Tag: PR Conferences

Proof That PR Drives Sales!

This week’s PRWorkbench guest blogger is Thomas Scott, VP of Operations for Showhomes. Thanks to Thomas for these great observations made at last week’s Franchise Update Conference.

Franchise Industry Execs Miss the Opportunity to Leverage Franchise PR to Drive Sales

P1040751300 franchise executives converged on the Drake Hotel in Chicago this week for three days of intense evaluation about the state of franchise sales and dialog about best practices that drive results in today’s market. This much anticipated Franchise Update Conference centers around industry reports on numbers of franchise units sold, lead sources for the year, and cost per franchise sale.

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This year’s theme, Mission Possible, held lots of promise as the previous year has been a wasteland for many companies. This year three big issues converge into a perfect storm that creates lots of choppy waters for franchise sales:

 

  1. Fran Data experts projected that the franchise industry will have some truly choppy waters for the next four or five years due to lack of bank financing and shaky loan underwriting making credit hard to come by
  2. Traditional powerhouses of franchise sales lead generation have trailed off significantly; franchise portals in particular are not delivering the quality leads they once were
  3. The dramatic shift in the way people communicate and build trust and how this impacts the rise of social media left more than a few companies struggling to connect the dots

A big disconnect with franchise sales lead generation centered on an old-school tool: Franchise PR. Here’s a list of lead sources for franchise sales this year:

Lead Sources for Franchise Sales (where leads for franchise sales come from)

  • Internet          34%
  • Referrals          28%
  • Brokers            17%
  • Print                  8%
  • Other               13%
  • Trade Shows      3%
  • PR                    3%

Sources of Closed Franchise Sales (Where the leads that actually closed came from)

  • Internet          50%
  • Brokers           16%
  • Trade Shows   13%
  • PR                 11%
  • Other             10%

Franchise companies only generated 3% of the total leads for franchise sales this year. Only 3%! Those measly 3% of leads resulted in 11% of the total industry unit sales this year. 11%! Making matters worse, almost half of the companies represented at the Franchise Update Conference were not using PR to generate sales leads. HALF!

The Franchise Update report also gave out projected average budgets for franchise development: the average company will spend $162,000 on its total budget to sell franchises this year. PR was way down on the list of expenditures. If PR done poorly and without consistency produced 11% of the franchise sales last year, what should you budget to grow a franchise system?

Franchise companies need to wake up – PR if used correctly by someone that understands the social media shift is a powerful tool for franchise sales lead generation. PR firms need to wake up too. What PR worked 20 years ago and even what worked last year DOES NOT WORK in today’s market.

Here’s the issue: publicity is great. Publicity will get you in the papers and can help with search engine optimization and Google search results. Publicity can generate a binder full of clips. Franchisees love publicity because it’s great for the ego. Publicity does not, however, generate franchise sales. Old-school press releases about store openings, expansion plans and staff changes don’t have the oomph they once did in today’s social media market.

PR can be used to aggressively drive your franchise sales if you focus on telling your story and driving the social media conversation about what you do. We’ve successfully done this at my company, Showhomes, and I listened to Stan Freidman, CEO of Retrotax talk about how he has used it to get his new company off the ground.

Success with PR centers around the story you tell. If you can get people talking about your sales effort in social media arenas like Linkedin and Twitter, you can get reporters to bite and that will lead to lots of online trust and credibility. This is crucial because candidates are at their lowest trust level any of us have seen.

They call this the ‘Great Recession’ for a reason!

For more information from Thomas Scott, please contact him at:

Thomas Scott
VP Operations, Showhomes
615-483-4923
tscott@showhomes.com
www.showhomes.com
Twitter: @showhomesthomas
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/thomscott

Bulldog Media Relations Summit – Update

 
Yesterday, our team at eNR had a lively discussion on the direction of social media and public relations lead by co-developer of our MatchPoint service, Peter Himler of Flatiron Communications.
 
For anyone attending the Media Relations Summit in New York this weekend through Tuesday, Peter has organized a Tweetup on Monday. Click here for details and registration: http://nyctweet.eventbrite.com/

 

Crown Plaza Times Square - Home of Media Relations Summit 09
Crown Plaza Times Square - Home of Media Relations Summit 09

 

Bulldog Media Relations Summit 2009 – Prologue

 
Media Relations pro’s – are you heading to the Bulldog Media Relations conference in New York this weekend? Why not?
  
This year’s show has tremendous potential with keynote speakers such as news icon Dan Rather and popular anchor / consultant Dan Abrams. 
  mr09logo
Please check back here throughout the weekend and week as we’ll be posting updates, photos, Tweetup details, and commentary.
  
 What are you looking forward to seeing at this year’s show?

Local Media Tips – Guest Blog by Hope Salley

 
This week, my friend Hope Salley of eNR Services is providing a recap local media pitching tips from a PRSA event in Connecticut. The event was hosted by the PRSA -Westchester County and Fairfield County Chapter. The guest speakers were Allan Drury, business reporter/editor with the Journal News (Gannett-Westchester and Rockland Counties), and Jim Zebora, business editor with Hearst CT Newspapers (Connecticut Post, Advocate). Thanks for the tips Hope! – Jack

 

 

First and foremost, Allan Drury said that the most important thing a person pitching to the media should do is – do their homework! As quoted by Drury, “Know your reporter. Look at the past six months to see what kind of articles that reporter likes covering. Don’t look at just the past week.” This solidifies why the MatchPoint application is so important to our clients. Drury said it is very important to target the right media.

 

Below are a few dos and don’ts explained both by Allan Drury and Jim Zebora:

 

Dos

  • Keep headlines short and concise. Reporters want to see what the news is right away.
  • The best time of day to reach a reporter is in the morning or anytime between noon and 2 p.m. The afternoon hours are usually a “sprint to the finish” time for most reporters and editors.
  • The best way to reach most reporters is via email.
  • After sending a press release, follow up with a phone call to the reporter a few days later.

 

Don’ts

  • Don’t harass reporters. Continuing to call them or emailing them is a sure turn-off.
  • Don’t send irrelevant stories. Only pitch stories that have merit and offer legitimate news.  

Drury said it is important to include statistical information and research in press releases that offer substantiality to the story. This data backs up the focus of the release, and makes it a lot easier for the journalist (less work they have to do). Drury said press releases without data tend to be “fluffy features.” When it comes to business stories, Zebora conveyed that the reporters at the Hearst CT Newspapers look at mom-and-pop businesses the same as national businesses, meaning small businesses have pertinent, legitimate news just as much as larger corporations. In fact, it is the local businesses – affecting the local community – that journalists are more interested in covering.

 

 

Healthcare Business Pitching Tips

 

The Chicago PRSA chapter’s January monthly luncheon meeting featured a panel of journalists focusing on the business of healthcare. Guests included Tom Burton of The Wall Street Journal, Diane Eastabrook of PBS’s Nightly Business Report, and Mike Colias of Crane’s Chicago Business.

 

Here are some tips the panel gave for pitching Healthcare Business:

 

ü DON’T pitch healthcare business reporters “medical miracle” stories that have no impact on business, the industry, or competition

    

ü DO have interview subjects available if you’re pitching TV

    

ü DO be helpful with details on medical data or have ready access to someone with details

    

ü KNOW what the media outlet does
 

ü KNOW what your organization does that would be of particular interest

  

  

Here are the types of enterprise areas that the panel would like to know more about in 2009:

 

  1. Healthcare Cost Containment
  2. Conflicts of Interest
  3. Industry consolidation and how it affects consumers

  

My compliments to PRSA Chicago and Steven Davidow for putting together such an interesting panel!

 

 

Communicating Renewables Summit Announced

 

Joanna Schroeder of 4R Communications has organized an interesting communications and PR conference focused on alternative energy.

The Communicating Renewables Summit will take place in April in Minneapolis.  Check out the topics and speakers:
http://www.communicatingrenewables.com/