Category: Marketing

Using Artificial Intelligence in Public Relations

Posted on by Wellons team

The onset of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in creating information about virtually anything has been sudden and enormously impactful.

If you feel your understanding of AI may be lacking and how it is transforming business, you have plenty of company. It feels like AI has arrived overnight…so fast that it has all of us feeling our way forward to adjusting to what seems to be morphing into an Artificial Intelligence business world.

In particular, the marketing and public relations industries are on the front line of industries feeling AI’s influence and how it affects marketing programs like yours.

Getting comfortable with Artificial Intelligence

If you feel you need to get better acquainted with AI, here is some information that will help you better understand AI and how it is changing how we are doing business:

A great place to start is Microsoft’s AI for Small Business: A Beginner’s Guide.

More in-depth drives into AI and where it may fit into your business:

  • McKinsey & Company Quarterly Five Fifty Real World AI offers hundreds of examples of how AI is being incorporated into business management and marketing
  • Everything PR News offers insights on AI’s role in PR in The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Public Relations
  • Forbes business writer Ali Payani provides a thoughtful analysis of AI’s impact on marketing in Embracing the Future: How AI Is Revolutionizing Marketing and Sales

So, how is Artificial Intelligence affecting public relations?

AI is enabling PR practitioners like Wellons Communications to more rapidly and analyze data quickly and accurately.

It helps identify trends and insights. It influences development of develop targeted messaging and campaigns, including what is already being said about you and your competitors.

AI is improving the accuracy and efficiency of media monitoring and analysis.

Can AI replace the need for public relations practitioners?

Nope.

AI is a big help to PR professionals, but it lacks the humanity necessary to gauge or “read” public opinion and what matters to people. It can assemble and organize information, but it lacks the creative spark that can point that information toward an original, productive marketing campaign.

What AI does do for PR agencies like Wellons Communications to more rapidly and analyze data and ideas quickly and accurately. It helps identify trends and insights. It influences development targeted messaging and campaigns. AI is also improving the accuracy and efficiency of media monitoring and analysis.

AI is particularly helpful in media monitoring; analysis of what media is saying and how that information might affect your industry or your business and providing.

The final decisions on what you could or should do, in response to AI analysis, however, still requires a human touch and sound decision making.

Can small businesses like yours use AI in their marketing?

AI-driven personalized marketing campaigns can help build stronger connections with customers and increase brand loyalty.
Also, AI-powered content creation tools can accelerate and streamline the content creation process, saving businesses time and money.

How does Wellons Communications use AI?

We’re already using AI to strengthen our clients’ public relations and publicity programs.

We use AI to transcribe interviews, capture notes and ideas, create content more efficiently and better predict the changes of a PR pitch earning coverage.

Using tools like Cision, Grammarly and Meltwater Propels “PitchPrefer,” we can play to media preferences in what kind of information they want to receive or what they seek.

Best of all, we can take advantage of AI’s power to work more quickly and efficiently, which means you get more from us in less time.

We would love to explore how we can harness the power AI to accelerate your PR and overall marketing program.

If you’re ready to put AI to put some kick into your marketing program but feel hesitant about what to do or where to start, give our PR firm a call and talk to us…in human (not AI) terms.

Are you capitalizing on your winning stories?

Posted on by Wellons team

“Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser.” –

Gen. George S. Patton

If you count yourself among the winners, then it’s the story of your successes, and what they do for your clients, is a story that you need tell….over and over.

“Facts and figures and all the rational things that we think are important in the business world actually don’t stick in our minds at all,” says Nick Morgan, author of Power Cues,” but stories create “sticky” memories by attaching emotions to things that happen. That means leaders who can create and share winning stories have a powerful advantage over others.”

Put away modesty

Your first thought may be “Well, telling our story is going to sound like bragging.”

Wrong.

If you don’t tell your story, nobody else is going to do it for you. In fact, others may take your story and define it in their own terms…and to their advantage.

It is solely up to you to identify your strengths and successes and then tell people about them. And that’s where public relations enters into the marketing mix of your overall communications.

Keep your customers first when you tell your story

Put your story in a context that puts your customers and employees first. Choose a framework that will resonate with your listeners and audience

For example, people don’t want to hear “We have lots of experience.” What they want to hear is “Here’s how our experience has led to successful outcomes for our clients and how our experience will lead to results.” And then back up your story by reporting some results.

According to the Harvard Business Review:

“First, companies should inventory their existing market research and customer insight data, looking for qualitative descriptions of what motivates their customers—desires for freedom, security, success, and so on.”

Second, companies should analyze their best customers to learn which of the motivators just identified are specific or more important to the high-value group.”

So, what kind of stories should I tell?

A story without a challenge simply is not very interesting. Good storytellers understand that a story needs conflict.

Define a challenge that confronted your customer. Then tell how your business solved the problem.

Here’s an example:

“After years of significant membership growth, the Society for Pet Adoption (SPA) began to experience a significant downturn in new membership. SPA needed to find a way to attract new, younger members to supplement the loss of aging and dying members.”

And then explain, in simple, basic terms how SPA reversed the trend.

“SPA augmented online communications to better reach and appeal to a younger family demographic. Their website added appealing visuals of pets in need of adoption and featured “New Surroundings,” showcasing how the adoption of a pet provided a common point of emotional connection that positively involved every member of both the immediate family and their friends. Media found the New Surroundings stories offered emotional appeal to their audiences and adopted some of the winning stories for features in their news reports.” The membership decline reversed itself within a nine-month period”

The formula 1. Problem. 2. Solution. 3 Results.

Let us help you craft and tell your winning stories

As public relations practitioners, we are professional storytellers. We are also professional marketers.

We combine marketing and storytelling to help our clients more effectively reach their customers and potential customers.

We can help you clarify your strengths and how you are helping your customers. And, just as important, we can identify and share your story with powerful media sources who are always looking out for stories they can share with their audiences.

And, once we have crafted your story, we can develop ways and means to augment what you have to say. Powerful photos. Attention-getting video. Research that underlines your results.

We help media make your story become their story. Call our Orlando PR firm to help you put your story in the hands of media best suited to reach your key target audiences.

Give us a call. Share with us what kind of winning stories you want to tell. After all, like General Patton said so eloquently, “Americans love winners.”

And rely on us to help you develop the story of your brand and generate positive results for your business or organization.

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.

What’s your plan for dealing with unforeseen circumstances in business?

Posted on by Wellons team

What’s your plan when a business problem pops up that is totally unforeseen? What’s your order of response to an event that is unanticipated, troublesome, and not even your fault?

Who steps up to represent your organization? Who determines how you are going to react? What are you going to tell your customers? What are they going to say when media comes knocking on your door?

Few, if any, really foresee a “black swan” event

Nobody really expects a “black swan” – an unpredictable event beyond what is normally expected of a situation and that has potentially severe consequences for one’s business.

What kind of “black swans” are we talking about?

Events like COVID-19, a workplace accident that results in injury or even death, the actions of a disgruntled employee who is identified with your organization, slowdowns in the supply chain that affect your operations, to name a few.

The event does not even necessarily have to be your fault. It can be something that affects your industry, like a slowdown in the supply chain, a weather event that disrupts flights and operations, or an economic event that has an influence in your business category.

Unanticipated events happen and you need to have a basic outline prepared to deal with them.

When was the last time you looked at your crisis plan?

Good news: most organizations already have crisis communications plans prepared.

According to a PR crisis survey that PRNEWS and CS&A International, a specialist risk, crisis, and business continuity management consultancy, conducted in late 2019, about 62 percent of companies have crisis plans.

The bad news is that once the crisis plan has been prepared, it is often jammed into someone’s file and gathering dust and forgotten. According to the same PRNEWS survey, “it’s uncertain how many regularly update them (crisis plans). In addition, few companies consistently practice crisis scenarios.”

Why are these plans forgotten? Primarily because no crisis has occurred and there has been no reason to look at the plan. Or because personnel change and no one can remember who wrote the plan or where they put it.

No matter what the reason the plans “disappear,” crisis plans can easily become outdated or misplaced. And that puts you and your business in peril.

Crisis plans need to be reviewed annually…even if it takes only 15 minutes

Overseeing a crisis plan doesn’t require an entire day of your organization’s time.

In fact, it can take about 15 minutes a year once it has been prepared.

Your review needs to address questions like:

  • Is the general plan still current?
  • Has the contact information in the plan changed?
  • Who oversees the plan?
  • Do we know how to find the plan when we need it?
  • Has our industry or situation changed so that the changes require us to modify our plan?

Who’s in charge of your crisis plan? And who keeps it updated?

Theoretically, your CEO or COO is responsible for your crisis planning and response.

In reality, someone in the lower ranks, or an outside resource, is responsible for crafting the plan, testing it out, and keeping it updated.

It’s important to ensure that someone in, or connected to, your organization is clearly in charge of crisis communications planning and stays in touch with its basic response actions. This same person should be the one to review the plan and call management’s attention to any changes that require the buy-in of the entire organization.

So what does Wellons Communications have to do with crisis planning?

Wellons Communications serves to write crisis plans, test them out, freshen them up when required, and, in an actual crisis, act as either the spokesperson for your organization or prepare your designated spokesperson’s response.

In short, we stand at your side and help guide your response so you immediately can communicate your side of a story to four key audiences:

Your employees: let them know that your only point of communication is whomever is designated as your spokesperson.

Your customers: tell them what is going on and what you are doing to address it.

Media: Identify one person (by name, title, and contact information) who is your spokesperson and how to reach them. And keep in mind that media includes both consumer media and trade media.

Your industry: if your business category is caught up in the crisis moment, let your industry association know what you are doing and who is speaking on your behalf.

Pre-empt crisis response now…by reviewing your crisis plan

Chances are you already have a crisis plan in place…or have, at least, thought about it.

If you have a plan established, look at it and update it. If you don’t have a plan formalized, put one in place, even if it’s only one page.

If you anticipate that you need—or may need—crisis planning assistance and crisis response assistance, consider our Orlando PR firm and let us help you put a plan together, conduct a run-through to see how it works, and stand by your side in the event you need to respond to a crisis.

And remember, those “black swans” are only a moment way…and you need to be prepared to address them if they occur.

Use video to spice up your communications

Posted on by Wellons team

Looking for an inexpensive way to get an edge on your competitors or gain a powerful new connection with your target market? Consider these observations about video marketing and think, for a moment, how this relates to your marketing and public relations strategies:

This certainly suggests that businesses need a video marketing strategy — but this idea isn’t new. What has changed is the importance of video’s presence on every platform and channel.

So…are you using video to convey your message? Or are you totally dependent on words and still pictures to communicate your key marketing messages?

Video is a staple of our everyday lives

America has been a TV society since the 1950s.

The notion of “TV”, however, now extends far beyond sitting in front of a television set.

Social media has revolutionized how we “consume” or watch information. YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok and all the other gaggle of online information sources have both created demand for video content and influenced how people receive and absorb information.

Cell phones, tablets and computer screens are now more dominant than one’s television set.

The takeaway: To remain relevant, you need to include video in your total marketing plan and particularly in your public relations communications, to effectively put yourself in front of your key audiences.

But doesn’t video cost an arm and a leg?

Over the years, video-making tools have become more and more accessible to the average marketer and small business owner. Today almost anyone can launch their own video marketing campaign.

An inexpensive video need not look like it was produced in one’s garage. Plenty of low-budget videos look as professional and polished as their more expensive counterparts.

The costs of video creation have declined significantly. Cameras have improved a great deal – in fact, if you have a smartphone, there’s a video-quality camera sitting in your pocket right now. This makes recording footage quicker and simpler than ever before.

That does not mean, however, that you should set up a chair under some lights and hit the video button on your cellphone to record something. It does mean that you can have video content produced at a reasonable price that can stay well within your budget…and underscore your business’ level of professionalism.

You must put aside a sufficient budget to reach effective levels of communication. The exact amount, of course, will vary with each client’s budget capability and needs, but something in a range of $750-$2,000 can serve to get your video presence established.

How Wellons Communications approaches video content development

The message you want to communicate will depend entirely on your product or service.

At our Orlando marketing agency, we strategically rely upon the themes and messages you use in your overall marketing plan. That provides consistency with what you are already saying about yourself.

There are, however, four basic ideas to which we subscribe in planning short video content packages:

  • Sound quality is paramount. Viewers must be able to hear and understand what you are saying.
  • Get to the point! Communicate your relevant thought within 10-15 seconds.
  • Add a personalized element. This provides an emotional connection with your viewer.
  • Be mindful of the length of your video. Shorter is better.

We can build a video package for you.

We plan the video package. Unless it’s something short and snappy for social, we typically don’t shoot them. We use professional videographers who have professional equipment who will make you look as professional as possible.

We can build your video package from scratch—from what you want to say and how you say it to how it will look, where, how, and when the video will be used and how much it will cost. We also handle the research to identify a video team that will stay within your budget.

Before we get to the production stage, we plan…and plan…and plan. This usually results in a storyboard that illustrates how your video will look. In turn, the video team we select takes that information and puts your video together (under our supervision).

Finally, we assist in the distribution of the video, from coordinating its use in your online marketing initiatives to distributing it to news media.

Use video to freshen your marketing. And call on us to get it underway.

At our Orlando PR agency, we think like marketers and act like the public relations professionals we are. We think of ourselves as “marketing public relations” practitioners…and that translates into virtually all the PR services we provide our clientele.

When you are ready to add video to your marketing or PR mix, keep us in mind or simply call or email us and let us discuss with you how you can, affordably, add video to your overall marketing program.

How up-to-date is your crisis communications plan?

Posted on by Wellons team

If you run your own business—or oversee a significant operation of someone else’s business—you are always conscious that you are only one mishap away from an incident that could derail all the hard work you have put into establishing the good name and reputation of your enterprise.

It could be an accident that causes injury or death to a customer or an employee.  It might be someone losing control of a vehicle and crashing through your front window. It could be someone protesting a cause and selecting your business as the target of whatever they are espousing. It could be a tornado that sweeps through your location and causes major damage.

The point is that all businesses and organizations are subject to experiencing some form of crisis. And, in the face of that gloomy reality, it only makes sense that one needs to be prepared with a basic crisis management and communications plan.

Incidents may not necessarily be your fault

Crisis communications-related incidents know no boundaries.

As often as not, crisis situations are triggered by safety or operational issues that happen in your industry. And when they occur, you can potentially be caught in the flurry of communications that inevitably surrounds the crisis.

For example, unruly passengers acting out on airplanes trigger focus on the entire airlines industry and can even extend to other transportation businesses like trains and busses. An outbreak of salmonella or e-coli in a restaurant can result in media focusing on issues like “How clean are dining establishments in our area.” A cyberattack from a foreign nation could disrupt your ability to supply services to your customers.

You may not be at fault, but because someone else has experienced or created a bad outcome, you may get caught in the crossfire.

Be prepared….and stay prepared.

A survey conducted in late 2019 by PRNEWS and CS&A International, a specialist risk, crisis and business continuity management consultancy, reveals that while 62 percent of companies have a crisis communications plan, there is great uncertainty about how many organizations regularly update their plans.

The same survey suggests, in addition, few organizations consistently practice crisis scenarios.

In short, they put the plan on the shelf to gather dust and fail to review it frequently enough to be of any value. The survey also goes on to reveal that almost 40 percent of companies lack any kind of crisis response plan.

By failing to remain in touch with one’s crisis plan, should a crisis-related incident occur, one’s response to the incident will be slow, confused, lacking clarity, and likely putting an organization in a defensive posture.

If a crisis incident occurred, what would you do?

Who would you call? Who should be called? How do you reach them? Who will investigate what is happening? Who should be speaking with media? Who should be representing your organization? How do you reach legal representation to ensure that whatever you say does not put you at risk?

From an operational standpoint, what immediate changes must you undertake in response to the incident? Remain open? Modify your operation? What do you tell your customers? What do you tell your employees? Who will do the communicating?

These are only a sampling of the kinds of questions you would be faced with. And you can bet your bottom dollar these questions will need to be addressed in the first moments of a crisis.

Without a plan, events spiral out of control

Per Dirk Lenaerts, senior partner at CS&A International, who oversaw creation of the survey referenced earlier, “Many companies struggle with reacting quickly and getting organized when crises strike. This is yet another reason why practicing is so important,” he said. According to the survey, respondents chose “reacting quickly” as “the most difficult aspect of crisis response.”

No crisis communications planning, of course, can foresee all types of incidents, but there are common elements that one’s plan should contain that will provide an orderly and managed response to whatever has occurred.

In that context, it suggests that two actions can provide a foundation for crisis response:

  1. Create a plan
  2. Practice and review the plan elements

At Wellons Communications, we know how to deal with crisis management

Businesses like to state, “We’ve seen it all.”

That is an overstatement, of course, but we can confidently state that our team at Wellons Communications has certainly seen enough.

We have served clients who have been well-prepared for a crisis. We have also assisted clients who never envisioned having to deal with the media firestorm that erupts in the wake of a crisis incident.

We have created crisis plans from scratch. We have updated crisis plans. And we have served as the driving force to execute on crisis plans, as necessary.

If your business is prepared for a crisis, congratulations. We hope you stay prepared.

However, if your business needs a crisis plan or needs a partner to assist you in dealing with crisis communications, think of our Orlando PR agency.

We are experienced and well-versed in what actions to take (and not take) to help you maintain your reputation. And, in the end, maintaining your organization’s good name is what our job is about.

Is public relations part of your 2022 marketing plan?

Posted on by Wellons team

Chances are your marketing plan for the upcoming year is already set in stone.

Your marketing objectives have been established, marketing strategies agreed upon, tactics identified and budgets confirmed. Right?

Do you even have a marketing plan?

Surprisingly, almost 25 percent of business-to-business marketers in the U.S., when surveyed in 2020, said they did not have any kind of marketing plan in place. A whopping 76 percent said they did not have a formal marketing plan.

A different survey conducted by Outbound Engine, a digital marketing service that specializes in assisting marketing planning, says, essentially, the same thing. According to Outbound’s information, approximately 50 percent of small businesses have no marketing plan.

In short, there are a lot of small to medium business owners out there whose marketing plan is “winging it.”

What is marketing? Is PR marketing?

As a general rule, marketing includes sales, advertising, public relations, promotion and research, accompanied by measurement.

Public relations, one of the services that Wellons Communications offers, is not total marketing. It’s a specialized marketing service that enables clients to present their product or service and shape public or business perception of what they do, only without paying media for the coverage or recognition.

Two of the primary differences between paid advertising and public relations are, first of all, cost and second, the ability to measure response.

Advertising is expensive and, according to the old marketing adage, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

Further, consumers recognize that advertising is totally self-serving.

For companies with limited marketing budgets, marketing in PR offers an affordable choice, for the simple reason that they lack sufficient dollars to purchase enough advertising to really make a significant difference in their overall marketing. And, for organizations with larger marketing budgets, PR provides a means of augmenting advertising with editorial recognition that advertising lacks.

How can PR complement your marketing plan?

Where PR shines is in its ability to provide credibility by putting a “face” to a name. Think of it as a second dimension to your branding process.

The type of PR we conduct at our public relations agency seeks to provide an added communications dimension or connection with your product or service to get your message across.

Our primary marketing weapon is publicity: generating editorial recognition for your product or service that possesses the credibility that advertising lacks. We do this by persuading editorial media to recognize your business and what you are doing to benefit your audiences.

Why is PR less expensive?

The reason PR costs less is that publicity has to be earned. You cannot buy publicity.

Media has to decide on their own whether or not your business is newsworthy and what makes it newsworthy.

In that sense, Wellons Communications becomes a storyteller. We package your story in a newsworthy, easy-to-understand format, distribute your story to media whose formats and audiences are suited to receive your story, and individually “pitch” or contact media who might be particularly interested in your story.

Our primary costs are related to manpower, backed by know-how and experience in working with editorial media.

PR’s operational expenses are minimal

There are operating expenses connected with a PR firm, but in comparison with advertising, they are only a fraction of the cost.

Basically, PR’s operational expenses include production of visual materials that bring your story to life (photos, video, online visuals).

So, what’s the payoff with PR?

When PR and publicity connect, it can put your product or service into the news with an impact that advertising simply cannot deliver. Editorial recognition is recognition that is earned…and it is our job to help you earn it.

And, in an era when “fake news” has become a news story in itself, it is exceedingly important that whatever news recognition you seek is backed up by facts, figures and information that can be totally documented.

Ensure that you have PR in your 2022 marketing mix

If your 2022 marketing plan is complete, congratulations. You are in the minority of organizations who possess such a plan and are ready to get out there and promote your business more effectively.

If you don’t have a marketing plan, contact us at Wellons Communications. Let our Orlando PR firm share with you how you can start development of a total marketing plan…one we hope will include public relations as an important cornerstone.

All best wishes for a prosperous 2022!

How to take advantage of trends to get attention for your business

Posted on by Wellons team

Ever think of yourself as a trendsetter? Have you ever wondered how you can supercharge your digital marketing program by capitalizing on trends?

It’s all too easy to say to oneself, “There’s nothing trendy about my industry.” But, when you step back and take a longer look at your industry, you likely will begin to recognize trends that have come and gone, trends that are emerging, and how trends have impacted your business, both positively and negatively.

Trends can offer substantial marketing upside if you can recognize them as they begin to emerge. Trends become news and, if you use your imagination and identify how a particular trend might affect your business, there is potential for putting yourself in the news as an expert in your field (what PR firms like to dub “authority marketing”).

Do you find yourself thinking, “but trends never happen in my business”?

There are always trends ongoing. You simply must keep an eye out for them.

At this very moment, in 2021, the real estate market is going through a trendy phase that is characterized by a lack of available home inventory and skyrocketing home prices.

Just a quick look at the news reveals other current trends:

  • Hotels are revising their operations to adjust to the post-COVID travel rebound. The lack of employees has forced hotels to cut back on guest benefits that were once considered routine, like free breakfast buffets, in-room guest bars and, yep, even daily room service.
  • The meetings industry is being forced to adjust its business model because of the impact of Zoom and other online meeting tools.
  • There is growing suspicion of Facebook, Instagram and other social media tools as a high-impact means of reaching one’s market.

How can you capitalize on trends?

Be aware of what’s going on in your industry. If you recognize a change in how you and your competitors are operating, be the first to identify the trend.

Make yourself available as an expert observer in your industry. If media know who you are and how to reach you, you have made their job easier and significantly increased your chances of being called upon as an authority in your market category.

Piggy-back on what others are offering about a trend. Offer an observation on a trend that someone else has already recognized. Media cannot simply take one person’s word that a trend is happening. Providing a second opinion, or an example that illustrates a trend, puts you in an advantageous position to generate media coverage.

Generate news that confirms a trend. If you recognize an emerging trend in your industry, explain it – and illustrate it – better than your competitors.  

Issue a simple chart, a photo, an online video, or even create a podcast to make trendspotting come to life and make a journalist’s job easier. The payback, of course, is when your organization’s name is attached to whatever you create to make a trend easily recognizable and more easily understood. 

How do you spot trends?

Look outside your business. If you recognize a trend in another industry, ask yourself, “How might this apply to us or affect us in our market category?”

Something that is happening in the food and beverage in industry, for example, might have a parallel impact on a totally different kind of industry.

Follow relevant websites and blogs. Journalists are constantly on the lookout for what is new and different. If you become acquainted with what media are looking for, you will position yourself to become a trend-spotter.

Remain connected with current affairs and news. When a trend hits the news, ask yourself, “how can I take advantage of this?”, if there is a fit.

An insightful 2015 article by Michael Noice in Entrepreneur provides a more in-depth look at trends and how you can recognize and capitalize on trends. Although the article is six years old, it stands the test of time in terms of its ideas on spotting and taking advantage of trends.

Wellons Communications can put trends to work for you

Our Orlando PR agency is trend-conscious. A key part of our job is to pay attention to what’s going on in the news. We have a responsibility to look for trends and come up with ways to make them work for our clients.

From putting your name in front of media as a qualified observer and reminding them how they can reach you (or us, so we can reach you) to creating vivid examples that explain a trend and where you fit in, we know how to help our clients take advantage of what’s trending.

Are you in a position to take advantage of the next trend in your industry? Or will you be reading about how your competitors are being quoted about what’s happening with the trend?

Start trending in the right direction by calling me and learning more about how we can put our trending team at your disposal and put you in the front of the news.

How would Santa use public relations?

Posted on by Wellons team

Santa needs PR?

“C’mon,” you scoff. “Santa needs PR like I need a hole in the head.”

But, when you step back and think more about it, even Santa has a genuine need for public relations assistance, just like your business needs public relations to both build sales and address issues that potentially could get in the way of sales.

So what kinds of challenges might Santa face?

  • Start with the elves. Are they happy with what Santa pays them? And what if they go public with their salary concerns? How does Santa react? What does he tell the public? And how does Santa communicate how the elf challenge is being resolved in time for Christmas?
  • What about the reindeer? Animal activists may frown on how Santa puts the flying reindeer to work each Christmas. How does Santa treat the reindeer the other 364 days of the year? Are they overworked? Should they even be used to deliver gifts, or should they be retired in favor of advanced technical solutions for delivery?
  • Weather challenges. How will Santa’s journey south be affected by winter storms that may be lurking in his flight plan? Who will serve as Santa’s spokesman to relay reassurance that the presents will, indeed, make it to their rightful place under the Christmas tree?
  • Credibility. At what age will children begin to ask, “Is Santa real?” And what do parents tell their kids when it becomes obvious that they will be soon facing some tough questions?

How would public relations help Santa?

The world as we know it changes every moment, which creates ever-changing challenges.

A well-organized, thoughtful and up-to-date public relations plan backed by knowledgeable professionals provides a means of dealing with those challenges.

Santa’s brand image ranks second to none, and it would be PR’s job to keep it that way.

Because of his high visibility, everything about Santa – and we mean everything – is subject to public scrutiny. Santa’s PR team would need to anticipate the tough questions that potentially can emerge and be prepared to address them. At the same time, the PR team needs to find new and different ways to ensure that Santa continues to hold his leadership position.

So why do you need public relations?

As you prepare to address the 2019 business year, ask yourself the same kinds of questions Santa’s PR team would ask themselves as they look ahead.

Those questions would include:

  •  How can public relations help me market my product or service?
  • What kinds of newsworthy issues and challenges can hurt my business? And am I prepared to address them?
  • Are there newsworthy issues upon which I can capitalize?
  • Are my messages clear and understandable?
  • Will information about my product or service withstand intense scrutiny?
  • Am I missing an opportunity to affordably and effectively market my product or service by not including public relations?

Put public relations into your marketing mix for 2019

With the turn of the annual calendar right around the corner, now’s the time to look over your existing public relations plan and freshen it for 2019—or to create one altogether.

A practical action plan can be put into place to augment your overall marketing activities for a fraction of the cost of what you would invest in advertisements.

What’s more, when you bring an experienced, knowledgeable PR team to your side, you get considerably more than simply a publicity team. You acquire a team of marketing professionals who proactively help you sell your ideas while covering your back to fight off challenges that prove damaging to your enterprise.

Our recommendation: add PR to your marketing mix in 2019…think of it as a present for your enterprise.

Best wishes for a happy holiday season and a great 2019

At Wellons Communications, we have been fortunate to assist – and learn from – extraordinary clients whose successes we have been pleased to contribute to. We are, indeed, grateful for their business and we remind ourselves every day that it is a privilege to serve our clients and help them attain success.

We wish you the same kind of success for your business in the coming year.

Merry Christmas…and a prosperous and fruitful New Year.

How to get the most out of your elevator speech

Posted on by Wellons team

Quick! When someone asks you “What do you do?”, what’s your answer?

Do you tell the questioner, in a single sentence, what you do – or do you focus on the benefits you provide your clients? Are you able to define, in as few words as possible, the results you deliver on behalf of your clients? Do you stick to that definition?

Emphasize the value you bring to your clients

We’ll start with our own business. When people ask members of our public relations account team “What do you do?” we respond, “We help our clients sell things.”

If the questioner wants more information, they will ask—and we’ll respond with a broader explanation of how we develop and distribute information that helps our clients reach their key audiences and helps them sell their products, services and ideas.

Too much information and too little time to absorb it

The avalanche of communications that has emerged in the 21st century demands your communications be clear, simple, to the point and quickly and easily understood. No surprise, social media has led the way in creating the crowded competition for attention, to wit:

  • Every second, on average, around 6,000 tweets are tweeted on Twitter, which corresponds to over 350,000 tweets sent per minute, 500 million tweets per day and around 200 billion tweets per year.[1]
  • Every minute on Facebook: 510,000 comments are posted, 293,000 statuses are updated, and 136,000 photos are uploaded.[2]
  • 3,607,080 Google searches are conducted worldwide each minute of every day.[3]
  • Ninety percent of all data was created in the past two years (that adds up to 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day.) [4]

The result of all this electronic overload has upended and revolutionized print and broadcast media, as well as other communications industries.

On one hand, social media and electronic communications provide an entirely new means of reaching one’s audience. On the other hand, the sheer volume of information generated by electronic communications weigh down one’s ability to take it all in, much less make sense of so much information.

“Just show me the baby”

The communications overload places a premium on presenting your message in a quick, easy-to-understand format.

To illustrate, there was a leading executive in the theme park industry who was regarded as a terror for those who insisted on long, windy explanations. The theme park exec would, in front of everyone in the room, cut them off and say, in a loud voice, “Enough. Just show me the baby.”

While it wasn’t pleasant to hear, it was his way of saying “get to the point.”

We agree with his philosophy (if not his manner of management); it’s important to present your message quickly and simply, as well as memorably.

Brevity is king

Eons ago, one of the key tools for PR folks was Strunk & White’s Elements of Style. The book’s benefit can be summed up as “omit needless words.” It’s an old philosophy, but it’s one that holds true today.

Because of the crowded communications field, we have shifted to presenting and absorbing information in headline fashion. We cannot communicate simply enough. And that means communicating in as few words as possible.

In a day and age when we want people to read white papers that detail everything you would like them to know about your product and service, no one has time to read them.

They’d rather get a postcard with one sentence and an interesting graphic that drives your point home.

We work simply, but effectively

Our team at Wellons Communication recognizes how quickly communications is changing.

We understand how to craft a message that will cut through the clutter, gain recognition from your target audience, and provide them the reasons it is important for them to do what you want them to do.

If you want to start communicating with simplicity and clarity, think about our approach at Wellons Communications. We keep it short and to the point, focused on making your message more powerful in its simplicity.

We help you sell things, which is the whole point of being in business.

[1] http://www.internetlivestats.com/twitter-statistics/
[2] https://blog.microfocus.com/how-much-data-is-created-on-the-internet-each-day/
[3] https://blog.microfocus.com/how-much-data-is-created-on-the-internet-each-day/
[4] https://web-assets.domo.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/17_domo_data-never-sleeps-5-01.png

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