Kibbe on Marketing: Thoughts on Savvy’s PR Boot Camp

I recently attended the PR Boot Camp presented by Savvy Workshop, a Manchester marketing and print services firm. Several area professionals each discussed the various aspects of that mysterious science and art known at public relations. I thought I’d share with you some of the concepts I found important.

“Public Relations” is not advertising, nor is it strictly synonymous with marketing. It’s easier to say that advertising and marketing are aspects under the public relations umbrella. “Public relations is managing reputation and branding,” said Monica Bardier, owner of Ping PR .

Today there are many different outlets you can use to get your company noticed. It’s not just newspapers and radio anymore.  What does this mean to you? If you aren’t present in the digital/social universe in some form, you might as well not exist. This doesn’t mean you should ignore a printed medium, quite the contrary (e.g. print magazine subscriptions are growing), just don’t focus on that exclusively.

When thinking about how you will interact with your customers, Savvy’s Mike Glazner said to think about them first, not about your company. Don’t tell your customers how many whizbangs your widget has, tell them all about the problems in their life your widget will solve.

A good deal of public relations is just that – interacting with the public. And that requires interacting with the media. A big part of why I started Kibbe on Marketing was to hopefully educate folks on just how to get us media-types interested in what you have to say.

Mike Emerton of Bridgeview Marketing was spot on in recommending that business owners should develop relationships with editors and reporters. As a reporter, my virtual door was always open. With the advent of social media you can get to know publications and those who work for them much more easily. You can see what kind of topics and sectors they write about.

Matt Mowry, editor of Business New Hampshire magazine, made a very good point about relationships with the media. Editors and reporters are friendly, “but we are not your friends.” We are not writing an ad for you; we write news. This means we ask questions. A lot of them. And ones that can possibly be uncomfortable. For example, if you have no intention of giving me some financial data, say percent growth, don’t waste Matt’s or my time.

Feature coverage – that is a piece about you and your company alone – is rare. Don’t ask for it, because it’s just not going to happen. You pretty much have to have made cold fusion energy available at Walmart in order to get me to give you 1,500 words to yourself.

And if we’ve just published an article on widgets similar to yours, said Matt, we probably won’t be doing another story on that for a longtime – like a year or more – if ever again. So don’t ask for that either. A good review of a particular publication’s editorial calendar is in order.

You could easily have filled the whole PR Boot Camp seminar on the ins and outs of social media and search engine optimization, more affectionately known as SEO. I am scratching the surface of this myself.

Allen Voivod, who owns Epiphanies Inc., a social media strategy firm, with his wife Lani, gave a number of important points to consider when moving into the social realm.

While setting up a Facebook page and Twitter feed are free, think a little first what you want to accomplish. “Social media” is just that – it’s a place for social interaction, not commercials. Think of it more as a place to have conversations with your customers, ask them about their preferences and learn from them.

When you are getting the word out about your company, Allen said to tie your press release and website together by using the same keywords in both communications. This is at the core of SEO. If you want to learn more about all things social, stay tuned for the upcoming seminar by Epiphanies Inc.

Savvy Workshop’s next seminar will be the Sales Boot Camp, Friday, Feb. 24, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Visit www.savvyworkshop.com for details.


Cindy Kibbe is owner of Cindy Kibbe Creative Communications, a writing services firm based in New England. She was an editor for a regional business publication for nearly a decade. She can be reached at cindy@kibbecreative.com.

Kibbe on Marketing: Between Mount Everest and a Hard Place

As business owners, we’re used to a certain amount of upheaval and uncertainty in our lives. We plow forward and make the best decisions we can based on the information we have. Yet there are times when, despite all logic, our gut is telling us something different.

That little voice spoke to me months ago regarding an opportunity, but I didn’t take it for what it was. You know the one – that little niggling feeling in the back of your mind, the rock that suddenly appears in your stomach that you can’t seem to digest no matter what you do.

I had an opportunity I just assumed was right for me when it wasn’t, not now and maybe not ever. When recently confronted with similar opportunity, that niggling voice turned into a shout and the rock became a boulder. I made the excruciatingly hard decision that that particular path wasn’t right for me, but not without a hell of a lot of heartache – and stomachache – for all involved. When I made the decision to focus my energies elsewhere, Mount Everest disappeared from my gut. I know, despite what my head was telling me, I had made the best decision for me.

Business owners experience the same thing from time to time. An opportunity or a client, even a business partner may seem perfect but for that little feeling, that rock in the stomach. We reason with ourselves, cajole ourselves, even berate ourselves, but we just can’t seem to come to true acceptance.

That is precisely the moment to stop and listen to your intuition. If you can find out why you have concerns, you’ve already won the battle. You can address them head on and your ultimate decision, no matter what it is, will be that much more satisfactory.

But what if it isn’t one big thing, but a million small things? That’s much harder. A situation like this makes your job of introspection much more difficult. That’s when you have to trust yourself. That’s when you just have to believe in yourself enough to make a decision with which you and you alone are comfortable despite how perfect the client or the contract seems. And that is hard.

It’s also important not to make decisions based on fear. That’s another thing altogether. Are you considering working with this client because times are tough and you’re afraid you might not get another one anytime soon? Or are things truly just not adding up right? The trick is learning the difference, and that takes supreme honesty towards oneself. And that is hard.

My original decision to consider certain opportunities just because that's the way things are supposed to go were based on fear. That led to some tough consequences, not to mention the loss of all the time I could have spent searching elsewhere. I’ll admit I first felt like a quitter and a coward, but then I realized I was ultimately saving others, too, from the same bad fit.

As a business owner, what would a working relationship be like going forward with a client or project you hate? Do you think you can honestly do your best work or give your best customer service in such a situation?

These are not easy decisions, especially when cold, hard honesty is required. Those around you may think you're crazy and that you've made a big mistake. Or the devil on your shoulder gets your ear. You know you did the right thing to walk away this time, but where’s the next opportunity going to come from and what if that one falls through, too?

Guess what? The next opportunity might not work out, and it may indeed be awhile before another one comes along. But it’s just as likely, maybe even more so, that the next opportunity will be a good fit. It might be right around the corner in a direction you weren’t looking or in a place you had forgotten to look. Why? Because you know now. You are now aware. You have more information about what you want or don’t want. And you are now armed with the courage to make those decisions that were so difficult the first time.

Growth is hard, and it really hurts sometimes, but it’s the only way forward. Listen to that little feeling. And if you train yourself to listen to it sooner than later, to be honest with yourself and have the courage to trust your decisions, you just might avoid having to digest Mount Everest.

Cindy Kibbe is owner of Cindy Kibbe Creative Communications, a writing services firm based in New England. She was an editor for a regional business publication for nearly a decade. She can be reached at cindy@kibbecreative.com.

Kibbe on Marketing: The Primary Circus Brings More Than Peanuts

The 2012 New Hampshire First-In-The-Nation Primary will be my fourth go-around in this extrordinary political event. My husband and I moved to the Granite State in January 2000 just in time for that contest. I have vivid memories of stopping into the Outback in Bedford, our apartment still full of wet boxes from the blizzard, to find the restaurant jammed to the rafters with everything from TV anchors, AP journalists, local newsies and even a few bonafide diners like us.

This latest Primary had me thinking about the ecomonic impact of the event. Analysts say it actually is no big deal in terms of actual dollars, but I don’t think that’s entirely accurate.

Our once-every-four-years media circus supports local businesses about as much as the average Laconia Bike Week, says the University of New Hampshire. UNH did a study several years ago on the impact of the 2000 Primary on the local economy (and I looked for more recent stats, but apparently there are none), and found the event’s total impact at that time was $264 million. When compared to the Leaf Peeper season, with 2011 estimates over nearly $1 billion, the Primary is chump change.

I suppose that’s an unfair comparision – the fall foliage season lasts longer (or does it?) and I don’t have more recent spending numbers for the Primary, but I think it means considerably more to the state.

Let’s start with the news media itself. Sure, they don’t linger to visit like actual tourists, but today we have a whole panoply of folks who call themselves “journalists” covering the event – from bloggers and hyperlocal writers to actual journos who write for actual media outlets to the folks who film the candidate for commercials and out-of-town campaign staffers. All these people are spending money at restaurants, bars, coffee shops, maybe hotels and even a few parking tickets. Each Primary, that number grows. More people, more money spent.

Then there’s visitors from nearby regions just over our borders who come up to see what all the fuss is about. They, too, eat, drink and otherwise make merry.

Perhaps most interesting are the people who are here for a short time or who only see us on TV – and remember something that inadvertantly slipped through. Perhaps they’ll think, “Gosh, what a beautiful state that is. What a cute coffee shop, the people seem so nice. That resort by that big lake is incredible. I think I’ll visit there again and stay this time.”

I wonder if anyone has cranked some numbers on how many visitors we get from folks whose first exposure to New Hampshire was from the Primary? The New Hampshire Secretary of State’s office has said the Primary wasn’t created as a tourist event. Maybe there should be some thought given to that?

Cindy Kibbe, an editor for a New England business publication for nearly a decade, can be reached at cindykibbe@comcast.net.