Building Out Your Communications Team: Hire Staff or Engage a Firm?

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Your company is growing. The work is mounting, and you know increasing bandwidth is the next step. If increasing bandwidth includes bolstering your communications team, do you hire staff? Or do you engage a communications firm?

Or maybe it’s the opposite. Company sales are slumping. And you know that if you could just get your story out there, the new work would begin to flow. Again, do you hire staff or engage a firm?

You’re facing a valid question, and the right decision will depend on a number of things:

  1. How important is it to have someone on site, all the time?

Do you need to be able to pop in to his or her office on a moment’s notice for a discussion? If you only need to meet with your communications team once or twice a week to touch base, or are comfortable communicating electronically, having a full-time staffer in the office doesn’t provide a significant advantage over hiring a firm.

  1. How sure are you of the actual duration and the scope of work?

Here’s the thing: if you hire someone to do a full-time job, you’re going to want to get 40 hours of solid work out of them every week, right? Hiring a firm that has the flexibility to ramp up or shift down based on need can give you more flexibility.

  1. Do you need multiple skill sets?

Communications encompasses a variety of skills and expertise (paid search, public relations, events, web development and design, etc.) Does the person you’re hiring have the necessary skill set to get the job(s) done? Are they comfortable doing press releases and doing web design if needed? A good communications firm will have specialists on staff that can handle various aspects of communications. This specialization means the quality of work may be higher than if you hire someone that doesn’t have all of the skills you need.

  1. Do you have the necessary skills to get the person up and running?

Onboarding a new hire is a lot of work, especially for smaller businesses and organizations that may already be understaffed and/or overworked. Larger organizations may already have the capacity and economies of scale to identify and vet candidates, hire, and train. If your organization is already stretched thin, it may be too much work to go through the hiring and training process.

Sometimes organizations will retain a firm then convert to staff. In fact, a communications firm can help you make sure you hire the right person, set strategy, and conduct the on boarding.

Bottom Line:

If you’re still not sure, err on the side of caution. Begin with a firm because you can always terminate the program if your needs change or if any issues arise.

Bringing on and training an employee can be time consuming, and once that person is a full-time employee, parting ways can be difficult if your needs change or if it’s not working out for any reason. What once seemed like a solution can turn into an HR nightmare very quickly.

Of course, these are just some issues to consider when deciding whether to hire a firm or hire in house for your communications needs. To properly weigh your options, it’s best to consult a professional to take a deeper dive into your organization’s needs.

Should You Hire A Public Affairs Firm or a Public Relations Firm?

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At Targeted Persuasion, we get this question all the time. The truth is, it depends.

What are you trying to accomplish? What’s the difference in a public affairs firm and a public relations firm? Aren’t they the same?

Not really.

A public affairs firm focuses more on the political sphere. Its primary aim is to build and develop relations between an organization and politicians or governments. Public engagement and policy advocacy are well within a PA firm’s wheelhouse, as shaping public opinion around policy is a specialty.

Public affairs firms also perform some of the same functions as a public relations firm, especially when seeking publicity for organizations and responding to media issues and inquiries.

Public relations firms perform much broader functions. While public affairs can certainly be a component, the larger aim of PR firms is to manage the spread of information of and about an organization to the public.

If you are trying to shape public opinion around a policy, then I encourage you to seek out a public affairs firm.

Here’s why your choice of a public affairs firm matters:

  1. Public Affairs Firms Understand the Political Landscape.

Politics is a public affairs firm’s specialty. They have a background and previous experience working with local politicians in their city and state. This intensive background translates to a deep understanding of the political landscape in the area.

Public affairs firms are comfortable using polling to shape messaging and determine strategy. They can take your issue and know exactly what to do with it- who to go to, where to air the concern, and how to go about informing the public.

Remember, one tweet can sink your battleship before it even leaves port, so leave the messaging up to an experienced captain. Protect your message and put it into the capable hands of a public affairs firm.

  1. Public Affairs Firms are Comfortable Working with Lobbyists and Elected Officials.

A public affairs firm has relationships with lobbyists and elected officials already built out. This means that you can use their networks to advance your cause, rather than trying to build those contacts from scratch yourself. This will leave you ample time to work on the meat of your project, rather than worrying about setting up meetings with officials.

  1. Public Affairs Firms Know How to Craft Messaging to get the Public to Take Action.

Public affairs firms have a toolbox filled with ways to get the word out to the public about your issue. They have tried and tested petitions, town halls, and action alerts, each of which engages the public in a different way. Depending on your needs, the firm will craft messaging to get the public on board with your issue, leading to a successful campaign and the results you wanted.

Public affairs firms and public relations firms may seem indistinguishable at first glance, but the differences become clear. If you’re trying to get the word out about a campaign relating to policy, a public affairs firm is the clear winner. They understand the political landscape, they are specialized in outreach to local lobbyists and politicians, and they know how to craft attention-grabbing messaging. Use a public affairs firm to advance your campaign and you won’t be sorry!

5 Top Tools for Social Media Marketing

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Are you tired of logging into six different social media profiles to post the same story from your organization? Save some time and headache with these five publishing tools for your business’s social media accounts. Many of them are affordable and come with extremely useful (and profitable) bells and whistles. Our top five picks are highlighted below!

1.PowerPost

PowerPost is our priciest entry on this list starting at $599/month, but its powerful software includes a centralized platform that you can use to create all drafts and use to post to six different social media platforms. You can customize each post from the dashboard and tailor it to each social media platform- ie, 160 characters for Twitter.

The dashboard can be a collaborative space for your whole team- anyone with the credentials can log in and work with the rest of your team simultaneously.

An analytics dashboard is also included so that you can view the engagement metrics for each and every post, enabling you to see what kind of content resonates with your audience. This tool is valuable because it can lead to increased profits as you increase click-through rates from your customers.

2. Buffer

 

Buffer is the most inexpensive entry on our list, with its free individual plan. You’ll only get one social media profile with this plan, but the plans including multiple social profiles are only slightly more expensive. Like PowerPost, you can manage all your accounts from one dashboard, and you’ll also have access to an image creator for your content.

Buffer’s main selling point is its automated post scheduling. Buffer’s software tracks engagement and posts automatically at times optimized for maximum engagement. It’ll take all the brainwork out of timing your posts, and you’ll hopefully see valuable returns in engagement from your audience. All you have to do is add posts to your Buffer queue and it’ll post them automatically.

Automated re-shares are also included- Buffer’s analytics can tell which content performed best, and it’ll re-share these top posts automatically.

3. Socedo

Socedo is moderately priced starting at $100/month. Its main strength is in its warm lead generation abilities that can vastly aid your sales efforts. Socedo’s software crawls Twitter and picks out chatter data including keywords that you set as relevant to your sales.

Socedo also syncs directly to customer relationship management systems such as Salesforce. Socedo’s analytics measure clickthroughs on your targeted posts, and will feed you rich data on these leads that can be transferred to your CRM of choice, allowing you to directly turn social media data into warm leads.

This software is best for increasing your sales easily, so it can affect your profits profoundly if you use it correctly.

4. Likeable Hub

Likeable Hub will help to remove most of the brainwork of coming up with content to post on your business’s social media accounts, making it ideal for a small business owner who can’t dedicate their limited time to social media marketing.

Likeable Hub’s idea library contains content ideas tailored to your industry. You can choose with one click and review and edit the posts; then they will be automatically published from your queue. This service starts at $299/month.

5. CoSchedule

CoSchedule is a drag-and-drop marketing calendar that allows you to visually plan your social media marketing. It works great for a marketing team, with multiple users able to sync themselves with the marketing calendar.

Another plus is its ability to sync both content creation apps such as Google Drive and WordPress, and distribution apps such as Facebook and Twitter. This will allow your team to create content separately, and then everything can be synchronized easily on the CoSchedule calendar.

CoSchedule has a feature called ReQueue, which fills social media calendar gaps with re-shares of top performing content, which it measures with engagement analytics. This way, even if your team drops the ball on scheduling, content will continue to be published during dry spells.

CoSchedule starts at $40/month for individuals, but since its strengths lie in its collaborative abilities, the pricing can range upward to $2200/month for established marketing teams with 25+ users.

Hopefully our helpful guide contains all the features that you need to know about in order to choose the best social media marketing tool for your business. There is a lot of variety out there, from tools catering to lead generation to tools containing pre-chosen content that publishes itself. Good luck!

4 Weird Psychological Lessons Marketers Should Use

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You have to understand your audience in order to run an effective social media campaign. With a few basic psychological principles, you can get inside their heads and understand why they engage with content the way they do.

  1. People share content to enhance their relationships with other people.

Social media isn’t a vacuum– it exists to connect people with each other. There are five key reasons people share content online, according to a New York Times study.

  • To improve the lives of others.
  • To define themselves.
  • To grow relationships.
  • Self-fulfillment.
  • To advance causes they believe in.

Users are harnessing the power of people. They want the content they share to work for them and perform a function, whether it is to brighten their friends’ days or to share a fundraising call for a favorite charity. Keep this in mind when you’re marketing- provide content that will increase the social value of the people who share it and engage with it.

  1. Color can change people’s behavior.

According to the study Impact of Color on Marketing, “People make up their minds within 90 seconds of their initial interactions with either people or products. About 62 to 90 percent of the assessment is based on colors alone.” But it’s not so much about the color itself- it’s more about whether the color supports your service, product, or brand.

To make strategic color decisions about your brand, think about common associations you’ll want to have– green for environmentally friendly, yellow for slow, etc.

  1. Make yourself trustworthy.

Social proof is likely to influence consumers’ behavior. A power company’s study showed that homeowners were likely to mirror their neighbor’s energy consumption habits, whether that was less or more energy. When someone sees that their tribe is engaging in a certain behavior, they’re more likely to trust the group and engage in that behavior.

So what does this mean for marketers? Create shareable content. When people see their friends sharing your content and saying how much they love your product, they will be much more likely to purchase. You could also publicize testimonials and good reviews as social proof of your product’s integrity.

  1. Emotions are contagious.

According to Psychological Science, when people are psychologically aroused by heightened emotions, they are more likely to share, boosting social transmission.

In addition, the more positive the content, the more often it was shared, according to a study by the University of Pennsylvania. To use positivity as a part of a social media strategy:

  • Share feel-good stories from your customers or industry.
  • Use humor in your content (but make sure it’s appropriate!).
  • Ask your audience to share positive stories about your brand.
  • Share an inspirational video.
  • Add happy emojis to your content where appropriate.

Emotional contagion will help get your message shared by your own users, just by putting a smile on their face!

 

We hope these psychological strategies will help you create content that will be more shareable. It’s pretty cool what psychology can do.

Media Relations Matter

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If you are anything like me, you work hard to move the needle. And I’m always looking for ways to layer on different communications tools that can effectively work within existing campaigns.  

Too many organizations and businesses keep their story inside their four walls, totally missing opportunities to expand their reach through earned media.

Why do media relations matter in the first place? Like it or hate it, media is influential in shaping public opinion. Whether you are trying to persuade elected officials or you want to tell your story to a broad audience, media can help influence on your behalf. And for the most part, media is trusted. As a trusted ally, media can help legitimize your message.

Earned media matters. Now let’s talk about the best strategy for engaging local media.

When determining the type of media you’d like to pitch, think first about whom you are trying to reach. At Targeted Persuasion, we’ve found that we get older and politically engaged segments when articles run in the daily newspaper, and we can hit a large portion of the population through the right local television station. We usually aim for the station that has the largest viewership first.

When we need to reach a younger group, we’ll seek out local influential social media stars. Based on the content and target, we will often reach out to independent print and digital news outlets. However, don’t discount the ability of your local paper and broadcast affiliates to reach younger audiences. Many of them have beefed up their social and digital presences. If you can craft a message that resonates, readers will often share with their friends further expanding your reach.

This is a very brief overview, and obviously the devil of any media outreach strategy is going to be in the details. Next week, we’ll take a more in depth look at earned media strategy and how to craft your message.

In the meantime, if you have a story that you want to tell, it’s never to soon to start the discussion. Email us today and find out how Targeted Persuasion can help.

Your campaign checklist

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Whether you’re an advocacy organization working on a grassroots campaign or a business launching a new product, it’s important to have a toolbox ready to go to effectively launch your campaign. These tools working together can take your campaign to the next level. Here are just some of the items you’ll need.

1. A robust email list.

Have you been keeping a list of partners, influencers, customers, and supporters? How can you supplement your list to make sure you’re reaching everyone that cares about your product, service, or cause?

2. A well-designed website or landing page.

When people click on that email or social media link, where does it take them? You need a sleek and easy to read website where customers and supporters can quickly ascertain the benefits of your product or cause and how to purchase or contribute.

3. A follow-up plan.

Once someone had donated, purchased or participated, your communication doesn’t end there. That person needs to become a life-long customer or advocate. Do you have a follow-up plan for keeping these people engaged?

These are just some of the tools you’ll need to make your next advocacy or advertising campaign a success. To see how the complete toolbox works together, check out this case study from a real-life (and extremely successful) campaign that Targeted Persuasion ran earlier this year.

8 Tips to Create a Marketing Email

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When you’re starting from scratch, writing a complete and effective marketing email can be overwhelming. We’ve compiled a list of tips to ensure that your emails are effective and engaging.

  1. Stick to the point.

Keep your email short and sweet. Only give relevant information- stay away from fluff! Your subscribers have limited time to spend reading your copy. Make sure your point comes through. What’s the goal of your email? Keep that goal in mind for every sentence you write.

  1. Provide value.

If you’re not providing something of value to your subscribers, they will unsubscribe. Who wants to get marketing emails that don’t help them at all? If you’re releasing a new product, describe how it can help them. If you’re having a sale, give details and a big link to your site. If your email doesn’t provide anything of value to your subscribers, rethink sending it until it does.

  1. Make it easy to read.

The easier your copy is to skim, the more information your subscribers will see. Try using bullet points, italics, and bold key information. Don’t go overboard here, as excessive use of bolding, italics, and underlining can do more harm than good.

Paragraph breaks will also do wonders- giant blocks of text are daunting to read, and you want eyes on your main points- so make them easy to find!

  1. Know your call to action.

You should have a clear goal for what your recipient will ideally do when they receive your email. Your call to action should be clear and visible- there should be a big button or link moving them closer to this goal.

Selling a new t-shirt? Provide a picture of the shirt and a big “buy now!” button linking to your website. The easier it is to follow through, the more recipients will do it.

  1. Personalize, if possible.

People are much more likely to read information that is addressed to them. If you have their name from a subscription list, set your email marketing service to address the email to them. (If you aren’t sure what email marketing service to use, check out our top five picks here).

  1. Control your tone.

It can be difficult for humor to come across in a text-based format, so avoid using humor or sarcasm unless you’re absolutely sure that it’s appropriate for the situation.

We know that you’re probably excited about the information you’re sharing, but avoid using too many exclamation points and excessive punctuation. It can appear unprofessional, and even hysterical, if you overuse the exclamation point. A good maximum is one exclamation point for every three sentences.

  1. Revise, revise, revise.

Once you’ve drafted your email copy, congratulate yourself. And then go back to it. Read it over. Check and double check your spelling and punctuation. Errors will appear unprofessional to your subscribers and undermine your credibility.

You’ll also want to make sure you’re sticking to your goal for the marketing email. If a paragraph doesn’t support your goal, delete it or edit it until it does.

Another tip- get someone else to read it over, or read it aloud to yourself. This way, you’ll be able to catch mistakes that you may have missed when writing it or reading it silently.

  1. Add artwork.

You’ll want to add a few well-placed, tasteful graphics appropriate to your messaging. Avoid stock photos, as some recipients may find these off-putting. Keep in mind the medium – you’ll want to avoid larger images that may inflate the size of the email too much. They should also fit well with the formatting of your email.

Hopefully our list gave you some helpful dos and don’ts for your email marketing. Good luck!

The Path To Digital Dominance

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When I started my first company over 10 years ago, I didn’t have a lot of resources to make things happen. I had some experience and knowledge from years of working in the communications industry – but no budget that I could build my business with. As I’ve stressed to my clients, kids, and anyone who will listen, lack of resources are never the real problem, unless you lack resourcefulness.

Fortunately with the world of online media, it’s now easier than ever for people who are virtually unknown to the wider world to build a thriving business from the ground up. I count myself as one of those success stories. It wasn’t easy to do though. There were no text books guiding me down the path. There was a lot of trial and error.

Now, all of these years later, I’ve written the book (or at least a book) on building your online influence. The lessons I learned truly made a difference, and allowed me to build a thriving business. I never intended to write a book about those lessons, but I couldn’t resist sharing my hard-earned knowledge with the rest of the world.

The main lessons I learned that I needed to spell out were:

– How to Generate and distribute content (with very little effort)

– How to Build their audience (even if you have no following now)

– How to Engage their followers (even if you hate talking to people)

In my new e-book, Pixels Are the New Ink: 3 Steps to Digital Domination in Your Industry, I lay it out in an easily digestible format. I truly believe the lessons in this book will be transformative for any businessperson, politician, community activist, or leader of any kind who wants to build their brand online.

Check it out here and find out the secrets that will help you dominate your industry.

– Jeff Tippett

Resourcefulness, Not Resources. Start Fundraising Now.

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If you’re running an association or non-profit, chances are raising money is already a big part of your yearly routine. Membership dues and donations are the lifeblood of your organization, and a crucial funding pipeline for day-to-day operations.

However, sometimes an opportunity to create lasting impact for your members arises, and you find yourself without the spare funds to make it happen. Running an effective grassroots or marketing campaign can incur a lot of unplanned expenses, but the good news is that this doesn’t have to be prohibitive. If you can develop a message that sells the benefit for your members, you can raise the money faster than you ever expected.

As I wrote in this blog post back in January, lacking financial resources is not your problem, resourcefulness is.  I interviewed expert fundraiser Clarenda Stanley-Anderson in this same blog post, and it’s a great place to start for anyone interested in raising money for their organization or special projects. Read it here now!

You have several options to raise the money you need. If your team is stretched thin, you could hire an outside fundraiser. There are many individuals out there that work for non-profits and associations that are willing to offer freelance consulting services.  Many firms, like Targeted Persuasion, also offer fundraising services for clients who need to raise money for other communications work.

Remember that not all fundraisers are alike and that you need a fundraiser with applicable experience. How they raised the money is just as important as how much. If you need cash fast to fund an imminent campaign, an expert grant writer probably isn’t going to do the trick.

The bottom line is this: don’t let current lack of funds dissuade you from investing in your organization’s future. If the campaign you want to fund is valuable to your stakeholders, you can find the funds. All you need is a good message, a strategy, and a little bit of time to make it all happen.

For more resources on fundraising efforts, visit the Association of Fundraising Professionals at www.afpnet.org. To find out how Targeted Persuasion can help you fund your next communications campaign, contact me at jeff@targetedpersuasion.com.

5 Email Marketing Services To Consider For Your Business

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The market today is flooded with email marketing services. It can be difficult to figure out which would work best for your business, so we have put together an abbreviated list of email marketing services, highlighting what they’re best used for. Hopefully, our list of features will help you to decide which will be most useful for your business’s needs!

 

  1. Drip

Drip is one of the newer contenders in the email marketing space. It is a lighter weight program than the others on this list – you can integrate it with your website with just a few lines of code – and it starts at a low price. If you have under 100 subscribers, it’s free, and it can rise to $99+/month for the full featured version.

Drip’s main advantage is in its “if, then” rules. These offer a customized experience for every one of your subscribers. For example, say you run a business selling shirts. Your email has a section for men’s and women’s shirts. One of your subscribers clicks on the women’s shirts link. Now, Drip’s software can allow a follow-up reaction. If she clicks on women’s shirts, then she’ll get more emails from your women’s clothing department, allowing the marketing she receives to be more targeted.

Drip also allows for event tracking, meaning that it is capable of tracking when one of your subscribers takes a certain action. You can then tag them for later so you can market to them more intelligently. Other features offered are email capture, web analytics, and lead nurturing.

If you’d like a budget-friendly, lightweight email marketing service that has highly targeted marketing tools unlike those offered by any other company, Drip may be for you.

Standout Features:

  • Lightweight
  • “If, then” rules
  • Event tracking
  1. Constant Contact

Constant Contact is one of the industry heavyweights. It is easy to use and beginner friendly, and has easy to manage email lists, contact lists, and email templates available for your use.

Constant Contact also allows for email tracking, and it comes with built in social media tools. For example, if you send out an update about a new product you’re offering, there will be buttons for your subscribers to click so that they can engage and spread your message via a variety of social media platforms. Also built in is an image library populated with fair-use images, and you also get a whole gigabyte to store your files with Constant Contact.

Support options are good, with live chat, email, and community support. With the ease of use and built in storage and social tools, it may be a one-program solution to a small business’s email marketing needs.

Constant Contact offers a 60 day free trial, and it’s $20+/month after.

Standout Features:

  • Beginner friendly
  • Built in social media tools
  • Image library

 

  1. AWeber

AWeber is another heavyweight in the email marketing space. It has all the standard tools- email templates, list management, autoresponders, and email tracking.

Its main advantage, alongside its standard features, is its connective abilities with most other platforms that you may have used to build your website. WordPress is one example. You can create a pop-up for your website visitors allowing them to input their emails so they can get your newsletter. AWeber will use this information to populate a list of new subscribers. This is a great way to grow your subscriber base and get your message out to those who have asked to receive it.

AWeber offers good support, with live chat, phone, and email support, alongside free how-tos and tutorials. AWeber starts with a 30 day free trial, and is $19+/month afterward.

With its integrative capabilities and its standard marketing features, AWeber is best for small and medium businesses who rely on subscriber sign-ups to get business returns.

Standout Features:

  • Integration of other applications
  • Templates
  1. GetResponse

GetResponse is an email marketing service that is best for absolute beginners. It has a drag and drop builder to create campaigns, segment contacts, and to send content to specific groups. It also comes loaded with beautiful easy-to-use forms, landing pages, tracking, and autoresponders.

GetResponse also offers seamless integration with third party lead generation software such as Salesforce and ZenDesk. These tools will help beginners to optimize their sales toolkit, and will provide good initial returns on the small investment of $15+/month after the one month free trial.

Support, needless to say, is geared toward beginners, with phone support, live chat support, email support, and a comprehensive help section. If you’re a new business owner who has never done email marketing before, GetResponse is a great program to use.

Standout Features:

  • Drag and drop builder
  • Integration with lead generation software
  • Comprehensive support
  1. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is a robust email marketing service that combines email marketing with automation, CRM, and sales. If your goal is to upgrade to smarter email marketing campaigns, consider using ActiveCampaign.

ActiveCampaign includes an email template editor and mobile friendly sign up forms for your audience. You can segment contacts based on a number of criteria: actions, location, behavior, and social data. In addition, you’ll have unprecedented access to your subscribers’ information– ActiveCampaign allows you to fetch additional data on your contacts using only an email address.

If all this isn’t enough, ActiveCampaign also integrates with over 150 third party applications, including eCommerce tools and lead generation tools.

ActiveCampaign’s services start at $9/month, but can get quite high. If you have the money to spare on an aggressive marketing campaign that does the work for you, ActiveCampaign is perfect for your business.

Standout Features:

  • Combination email marketing, CRM, and sales
  • Mobile friendly
  • Contact segmentation
  • Fetch subscriber data
  • Integration with third party apps

From simple and lightweight to integrated with over 150 apps, the email marketing space is populated with a wide range of services catering to a wide range of needs. Hopefully our list has cleared up any confusion you had on which email marketing service is right for you!