Getting Attention

Susan Y Kohl

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136400872
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Getting Attention: Leading-Edge Lessons for Publicity and Marketing is a savvy and innovative guide to getting your message heard in today's dynamic and noisy markets. It's an insider's look at what works and what doesn't in the fast-paced, high-tech world of communications. You'll learn to leverage a spectrum of new and often free technologies, not only the Internet, to distinguish your product or service and reach customers and influencers. Getting Attention reveals how to tailor a message for a specific or multiple media so that it has the best chance of reaching and informing your target market. And most importantly, the book features countless guerrilla tactics for achieving the publicity and marketing results you need without spending a lot of money. You'll learn how to blend innovative and traditional promotional techniques and create programs that build customer relationships and bolster your bottom line. Gain the real-world success secrets from leading marketing visionaries from the non-profit, entertainment, government, and corporate high-tech fields. Whether you're a PTA volunteer, a manager at a start-up company, or the head of a Fortune 1,000 corporate communications department, Getting Attention can help you successfully position your product or service for success.

The twentieth century. if someone were to ask me what words or phrases I thought best described the twentieth century, I would have to say "an incredible technological adventure." I would focus on technology because it alone has most significantly changed my personal and professional lives. Technology has also changed the world around me, from the way I communicate to the way I'm communicated to.

In the history of the world, we acknowledge that the twentieth century was a relatively short period, yet it encompassed 100 years that produced powerful new technologies, products, and services that enhance our lives today. The twentieth century began with the first-ever radio message sent across the Atlantic Ocean in 1901 and ended with more than 77 million Americans using the Internet. Radio, television, cellular phones, fax machines, pagers, computers, answering machines, VCRs, compact discs, microwave ovens, digital cameras, and electronic mail are all things we take for granted today as we go through our daily lives. Who would have thought that my five-year-old twins would not only know about the Internet but also want to use it regularly?

The speed at which people accepted technology was also amazing. It took radio 30 years to reach 50 million people. It took 10 years for 45 million people to own a personal computer in the United States, but it took less than seven years for 100 million people worldwide to discover and start using the World Wide Web. In 1998 approximately 20 million websites had been created; yet by 1999, search engines were reaching only about 16% of the publicly accessible Web.

There was an incredible amount of information, and all of it was available if you had the right tools. All forms of information-voice, text, and images-were being translated into digital bits. Not only was it being transmitted, but it could also easily be accessed electronically from anywhere, including your home, the workplace, or even from a portable computer. People could now shop, sell goods and services, or conduct transactions, such as banking or trading stocks, online. They could research and book travel through their computers. And they could instantly communicate with friends and strangers from all over the world.

With the phenomenally explosive use of the computer and the Internet, consumers everywhere were becoming increasingly more powerful. Their behavior could and did dictate the success of high-tech-related advertising vehicles such as banner ads, e-mail, and website traffic. With a simple click of a mouse, they either remained on a site or left in search of another one that captivated their attention and gave them a compelling reason to stay. I routinely use the

Internet to do various things, including shopping, and have become critical of commercial sites that are either difficult to navigate or that do not offer me simplicity in the purchase process. I get frustrated with companies that still do not have online catalogs or ordering capability.

MARKETING TOOLS

While the functions of marketing-product development, research, advertising, public relations, and special eventsremain somewhat traditional, the methods keep changing. Until the 1970s, almost all marketing was done through traditional vehicles such as the U.S. Postal Service, special events, radio, and television. When companies such as Apple Computer, Radio Shack, and Commodore began a new era by introducing mass-market computers in 1977, things changed. Consumers were warming up to the idea of owning personal computers. In 1984, when the 3.5-inch computer diskette debuted and became industry standard, marketers began to recognize a new vehicle for communicating information to the general public. Massive duplication of computer diskettes, a transportable device on which computer data are stored, and later CD-ROM (Compact Disk, Read-Only Memory) gave them a vehicle for communicating large amounts of information in a relatively inexpensive way. E­ mail, the Internet, and the World Wide Web changed the marketing function even more.

Sending marketing collateral and product advertising through the mail has always been an effective way to communicate. It continues to be commonplace for companies to have an artist, graphic designer, or desktop publisher create a dynamic marketing piece, buy a mailing list from a company that specializes in marketing lists, have a fulfillment house lick the stamps, and send the mailing through the U.S. Postal Service. By industry standards, if two percent of a mailing list responded to your call to action, then you had a successful direct marketing campaign. Later, telemarketers would join the activity and pursue sales leads that did not respond immediately to direct mail.

Diskettes and CD-ROM

When diskettes and CD-ROM hit the scene, a new trend in direct marketing emerged. Sending diskettes in the mail soon became extremely popular. A 3.5-inch diskette can hold approximately 1.44 megabytes of information. In the early days of computing, that was a lot of space and perfect for sending anything from text and graphics to software.

No company was better at using diskettes for marketing than America Online (AOL) in the early 1990s. In 1993 AOL began sending out more than 250 million diskettes to the mass market. The diskettes carried AOL software on them and could be found almost everywhere-in your mailbox, in your magazines, and at the nearest computer store. Within a year's time, the software diskettes garnered AOL one million subscribers. Why? Because by simply inserting a diskette into a computer, consumers could sample the AOL Internet access product for free.

Toward the middle of the decade, CD-ROM became popular as a marketing tool and still is today. CO-ROMs can store approximately 650 megabytes of data, or about 300,000 pages of text. Because of its large storage capacity, CO-ROMs are perfect for multimedia-audio, video, and rich graphics. They are relatively inexpensive to produce and they're lightweight and durable. It's not uncommon to request an evaluation CD from a company in order to "test-drive" new software. You can even "burn" (encode) your own CD-ROM at home for the cost of the equipment and supplies.

Electronic Mail

Electronic mail, or e-mail, has rapidly become a marketing technology that we now take for granted. E-mail is nothing more than text messages that are sent through a network to a specified individual or group. Many people use it as one of their primary means of communication with the outside world-it's fast, cheap, and fairly reliable. Messages can be sent instantaneously across thousands of miles to thousands of recipients. Nine out of ten times, I will send someone an email message rather than pick up the phone to call.

Marketers have found several ways to use e-mail to reach potential customers and other target audiences. While highly useful, it can be a useful tool. It can also be a dangerous tool when companies use it to "spam" consumers. Spamming is the twentieth-century art of mass mailing unwanted e-mail messages to thousands of unsuspecting computer users. To many people, nothing is more annoying than finding an unsolicited e-mail advertisement in your e-mailbox. The general public has cried out against spamming, and several organizations, services, and vehicles now "fry" (attempt to eliminate) spam. Legislation that could prohibit the practice is also in the works.

Websites

As the Internet and the World Wide Web began gaining popularity, so did new ways to market using websites. Suddenly companies were putting their universal resource locators (URLs) on everything. These so-called Web addresses have become common fixtures on letterhead, business cards, brochures, and marketing give-aways. They can also be found in print ads, on radio and television, and even on the backs of shirts. The goal is to get consumers to visit your site and ultimately to have them click on advertisements and actually buy something. Electronic commerce, or ecommerce, had arrived. The advent of permission-based marketing-the practice of obtaining a person's permission to communicate with them and provide advertising-made capturing a person's e-mail address one of the most important things you could do with a website, according to many online marketing professionals.

Banner Advertisements

In 1995 banner ads appeared on the online marketing scene. A banner is a small, rectangular-shaped ad with graphics and a link to a website. They have been called by several names, including electronic billboards. Today they are expected to do one of two things-either lead to an actual online sale or build a product or service's brand. They evolved from simple text messages in a box to ads with eye-catching animated pictures.

In mid-1996 the advertising model for banner ads changed. Instead of being charged by the number of visitors to a site, advertisers were beginning to be charged by the "click­ through" rate. The click-through is nothing more than clicking on the banner ad and being transported to the advertiser's site. For the companies that offered banner ad hosting, the accountability level rose substantially. They were accountable for the number of visitors they generated and for the quality of those prospects.

With the increasing number of websites and the highly competitive content available, banner ads started to lose their effectiveness. Click-through rates dropped dramatically, and Internet advertisers began to search for new and more effective ways to reach online consumers. The online advertising industry was only in its infancy. In late 1999 Forrester Research predicted that global spending for online advertising will reach $33 billion by 2004, one-third of which will be spent outside of the United States.

PUBLIC RELATIONS

Since the first days of public relations in the seventeenth century, the goal of the profession has always been to build relationships, increase communication, and influence perceptions and behavior of either a broad audience or a targeted one. Until the late twentieth century, the strategies and techniques that public relations practitioners used did not waver much. Throughout this time period, practitioners used press releases, special events, and in-person meetings to accomplish their goals of influencing the general public and obtaining coverage by the news media. They still do today, in fact. Significant change didn't occur until the mid-1990s when technology made communication easier and much more immediate.

The tools of public relations today are similar to those used by marketing professionals-diskettes, CD-ROM, the Internet, websites, and e-mail all play key roles in how public relations people get their messages across. It's common today for a journalist to receive a press kit with either a diskette or a CD-ROM included. Companies hope that journalists will use these tools to experience their products firsthand, or perhaps to better educate themselves about the company and its customers.

Websites have become instrumental in helping journalists with their research efforts. They can visit a site, review company and product information, watch a video, and gather contact information. But traditional press kits are rapidly becoming a waste of money and paper because today's technology-savvy journalists know that most information can be found online.

E-mail has also become an effective tool for public relations practitioners to reach journalists to secure news coverage. It's cheap and interactive. Responses to e-mail inquiries can be sent within a few seconds of receiving the original request for information. Many journalists actually prefer to be contacted via e-mail because it saves them critical time, especially when they're on deadline.

Reality Check

The object of most public relations campaigns today is to get free publicity. Public relations industry professionals spend a lot of time discussing how to develop strategy, shape reputations, influence perceptions, and build brands, but most senior-level executives will admit that they most desire the free press. For many people, "getting ink" (having the company's name published) is their unspoken primary goal. To them, press coverage can accomplish many things, even some of the previously mentioned objectives. Today, this type of free publicity is critical to building a company or product's brand. if the publicity incorporates a company's key messages, then it can also help build a reputation or influence the target audience's perceptions. Sometimes, it can even help to move the stock price.

Similar to technology, the ability to obtain press coverage has also evolved over the last century. For the most part, the publications and broadcast outlets that tied editorial coverage to a company's willingness to pay for advertising have disappeared. A few holdouts, however, still offer news coverage only if you purchase advertising or agree to buy reprinted articles from them. I have also been in a situation where my company was promised inclusion in a magazine or book "without any financial obligation on your part" only to receive a bill later.

Television News Scams

One of the biggest "editorial" scams I saw in the late 1990s involved broadcast programs. These programs tried to take advantage of the increased interest in high-tech and business news. They also tried to take advantage of budding high-tech companies that, perhaps, were not as news savvy as they should have been. Over the course of about a year and a half, I built a list of more than a dozen business and trade television shows that featured prominent hosts, such as Casper Weinberger or Mark Hamill (of Star Wars fame). They would build so-called news programming around hot new technologies or business trends that would capture the general public's interest. They promoted these shows as excellent vehicles, not only for widespread news coverage of products, services, and trends, but also as a good way to position com panies as industry leaders.

Here's how it worked: An assistant to the producer would call a CEO and say that the show was considering the company for inclusion in a segment on a particular branch of the industry. The assistant wanted to talk in-depth with the CEO to gather research, and "if" the company were selected, it would be featured and broadcast on CNBC.

I was always the lucky one to call these assistants back. The first question I would ask, having been a television reporter for more than a decade, was if any costs were associated with the opportunity. That question generally caused a lot of hemming and hawing. It would always turn out that, yes, there were some "marketing" costs to the tune of about $45,000. Now, I realize I am generalizing these programs, but the cost was always between $25,000 and $50,000.

Theseb costs, I was told, would pay for the production of the segment as well as an integrated marketing campaign, including exposure on the World Wide Web. As part of the deal, a company would receive a copy of the three-to fiveminute video segment, which it could use for promotional purposes. As for when and where it would air on CNBC, it was generally shown on Monday mornings at 9 a.m. on cable channels that carried some CNBC programming; it was not a part of actual CNBC programming. Furthermore, if you looked at the cable channels that aired the show, they were in markets such as Billings, Montana, and Boulder, Colorado.

They were not in the top-50 television markets in the United States nor were they considered the business or high-tech hubs of America.

I was surprised by the number of these shows and the highcaliber people in the public eye who lent their names to them. I was really shocked by the number of companies that actually paid for these opportunities. News is free. Remember that. You don't have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to get news coverage.

More News, More News Opportunities

In the late 1990s publications began to get extremely specialized. For example, in the high-tech arena, magazines were dedicated to personal computers (PCs), Macintosh computers, networks, the Internet, mobile computing, Java, Yahoo!, high-tech-related business, computer shopping, and computer reselling.

Computer television shows sprang up as well. C/net Central was complementary to its online website. ZDTV created its own 24-hour computer network. CNN had a computer show and a high-tech unit out of San Francisco, and at least a halfdozen local or syndicated computer or Internet-related broadcasts debuted. Unfortunately, by the end of the 1990s, only a few programs managed to stay on the air, and ZDTV was having a hard time finding a home with cable companies across the country. By the end of 1999, ZDTV was still not available in the San Franci...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Acknowlegments
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Twentieth Century—The Adventure Begins
• Chapter 2 The Internet—A Force to be Dealt With in the New Millennium
• Chapter 3 Effective Marketing On the Web
• Chapter 4 Electronic Mail—Let's Communicate
• Chapter 5 Push Technology
• Chapter 6 Wireless Technology—The "Anytime, Anywhere" FACTOR
• Chapter 7 Influencing the General Public
• Chapter 8 Approaching the News Media
• Chapter 9 Marketing and Publicity on a Shoestring
• Chapter 10 Mixing Technology with Tradition
• Chapter 11 What's Next? The Pros Talk About Today and Tomorrow
• Chapter 12 Free Stuff and Other Resources
• Appendix
• About the Author
• Index