Like this article? PLEASE +1 it! Evan Signature
Evan Carmichael Top Header
Share for a Cause









Not Getting the PR Results you Want

Written by: Bob Kelly

Article Overview: Are you too focused on communications tactics and not on a workable blueprint for dealing with those important outside audiences whose behaviors most affect your unit?

Free Download - Are You Cool With This? By Bob Kelly
Name: Email:

Not Getting the PR Results you Want

Please feel free to publish this article and resource box
in your ezine, newsletter, offline publication or website.
Only requirement: you must use the Robert A. Kelly
byline and resource box. Word count is 975 including
guidelines and box. Robert A. Kelly © 2006.

Not Getting the PR Results You Want?

The reason might be this simple: as a business, non-profit
or association manager, you’re too focused on communi-
cations tactics and not on a workable blueprint for dealing
with those important outside audiences whose behaviors
most affect your department, division or subsidiary.

If this sounds familiar, the blueprint I refer to provides the
tools required to persuade those key external stakeholders
to your way of thinking. Then, hopefully, move them to
take actions that lead to your success.

A blueprint, say, like this one: people act on their own
perception of the facts before them, which leads to
predictable behaviors about which something can be done.
When we create, change or reinforce that opinion by
reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action the very
people whose behaviors affect the organization the most,
the public relations mission is usually accomplished.

And, by the way, this is a blueprint that can produce
behaviors such as more prospects interested in your
services or products, more proposals for joint ventures and
strategic alliances, more frequent repeat purchases, or fresh,
new capital contributions and membership applications.

If this is something you wish to pursue, the next move is
yours. For example, take the time to enlist those public
relations people assigned to your unit in a brand-new
push to find out once and for all what those outside
audiences – those with behaviors that actually affect
your organization – really think about you.

That’s where the rubber meets the road because target
audience perceptions inevitably lead to behaviors that will
either hinder or help you in reaching your objectives.

So, let’s assume you and your PR team decide to prioritize
your outside audiences, then monitor the perceptions of
members of the #1 target audience on your list.

Here’s the first “fork in the road.” You can use your PR
professionals – who after all are in the perception and
behavior business – to interact with target audience members
by asking a lot of questions. For instance, “What do you
know about us? Have you ever had dealings with our
organization? Was it, or they, satisfactory?”

Or, if you have access to an ample budget, you can engage
the services of a professional survey firm to handle the
perception monitoring chore for you. Keep in mind, however,
that this activity is central to the success of a public relations
effort.

Either way, the data assembled by this drill is the raw material
used to create your public relations goal. And that goal might
call for clearing up a troublesome misconception, fixing a serious
inaccuracy or killing that budding rumor dead as a doornail.

But reaching that goal is another story. You need a strategy
to show you the way, and when it comes to perceptions and
opinion, there are only three strategies from which to choose:
change existing opinion/perception, create it where none
exists, or reinforce the perception. Trick is, be certain the
strategy you select is a natural fit with your new public
relations goal. For example, if you discovered a really negative
perception among members of your target audience, you
certainly wouldn’t choose the “reinforce” strategy.

But the real “beast of burden” in this PR problem solving
sequence is the message you will use to alter the offending
perception you turned up during your audience monitoring
drill. This is one message that must be very well written,
clear as crystal, and supported by compelling and believable
facts if it is to alter what some of your target audience
members believe. In this way, the message can nudge
perception in your direction, lead to the behaviors you have
in mind, and help you achieve your unit objectives.

Final challenge? Get that message to the eyes and ears of
members of your target audience. And that means selecting
and employing the right communications tactics from the
wide choice available to you. You can use personal contacts,
special events, media interviews and speeches. Or, you might
select from among news announcements, facility tours,
newsletters, brochures, audience briefings and so many others.
But be certain that the tactics you choose have a record of
reaching people like the members of your target audience.

Soon, however, questions will be asked as to how the new
public relations effort is faring. In other words, “Are we
getting the PR results we want?”

A fair question and one that can be fairly answered
by returning to the field for a follow up monitoring session.
Once again, you as the manager, and/or your PR support staff,
must ask questions similar to those you asked during your
earlier benchmark perception monitoring session.

The difference now? You want to see evidence that your
perception monitoring, your public relations goal and
strategy as well as your carefully crafted corrective
message and communications tactics have actually altered
the offending perception as you planned.

Should results not come fast enough, additional
communications tactics can be added, and their frequencies
increased.

Bottom line: as the department, division or subsidiary
manager for a business, non-profit or association, if the
primary focus of your public relations effort is tactics, you
are well-advised to make a shift in favor of this kind of
workable PR blueprint that gives you the best chance of
achieving your unit’s operating objectives.

end

Bob Kelly counsels, writes and speaks to business, non-profit
and association managers about using the fundamental premise
of public relations to achieve their operating objectives. He has
authored 245 articles on the subject which are listed at
EzineArticles.com, click Expert Authors, click Robert A. Kelly.
He has been DPR, Pepsi-Cola Co.; AGM-PR, Texaco Inc.; VP-PR,
Olin Corp.; VP-PR, Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.;
director of communications, U.S. Department of the Interior,
and deputy assistant press secretary, The White House. He holds
a bachelor of science degree from Columbia University, major in
public relations.
mailto:bobkelly@TNI.net Visit:http://www.prcommentary.com

Related Articles
  Rule 21 Listen to the Market
  Results
  SEO: How To Avoid Your Website Being Canned In The Google Supplemental Results
  A Special Marketing Tool: Online Pay-Per-Click or PPC Ads
  SEO - 75% Of Web Users ONLY Look At the First Page Of Their Search Results - Are You There?

Home > Public-Relations > Bob Kelly > Not Getting the PR Results you Want
Article Tags:

About the Author: Bob Kelly
RSS for Bob's articles - Visit Bob's website

Bob Kelly counsels and writes for business, non-profit, government agency and association managers about using the fundamental premise of public relations to achieve their operating objectives. He has published 245 articles on the subject which are listed at EzineArticles.com, click ExpertAuthor, click Robert A. Kelly. He has been DPR, Pepsi-Cola Co.; AGM-PR, Texaco Inc.; VP-PR, Olin Corp.; VP-PR Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.; director of communications, U.S. Department of the Interior, and deputy assistant press secretary, The White House. He holds a bachelor of science degree from Columbia University, major in public relations. mailto:bobkelly@TNI.net Visit:www.PRCommentary.com

Click here to visit Bob's website
Dashed Line

More from Bob Kelly
What is Best Practice Public Relations
Yes There is a PR Sweet Spot
So Many Managers Doubt PRs Value
Managers Can We Agree on This
Managers Lets Call a Spade a Spade


Related Forum Posts
Run a major competition Run a major competition - You beat me to the punch LoveInventions! I was just on my way to post this! The idea is simple: run a competition for a major prize to get people posting. In this case Darren put up a $729 Nikon DSLR up for grabs as the top prize. The winner was selected randomly and each post you wrote gave you another chance to win. [quote:1nc4sv0r]The Goal - the aim of the exercise was simple. To sign up new members to my forum and increase page views. My hope was to have a bumper month but also get new members signed up to have an ongoing impact on overall activity going forward.[/quote:1nc4sv0r] [quote:1nc4sv0r]Results: Traffic - Over the full month traffic was increased 66.7%.[/quote:1nc4sv0r] [quote:1nc4sv0r]Results: New Members - Recruiting new members to the forum was another goal of the competition. We’d had an influx in January of 1803 new sign ups as a result of a previous smaller competition but since had been around the 1200 per month. April however saw a boost in numbers by an extra 2823 members.[/quote:1nc4sv0r] [quote:1nc4sv0r]Results: Activity - Another bonus related to increased traffic is the increases in user activity on the forum. Here’s the increase in new ‘threads’ to the forum (up from the 1500’s to just over 4000 for the month). And here is the increase in new posts (up from 1400 per month to over 43000 for the month).[/quote:1nc4sv0r] [quote:1nc4sv0r] The Downside So far it’s sounding fairly rosy isn’t it. Increases in traffic, members, activity and even earning are all good. However there was two downsides. 1. Moderation Workload - I have an amazing team of moderators to DPS but the month of April was the hardest that they’ve ever worked. I totally underestimated the extra load upon them in setting up this competition. It has made me reconsider how I run future competitions. 2. Impact upon Quality of Reader Interaction - over all the increased activity of the site brought in some wonderful new members who are interacting on the site with genuine interaction. However a small number of new members were just there for the competition - even though I made it clear that spammy entries wouldn’t win. This impacted moderators workloads but also the overall morale on the site a little. I think we managed to contain it but again - next time I run a competition it’ll not be based upon post numbers but rather some sort of quality level of interaction.[/quote:1nc4sv0r] What do you guys think? Is it worth testing out? Considering we already give out over $1,000 in month prizes, what would be the ultimate prize that we award at the end of the competition?
$3000 per mo Site for Sale: $65,000 OBO $3000 per mo Site for Sale: $65,000 OBO - $3000 per mo Site for Sale: $65,000 OBO Content and Community Driven Pet Websites ________________________________________ Profile: Two Pet Related Websites Price: $65,000 OBO Age of sites: 2 years 4 months Monthly revenue: $3300 (plus or minus a couple hundred) Key details: Growth Year over Year: 641% Uniques: 200,000 per Month Page Views: 1 mil + per Month Referrers: 10,000+ Monthly Search Engine Traffic: 61% Members: 7500+/- Articles: 318 Blog Posts: 189+ Forum Posts: 256,000+ Topics: 19,000+ Adsense Revenue: $1500-$1700 per month Kontera Revenue: $900+ per month Direct Advertisers: $90 - $300 per month Monthly Server Costs: $100 Monthly Advertising Costs: $0 Total Profit Per Month $2500 - $3000 Organic Growth Month over Month: 10% +/- (Zero spent on advertising – all word of mouth and search engine) Software Licenses: All Open source and thus free: Linux, Apache, MySQL, Zen Cart, PHPLIST, WordPress, SMF, and the rest Custom Programming. Software Editions: All software running latest releases. Uniques Last Month: 200,000 Page Views Last Month: *2,000,000+ per month Referring Sources: 1,000 different referrers Referring Keywords: 60,000 Search Terms First Page Results: Thousands of keywords and keyword combinations Indexed pages (Google): 65,000+ Indexed pages (Yahoo): 26,000+ Google page rank: 5-6 (Lots of 3’s and 4’s throughout the sites) Pages of Content: 60,000+/- Alexa site rank: 124,000 (way off the mark due to audience profile) Compete Site Rank: Much closer but still off.. See image Brand Value: All Original Creative and Content including Logo, Forum Template, Front-end, CSS, Code, Images etc. Extremely well made to render fast as well as accessible, to both humans and search engines. Search optimized throughout. Description: I actually posted this for sale almost 11 months ago but didn’t take any offers. Since then traffic has increased almost 650% and revenue has increase by almost as much, closer to 600%. Revenue comes from direct advertising ($150-$350 per mo) but primarily Google Adsense ($1500 - $1750 per mo) and Kontera Links ($700-$900 per mo). Letting go as I’m working full time and just started Business School… I just don’t have the time. However, these sites are ripe for one to build a better business direction. I started these sites as the pet industry happens to be exploding, exponentially and almost parabolically. Google “pet spending” to find a glimpse. Some articles you’ll find: “The Growing Pet Industry Is One Trend You Can Bank On” "In the past 10 years, pet spending has more than doubled to an estimated $38.4 billion for 2006." "According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the pet industry is now the seventh largest retail segment in the country." “We have only begun to see the tip of the spending iceberg" “Pet Spending at All Time High” "Pet ownership is on the increase in the US, and the amount of money spent on pets is dramatically increasing too." The two sites are content and community driven websites with 350+ health related articles on pets, a pet blog that discusses current issues, and a very active message board and community. They compliment each other perfectly and as such are being sold together as a package. The templates are completely custom designed and CSS powered. They would be XHTML Strict Compliant however we’ve included a couple of things that just wouldn’t let it pass. There are almost 8000 members between the two sites. Several hundred more between the blog subscribers and the email list subscribers. At one time we had a store (its all still there however it’s been shut off) and we had about 200 customers. The store lasted only about a month and a half as our careers just didn’t allow us to provide the customer service this site deserves. We also had a drop ship company that worked out really well, (and we still do if we want them). Much more work than our careers had time for. The logos are custom. I’ve got the logo in vector version for Signs and tee shirts. The Design is custom. All software front-ends are custom and running clean - open source applications. Runs extremely well. The entire 2 sites run on a dedicated server that runs about $100 a month.. The sites run on a LAMP environment, meaning Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. All of the software is open source and requires no fees. We run PHPLIST, Zen Cart, and SMF Simple Machines Forum. The blog is Word Press. The article system is completely custom however the back end panel is ran simple from phpMyAdmin – straight to the database. I think there is enormous potential with the two sites as the brands have a very loyal following and is growing by leaps and bounds. It has been mentioned in 10 or so online and offline newspapers (that I am aware of) as well as a magazine – all of which will be provided. The site was featured as Yahoo’s Site of the Week. The site was forever (and perhaps still is) the number one pet site viewed on StumbleUpon.com. The blog also has 177 links from 56 sites according to Technorati.com and ranks 52,000. The database is huge. It’s full of fully owned content, images, customer data, subscriber data, members etc etc. The brand really sells when it comes to tee shirts and calendars. We have a drop shipper when needed that we buy tee’s at 4 dollars a shirt. Each shirt sold for $20 so there was a great margin. The two sites have a solid existence and are trenched well into all the major search engines with perhaps thousands of first place results for keywords and keyword combinations. The majority of traffic is all organic from Google, Yahoo and MSN and it will stay that way forever. The site was built solidly by SEO pros with Search Engine Spiders in mind as every part of the site is search friendly. All pages have been correctly and lightly coded. The database powers the meta tags, title tags, h1’s, h2’s, image titles and bold tags. The site has tens of thousands of dollars put into the design and functionality. petsite4sale@gmail.com


Recommended Article for You close

  Rule 21 Listen to the Market

Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.



Featured Article


Bottom Footer
Share for a Cause












Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!
Name:
Email:
Popular Articles

Adapting to Technology and the Internet

10 Steps to a Great Support Team

Work at Home Moms and Their Bad Rap?

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.