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Attracting Your Market
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This aggressive medium will help:

• Create sales leads
• Cross-sell and up-sell existing clients.
• Obtain referrals from existing clients.

Our agency will help train your existing personnel or a part-time person. We would assist by developing a "Call Guide" including:

• Open-ended script
• Features and benefits
• Objections and answers to them
• Company backgrounders

We will also help establish paper trail to ensure that the system is foolproof. Tracking devices to include:

• Sales action sheets
• Shift wrap-up sheets
• Tickler files
• Routing systems

Additionally, PR Works can assist with:

• Recruiting telecommunicators
• Training telecommunicators
• Developing ergonomics of in-house unit or coordinating the services of a service bureau.
• Telemarketing can do the spade work to pre-qualify prospects and fill your pipeline with leads.

Direct mail is a streamlined avenue to highly qualified prospects.

YOUR MOST VALUABLE CUSTOMER IS THE EXISTING CUSTOMER

We suggest the creation of a referral program.  The program would encourage appropriate referrals and offers special premiums (logoed chairs, sweaters, windbreakers, etc.).  Direct referrals are your best source for new students.  These referrals must be cultivated and encouraged.

NEW PROSPECTS

Outside mailing list analysis.  We will further explore the "profile" of customers and determine the best source to reach them.  We will explore a variety of options. 

BREAKING THROUGH THE CLUTTER...

From creative concept through to the post office in the most cost-effective manner, we help you develop a direct mail program that generates hot prospects.

We start by developing a compelling "offer".  This may not only be price, but value added service.

Next we design and implement a creative package that entices involvement and encourages response.  We will evaluate "teaser" copy to graphic elements to develop a piece that commands attention and leads the prospect to action.

Finally, we coordinate the entire process from creative concept to mechanical design to printing to mail house fulfillment.

STRATEGY:

When people call for general information, they have just identified themselves as motivated, potential “CUSTOMERS.” Therefore, we need to capture some minimal, but crucial information about them to
   (a) Better assist them
   (b) Convert them to satisfied CUSTOMERS.

All too often leads slip through your fingers. Little or no information is captured. There is no chance for follow up or on-going marketing.

A simple, standardized intake form helps you capture full information.

RED FLAGS

(Typical request by the caller:
“I’d like some information about…”
“Please mail me free copies of your brochures outlining….”
“Can you give directions to your …”
“What is the price on…”

TRACKING RESPONSE

Without tracking there is no way of evaluating the effectiveness of your marketing. There is also no clear path to where you should focus future marketing. We will help develop tracking systems that capture vital information that can help measure results and provide a road map for the future.

Becoming An Expert

A newsletter is one of the best methods of telling the big story about your company’s difference.  It also gives you a non-threatening, "soft sell" opportunity to regularly get in front of the press, existing customers and prospects - usually quarterly or semi-annually.  This should generate a tremendous boost to referral business.

PR Works will help develop an editorial outline, interview you and other subjects, draft copy, assign photography, design an intimate and compelling newsletter, and coordinate the printing and mailing.

Editorial content should be "reader oriented" and consist not only of news about the company, but tips, profiles of interesting clients, industry trends, etc.

A well designed newsletter encourages the reader to take action and generates actual leads.

It is one thing for you to call yourself an expert, and an entirely different thing for the media to deem you an expert by including a column bylined by you within their pages.

In addition to the ego boost of being recognized in the local supermarket, an expert column positions you as the authoritative source for your profession.  Most people choose 'the expert' over lesser know practitioners.

So, now you lust for the “expert columnist” opportunity. 

Not so fast, Mr. Expert.  There are a number of key elements to consider. 

First, be keenly aware that most publication run on a ration of 70% advertising and 30% editorial.  Therefore, the news hole is tight and cherished.  How do you become an essential part of that elite mix?

1. Before you burn up the phone lines with a pithy sales pitch to your local editor, consider which editor you really want to talk with.
     

2. Go to the top of the food chain.  Target the publication that is most likely to be read by your prospect.  A website developer can benefit more from the pages of a regional business journal than his local weekly newspaper.  Conversely, a real estate agent might prefer ink in the weekly newspaper of the affluent town he serves.
         

3. Gather “editorial calendars” that outline topics for those special issues.  This may be your foot in the door.
      

4. Your approach to the editor should focus on what you can do for his readers.  Emphasis that your column’s content will illuminate critical issues of concern to his readers and will be written in an objective, information and entertaining manner.  You clearly understand that this is not a blatant advertisement or “advotorial”.
   For example, “Choosing an attorney specializing small business” is won’t fly.  But, the “Five areas that small businessmen most frequently encounter legal problem” is likely to be of interest.
         

5. Play by the rules.  Editors usually have a specific word count/length that they prefer.  Determine what it is and stick to it.
          

6. Accuracy and the truth still count.  Check and site your sources and make sure they are right.  You are trying to build credibility, not damage it.
         

7. Go a step further.  Offer addition reading on the subject.  Better yet, get readers to establish a direct link with you by offering useful brochures.
         

8. In italic typeface at the end of the article, it is usually acceptable to briefly establish who you are.  Most editors will allow you to state your name, company title, company name, and brief explanation of your credentials.  Sometimes, a generous editor will even allow you to include you business telephone number and e-mail address.
   For example, Steve Dubin, President of PR Works, has been a newspaper reporter and PR professional for over 15 years.  For additional information, please contact PR Works at 781-582-1061, prworks@prworkzone.com.
          

9. Provide a professionally shot photo that allows the reader to see the cut of your jib.  Your smiling and inviting portrait should give the reader the impression that you are an approachable professional.
           

10. Once published, create greater shelf life for your columns.  Utilize the services of a graphic designer to repaginate the article, using the banner of the publication, and include the piece in your sales materials.

It is imperative to create news rather than simply chronicle it. 

Seminars should accomplish two goals -- involve qualified prospects and attract media coverage.  PR Works will work with you to formulate seminars that meet these criteria.

We will assist in resourcing broadbased panels (not only an attorney from your staff, but an independent accountant, loan officer, etc.) for each seminar so that the consumer is not intimidated by the possibility of a sales pitch.

We can start modestly by holding the informal seminars in conveniently located function rooms.

The difficulty is in attracting the audience.  The best method of pre-qualifying prospects and providing a public relations hook is to establish a nominal charge ($10) which will be donated to a charitable cause (from the Jimmy Fund to Habitat for Humanity).  The charitable tie in will garner free listings for the event in calendar sections of regional newspapers.  Another option is to boost numbers by offering the presentation for FREE.

Seminar attendees will be issued an evaluation form which not only provides you with useful feedback, but also tactfully allows for requests of information regarding the panelists' services (a/k/a leads).

Any publicity is good publicity.  Just spell my name right. Right?  Wrong!

Ask Monica Lewinsky. Dave Megget.  Latrell Sprewell. 

The media is your avenue to visibility and credibility.  Public relations provides third-person credibility not obtainable through paid advertising. 

What Do You Mean, “How many employees are illegal aliens?”

What do you do with difficult question?  Your choices are to get flustered or get prepared.  Anticipate tough questions.  Write them down.  Prepare answers for them.  Practice answering them with composure. 

You may choose to role play with actual video equipment to get used to the intrusion and to see what you look like.

You also may be surprised.  Often times reporters are more than happy to allow you to do your homework and will gladly rattle off a series of questions that they would like clarified.

Welcome - You are on the air

As the humming bird and wild flowers co-exist in harmony, a symbiotic relationship can exist between the press and its sources.  You need to create an environment in which the press is given access to information and stories that are of interest to their audiences.  Obviously this must be done without hanging out your dirty laundry.

Clarity and confidence reign.  Once again, draft some the key comments that you would like to convey.  Mare sure that these point are made concisely and in colorful ways.  Use personal anecdotes that transform concepts into human terms – “Our cutting edge technology converts contaminated soil into a stable element which can be used as the bottom layer of a parking lot, road or even a tennis court.  We take a negative and turn it into a positive.”  Think in 10 second sound bites that are memorable and compelling.

On & off the record 

Avoid confiding secrets or any proprietary information with a reporter.  Reporters are note inherently evil, but in the course of a long interview the line between on and off the record always gets blurred.  Often times the juicier details are “off” the record and it becomes awfully enticing for the reporter to share the darker side with the public.  Reveal only what you want revealed in tomorrow’s paper or the 11 o’clock news.

Response time is critical

As in health care, response time to press inquiries is critical.  We often encourage clients to wear a beeper and do something rare – actually response immediately to it.  When the Boston Globe or Inc. Magazine call for comment or to arrange for a more comprehensive interview more often than not they are on a tight deadline –TODAY.

If you respond NOW you may obtain significant coverage.  If you procrastinate the window of opportunity is likely to evaporate.

Enjoy Your 15 Minutes of Fame

Everyone enjoys the ego boost of being in the public eye.  Make sure you make the most of it .  The public memory fades quickly – develop a strategy that garners you press on an on-going basis.

Smile for the camera…

To discuss your public relations and marketing opportunities, please contact Steve Dubin
at 781-582-1061 or click here to request more information.