Why YOU Should Bet on PR

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Caroline Limpert authored an article on Inc.com called “Why I’m Betting on PR” as a late Christmas gift – it ran on Dec. 26.  It was a pretty short piece, and I could have added a lot of arguments of my own, but it makes the point.  Young companies and companies with small marketing budgets will get the most bang for the buck with PR dollars.  Regis McKenna, the visionary marketing guru who helped shape Silicon Valley in the ‘70s got it, and far-sighted entrepreneurs and small business owners understand its power as well.

PR is not “free”, but it does give you more power and reach than many other forms of marketing.  Even in an era when “personalized” messages are all the rage, providing relevant information judged to be of value by 3rd party information sources (magazines, newspapers, blogs, etc.) is one of the most effective ways of building and reinforcing your brand.

Give PR a try.  All you have to lose is your anonymity.

Marketing 101

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Marketing 101 seems like a good introductory title to a blog about effective marketing for startups and emerging companies.  With more than 30 years’ experience in launching and promoting technology companies and other B2B enterprises, I have seen a lot of companies succeed, and a lot of companies fail.

A company’s success requires a lot more than a good marketing program.  It needs passion, adequate funding, technical savvy, and leadership (see my article on the Heart of a Startup).  If a company doesn’t have the vision, management team, product, sales, personnel, and financial and delivery operations in place, there is nothing that marketing can do to save a company.  In fact, in my early days with leading PR agencies such as Regis McKenna Inc. and Hill & Knowlton, we had a saying that “good marketing is the best way to kill a bad product”.

Defining marketing

According to the AMA, marketing is “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large”.  This definition encompasses much more than simply outbound (and now inbound) communication with customers and prospects.  I found a definition using a Google search which said marketing was “the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising”, which is closer to the narrow definition to which many people subscribe.

What are the first steps in marketing?

If you agree with the second definition above, you might think that the first steps in marketing are to get a website and some brochures ready and send out a news release.  Not.

Overarching Vision

True marketing starts much earlier, when a company starts defining who it is, what it plans to offer, why it will do it better than anyone else, and how it is going to execute.  To effectively launch a company and a product, it is important to have a cohesive strategy. A strategic marketing plan will take into account overall organization goals, corporate and product positioning, financial goals, community relations and other issues.  The marketing message must be congruent with how the company is presenting itself to employees, vendors, investors, and users.  For example, if a company says it cares for customer service and does not have trained representatives in place to take calls when it starts shipping product, it won’t take long for customers and prospects to mistrust the company.  If a company claims that its products are the fastest, most reliable or easiest to use and these claims are refuted by early adopters, it will soon lose momentum.  And if the CEO and the CTO have different responses when asked about the company’s vision, mission and objectives, the company will be perceived as not yet ready for prime time.  Getting a strategic plan in place can take from 3 to 6 months depending on the stage at which the company is operating.

IMPORTANT:  It is not necessarily expensive to get a strategic plan in place, but it does take time.  Rushing a plan is more expensive than allowing for an appropriate amount of time to develop the plan.

Adequate Funding

Another common mistake among young (and sometimes more established) companies is lack of consistent budgeting.  It takes time to create and sustain a market presence, and inconsistent application of marketing programs can sometimes be worse than no marketing at all.  We recently worked with a company with outstanding potential and were working on a year plan.  Unfortunately, the company decided to pull back on its budget abruptly, halfway through the year.  With no warning, some of the activities underway we cancelled midstream—resulting in expense with no return for the company.  Had we understood the financial constraints earlier in the year, we would have recommended a different set of activities.

On a par with outright cancelling of a program is inconsistent application—stops and starts.  As in activities such as dieting and muscle building—and relationship building, building up a head of steam, followed by inactivity and then trying to start over yields less than optimum results.

Consistent Messaging

How much better to go out with a consistent message and a funded marketing program that will allow the company to demonstrate a single-minded focus and build a reputation in the market?  At Breakthru, we specialize in helping young companies look larger than they are.  This is not deception, it is simply helping them to present themselves in a way that allows them to demonstrate that they are an organized and sophisticated organization, worth of the trust of their audiences.

Marketing 101 Summary

Plan before you leap!  Make sure that your agency is on board in time to provide strategic planning based on a reasonable budget, rather than simply looking for quick tactical solutions.  It is less expensive—and more productive in the long run.