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Category: PR

Boost your return on investment with public relations  

Posted on by administir
roi public relations featured image

You want to raise general awareness of your brand and share an authentic story about what makes you special, all while driving engagement and sales.   

It’s a lot to accomplish, especially when you have a small marketing budget. That’s where public relations (PR) can make a huge impact. 

Generate your pitch-perfect return 

While you may already know that PR is one of the most credible ways to get the word out about a company and its product or services, you may not know that it can also provide a high return on your marketing investment.   

Industry giant Bill Gates once said, “If I was down to my last dollar, I’d spend it on public relations.” He learned early the value of PR and its ability to tell an authentic story, build trust and cultivate loyal customer relationships.  

ROI can equate to media impressions that heighten a company’s visibility and boost brand reputation. It can also add up to revenue when a PR strategy can be directly linked to a prospect seeing an article and reaching out to set up a meeting. 

Maximizing results and ROI involves working with an experienced PR team to create a media relations strategy that reaches the right target audience at the right time. It might be for a short-term burst of media coverage for a few weeks or a year-long awareness program.  

STIR’s Brian Bennett notes that well-strategized media placements can drive significant web traffic and are often where clients get the most value for their dollar. “It’s one of the most powerful– and affordable – marketing disciplines and should play an important role in integrated marketing plans,” he says.  

What’s the best way to measure the impact of your public relations efforts? 

Set your ROI gameplan 

Before starting a campaign, prioritize which results are most important and plan how to get there. Determining what good ROI looks like will depend on the media market, the outlets used, and of course, the story.  

For example, STIR recently worked with a local client that wanted to get in front of their prospects with meaningful content and thought leadership. They assumed that local media was their only target, not realizing that some high-profile national placements shared on social media, could also help build their credibility and profile with local customers. In six months, STIR garnered nearly 890 million impressions with the client frequently quoted not only in local business publications but also high-profile outlets such as U.S. News & World Report and Money Magazine. 

Engage your ROI dynamic duo 

Impressions and engagement together can provide some solid data around the impact of your PR efforts. Generally, impressions are a calculation of how many people have heard about your company in a given time measured through article readership, scroll-throughs and viewership. Clients can expect results that may range from 500,000 – 1 million impressions for local or regional placements to 900 million or more for national level placements. Your team should help to set coverage goals at the beginning of a campaign and monitor progress along the way. 

Engagement points to things like shares, comments, link clicks and likes. Monitoring software can give you a snapshot of engagement in their system, but you can also measure it through social media or other brand platforms. A great example of this is when a television station shares your brand’s news segment to their social media pages, where you can directly track the metrics or feedback. 

Tracking website traffic timed with a great media story is also another way to measure engagement. Typically, you will notice a boost within a day or two to a week of story publication. 

Consider Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) 

Ad value is a metric that public relations pros use to measure the impact of media coverage. Simply put, it’s the dollar value of your placement if you had paid for it as an advertisement. It measures the value of the overall campaign using data including the type of media coverage and where it was placed.   

Well-known monitoring services services use the following formula to calculate AVE: (Readership (UVPM) x Actual Viewership x Average Ad Cost).  AVE calculation will vary depending on the type of outlet. 

AVE is just one way to measure the efficacy of a campaign or story and in recent years some agencies have steered away from using it. This is because it doesn’t provide qualitative data like engagement or measure positive or negative article tone. Therefore, if your brand is using AVE, other measures should be used in alignment with it. 

Measure Story Sentiment   

Sentiment analysis can be a powerful way to qualitatively measure data around your PR. Analyzing the positive or negative tone around your campaign placements can help steer the direction of future campaigns, including messaging and positioning.  

You can analyze sentiment in many places—for example, on social media or in the news. By evaluating factors including word choice and tone of voice that are associated with your story, you can get a better idea of how people feel about your initiative.  

Though you can’t put a dollar value on how people feel, you can measure overall sentiment by counting the share of positive mentions and comparing these to mentions with negative or neutral sentiment.  

Your team should use the latest media measuring and monitoring software in order to provide the best impressions and engagement data for reporting. 

Find a partner that works  

The greatest value you’ll get from your investment is that of a knowledgeable, results-oriented PR team who can help you set priorities, determine how you will measure results and recommend the best way to set up reporting. Public relations efforts are not one-size-fits-all, and an integrated agency can help give you a full picture of what you might want to invest in, at what scale and why.  

Learn more about STIR’s approach to PR. 

6 Things to Look for When Searching for a PR Firm

Posted on by Katie Koeppel

We recently heard about an organization that hired a PR firm under a five-figure retainer to help boost the leader’s image during a tumultuous year. Flash forward 12 months, the agency struggled to manage the most routine tasks and failed to make any headway in elevating the organization’s profile or the leader’s image. The contract was terminated – but not before money and time were wasted. Likely, both the client and the agency experienced a lot of frustrations during this process that could have been avoided with better preparation and communication.

If you’re considering hiring a PR firm – whether to help raise brand awareness, promote a specific event or manage a crisis situation – here are six things to look for when starting the quest:

Get a clear scope of capabilities 

One of the first things most clients do is head to a firm’s website to check out its list of clients and case studies. That’s a great first step but we recommend digging a bit deeper and being open-minded. Look closely to see if a firm’s experience includes local, regional and national media relationships and how that aligns with your needs. If they are doing a lot of other work for clients in similar industries, how might that impact their dedication to your business? Sometimes the best relationships can start with a PR agency that might not know everything about your business but does have strong media chops and a dedication for learning about your industry. That’s why we always recommend an initial phone consultation vs. just perusal of a website. 

PR today is also about so much more than just media pitching. A strong PR team can support content development, video work, organic and paid social media boosting of media stories, and digital marketing to maximize PR results. Be sure to learn about a firm’s broader capabilities, especially in other areas that you can’t support in-house.

Beware senior pitches, junior switches 

In most firms, but especially larger ones, senior agency talent are handling new business development and in all the preliminary meetings. But once the ‘ink is dried’ on the contract, junior talent are often assigned day-to-day management of campaigns. That can be just fine based upon the specific assignment, but not ideal for high-level strategy work. Surprises like this can be avoided by simply asking the question ‘who exactly will we be working with daily on this account?’ 

Search for an extension of your team

Let’s face it. If you had the time and knowledge, you’d be handling PR yourself. But in most cases, companies recognize that they don’t have the contacts or expertise to manage media relationships or to develop impactful strategies. The right PR team can fill that gap, but the best ones do even more. They become extensions of your team who actually care about your business. When searching for this type of team, generally they will give you ‘clues’ that they understand your business problems and have creative, effective solutions. They ask lots of questions, they are proactive in problem-solving and ideas, and they respect budget parameters. 

Expect ideas …and more ideas

There are definitely core aspects to putting together a PR strategy that multiple PR firms will recommend. Build your media lists, write a press release, pitch the right media. Yes, those are important. But there’s more. During the search process, look for a PR team that goes the extra mile to think about out-of-the-box story angles and never-been-tried event ideas that will generate extensive media coverage and generate leads and sales. And just as important, a year or two into the relationship, are they still brainstorming and working as hard for your brand as ever?

Get clarity on reporting & results

More than ever, PR firms need to provide accountability and that means more than just impressions. Today metrics are essential. Can the PR team give you an indication of how that media coverage drove landing page visits? Will they help you leverage media placements with the company’s sales team to help close deals? Can they guide you in boosting great media stories via social to help drive traffic and leads? You have to ask, and they should be able to provide you with evidence of a strong reporting process.

Ask about influencer experience

Social media influencers are here to stay and  a well-implemented program can complement media relations strategies and help drive leads and revenue for both B2C and B2B brands. As this is still relatively new territory, some PR agencies are doing more than others in the category. 

Influencer marketing involves comprehensive strategy and outreach, and negotiation and management expertise, so it’s important to ask about a firm’s experience in this area and learn what kind of results they’ve been seeing with clients.

Posted in PR

4 Ways to Shift Your Marketing Strategy During COVID-19

Posted on by Katie Koeppel

Let’s face it. Until a vaccine is approved, COVID-19 will continue to hover over all of us, impacting our lives and the global economy. For marketers, it may seem jarring to push forward with brand messaging, however putting a freeze on marketing now is akin to slamming your breaks on the freeway – it will lead to disastrous results. 

Instead, accelerate carefully but confidently to move your brand forward. Here are four strategic marketing shifts to watch for as you continue to navigate through this crisis.

DOUBLE DOWN ON TRUST AND TRANSPARENCY – Brian Bennett, STIR President

During times of crisis, you can increase brand equity by taking extra steps to identify with customers’ concerns and needs – assuaging their fears and going above and beyond their expectations. Now’s the time to emphasize product guarantees and offer refunds if products are delayed due to COVID-19 shipping issues. Businesses need to be transparent about how they are implementing new sanitization procedures to ensure customer safety, and respond within minutes not days to customer concerns. Be sure to avoid platitudes and only make promises that you intend to keep.

SERVE, DON’T SELL ON SOCIAL

With many continuing to work remotely, there’s a captive audience for brands to leverage on social channels. Instagram Live usage alone has doubled during the coronavirus. 

Social is a powerful and cost-efficient strategy for smaller brands looking to breakthrough. But more than ever, businesses should listen to social conversations and drive value-oriented vs sales-driven content. Build engagement through contests and quizzes. For example, we worked with a Wisconsin dairy client to implement a simple social media contest to win free cheese and in one month increased sales by 167%!

More online users are taking solace in planning for future activities, like trips to which restaurants they want to visit, so focus on positive, forward-looking messages. To help during this time, social platforms have designed COVID-19 specific resources to help business owners. 

ADAPT YOUR MEDIA OUTREACH STRATEGY – Christel Henke, V.P. Earned Media

There’s been a seismic shift in the media landscape since COVID-19 and it has significantly affected what stories reporters are interested in and how they are presented (hello Zoom and Skype interviews.) That means even more critical thinking before hitting send on pitches to producers and assignment editors, judging by some of the bad PR pitches out there.  Any pitches that smack of self-serving, will get tossed immediately but a story like how Wisconsin insurer Rural Mutual is helping dairy farmers make it through this crisis – that’s the kind of human interest that reporters are looking for.

For the most part, reporters are still inundated with COVID-19 news right now and they aren’t anxiously awaiting an email about your new widget – unless there’s some connection to the current crisis. If not, best advice is to wait it out a bit and monitor the news until the shift back to normal begins. 

THE DIGITAL FUTURE IS NOW

Work from home. Telemedicine. Zoom(bombing). Virtual conferences. Fashion sweatpants. Sourdough. Quarantine has thrust us into a future we will never fully return from. The Social security administrations is seeing productivity gain processing claims at home. Stock traders can now trade stocks from home. Is that right or wrong? Time will tell, but likely this is the new normal. And for many businesses, getting digital right will be a deciding factor on whether they come through this crisis stronger or have to close up shop.

For some, cancelled conferences and events, may result in extra budget and companies that haven’t prioritized social, SEO or influencer-led campaigns, are now finding it’s time to dip their toes in the digital waters. And those nice to have digital initiatives you had in the hopper for 2022? Do them right now. Digital couponing, advertising, ordering and delivery if you are B2C. Air dropped custom swag and spiffs for your employees, clients and prospects instead of in person meetings. StackAdapt, for example recently sent herb garden kits to its top clients – the perfect balance of thoughtful and relevant, and one that will remain top of mind for marketers who need programmatic ads.

As you rev up your marketing engine during this time, make sure all the gears of your digital marketing machine are ready to go.

We invite you to take our free assessment to gauge where your company stands on the digital marketing spectrum, or you can download our 10-step guide on how to Build a Marketing Machine.

True to its Name – Influencer Marketing Will Influence Your Level of Success

Posted on by Emma Spring

Influencer marketing is quickly growing in prominence and… influence. Astounding results and return on investment are being generated by incorporating influencers into integrated marketing campaigns.

If you’re looking to boost your returns, you’ll need to find the right  influencers to represent your brand.  Here are a few tips that will help:

Immerse yourself in the marketplace

Not all influencers are created equally. Each will bring different levels of participation and enthusiasm to your brand. And there is no magic list of the good ones. It’s much like being the general manager of a baseball team.  You need to scout all the players personally, see how they perform and whether they’re a fit for your team.

Start with demographics

Each influencer has an audience. Only consider those influencers whose audience demographics match those of your targeted customer base. Influencers’ audience demographics can be readily found on social media marketing platforms, such as BuzzSumo and Meltwater.

Micro or macro?

Don’t assume that influencers with the largest audience are the best. Let your marketing strategy determine the right audience size:

  • If you seek awareness and association for your brand, a more famous Macro influencer (500K+ followers) is likely a good fit, assuming you have the $100,000+ budget to pay for it.
  • If you want to generate commerce and require engagement (clicks and conversions), Micro influencers often generate higher levels of attributable commerce, and therefore, higher ROI.

Keep this handy chart nearby to know which “type” of influencer would fit best as you develop marketing plans.

Credit: The Business of Fashion

Seek authenticity

You need to do due diligence to determine whether an influencer’s audience was authentically, organically acquired. Sadly, many influencers have purchased accounts with already established followings and changed the username. This allows a person who is actually a “micro” or “nano” influencer to appear as a “macro” influencer. This is called Instagram Fraud. The Business of Fashion reported “Instagram Fraud” is a billion dollar problem in the advertising industry.

Here are our tips for weeding out the fakers:

  • Watch for exponential jumps or dips in engagement from one post to another.
  • Double-check that the average likes on an influencer’s posts aligns with the following count.
    • If someone has 40,000 followers but each post only receives 200 likes, it can indicate they may have bought “likes” or “followers.” More importantly, it shows the influencer’s content is not engaging enough for your brand to be investing in.
  • Review the list of followers and go into a handful of profiles to check for bots.  

Invest wisely

Appropriate influencer marketing budgets range greatly depending on the size of a business and overall marketing spend. But research shows two-thirds of marketers are planning to increase their influencer budgets. 

The best approach for those just beginning to allocate budget towards influencer marketing is to start small, and test the waters with different types of influencers and continue to add resources as you see results.

For example, the chart below shows how one of our client’s Instagram following grew significantly as more was invested in its annual influencer marketing program. You’ll see at the beginning of the year (February), the company had zero followers gained after only investing in influencers for one month. But after six months of investing in a consistent program, the company gained nearly 4,000 new followers. 

Source: STIR

Influencer marketing works because consumers trust the judgement of the author to be authentic and informed. Follow the steps we’ve outlined above to find influencers who are in a position to recommend your brand to audiences based on their credentials, and who will actively and enthusiastically support your cause. You’ll be on your way to a new level marketing successes.

Interested in influencer marketing? Let’s start a conversation—email Christel Henke to connect with our earned media team at christelh@stirstuff.com. 

And, be sure to check out STIR’S INFLUENCER MARKETING CASE STUDY.

It’s a deep dive into our annual influencer program for National Business Furniture that had a whopping 1,333% ROI in one year. Using the strategies outlined above, we partnered with authentic, highly-engaged micro and nano teacher influencers as well as a few interior designers and entrepreneurs. Here are four of the 100+ amazing promotional posts they created on behalf of National Business Furniture:

From the Mouths of Media: 4 Ways to Get Your Company Press

Posted on by Katie Koeppel

Marketing and public relations practitioners now outnumber journalists six to one, which makes getting your company press (both local and nation) more competitive than ever. To make the news and leverage earned media, companies have to be “mediagenic.” This is a term our PR team uses to describe brands that know how to present newsworthy stories. With our help, we’ve seen mediagenic brands use PR to jolt ad campaigns and hit ROI goals as high as 15:1. 

At a recent media networking event, we polled local and national press on what it takes for a company to be mediagenic and get covered in the news. Here’s what you need to know:

1. Timing is Everything 

Every day, reporters face a constant influx of emails with new story ideas and tight digital deadlines. This makes the timing of your newsworthy story outreach almost as important as the content. When contacting the media about your story or event, give as much advance notice as possible. These days, even local TV outlets plan 3-4 weeks ahead, and for editorial opportunities in trade publications, it’s good practice to reach out at least 3-4 months ahead. 

Another pro timing tip straight from the mouth of a reporter: mare sure you are immediately reachable after you send out a press release or story idea. If a reporter is interested, they’ll want to get more details or schedule a follow-up interview ASAP so they can be the first person/outlet to report on the story. 

2. Don’t Forget the Why (Impact) 

No matter what topic they cover, reporters want to write stories that have an impact. They need to know the facts—the “Who, What, Where, and When”—but more importantly they’re looking for the “Why.” The start of your company’s story should focus on how it is making an impact, not the functional details like an event agenda, or new product features. 

For example, XYZ brand’s mediagenic story isn’t about its new cameras that can detect guns in buildings using AI technology. It’s about how XYZ company’s cameras are one step in the right direction to lowering the alarming rate of school shootings in the U.S. Now, that’s impact. 

3. Work to Make Reporters’ Jobs Easier

More often than not, your company’s mediagenic story is merely one of dozens a reporter has to crank out in a given week. Whereas coordinating that same story should be your #1 priority for the week. Do what you can to make reporting on your company as seamless as possible—be ready with possible interview times from your company’s spokesperson, offer relevant facts and figures, provide high-resolution photos (and video if you have it for TV to use as b-roll), and share as much information as you can ahead of time in one email or release vs. a tirade of back-and-forth emails where details could get lost. Reporters will be more likely to reach out to you proactively for other stories if you take this approach. 

It’s also important to help the media through the negative stories too. Be transparent in crisis situations. Explain what you can, and if media is pushing for details you can’t share, explain why you’re not able to. Most of the time they’ll understand and be respectful in how they share this info.

4. Be Descriptive

Each company—no matter the industry—should invest substantial resources into its positioning and messaging strategies to describe its unique value to customers and how it is different from competitors. These illustrative descriptions also should be used repeatedly with media. One technology reporter stated his top pet peeve is companies who describe their products or services as “solutions.” This does not say anything about how the product works or the kind of impact it makes. 

So before you send that email or make that call to a reporter, consider: Are you doing what it takes to be mediagenic? 

Posted in PR

Four Steps to Increase Event Attendance

Posted on by Katie Koeppel

Whether it’s professional sports games, the State Fair or a music festival, STIR consistently helps clients set attendance and revenue records. Most recently, we helped Bastille Days obtain a 13% increase in revenue and attendance in just one year. Here are a few of our proven event marketing strategies that build brands and generate excitement.

1. Reimagine Your Creative Strategy

Even the best events need to be regularly re-energized. If your attendance is stagnant, or even worse, declining, it’s time to revamp creative. The event market space is getting more competitive, so relying on the same graphic design and messaging year-after-year is not going to cut it. When crafting a new creative strategy, focus on the single most important aspect of the brand’s consumer appeal. What do your attendees really want from the experience on an emotional level? Unassuming fun? Championship dreams? Cultural immersion?

Knowing sports fans live for the dream of a championship, we built a campaign for the Milwaukee Bucks around the rally call ‘ Own the future’—the promise of future excitement. This rejuvenated creative strategy helped the worst team in the NBA become a top game day attraction.

2. Create One-of-a-Kind Experiences

Often, time-honored festivals stick to what they know best and avoid venturing away from their event experience “formula.” It’s important to stay focused and in character while also offering new, one-of-a-kind experiences true to your brand. 

For Bastille Days, one the nation’s largest French-themed celebrations, the main mission was to celebrate French culture. We researched popular French culture elements that aligned with the new creative theme, MKE Mon Amour, and found a way to add them in and promote them. These locally-made Love Lock sculptures inspired by the Pont des Arts, a famous bridge in Paris where couples lock their love for one another, were a big hit for the festival. 

Even a small element will draw people in just because it’s new and different. It also is a great way to generate media coverage as new = news.

3. Extend Your Reach to New Audiences 

The best events have diverse appeal. Continue to build attendance by focusing your marketing efforts on new audiences or target markets. For the Wisconsin State Fair, we staged the Jalapeño Olympiad, a promotion that involved the Hispanic community to attract new attendees in this underrepresented audience. In its first year, the Facebook promotion reached 5,500 people in Milwaukee’s Hispanic community and generated 55 contestants. 

Social media and digital advertising allow you to target audiences that are seeking experiences like yours at a lower cost than a traditional TV and print media buy. It’s also possible to augment budgets with grants like the Joint Effort Marketing (JEM) Program.The JEM grant reimburses advertising costs targeting new geographic markets or demographic audiences. 

4. Super-charge Awareness via PR and Social Media

Use public relations and social media to tell your event’s story. Media coverage and high social media engagement are sure to keep your event top-of-mind and send more attendees your way. Be sure to focus on 3-4 content pillars to refine your earned media strategy. This will give each social post, influencer promotion and media story a defined purpose and meaning. 

From obtaining city permits to booking big-name entertainers, planning a large-scale event takes a lot of work, and these four steps are just the opening act. Contact katiek@stirstuff.com for a backstage pass to greater event success. 

Pitch Perfect: 5 Ways to Score a Byline Article

Posted on by Christel Henke

When it comes to thought leadership, bylined content is one of the best ways for executives to position themselves as industry experts and boost SEO for their companies. With more than 500 million blogs and thousands of trade publications covering just about every topic under the sun – from food safety to hospital design – the opportunities are endless.

For the best results, bylined articles should be part of a content calendar within an ongoing visibility campaign. Placing them takes a strategic approach. Here are five tips for hitting the right notes with your article pitch and building long-term relationships with editors.

1. Be realistic

What expert doesn’t want to be featured in a national publication like Forbes, Entrepreneur or Harvard Business Review? While these outlets do accept contributions, pitching them usually requires a seasoned expert with a portfolio of previously published articles. If you are just dipping your toe in the content waters, it’s better to start with blogs or trade outlets within your industry. Generate some early wins before approaching the media major leagues.

2. Do Your Homework

Who is the audience you most want to reach? Once you determine this, conduct online research to find top industry outlets or blogs and study their content. What topics are they regularly spotlighting and what are the headlines that are typically posted? Some outlets are more focused on ‘how-to’ listicle-style pieces such as ‘How to improve your safety procedures in 10 steps’ while others prefer in-depth opinion pieces. The more your pitch lines up with the outlet’s format, the better your chances of success. Most outlets that accept content include editorial guidelines on their site which outline word count, formatting and graphic requirements.

3. Expand Your Topic Horizon

The obvious approach when exploring media outlets and topics is to pitch outlets that directly align with an expert’s industry, e.g. pitching a financial expert to a financial publication. While that’s a starting point, think out of the box by leveraging all the areas of your expert’s skills set. For a CEO in the commercial collection business, we went beyond collection-industry publications to emphasize his years of management experience in customer service, sales and training publications.

4. Focus on Personal Insights

It’s nearly impossible to find a topic that hasn’t been written about, but your personal style and insights can provide a fresh and valuable take that editors or looking for. Study the outlet for previous articles on the topic and make sure you are taking it in a different direction. Determine why your article would be relevant to their readers. Then, target the appropriate editor who reviews article queries – often this person is noted specifically as a contact on the website.

Here’s what your email pitch should include: 

  • A short, attention-grabbing subject line. Include ‘Bylined Article Query’ so editor immediately knows what you are asking for.
  • A brief paragraph indicating your interest in contributing an original article; explain why the piece would be timely along with 3-4 short bullets on points the article will cover.
  • List the expert’s title and a professional bio. Include a link or a short paragraph that highlights the expert’s past writing experience. If author’s title is sales or marketing-oriented, in some cases, it may be better to revise it to something more general, e.g. Manager, V.P. so that it doesn’t feel overtly promotional.
  • Consider offering an exclusive. This means that you are committing to provide original content that will not appear anywhere else. Depending on the outlet, there may be flexibility in offering similar content to a different industry publication or it may be a very rigid requirement. You’ll have to determine this on a case-by-case basis.

5. Be Persistent, Not Annoying

Editors are busy people and, while you may get a quick response, chances are you will send a pitch and hear nothing back. Be sure to send a follow-up email – usually a couple of follow-ups with a week or two in between is sufficient. If you haven’t heard back after two or three emails, it’s time to try another publication or review your pitch to see how you might tweak it. While social channels are a great way to connect with reporters and see what they cover, pitching via email is still the better way to get a response from editors.

Remember to be responsive. An editor may email you with a question or might be intrigued with where you are heading with a pitch, but also might want to take it in a slightly different direction. Being flexible can help you build a long-term relationship that could ultimately land you multiple article opportunities down the road.

And like that, you’re off to the contributed content races! If you’d like more advice on how to generate editorial content that drives leads, please reach out at christelh@stirstuff.com.

Posted in PR

How to Develop Your Brand Story

Posted on by Katie Koeppel

On the surface, brands can seem one-dimensional: a logo on a package, the product it represents, a webpage, or some ads. While this would qualify as a brand by definition, often it carries little meaning, little equity, and little potential.

To create incremental value to the brand owner, a brand must be endowed with meaning. It is the meaning – the story –that determines how that brand is perceived and the degree to which it is preferred over alternatives. Some brands have stories that have evolved over the years and are continually refined. Other brands are new or reinvented, and the story needs to be retold or developed from scratch. 

A CMO is always faced with the tasks of increasing sales, increasing profit, increasing awareness and preference. Many strategies can be employed to move in this direction, but without properly telling the brand story, success will be limited.

Defining Your Brand Story

Envision your brand as a person – a persona – with a personality. The more interesting, genuine, and compelling it is, the more trust it will garner. Consumers make snap decisions about the brand based on what they see.

Here are some of the underlying elements that drive consumer decisions about your brand:

  • Why the brand exists
  • How the brand evolved
  • What the brand “believes in”
  • Brand style cues
  • Brand ethics – how it behaves
  • Brand associations – where it is seen, who its friends are
  • Brand credibility – what its credentials are

Telling Your Brand Story

You have to tell your brand story everywhere, and in every way. Make it as interesting as possible. Marketing professionals should set the tone for the company. The true test of success is whether this tone resonates with staff. Is it a point of pride? Can your staff effectively tell the brand story with credibility and enthusiasm?

To develop your brand story, carve out a sizable chunk of time to do the following:

  1. Make a list of your brand’s positive attributes. Don’t just include product attributes; outline the values and persona you want your brand to be known for.
  2. Define the sellable/winning position within the category.
  3. Connect attributes and story elements to marketing strategies.
  4. Generate a keyword strategy – sound bites that are consistently reinforced across every messaging platform.

Activating the Brand Story

You must employ an integrated marketing strategy to successfully activate your brand story. This plays out in traditional media, digital media and all relative brand touch points. You need gifted partners – a creative ad agency with integrated messaging capabilities to weave together the elements in a smart and seamless way. You also need a digital marketing agency that can build out the elements you need to carry the message.

You can save a great deal of money by finding one integrated advertising agency that provides:

  • A comprehensive messaging platform, from point of sale to personal interactions over the counter and by phone
  • A thorough review and rewrite of all of your existing communications assets
  • All design elements from industrial design to packaging
  • Websites, apps and digital properties
  • Advertising creative
  • Public relations
  • Social media marketing
  • Promotions

Giving Your Brand Story Longevity

You can, and should, build a strong, meaningful, integrated brand story that will positively affect sales, profit, ROI, perceptions and preferences. But you can’t do it alone. You need to involve other people as well as an agency that gets it.

The brand story is embellished, burnished and rewritten every day, but the most important chapter in the story is the one you are writing today.

This STIR blog also was published in the online PR news-source Bulldog Reporter, titled “PR Storytelling: How to Develop Your Brand’s Story.”

Brand Storytelling In Action

Cousins Subs – Optimistic

Cousins Subs approached us to help visually define the company’s brand pillars. This image, which was hung on the walls in Cousins stories and corporate locations, told the story of what their company stands for. Yes, they make subs, but the company also has a rich history doing great things for the community and their employees.

One of Cousins four brand pillars was “optimistic,” which this photo reflects in an attention-grabbing manner. The young girl in an old library tells the story of how at any age, you should keep learning, feed your curiosity and strive to grow.

Posted in PR

9 Ways to Measure Your Story’s PR Potential

Posted on by Katie Koeppel

Marketing departments don’t always fully grasp the role of public relations departments. The PR team’s work is often reduced to “getting our company in the news.” While that may be a goal in PR, it takes strategy and a nose for news in order to get there. Brands are often anxious to send out press releases that don’t always tell a newsworthy story. The first task for any PR professional—well before we pen the first press release—is to find the client’s story. And we know the news when we see it.

Before a story makes it to the front page of the newspaper, the 10 p.m. news or a featured spot on the web, it must contain at least one of the elements of news. A good PR agency knows how to measure the newsworthiness of your company’s story. This ultimately increases your company’s ROI on PR efforts: when your PR agency spends more time pitching high-quality stories, you can expect more high-quality coverage.

Not sure whether your story is newsworthy? See if it has at least a few of these elements:

  1. Timeliness. Did something just happen? Better yet, is it happening in the future? You might have news on your hands. If it happened a week ago, or even a day ago, the newsworthiness of your story is diminished. Events are always more likely to be covered before they happen; reporters rarely write about events after the fact.
  2. Proximity. If you have an exciting story happening right in your hometown, perfect—reach out to the local news organizations. USA Today, however, probably isn’t interested (unless your story contains several other elements of news). Similarly, if you’re launching a new product nationally, local and regional news outlets may be less interested than national publications that have a wider audience
  3. Prominence. If your story involves a prominent figure on a local or national level (think politicians, athletes or any kind of celebrity), it automatically has news value.
  4. Oddity. Anyone that’s worked in journalism knows this old adage: If a dog bites a man, it’s not news. If a man bites a dog, you’ve got a story. The unusual is interesting, and often newsworthy.
  5. Emotion. A story that tugs at the audience’s heartstrings can be newsworthy; for example, a story about war veterans reunited with their long lost friends from the war after many years, or a story about a family that overcomes challenging circumstances. These stories may not always be timely, but they draw in the audience with their emotional appeal.
  6. Human interest. Is “human interest” just a euphemism for fluff? Maybe. But these stories have their place. They can be quirky or funny anecdotes that incorporate some of the other elements of news, like oddity or appeal to emotion. Examples would be a story about a pet competition at the county fair, or an article about extreme bargain hunters on Black Friday.
  7. Sex. It sells, as they say, and it also tends to increase the news value of a story.
  8. Conflict. You may not want to pitch a story that highlights your business in conflict, but stories involving a conflict between two or more parties are often newsworthy. Readers enjoy rivalries and watching conflict play out.
  9. Impact. Anything that impacts a great number of people is more newsworthy than something that only impacts a small subset of the population. Is your big company announcement going to impact the community at large, or is it only noteworthy to your employees? If the latter, it would be better suited for your internal newsletter than in a press release.

Remember these elements when sharing ideas with your PR team. They aren’t hard and fast rules, but by understanding what makes a story newsworthy, you’ll be better able to identify a great story from your own company when it arises.

Posted in PR

Be the Talk of the Trade Show with Earned Media

Posted on by Christel Henke

For B2B companies, exhibiting at a trade show is a very cost-effective way of reaching customers and prospects. However, it takes a lot of planning and judicious investment to ensure success and avoid getting lost among the sea of exhibitors and attendees. With the cost of paid sponsorship at trade shows continuing to skyrocket, consider using earned media to stand out from the crowd.

We recently got back from IFT18 in Chicago, where we had the privilege to position seasoning and spice company Asenzya for trade show success using earned media strategies. A mix of proactive social media and media relations efforts allowed the company to take its trade show presence to a new level. Compared to the previous year, Asenzya doubled its onsite media interviews and ranked among the top five in social media engagement.

Here are a few key takeaways to help you get stellar results at your next trade show:

Prepare what you can in advance.

Trade shows make for long days and busy schedules. It’s important to do a sufficient amount of prep-work so that you’re not overwhelmed at the show. About 1-2 months prior to the event, pitch media attendees and local media to secure pre-show and onsite media opportunities. Develop talking points and press kits in advance to quickly get media necessary information. On the social side, create a series of templates for each network to provide consistent branding on all social channels during the show. You can schedule these posts in advance to ensure your brand is still active on social, even if it gets busy at your booth. Review the show’s social accounts to implement the right hashtag(s) for increased engagement.

Photo of social media template samples

Stand out from the crowd.

Identify and promote what sets you apart from the thousands of other attendees. This may be a new product, thought leadership topic, or something you’re doing in addition to the typical exhibitor duties. For example, Asenzya hosted a bus tour of the best pizza restaurants in Chicago for its customers. Several reporters were intrigued by this, so Asenzya invited them as well. It was a unique way to continue to build relationships with these media contacts. Another idea is to stand out on social media. But when social channels are overcrowded with everyone using the same hashtag, this can be difficult. For Asenzya, we created a geo-targeted Snapchat filter to be used by attendees throughout the IFT show. It got great engagement, and Asenzya was one of the only companies to use a filter like this. Investing in a social media ad campaign that targets individuals attending the show is another great way to break through the social clutter.

Photo of geo-map and Snapchat filter design

Put on your social butterfly cap.

You only have a few days at a trade show to reach your target audience, so milk every minute for all it’s worth. Shoot photos and videos to promote what’s going on at your booth on social media. Walk the show and share the cool things you see on social. Reply to and retweet those engaging with the show’s hashtag and your brand. Mingle with the crowd and be on the lookout for media contacts to invite to your booth. Be sure to keep conversations going after the show too. Follow those you meet on social, share any additional information via email, and be sure to connect with them at next year’s event!

Photo of smiling Asenzya staff and onsite media interview

For more tips on how to implement earned media into your trade show strategy, please contact Christel Henke, VP Earned Media, here.

Selling By Storytelling: 4 Ways We STIR Up A Compelling Narrative

Posted on by Brian Bennett

Since I first began working in PR, I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen confused looks on people’s faces as they attempted to guess how I spend my days. My family used to ask me when they were going to see me on TV and I’d say “It’s really not about me. It’s about helping my clients tell their story.”  Finding and sharing those stories has been my passion over the past 25 years.

From my experiences working with both small businesses and major corporations, I’ve learned that the foundation of any successful storytelling campaign is relationship-building and trust. That’s the approach our STIR Earned Media team takes with every PR, content and social media campaign.

  • Listen Before Telling:  Crafting a client’s narrative with the emotional power to connect with audiences is the most important part of our job. And it can’t be done without taking time to know the client – learning their industry, understanding objectives and involving them in the PR planning process. Creativity is crucial but making sure that the ‘big idea’ is on target with business objectives is equally as important. Does it drive prospects to a new website? Is it delivering customers to a retail grand opening? My team and I always hold a discovery session with clients to discover what they are trying to accomplish then frame the message we want to share and determine the most compelling way to deliver it. We’re strategic storytellers and that’s a priority.
  • Be a Connection Cultivator: It’s a new world where we are always connected at some level and the merger of man and machine is forever changing expectations for communicators. Today, attention and trust are scarce, and consumers are more skeptical than ever. That makes authentic connections – whether through word-of-mouth, online communities and reviews – more valuable than ever in this 24-7, multi-screen environment. My focus is to ensure that the Earned Media team builds those connections by understanding the best ways to reach target audiences, whether that’s through an industry journalist or a social media influencer.
  • Breakthrough the Clutter: To reach today’s hyper-connected consumer who is overwhelmed with messages, PR pros must truly create a powerful visual impression about the brands they represent and ensure that they are relevant in a personal way to the audiences they are targeting. Best-selling author and entrepreneur, Seth Godin, once said, “People don’t buy products and  services, they buy relations, stories and magic.” Whether that story is a human interest piece or focuses on a breakthrough technology, STIR Earned Media works closely with clients to find that newsworthy angle that captures imaginations.
  • Promise and deliver:  It’s a rare PR pro who hasn’t had a client tell them they want to be on the front page of the New York Times or be interviewed on a top-rated national morning show. It can be tempting to make these promises, but clients really should be cautious when hearing these kind of coverage ‘guarantees.’ In reality, a successful earned media campaign is focused on the right customized media goals for each client – sometimes a well-placed trade story can be more valuable than a national story. I believe the best way to build trust and long-term client relationships is to set high, but realistic, expectations early on about what can be achieved, work with clients to determine what defines a ‘win,’ provide regular progress updates and stay focused on achieving commitments.

In the end, the best PR campaigns involve constant and clear communication and a commitment to finding the most compelling strategic solutions. At STIR, I’m really proud to work with a talented team who delivers on that promise every day.

If you would like to learn more about how STIR can help you tell your story, please contact Christel Henke, Vice President, Earned Media, here.

Posted in PR