Category: Advice

31
Oct

Yes, But WTF Do You Do???

One of the things that I had to self-excise from my Your Baby’s Ugly presentation last week was a discussion on how companies tend to market themselves in this sector. So many get caught up playing Buzzword Bingo that it’s increasingly tough to cut through the crap and sort out what the companies actually do and sell.

I had 25 minutes to work with in presentation, so I hacked that off to get in some other key points. But the problem is a biggie in this space. Ask people new to digital signage, who walk onto a trade show floor or start sifting through vendor websites, and they’ll almost  certainly tell you how they struggle to tell the vendors apart.

We get the right message to the right people at the right time was a good line 10 years ago. Not so much now.

When I have my act together, I like to look at the exhibitor list for a trade show before I actually go and walk the floor – so I know what I want to hit and what I don’t want to bother with. We’ve all been trapped in conversations with sales guys who have stuff you’ll never buy or recommend.

So I was running through the exhibitor list for CETW next week in New York, and reading stuff like this:

<Company Name>  is a retail technology provider offering a one-of-a-kind Omni-channel solution to help fashion retailers create engaging experiences for their consumers and drive ROI. Our technology and accompanying products bridge the gap between retailers physical stores, e-commerce, and social networks to create one centralized brand experience. We differentiate ourselves by engaging retailers’ customers through our <—>  fashion mobile application, and patented in-store digital mirrors and tablets, while simultaneously collecting powerful consumer data to help retailers make decisions and communicate directly with their customers.

What does that mean? What the F-word do they do???

Drill down into the company site and you can see they have interactive apps and gadgets that enable shoppers to tell their friends about apparel they’re thinking about buying, which can drive sales and inform retailers about what interests shoppers and what they’re doing.

SO SAY THAT!!! Sheesh.

Words like omnichannel, engagement and experience are so over-used and subject to interpretation they’re almost pointless. You have a matter of moments to get people interested in your pots and pans. Don’t waste it blabbering on about nothing, as your prospects tune out and physically or mentally move on.

 

 

02
Sep

Why Your Digital Signage Marketing Sucks

Between industry contacts and my deal-with-the-devil press access to trade shows (in return for privileges, all the vendors get my email address), I see a lot of marketing pitches and press releases every day. An awful lot of them are, well, awful.

Or in more polite Canadian terms, sub-optimal.

There are two core problems: old formulas, and scant information.

First, the  formula.

Small companies with limited working capital can’t usually afford to get good marketing help, so they often do it themselves. And the easiest DIY method is copying/adjusting/co-opting some other company’s crappy press release or handout, and making it their own. That is likely why I get endless releases that use terms like world leader or leading global provider. Somebody used that, so Me Too!

It’s also probably why I get formula quotes from executives saying they are pleased, delighted and my favorite, excited, about whatever agreement is being touted as momentous. The execs come off as morons.

There’s a whole,”Well, I guess that’s how these things are done” dynamic at play here among people who are good and sometimes brilliant engineers, but hopeless marketers.

Second, scant information.

It’s not enough to say something has been done or something new exists, but that’s what I often get dropped in front of me for consideration.

A case in point: A company this morning announced a new “no cost” digital signage media player. Ok, that got my attention, so I dug into it. But there was no substance. Three whole paragraphs, and the third was the standard blah-blah stuff about the company. I am in Hour Seven of waiting for answers sent to the company’s email drop.

The release didn’t get coverage here because a series of fundamental questions did not get answered. The thing did get mileage elsewhere, but whoever read that regurgitated as “news” release would also be left with a pile of questions.

Making it worse, and this is very common, there was nothing on the company website related to the release. Truly, nothing.

So here’s the simple remedy, broken down by key elements:

1 – Put yourself in the mindset of the target audience: Figure out what questions they’ll have about the product or service. Then answer them in the piece, proactively.

2 – Structure the message: Get the key information up at the top, so people are intrigued and want to read on. What does this thing or service do, and why should people care? It saves money. It makes something easier. It does something faster. Whatever.

3 – Use quotes that matter: They’re almost all manufactured/invented, so make ones that add to the story. No one cares that a CEO is delighted. Except the CEO. “This has made a remarkable difference to how we do business …” beats the crap out of “We are absolutely delighted to be working with …”

4 – Develop a basic communications plan: Get your ducks in a row for PR day. Your website needs to align with the release, and offer more. A big part of issuing PR is to drive people to your site, and if they show up and can’t find anything more than the press release that sent them there (or not even that), it’s a big missed opportunity. It also screams at people that you don’t have your act together.

You want to pull them to your website to dig deeper, read specs and FAQs. Your sales people also have to be prepped, and your resellers. “I dunno … ” is not the answer you want when somebody rings in wanting to know more.

You don’t need a six or seven figure retainer with a big communications firm to do that. If you can design a content management system or a media playback device, you can plan out an announcement. If you can’t, I don’t want to buy your gear.

5 – Test your message: We all know people. We all have friendlies we trust for an opinion. Ask them to read what you have in mind, and find out if they understand it and got all the information they needed.

6 – Avoid copying: You need a not too long, intriguing headline. You need a useful, equally intriguing opening paragraph. And you need contact information – for someone who’ll actually field calls and emails – at the end. The rest: just think it through for what people will want to know.

7 – Not too long: 500 words is heaps. Really.

 

27
Mar

Infographic: Everyone’s A Leading Global Provider, And No One Cares

most-overused-words-pr-infographic-660x1024

 

Soi, so, so true of this industry. How many press releases and website About Us pages start with Leading Global Provider?

Answer – Most, which is loopy.

What’s missing from this terrific infographic by Shift Communications are the word cloud counts for manufactured quotes, which invariably include how pleased/delighted/thrilled the people in charge are about the deal or announcement.

Simply put, when your press release looks like every other press release out there, you’ve done a terrific job of ensuring few people will read it.

Tell a story. Grab people and make them read by putting the news up top. No one cares that you have declared yourself a leading global provider.

02
Sep

Six clues to getting better technology press coverage

Across the pond and along the Thames, Adrian has a rant up on DailyDOOHabout the sorry state of press releases he gets all day, every day, from companies looking to get some love and attention in that blog.

He kindly mentions that when he gets press from pressDOOH, it’s actually useful and ready to go.

I am in this very weird position of being someone who develops press material for companies (among a buncha things), but also gets pretty much the same gush of PR material as DailyDOOH, as companies look to get a mention on Sixteen:Nine.

Adrian nicely covers off the formatting and ease of access issues, so I thought I would add to his rant by mentioning the other area – content quality – that plagues a lot of the press stuff that gets sent my way.

1 – Not getting to the point. In newspaper parlance, it’s called burying the lede. If I have to wade through seemingly endless blabber about “leading global provider” and “state of the art” before I finally start to build a picture of why this was sent to me, it’s either going to get ignored or – if your timing is bad and I am cranky – the press you get may not be what was hoped for, at all.

2 – Teeing up useless quotes. I completely ignore quotes that start with “We’re pleased …” or “We’re delighted/excited/thrilled/emptying our bladders …” I also ignore quotes that sound about as natural as something in the mission statement of the Maine Society of Retired Actuaries. Most press release quotes are invented, so there’s no reason why they cannot be natural sounding and enhance a story. Quotes are a great tool to reinforce the context of something, like, “In the testing we’ve done so far, this has improved performance by ….”

3 – Plenty of jargon, no context. You may have noticed a lot of Sixteen:Nine posts have some spin in them that amounts to my expressing why the people reading the thing should care. Software companies are particularly notorious for issuing releases that spew out lists of new bells and whistles and enhancements that mean something to the developers, but to few others. Too few companies issue releases that clearly state how adding this feature will reduce time or costs to do something by “X” or open up the ability to do “Y”.

4 – Lacking in credibility. It’s not a rampant problem, but there are definitely companies out there that send out stuff that either stretches the truth or carefully leaves out important details. If I don’t believe the release, I’ll tend to hit the delete button, or go the opposite way and call the company out. It usually takes very little searching to unearth the truth.

5 – Using filters and gatekeepers. If, as is too often the case, a news release doesn’t properly anticipate follow-up questions, someone should be ready on the other end of the phone or email to answer questions … within the hour of the release. If the only contact person is from a third party public relations firm, I don’t even bother. I don’t want to be handled. I don’t want to be scheduled. And I definitely don’t want to be monitored during a phone interview by a PR person “just sitting in” on the call. I want to be able to send a note to the CEO and get an answer kicked back directly from the person in the know.

6 – Assumptions of an editor. For decades, press releases were purely mechanisms to stimulate awareness and coverage by the mainstream or business press. The internet changed all that. What most people who generate press releases have failed to understand (and this is baffling) is that a lot of people read press releases straight off PR news wires or off the returns of search results. Even when there is a familiar media organization in the header of a “story” it is quite possibly just an automated feed from a PR service. So this notion that editors will “touch” releases and turn them into interesting, highly readable features is mostly wishful thinking.

There are opinion pieces out all the time trying to make the case that the press release is dead. It’s not. Press releases are terrific marketing and communications tools. The problem is that the formula and process that was used 10-15 years ago doesn’t now work, and too few people realize it. Good press releases tell stories that are complete and credible, and get you interested from the first words.

 

09
Jun

Tell readers, immediately, why they should care

Though one of the core reasons I started pressDOOH was to write press releases and related material for client, it’s actually developed into only a small part of my company’s activity. But when I do produce press material, I operate with one key objective – drawing people into the story.

And this IS storytelling.

If your company is just putting out a release because it’s some sort of legal requirement or ego-stroke, then fine, stop reading advice pieces and do whatever you want.

But if you actually want people to read what you have to say, write you press releases in a way that makes people want to keep on reading.

The biggest thing you need to do, in writing effective releases, is reinforce just about immediately why people should care. If your leading paragraph is a word salad of conjoined phrases about new and leading and game-changing and taking something to the next level (by the way, YUCK!), your readers are already mentally checking out.

Your leading paragraph should be about how this product or service will lower costs, make things easier, do something better, or be available to see for the first time somewhere. Tell readers why they should care, and give them a reason to keep on reading. The goal is to pull them through the entire release, and if readers are bored halfway through the first paragraph, seeing them get to the end is just wishful thinking.

You also need to put your message and pitch in context whenever that’s possible.

It is one thing to throw some technical jargon at people about gear that does a particular thing better. That’s a start. But it is SO much more powerful to tell readers that for the work that they do, this will reduce costs in half and triple the delivery speed. Don’t make people figure that out themselves. Tell them!

 

11
May

Hey Mr. CEO, You’re not the story

I am looking at the lead of a press release and assuming the poor PR people knew better than to NOT include the CEO’s name in any missive they issue.

That could be the only reason for this sort of thing:

“Charles J. Beech, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Trivantis, the company behind the successful Lectora eLearning brand, today announced the Company’s agreement in principle to acquire its partner Flypaper Studio, Inc., providers of the leading Flash content creation and digital signage platform.”

You know what Mr. Beech. You’re not the story. It takes 20 words amounting to nothing to actually get to the point of this release – which is that his company just bought another one. The acquisition is actually the story, and if the PR people want that story read and to better control the message, they should package it up so it actually reads like a story.

Failing to do so means the PR people have to hope and editor or blogger will take the time to make the thing a story, and that they won’t shake their heads and skip it.

The story here is that eLearning software firm Trivantis has reached an agreement in principle to acquire Flypaper Studio, which will mean <inset meaningful words here> …

Later on, Mr. Beech can beat his chest and tell the world everyone is delighted by the deal.

The whole point of issuing a press release is to relate news about the company that creates interest among the unfamiliar, and generates excitement and/or confidence among clients and partners. Over and over, I see press releases so bogged down by egos and 25-year-old writing formulas that the news gets lost and the release doesn’t get the amount of reads that was desired when the process started.

It’s forehead-slapping obvious. A new release should lead with news.

13
Apr

Is a torrent of BS an effective communications strategy?

Stating what would seem obvious, but evidently is not, your choice of words in your media material reflects how your company conducts business. So if your communications material is a torrent of BS, your credibility is in question before you even get to the starting line with customers.

Consider the release this morning from an unnamed company …

<Blank> Media, the premier source for <blank> advertising, is pleased to introduce yet another dimension to its growing portfolio of media assets: state-of-the-art digital advertising monitors.

Through <Blank> Media, distinguished brand partners now have an exclusive platform – of commercial broadcast quality – to showcase TV advertisements and video footage, as well as multiple static ads, to ultra-affluent consumers in a select, non-competitive environment.

Luxury brands will enjoy exclusivity of message provided by <Blank> Media’s sleek, 46-inch Samsung digital monitors, which are positioned as the focal point in each <venue>. No other brand will share the monitor.

State-of-the-art digital advertising is available to premium brands through <Blank> Media Media in highly-trafficked <venues> across the United States including Los Angeles, New York City, Las Vegas, Dallas, Atlanta and Chicago.

To learn more about how to broadcast your advertising message to Ultra-high Net Worth …

And so it goes.

State of the art is a meaningless term, particularly when it comes to some as pedestrian as flat panel monitors that millions of people now have in their homes. Laying on the sleek, luxurious, ultra this and that may impress a few people, but will just put others off.

Assuming the target readership for this kind of release is agencies and media planners, the simple message this company should be conveying is that it has a new means to effectively reach the attractive demographic it already delivers at these venues, presumably through posters. Then it should relay some information in terms these readers would actually care about, like age and household income ranges, how they index in interests and buying patterns, how long in the venue, frequency and so on and so on.

To gush out a release like a new opener to Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous is a largely wasted effort. Think less about impressing people with empty phrases and more about providing information the target readers can actually use. As it stands, most people won’t read past the state of the art cliche.

 

03
Mar

Event week is the wrong week for PR

I was just at my industry’s biggest event last week, and I was run off my feet the whole time. I go in part as a consultant to see what’s up and meet clients, but also as a quasi-journalist who “covers” the event.

I knew this already, but it was really enforced last week how issuing PR on the day of a big trade show is a great way to ensure the potential readership will drop like a rock.

Think about it. The people you most want to read about your newest set of pots and pans, or latest conquest, are at the show. They have breakfast meetings, lunch meetings, dinner meetings and late night drinks. They are on the trade show floor all day. The most reading they do is urgent emails on their smart phones.

They don’t, as a result, have any time to read press releases or press coverage. The same goes, to some degree, for what passes for working press at these shows. They are swarmed and only have time to cover the biggest news.

If you want to time news releases to your big trade show, time them for the week ahead of it. That makes people aware that you have something they want to see, should they be going. They are also still at their usual desks and will typically have more time to read that day or in the evening, and in a perfect world, they may even contact your company to schedule a booth visit.

Put it out the day of the show and your prime targets may never know you have what they need, as they walk on by the booth, oblivious.

The same goes for trade media and bloggers. On a busy week, you have to scrap for attention. The week before the show, your shot at getting the coverage you are after is much higher.

24
Dec

Taking it to the next level

I did an interview recently with a person I consider pretty smart, but I found myself starting to cringe as I kept hearing the dreaded phrase,”Take it to the next level.”

I’ve no idea where this phrase comes from, but it has this slightly uncomfortable pick-up line feel to it that I’ve had little luck getting past. In biz-speak, it seems to be used whenever someone is referencing improvements or enhancements.

“We plan to take this product to the next level,” people say, and far too often.

The real problem with this phrase is it lacks any substance. When even slightly jaded people hear about something going to the next level, they start thinking the plans are vague or non-existent.

In marketing a product, you’ll get far more mileage from avoiding empty phrases and just flat saying, “Our next version will add 25% more capabilities, and be twice as fast.”

THAT “next level” has substance.