For Great PR, Put Relevance First

Have you ever been disappointed because the characters in a movie weren’t relatable? If it was TV, you probably flipped the channel. If you were in a theater, you might have grudgingly endured to the end, then told your friends to save their money. Customers react this way too. If you don’t market in a way that is relevant to them, they will tune your PR out (at best), or worst case, will revolt. As an entrepreneur, you must offer relevant news that will resonate and connect with your market.

That sounds difficult, doesn’t it? To make it easier, think about the elements of a great story as a family unit. Think of branding and marketing as the parents and sales, advertising and customer experience as the children. As in any family, if they’re on the same page, life is great. But misery occurs when any member gets out of sync. Creating balance will be a perpetual process, but here are some tips to shorten the timeline based on what other entrepreneurs have already done.

Going One on One with your Products

Disney was one of the first to perfect personalized product experience with “D-Tech Me” in which photos capture customers from multiple angles and create a personalized “Jasmine doll” or 3-D character with your son or daughter’s face that is mailed to them upon their arrival back home. Mike and Ryan Regina, the brothers behind commercial design builder Big Sky Enterprise have taken this strategy to the construction industry by supporting companies looking to expand with a “Disney Experience” for their building expansion. In their research, they realized customers had two options:

1. The traditional model, where an executive at the company takes the lead and coordinates the architect, engineers, attorney, approval process and hires the sub contractors to perform the work after permits are obtained. The entrepreneur must find time to coordinate all of these participants while still working full-time and running their business. It’s a huge financial investment time commitment. If he or she somehow makes the time, other functions (supporting existing clients and new business development) will be negatively impacted. He or she will run the risk of burn out as well.
2. Or, they can hire a company that specializes in organizing and following through with these steps. This allows owners to focus their attention on business while the specialist firm takes care of the development, financing, and construction of the expansion. Like Disney, Big Sky creates a unique experience for each client served. Everything is taken care of, from initial vision to certificate of occupancy. In this case, the “Disney of Real Estate” approach has resulted in increased business to the point of making the firm one of the Philadelphia’s 100 fastest growing companies.

The principle holds for both products and services, for everything ranging from custom ordered t-shirts and jewelry (think Etsy and Zazzle) to advanced service offerings like “creating, selling and building a new restaurant concept to Disney” (there really is such a business, and the proprietor, Steve Schussler, has created some five concept restaurants so far including Rainforest and The Boathouse.)

Going One on One With Marketing: Predictive Data Isn’t Just For Geeks (or Large Companies)

Here’s an interesting fact: Neilson has surveyed 2,000 small US businesses and discovered that 60% are using big data to predict market trends and demand.

Predictive analytics assists in customer retention, a competitive edge in selling, predicts future spending, dramatically reduces marketing budgets and most importantly, establishes customer relevance. The best part of this is that the right system will let you do these things simultaneously instead of concentrating on just one or two goals at a time. It gives customers a better shopping experience by not bombarding them with offers for products they don’t want or need. For example, if your brand of choice for oral hygiene products is Crest, you would probably be happy if they sent you offers for a free toothbrush each month. But you’d be annoyed if they blitz you with offers for Colgate.

When Lang Smith, CEO of Cloud Signalytics for the auto industry, he was filling a gap the rest of the industry didn’t take seriously. At that time, the industry followed the motto, “If we spend the money on ads, the sales will come in automatically over time.” In Smith’s case, he revolutionized old marketing rules. Instead of having customers receive endless offers from dealerships with nothing to do with their individual situations, he showed the auto industry how to use predictive analytics to offer customers only what they need, and when they need it. The outcome: Smith is helping companies such as car dealerships to reduce their marketing budgets by 50% or more, while increasing their abilities to meet customers’ wants.

Why would any company market to 50,000 people if only 5,000 of those people actually want their product or service? In the case of auto dealerships, this type of relevance is helping auto dealers generate 10 times the customer base for about a tenth of the cost in about a fourth of the time. Predictive analytics—and customized relevance to your customer—helps to ensure you are pouring your PR message into the conduits that are pre-disposed to receive. This is PR wisdom that will stand the test of all time.