Justin Rubner

Archive for 2011|Yearly archive page

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I Love Your Brand…So Why Do You Spam Me?

In marketing strategy on 01/28/2011 at 4:09 pm

I’m an anti pack rat.

Clothes I haven’t worn in two years? I donate them. The VCR I haven’t used since 2001? Threw it away. Paperwork? Love going through my file cabinet and trashing as much as I can. Getting rid of useless stuff makes me happy.

Which brings me to information overload.

I recently went through my Gmail account and unsubscribed to 20 or so marketers. At first, I felt bad….I am a marketer after all. Felt even worse when I got a note that said they were sad to see me go.

But after a few, it felt great. Now, I log into Gmail in the morning…and wow…10 messages instead of 30. It’s freeing.

Information overload

Give us the option to customize the frequency of emails

One marketer I didn’t unsubscribe to at the time was Crate & Barrel, a furniture company.

Love the furniture. Love the brand. Hate the spam.

I did a search in my email today. Crate & Barrel was sending me, on average, a message every 2.15 days. Over the past three days, I’ve received three.

So I went to the bottom of the email to see about reducing  frequency. Only option was to unsubscribe. Which I did.

The moral? Be careful about the frequency of messages. No one needs to see emails from a furniture company every day.

Also, every email should have the option to customize messages.

I don’t want to hear about Crate & Barrel’s new lines. I would, however, like to hear when they’re having a big sale. In addition, consumers should have the option to customize frequency. Once a month is fine. Unfortunately, we often don’t get any customization options.

Don’t mean to single out Crate & Barrel. They make the same mistake many others make.

However, other companies, like Jos. A. Bank, a men’s clothing store, limit their marketing to me. In fact, I shop there every quarter when I get a direct mail (have never received an email from them) advertising a gazillion dress shirts for the price of one. I’m drawn in like a moth to a flame. Can’t help it.

I get something from Jos. A. Bank once a month or so. That means for every three direct-mail pieces the company sends, it receives at least $35 in revenue from me. Not a bad conversion rate, I’d say.

Now, if Jos. A Bank would only apply the same mega sales to dress shoes, they’d get $100 easily from me as quickly as it would take to drive to the nearest store.

-Justin Rubner

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Nobody Cares About Green Toilets and 12 Other PR Tips On Pitching Reporters

In public relations on 01/21/2011 at 10:30 am

Always know what a reporter covers before the pitch

The following is a real conversation.

PR person: My client, Solutiony Solutions Inc., is a solutions provider and just released Solutions ‘R Us Version 2.0. Do you write about solutions?

Reporter: Not really.

PR person: Well, they did just install water-saving toilets and energy-efficient light bulbs AND started a ride-share program! Green Business Weekly last year ranked them the 20th-greenest solutions provider in America. Do you write about the environment?

Reporter: No, I cover venture capital, economic development, international business and Steve Jobs. You really should know this before calling me on deadline.

PR person: Oh, they just raised $200 million from Vulture Capital LLC, are hiring 2,000 people in your city, expanding into 20 countries, and added Steve Jobs to their advisory board. Is that something you’d be interested in?…

OK, that was a bit of an exaggeration. Nonetheless, I’ve had conversations similar to this all too often when I was on the opposite side of the pitch.

Here are some tips aimed at avoiding a bad pitch like this so you’ll A) get press and B) won’t get hung up on:

  1. First thing’s first. Develop a PR plan that identifies targeted outlets and relevant story ideas.
  2. Once you have news, target your pitch. If pitching a trade publication, for example, your angle should focus on the  industry it covers. If pitching local broadcast, your angle should have a local spin. And a business pub–it better be business-y.
  3. Do your homework BEFORE pitching. You should know what the journalist covers. Come armed with similar stories he or she has done. After all, if you were a salesperson, would you call a prospect, ask him or her what the company does, and try to sell something that’s of no use? Of course not–you wouldn’t waste the prospect’s time, or, more importantly, yours. Don’t make that mistake when pitching a reporter.
  4. Know a journalist’s job is not to give you publicity, but rather to tell news that is of interest to the outlet’s  consumers. Publicity is an after-effect.
  5. Keep timeliness in mind. An event that happened a month ago is often not newsworthy. That’s why they call it the “news”…and not the “olds”. Sorry, bad joke.
  6. Be prepared for questions. While most PR agencies approach their craft smartly, I have often been pitched by account execs who couldn’t answer any questions outside their script. Worse, I’ve been pitched by interns who often didn’t know enough about business in general to answer relevant questions. You should know as much as possible about the thing you’re pitching.
  7. Offer exclusives. Many media outlets thrive on them. Really, why should someone read the exact same story in two competing newspapers?
  8. Offer up the CEO or the person involved in the news for an interview.
  9. If sending a press release,copy and paste it in the email. Reporters get tons of releases every day. They don’t want to open attachments.
  10. Write an email subject that stands out. When dealing with a hundred pitches a day, many reporters delete emails without even opening them when subject lines makes no sense or are full of corporate jargon.
  11. Sum up the news of the release in the email. Sometimes, you’ll have to change the angle to suit the particular person you’re pitching.
  12. If a reporter bites, NEVER ask to see a story before it’s published. Any respectable publication wouldn’t allow this. First, stories would never get done. Second, it’s a violation of basic journalistic standards to have a source edit something. Instead, offer to check facts.
  13. Understand that NOBODY cares about how environmentally friendly your company’s toilets are. Unless it’s The Journal of Green Plumbing Fixtures. And I hear it’s about to go down the tubes.

Have other PR tips you’d like add? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

-Justin Rubner

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A Messaging Platform Will Make Your Life Easier

In business communications, copywriting, marketing strategy on 01/04/2011 at 9:00 am

What’s one of the most important things to solidify before you re-brand or launch a website?

A messaging platform.

With a messaging platform, you know what you're diving into

A messaging platform is exactly what it sounds like–a foundation that all communications spring from. Crafted well, it can serve as the core document for creating engaging Web copy, pitching investors, communicating with the press, improving search-engine results and writing effective marketing collateral.

Without one, your team is executing marketing communications in (excuse the corporate jargon) silos. And when it comes time for Web content, you’re working…and re-working…and tweaking…copy over and over. Presentations take twice as long because you can’t agree on how to say what it is you actually do. Press releases, meanwhile, become a serious chore because you have no common point of reference.

A messaging platform will help save you from these problems. It’ll make your launch, and on-going marketing endeavors, easier. It’ll also end up giving you better messaging.

The process starts with a discovery session. During the session, you’ll be asked questions about your “secret sauce”, company lore, writing tone, competition and differentiation. From that session, a messaging platform should emerge and look something like this:

Positioning Statement

A positioning statement contains concise language on what you do, the markets you serve, who you’re trying to reach, how you’re different, and what goals you want to accomplish. Positioning statements are short. They’re written in plain, non-advertorial language any businessperson can understand.

Think you have this nailed? Do you offer a product? A service? Both? How do you say that? Do you want to say you’re a startup? Or, convey experience? Are you using the language of your customers? Or, parroting programmers and investors? Should you call your product an XYZ…or a ZYX? Focus on Benefit A…or B?

You have tough decisions to make.

Still think you have this nailed? Get your salesperson, chief marketing officer and chief architect in the same room and ask them to write a basic positioning statement. Nine out of 10 times they’ll have three different answers.

About Us

In most messaging platforms I create for clients, I craft an About Us page that can be used word for word on the website. This is the page readers click on to get basic information about your company.

I write these pages to inform and invoke emotion. You want to get readers to pick up the phone. You also want to explain–quickly–what you do and how you’re different so they don’t get frustrated.

Boilerplate

A boilerplate is the text beneath a press release. It contains the simple language of a positioning statement with a little more creativity. It’s intended for analysts, reporters and customers. It’s much shorter than the About Us page. It should be pithy but straightforward.

This language ought to be agreed on before you start publishing press releases.

Competitive Analysis

It’s always beneficial to have a matrix of your competitors’ taglines and core messaging compared with yours. It often includes your perceived weaknesses and strengths next to your competitors, as well as differentiation strategy.

You should never attempt to write Web copy without studying what your competitors are saying.

Creative Concepts

This section kicks it up a notch by offering some creative thoughts. I usually offer potential taglines, possible website headlines, homepage ideas and more. Some of these should be conservative; others should be a bit “out there” to get creative juices flowing.

Style Guide

This guide ensures that when you communicate, everyone is using the same style, spelling and grammar. For instance, do you log in or login? Should headlines be capitalized or not? What acronyms should you use? How should you handle trademarks?

The simple answer is, it’s often up to you. But you must be consistent. When you use one concept one way on the homepage, and another way on your Benefits page, you won’t look fluid. Some people might not notice this lack of consistency. Many will.

Website Navigation

Never rely solely on your designer for this. Any person contributing to the copy should be intimately involved in this process BEFORE he or she starts writing.

Power Words

This section contains phrases with good SEO strength. These words should be used on the homepage, in headlines, as close as possible to lead sentences, and in the back-end of the site to ensure search-engine effectiveness.

Core Recommendations

They include phrases to use, tone to strike (edgy vs. conservative, etc.), PR strategy, and much more.

A Small Investment Now Pays Big Later

You have two options before you re-brand or launch.

  1. Spend a little time now to have a solid messaging strategy so you can have more time later to run your business.
  2. Or save a little money up front and dive into your new market blind.

As you can tell, I’m bullish on the first option.

- Justin Rubner

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