CDC’s emergency response Twitter account, had ramped up to 51,139 followers. Two weeks later, they had 172,900.

Why? Simple - because, as in any other aspect of marketing and communications, content is king and timing is everything. The CDC focused on providing the facts to people, from FAQs to live press conferences, that dispel rumors and misinformation. For example, a post in mid-May simply states, “Update 5/18/09: 5123 total cases of novel H1N1 flu, 5 deaths, 48 states affected: http://bit.ly/9MRt3 #swineflu”. They provided regular updates so the information was timely - a must-do for any blog or social media site, and absolutely critical in a time of crisis. As proof, they tweeted about once a day leading up to the outbreak, but over the few weeks at the height of the swine flu outbreak, they had 127 tweets, equal to almost 5 a day.

This new channel provided the CDC with direct access to the public and helped ensure up-to-date facts were received quickly and easily. People want to help people and share important information…by leveraging Twitter, the CDC very effectively and successfully unlocked the power of the online network of others to help disseminate information factually and immediately. You can read more about their success in this recent Ad Age article (you have to register to read).

Now I’ll move on to LinkedIn, the third and final SM tool I’ll review here. LinkedIn is a free, business-oriented professional networking site. Emphasis on “professional” and “business-oriented”, which distinguishes it from Facebook and Twitter which are more mixed in focus. LinkedIn has a strong presence, with nearly 40 million users in 200 countries. It is, in essence, an online resume and contacts database whose best use is for connecting to others professionally. Similar to Facebook, you have to invite someone to “link” with you and they have to accept your link before you can see their full profile and begin interacting with them.

Your LinkedIn profile starts with your current job and title, lists past jobs you’ve held, your education, related websites and blogs, etc. You also have space to write a short summary of your work experience and areas of specialty and can ask others to “recommend” you, which is an online version of a short letter of recommendation. We recently found this nice blog post on five tips to taking full advantage of LinkedIn.

Like the other SM tools, LinkedIn is constantly adding new features. For instance, they recently added an Update feature identical to the “Share” feature in Facebook, where you can answer the question, “What are you working on now?” They also have LinkedIn “Groups” you can ask to join. When you are accepted, you can then post discussion topics that all others who are in that group can see and respond to. LinkedIn also has some nice applications you can take advantage of, such as a Wordpress app that allows you to feed your blog into your page, as you see in this image of my LinkedIn page below. Similarly, you can use the Twitter app to feed in any tweets that include keywords into your LinkedIn page.

So now we’ve briefly covered what Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are. So now what? Should you start a Facebook Fan page for your company? Or a Twitter account? And what about LinkedIn? How do you decide which one(s) to use and how? Well, to start, we recommend you first go back to your business and marketing goals. What are you trying to accomplish? Let’s take the case of the United Way group I spoke to. Their challenge was trying to engage more of their members - getting more to come to events and starting an online conversation where they could grow the community dialog in between physical meetings. For other organizations, it may be trying to grow sales or increase web traffic.

Once you know your business goal(s), then you need to look at your marketing plan. What are your goals - awareness? leads? reducing costs? positioning in a new market space? If you have not first clearly articulated and agreed on your business goals and the related marketing goals, then you are not ready to embark on social media or any other type of media for that matter. Your money and your time will likely be wasted. However, if you have your business goals - to raise sales by XX% or to increase member engagement by YY% or to lower costs by ZZ% - and you have a solid marketing plan that outlines the goals you need to achieve to help support the business goals, then you are ready to think about what marketing channels - or media types - to use to best achieve those goals.

This may sound preachy, and OK, it is. But the fact is, we see many jump in to social media without a plan
or end goal. With the buzz around social media, they feel like they’re behind and they need to jump in, and figure out a strategy later. Bad idea!

Social media is an important new tool in the marketing toolbox. Just like paid media (aka, advertising)and earned media (aka, PR), now there is social media with its own new set of rules, best practices, and costs. To minimize risk and get up the learning curve, we recommend that you begin engaging in social media with one or all of  these three SM tools by listening first. Likely your company and/or industry and/or competitors are being mentioned online, so, an important place to start is to have a small team or one employee join in and begin listening and studying others. When we began our research on social media, we found out which companies and organizations were on the various sites, and we started watching them. We also followed the online conversations of our clients to better understand the online conversation about them, which was fascinating and enlightening.

If you are trying to build community, creating a Facebook fan page is probably a great place to start. And to maximize the tool, it’s best to have a diverse set of content including video, pictures, and links to your own or other sites for relevant information. Having regular updates to the fan page is key, so before you start, it will be important to create a 2-3 month editorial calendar of post ideas and content developers so you ensure a process is in place and the quality of content stays high. Here are some nice examples of brands using Facebook to meet a variety of goals.

If you are launching a time-based, lead-generating campaign or have a big news event, Twitter can be an effective tool. With the right call-to-action (free on-site visit by an engineer, limited-time product or service discount, etc), you can send out a tweet about it, and it will likely be “retweeted” (aka, forwarded) by others. As I mentioned in my part 1 post, Twitter can also be a great way to get feedback or do research. Southwest
Airlines used Twitter this way recently when they announced new service to Boston’s Logan airport. They tweeted ahead of the announcement asking their followers to submit questions online about the new service. Then, on the morning of the announcement, they did a live interview with a senior executive, where he answered followers’ questions.

They not only got great questions, they effectively used social media - Twitter and video and their corporate blog - as a medium to talk directly to their customers and the public.

Twitter also has some really nice third-party applications, such as Twtpoll, where you can create a simple poll, send a tweet with the question, and have your followers participate and retweet. It is a fast way to get great, anecdotal feedback about a particular topic.

The primary way for companies to take advantage of LinkedIn is for recruiting. By creating a company page on LinkedIn, you can then post job openings, job-related news, and research candidates and prospects. By creating a LinkedIn Group, you can also increase the visibility of your company as others join your group and you can efficiently communicate out news to the group with the discussion feature.

As with other areas of marketing, for social media, you’ll need to try some different approaches and over time, refine your SM strategy and implementation based on your goals. There are literally thousands of ways to take advantage of these and other SM tools, from YouTube channels to blogs. Mashable.com has a very helpful post on the 35+ Examples of Corporate Social Media in Action, there is a Social media Case Studies Superlist including the social media awards list recognizing companies such as Whole Foods, Zappos.com, and Jet Blue. I liked this post, which lists alot of interesting and varied articles about businesses using Twitter.

The key to social media success is the same as with other tools in the marketing toolbox: know what your goals are, learn the rules of the game, and try different things until you find success. If you have other great examples of SM, we’d love to hear about them.

Recently, I was asked to present to a group of United Way volunteers about the basics of social media (SM) and advise them how best to take advantage of these new tools to further their mission and achieve their goals. So I thought I’d share a snapshot of my presentation here.

If you are actively using SM tools and have integrated them into your overall marketing strategy and plan, then this will likely be too basic for you. However, we have found that many are still struggling with what exactly all these tools are and how they can best be used to help achieve business and marketing goals. If you are in this latter group, maybe the information here will be helpful.

To start, one of the biggest challenges with SM is just trying to figure out what functionality these tools provide and how to effectively use them. As you can see from this image, there are hundreds, if not thousands, to choose from.

Three of the most common SM tools that I will focus on here are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. In this post, I’ll talk about Facebook and Twitter. In the second, I’ll provide an additional Twitter case study, talk about LinkedIn, and then summarize with our recommendations on how best to take advantage of these tools to meet your goals.

So, let’s start with Facebook . Facebook is a free-access social networking application used by over 200 million users globally. In order to connect with people on Facebook, you have to “friend” them (yes, the noun just became averb) and they have to “accept” you as a friend. Once you are connected, you can begin networking: see their activity, who else they’re friends with, comment back on their updates, etc. Some cool features of Facebook include the ability to posts websites, images, and video right on your page. This is an important point and distinction from an environment such as email or even other SM environments, where you have to click on a link and go to another site to view it. On Facebook, it serves it all up right there on your page.

Another cool feature of Facebook is the ability to “become a fan” of pages. They could be company pages, cause-oriented campaigns, Hollywood stars, etc. This is not only fun for users to “become a fan” of groups they are associated with, care about, and/or want to promote to their friends, but they can be a very effective way for organizations and businesses to create an online community where they can keep users, donors, and constituents up to date on the happenings of the group. You can efficiently feed content to your Facebook fan page by linking it with your organizations’ blog, so blog posts automatically feed into your Facebook page.

Similar to fan pages, nonrprofits can create Cause pages that users can join. With Cause pages, interested users can join and thereby encourage their friends to learn more and join as well. While these Cause pages have not shown success in actually raising dollars for nonprofits, they can quickly and efficiently raise awareness and visibility of the work of the organization in a cost-effective manner. There are many more features of Facebook, and new applications introduced daily. We strongly recommend a serious evaluation of Facebook for your department, product, individual brand, or company/organization for these and many other benefits.

Secondly, let’s look at Twitter, which is a free-access microblogging SM networking tool. The essence of Twitter is short 140 character “tweets” very similar to the updates in Facebook. You can use tools such as TweetSync to have your tweets automatically feed into your Facebook page. Unlike Facebook, where you can only talk to “friends” who’ve accepted you, you can “follow” anyone on Twitter whether they reciprocate or not - ie, you can follow others even if they don’t follow you. Also unlike Facebook, Twitter provides great search ability and can be a very effective tool for quick research. As a simple example, a few weeks ago, I was trying to compress a video and having trouble. I sent a tweet out to ask if anyone had advice, and using TweetSync, had it also appear on my Facebook page. Literally within minutes, I had two responses - one on Facebook from a personal friend and one on Twitter from someone I had never met. I had my problem solved almost immediately.

There are many, many tips to effectively using Twitter and many perceived “rules” that you don’t necessarily need to follow. While I won’t go into all them here, a critical practice to using Twitter successfully is setting expectations for what your followers can expect from the specific account. For example, Dell Outlet uses their Twitter account exclusively for sharing deals on Dell equipment. That’s it. They don’t follow others, they don’t mix up the content of their tweets to be funny jokes, personal stories, and business information. They share great deals, and that’s it. And if the number of followers is any indication, it’s working. When I checked today, they had 583,428 followers. And how many do they follow, you may ask? 23 users.

Twitter is a very fast-growing, popular SM tool. In fact, Twitter saw 1M new users in December 2009 alone, and as of this presentation in early May, had a total of 4.3 M users according to mashable.com, including many stars, politicians, and some of the most well-known brands. We see huge potential for businesses and individuals to leverage Twitter for their business and marketing goals.

Look for the next post to cover another Twitter case study, a brief overview of LinkedIn, and a wrap up with our recommendations for how best to leverage SM tools to meet your business objectives.

Last month, TREW Marketing had the honor of leading the marketing strategy, planning, and execution of an awareness campaign, We Are One Central Texas. The campaign centered on video and social media, including Facebook, Twitter and a customized web landing page, as well as traditional PR outreach.

We were very excited when Monica Williams, editor of Giving City Austin magazine, wanted to do a “behind-the-scenes” feature of the campaign and videoshoot. The new issue of Giving City Austin just released this week, and the feature, as well as the entire magazine, are terrific. You can read the full article about the campaign starting on page 36.

Thanks to Monica and her colleagues and staff at Giving City Austin for the fantastic coverage and support of the campaign. If you want to find out more about how these and other nonprofits collaborate or share your own story of nonprofit collaboration, be sure to become a fan of the Facebook page and comment away!

One of the best ways to learn about marketing and communication is by watching and listening to others. Last month, Domino’s used video and great attention to their content to  communicate to their audiences. While this example happened to occur during a crisis, it provides lessons that marketers can use every day, including:

1. using video to communicate a message,
2. choosing words that help us seem approachable, real and authentic, and
3. remembering that content is king and timing is everything.

You may have heard about the very unfortunate crisis Domino’s faced when two employees posted a disgusting and offensive video while preparing pizzas (pizza ingredients up noses, etc - really nice stuff!). This struck at the core of Domino’s promise to their customers - that the pizza they sell is fresh, safe and prepared by clean people in clean kitchens. If you don’t have this basic trust, you don’t sell pizzas.

It would be one thing to read about this in the paper or on a blog, But, the fact that it was posted online as a video made this immediately global and very, very real and shocking. The video viralized instantaneously, and as a New York Times article pointed out, a few days after the posting, “the video had been viewed more than a million times on YouTube.” And with the masses on social media, it was accelerated even more quickly with discussions about Domino’s throughout Twitter linking back to the video.

This is not necessarily a new phenomenon - we see examples of the power of viralization every day. Think Susan Boyle But this is a very serious matter, and responding by video is a big risk AND opportunity. What is said, who says it, and most importantly of all, how it is said, has the potential to stabilize OR do even more damage to the Domino’s brand. Watch the video, and then I’ll share my opinion about how well I thought it was executed.

I personally thought the delivery was spot-on. The spokesperson, Patrick Doyle, is President of Domino’s USA, and has the high-ranking title needed to demonstrate the seriousness of the matter. He is also, by title, clearly the one responsible for the region in which the crisis took place. He apologizes within the first 15 seconds of the video, and goes on to succinctly and, in my opinion, sincerely, communicate important points including the quick and decisive action taken to dismiss and arrest the employees. Mr. Doyle also did an outstanding job of making Domino’s feel very local and personal with comments such as “this was an isolated incident in Conover, North Carolina”, “the independent owner of that store is reeling from the damage this has caused”, and mentioning that Domino’s employs “125,000 men and women [who] work for local business owners.” In addition, his use of every-day language, such as “sanitized from top to bottom” “delivering high quality food to our customers day in and day out”, and “thank you for hanging in there with us” also made him feel authentic and approachable.

For the most part, Domino’s is getting kudos for their response, as detailed in this USA Today article. The one area where they are being criticized is in the timing of the apology video, which came 2 days after the employee video surfaced - the equivalent of weeks in online crisis time. Timing is everything, especially in a time of crisis, as US Airways discovered in their lack of response following the crash of Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in January. In Domino’s defense, they did respond within hours on a blog where the video was first mentioned, and then on Twitter. The video then followed two days later. In the end, while the sooner they would have put out the video, the more authentic and effective it would have been in addressing the public’s trust in Domino’s, overall they responded in a very timely manner and have been applauded for their overall handling of the crisis.

This is a great example that we can all learn from. Do you have others? Please share them here. Do you disagree or have additional thoughts? Please add your comments.

Congratulations!  You’ve created a product, figured out your pricing and distribution model (not to mention a ton of other details), and are ready to bring it to market. Or almost ready.  First you need a positioning statement.  The following blog outlines the what, why and how of creating a positioning statement.  This information was derived from a recent presentation by TREW Marketing’s Kelly Cottrell at the Central Texas Funding Network Symposium.

What is a positioning statement?  A statement or set of statements specifically used to create an image in the mind of your customers.  It is how you want them to visualize your product in relation to the market and competition.  

Positioning statements should be created before beginning your marketing efforts, since it gives focus to your marketing efforts and influences your company branding.  Your positioning statement is a core component of marketing activity.

How do I go about creating my positioning statement?  

Step1:  Deep thinking and research.  This includes asking yourself some questions, such as “What business am I in, and how is it different?”  ”Who is my target audience, and what needs do they have that I can solve?”  ”What are the key benefits of my solution?”  To thoroughly answer these questions, you will need to do some market and customer research.  This could be done informally through customer interviews, social media, and Google searches, or more formally by engaging a formal research project.  Don’t assume you know it all — validate your ideas and thoughts.  Through this process you may find yourself aligning your product’s strengths to customer needs and care-abouts, perhaps even tweaking the product itself.

Step 2:  Create Your Positioning Statement v1.  

Congratulations!  You’ve created your first positioning statement.  Have I mentioned yet that this is an iterative process?

Step 3:  Repeat steps 1 and 2.  You will leverage your positioning statement like crazy, once finalized. Your sales force will become masters at delivering it.  Your marketing efforts will incorporate it into everything they do.  Get it right at the beginning and save yourself what could be a very costly mid-stream change down the road.

Step 4:  Unleash your marketing communications strategy, beginning with the communications brief and message matrix.  This is one of several areas where your positioning statement (and underlying research data) heads next.  Your internal marketing leader or TREW Marketing Virtual Marketing Director will create segmented messages based on identified targeted audiences.  

In summary, creating a thoughtful product positioning statement will take you far down the road to success, and prevent costly mistakes once moving into sales and marketing execution.  TREW Marketing offers coaching services to help you develop your product positioning statement and make the transition into marketing strategy.  Please contact us at info@trewmarketing.com for more information.

With the outbreak of swine flu in the past week, we see once again that when crisis strikes, there is little time to prepare, and quick and decisive action is critical to effectively responding. During such a time, one action you will likely be faced with is responding to the media.

Here are 7 things to remember in responding to the media during a crisis. In later posts, we will address steps to prepare for a crisis as well as responding to employees and customers.

7 Things to Remember in Responding to the Media During a Crisis

1. Remain calm and breathe
2. Contact your communications/PR specialist
3. Get the facts
4. Develop your message(s) and know what you won’t say
5. Be accessible and available
6. Avoid “no comment”
7. Designate your spokesperson

To learn more about TREW Marketing’s media and crisis communications training, including case studies of the good, the bad, and the ugly, check out our services page or contact us today.

1. Remain calm and breathe
When the media calls - or more often during a crisis, shows up at your doorstep - it is important to stay calm. A great way to do this is by breathing. Physiologically, by focusing on breathing, you can keep your heart rate moderated and maintain normal blood flow to your brain. This helps you keep a clear head to communicate effectively and decisively.

If, instead of staying calm and breathing, you immediately jump to action, and forget to breath, your body will involuntarily fire into “flight or fight” mode, causing a number of resulting behaviors, including increased adrenaline and respiratory rate, and decreased ability to think rationally.

By focusing on controlled breathing, you can maintain a sense of calm and clear thinking needed to execute a successful interview.

2. Contact your communications/PR specialist
It’s important to contact the person is in charge of working with the media, whether at your company or external agency, as soon as possible. They not only may be the first to be called by the media for a response, they will also ask you questions you may not have thought of, such as facts about injuries, ways you prepared for the crisis before it occured, what employees may be saying, or rumors you may need to respond to.

By alerting them and bringing them into the preparation immediately, they will not be caught off-guard when the media call, which could unduly cause even more questions and distrust. And they will help you prepare by putting themselves in the shoes of the media to role play and help you craft your response.

3. Get the facts
During one crisis I faced, a building was evacuated and nearly 15 emergency vehicles were on-site within minutes. News crews were on the way, I was sure. I immediately found the fire chief and asked him the basic questions: was anyone hurt, was the building evacuated successfully, did they know the cause of the fire? I was happy to learn there had been no injuries, and the fire chief praised the manner in which employees evacuated. I also learned that a fire drill had just been practiced 2 weeks prior.

Within a matter of 1-2 minutes, I had all the facts I needed to prepare our spokesperson for an immediate press interview. And it was just in time. The cameras were rolling when I reached our spokesperson. I gave him the facts, and he went on camera ready to share what we knew. In the end, the story was killed, and the media left seeing that there was no (bad) news to report.

4. Develop 1-2 concise messages and know what you won’t say
As in any interview with the media, you need to know what your message(s) is and what they likely will be asking. In the case of the fire scenario in #3, our messages were: 1. all employees evacuated safely, 2. there are no injuries, 3. we are working with fire officials to determine the cause.

You can see these messages are short - no more than 10 words, and two of them are only 4 words - and they are fact-based. In a time of crisis, you want to stick to the facts as much as possible, and practice Q&A so you can work on bridging to these important messages from a variety of different questions. During this time, you can also discuss and practice answering questions on topics you cannot share, such as exact injury counts or other facts that you may not yet know. These are all things your PR specialist can help you prepare for.
It is best in any interview, especially during a crisis, to keep the number of messages to a minimum. You don’t want to try and communicate too much - just a simple message of the facts and how you are responding is the most important thing to communicate.

5. Be accessible and available
In a time of crisis, news will break rapidly. The more you make updates available to the media and you are accessible for interviews, the better chance you have of controlling what story gets told. If you hide behind your office door or do not answer or return the media’s inquiries, the story will continue to be told without you.

6. Avoid saying “no comment”
Human nature is to distrust the person who answers “no comment”. It’s OK if you do not know the answer to a question. In the case of the fire example in #3 above, we did not know the cause of the fire. However, we did not choose to refuse all interviews because we didn’t know. Our spokesperson appeared on-camera and via phone and told reporters we did not know the cause of the fire, but as soon as we received more information from fire officials, we would let them know. They were satisfied with this answer and anticipated an update when the facts became known.

News media don’t want to be scooped. So, in the case where you are waiting on further details, the best course of action is to set a time when you will provide an official update to all media, even if it is to report that you still do not know anything new. The media will rest easier knowing they will get an update at the same time everyone else will. It doesn’t mean they won’t still try to go find out on their own, but you have made yourself available to them and helped them by providing a time when you will offer a new update on what you know.

7. Designate your spokesperson, and (if you have time) practice
It is important to designate a spokesperson who will speak to the media before they show up. This way, the person who’s going to be responsible for carrying the message to the public knows what is expected of him or her; they can immediately begin preparing by reviewing the facts, practicing the messages, role-playing Q&A, and all the while, breathing to stay calm for a relaxed and informative interview.

For all you video and film buffs out there, you’ll be happy to hear there is a new festival just for non-profit organizations - Lights. Camera. Help.

The submission process kicks off tonight with a press event at Southwest Key Community Center. For more about tonight’s kickoff event in Austin and how to submit your cause-related film or video, check out the details below or visit the festival Facebook page. 

 WHAT: Real-to-Reality: Films for a cause find their festival

 WHEN: Thursday, April 30th 7:30-9:30pm

 WHERE: Southwest Key (6002 Jain Lane) MAP

RSVP: contact@lightscamerahelp.com

Representatives from the American Cancer Society, United Way Capital Area, the Capital Area Food Bank and Best Friends Animal Sanctuary will speak about the value of the films-for-a-cause genre, show a trailer for their films and then formally submit their films.

For more information, you can email contact@lightscamerahelp.com or call Aaron Bramley at (917) 678-4590.