Category: Blog

3 ways to help your audience understand your marketing message

Posted on by Wellons team

Sometimes it seems like the pace at which the Internet has revolutionized marketing and communications is overwhelming.

The sheer volume of communications that float across your computer screen, along with all the outside communications you see every day, is far more than one person can absorb.

The enormous volume of communications places a premium on three important elements critical to your audience’s understanding of what you do and how well you do it: clarity, frequency and consistency of communication.

Clarity cuts through the clutter

It’s easy to become caught up in throwing out trendy lingo and technical language when communicating with potential clientele and your current customers.

The health care, insurance and technology industries provide three vivid examples of using language and phrases very few—even their customers—can understand.

While it is important to stay current, it is even more important to be understood. And that likely means using old-school communications that underscore a communications basis: keep it simple.

A December 2023 issue by the Content Marketing Institute’s Ahava Leibtag showcases the value and importance of clarity and simplicity in communications. Her study makes a great case for using clear, concise communication that first-time readers can understand without breaking a mental sweat. It’s worth a glance.

Use the Rule of Seven

Think about how many TV ads, news reports, magazine articles and online communications you receive every day. The amount of information to which you are exposed is staggering. There is no way you can remember all of it.

That’s where frequency comes in.

An old marketing adage is The Rule of Seven. In short, it means that you must reach your target audience with seven impressions before they start to pay meaningful attention to what you are saying. It is a rule frequently employed in advertising.

At Wellons Communications, however, we subscribe to the notion that there is a more affordable way to achieving those seven impressions. We adhere to the idea that advertising, augmented by an effective publicity program, can both speed up achievement of The Rule of Seven while costing you less.

By publicizing who you are and what you are doing, you can accelerate your frequency of communications at considerably less cost.

Say the same thing. Over and over and over.

We’ve established that you must keep your message simple. People must understand what you are saying.

And we have established that you must frequently project your message to cut through the volume of communications that exists today.

Our third tenet is to keep your message consistent. While you may become weary and experience “client fatigue” in the repetition of what you say about your business, keep in mind that what you are saying may be the first—or seventh—time your audience is being exposed to your message.

Suzanne McGovern, one of our staff members at Wellons Communications, effectively used consistency as part of the publicity team that prefaced the opening of Walt Disney World. Suzanne’s credo was “tell ’em what you are gonna tell ’em….and tell ’em again and again and again.” The publicity results of her approach remain one of the benchmarks for success in the public relations industry.

Our message: use Wellons to augment your marketing

As 2024 ramps us and you seek new and better—and more affordable—ways to add strength to your marketing program, keep Wellons Communications in mind.

We’re good at creating new, simple PR programs that will not weigh down your budget, while delivering substantial results.

And we promise to keep you message clear and understandable, put it out there on a frequent basis and keep it consistent throughout.

Happy holidays from Wellons Communications

Posted on by Wellons team

“Deck the halls with boughs of holly
‘Tis the season to be jolly
Don we now our gay apparel
Troll the ancient Yuletide carol”

– Opening lyrics to Deck the Halls

The holidays are, indeed, the season to be jolly.

This is the time of year that we truly feel the magic of the season.

It is the beauty of twinkling lights that illuminate the darkness that descends upon us earlier each evening as winter arrives. It is decorated trees, colorfully wrapped presents beginning to appear underneath and the sounds of beloved music and carols that serve as the background for gatherings that bring us together.

It’s a time when we all feel the anticipation of family memories and the excitement of gifting that we had as children.

The holiday season is truly a special time that encourages the best feelings within each of us to be shared with those who we love, cherish and value.

In that spirit, all of us at Wellons Communications want you to know how mindful we are of those who are close to us.

We are truly grateful for the friendship and loyalty of our valued clients. We are equally as grateful for our dedicated team of professionals, who have shared their abilities with both our organization and our clientele.

May the love, joy and extraordinary magic of the season be with you this holiday season, and throughout 2024.

Aim at influencers to bolster your marketing program

Posted on by Wellons team

In its most basic form, public relations centers around reaching people or organizations who shape and influence perceptions and opinions. It is PR’s role to persuade people that your business is the correct answer to whatever you are marketing.

The topics can range from what you want people to know to purchase your product to shaping people’s perception about issues and matters of importance.

No longer, however, can PR firms depend primarily on mass media to help shape opinion.

Targeting one’s most influential media resource now centers on finding and defining “influencers” whose recognition and endorsement can have enormous impact on how folks view your product or service. These influencers can range from specific individuals at a mass media outlet to a lone blogger, whose recognition can make or break a marketing campaign.

Gaining traction with influencers

One cannot simply blast away with emails to media (both mass media and online media) in the vain hope that they will use your information.

Successful influencers are deluged by unsolicited emails, most of which end up in the trash can.

One must gradually reach out to influencers first, build up their trust, before even considering asking them for recognition. You must convince them of your legitimacy as a media resource and the newsworthiness of your product or service. It is a slow, gradual process that requires being in it for the long haul. There are no shortcuts.

Finding influencers

At Wellons Communications, we rely on well-established mass media communications programs to immediately reach media outlets that can help boost recognition of your business.

Beyond mass media, however, we have a well-defined approach to zeroing in on influencers whose recognition can augment your marketing efforts. These steps include:

• Hashtag audits

We search for hashtags that are relevant to your business and narrow them down to those best suited to what you do. It’s a tedious process, but an important step in finding your correct target audience.

• Google Alert communications

We use Google Alerts to identify influencers by keywords. We set up alerts for suitable terms that will enable you to start receiving notifications when somebody posts information related to what you are marketing. From that, we can choose from the list of influencers and contact with what information they are seeking.

• Contact with Blogger Outreach Groups and Platforms

Facebook organizes groups by their interests – from investment seeking information to invest in oil drilling to housewives seeking recipes for air fryers.

We identify those groups best suited for our client’s information and seek to build relationships with its most active members.

• Aggregator and outreach tools

We can call upon specialized outreach resources like Pitchbox and Buzzsumo to help build campaigns targeting specific influencers. By employing carefully selected keywords we can scan the internet to identify and reach out to dominant online influencers with the kind of information they are seeking.

Call us to find out how you can benefit from influencer marketing

At Wellons Communications, we pride ourselves in keeping pace with the rapidly change ways in how people absorb information, particularly in the online marketing arena.

Online marketing is an increasingly sophisticated and complex form or marketing, but we keep our programs simple, easy to manage, and well within the budgets and capabilities of our clients. We want you to understand what we are doing, how it can benefit you and increase your business.

As 2023 winds down and you are looking at new ways or more effective ways to help you sell your product or service, think of Wellons Communications.

Contact us about creating a well-rounded public relations program that includes basic PR strategies and new and different approaches to reach your target audiences…. like reaching the influencers best suited to help you increase your reach and sales.

The importance of “positioning” in your marketing program

Posted on by Wellons team

Marketers are fond of talking about “positioning” their product or service in their competitive marketplace.

Often, marketers fall in love with the notion that if they simply advertise or talk about what they do, they have successfully positioned their product.

Wrong. And here’s why.

Positioning is the way companies and brands are perceived by one’s consumer not by you. Positioning is where you exist in mind of your present and prospective customer.

Where does public relations fit into positioning?

Simply stated, PR is one of the key building blocks in an integrated marketing campaign.

The sole mission of public relations is to help you sell your product or service. How PR helps you sell is to develop ways and means to create a distinct identity, image, or concept for a product or service.

In other words, positioning.

At first glance, you might say to yourself, “Well, ‘positioning’ might be great for Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, IBM, or some corporate giant, but I’m only a medium-sized business and simply don’t have the kind of marketing budget that can support positioning.”

Positioning is important to any business, large or small, because all businesses face the challenge of identifying who you are, what you do, and why it is important to your target audience.

Should you pass on positioning for less complex marketing approaches?

It’s easy to skip pass on the notion of “positioning.” It’s sort of like jumping immediately to tactics without having objectives or a strategy.

Three of the primary reasons of why it’s so easy to reject and avoid “positioning” as a part of your overall marketing strategy are that positioning is hard to understand, positioning requires time and positioning is difficult to measure.

Making positioning even hard is the fact that we live in the most overcommunicated era in human history.

Today, the average person sees around 10,000 ads per day, though only a quarter of that or less will be relevant.

On top of that, the flood on online traffic is overwhelming. The Harvard Business Review reports that the average professional spends 28% of the work day reading and answering email, according to a McKinsey analysis. For the average full-time worker in America, that amounts to a staggering 2.6 hours spent and 120 messages received per day.

That’s a lot of information. And it makes positioning a challenge.

So how do you successfully position your business?

The most efficient way to help you achieve successful positioning is to call on folks who position products and services for a living, like our team at Wellons Communications.

We are positioned as a marketing services company that relies primarily on public relations to build awareness and subsequent sales for our clients.

We have worked in all aspects of marketing and have keen insights on how to battle through the maze of overcommunications that exists in today’s competitive marketplace.

As you shape and modify your business’s overall marketing communications program, keep Wellons Communications in mind.

We are ready and able to assist you in developing – and maintaining – an effective positioning for your business. We rely on creative marketing approaches that put your customer first and positions your business as the best means of delivering what your customer wants and needs.

Are you keeping up with marketing’s fast-moving changes?

Posted on by Wellons team

“Often, as classic marketers, we think there is only one way to do things. Now, out of necessity, we are discovering there are new ways to get the job done.” – Rand Harbert, Chief Marketing Officer, State Farm Insurance

Changes in how you market your product or service are happening at a dizzying pace.

As you wrestle to keep up with the rapid marketing changes affecting your industry and your individual business, you need to constantly be mindful that your company must maintain continuity of purpose while reflecting an external consistency of your messaging and image.

It’s a tough balancing act. You can bet that marketing changes are going to continue to be ongoing, as well as difficult to understand and resolve.

Digital marketing has moved to the forefront of marketing

No surprise: digital marketing has been overwhelmingly the biggest change in marketing.

We’re in the midst of the Digital Age.

But how many business owners, particularly of smaller businesses, really understand much about digital marketing and how to harness its power?

In the mid-2010s, AWeber, a global email marketing software provider, conducted a survey of small business owners and marketers about their relationship to digital marketing. This study indicated that 94 percent of small business owners and marketers declared online marketing to be very important for the growth of their business. But only 12 percent claimed to be proficient in online marketing, whereas 29 percent said they felt overwhelmed by online marketing.

If you feel uncomfortable thinking about how you address digital marketing, that means you have plenty of company.

How can you utilize public relations in your digital marketing?

As you look ahead to 2023 and how you shape your marketing plan, think about how you can reach your target audiences – and your current customers—with an expanded digital public relations program.

We’re not talking about distribution.

We’re talking about content.

Ideas. Suggestions. Thoughts. Benefits. The kind of messages that reflect who you are and how you’re connected to whatever your audience wants resolved.

Content is more than words

At Wellons Communications, we view content as the sum of your entire story.

Certainly, words are important. They should, however, be amplified by graphics and video that more easily capture attention and bring your story to life.

Keeping it simple

In a world where we’re exposed to 4,000 to 10,000 ads every day, it’s critical that your content immediately connects with your targets and clearly says what you want to say.

Our approach to storytelling is to make your story as simple as possible.

We use short, clear sentences. We back the words up with eye-catching graphics like photos, drawings, charts, etc. that bring the words to life. And, if your budget can accommodate it, we mix in affordable video that adds the dimensions of movement and sound to your messaging.

Content development is only one phase of PR

While we develop content, as a media relations agency, we also conduct distribution – putting your messages in front of media who will have the most interest in news about your business.

We develop and maintain lists of media who are looking for the kind of news you can offer. And we regularly put your name and business in front of media who are eager to develop contacts that can knowledgably address issues and happenings in your industry.

Does all this cost a lot?

The good news is that PR is considerably less costly than advertising.

That doesn’t mean PR is less effective. It’s simply a different approach to presenting – and keeping – your business in front of your key audiences.

While PR cannot entirely control when media will adopt your message or how it’ll be employed, the positive impact of a solid PR “hit” will add credibility to your overall messaging and distinguish your standing from competitors.

As you’re working on your Q4 marketing strategy, think about including Wellons Communications in your plan to help you keep pace with the kaleidoscopic world of marketing…and reaching your targets effectively and affordably.

We’re a digital marketing agency that stays up-to-date on the latest trends affecting a large variety of industries. Give us a call at 407-462-2718 or email will@wellonscommunications.com to get started.

The public relations power of your employees

Posted on by Wellons team

What if you could multiply the number of messengers that could tell your story?

What if you had a team other than your sales or marketing departments who can share your story with passion, conviction and, with guidance, accuracy?

The fact is, there’s no “what if.”

You already have a built-in PR team in your employee workforce.  It’s a team that requires only clarification about what you’re already saying about your business and your encouragement to share that message.

Aren’t employee relations and public relations the same?

Employee relations can be viewed as form of public relations. But the audience is a cohort of one – your employees.

What your employees say about you is taken at face value by those who listen to them. They talk to their families, their friends and, in many instances, are the only connection between you and your customers.

Because people view your employees as an accurate barometer of your business’ capability and reputation, your employees are a critical audience to have on your side.

Employees may not clearly understand what to tell others about you.

Just because an employee works for you, doesn’t mean they automatically know how or what to tell others about your business.

Their point of view is frequently shaped by whatever job area they spend their work time. A hotel housekeeper, for example, will see or know very little about an overall employer’s goals or mission. An administrative worker in the front office, however, will likely be quite knowledgeable about their employer’s business.

All your employees likely don’t know precisely what you do, how you express it and how their services benefit your clients.

So, how do you fix that?

Active internal communications

A good starting point for equipping your employees to serve as PR messengers is an active, ongoing internal communications program.

It means you must communicate what you’re doing with your employees on a frequent basis. You must let them know what’s going on in your business and your industry and how it relates to them.

And, at every opportunity, you must communicate your respect and appreciation for their hard work and professionalism. Let them know you’re grateful for their efforts and how much their work means to you and your clients.

Harness recognition power

Use internal communications to take advantage of the power of recognition. State clearly and simply that you understand what your employees do, what kinds of challenges they face and that you value their presence at your side.

You can get better acquainted with the power of recognition in creating a Culture of Recognition.

So, what should you put into an internal PR program?

No two internal communications programs are alike. And many of them are baked into employee relations programs, which sometimes fail to act with the frequency and capability of a professional PR program.

HR folks, in fact, often view internal communications as an extra duty and must struggle to find the time and resources necessary to conduct an ongoing internal communications program.

At the very least, internal PR programs should provide employees with:

  • A clear statement about what your business does (e.g., We build widgets)
  • A clear statement about the benefit(s) your business provides for customers (e.g., We provide families with an enjoyable time together)
  • Ongoing news about your company’s activities
  • Recognition of achievement on the part of employees

But HOW do we establish an effective internal communications program?

That’s where the Wellons Communications PR firm can help.

We spend all our work time providing clients with effective communications programs that build awareness, recognition and sales.

Using the same models and approaches we use to conduct global, national, regional and local PR outreach, we can build an effective internal communications program for your business…with an emphasis on affordability.

We’re ready to start building closer relationships between you and your team members.

Give our Central Florida PR firm a call at 407-462-2718 or email will@wellonscommunications.com to find out more about how we can create or freshen your internal communications program.

Earned media versus advertising: There’s room for both

Posted on by Wellons team

It’s a century-old adage: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”  – Department store mogul John Wanamaker

Advertising is, indeed, costly. Even so, it remains the bedrock for most marketers because they can control virtually every aspect of the advertising message.

So, what other marketing alternatives do you have to reach your potential customers?

The answer, of course, is publicity – the cornerstone of public relations. Publicity is considerably more affordable and, when it hits a home run, it’s worth its weight in gold. The only downside is that publicity messaging is considerably less controlled and not entirely predictable.

The myth of free media

One of the myths about publicity is that it is “free media.”

Publicity is not free. Publicity is earned media. And one must work hard to earn publicity coverage. To clarify, earned media is any material written about you or your business that you haven’t paid for or created yourself.

Although earned media is always published or presented by a third party, there are ways marketers can position themselves for this type of media coverage. That’s where public relations firms or communications agencies like Wellons Communications come into the picture. We create content for placement and seek out opportunities for coverage for our clients.

Media have an insatiable appetite for content

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or gazelle. When the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

Like the lions and gazelles in this famous quote, media must wake up every day in search of new content.

To find new content, media (particularly news outlets with small staffs) depend on pr consultancies to feed them information that might be of value to their particular audience. Media depend on their staff to ferret out new and different information and then package it into a way that will hold on to their readers, watchers and listeners.

Orlando public relations firms like ours then provide a genuine service to media outlets. We create content and use individualized “pitches” to serve it up in a way that makes sense for each media outlet. If information has a broader consumer message or industry-wide message, we tailor it so it can be incorporated into an individual outlet’s particular editorial liking.

Earned media is changing rapidly

Once upon a time, publicity (i.e. earned media) meant placement of an article in the local newspaper, a magazine article or a TV or radio appearance.

In the digital age, there are now plenty of new opportunities for placement. Online media has certainly earned its seat at the table as an important outlet for news and information.

Publicity now also comes in the form of a customer’s tweet about “the best customer service ever!”, which is amplified by likes and retweets. It’s also a horrible Yelp review about how a different customer had “the worst service” from that very same business. And, it’s your industry blogger’s “Top 10 Businesses of The Year” article that was viewed and shared by thousands of people after you launched an important new feature about your product.

How we help you generate earned media

Earned media coverage is one of the prime services we provide our clients.

We create entire publicity packages…. not just press releases, but integrated public relations campaigns that blend your key messages into packages that bring your story to life.

We package together words with visuals. We then distribute those packages to outlets that might have use for them and, in many cases, employ individual messages that explain how your story will be of interest to their audiences.

For media who simply don’t have the time or staff to seek out this kind of information, we make it as easy as possible for them to project your message. Or use your message as an example of whatever else they might be saying.

Disciplined message crafting generates earned media

At Wellons Communications, we follow a four-step process to maximize earned media coverage for our clients:

  1. We create or identify your stories
  2. We package your stories (i.e. words and visuals)
  3. We distribute your stories to qualified media
  4. We follow up to amplify the stories you want to tell

We look for story opportunities that you may not immediately recognize. We keep in close touch with your key media sources to understand what kind of content they’re seeking. We work within media deadlines. We serve as a kind of unofficial staffer for media, helping them obtain information they can use to present to their audiences.

If you are seeking to expand your marketing beyond advertising or complement your already existing ad program, think of Wellons Communications. We’re willing and ready to help you augment and supercharge your already-existing marketing program. Email will@wellonscommunications.com or call 407-462-2718.

What does your online presence say about you?

Posted on by Wellons team

Think about the last time you took a close look at your business’ website – a really close look.

Is all the information on the site accurate? Is it relevant? Is it easily understandable? Is it populated with outdated information? Is there relevant information missing?

Your website is, of course, a key element in your marketing presence. And while it’s exciting to get it up and running, once the novelty has worn off, what your website says is often overlooked in the rush to move on to other marketing challenges.

Your website is only the start of your digital marketing presence

What your website says (or fails to say) has the potential to tarnish your hard-earned reputation. While your website is easily the most visible of your online marketing initiatives, it’s only one of tools you have in your online marketing kit.

All your online marketing initiatives deserve the same kind of careful attention as your website. Social media, email, text and content information and presence are all a part of the package that comprises how others view you and your organization in the digital world.

Here’s a to-do list for reviewing your digital communications

  • Read the content copy that appears on your website and your related internet-related communications. Is the information accurate? Is the information current?
  • Get rid of outdated information. Is your website weighed down with years-old information that is no longer relevant?
  • Get to the point. Does your content immediately project what you want to say? Is there too much explanation?
  • Do the graphics on your website immediately visualize what you do or what you want to project? Do photos and graphics need to be updated or changed?
  • Does your site clearly instruct your customer how to contact you? Is the contact information correct? Is it easy for your customer—or potential customer—to get in touch with your organization?
  • Is the site organized so that your customers can find what they are looking for? Do they have to flail away trying to figure out what you do and how to connect with whatever information they are seeking about you?

Here’s how Wellons Communications can help you with digital marketing

First, we offer you a new set of eyes to look at your website and provide a clear-eyed analysis of what we see…and what we don’t see.

Chances are, you’ve looked at your website so often that you may not recognize the presence of “red flags” that might be detrimental to the information you want to present.

On the positive side, you may be suffering from what advertising people call “client fatigue” – meaning that you may be weary of what you’ve been presenting, only to find out that your marketing messages are on target and effectively getting through to your target audiences.

Our journalistic backgrounds, combined with our marketing know-how, can provide you with a knowledgeable third-party summation that’ll let you know what changes may (or may not) be necessary.

We’re not in the business of recommending total communications overhauls simply to generate new business. We recognize and applaud jobs that are well done. At the same time, we’re not afraid to offer constructive criticism if, in fact, it’s required.

Find out more about how we can help you with the communications and content side of your digital public relations and marketing needs.  We’re only a text or email away and ready to lend a hand to help you update and strengthen how to incorporate public relations into your overall digital marketing initiatives.

If you’re looking for an Orlando marketing agency, call 407-462-2718 or email us at will@wellonscommunications.com.

The shift to digital – and how it affects your PR program

Posted on by Wellons team

In just a little more than two decades, how we transmit news – and how we absorb news – has been completely transformed, thanks to the rapid onset of the internet and social media.

The transition of news to digital sources has disrupted newspapers and magazines. TV and radio have also been greatly impacted, although they have quickly adopted social media as part of their overall communications platform.

What has happened is that digital has become newspaper, magazine, TV and radio all wrapped up into one. And it has revolutionized how we get our news.

How people get their news now

According to a study done by Pew Research Center, a large majority of adults in the U.S. get their news on digital devices. In fact, 86 percent of participants reported they often or sometimes use a smartphone, computer or tablet to get their news.

The next highest medium participants used to get news is television at 68 percent – nearly a 20 percent drop from digital devices. 50 percent of participants got news from radio while only 32 percent turned to print publications.

Digitally speaking, where do people go for their news?

Among digital platforms, Pew Research Center found the most preferred one for news is news websites or apps. About a quarter of U.S. adults prefer to get their news this way, compared with 12 percent who prefer search, 11 percent who prefer to get their news on social media and 3 percent who say they prefer podcasts.

Younger people, as you would expect, have adopted news use patterns different than their elders. Americans ages 50 and older use both television and digital devices for news at high rates, while the younger age groups have almost fully turned to digital devices as a platform to access news.

So, what does this mean for you and your PR program?

First, you must have a digital component in all your marketing communications.

Second, you must understand how to call upon digital media to augment your overall marketing program.

And that’s where communications resources – like a PR firm, social media agency or digital marketing agency – enter the picture.

Digital communications are a powerful means of calling attention to your business. But what kind of attention are you attracting?  Communicating digitally is one thing. Communicating effectively is different.

How we approach digital marketing at Wellons Communications

We have three basic tenets to approaching digital marketing for PR purposes:

  1. We view digital marketing as a springboard for marketing your business

Like a diver who vaults into the air from a springboard, you must select what kind of dive – or messaging—you want to undertake. And you must decide how you want your business to look when it appears on a mobile phone, tablet, computer or within a social media platform.

  1. Keep it simple

We battle to keep messaging simple and understandable. Attention-getting headlines. Short, understandable sentences. Visuals that instantly make your message come to life.

We support this simple approach by mixing in complementary features – like video, a podcast or blog – that keeps your online visitor wanting to learn more about you.

  1. A third thought: affordability

Marketing your business is a necessary expense, but you want to keep costs under control and avoid overspending. Small-to-medium-sized business simply don’t have the luxury of spending a great deal on marketing.

We seek to put together digital public relations and marketing programs that do the job you intend without going overboard on costs. That doesn’t mean you should conduct a digital PR program on the cheap. It means staying within your budget.

At Wellons Communications, we still call on the experience we gained creating simple, effective communications programs. Only now, we direct our messaging via digital sources and digital targets.

If you’re seeking to charge up your digital PR outreach, use a digital resource to get hold of us: send us an email at will@wellonscommunications.com or a text at 407-462-2718. Or even pick up your cell phone and give us a call.

We’ll be happy to get right back to you, examine your needs and let you know how we can help you amplify your digital marketing communications.

Making marketing changes in a tough business environment

Posted on by Wellons team

The new year is just around the corner. You are likely at the point of wrapping up your marketing plan…and budget…for 2023. Before you finalize your 2023 marketing plan, however, ask yourself four important questions:

  • Is the marketing plan delivering what we want or expect?
  • Do my key marketing resources (advertising agency, PR firm) clearly understand our overall business objectives?
  • Do we need to make marketing changes that can substantially benefit us?
  • What changes in our marketing plan do we need to make to keep us where we are or increase our business in a challenging marketing environment?

Here’s an example of how we approach marketing

Let’s take a hypothetical small business and see how we might address these four key marketing questions.

Situation:

Your company can only afford a modest advertising budget and a limited PR budget. Your ad budget barely reaches the level of effective communications…reaching your target audience with the frequency that registers recognition, let alone a sizeable response.

For your 2023 marketing plan, you have the same amount budgeted for paid advertising and PR. Inflation, however, will diminish what your limited ad budget will be able to deliver in terms of reach and frequency.

How will you maintain reach and frequency while keeping up with inflation? How will you address customers or potential clients, who will also be feeling the impact of inflation and be less willing to spend until the business climate turns around?

The challenge:

Maximize the impact of your marketing budget without spending more than you did in 2023.

Here’s how we would address this challenge.

Our recommendations:

Keep the same budget in 2023.  If you spent $125,000 in advertising in 2022 and $25,000 in public relations and promotion, maintain the same overall budget.

With no additional marketing expenditures and less impact from the marketing dollars you have available, look for other ways to use your budgeted dollars effectively…or more effectively.

So, how do we do that?

  1. Use what you’ve got. If your creative messaging and materials are satisfactory, continue to use them without making costly major production changes (art, copy, photo, video, digital).
  2. Look for peaks and valleys in your sales. You may want to front-load part of your marketing spending ahead of your peak season with the notion of “peaking your peak.” By putting your dollars to work to raise your peak, you will have them working considerably more efficiently than trying change what have historically been seasonal sales valleys.
  3. Re-allocate your marketing expenditures between advertising and public relations. If you have $125K available for advertising, take $5,000 and allocate it to public relations and see what your PR firm can do to deliver a specific goal of $30,000 in measurable editorial impact in consumer or trade media.

We are a public relations firm. But we are also a marketing firm.

The example above illustrates the kind of thinking we would put into your business and how we can help you improve on your overall marketing efficiency.

When you look over our recommendations, you may notice three key features about the critical thinking we put into every client’s business:

Maximizing what you already are spending. This might mean re-using or recycling marketing messages that already work or have worked in the past so you can minimize production costs to free up some of your marketing dollars.

Be willing to re-allocate how you use your marketing dollars. Sure, we’d like to have more PR dollars to work with (we are a PR firm, first and foremost), but only if those dollars can be used to deliver measurable results.

Invest marketing dollars only in approaches that will enable you to earn more revenue sooner rather than later. That may require spending in different patterns (i.e., time, longevity, allocation) than you previously have done. We aim at ways and means that enable your marketing dollars to earn more revenue in the short-term.

Call Wellons Communications to discuss your 2023 marketing plan

We are always looking for new business, just as you are always looking for ways to improve your sales.

That said, we sincerely believe our marketing-centric approach to public relations can offer you insights and directions that can enable you to get the most out of your marketing dollars.

If that means more spending on PR, great. If it means making changes in your advertising and collateral materials, that’s also great.

We are not afraid to recommend changes. And we are equally willing to recognize that your plan is just what you need.

Talk with us about how your marketing program is going. Ask us what we think of your overall marketing approach. No need to be protective or defensive. What’s done is done and we are not judgmental.

We will be candid. And that’s because that’s what we believe you want to hear when you talk with us.

We’re eager to hear from you.

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