Publicity – Orren Prunckun

Paid, Earned & Owned Media

Orren Prunckun — Mon, 13 Aug 2018 14:06:35 +0000

Most businesses want more customers.

Or if they have too many customers, then they want to get more out of their current customers.

I don’t know anyone, not in either of those situations.

They have a Facebook page and do some PR, but wonder why they don’t have as many customers as they want.

Or they have an email list and do some advertising, but wonder why they don’t have as many customers as they want.

Or they have some great PR and do some paid placement, but wonder why they don’t have as many customers as they want.

I coach and consult to a lot of small businesses on marketing and sales and one of the most common statements I hear is “we are going to get more customers via social media.”

LOL.

As soon as I hear that I immediately know they have no idea of what they are talking about.

They have heard some advice about social media being the be-all-and-end-all of customer acquisition.

Don’t get me wrong; it can be.

But there is quite a bit of nuance to social media and how it relates to sound principles of marketing and sales.

The vast majority of prospects (remember those are the people who are not yet customers) come from sources.

Those sources have two differentiating elements – control and ownership.

The legal structure called a company also has control and ownership.

Both are important, yet very different.

Paid sources of prospects are where your brand controls but DOESN’T own the pipeline of prospects.

This is sources such as advertising, paid placement and so on.

Yes, social media fits in here.

Earned sources of prospects are where your brand both DOESN’T control and DOESN’T own the pipeline of prospects.

This is sources such as PR, SEO, social shares and so on.

Yes, social media fits in here.

Owned sources of prospects are where your brand both controls and owns the pipeline of prospects.

These are sources such as your email list, social media pages and so on.

Yes, social media fits in here.

I tried to make it obvious, but here it is: social media could come from all three sources

Social media advertising, social shares and a fan page respectively, for example.

Businesses that want more customers, or have too many customers and want to get more out of their current customers, need to use all three sources in combination, not just solo or in a pair!

So, how do you use control and ownership in the context of paid, earned and owned prospect sources to get more customers?

It’s simple, yet not very obvious.

You get prospects you paid for (that you control but you DON’T own) through advertising, paid placement and so on to qualify themselves and turn them into an owned source.

There are lots of ways to do this.

You get prospects you earned (that you DON’T control and you DON’T own) through PR, SEO, social shares and so on to qualify themselves and turn them into an owned source.

Again, there are lots of ways to do this.

You then use those once paid and earned prospects as owned prospects and market and sell to them through your email list, social media pages and so on.

Want more prospects?

Just turn on the paid, earned and owned prospect pipeline taps all at once.

“We are going to get more customers via social media” as it’s a useless statement.

Snapchat filters, Twitter hashtags and Instagram photos alone are fluff, and you’re most likely wasting your time and money.

Don’t repeat silly mistakes!

It’s not based on some pimply teenage who thinks the social media bandwagon is cool.

Don’t Run Your Media Company Like This

Orren Prunckun — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 04:27:15 +0000

The XYZ Newspaper puts a paywall up each time you go back to a post.

This business model is laughable.

What follows is what I call The Economics Of Publicity…

I want to tell a story; I attended a workshop some years ago hosted by an outlet, and they asked, “what business are outlets in?”

Many of Publicists, Marketers and PRs in the room, eager to please, started shouting out various words: “storytelling,” “influencing public opinion,” “telling the truth,” and so on.

I waited for the melee to subside and I quietly said, “Advertising,” to which she said, “Yes, advertising!”

Let us explore why that is the case and what that means down the rabbit hole we go!

The Publicity Ecosystem

Let us start off with the characters in the publicity ecosystem. There are the users, the customers, the storytellers and the outlets:

The users of published content are the consumers;
The customers of published content are generally advertisers (and in some instances where there is high reader loyalty, it is predominantly the consumer.) The customers can be the brands, companies and people who want to get their ideas, stories, products in the public eye. Advertising is a paid version of storytelling;
Just like the customers, the storytellers are also brands, companies and people who want to get their ideas, stories, products in the public eye, but they want to do it in a more cost-effective The storytellers are a free version of storytelling. This is what you’re is aiming to be; and
The outlets have an audience of consumers and are the publishers.

Advertisers purchase ads, which are usually priced per view (usually per 1,000 impressions.)

If an outlet does not have loyal paying consumers, then their revenue is likely generated through advertisers.

Therefore, the more paid subscription customers an outlet can attract, the more revenue they can generate.

Likewise, the more views or consumers an outlet can attract, the more revenue they can generate.

So, in order to make revenue, outlets need to have a lot of subscribers on their books or generate a lot of views or consumers.

Being paid means that outlet incentives are somewhat be based on two things: loyalty to consumers or loyalty to advertisers.

The Consumer-Advertiser Loyalty Continuum

Outlets enjoy a range of loyalty from free to paid for consumers.

Consumers can come and go as they please, dip in and out of the content they choose to consume, all the way to the other end of the continuum of habitually consuming content issue “front to back.”

Here are some imaginary examples of the different ends of the loyalty spectrum for illustration purposes:

The Fictitious Post is a subscription-based outlet with many paying consumers. This outlet has no advertisers, as their revenue is generated from consumers. In this instance, the consumers are loyal, and it could be argued that the outlet is loyal to their consumers – providing long form, evergreen, nuanced content. In this case, The Fictitious Post consumers may not read many different similar outlets in addition; and
The Fictional Guardian is a single-use based outlet with many non-paying consumers. This outlet has many advertisers, as their revenue is generated from advertisers. In this instance, the advertisers are loyal, and it could be argued that the outlet is loyal to their advertisers, providing access to many consumers. In this case, The Fictional Guardian consumers may read many different similar outlets in addition.

The Consumer-Advertiser Loyalty Continuum is what helps shape the types of users, the types of customers and the types of stories the outlets publish.

The XYZ Newspaper is close to The Fictional Guardian, that is a single-use based outlet with many non-paying consumers. This outlet has many advertisers, as their revenue is generated from advertisers.

Yet that has tried to mix that model with the Fictitious Post, that is a subscription-based outlet with many paying consumers. This outlet has no advertisers, as their revenue is generated from consumers

You can have both revenue streams; it pissed customers off.

You’re making money off them twice.

Especially when The XYZ Newspaper syndicates their content.

None of it is unique, thus why would people pay for it when it is free elsewhere.

Yes, the exact wording (copyright) is unique, but consumers don’t care about who owns the Intellectual property, or how good the prose is for news content.

Customers want the news content, or they want nuanced opinions.

Both can’t coexist.

Case Study: Marketing With Restricted Channels – Publicity Stunts

Orren Prunckun — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 03:49:23 +0000

Travers Beynon…love him or hate him.

The point I’m arguing is neither, and if you fall on either side you have been sucked in like the rest of them…

Tobacco advertising in Australia is incredibly restricted.

Marketing with restricted channels is frigging hard!

I’ve done it before in different industries.

So what would any publicist or marketing strategist do if they are working with restricted channels?

Think outside the square.

And usually, you can reach far more prospects with far less money because of it.

If you create a ruckus (AKA a stunt), the media will pick up on it.

And so they have.

That is exactly what he wants: advertising, but for free.

1,270 free media hits in mainstream publications.

Filter Google’s SERPs via News for “Travers Beynon” and you get 1,270 media articles.

You can go to each publication’s Rate Card and multiply it out for the article sizes and calculate just how much the advertising he has received for free.

It’s astounding.

Everything he does is a stunt.

If you like him, you have fallen victim.

If you hate him, you have fallen victim.

If you write about him, you have fallen victim (yes I realize the irony, but I’m attempting to prove a point.)

This article is about his company logo, FFS!: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5351627/Travers-Candyman-Beynon-girlfriends-company-logo-tattoo.html?ito=social-facebook_australia

Whoever is his publicist or marketing strategist is a genius.

Proviso BankStatements ProvCon 2017 – Personal Branding

Orren Prunckun — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 22:30:02 +0000

Why personal brands are important to you and your career
Theory on brands, perceptions and relationships
How to Evaluate, Elect and Embody a personal brand
Provide next actions once the session is over today

A Brand is… “The real-time, sum total experience, idea or concept of you inside the minds of others”

Positioning is… “Influencing the perception, idea or concept of you so it has a certain

position or attribute in the mind of others.”

STEP 1: How To Evaluate Your Current And Intended Personal Brand

STEP 2: How To Elect Your Intended Personal Brand

STEP 3: How To Embody Your Personal Brand

Take Action Step 1:

What are the important attributes for the career you want?
What are you current attributes?
Create a Blue Ocean Graph for you and your peers.

Take Action Step 2:

Pick a position no one else owns, does well or you can do really well.

Take Action Step 3:

What touch point do people have with you?
Determine how your position will be congruent at each of these?
Determine how your position will be consistent at each of these?
How will you give “deposits”?
How will you take “withdrawals”?
What publicity or pre-framing tools will you use?
What publicity or pre-framing channels will you use?
How will you maintain your position?

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The Positive Publicity Process: How To Generate Positive Publicity For Free

Orren Prunckun — Sat, 21 May 2016 23:44:12 +0000

Approximate read time: 9 minutes

There are only two ways to generate positive publicity:

Do interesting things; and
Pitch interesting things.

And to do them you need to the following elements:

STEP 1: Determine Your Objectives;
STEP 2: Select Distribution Channels;
STEP 3: Gather Publicity Stories;
STEP 4: Pitch A Story;
STEP 5: Get Published;
STEP 6: Acknowledge Publication; and
STEP 7: Evaluate Your Publicity.

Let’s begin with…

1) Determine Your Objectives

Publicity is pretty simple…

The first step is about defining your objectives.

Positive publicity is useful for quite a few things.

And I have listed some of the main objectives of publicity:

It increases brand awareness;
It inserts your story into published media;
It leverages 3^rd party credibility and influence associated with media to objectively position you;
It legitimises your activity via printing on the public record;
It influences your Google search engine result page rankings (SERPs) via published backlinks;
It increases marketing reach and traffic for most kinds of stakeholders; and
It gains attention for your message.

And publicity does all of this for free.

You can’t get better than that!

But, before we go on, you need to know who your target audience is for your publicity activity and how you will measure your publicity activity.

You don’t need my help for the former, but the latter is based on those 7 objectives.

At this stage, it’s also important to make you aware of some of the economics of publicity.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide, but media, like most businesses is driven by revenue.

It sounds obvious.

Broadly revenue comes from two sources:

Consumers;
Advertisers; or
A combination of both.

Hence describing this as a continuum.

The revenue source determines the type of content the outlet will publish.

Let me repeat:

The revenue source determines the type of content the outlet will publish.

Practically, this could be based on:

The length and nature of content; or
The modality, such as audio, video or text.

Of course, the exact details of how to do this are beyond the scope of this guide, but this should give you a quick idea.

This leads us to selection distribution channels.

2) Select Distribution Channels

Step 2 is about selecting relevant and related distribution channels that match with the audience you want to target for your publicity message.

Selection of publicity distribution channels is determined by the objectives you identified in Step 1, naturally.

This means researching keywords on Google and identifying target outlets, then ranking those outlets on the following criteria:

Their Alexa.com rank – Alexa provides insights into popularity of websites on the web;
Their beat – which is niche area over coverage; and
Their region – if that is applicable to isolating your message to a particular geography.

There are many others, which are beyond the scope of this guide, but these are useful to help prioritise your list in order of who you will pitch for the maximum amount of free positive publicity.

These prioritisation factors include similar stories published in the past or if you have a relationship with that outlet.

3) Gather Publicity Stories

This step is about gathering what you do that is newsworthy and interesting.

Then you match those things with publicity opportunities – based off their relevance and relatedness to the outlets audience.

I separate opportunities to pull and push opportunities.

Pull opportunities are more ad hoc and they include:

Call outs – call out websites are websites that match outlets who have content they want to publish with sources or experts who have experience in that same content. You reply to call out requests explaining how you can help;
- Twitter can be used similarly. Outlets or individual publishers of target outlets on Twitter sometimes do callouts for sources or experts who have experience in that same content they are about to publish; and
News jacking – is a bit of push and pull opportunities. It plays on words – hi jacking a news trend. What news trends are happening currently or in your industry that you can attach your message to; one of the big ones right now for almost anyone who exchanges money to take advantage of is Bitcoin.

You should be following all relevant outlets you identified, be monitoring and replying to callouts.

You must also monitor media trends for relevant keywords for your brand, audience and message for news jacking ideas.

Pull opportunities help you start a relationship with outlets, which leads us to push opportunities.

Push opportunities are more proactive and they include:

Evergreen Content – this is the type of content that are always interesting and exciting. Examples include things with a human element, Newness and Controversy. And these could translate into things like, giving big data, a stunt or new contracts won; and
Expanded Content – each of these could be standalone for a single outlet such as an exclusive, however expanding your content enables you to give it to multiple outlets. This could be in the form of extra sources, photos or angles.

Brainstorm publicity ideas based on evergreen content and general publicity guidelines, including a hook, headline, angle, importance and significance.

A crucial part of this is thinking about how you will expand that content to follow up with multiple outlets.

It’s best to float these publicity ideas with an unbiased network of publicity minded people to crowdsource feedback.

This is because what you think is newsworthy, may not be objectively newsworthy.

It’s an easy mistake to make.

People always loose objectively when they are seeking publicity for something they are emotionally involved in.

No one likes to hear their baby is ugly!

Don’t be mistaken.

Most miss the next step: completing a risk assessment.

When looking at what content you may have, it’s worth considering risk potential risks with your messages.

Remember this is about POSITIVE publicity.

And for higher risk stories, you need to mitigate its risk.

Do a risk assessment with a risk matrix.

Once you have identified the risks then work out how you will mitigate them.

And then work out how you will respond if a crisis happens regardless of rumour or truth.

As such, it’s smart to schedule a crisis plan once a year.

If in the rare instance you have a crisis, it’s worth knowing how to manage reputations with things like DMCA takedown notices and Google’s removal policy.

Of course, there are more, not covered in this guide, but these mentioned are the “80/20.”

Next up, we move on to…

4) Pitch A Story

This step is all about pitching your story to outlets.

This starts with making initial contact and introducing yourself.

Then building some goodwill with that outlet.

An effective way to do this is by giving an outlet content that is not directly related to you or your brand.

In other words, not self-promoting – this could be about others in your industry.

So, then once you have a story, you briefly re-pitch the outlet.

This time, your message will be well received!

What follows is a decision tree of sorts.

Here are the possibilities…

If an outlet is not interested in what you are pitching, follow them up with expanded content from Step 3.

Don’t rush – don’t ask them to publish.

If the outlet is interested, move on to writing a press release or doing an interview directly on the phone, depending on what they need.

Most people start their publicity campaign with a press release and it gets completely ignored, because there is no relationship with that outlet, nor has the outlet shown interest in what you are pitching.

Sending blind press releases has become so common place that it comes across as spam.

Spam is not good, okay?

Your press release needs the correct format, structure and elements which are, of course, beyond the scope of this guide.

Prepare the spokesperson (this may be you) with a copy of the press release, talking points, any additional elements pitched as expanded content.

5) Get Published

Step 5 is not an actual step.

Cheeky!

If you have done everything correctly until now, you have a very highly likelihood of being published or have already been published.

There is no action step here except patting yourself on the back for doing interesting things and being recognised for that via publication.

So, what is next?

6) Acknowledging Publication

Acknowledging publication is next…

This step is about acknowledging publication for so that you can continue to pitch that outlet well into the future.

This includes the following:

Building readership leverage by sending new prospects or via your network to the publication for further readership;
Gaining further readership through press release distribution services (most people do this before anything else in hopes outlets will pick it up. BIG MISTAKE);
Saying “thank you” to the outlet for publishing the story and telling them you have also shared it; and
Determining if you should send paid traffic to the article.

Got it?

Good!

This sequence has some particular nuance to it and to get the most out of it requires being astute to the subtleties, which I don’t have time to spell out here.

Onward…

7) Evaluate Your Publicity

Step 7, the final step, is about evaluating your effort:

Establishing Google Alerts for keywords related to the campaign to see who else has publicized based on your initial pitches;
Watching hashtags for publication and spread;
Measuring publication against your objectives in Step 1 to determine if the publicity campaign was valuable for your brand (this may include the number of outlets which published and the approximate dollar amount of equivalent advertisement rate for those media mentions, amongst other things which are beyond the scope of this guide);
Collecting a summary of all the publicity activity for your records; and
Monitoring the articles comments session for any required response.

Take Action

You made it…

You now have a solid plan for generating positive publicity.

That’s the full Positive Publicity Process and will be more than enough for you to get started on your own.

You can get the printed illustrated Process Map of this and 20 others for free, here

And if you’re serious about marketing and selling more, the logical next step is to contact me to help you do it yourself, have me do it with you, or have it all done for you.

This maybe the momentum you need to get great marketing and sales results.

Now let’s learn about The Social Media Marketing Process.

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The Marketing & Sales Processes: How Market And Sell Your Product, Service Or Solution

Orren Prunckun — Sat, 21 May 2016 23:31:49 +0000

Click here to embed this infographic.

Approximate read time: 14 minutes

The fundamental parts of marketing and sales are quite simple.

In order to effectively, consistently and predictably market and sell products, services, or solutions, particular marketing and sales processes should be followed step-by-step.

I have outlined several critical marketing and sales processes to help you market and sell products, services, and solutions.

Here they are…

STEP 1: The Human Purchasing Process;
STEP 2: The Market Research Process;
STEP 3: The Brand Creation Process;
STEP 4: The Marketing & Sales Pipeline Process;
STEP 5: The Marketing & Sales Communication Process;
STEP 6: The Content Creation Process;
STEP 7: The Lead Generation Processes;
STEP 8: The B2B Lead Generation Process;
STEP 9: The Partner Recruitment Process;
STEP 10: The Partner Co-Enrolment Process;
STEP 11: The B2C Lead Generation Process;
STEP 12: The Search Engine Optimization Process;
STEP 13: The Positive Publicity Process;
STEP 14: The Social Media Marketing Process;
STEP 15: The Sales Script Process;
STEP 16: The Sales Negotiation Process;
STEP 17: The Marketing & Sales Engagement Process;
STEP 18: The Marketing & Sales Launch Process; and
STEP 19: The Promotional Partner Launch Process.

Let’s begin with…

1) The Human Purchasing Process

…This is about how to navigate hardwired buying psychology to inform your marketing and sales.

This process lays the foundation for all processes that follow and helps you understand your prospects and customers.

This leads us to The Market Research Process…

2) The Market Research Process

…Once you have a foundation for all processes that follow and understand your prospects and customers, you need to understand The Market Research Process.

This part is about how to discover what your market wants and needs and how to use those findings in your marketing and sales.

Understanding their personas helps you enter the conversation your prospects and customers are having in their own mind.

This leads us to The Brand Creation Process…

3) The Brand Creation Process

..Once you have an understanding of processes for marketing and sales communication, you need to understand the Brand Creation Process.

This part is about how to evaluate and create or recreate an unforgettable brand.

It lays out the specific process for brand creation.

This leads us to The Marketing & Sales Pipeline Process…

4) The Marketing & Sales Pipeline Process

…Once you have an understanding of the conversation your prospects and customers are having in their own mind, you need to understand The Marketing & Sales Pipeline.

This part is about how to use a marketing & sales pipeline to market and sell more products, services and solutions to prospects and customers.

It also lays the structure and sequence to the rest of the processes.

This leads us to The Marketing & Sales Communication Process…

5) The Marketing & Sales Communication Process

…Once you have an understanding of the structure and sequence to the rest of the processes, you need to understand The Marketing & Sales Communication Process.

This part is about how to communicate with your prospects and customers at the various steps in a marketing and sales pipeline.

It also lays out the processes for this method of communication.

This leads us to The Content Creation Process…

6) The Content Creation Process

…Once you have an understanding of the brand creation process, you need to understand The Content Creation Process.

This part is about how to create powerful lead generating and lead converting marketing and sales content and increase the number of prospects, AKA marketing and increase the number of customers, AKA sales, AKA prospect conversion.

It lays out the specific process of content creation.

This leads us to The Lead Generation Processes…

7-14) The Lead Generation Processes

…Once you have an understanding of the process of content creation, you need to understand The Lead Generation Processes.

This part is about how to generate leads and increase the number of prospects, AKA marketing.

It includes:

The Digital Traffic Firehose Process;
The B2B Lead Generation Process, AKA Cold Email;
The Partner Recruitment Process, AKA Affiliates;
The Partner Co-Enrolment Process;
The B2C Lead Generation Process, AKA Advertising;
The Search Engine Optimization Process;
The Positive Publicity Process, AKA PR; and
The Social Media Marketing Process.

It lays out the specific process for each of these methods for generating leads.

This leads us to The Sales Script Process…

15) The Sales Script Process

…Once you have an understanding of the process for generating leads, you need to understand The Sales Script Process.

This part is about how to write irresistible sales communication to sell your process, services and solutions and increase the number of customers, AKA sales, AKA prospect conversion, increase the value of customer transactions, AKA upselling, and increase the number of customer transactions, AKA retention.

It lays out the specific process for creating sales scripts and how to handle sales objections and why prospects don’t take action on offers.

This leads us to The Sales Negotiation Process…

16) The Sales Negotiation Process

…Once you have an understanding of sales, you need to understand The Sales Negotiation Process.

This part is about how to overcome common sales objections.

It lays out the specific process for addressing these concerns.

This leads us to The Marketing & Sales Engagement Process…

17) The Marketing & Sales Engagement Process

…Once you have an understanding of the process for creating sales scripts, you need to understand The Marketing & Sales Engagement Process.

This part is about how to engage your prospects and customers to be loyal and encourage others to buy.

It lays out the specific process for engaging your prospects and customers.

This leads us to The Marketing & Sales Launch Process…

18) The Marketing & Sales Launch Process

…Once you have an understanding of the process for engaging your prospects and customers, you need to understand Marketing & Sales Launch Process.

This part is about how to launch a new product, service or solution successfully with no resources as well as how to launch with partners the right way by tying together Parts 1 to 8.

It lays out the specific process for launching a new product, service or solution.

This leads us to The Promotional Partner Launch Process…

19) The Promotional Partner Launch Process

…Once you have an understanding of the Marketing & Sales launch process, you need to understand how to leverage partners in the process.

This part is about how to launch a product service or solution with partners.

It lays out the specific process for launching with partners.

That sums up all The Marketing & Sales Processes.

Take Action

You made it…

You now have a solid overview of several critical Marketing & Sales Processes to help you market and sell you product, service or solution.

That’s the full Marketing & Sales Processes, and it will be more than enough for you to get started on your own.

This guide is designed as a choose-your-own-adventure, where you pick-and-choose what you want to understand and improve on in your marketing and sales.

You don’t need to consume it all from start to finish, but I encourage you to do, as you’ll be in a better position to market and sell more products, services and solutions.

So let’s start with some questions to help you decided where to start…

Then explore the guides for each process.

These will be more than enough for you to get started on your own.

Do you have too many customers?

If you do not have too many customers, this guide will help you get into a position where you can say yes!

How?

Answer the rest of the questions to find out…

If you do have too many customers, then this guide will help you get more revenue from them more often.

How?

Again answer the rest of the questions to find out…

Do you understand your prospects and customers, AKA market research?

If your answer is no, then you need to learn about Market Research and Human Purchasing Psychology.