Public Relations: May 2012

Run a Successful Customer Appreciation Event

Fun Idea for a Customer Appreciation Event

If you are the owner of a small or large business, you understand the importance of customers. After all, without these important contacts, you wouldn't have much of a business, right? Therefore, it's important that you take the time to make sure all of your customers feel appreciated from time to time. One of the best ways to do this is by hosting a customer appreciation event.

Customer appreciation events do more than just let your customers know how much you value them. These important events can also be used as powerful marketing tools used to help you obtain new customers or showcase new product and services to existing customers. It also gets your customers into your store or place of business for 4-5 hours. However, before your customer appreciation event will be successful, there are several things you will need to remember.

Plan Ahead - As with any important business event a customer appreciation event must be planned out properly or else it won't be successful. The last thing you want to do is throw something together in a couple of weeks. This is especially true if you want to host a customer appreciation dinner or a with casino night entertainment. Therefore, make sure you give yourself ample amount of time to plan. Many business owners allow six months or more when planning a business event such as this. You will need time to work out all the details including: what kind of event you are going to hold, where to hold the event, how many people to invite, etc.

Build Up the Anticipation - If you want your customer appreciation events to be successful, you have to get your customers excited about attending. Casino nights are a great way to add this excitement to your event. Talk about the event with customers, post flyers, mail out "Save-the-Date" postcards, do an email blast and follow up by mailing out professional invitations a week or two before the actual event. Offer ways for your customers to earn additional casino night "funny Money" such as "liking" your Facebook page, bringing a guest or spending a certain amount the month of the event.

Make It Fun and Enjoyable - More than likely, you've suffered through a boring event before. This is what you want to avoid. You need to make sure you give your guests a reason to attend by making it fun. For example, everyone enjoys free food and drinks and the excitement of Las Vegas with casino night entertainment. Your customers play for fun and can win prizes such as free products/services or gift cards to your store or business.

Why a casino night? - Casino parties for customer or client appreciation events allow you to interact with them in a fun and exciting atmosphere. It is the great answer to the age old question every sales or marketing manager has. "Okay, so how do we get our customers or clients to attend our event and have a good time?" Your customers can enjoy snacks and drinks while you present your program and our casino tables and dealers are already in place and ready to go.

During the event, customers and sales people can sit together, cheer each other on, and laugh with each other. While Las Vegas and other casinos are designed to take the player's real money, casino night events are designed to make people feel like winners! No one loses any money and the team building camaraderie is huge! The big bonus is it gets your customers into your store or place of business for hours!

Enhance your brand and visibility to your existing customer base and recruit new customers with a well thought out, well planned, well advertised customer appreciation casino night.

Handy Dandy Guide to PR Etiquette

Tis the season for sugar and spice and everything nice. So nothing is more fitting than a post on how to navigate the complicated world of working with the media.

I took the liberty of polling a variety of media sources to learn what they like and what they don't.

Here is a rulebook of manners to successfully manage your media relationships.

Thou shall not stalk the media

Following up with the media after sending a pitch is ok. Stalking them until they answer your emails or phone calls is not. I had numerous responses from the media that they would see the same number pop up on the caller ID 10x per day. They purposely didn't answer it because they weren't interested. If you've sent a pitch and performed a round of follow up and still hear nothing, it's safe to assume that they got it and it's not a fit for them right now.

I also had a resounding response that they don't respond to every pitch because they simply don't have time, and this goes even for people they have worked with before. Most did say that they read each and every pitch, so you don't have to wonder if it ever came through. Due to high volume, they simply don't have time to respond unless they are interested.

Another pet peeve was multiple check-ins after they show interest. If they show interest in your story, it doesn't always mean it will come to fruition right away. Trust that if they are interested, they will get in touch with you when the story will run.

Thou shall not send lengthy pitches

Across the board, simple was better. A few short paragraphs is enough. If you can't get your point across concisely, work on it until you can. Press releases were overall frowned upon because they aren't customized to the individual outlet.

Thou shall embrace email

Email was the answer for preferred method by all. As far as sending images/attachments, most were OK with this as long as it was a small, lo-resolution image. The only reason you would need to send an image attachment is if you're pitching a product that would visually appear in the outlet. Otherwise you can provide a link to additional images.

Thou shall not pitch any media outlet before reading, watching, listening

Never send a pitch to anyone without being familiar with what they cover, the audience they target, and how your story will fit in.

Thou shall not pitch the wrong person

When a media outlet has multiple staff members (and in most cases they do, unless it's a blog written by one person), choose the best person that covers your specific industry and pitch them.

Thou shall understand deadlines

National magazine editors specifically had the biggest beef with this out of all the media outlets polled - understand that most work 4-6 months in advance so if you're pitching Christmas and New Year stuff now, you're way too late.

Melissa Cassera is a sought-after expert in the publicity field and specializes in helping small business owners get publicity in top media outlets. As owner of Cassera Communications, Melissa has landed placements in top magazines, newspapers and morning shows for her clients. She works with business owners, authors, professional speakers, and experts from various industries including entertainment, healthcare, information technology, fashion and beauty, human resources and more. Melissa also serves as a nationally syndicated Wellness Expert, covering the latest in healthy living advice for media outlets and audiences across the country!

To find out more about Melissa visit http://casseracommunications.com/

Online Public Relations

When it comes to online public relations it is crucial that all businesses today realize how important it is to keep a positive image on the internet and not just the old and traditional word of mouth about a company. In today's world it is incredibly hard to keep a company honest with peer to peer review sites like yelp and a plethora of consumer affair related websites that allow them to post whatever it is they please about your company.

A lot of these sites are not credible at all because they take no liability of what the user posts and they refuse to remove anything at all costs. The biggest known cases are sites like ripoffreport.com and Consumeraffairs.com where the users can go ahead and vandalize a company completely without giving up their identity and the repercussions are slim to none because the sites owners refuse to release the data and information.

So what can a company in the 21st century do about all of this? Well the only feasible solution today seems to be that companies need to partake in online public relations campaigns that help to suppress negative information about their company online. The online pr gig is a little bit different however than the traditional public relations where a press release was mailed out to all of the writers in the country at local newspapers and if they liked a story they would publish it for the world to see in their paper.

In today's world the internet makes things a lot quicker and allows us to publish information on the fly. So internet PR today requires a strong understanding of how the search engines work and what a company can do to fight off negative events like a deadly food outbreak at one of their restaurants.

First make sure that you are social. Whether or not you are a fan of the following sites make sure your business has a profile on these sites and that they are consistently updated since the search engines strive to find new content:

    Twitter
    Facebook
    Hubpages
    WordPress/Blogspot (need to have a blog presence)
    LinkedIn (for connecting with other business people)
    Ezine or PrWeb.com Account

Launching press releases constantly and letting people know that you have a twitter or a Facebook fan page that they should like is a surefire way to start successful online public relations campaign. What you also need to be keen on is making sure that your company has a website and that you own the .net, .org, and. info.

Robert is an internet expert. He has done consulting work for the online reputation company profile defenders and speaks publicly at the Venture Capital forum in Portland on the third Wednesday of each month.

Managing A Brand

Perception And Reality

How a business is perceived by people is how it is considered; this may not be the reality, but what people think will reflect on the image and reputation of the business.

For this reason, the reality is how people think, so this needs to be managed; it needs to be led and built upon. This is the job of a PR agency, to manage a business's reputation and ensure that they are perceived in the correct way. Many companies do struggle with this, certainly if they are involved in a volatile industry or get a bad coverage by the press.

Managing a brand is a big part of the job that public relations covers and an important one for the reputation of the business.

Volatile Market Conditions

The media is a fickle machine, the goal is to draw readers in (rather that to portray the whole story, telling a story that sells is the goal of the media) and keep them coming back for juicy stories.

We are living in volatile times, when businesses need to protect their image and reputation. The financial industry is a good example of an industry that has received bad press. The various financial companies that have come into the media spotlight are seeking to counteract the bad press with putting a positive spin or positive PR. The danger is that bad press will cause existing clients to leave and prospective clients to stay away.

Monitoring Competitors Brands

Part of an effective PR strategy is monitoring competitors, watching how your competitors are working and how the market is reacting to their products/services and their PR.

The roll of a PR agency is to ensure they know who the competitors are in your industry, watch what they are doing and tailor your message to fit in or react to theirs.

Managing Complaints

A big part of managing a brand is managing complaints. Very few businesses are complaint free, there are normally customers somewhere that have issues of one sort or another whatever the business.

Part of good PR is managing these complaints and being seen to answer them. If the world sees that complaints are swiftly and efficiently handled, this can have a positive effect meaning that the complaint procedure only strengthens the brand.

Coping With Negative Coverage

The more popular a business becomes, the more likely that negative coverage will occur. This could be from a competitor, the media, an internal mistake or any number of sources. Part of the PR companies roll is to prevent or migrate this negative coverage. Similar to handling complaints, negative press coverage needs to be confronted and tackled either to divert attention away or diffused.

Helpful Advice

A company's brand is the heart of the business, if the brand is badly projected then the company (no matter how good the product or service) will suffer. Choosing the right PR agency to manage and maintain the brand is important even in the early days while the business is growing.

Selecting an agency that knows your market, knows your product will ensure that they are effectively able to manage your brand as they know the market; essentially the agency becomes an important part of your business strategy.

Marketing Quotes is a free price comparison service to UK businesses to help get free quotes and advise from local marketing companies.