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PR Tip: Nine Ways To Outwit And Outsell Your Competition

1. Keep Your Eye On The Bottom Line

• Are you selling products that are returning a high profit in dollars but not in percentages? Remember, it’s not the amount of sales you generate that really counts. It’s the amount of money you take the bank that counts.

2. Focus On Your People

• Is your staff on your bandwagon? Explain to them that you are building a championship team that’s going to survive these times. Are they on board? If not, you shouldn’t be employing them.

3. Communicate Your Differentiation, Your Story And Your Value

• Do you have a differentiation or value story to tell people? If you do, people will remember you and talk about you. If you don’t, they’ll forget about you.

4. It’s All About Connections

• Be the mayor. Your business is up for election every day of the year. Put your time and energy into developing relationships within your community and collecting votes. Nurture your connections. The only cost is your time.

5. Be A Personality

• Get in front of people and be the face of your company. Speaking in front of 100 people is worth more than you can imagine. People would rather do business with someone they know and like.

6. Love Your Customers

• Your customers are the sole reason your business exists so make them feel important. Ask them for feedback. Once a year, invite your key customers to a special event to thank them for their business. It’s far less expensive to market to your true fans than to acquire new customers.

7. Wow! Be Fascinating

• Everything you do and everything the customer sees about you -- your showroom, products, services, greetings, landscaping, washroom and lobby -- must be remarkable. If they’re mediocre, you’re just another average company that’s easy to forget about.

8. Make The Internet Work For You

• If you’re not found on the Internet, people won’t know about you. Invest in “search” and PPC programs. Explore the advantages of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Learn about mobile messaging programs.

9. Develop A Sales-Building Plan

• Write down what you want to achieve, your deadline for achieving it and what it’s going to take to get you there.
• From this, develop a six-month sales-building plan. Get feedback from your staff so they “buy into” the program. And finally, get someone to hold you accountable for getting the plan done.

If you follow these guidelines, you"ll outwit and outsell your competition.

Defining Social Media - Is It The Next Marketing Gold Rush?

Regardless of which business sector you're in, it's hard to escape the news - and hype - about social media. Is it the next marketing gold rush? No, it's just another element that may fit into your sales-building marketing plan.

Carnival Cruise Lines employed a digital-centric guerrilla campaign.

In November of 2009, Blu-Dot, a Minneapolis-based furniture maker, launched a guerrilla promotion utilizing social media that revolved around its $129 “Real Good Chair.”

Digital PR firms have long sought to gain an edge on the competition by spotting trends early. Some have been using mainstream media to uncover trends while others have begun tracking keywords used in search and social media.

Over the past 10 years, social media marketing has gradually overtaken advertising as the favored marketing outlet for businesses.

Whether it’s the TV remote or your computer mouse, our society now runs on a “give it to me now or I’ll click you” model of communication. What is PR? Sometimes it's the power of a click.

Here’s how one simple marketing mistake unraveled into a 30-day public relations and sales nightmare for Starbucks, all because of one simple e-mail blunder:

Each January, we here at Axia Public Relations suggest a theme on which to focus your business activities for the coming months. This year’s theme is “the year to risk.”