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

300 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.

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:

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
Traditional powerhouses of franchise sales lead generation have trailed off significantly; franchise portals in particular are not delivering the quality leads they once were
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

Apple and Apple PR

The Biggest Release That Wasn’t Released…Yet

Many Beatles and iTunes fans spent the past few weeks speculating that The Beatles catalog would debut on iTunes at the same time as the remastering of their catalog on CD and the debut of Beatles Rock Band, making a perfect hat trick. Many in the PR community also anticipated this cross-promotion no-brainer.

However, the lack of an iTunes announcement on 09.09.09 made the Apple gathering a non-event for some. But just wait…the delay will create yet another publicity-friendly event in the future. And, even more important to Apple Inc and Apple Records, a future Beatles / iTunes event will ultimately drive more sales via more product downloads. Steve Jobs even said, “we’ll see you soon.”

This masterful delay didn’t waste a great event and allow the iTunes availability to get buried in the PR and ad frenzy of Beatles CDs and Rock Band by Apple Records or the new iPod launches, iTunes 9 update, and the return of Mr. Jobs by Apple Corp.

After all, September is the time for releasing holiday gift choices (CDs, video games, and new iPods) not downloadable songs which won’t really drive holiday sales. It’s very smart of the two Apples to delay a deal and announcement until 2010 or later.

A Brief History of Beatles Repackaging

The 2009 remastering project is not the first time the band’s records have been repackaged and sold amid a flurry of positive PR and fan response. If you were born post-Beatlemania, chances are your first Beatles record was not Meet The Beatles or Sgt Pepper’s, but was one of these previous top-selling collections:

2006 Love

Love is a remixing, editing and splicing of a hundred or so Beatles tunes mashed together as a soundtrack for Circe du Soleil. It sounds like blasphemy to purists, but being produced by Sir George Martin makes it not only legitimate but fun to hear. I think the platinum-selling Love was also was a test for the 2009 remastering project.

2006 Capitol Years
This remixing of the first 8 US Capitol Beatles albums was the first time some of the US versions of Beatles records made it to CD.

2000 The Beatles 1
This is virtually the same set of tracks as 1982’s “20 Greatest” released on CD and promoted to the next generation of fans. The result: over 10 million copies sold in the US alone!

1995-96 Anthology 1, 2, & 3

Not truly a greatest hits compilation; the Anthology series featured alternate versions, demos, outtakes, and historical live performances. It also served as a companion piece to the much-hyped ABC documentary series of the same name. The Apple and Capitol promotional machine did phenomenal job making sure every person on in America knew about this release

1988 Past Masters Volume 1 & 2
1988 Beatles Box Set
This release was significant as the first complete box set of all albums on CDs plus the two Past Masters CDs of singles and B-sides not available on any album. This set is virtually identical to the 2009 release but not remastered.

1982 20 Greatest Hits

Absolutely nothing special about this release – just repackaging the same ol’ songs and selling millions of copies to a new generation of fans, that’s all.

1982 Reel Music

In the 70’s and 80’s, Capitol seemed to like to have a twist or theme to tracks repackaged and compiled. I guess this gave consumers a reason to care. This one featured only music from the Beatles movies (???). This also featured a “new” track: a medley of the Beatles movie songs taking advantage of the Stars on 45 fad happening at the time.

1977 Love Songs
The repackaging theme for this compilation was obviously the band’s love songs and ballads.

1976 Rock ‘n’ Roll Music
The repackaging theme for this inferior compilation was old-time rock n rolls cover tunes written by Chuck Berry and others. I assume the thought behind this choice was the fact that these cover tunes were not included in the 1973 Red and Blue albums below, even though “Twist & Shout” and others were some the band’s most popular early records. These tracks were poorly selected and remixed and the packaging looked substandard. It’s interesting that this compilation itself was repackaged four years later and split into two budget-priced albums.

1973 The Beatles 1962-1966 (aka “The Red Album”)

These are the granddaddy of all compilations, great hits, and repackaging! These mega-selling albums were #1 worldwide instantly and sold well for the next two decades.

1973 The Beatles 1967-1970 (aka “The Blue Album”)

1970 Hey Jude
At the time, Apple and Capitol tried to spin this release as a new Beatles album (in the US only). But the only thing new was the packaging. All tracks were previously released as singles or b-sides, but never included on previous Beatles albums. The plan worked, with the record reaching #2 on the US album charts.

Death of PR Spam

PR Spam took a few more hits last week. First, blogger Gina Trapani created a new wiki of PR agencies who have spammed her via press release.

Secondly, MatchPoint rolled out a new version: MatchPoint v1.5. The anti-PR Spam tool will keep users off of Gina’s list!

PR Spammers (and the over-priced PR vendors who enable them!) typically build lists of journalists (based on beats) who may or may not have ever written an article or blog related to the Spammers’ blast press release.

MatchPoint allows PR pros to identify the most appropriate reporters and bloggers based on what they have recently written, not by outdated information like beat or title.

The true PR Spam killer is this: after finding an appropriate journalist, users can engage them one-on-one directly through MatchPoint. The personalized, custom message can range from a simple pitch note to a full multi-media press package.

Other new enhancements include the ability for PR pros to monitor specific journalists, create notes on follow up activity, and evaluate success of campaigns with detailed tracking reports.

MatchPoint is now giving journalists the ability to evaluate the usefulness of story pitches and rank the sender. This new system was designed to weed out PR Spammers and open a dialogue between professional PR practitioners and journalists.

PR professionals can get a free ten-day trial at this link. PR Spammers should ignore this link!

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

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.

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?

Newspapers: Trend or Term?

In an earlier posting, I opposed the current Public Relations industry panic that “the media is dying.” I maintain that the media is alive and well; it’s evolving. Those of us working in the PR world need to promote that fact that despite cutbacks and right-sizing, the media, including newspapers, is more important than ever.

One way to do this may be to update the definition of terms. Let’s start with the word newspaper.

Most people still see a newspaper as news printed on paper. I submit that even those media outlets that stopped printing and distributing news on paper in favor of an online-only model can still be called newspapers.

We’re already using the word publish with an online meaning. When I’m finished writing this piece, I will hit a button labeled “publish” so you can read it via this blog site. Not many years ago, the word “publish” meant physically producing and disseminating printed pages for public consumption. We’re already far beyond that definition in this digital age. We’ve updated these terms in our lexicon:

A file is no longer limited to something in a manila folder
To dial-in or dial-up does not require the use of a rotary phone
A press kit does not – and should not! – need to be a wasteful and environmentally unfriendly box of junk that PR folks send to journalists who throw them away
A record can be a compact disc, not only vinyl
An album is a collection of songs, not only on vinyl

Those last two are still hurdles for some people! Let’s all say it together….CDs are records…albums are collections of songs….

Here are a few others to think about. Is “The Office” a Television show? Of course it is, though millions of us do not watch it on a Television but via iTunes, Hulu, DVDs on a laptop, or on a monitor on an airplane.

Are companies like Best Buy or Toys R Us only retail stores, or are they suppliers of goods both digital and physical? I say the latter. I’m a huge Toys R Us customer in my nearly three years of fatherhood, yet I haven’t stepped into a brick & mortar Toys R Us location since I was a kid.

So why are we limiting the term newspaper to exclude digital editions? We need to stop hitting the panic button every time a favorite newspaper or magazine goes online-only and realize that the newspaper lives on. And in the digital world, that means lives on forever.

Social Media Experts or Hammer Gurus?

Self-described Social Media Experts beware!

If you call yourself a social media expert, the rest of us will soon see that you’re saying nothing.

Social media is just…media…channels…tools. It’s a means to deliver your message to your audience. This is true whether you’re a PR person for a coffee shop, a salesperson for an office supply chain, or a fund-raiser for a local charity.

Carpenters are carpenters, not Hammer Gurus. Cowboys are cowboys, not rope & fence kings. Drummers are drummers, not drumstick and cymbal experts. Sure, they know a lot about those tools of their trade, but tool expertise alone won’t make get them hired or help their client. The quality of the work they produce with those tools will.

Thanks to Albert Maruggi and Kevin Dugan for listening to my rant earlier this week on this topic!

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.

Is PR Recession-Proof? A farm boy asks…

For horse owners, spring means expanding your network of resources to hay suppliers, stables, and farmers who still have hay stocked up and are willing to part with it. Last Saturday, we were fortunate enough to find a farmer in Northern Illinois with plenty to sell. The guy’s son would even help load the truck.

Profit, the horse who sparked the conversation

As we were loading bails of hay, the kid asked me if I worked with horses for a living. “No,” I said, “just one day a week, I guess. On the other six days, I’m in public relations in Chicago.”

I had expected the typical questions like “What does that mean?” or “Do you know anyone famous?” Instead he asked, “Is public relations recession-proof?”

This shocked me. Why was that his first and only question about PR? He was thinking about career choices and the most important thing to him is an industry’s position in the current economic climate. The source of this thought could have been TV network and cable news. But wait, this was a high school guy and they don’t watch TV news. My conclusion is that on whatever social media sites this kid tapped in to, the recession is being discussed along with PS3 games.

I gave him my standard answer: “Is anything really recession-proof?” He answered, “Yeah, I guess not, except for certain aspects of the entertainment industry and the mob.” Okay, so this kid knows his Sopranos quotes too.

I told him “despite the recession, we’re doing all right. In fact, it’s going to be a great year for PR. More companies will need to use PR to get their messages to consumers. When they see the costs of PR and the results they get compared to advertising, it’s a no-brainer.”

He seemed to get it! He even asked more about the return on investment of PR versus traditional advertising! Maybe this kid will be interested in a PR career. Though he might want to consider following his Dad into the hay business…demand is high, prices are up 25% over last year, and no one is Tweeting about lay-offs.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: