Category: Public Relations

How good public relations adds value to your brand

Posted on by Wellons team

We often hear the general question, “What kind of value does public relations add to my business?” Usually, the question is framed somewhat more bluntly: “What good is PR?”

The underlying question business leaders really are asking is “How do you connect brand awareness efforts to business value?”

And, in virtually every instance, business leaders equate value with more revenue or lower costs.

What role does marketing serve in business?

Step back for a moment and ask, “What is it that marketing does?”

Marketing aims to increase or maintain sales and revenue.

Within the marketing function, advertising, public relations, promotion, and research are the marketing components that support sales.

Advertising

Advertising, which is expensive, is controlled by budget and media-buying decisions. One knows where one’s ad will appear, who it will reach, and how many folks might see it. What one doesn’t know is how many people will actually look at it or respond to an advertisement.

Public relations

Public relations, which is not nearly as expensive, is controllable only to a point. Information is distributed, but how many people see it or respond to it totally depends on the interest value of the information and the audiences served by the media outlets that present the information.

Promotion and research

Promotion capitalizes on other people’s dollars to expand one’s marketing program. Research seeks to find out how people perceive your business, which in turn, influences how you approach your marketing.

Awareness is the first step in marketing

Brand awareness is the first step in building a connection with a customer. It’s the foundation upon which a brand builds recognition, trust and preference in a competitive market.

How effective is PR in building awareness for your brand?

Connecting the effectiveness of public relations in building brand awareness to increased revenue or decreased expenses is like trying to figure out how a football or baseball player’s statistics relate to a team’s wins.

So many other things must happen that pinning wins on a player’s passing yardage or batting average involves a tenuous connection at best.

While PR is statistically difficult to measure, experienced business leaders know that successful public relations is a “must” in their overall marketing approach.

PR goes beyond self-serving advertising and attracts powerful third-party endorsement in the form of recognition of one’s brand by someone else.

So how does good PR fit into building your brand?

Branding is a strategy for making your company memorable.

Public relations generates interest in your product or service through storytelling. The ultimate goal of PR is to tell your story through other channels of communication…i.e., media coverage, whether it’s mainstream media like print or television or emerging media on the web or social.

While the goals of branding and PR are different, it’s a symbiotic relationship—a partnership. Your business thrives when branding and PR align.

Find out more about how you can utilize the power of public relations to affordably and successfully add value to your brand.

Contact us at 407-339-0879 or email us at will@wellonscommunications.com and let us tell you more about how good PR can make a difference in making your brand stand apart from your competitors.

Effective PR results from effective marketing planning

Posted on by Wellons team

At Wellons Communications, we remind ourselves every single day, “The only reason marketing — and public relations — exist is to help people sell products or ideas.” That said, we aim to generate results. But, like any effective approach to business, generating results is challenging.

From newcomers taking on aggressive marketing for the first time, we often hear, “Oh, you’re the guys who send out press releases and get us in the news, right?”

That’s sort of right. Issuing press releases is one of many actions we take on behalf of our clients.

Public relations is a key element of your overall marketing program

Many businesses equate marketing with advertising.

That’s because ads are costly. There are production costs like printing and videotaping. There are the costs for time and space on media ranging from billboards to television commercials and online messaging. And there are costs to pay the advertising company for their time and service.

Because advertising costs can be so burdensome, advertising can easily consume the majority of a business’s overall marketing budget — leaving little for sales, promotion, research and public relations.

Advertising seeks to generate profit and revenue from sales related to specific advertisements. PR creates awareness — and a larger reputation for the company or brand — through earned media coverage (i.e. publicity).

So, what’s the difference?

Advertising is media for which you pay.

Public relations is media coverage you earn through the building and communicating your brand or product.

Another way to look at it is that advertising tells people what you want them to know about you.

Publicity provides the means for telling people what others think about you.

At Wellons, there are no boilerplate PR plans. Only one-of-a-kind plans that deliver results.

Like we said earlier, we do considerably more than crank out press releases.

A robust public relations plan will include all of your important audiences, prioritize them according to what messages you seek to communicate and develop a cohesive, practical, affordable means of reaching them with the correct message.

No two public relations plans are alike, just as no two marketing budgets are alike.

Every one of our client’s plans is crafted to meet each client’s budget, business objectives and messaging needs.

At Wellons, we springboard off of your marketing history while crafting public relations programs and plans that are unique, contemporary, relevant, and affordable.

The end result is a public relations plan that is specifically tailored to each client’s marketing requirements and pocketbook.

Without planning, it’s “Ready. Fire. Aim.”

When businesses hire us to conduct publicity and public relations, they expect results.

So do we.

And that’s why we insist that before we start spewing news and information on Day One, we don’t start unless we have an agreed-upon public relations plan.

We start by ensuring that we understand what you want to accomplish. We immerse ourselves in your marketing plan to see where PR should fit in. And then we put pencil to paper and develop a plan that we believe will generate the results you want and deserve.

When you need a PR plan, and a firm to implement it, plan on Wellons to get results

With 2025 rapidly approaching, it’s time to start looking ahead and begin budgeting and planning for your marketing initiatives for the new year.

As your marketing planning begins to coalesce, keep Wellons Communications in mind.

Our PR firm can originate an entirely new plan for you. Or, if you’ve been in business a long while, use your marketing history as a guide for either new and different initiatives or a continuation of what has previously worked best for you.

In either case, we believe that great marketing — and great PR — begins with a great plan.

Wellons Communications, we do not tolerate failure, which is why we put such an emphasis on planning.

As the great Benjamin Franklin said about planning, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail

 

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.

The inside scoop about pitching stories to media

Posted on by Wellons team

Some of the questions we receive from our clients — and potential clients — underscore their curiosity about how we go about presenting ideas, known as pitching stories in the PR trade, to news media.

Some of the questions we field include:

  • How do you know which media to pitch?
  • How do you know which media are most receptive to news about what we do?
  • Is there some kind of standardized process you employ to pitch media?
  • What is the best way to pitch media?
  • Is pitching an effective means for placing stories?

These are all good questions. So, we’re going to give you a peek under the curtain to illustrate how we pitch and what we do to maximize our pitching success rate.

All pitches are different.

No two pitches are alike That’s because all stories are unique.

To illustrate…

The opening of a new restaurant will have interest to local consumer media where the restaurant is opening and trade media that regularly cover the food and beverage industry.

So, pitching the news about the new restaurant will be directed to local print media, online news sources, broadcast news sources (including podcasts), as well as any national or regional trade media who seek information on the food and beverage industry.

More specifically, the story will be directed to individuals who cover dining and lifestyle topics. The same story, with a slightly different slant, will be directed toward sources that cover consumer business news and food and beverage trade news.

When it gets down to differentiating the new opening, it is our job to dig out what makes the story newsworthy and craft a story that makes the news relevant to the media that matter most to the client’s business. Maybe it’s a menu item that is totally unique or reflective of a popular dining trend. Or maybe it’s the reputation and renowned ability of the restaurant’s chef or the debut of the restaurant in an entirely new area.

What are some of the keys to making pitches work?

Thanks to research compiled by organizations like Meltwater, Cision, and ContentGrip, all of whom offer comprehensive media monitoring, as well as our own experience, we have a keen knowledge of the key components to make pitching stories work.

For example:

  • About one in five journalists prefer to receive pitches on Monday, but more than half of journalists don’t care what day they are pitched stories. Most journalists say they prefer to be pitched before noon.
  • More than half of journalists get at least a quarter of the stories they publish from pitches.
  • Approximately 67% prefer to get pitches that are less than 200 words long. Well over half (61%) say that two to three paragraphs are the sweet spot.
  • 49% of journalists say they seldom or never respond to pitches. 24% said they respond about half the time, 18% usually do and 8% always do (thank goodness for the eight percent!).
  • The leading reason for immediately rejecting otherwise relevant pitches is a lack of personalization.
  • Overwhelmingly (90%) prefer personalized, one-to-one pitching.

We create “pitches” that hit the strike zone.

It is clear from research, and our own experience, that pitches must be tailored to the individual receiving them.

No respectable journalist is interested in a pitch that is from a PR firm casting as wide a net as possible. Individual journalists want to be treated as individuals and are considerably more likely to pay attention to those PR professionals that recognize and respect their work and individual style.

With that in mind, our pitches at Wellons Communications are really a series of individualized pitches tailored to each individual journalist. This requires upwards of thirty to forty individualized emails, letters or phone calls aimed directly to each individual journalist’s wants and needs.

Take advantage of our pitching abilities

Our team has experience from both sides of the communications spectrum. Members of our public relations agency have served as journalists and we have served as publicity specialists, experience that has enabled us to know what kind of information media seeks, how and when they need it, and how to get the information to them.

When it comes time for your story to be told, call on us at Wellons Communication to start pitching stories … preceded, of course, by a well-designed plan that includes all the elements to enable your story to be presented in the most robust fashion possible.

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 to hire a PR firm

Posted on by Wellons team

Public relations firms do their best to improve the overall business objectives of their clients. The positive performance of clients, after all, is the only business measurement that really counts.

How often, however, do clients share necessary information with their public relations agency to “arm” them with the information the PR firm needs to succeed?

Often, companies simply ask PR firms to pitch their services without providing or sharing information that is critical to formulating an effective PR plan. On occasion, PR firms are confronted with organizations whose basic theme is “I am the client…and what are you going to do to improve my business results?”

The importance of communicating with your PR firm

PR agencies are, of course, outside services.

However, when you bring a PR firm aboard, you need to include your PR firm as a key member of your marketing organization. That means sharing information with them. Often, this is confidential information the firm needs to know to help you successfully compete or, at the other end of the spectrum, prevent potential damage to your business.

PR professionals are not clairvoyant. They cannot read the minds of clients. And, without providing PR team members with a clear and basic outline of your wants and needs, they cannot deliver results that meet those needs.

Prepare your PR firm before you even hire them

When you anticipate bringing a PR firm on board, whether it’s hiring a PR firm for a small business for the first time or because you’re changing firms, you can get the most from the firms by providing them an overview of what you are seeking to do, accompanied by a backgrounder on your business and your business category.

Surprisingly, many organizations have no idea how to build a PR brief. As a result, the entire process of enabling PR firms to respond to your business ends up below expectations, both for you, as a client, and the PR firm, as an outside service eager to help your business. This might leave you wondering, “Is hiring a PR firm worth it?” It definitely can be, but you have to do it right.

How do you hire a PR firm?

Start by identifying firms whose background, whether on point to your industry or with the capability to help you within your business category, is a fit for you. Some agencies specialize only in certain categories like tourism, medicine and law, or industry categories like automotive or agriculture. Other agencies have clients in a variety of categories.

Specialists provide advantages because their learning curve is less. Generalists bring the advantage of “transferability” that allows them to bring strategies and tactics that have worked outside your business category to your side.

Where to start looking? The local Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) chapter, if you are primarily a local business, or trade journals like PRWeek, which list PR firms and their backgrounds, is one place to start. If you’re looking local, your normal networking opportunities might yield some options. And of course, there’s always the power of a Google search. A quick “PR firms near me”, or in our case “Orlando PR firms” should do the trick.

Pitching new business is a risk for PR firms

One important rule: limit the number of agencies you want to have pitch to you. If you ask for too many agencies to pitch, you will not be able to give each the time and attention required. Many agencies will feel like pitching your business is a lottery and will pull out. Putting together a proper pitch is an expensive business for an agency, so many are becoming increasingly discerning about the pitches they do. If they feel like pitching your business is a lottery, they will decline participation, and you might miss out on a great fit.

Keep in mind that agencies will also be asking themselves, “Is this someone I want to work for?”

By providing each new business participant a basic brief, you will immediately convey that you are serious in your search, well-prepared in how you intend to measure each agency and ready to provide strong direction.

Spell out what you want to accomplish

Briefs for competing PR firms do not need to be long documents. They can be very basic. The good news is that most of the information you need to share with them already probably exists in your business plan.

Here’s a basic outline of what should be provided to PR firms before asking them to pitch your business:

  • Your business objectives
  • Where your business or brand currently exists in your business environment
  • What you want your business or brand to be
  • Target audiences: Who are you trying to reach?
  • Key competitors
  • Issues and considerations that the agency must take into account
  • Existing research or information you can share about your business
  • Other marketing you already are undertaking (e.g., advertising, promotion)
  • Time frame: When will you be receiving pitches, and when you will make a decision?
  • Budget: Provide a budget range that is easily within your capabilities
  • Structure: Who will be the primary point of contact with your business?

Pick a firm you can trust

At our Orlando PR firm, we’ve been on both sides of the table on pitches and have seen the good, the bad and the ugly in terms of how companies have gone about hiring a PR firm.

If you’re looking to hire an Orlando PR agency, we’d be happy to consult with you on the process and present our thoughts on what we could do for you (and if we’re not the best fit, we have a great network of other Florida agencies with a wide range of specialties, and we’re happy to refer you).

Want to chat? Give Will a call at 407-339-0879 or shoot him an email at will@wellonscommunications.com. No matter who you choose to help with your PR needs, we hope you use this process to find your perfect fit…and we hope you see awesome results for your business.

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.

Lean on public relations strategies to accelerate your post-COVID marketing

Posted on by Wellons team

As 2021 draws to a close, we appear to be slowly turning the corner in battling the COVID threat. While we are not yet over the hump in creating the herd immunity necessary to return to life as we knew it before 2020, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel is growing brighter.

With more positive days ahead, it is now time to begin looking for opportunities to capitalize on the predicted surge in demand and spending that will likely occur.

And, while you are revising your marketing plans to move beyond COVID, keep public relations strategies in your marketing mix. Why? Because there is considerable demand and interest out there for high-quality news and feature pitches.

Recognize how marketing has changed in the past 24 months

During the pandemic, we became a nation of homebodies. And that fact alone has wrought enormous changes in how we purchase goods and services and how we shop for them.

Consumer behavior has totally changed. Marketers responded to people’s fears of going outside and shifted to customer-centric strategies that, before COVID, would likely would have been given little or no emphasis.

The end result has been an upheaval in how customers and marketers connect. Online shopping has exploded. Home delivery of everything from fast food orders to grocery shopping has become routine. Business meetings and visits with the doctor require only a couple of clicks on one’s computer to get connected.

So where does marketing go from here?

A relevant article by Ernst & Young’s Janet Balis in the March 2021 Harvard Business Review provides some interesting insights into how marketing strategies will change as the COVID era draws to a close.

Within the article, one item, point No. 6, particularly interested us at Wellons Communications. Balis says in the past, the truth was “relationships matter.” Now, it’s “relationships are everything.”

And relationship building is what Wellons Communications is all about.

Re-connect to your audience with publicity and PR

Aggressively publicize what you are selling and why it is useful to your audience.

A few months ago, we noted that, during the pandemic, companies were being strangely quiet about what they were doing or only talking about COVID and how they were responding to it. From a journalist’s point of view, it was hard to find a story that did not have COVID somehow connected it.

Media, like all of us, now are suffering from COVID message fatigue. We’re weary of hearing about the pandemic and want to get on to something more positive and cheerful.

As an illustration, the British PR firm Energy PR surveyed nearly 150 national and trade journalists to get their view on how PR has changed since COVID began. More than half of the media surveyed (53 percent) said they were receiving fewer pitches from companies or their PR firms. Eighty-eight percent said they want people to pitch feature ideas to them.

Closer to home, journalists are telling us that they are hungry for story ideas that are COVID-free. They have an appetite for information that is independent of what a company is doing in relation to the pandemic.

Do you see the opportunity? At our Orlando PR firm, we certainly do and we are working hard to ensure our clients are taking advantage of it

Let us start pitching for you

The most effective weapon we have in our arsenal at our public relations agency is publicity. We have spent our careers on both sides of the desk (journalism and PR) and have keen sense of what journalists want and how to best convey information to them.

What we are talking about, specifically, is the public relations strategies that relay enough information to build trust and confidence in you and your business.

Consider these observations from Cison’s Global State of the Media Report.

Twenty-eight percent of media receive over 100 pitches per week with most being deleted. Contrary to popular belief, a sizeable percentage also say they like receiving pitches on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

PR pros are supposed to make journalists’ jobs easier. Nearly half of journalists report that they cover five or more beats and file seven or more stories per week. Seventy-eight percent report that they are looking for press releases, and 68 percent report they want original research. They are also looking for multimedia elements like photos and video and invites to interview experts or attend events.

To sum it up, at our public relations agency, we recognize that journalists are looking for non-COVID stories and features. We sense that they are willing to consider new and different kinds of stories. And they likely are not receiving the kinds of story ideas and concepts that fit what they are seeking.

There’s no time to waste if you want to get ahead of your competitors and put you message in front of media. Call me and let me amplify on what we can do and how we can use public relations strategies to accelerate your digital marketing program as COVID begins to decline.

We get results.

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