In Chapter 11, entitled You Are What You Publish: Building Your Marketing and PR Plan, David Scott brought up many important points concerning the topic. According to Scott, the idea that the four P’s of marketing (product, place, price, and promotion) are the most important factors is complete nonsense. Rather than focusing on these factors, to succeed on the web under the new rules of marketing and PR, you need to consider your organizational goals and then focus on your buyers first (Scott, 2013).
Your product or service you sell is secondary: Organizational goals and buyer personas come first
After reading Chapter 11, I believe this is one of the most important points that Scott made. Rather than focusing on your product, the new rules for marketing and PR call for a change. Marketers and PR professionals need to align objectives with objectives and goals of the organization (Scott, 2013).
According to Scott, many marketers and PR specialists focus on the wrong measures of success (Scott, 2013). With websites, people often say things like “we want to have 10,000 unique visitors to our site”, while PR measurements are often similarly irrelevant, aiming for goals such as 10 mentions in the trade press or three national magazine hits each month (Scott, 2013). These goals have importance, but what really matters is leading your site’s visitors and your constituent audiences to where they help you reach your real goals, such as building revenue, soliciting donations, and gaining new members (Scott, 2013).
Scott makes a great point in this chapter. Marketers and PR professionals are similar to groups of seven year old soccer players, focusing on the ball, rather than the goal! By focusing on things such as sales leads, press clips, and website traffic, marketers lose track of the overall organizational goals, such as revenue building (Scott, 2013).
After different leaders and employees are aware of organizational goals, then you can proceed to the next step, learning more about the buyers (Scott, 2013). As part of the planning process, creating buyer personas is essential. A buyer persona is simply a representative of a type of buyer that you have identified as having a specific interest in your organization or product (Scott, 2013). These personas are arguably the single most important aspect of a marketing and PR plan. By conducting interviews, organizations can learn about buyers and develop buyer personas and profiles (Scott, 2013). When you really know how your buyers think and what matters to them, you eliminate the guessing about what to say or where and how to communicate with them (Scott, 2013).
Source:
Scott, D.(2013). The New Rules of Marketing and PR (4. ed., pp. 162-168). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated.
Hi Patrick,
ReplyDeletePrior to reading Scott's book I had never heard of the idea of a "buyer persona" before but when he explained it it made perfect sense. His example of the college website and the five potential buyer personas for it offered such clarity. Scott offered a great step-by-step starting with determining the company's organizational goals, then determining the buyer personas that will help you reach those goals and then developing a marketing plan to reach the consumers that are a part of each buyer persona that has been created. He also offers great information on how to create your buyer persona profiles by asking questions such as:
1. What are your goals and aspirations?
2. What are your problems?
3. What media do you rely on for answers to problems?
4. How can we reach you?
He also encourages marketers to read the publications and websites that your buyers frequent to gain an understanding of the way they think (Scott, pg.165). The most effective way to get the answers to these questions is by interviewing your target.
"When you really know how your buyers think and what matters to them, you eliminate the agony of guessing about what to say or where and how to communicate with buyers." - Adele Revella
Do you think your current company could make use of buyer personas, and if so how?
Resource:
Scott, D. M. (2013). The new rules of marketing & pr. (4th ed.). Hoboken: John Wiley & Son.
Pat, you did a great job of summarizing the major points from Scott’s chapter on Building a Marketing and PR Plan. I agree with you and Scott that as communication platforms change, so must the ways we view public relations success. I found an interesting, albeit old, article on measuring PR success. Though seven years old, this article already addresses the need to consider more than media hits and mentions. “PR isn't just a numbers game, nor is it just about media coverage. To achieve long-term PR value, you need to embrace qualitative factors, such as relationships, awareness and positive perception. And while traditional tools are useful, less obvious measurements can help paint a more detailed, colorful and accurate picture” (para. 3). The article goes on to suggest addition areas to consider such as relationships with reporters and mentions by competitors. Because the article is older, it doesn’t include all the ways that social media should be considered as a tool for success. But, we know from this week’s reading that social media is key. “Millions of people are online right now looking for answers to their problems” (Scott, 2013, p. 192). There is no longer a need for a journalist to act as a go-between, marketers and PR professionals can use social media to reach buyers directly.
ReplyDeleteReferences
Meranus, R. (2007). Measuring your PR success. PR Newswire. Retrieved from http://www.prnewswire.com/knowledge-center/content-marketing-strategies/Entrepreneurcom-Measuring-Your-PR-Success.html
Scott, D. (2013). The new rules of marketing & PR. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Hi Bobbi Sue – an important key word that stood out from your post is relationship. PR has always been about relationships, but who those relationships are with is changing. While traditionally PR professionals sought out relationships with journalists and other news contacts, now one of the most important relationships is with the consumer. There is no better way to connect with this consumer than through social media. Relationships are based on a give and take; there can’t just be a one-way push of information. Connecting with these buyer personas requires two-way interaction, and once this is established relationships can build freely.
DeleteHi Pat,
ReplyDeleteGreat breakdown of Scott’s points in chapter 11 regarding organizational goals and buyer personas. And congrats on your first blog post!
I completely agree with Scott’s position that a marketing department needs to first establish its goals and align with the greater organization. Scott’s analogy that the lack of goals and measurement is like a bunch of seven-year-olds on the soccer field is great. Basically, it’s a mess! And if a company goes out there trying to market a product without really knowing what its checkpoints for success are, well, that’s also a mess.
Scott mentions the “4 P’s” of marketing aren’t really relevant anymore. But what about the “4 C’s”? Instead of product, price, place and promotion, you have consumer, costs, convenience and communication. So you start with who are your consumers, and what are their wants and needs? To Scott, this is determining the buyer persona. He mentions that “only when you understand buyers should you begin to create compelling web content to reach them” (Scott, 2013, p. 162). Once this is established, marketers can move onto other aspects of a marketing plan, like what are the costs associated with accessing or buying the product? Is the product convenient for consumers? And finally (and rather importantly), what are the most effective ways for two-way communication with these consumers? (McClean, 2012).
So what about those established companies that already have products or services on the market? Based on Scott’s advice, should they reevaluate their current strategies and make sure they have a full grasp on their buyer persona? Even if a company is already accomplishing its goals without following Scott’s outline there could be room for improvement and additional success.
Great job!
Lindsey
References:
McClean, R. (2012, October 19). The 4 C’s versus the 4 P’s of marketing. Retrieved from http://www.customfitonline.com/news/2012/10/19/4-cs-versus-the-4-ps-of-marketing/
Scott, D. M. (2013). The new rules of marketing & PR: How to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases & viral marketing to reach buyers directly (4th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Pat,
ReplyDeleteI liked your description of this chapter, it was really informative and covered a lot. I like that you brought up that the author believes that the original 4 factors are no longer relevant. He recommends focusing on end goals rather than trying to check items off of a list. I believe that we become distracted by short term goals too often and lose sight of the long term goals that were originally set in place. The decision to focus on organizational goals is important. Companies should remember their long term goals and not forget about them in order to meet short term sales quotas.
I also really appreciated that you talked about the need for employees to understand organizational goals. This is important because employees should be aware of the long term goals that a company is trying to achieve. This gives them a sense of being involved in the bigger picture and will help point them in the direction you want them to go in. I liked that you were able to tie in the soccer reference, that made a lot of sense for this particular chapter. Sometimes by focusing on what you are doing in the present, you can lose focus on what you want the end result to be. Do you think that employee involvement in this process is key or could this be orchestrated by upper management without the employees being too involved? What would you recommend?
Great Post!
Hey Ian – you mentioned the importance of employees understanding their organization’s goals. At the beginning of every year at my company we create personal goals for the year, but these need to align with the company’s overarching goals. It’s a really interesting exercise because you can see how your smaller projects or day-to-day work are actually a part of something bigger. Not only does it help an employee understand their company’s direction, but it also helps them realize how they’re contributing to something bigger.
DeleteI do think employee involvement in the goal-setting process is important. Employees are generally the ones who have direct interaction with customers and other key constituents, so without their input upper management may not realize where the company can improve or what it should focus on.
How about in your professional experience – have you ever been a part of goal-setting for an organization?