Category: Blog

How to set a winning communications strategy in 2021

Posted on by Wellons team

We’re still right at the start of a new year. Possibilities for your business stretch out in front of you right now, and it’s the time to set big goals to strive toward. If you haven’t already, it’s also the perfect time to sit down and get serious about a communications plan and editorial calendar for 2021.

Don’t close your browser. We know that with so many things on your plate in the first few weeks of the year, you’re likely scoffing at adding one more. But this is crucial. At our Orlando marketing agency, we see it too often with businesses. If there’s no plan set, communications get bumped and bumped again for other items. Doing the thought time up front means it’s not a monumental task chasing you throughout the year. And with a plan, you can leverage communications as a pillar to reach your overall business goals.

But where to start? Developing a winning communications strategy for your business in 2021 doesn’t have to be a painful, time consuming or even formal process. Here are a few easy steps you can take now to create one.

Understand your goals.

You likely set goals for your business already. Perhaps you want to hit a certain revenue number, complete a certain number of projects or attain a certain number of new clients. How can communications support that? A few examples of communications goals could be increasing your number of social media followers, consistently sending out a monthly newsletter to prospects, attaining a certain reach on earned media hits or producing a certain number of pieces of sales collateral. Think about your overall goals, and set communications goals to help you along the way.

Add some context.

Now would be a perfect time to involve your PR agency if you have one. Your agency has a lot of practice at looking at goals and setting effective strategies to help get there, and they can really add value at this point rather than later. In addition, you will want to add some context to your plan. Pull out your latest SWOT analysis. Is there anything you can learn there that can inform your plan? Do some research on your competitors. What are they putting into the marketplace? Are there any winning strategies you can adapt? You can jot down a few notes here or tweak your goals.

Start thinking tactics.

How will you reach your goals? If you want to send out a monthly newsletter, for instance, think through a few things. Who will be responsible for this? Who will you target, and do you have an email list? What do you want to say? What will it look like? While you’re fleshing out the process, you might also come up with a few sub-goals to add to your list.

Set the editorial calendar.

Much of your communications strategy will likely be driven by news, or your editorial calendar. To start to develop this, think about some of the business milestones you’re expecting this year. Perhaps your business has a big anniversary year on the horizon. Or, maybe you know that your huge project will top out in June. Put a few stakes in the ground on an editorial calendar, even if it’s just an estimate. This will allow your entire team and marketing agency to better plan and prepare to implement the communications strategy around these events. Next, brainstorm other content ideas. Again, you can refer to industry leaders and competitors, or turn internally to things you’ve been hearing or seeing. Maybe you want to implement a monthly staff spotlight to go out in that email newsletter or on social media. You don’t have to fill in every slot right now, so there’s plenty of room to pivot later. Add your editorial calendar to your communications plan.

Get going, and analyze.

Now that you know what you want to do and what you want to say, put everything in motion. Start executing on your plan, but don’t forget a key step: reflection. You might not see the needle move immediately (don’t quit just yet!) but after you run your plan for a bit, take a look to see what’s working and what you might need to tweak. Don’t forget to celebrate success.

It’s never to late to set a communications plan and start leveraging this important piece of your business. Having a plan in place sets you up for success.

Need a little help? At our Orlando PR agency, we’ve been thinking strategically for businesses for more than 15 years and can help you set a plan in motion. Give Will a call at (407) 462-2718 or shoot him an email at will@wellonscommunications.com.

What’s ahead for marketing and PR in 2021?

Posted on by Wellons team

The new year is almost upon us and, with the pandemic still raging full-bore, it is challenging to try and look too far ahead.

As difficult as it is to forecast the future, making preparations for what we can reasonably believe will happen in the upcoming months is a must. None among us, of course, has the ability to precisely predict, for example, how consumers will respond when COVID vaccination peaks in the springtime or how businesses will respond to a new presidency.

There are, however, certain characteristics we consider as we develop marketing and public relations approaches for the immediate future.

Recognize the increased emphasis on health and safety

A recent Consumer Index Report by Ernst & Young reports that 26% of consumers surveyed prefer brands and products they trust to be safe and minimize unnecessary risks. Fifty-seven percent say they now pay more attention to how healthy the products they buy are for them.

So how does this translate to your business?

First of all, it means that consumers will continue, at least until they feel less threatened by COVID, to deal remotely. Projected even further, that means that your business must make it as easy as possible for your customers to do business with you. Outdated software or barriers for people to reach you or conduct business with you can be a deterrent to retaining existing customers or attracting new customers.

Upgrade your ability to connect with your customers online

According to an eMarkerter report from June, the average U.S. adult will spend 23 more minutes on smartphones per day in 2020—and that was in June!

We are socializing, working, shopping, and more—online. It’s not just Gen Z and Millennials anymore; it is all of us.

Though digital fatigue is real, there are certain digital experiences to which consumers are growing increasingly accustomed, like buying online and picking up in a store, curbside pickup or home delivery. Your website and social channels are now the front door to your brand or business. Looking ahead into 2021, this may translate to tactics like brief virtual events, online channels and creating video content to tell your story more effectively.

Keep you staff’s tech skills equal to those of your customers

The COVID threat has accelerated behaviors with a speed that no one could have forecast. Business professionals routinely conduct Zoom meetings, and youngsters attend classes without showing up in a classroom. People attend exercise classes online and talk to their doctors in virtual visits. The scale and magnitude of these changes is absolutely staggering.

This huge shift in behavior means your employees, particularly those who are in frequent contact with your customers, need to clearly understand how to work the levers of tech interaction.

So how to upgrade your staff’s tech skills?

Some people are resistant to new technology because they don’t see how it’s any better than the current system. Your employees may be thinking, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

The problem with that attitude is that they may not realize how broken the current system is.

If you want your workforce to be more tech savvy, you have to make them want to be more tech savvy. It’s never easy to get people to do things they don’t want to do.

Start by showing them how your technology will make their jobs easier. Just saying it will benefit them may not be enough.

Have them work side-by-side with someone who has embraced the technology. Your tech-savvy employees can demonstrate how easy it is to use and how it will simplify their job.

And, finally, look to the future with confidence

All of us want to return to “normal,” but, realistically, we must recognize that “normal,” will never be the same at it was before COVID.

Even after suffering through the ravages of a pandemic that none of us ever could have anticipated, Americans still possess a tough, resilient spirit that is seeing us through a period of uncertainty.

Given the exceptional abilities that have made our nation the leader of the free world, we find a way to create and prosper in a new normal.

No one, of course, can accurately predict what a new normal will look like, but by examining and responding to trends that are manifesting themselves in the marketing world, we can be better prepared for what is coming and how to adjust to it.

Happy holidays to all and a safe and prosperous 2021

We wish all of you a happy – and safe – holiday season. And we join each of you in hoping that we turn the corner toward an even more positive life as we will know it once the pandemic is behind us.

Marketing the holidays: 5 quick and easy ways you can reach customers this holiday season

Posted on by Wellons team

It seems like every year, the holidays creep closer and closer up the calendar. You may have even walked into a big box store recently to be greeted by a display of trees and lights—all before Halloween.

But whatever your thoughts on premature cheer, the early displays might have one upside. It’s a good reminder that you should already be planning your strategy for reaching your customers this holiday season.

Before the weight of anxiety settles upon you, let us say that this doesn’t have to be complicated—but you should do it. Q4 is a key time for many businesses, and a little foresight, combined with creative thinking and simple execution, can make a big difference for your bottom line. Here are five quick and easy ways you can reach customers this holiday season, whatever your strategy.

Social media

This tactic probably isn’t a surprise. People these days spend so much time scrolling on their phones, and social is a natural way to reach customers. But your efforts don’t have to stop with plenty of organic posts touting your product or end-of-year sale. Put on your thinking cap and come up with a creative campaign themed to the holidays. Dive into the season of giving with giveaways, partnered with favorite brands or influencers. Or, run a retargeting campaign so your customers see your product at every turn and can quickly check it off their gift list.

Email marketing

You (hopefully) use a robust email list all year long to reach your customers. But, at a busy time like the holidays, it doesn’t hurt to up the messaging and try to stand out. Plan a countdown campaign, with gift ideas every day leading up to Christmas, or launch a contest with eye-catching, lucrative prizes people actually want to win. And don’t forget to segment. Offer tiered discounts and perks to your best customers to drive serious sales and nurture those relationships.

Traditional PR

Don’t sleep on the power of true PR. Having your product included in a gift guide, whether it’s an influential trade publication or a popular website, can be a grand slam in terms of holiday sales as people are searching for ideas. Even sending samples to great influencers or bloggers in your space for a gift guide feature can help you both reach new audiences and bolster SEO, which can support the bottom line.

Holiday cards

You get them every year from family and friends and maybe send your own. Why not do the same for your business? Especially if you’re on the B2B side of things, a card from your team can add a personal touch and let clients and prospective clients alike know you’re thinking about them this holiday season. Like this idea? Now is the time to order.

Personalized gifts

When it comes to holiday marketing, it’s easy to think about customer acquisition. But don’t forget about some of your best customers—your current clients! For those involved in business to business industries, a personalized gift to some of your best contacts, or even some highly qualified leads, can help you stand out among the noise in a highly busy, highly competitive season. Whether it’s a gift basket, piece of marketing swag, a digital gift card (perfect in the time of COVID) or even a donation to charity in their name, a personalized gift is a high-touch show of customer service and can bolster your relationship.

With a little planning, the holiday season can be a huge opportunity for any business. But you shouldn’t let it stop there. While you’re at it, work to incorporate these tactics into a 2021 marketing plan, pinpointing key dates that make sense for your business—and keep the holiday cheer rolling throughout the new year.

Need some extra bandwidth to make it happen this year? Wellons Communications is your Orlando marketing agency, and we’re here to help. Give Will a call at (407) 462-2718 or shoot him an email at will@wellonscommunications.com. 

Use visual storytelling to make your message stand out

Posted on by Wellons team

The competition for your attention has never been so fierce.

From the time your alarm goes off and you check the news to the moment you check tomorrow’s weather and click the television remote before going to sleep, you are deluged with messaging. And by messaging, we mean all kinds of information—advertising, news and anything else designed to capture your attention.

The fact is we are receiving more information than any other time in recorded history, primarily due to the onset of the internet and the sheer volume of information that can be generated and distributed through digital and mobile communications.

The end result: we begin to ignore or tune out messaging and information.

And that neatly presents the challenge we face as professional communicators: how to make your message stand out and distinguish who you are, what you do, and how well you do it.

Pictures are, indeed, worth a thousand words.

Let’s take a quick glance at some pictures to make our point. This is an instantly recognizable visual cue. It needs no words to clearly explain its meaning.

Here’s another example: it illustrates our point about the exponential growth of messaging that bombards us daily:

The meaning is pretty clear. The number of advertising messages to which we are exposed every day has doubled in the past 13 years.

This example is a little more complex:

This example uses words, in combination with a powerful graphic, to convey the notion that “thoughts” can result in a “change.”

The overwhelming importance of using graphics to project your message

The majority of your potential clients get to know you by your graphics. Your logo. Your letterhead. The sign on your door. The graphic on your website. Even the graphic design on the cup of coffee you may be sampling while you read this.

For those who are already doing business with you, the relationship is far greater than graphics, of course. But, for those whom you want to serve, graphics are often the first step in making an acquaintance.

The things you interact with every day were all created by a graphic designer. These elements communicate an idea or concept—that’s the purpose of graphic design. It’s the graphic designer’s job to marry creativity and strategy in order to effectively communicate with the world around them.

Our Orlando marketing agency relies on graphics to make your customers relate to you

Our digital marketing agency practioners are huge believers in blending your ideas with visual elements that make your ideas come to life.

Photos. Videos. Charts. Illustrations. Cartoons. Website graphics. Postcards. Signage. There is no graphic expression that is off the table.

If a graphic can tell your story without a thousand words, so much the better. We are firm believers in infographics to capture attention. And we utilize creatively talented resources to help make your messages come to life and convey ideas that will attract attention and make your product or service pop.

Picture this: Call on Wellons Communications to convey your message

We describe what we do as marketing public relations. We specialize in public relations aimed at selling a product, service or idea. After all, isn’t that why you are in business?

If you are seeking a new, fresh way to cut through the white noise of the informational messages that hammer away at us every single minute, then consider calling Wellons Communications, an Orlando marketing agency, for solutions.

You talk. We’ll listen. And after we’ve listened, we’ll respond with recommendations and ideas that will be tailored specifically to the wants and needs of your potential customers…and aimed at helping your business grow and succeed.

Now, how’s that for a picture?

Contact me at 407-339-0879 or email me at will@wellonscommunications.com and find out more about how we can serve you.

Tips for starting an influencer marketing program

Posted on by Wellons team

You’ve probably heard of influencer marketing before. Maybe the term brings to mind visions of Kylie Jenner sharing a product she loves on Instagram, and it seems out of reach for your business.

But to be honest, that’s just not true. There are options within influencer marketing for many types of businesses. You just have to find the right fit for you—and get started.

What is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing blends the ideas of traditional advertising, public relations and celebrity endorsements. It involves working with a brand or person who has influence in your space, likely on social media or a digital platform, to drive awareness for your brand and/or drive sales.

The sticking point for many people is that they envision these elusive influencers as celebrities with millions of followers. But influencer marketing can also mean working with what are known as micro influencers—a somewhat misleading term for influencers who have a smaller following, but who speak to a specific niche and have very engaged fans. These influencers might reach fewer people, but they tend to give you a bigger bang for your buck.

How to develop an influencer marketing strategy for your business

In short, influencers can make a big difference for you (we’ve seen it!), whether your business is a nationwide product or a local restaurant, drawing new fans to your pages and property and building that bottom line. You just have to find the right fit for you. Want to learn how? To start, you need to think long and hard about your brand and your goals. Check out our best tips below.

Define your goals. As with most things in business, you need to go in with eyes wide open as to what you want. Do you want to drive SEO results for your company with seeded keywords? You might want to focus on bloggers rather than social influencers. Do you want to reach young people with a wow-worthy, trendy product? Maybe TikTok is for you. Do your users have a big Instagram community? Maybe Instagram influencer marketing is the best way for people to discover your product.

This decision is going to drive all others—and ultimately determine how happy you are with the results—so choose wisely.

Outline the ops. Before you actually start working with an influencer, it’s a good idea to work out what that will look like. How will you package your product (special touches might stand out!)? How will the influencer check into the hotel or make their restaurant reservation, and how will you communicate to staff what’s going to happen?

At this stage, you will also want to think about budget. Many of the best influencers have a media kit outlining their rates for things like a blog post or social story. Others will accept products or experiences—depending on the value—in exchange for a reasonable scope. Some businesses also offer affiliate benefits for partners, allowing them to earn a commission on sales. Decide what your budget will be for this campaign and how you will handle it.

Find your fit. Now comes the fun part. Get on your chosen platform and do some research. Find the go-to influencers in your space. Explore hashtags, or check out other brands you admire to see who they work with. Do a quick search. When you find someone you think is a fit, look deeper. What kinds of things do they post? How many followers do they have? What is their engagement rate, and who is their target audience? Make sure they have enough sway with the right people to help you reach your goals, and make sure they’re someone with whom you want to align your brand.

Make it happen. Find your chosen influencer’s contact info and shoot them an email or just reach out on their popular platform. Outline what you’re thinking, and see if it aligns with their vision and standards. It might help to draw up an informal influencer agreement outlining what both sides can expect for the partnership. If this is a paid partnership with a big budget, you might even draw up a contract, like you would with any other ad deal. Be sure to ask influencers to follow all guidelines regarding disclosures. It can also be helpful to provide your influencer with your own media kit, especially if there are certain messaging points you’d really like to hit. Influencers will often pull from this so they can give their followers reliable information, and it can support your overall branding goals.

Track and reuse. Your influencer received your product, loved it and shared. They came to your resort and wrote a glowing blog. They visited your restaurant and posted a swoon-worthy pic on Insta or video on TikTok. Amazing! Now, you need to see if your program worked. Follow up with your influencer about their experience (you are, hopefully, building a relationship, after all!). Ask them to provide any internal stats they might have about performance (page views, reach, etc.). Take a look yourself at your web traffic or social analytics and see what can be tied to the partnership. This will all help guide you in future influencer partnerships.

And don’t forget a vital step—reuse this influencer content wherever you can. Influencers produce some amazing content for your brand, and you should be engaging with it, reposting it to your page and sharing blogs and vlogs to make the most of your partnership.

Influencer marketing can work for you

Now that you have the steps, tweak and repeat. Despite the sometimes bad rep influencer marketing gets, when done correctly, it can be a great thing for your business.

Feeling a little overwhelmed by the prospect of starting from scratch? Call in the pros. At Wellons Communications, we’ve put our PR savvy to work for years building influencer programs for everything from national products to local restaurants. We understand how the process works and have built great relationships with all kinds of influencers. We’d love to put our know-how to work for you. Give us a call at 407-339-0879 or email will@wellonscommunications.com, and let us get started working for your busines

How PR can help you get ahead in today’s E-commerce marketing environment

Posted on by Wellons team

The shift toward an E-economy arrived with bewildering speed during the past decade. While it did not catch businesses off guard, E-marketing surprised many with the speed by which it overtook traditional marketing processes.

Now, with the entrenched presence of the COVID pandemic for the next year or so, E-commerce has become not just another adjunct to your marketing program, but, for many, the primary means of reaching customers.

It’s important to recognize that E-commerce has advanced well beyond simply initiating a Search Engine Optimization program and hoping you show up in generic Google searches. It’s an ever-changing process that is the marketing program for many businesses.

E-commerce, however, is not a one-trick pony.

It requires marketing agility, the necessary resources required to gain a foothold in the E-commerce battleground, and the know-how to present one’s values and benefits to customers so the business can jump off the page and become recognizable…and wanted.

E-commerce success demands more than digital outflow

Successful digital marketing requires a mix of activities, not all of them online. You need communications that will reach and attract your potential customers before they head to their computer screen.

We’re talking about the kind of activity that will build online interest in your brand, products or services and draw people to your site. This could be special events, attention-getting visuals, storytelling in a compelling fashion, news, information only you can deliver, or best of all, having the story told by someone who already has an online following.

Next, your digital marketing needs to make customers want to continue to return to your site.

But it can’t end there.

Your online marketing needs to engage prospective customers so they not only recognize what you do and what you stand for but want to buy your product or service.

Is your E-commerce approach still fresh…or is it getting tired?

Even if you are an E-commerce veteran, you need to constantly review how you are doing things to ensure your E-commerce marketing is firing on all cylinders.

Your approach to E-commerce marketing and communications cannot remain static.

You have to maintain a balancing act of familiarity, like your logo and your headline, along with something fresh and new that signals that you are in tune with whatever changes your industry is experiencing and reflective of your ability to remain in touch with what’s around the next corner.

Amplify your E-commerce marketing with a strong PR program

Most often, our clients call on us to develop and implement aggressive media relations programs to support their keyword strategy and boost their site’s performance on search engines.

We rely on building a focused, multi-faceted communications program that calls attention to their keywords and aggressively addresses those niches where those keywords have the most potential to augment someone’s message…like appearing in an influential blog or a magazine article.

But there’s a lot more to PR than simply reinforcing keywords.

We seek out and create opportunities for others to present you in a credible, favorable manner people will want to view … and Google will rank. And, when we capitalize on these opportunities, there’s the added benefit of of countering Google’s changing ever-changing algorithms.

No black hat nonsense, or SEO “experts” seeding your content onto poor websites to chase backlinks.

We are talking simple, easy-to-understand, practical distribution of information and ideas to sources like bloggers, vloggers, traditional media and influence leaders who will understand the value and importance of your message at a glance and want to share it with their audiences.

Messaging and communications are where PR comes into the picture

From employment of visualization using photos and video to special events, PR can serve as a springboard to generate attention both inside and outside of E-commerce channels of communication.

PR can reinforce what you are all about and amplify your messaging through news and communications outlets beyond your normal scope. PR can serve as a different kind of driving force to direct people to your website so they can learn more about you and see what you can offer them.

The cost is relatively inexpensive, particularly when it compares with paid advertising, which online readers recognize and often bypass, to get to whatever subject is most important to them.

Look at your E-commerce marketing with a fresh set of eyes

Even if you are well-versed in E-commerce, it doesn’t hurt to take another look at what you’re doing.

E-commerce has advanced and will only continue to do so. The pandemic has brought that to light more clearly than ever before.

Our approach? Developing and executing awareness-building programs that encourage online readers to put your company straight into their search bar.

We maximize E-commerce marketing efforts by clearly identifying and establishing those qualities that what make you special: your expertise, authority, personality and ability to deliver. And, once we attract reader attention, we aim toward making your potential customers feel completely confident in buying from you—and in recommending you to others.

Find out more about how we can help you energize your E-marketing.

Email me at will@wellonscommunications.com (or call me… 407-339-0879) and let’s talk about how we can add new life to your digital marketing.

How to get started with Facebook and Instagram ads

Posted on by Wellons team

Maybe you’ve been there.

You’re posting and posting great content for your business, and yet you still see your post reach hovering in the same sad range. You’ve heard about social media ads, and you’ve even started researching how to get started, but every time you fall down a Google spiral, feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of deploying ads on Snapchat and Pinterest, setting up a landing page and mapping out a sales funnel until you just give up.

We’re here to say it: Getting started with social media ads does not have to be that complicated—and they can make a big difference for your business.

Just start small.

The why and where

First, know you aren’t crazy for thinking you’re running in circles relying on organic reach. In fact, besides a 0.5 percent increase during the social media surge of the pandemic, organic reach on social has been declining for years. Now, only 5.2 percent of your page’s followers see any given organic post.

That alone is a strong argument for the use of paid social media strategies.

There’s also plenty of opportunity out there. While nearly all social platforms offer ads (Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest and most recently TikTok to name a few), Facebook and Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) are great first steps. Facebook’s ad platforms have been around for years, and with 2.6 billion monthly active users, it’s also the largest social platform.

Because of this, we’ll focus there first. Ready to get started? Check out some of the most basic steps below.

Give yourself a boost.

If all you’re looking for is a little bump of engagement on your page posts and you just want to dip your toe in the social media advertising waters, boosting a post on your page is the way to go. Simply go to your business’s page and select the post you want to amplify. There should be a blue button offering to boost. Here, you’ll see a simplified version of Ads Manager where you can decide how to boost, who to target and how much to spend. And just like that, you’re doing it! While you can read on for more about how to refine your efforts, think of a simple boost as giving the organic content you’re already doing a little more “oomph”.

Ready to go bigger? Define what you want.

If you want to turn that “oomph” into a “POW,” you’re going to need to use Ads Manager. Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with it (we promise it looks more complicated than it is). Facebook offers a variety of options right off the bat. They break down to:

Awareness

  • Brand Awareness—Increase people’s awareness of your business
  • Reach—Show your ad to as many people as possible

Consideration

  • Traffic—Drive people to a website
  • Engagement—Like a boost, but with more refined options. This breaks down into page likes, post engagement and event responses.
  • App installs—Promote your business’s app
  • Video views—Get your video in front of people most likely to watch it
  • Lead generation—Using a form, get people to submit info, like emails for newsletter sign ups
  • Messages—Another of your boost options, this allows people to connect with your business.

Conversion

  • Conversions—Drive actions on your site, like adding to cart
  • Catalog sales—Promote your ecommerce store to drive sales
  • Store traffic—Promote your brick and mortar location to those nearby

You need to decide what it is you want to accomplish with your ads. Do you want more web visitors? Do you just want to stay top-of-mind? Are you looking to ramp up engagement on your page? This will drive your choice. While all of these objectives are useful in the right moment, if you’re just getting started, consider engagement, a page likes ad, traffic or awareness as a first test. Some of these other objectives require slightly more complicated setups (great for your continued education!)

Know your audience

Once you pick your objective and set your budget to where you feel comfortable, you will have to create an audience to target. Facebook offers so many options here, you might feel a little creepy—and you’ll definitely start to understand more about the ads you see in your own feed. Think about who your target customer is. Then, get creative creating parameters that best fit people like your best customers. The trick here is to shoot for a middle ground. You don’t want your audience to be so wide they find your ad irrelevant, and you don’t want to be so narrow that you’re missing great targets and not getting bang for your buck. Playing with the custom audiences is a great place to start, but lookalike audiences hold huge potential for later down the line.

Know the requirements

One of the last steps to launching your ad is to select the creative—and this is an integral step. If you don’t create an ad that catches people’s attention, all the hard work you’ve put in won’t ROI in the way you hope. Worse yet, if you don’t create an ad that fits Facebook or Instagram’s parameters, it might not run at all. When you get to this step, you can either select a post from your page or create a new ad. Give good thought to if what you post makes sense for the audience and the platform. Make sure your objective carries through with the right call to action. Make sure the visual you select is eye-catching, and at the most basic level, is the right size and shape. Sprout Social has great guides like this one to help you with this. Finally, make sure your selected image doesn’t have too much text. Facebook prioritizes ads for images with less than 20 percent text.

Monitor, learn and repeat

You’re not going to get it totally right the first time. Even the most experienced marketers and social media gurus know there’s always room to optimize. Try a few things and see what works best for your business. Once you have a little more experience, you might look into installing a pixel on your website and trying retargeting, or setting up a catalog for dynamic ads to sell products.

Truly, there are huge possibilities for your business in the realm of social media ads. You can always learn and grow. But the only way to reap the benefits? Take the first small steps and get started. Still feeling overwhelmed, or ready to move on to Social Ads 201? Give us a call at 407-339-0879 or email Will at will@wellonscommunications.com. We’d be happy to review your goals and put our social media advertising know-how to work for you.

Why COVID-19 could be your opportunity for media coverage

Posted on by Wellons team

We’re all numbed by the overwhelming amount of information doled out daily by public health officials, governmental officials and other well-meaning organizations.

Wear masks. Keep your distance. Wash your hands. It’s a mantra we have heard—and lived—daily since COVID began to make its presence felt in early February.

Lost in the shuffle is information about products and services that continue to operate without interruption and whose services are in demand.

Surprisingly, there is considerable demand for product and service information. However, in response to this demand, information outflow by public relations operatives has actually decreased.

In our estimation, that presents an opportunity you cannot afford to miss.

How do we know media wants more information in today’s COVID times?

Energy PR, a well-respected British public relations firm based north of London, conducted a survey of nearly 150 British media outlets in the past month. The survey explored how things have changed for them since COVID-19.

The answers Energy PR uncovered offer some valuable insights that businesses and brands can capitalize upon. You can see their survey for yourself here.

One survey, of course, does not a trend make. However, like Energy PR, we hear journalists saying, “I am okay with COVID material, but I need other stuff as well.”

Here’s what Energy’s survey tells us:

Don’t try to be COVID-relevant when you’re not. There is so much COVID information out there that you get lost in the shuffle and become just another COVID story. A full 20 percent of journalists report that “no one is doing or saying anything new at the moment.”

Creativity counts. Sometimes creativity is simply being the oracle of the obvious. Actions like pointing media toward your blog posts, identifying how customers are adjusting to changing times and even new, unforeseen responses from your customers can all provide information that may serve as a news hook for outlets hungry for something besides COVID.

Don’t hold back. Business acumen and insights count. But you’ve got to express your ideas—and distribute them—to get noticed.

If you have something to say about your business category, now’s the time. If you’re noticing significant changes in consumer behavior, be a leader in your category and say it.

If you have something totally unique to point toward, go all out and issue a press release, tweet, conduct a webinar or make yourself available as a guest on a podcast. Above all, however, let your PR firm know about it so your marketing team can take advantage of what you have to say.

Capitalize on the lack of information. The sheer volume of information in the current news environment offers an extraordinary marketing opportunity for you to put your name in front of households who are weary of news revolving around The Mantra (masks, distance, handwashing) and COVID.

Here’s how Wellons Communications can help you…right now:

We know how to identify what’s newsworthy, even when you may not realize you have news.

We have exceptional news distribution capabilities that can put your news in the hands of journalists who are eagerly looking for something to report on other than COVID. We also possess the kind of creativity that can make your message stand out and call for attention.

We have outstanding resources at our fingertips that can graphically make your messaging come to life. And we understand how to make your message turn into memorable video and audio “bites” that can put your product or service into the news. 

You can capitalize on an open news window right now…but only if you act.

Never before have we seen the media so eager to report something beside The Elephant in the Room (COVID). Indeed, with smaller-than-ever staffs and less time available to research and identify what’s newsworthy, media have become more and more dependent on folks like us at Wellons Communications to help them find stories that will interest their readers, viewers and listeners.

You can only take advantage of this opportunity by acting. The media are not going to find you if you wait for them to call.

Instead, let someone like us give you a hand in crafting and distributing information that will put your product or service into the news. We can help you connect with your target audiences and conversely, allow your would-be customers to connect with you in the form of sales.

Call me, Will Wellons, at 407-462-2718 or email me at will@wellonscommunications.com and let me know what you want your audiences to hear.

Why you need to think about crisis communications now (and how to start)

Posted on by Wellons team

With everything 2020 has thrown at businesses, it’s probably not too hard to imagine why your business might need a crisis communications plan.

There have been countless lessons over the past few months of businesses tackling crisis head on, and many cautionary tales of businesses falling on their faces.

Even so, it’s easy to see why it doesn’t get checked off your to-do list. In the day-to-day hubbub, while you’re just trying to stay afloat, devoting the time to developing a crisis plan might not seem like a priority. Maybe you think you can’t fully craft a plan until you know what you’re facing. Or maybe you don’t even know where to start at all.

But whatever the reason, there are so many more that you should take the time to walk through your crisis communications plan…NOW.

If you don’t have a plan, you’re just reacting. Imagine driving down a dark, curvy road at night. With your headlights on, you can only see a few feet in front of you. You don’t know what’s lurking up ahead. Now turn on the brights. Suddenly, you can see a lot more.

Crisis happens fast. Having a plan means you can see further up the road. Without one, you’re just reacting to whatever pops up.

Social media means crisis is even faster. With so many different platforms, social media can mean you feel a crisis even more. You have a more direct platform to communicate with your guests or customers, and they have a more direct platform to communicate with you. If you don’t have a plan, the chatter on social media can be deafening…and devastating.

Having a plan forces you to define your brand. As you craft a crisis communications plan, you’re going to have to further evaluate who you are as a company. What do you value? What is your brand voice, and what do you say with it? Any time you look internally—to determine your best-selling products, to identify sales opportunities, to find new verticals, to form new positions—you strengthen your company because you can more clearly articulate these things.

You show employees you care. Just like when you put new HR policies in place, having a crisis communications plan helps your employees. It shows that you take your company seriously and value what you’re building together. It shows that you care about concerns and are the kind of company that works proactively to protect staff.

You show your customers you care. No one likes to deal with a crisis, but when you do—and when you’re prepared—you show your customers how seriously you take your brand. You show you are taking action, and you show you value their trust in you.

Have we convinced you?

Getting started doesn’t have to be intimidating. First, take some time to brainstorm a variety of situations your company might face. Think about how you might handle those situations. What might you say (or not say) and what platforms might you use to spread (or monitor) that message?

Next, designate a crisis team with a point person or spokesperson. This might also be a great time to engage an agency (hi!). Together, come up with an action plan. You might even start to draft some communications that can be quickly and easily customized and deployed.

Still need a little help? Wellons Communications has helped clients weather all kinds of storms. We’ve been helping clients prepare for more than a decade, and we’d be happy to lend a third-party perspective to your business.

Give us a call at (407) 462-2718 or email will@wellonscommunications.com for a free consultation.

Does your agency do that? The service you need to take advantage of

Posted on by Wellons team

When your agency crafts a social media strategy that gives you a great ROI, it’s amazing. When they knock it out of the park with a huge media hit, it’s impressive. When they execute on an email campaign that boosts the bottom line, you’re thrilled.

All of that is great (and we hope that’s happening for you). But if your agency partner is not an expert in one key area, chances are, you’re underutilizing your resources—and none of the above outcomes will be possible.

What is it?

It’s content.

More often than not, potential clients come to us requesting help with social media or wanting a press release written and distributed to the media. We do both, but the reason we’re able to do so successfully is because what we do best at Wellons Communications is craft content. And your agency should be able to say the same.

What is content?

Content is everywhere, from an organic post on Instagram to an SEO blog, a marketing email and even a white paper. It could be an internal communication, like a letter to your employees, customers or vendors, or a sales sheet, like a case study.

It could even be a non-written form, like a video or infographic.

To put it simply, content is how you tell your story, how you express your brand to your audience and the world. It is the lifeblood of everything your agency does.

What are the benefits of content?

When done right, content can help you achieve your marketing and PR goals. You can expand your reach with an SEO blog or a well-crafted digital ad.

You can cut through the clutter and grab your audience’s attention with an eye-catching email. Or you can communicate your point of difference clearly in success stories, sales sheets and white papers.

With content done right, you can gain customers, makes sales and position yourself as an industry leader.

Why should your agency lead content?

It’s true that content is incredibly important to businesses of all sizes. There’s a good reason many CEOs, CMOs and everyone in between try to hold on to content. They know their story, and they believe they can tell it better than anyone else.

With the wrong agency, that might be true. But the right agency should be a partner for your business. They should not only click with you right away, making you feel like they just “get” you from the start, but they should continue to hone that relationship, learning and circling in on the core of your message.

They should come to understand you like you understand yourself and be able to explain that across all sorts of platforms.

If they don’t, you’ll feel the limits of your relationship even in something as simple as a social media post or a press release.

But when your agency does have this level of understanding, having them hit on all levels of content is an amazing benefit—and one you should take advantage of.

For starters, your agency should be made up of professionals. You hire them to take in information, synthesize it, and determine the best way to share it. When you can use that storytelling ability across platforms, you’re firing on all cylinders of communication. Drawing on content, your agency can tell your company’s story as a united front, from a single tweet to a guest article in your favorite trade publication. And that’s incredibly powerful.

At Wellons Communications, we’re storytellers first. Our agency is made up of former journalists and PR pros, all of whom have been trained to listen, tease out the unique details of your story and tell it eloquently. We’re not limited by platform or length.

Want to take advantage of that? Give Will a call at 407-462-2718 or email him at will@wellonscommunications.com.

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