PR 101 - Effective Marketing Communications for the Automation Industry
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Walt Boyes presents a totally revised and updated version of PR101, his very popular Marketing Communications Master Class. This webinar is for both newbies to marketing communications (product managers, sales managers and engineers who have been "promoted" into marketing) and those who have been doing marcomm in the automation industry for a while. This webinar is specific to the automation industry and discusses: - Marketing "bang for the buck" - Integrated marketing - Public relations in the automation industry - How to place a press release - Product releases and news releases - Relationship building with editors, influencers, and thought leaders - Social Media: Inbound and outbound marketing -- a cascade control loop - Metrics and measuring results Walt has more than 25 years of experience in sales, sales management, marketing, and product development in the automation industry, including Executive Committee experience and board of directors service in both for-profit and not-for-profit companies. Walt is currently serving as Editor-in-Chief of CONTROL magazine, http://www.controlglobal.com. In addition, he is a principal in Spitzer and Boyes LLC, http://www.spitzerandboyes.com, a technology consulting firm devoted to assisting companies to better market their products in manufacturing and automation. Walt also acts as a freelance acquisitions editor for Momentum Press, a division of iGroup, on Instrumentation and Automation texts. Walt has published professionally in the technology and science fiction fields, and is a member of SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
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PR 101 - Effective Marketing Communications for the Automation Industry
- 1. Walt Boyes Editor in Chief Public Relations Tactics forPublic Relations Tactics for Automation CompaniesAutomation Companies Tips and Strategies for Creating a Working PRTips and Strategies for Creating a Working PR Program forProgram for YourYour CompanyCompany PR101:PR101:
- 2. Introduction We’re talking about Public Relations…something many automation companies don’t do, or don’t do well. Why not? What good is it? Isn’t PR just for really big companies or politicians? I’m a control system manufacturer. I sell to engineers! I don’t need a “spin doctor!” …And now there’s all this blogging and tweeting and Facebooking and I don’t know what to do with any of it! Social Media, phaugh! Sadly, this may sound like YOU!
- 3. What is PR? Public Relations is the art and practice of communicating ideas.
- 4. The difference between PR and advertising Advertising is about products, services or brand image, PR is about ideas… who you are and what you stand for.
- 5. PR’s place in the marketing mix PR is NOT a cheap replacement for display advertising! But ...you already knew that, didn’t you?
- 6. The basics of PR: 1. Media communications 2. Product marketing 3. Tradeshow participation 4. Editorial coverage 5. Stakeholder communications 6. Crisis management
- 7. The basics of PR: 1. Media communications It used to be that companies decided what their customers should know and tucked everything else under the rug. Fact is, marketing communicators no longer own the message.
- 8. The basics of PR: 2. Product Marketing While this is what most automation companies ONLY do, it isn’t the only thing they SHOULD do.
- 9. The basics of PR: 3. Tradeshow participation Tradeshow participation is problematic for smaller companies and questionable for larger ones…here are some things you can do instead, or in addition to attending trade shows or (gulp!) exhibiting at them.
- 10. The basics of PR: 4. Editorial coverage This is the money play for everybody…getting coverage for the work you are doing gives you a brand image and a reputation that is worth quite a bit.
- 11. The basics of PR: 5. Stakeholder communications If you are larger than a four or five person office, you need to figure out how to keep everybody on the same page. If you have investors, or remote offices, this is really important.
- 12. The basics of PR: 6. Crisis management You may not think you need to know how to handle a crisis, but what do you do if a plant blows up and everyone says it is your control system that was at fault?
- 13. What Public Relations is Public Relations is the practice of selecting the correct facts and concepts about an enterprise and its actions and presenting them in the most positive light…
- 14. What PR can and cannot do for your company PR cannot make a “silk purse” out of a “sow’s ear.” You have to have something legitimate to say, or nobody will listen.
- 15. What PR can and cannot do for your company Marketing communications can no longer control the message. The inmates are running the asylum.
- 16. What is all this stuff about Social Media anyway?
- 17. What is all this stuff about Social Media anyway? •What is “social media”? •Who uses social media? •Does social media work in business? •Should YOU use social media? •HOW should you use social media?
- 18. How to construct a PR campaign “A PR Strategy Is More Than Sending Out Press Releases” – Linda VandeVrede
- 19. Writing a press release It must be “news” It must be noteworthy It must be well written It must be topical It must be targeted
- 20. Relations with Technical Editors Maintain a database of editors in your trade area and industry. Keep it updated. Make sure you call or meet with each editor at least once a year. Keep editorial guidelines from all of your target publications Know what the editor’s preferred writing and image styles are Know how the editor prefers to be contacted
- 21. Getting editorial coverage in trade magazines and websites Know the editorial calendar Pick a topic that fits the calendar Pitch it at least 4-6 months ahead Make sure it is well written Make sure you furnish good visuals Get it in on time
- 22. PR and tradeshows Get your best customers to the show Schedule meetings with analysts and editors Announce new products Announce new strategic alliances Announce new contracts or big projects Get coverage in the “show daily” Make contacts in the trade press
- 23. How to use PR to increase interest in the enterprise Communicating the company brand Internal Communications Communicating with shareholders Communications with the media
- 24. What is branding? Branding is the maintenance and furtherance of the company brand. A brand is the cognitive “gestalt” made up of all of the knowledge, emotions, thoughts and feelings about a company and its products by employees, suppliers, customers, competitors, shareholders and the media. So why is branding important?
- 25. PR for branding the industrial enterprise PR communicates the brand values of the company PR projects the image the company sees of itself PR promotes the company, its values and its actions PR acts as the primary channel for Social Media interactions between the company and its customers.
- 26. Cognitive dissonance and PR Cognitive dissonance is produced when a company acts in a way that is contrary to its projected image and brand. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful phenomenon that leads directly to lost business. Cognitive dissonance can be spread quickly and widely by Social Media… witness the Toyota fail and the BP catastrophe.
- 27. Cognitive dissonance and debasing your brand When you do things just a little bit less well, or less expensively, you produce cognitive dissonance Cognitive dissonance always leads directly to lost business, even if you debase your brand just a little at a time. Cognitive dissonance from debasing your brand can be spread quickly and widely by Social Media…
- 28. PR for internal communications and Social Media Communicate the company’s strategic goals and objectives Communicate the company vision Communicate the company’s brand values Communicate news Manage morale Provide a channel for stakeholder communications
- 29. Communicating with shareholders PR is used to share company financial news with shareholders PR is used to share new programs, options, and shareholder specific information PR is used to communicate with analysts and Wall Street experts. YOU may be called on to explain why your company’s results aren’t as predicted. Do you know how?
- 30. Social Media Rules for Communicating with Employees, Customers and the Public: Honesty is the best policy Open communications is best Clear and direct works Waffling and ducking is counterproductive
- 31. Crisis Management Plan ahead for a crisis Have a crisis management team BE HONEST and OPEN Take responsibility Take corrective action swiftly Provide information access
- 32. How to handle a crisis Establish a crisis information center Establish a schedule of updates and stick to the schedule Never waffle, never lie: be forthright and honest Make sure you are communicating the truth as best you know it. Tell your story simply and help the media and the authorities get the story out
- 33. Walt Boyes Editor in Chief Putting It All Together– a detailedPutting It All Together– a detailed approach to integratingapproach to integrating marketing communicationsmarketing communications PR101:PR101:
- 34. Outbound 1.Wikipedia Page(s) 1. For company 2. For product(s) 3. For principals and experts 4. For industry issues 2.Articles and Whitepapers 3.Campaign Whitepapers 4.Presentations 5.Webinars 6.YouTube Inbound 1.Your own blog(s) 2.Twitter 3.LinkedIn 4.Facebook 5.“A List” at Control.com 6.Other Social Media End Users and OEMs Social Media and Outbound/Inbound Marketing Are a Cascade Control Loop Copyright 2012, 2013 Spitzer and Boyes LLC used by permission
- 35. Outbound 1.Wikipedia Page(s) 1. For company 2. For product(s) 3. For principals and experts 4. For industry issues 2.Articles and Whitepapers 3.Campaign Whitepapers 4.Presentations 5.Webinars 6.YouTube Inbound 1.Your own blog(s) 2.Twitter 3.LinkedIn 4.Facebook 5.“A List” at Control.com 6.Other Social Media End Users and OEMs Social Media and Outbound/Inbound Marketing Are a Cascade Control Loop Copyright 2012, 2013 Spitzer and Boyes LLC used by permission
- 36. Outbound 1.Wikipedia Page(s) 1. For company 2. For product(s) 3. For principals and experts 4. For industry issues 2.Articles and Whitepapers 3.Campaign Whitepapers 4.Presentations 5.Webinars 6.YouTube Inbound 1.Your own blog(s) 2.Twitter 3.LinkedIn 4.Facebook 5.“A List” at Control.com 6.Other Social Media End Users and OEMs Social Media and Outbound/Inbound Marketing Are a Cascade Control Loop Copyright 2012, 2013 Spitzer and Boyes LLC used by permission
- 37. Outbound 1.Wikipedia Page(s) 1. For company 2. For product(s) 3. For principals and experts 4. For industry issues 2.Articles and Whitepapers 3.Campaign Whitepapers 4.Presentations 5.Webinars 6.YouTube Inbound 1.Your own blog(s) 2.Twitter 3.LinkedIn 4.Facebook 5.“A List” at Control.com 6.Other Social Media End Users and OEMs Social Media and Outbound/Inbound Marketing Are a Cascade Control Loop Copyright 2012, 2013 Spitzer and Boyes LLC used by permission
- 38. Outbound 1.Wikipedia Page(s) 1. For company 2. For product(s) 3. For principals and experts 4. For industry issues 2.Articles and Whitepapers 3.Campaign Whitepapers 4.Presentations 5.Webinars 6.YouTube Inbound 1.Your own blog(s) 2.Twitter 3.LinkedIn 4.Facebook 5.“A List” at Control.com 6.Other Social Media End Users and OEMs Social Media and Outbound/Inbound Marketing Are a Cascade Control Loop Copyright 2012, 2013 Spitzer and Boyes LLC used by permission
- 39. Outbound 1.Wikipedia Page(s) 1. For company 2. For product(s) 3. For principals and experts 4. For industry issues 2.Articles and Whitepapers 3.Campaign Whitepapers 4.Presentations 5.Webinars 6.YouTube Inbound 1.Your own blog(s) 2.Twitter 3.LinkedIn 4.Facebook 5.“A List” at Control.com 6.Other Social Media End Users and OEMs Social Media and Outbound/Inbound Marketing Are a Cascade Control Loop Copyright 2012, 2013 Spitzer and Boyes LLC used by permission
- 40. Outbound 1.Wikipedia Page(s) 1. For company 2. For product(s) 3. For principals and experts 4. For industry issues 2.Articles and Whitepapers 3.Campaign Whitepapers 4.Presentations 5.Webinars 6.YouTube Inbound 1.Your own blog(s) 2.Twitter 3.LinkedIn 4.Facebook 5.“A List” at Control.com 6.Other Social Media End Users and OEMs Social Media and Outbound/Inbound Marketing Are a Cascade Control Loop Copyright 2012, 2013 Spitzer and Boyes LLC used by permission
- 41. Outbound 1.Wikipedia Page(s) 1. For company 2. For product(s) 3. For principals and experts 4. For industry issues 2.Articles and Whitepapers 3.Campaign Whitepapers 4.Presentations 5.Webinars 6.YouTube Inbound 1.Your own blog(s) 2.Twitter 3.LinkedIn 4.Facebook 5.“A List” at Control.com 6.Other Social Media End Users and OEMs Social Media and Outbound/Inbound Marketing Are a Cascade Control Loop Copyright 2012, 2013 Spitzer and Boyes LLC used by permission
- 42. Conclusion You’ve now seen what PR, or rather, integrated marketing communications, can do for any automation company. If you’ve followed me so far, you get a gold star…
Notas do Editor
- My name is Walt Boyes. I am Editor in Chief of Control and ControlGlobal.com, and a principal of Spitzer and Boyes LLC. In both endeavors, I am continuously involved in the uses and misuses of public relations. I have been either doing public relations and marketing or having them done to me for nearly forty years now. I’ve seen many changes, but not so many as I have seen in just the last decade. We are going to wade through the landscape of communications and try to see what the current best practices are. Some of those have not changed in decades. Some are as new as your last Tweet.
- Did you ever ask yourself why automation companies, integrators and manufacturers alike, don ’t do PR? Is the answer simply that the management staff doesn’t understand what it is, what it is for? Do you understand what Public Relations is? Do you understand what it is for? Public Relations, PR, is a fundamental part of any integrated marketing program…any integrated marketing communications program…any branding program. PR is about communication and communicating. We’ll talk about the ways PR is ESSENTIAL in the automation market.
- Public Relations is the art and practice of communication in a structured way. The purpose of public relations is to create the desired effect in the minds of the recipients. So what does this really mean? PR practitioners typically are attempting to present a concept, an idea, or a series of ideas, like the values a corporation represents…in a way that is structured to: Cause belief Stimulate action Add value
- Display advertising is designed to cause an action: calling an 800-number, requesting information from a website, calling a salesperson. Public relations is a bit more general than that. Public relations is simply about creating positive “buzz” in a structured way, around an idea. In essence, a public relations campaign is aimed at all of the stakeholders of an enterprise, while advertising is aimed directly at customers. PR serves analysts, customers, shareholders, media, and all of the other entities with an interest in the enterprise as a whole.
- There is a concept known as the “marketing mix.” It is all of the tools and strategies an enterprise uses to communicate its values, its products, its services to the public and to customers. The marketing mix includes display advertising, tradeshow participation, direct marketing, field sales, online marketing, and public relations. Public relations is an integral part of the marketing mix. In fact, it is the glue that holds the mix together. Most enterprises do public relations, they just do it unconsciously, and therefore they do it poorly. The topics we ’ll cover in this seminar are designed to show you how to do it well.
- The six basic functions of PR in the industrial enterprise are talking to the media, product marketing issues like new product introductions and new product releases, participation in tradeshows, symposia and forums, gaining editorial coverage, communicating with all of the stakeholders of your company, and crisis management. There is a seventh function, sort of a metafunction, that is composed of all six, plus some extra…and that function is management and conservation of your brand.
- Customer empowerment…employee empowerment…the Internet and the social media from email to Twitter have made it necessary for even integrators to know how to direct, not control, the message they want to present to the public, their customers, and their employees and suppliers. It matters what you say, and it matters what everyone else says. Just google www.insertnameofcompanysucks.com And you ’ll see what I mean.
- You don ’t have products, do you? Of course you do, even if you are just an integrator and it is only a proprietary template or two. One of the products you have is the reputation of your work-products. Bet you don’t really see that as a product of itself. You can use the same skills PR brings to vendors and big customers to gain benefit for your products, your reputation, and your ability to attract and keep customers, regardless of how small a company you are.
- Trade shows aren’t dead. They are undergoing a sea change. As the big old ones die, new trade shows are born, more targeted, more effective. But how you do at a trade show depends nearly entirely on you, not on the trade show management. At a trade show, you can kill several birds with the same stone. Your customers can attend, your suppliers and vendor partners will attend. Use a tradeshow, even when you aren ’t exhibiting. Schedule visits to your vendor partners. And above all, schedule visits with your customers. Invite them to the show. Make sure you have something to show them that’s interesting and new. This can be incredibly lucrative. You can get a customer to meet with you away from all office distractions. What ’ s that worth to you? Don ’t just go to a tradeshow and wander around aimlessly.
- Editorial coverage, I can assure you, is wonderful– especially because it is cheap (but it is not free– you have to earn it) and it imparts the imprimatur of the editor on the coverage. Writing articles, getting your customers to byline articles, and producing white papers and tutorials is a very simple and relatively inexpensive way to build up your reputation and increase the number of customers you can touch. Building customer bases is entirely a numbers game. If they don ’t know who you are, you may not even get a chance to bid that project you’d like to do so much.
- Lots of times we forget to sell to ourselves. That ’s bad. It makes for bad blood, sometimes even permanent fallings out, and if you don’t talk to your people, your investors, and the “inside folks” they become disaffected and leave.
- You think you don ’t need crisis management? What happens if a project you did goes south? Suppose somebody starts saying vicious things to you on Twitter or Facebook? Do you have a Crisis Management Plan to go along with your Disaster Recovery Plan? If you do, great. Keep it up to date. If you don’t, well…oops. Just look at the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Think about it. Think about Stuxnet and Siemens’ PCS7. Stuff happens, and everybody who faces the media and the public needs to have a message and training on staying on message. AND here is where transparency and honesty make friends. Really.
- Public relations is not sales. Public relations is not advertising. Public relations is that part of marketing that is the glue that holds an integrated marketing communications plan together. PR communicates the plan itself. It is important to see how this works. PR communicates any and all of the ideas, concepts and values of the enterprise to all of the stakeholders of the enterprise…and is designed to attain a stated result. Sometimes that result is more “buzz” about your capabilities. Sometimes that result is a higher stock price or just higher visibility in the market. Sometimes that result is crisis management.
- One of the biggest fallacies people fall into when they think of PR is that they think a PR person can communicate anything they have to, true or not, and get coverage and belief. You have only to look to the realm of politics and consumer business to see that that is far from true. PR can communicate facts, and truth. Yes, the facts are selected to produce the correct desired response, but they have to be true, and they have to be mostly “the whole story” and they have to be interesting and worthy of being listened to. One of the most common mistakes people make is sending out the same tired new product releases several times a year. It just isn’t “news.”
- You have to tell the truth, no matter how unpleasant. If you ’ve been good, you will have an interesting story to tell. If you’ve not, your stakeholders will have an interesting story to tell about you. It’s always easier to stay in front of the parade. Look at the mess Toyota got into a couple of years ago, not because they had problems, but because they lied about it, over and over. In the old days, you could tell people what to think because marketing owned all the information channels. With social media, this is very not true. There are so many ways to communicate satisfaction or dissatisfaction with a company now that you simply cannot cover them all. Because the customers control the means of messaging, it is important to be open, honest and forthright. Giving them more information is better than less.
- Social media is not new. There are graffiti on the walls of Pompei…that is social media. What ’s different is that it is so easy to be heard everywhere, on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, Foursquare, and the host of others. The history of the Internet is the history of more and more access to media for the individual. You don’t have to mail a complaint to a vendor– just post to your favorite list. When Robert Crandall was chairman of American Airlines he commissioned a study that found that of every 10 people who had a bad experience, 3 would talk about it, but 7 would walk away and never come back. Now, I think, it is more likely that 7 or 8 will give you a serious parting shot on social media as they walk away. So not only do you lose customers you hear about why they are leaving– and so does everyone else.
- The key to using social media is to use as many social media clients as you can, use them regularly and make sure you are honest, direct, and clear. You can use email, Twitter, a Facebook page and a Facebook Group, and the same things on LinkedIn to keep your name and brand in the public eye all the time. You have to do what Emerson has done. They are the best example of what you can do with social media. In fact, they have a corporate director of social media…that ’s all Jim Cahill’s job is…and it is working. Emerson is doing the one thing that counts more than anything in the world of social media…presence must be consistent. You can ’ t post or blog or tweet once in a while. You have to develop a presence that is consistent and interesting. This is hard work, but the rewards are amazing.
- A campaign has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A campaign is like a story, and if you think about planning a PR campaign as if you were telling a story, it is not only a good analogy, it also works very well in practice. First, you have to decide what the purpose of the campaign is. What is the desired result? Do you want to drive customers, editors and analysts to your website? Do you want to announce a new product? A new service? Do you want to trumpet the news of a big order or a new contract, or a major strategic partnership or alliance?
- A typical editor of a typical industrial trade journal or website gets between 1000 and 1500 press and product releases every month. If this doesn ’t give you pause, think about how long it takes to read each one…just to read them. Most editorial departments do triage. They sort them into two piles: frequent advertisers and not. They go through both piles. If in the first two seconds, something about the release jumps out at them, they save it. Otherwise, it gets “round filed.” In self defense, many years ago, I stopped looking at printed releases, and only consider email releases now. I can ’ t remember the last time somebody mailed me a release. This is good news and bad news. The good news is that I can handle them more easily. The bad news is that it is easier and cheaper to send them, so I get lots more of them. I get releases that are not even close to my editorial purview. I get political press releases, releases on self-help books, you name it, because it is really easy to spam editors. This doesn’t mean I read them.
- Here is the real trick! The more you know the editors in your market, and the more they know you, the easier it is to get your well-written, topical, targeted press or product release run. It is not about “who you know” as much as it is about “do it right, and be known to them.” Editors can do many things for you. You can get interesting tidbits of competitive intelligence by trading information for information. You can get that much-sought-after commodity, free publicity. You can get article placements, if the editor knows you, and knows that you can deliver on time when you say you will. And if you know the editor, you will know what style of writing, and what style of image, are most likely to get you the press coverage you are looking for.
- Once you have achieved a relationship of mutual respect and trust with the editorial staffs of your targeted publications, you can begin to pitch them articles for editorial space. These are priceless in the way they can affect the market for a product. One of the greatest sins in industrial PR is submitting a “puff piece” for editorial coverage when you’ve agreed to submit a 1500 word article. The editor has saved space for you, and now he has to find something else to fit in those four pages. He may never accept another article from you.
- It is a fundamental axiom that if you are going to participate in a tradeshow, you must attend with a plan. Much of that plan is PR. If you are making a new product announcement, you need a PR plan. If you are making some strategic alliance announcements, you need a PR plan. If you are meeting with analysts and editors, you need a PR plan. If you want to get your most significant users to attend and visit your stand, you need a PR plan. A clear and S.M.A.R.T. PR plan for a tradeshow can make the difference between a lackluster and expensive experience and a vibrant and useful venture. That’s, for those of you who don’t know the acronym, a plan that is Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound.
- PR is the vehicle of choice to communicate the company brand. Together with advertising, it is the way the company speaks to its customer base and its competitors and the media and analysts who moderate the marketspace the company lives in. The company brand must be communicated in a coherent and totally consistent way to the internal stakeholders, external stakeholders and stockholders of the company.
- That ’s a big fancy definition. Basically, your brand is everything you stand for. It is the image you have created, and that you live up to every day in the marketplace. Anything you do to reinforce the positives in your brand image can only help, but anything you do that contributes a negative to your brand image hurts. And by the “law of 10,000 Attaboys” a negative contribution to brand hurts more than a positive contribution to brand image helps .
- While marketing is designed to promote the company ’s products and services, and advertising is designed to generate sales, PR is designed to communicate the values on which the company stands. These values are what stand behind the company’s brand. These values are the company bedrock. As long as the company acts in congruence with these values, PR can further the image of the company, and thus the company brand. When the company acts incongruously, PR can ameliorate the damage, but cannot entirely reduce it.
- United Airlines has stopped using the tagline, “The friendly skies.” Why? Simply put, United has a reputation for bad service, surly employees, and general unfriendliness. Their tagline was causing cognitive dissonance and was clearly losing them more friends than gaining them. Southwest Airlines is a no-frills airline. They promise cheap fares, and nothing else. And for over 25 years, Southwest has been the most successful airline. Why? Because everything they do is congruent with their message. And they do it with verve and élan. They are entirely “on brand.” There is no cognitive dissonance with Southwest. You get what you expect, and more. While with United and most of the other airlines, you expect some service, some amenities, some civility, and what you get is a lousy airline. Too many automation companies act the same way. Even the best PR practitioner cannot ameliorate a strong cognitive dissonance.
- There is a current trend toward debasing strong brands. Even Southwest has fallen prey to this to some extent. The idea is that you can abuse “just a little bit” your customers, without hurting the brand unduly. This supposed brand elasticity is supposed to allow you to extract more value from the customer without giving them more value…or giving them less value. As Jon Stewart said about the proposed makeover of the “Brave” heroine Merida by Disney: They think they can get away with this because they think we are stupid! Your customers are not stupid, and they have highly tuned super heterodyne BS detectors. They may let you get away with debasing your brand for a while, but they’ll soon be looking around for another vendor with the values they originally saw in you and your products and services.
- Just as PR is a channel for external communications, so it can be for internal communications. It is every bit as important for employees, suppliers and other internal stakeholders to be informed on the company ’s goals, objectives, and values as it is for analysts and editors in the media, and for stockholders to be informed. Communicating the company’s brand values and vision internally and continually reinforces them in the minds of employees and reduces the potential for cognitive dissonance when a customer runs across a problem employee. BP fell afoul of this in the Deepwater Horizon mess. BP had, in the five years between the Texas City disaster and Deepwater Horizon, spent over $2 billion (with a B) on training designed to create a new safety culture in the company. Unfortunately, even though the effort had support from the highest levels in the company, it ran afoul of employees who felt it was better to continue maximizing bonuses, etc. by not improving safety– and the result is that BP has now spent many more billions trying to fix the problems they caused. If all those employees had been truly on board with the safety culture that Tony Hawood, Deb Grube and Ed Sieg were trying to create in BP, it is arguable that the Deepwater Horizon accident might not have happened.
- Typically, the only way PR is knowingly used in most automation companies is for shareholder communications. Shareholders need the same communications that the internal stakeholders do, and companies who are forthright and forthcoming with their stockholders and stakeholders do better at maintaining their stock prices even in the wake of unfavorable news than companies who ignore their stockholders except for the annual report, and ignore their stakeholders entirely.
- The lessons learned from the downsizings of the 1980 ’s are clear. If you want a workforce that is on-board with the goals and objectives, vision and brand of the company, you have to be completely honest and open with them, especially about bad news. Hiding the fact that layoffs are coming produces good old cognitive dissonance, which leads immediately to a loss of trust in management. Employees (just like your customers) have extremely well-tuned super heterodyne bullshit detectors (remember I said this before), and it is stupid to even try to fool them, or to think that they don’t know what is going on, just because you haven’t announced it yet.
- Every industrial enterprise dreads the crisis. The call comes in the middle of the night. Your tanker is aground. Your mine has collapsed. Somebody ’s plant has exploded, and your product was at fault. There is a leak into the groundwater. Whatever it is, you need to have planned for how to handle a crisis, have a team in place to manage it, take responsibility and corrective action swiftly, and provide easy access to information as honestly and openly as possible.
- These rules are deceptively simple, yet companies fail the crisis test every day. Maybe it is just too simple. The secret to crisis management is to be open, honest, and work hard to solve the problem. If it is your fault, accept responsibility early in the crisis, and start corrective action immediately. Take your lumps. The corrective action you say you will take must be clear, quick, meaningful and actually correct the problem– and make the situation whole again. Stonewalling in a crisis will get you what Nixon got. If it is not your fault, communicate that at every opportunity, while emphasizing that you are there, shirtsleeves rolled up, working to solve the problem anyway. Remember that you are telling a story, as it is happening. You are a reporter for your company ’s side of the story. Keep it to Who, What, When, Where, How and Why as much as you can. The simpler the story you tell, the more likely it will not be changed much by the media as they report it.
- Okay, everything I’ve told you is true. But it begs the question. The real issue is how do you actually put together an integrated marketing communications plan that works. For the next few minutes, we are going to look at a new way of seeing the problem.
- I find it useful to look at the things you need to do as part of a cascade control loop– appropriate for automation industry marketing, no? Look at the tasks as OUTBOUND communications, first. All of these things allow your customers to find you, touch you, on their terms. Note that all of them are designed to make you “authoritative” in the Google sense. The more authoritative you appear to Google, the higher you will appear in the organic search rankings– and the majority, maybe even the vast majority of customers find you on Google now. Note that all of this is content. It is high value content. You can’t post much self-serving bullshit on Wikipedia. People stop reading white papers if they are thinly disguised brochureware.
- Ever since the studies showed that (except for political hot button issues) Wikipedia is as authoritative as any other reference work, people have been looking up automation related topics there. One of the most significant things you can do is to make sure that you have good Wikipedia pages for the company, for its products, and that your principals and experts have biographical essays, CVs and bibliographies on Wikipedia. It is also worth many bonus points to contribute to pages on industry issues. Wikipedia can then become the core of your campaign to make your brand “authoritative.”
- Highly technical marketing has always had a spot for articles and whitepapers. The problem is that while everyone knows that you should write them, everyone also has the opinion that if an employee has the time to write them, he or she isn’t doing their real job, or is underemployed. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is, customers want NONCOMMERCIAL sources of information. Your company has some of the best experts on how to apply the products you make anywhere. It is really important to consistently create good, high quality, non-commercial whitepapers and application and case study articles. Again, like social media, it is important to do this consistently, so that customers and potential customers can expect to see new material on a regular schedule. There are also numerous ways to campaign those white papers and articles, too, and the sales leads you get are generally either A or B level leads.
- Presentations, short courses, and webinars are another way to attract an audience to share your expertise. Once again, these cannot be sales pitches. Webinars used to be prohibitively expensive to do, but with tools like GoToWebinar (which happens to be the webinar engine we are using today), anyone can produce, present and record a webinar. Recorded webinars are tremendous sources of more data for Wikipedia.
- Once you have your recorded presentation, and your webinar, post them on YouTube. There are thousands of automation related audio and video tracks on YouTube. You can stream them to your website, you can campaign them, you can send people to them in many different ways using social media. How much viewership can something like flow measurement, for example, get? Well, the video of me talking about “Back To Basics: DP Flow Measurement” has had over 55 thousand views in four years .
- Just like Wikipedia is the anchor of your Outbound communication loop, your own blogs are the linchpin of the inbound communication loop. Yes, blogging is an outbound activity, but the reason you are doing it is to increase the creation of a community around your company and your products. But you can’t just blog. You have to push the stuff you are blogging (as well as all the stuff you are producing as outbound content) to your customers, and people who might become your customers. Blogging must be consistent. You can have one blog, or multiple blogs. Each blog should have its own “voice” that people come to recognize .
- Here is where social media are critical. This is how you interact with your customers and stakeholders– how you disseminate the knowledge you have amassed, and the content you have created. Here is where people comment on what you say, and expect you to listen to them. This is the feedback portion of the cascade control loop.
- This entire system, this entire integrated marketing communications program, depends on content, and lots of it. The good news is that there are content creators available who are capable of producing as much content as you want or need, without breaking your bank. Look for people with industry and application specific knowledge already. You should not have to spend hours or days teaching the content provider your business. There are several good content providers I recommend to people when they ask. You do have to spend the money, though. You can’t just say you are going to do all these things. You have to have the content written or produced, and you have to have schedules for producing and publishing it. Otherwise, you are just mouthing motherhood statements. And then you’ll have the opinion that all this newfangled interactive marketing communications stuff doesn’t work. It does, YOU don’t.
- So that ’s PR for Automation Professionals. I hope you have a better understanding of PR’s place in the marketing mix, and how important proper use of public relations can be to the strength of your company and your brand. In a minute we’ll open the discussion up to questions, but I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I’ve enjoyed it and I hope you have too. We will be posting the recording of this webinar, but if you want a PDF copy of the slides and speakers notes, send me your contact information at [email_address] and I’ll see that you get one. If after the webinar, you have questions on a specific issue, feel free to contact me either at Control or at Spitzer and Boyes LLC. And now, on to questions!