How big does your company need to be before you use marketing professionals?

For brands who are growing  and becoming profitable there comes a time when you choose to professionalise your marketing.  Many businesses decide at this point that they have two choices: to hire a staffer or to buy in expertise from an agency.

Why you need better marketing

The needs are clear – you want more traction with your marketing, you suspect that there are better ways of doing promotion and marketing to get inbound leads and you can afford a budget just for marketing.  These are good signs.

You have identified clearly that your brand has a need and the possible shortcomings of your current set-up.

Hire versus buy: the dilemma

There are advantages and disadvantages – the internal member of staff will need to have well-rounded skills in a range of marketing disciplines (web, advertising, PR, copywriting, print design) and therefore a senior hire with this range of skills is more expensive than a junior.

Using an agency also requires decisions about their skills and area of expertise compared with the type of marketing and communications activity your brand has done in the past or plans to do in the future.

Costs are usually the determining factor

It may be less costly to hire external advisers compared to the cost of a senior member of staff – compare the full cost of hiring and paying (including office costs) a new senior marketer with the price an agency would charge you.

Have a couple of ‘chemistry’ or getting-to-know-you meetings with local marketing agencies and ask their advice.  Also ask to speak to a couple of their recent clients to see if they also made the same transition.

A third option worth reviewing is using a freelancer.  You don’t have the full hire costs of a full time person but can often get very experienced people at lower fee rates.  Check out the freelance hire websites like eLance.com and Freelance.com, Freelancer.com and guru.com.  I’ve successfully hired people for my agency and for clients using eLance.

Creative Agency Secrets has two current clients who use us for mentoring work.  They hired a junior marketer and we speak weekly to review their work, priorities and give guidance.  Could this work for you?  Give us a call – we always offer a free 20 minute first call.

In the meanwhile here are a few other articles that may help you figure out what to do

• Advertising – do it yourself or hire
• Hire a PR firm or do it yourself?
• Do it yourself internet marketing, or hire
• Hubspot offers inbound marketing tutorials for people using its website / content marketing system.
• Read Creative Agency Secrets’ assessment of Hubspot and how to do it yourself
• SEO do it yourself or hire a professional
• Small Business marketing – DIY or hire a pro?
• Web design – do it yourself or hire someone
• DIY or hire a market research company?

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The London communicators forum hosted a debate, “Wikileaks: Does it matter”?

The debate proved to be extremely popular. Not only that, but there are no less than three separate write ups for you to choose from:

Eseoghene Okonedo: Summary of the speakers and event questions.

Jonathan Priest: Recognises the reality and challenges your assumptions about whether leaking is always bad

Sean Trainor: In favour of reduced transparency in business

The main learnings that I gleaned which have applicability for business are:

1. An expectation that our rulers are rational and transparent is now the norm for behaviour.  But may not be true.
2. “Fair play” doesn’t come into the discussion – it happens, there are no rules.
3. When you say you want 100% honesty in business, do you really mean this?
4. Corrupt and self-serving people have always existed and will continue to do so – do you know which of your colleagues, clients and prospects are like this?  And how do you adapt your behaviour to deal with them?

As an aside, This weekend I read the Vanity Fair article (Feb 2011) where they interview the Guardian Newspaper Editor, Alan Rusbridger.  He gives the contextual background to how they were brought in to add reach and publicity for the three caches of documents released so far; including the row when Channel 4 TV was added without consent and the delays in publishing the diplomatic cables in order to allow El Pais and Le Monde into the group with the NY Times and Der Spiegel….. all gripping reading and rather more insightful into the working methods of Assange and his team.

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Antony Mayfield has written Me and My Web Shadow a book about online reputation management, we ask him why he did it and how readers can manage their own reputation online.

So what gave you the idea for the book?

The idea began with a video I did for the Institute of Chartered Accountants called “The 12 Golden Rules of Online Reputation Management”. I realised everyone was beginning to have to come to terms with the fact that their online reputation might affect them. It also seemed like a good way to introduce some of the amazing and easy-to-use tools and services on the web to a wider audience.

What was the tipping point for your realisation that online reputation management was going to be important in the future?

It was when I noticed I was ever more frequently giving the kind of PR advice I was used to giving to clients. Even with very experienced digital professionals, I would find myself saying things like “You’re never off the record online,” and “You should think about being the best, first source of information about yourself on Google”.

What is the number one reason for reading the book?

To get a clear idea of how you can manage your personal presence on the web and what it says about you. It is an “everyperson” guide to looking after your reputation on the web, but it has also been very useful for experienced internet users who haven’t necessarily thought about their own web shadow in a methodical way.

What questions does the book answer?

Me and My Web Shadow answers three big questions in three sections:

1. Why is the web changing the way reputation works?
2. How do we go about living with the web and managing our reputations?
3. How do we practically go about managing our online presence and personal reputation?

You have a full time job – how do you find the time to write a book?

Most of the work was done at weekends and in evenings, although towards the end I took a couple of weeks of holiday to finish it. It was only possible because I had a publisher’s deadline looming, otherwise it would have been really hard to do it like that.

If I read the book, will I have the tools to manage my own reputation online?

You should have a good understanding of why and how to manage your reputation on the web. We shouldn’t confuse “manage” with “control” however. No one, from the biggest brands to private individuals is able to control what is said about them on the web. But they can learn how to influence it, have a say in what the web says about them, if you like.

How can I find out what my online reputation is?

The simplest way is to log out of your search engines and social networks and research yourself as if you were an employer or business associate. Look in all the places you would expect to find information about you, ask what it says about you.

Buy a copy of Me and My Web Shadow

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Help is needed:

Rebecca has been asked to speak at a Cambridge University Careers service recruitment evening about our industry.

I’d like to give them a decent informational talk with a bit of humour thrown in.

Here’s the brief.

You may remember we met back in the Spring and amongst other things I mentioned that I may run a Careers Evening of talks around the Advertising and Marketing sector. Unfortunately, this hasn’t come to fruition. However, the Advertising and Marketing Communications Careers Fair is happening on Thursday 29 October and I am putting on some talks during that event.

We talked about the possibility of your doing 20 minutes on understanding the family tree of the sector, what job titles really mean with some jargon busting. Would you still be willing to come along and do this?

Questions:

1. List all the different types of Advertising and Marketing Communications agency specialisms
2. Create a ‘family tree’ of the sector
3. List all the main job titles found in agencies
4. List all the main job titles found in client-side marketing departments
5. What does each title REALLY mean?

Sounds like an A-level exam….. but can you help me out?

I’ll get going with some of the lists.  More tomorrow.

Please post your suggestions below.

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Congratulations to James Whatley for a fine piece of crisis management on the SpinVox blog.

They have been under fire following a BBC article by Rory Cellan-Jones here , SpinVox's response   and his latest rebuttal here .

Kevin has followed the clear rules of how to diffuse a crisis by sticking to the plain facts in his post.

I guess he's also contacting key bloggers direct and answering their specific questions via comments on their blogs.

Best of luck, my friend.  Tough times.

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I have returned from the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) conference in Austin, USA and, as last year, I attended some great sessions and met interesting people.  This year I was also speaking at the conference.

With the recession beginning to affect agency businesses I sought out those sessions that might be useful learning and training tools for you, the readers of Creative Agency Secrets.  Most of you run or work in creative agencies and will be considering how to plan for your future business development, growth and survival.  I hope that some of these posts will be useful reading over your Easter holiday.

Firstly – the panel I spoke on was called My boss doesn't get it: championing social media to 'the Man'.  With well-known B2B blogger, Peter Kim and the Small World Labs team we had a good discussion including taking questions by Twitter!  The panel is
summarised by several bloggers.

If you have an interest in Advertising and Branding – read about how Alex Bogusky from Crispin Porter+Bogusky is introducing new collaborative partnership business modelsto their repertoire.  Chris Heuer speculated on  The Future of
Advertising ng and 'hot' agency boss Pete Lerma from Click Here/The Richards Group led a great talk on
Models for agency integrationread this if you are a traditional agency adding digital teams to your offering.  

British Filmmaker Jess Search of C4 Britdoc facilitated a discussion on how Brands are driving content for branded entertainment. It seems Advertiser funded programming has come to maturity. 

The PR and Marketing communications world came under attack at the session "Are PR agencies a dying breed? " which was very animated – the common view was that social media is natural territory for PR folk but that we've got to get out and claim it for ourselves.  Building online commmunities in B2C and B2B were covered in two separate gigs:  Nerd network: building a B2B online
community
and Building your audience online .

Design and Digital businesses spoke about pitching and how to win work via the internet.  This focused on some of the 'free' pitching websites in the session called Is spec
work evil?   Probably the hottest argument of the conference occurred here and the debate continued in the comments on my blog post.  Please join in and add your views about whether agencies should do speculative work and free pitching. 

Thank you all for your time and please forward this email if it is useful for your team. 

P.S. I will be going to an event tonight hosted by the Cass Business School to debate solutions to the recession for the creative industries.  We'll be using the we20 method and I hope to publish the outcomes.  Join us  

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Back from the maelstrom that was the Digital Mission I find my in box crammed with trivia.  LIke this one from wonderful agency, Joshua G2 .  Or rather, their PR agency Zest Corporate .  Or rather their account handler Paul 

 Hi Rebecca

Hope you’re well. I have included a release from Joshua G2.

Joshua G2 has conducted some insightful research into how brands talk to UK mums in the current downturn.

Compared to the research last year 52% of mum are now satisfied with the way brands communicate with them, this is an astounding 44% increase on last year.

Please let me know if the release is of interest for your blog.

Many thanks
Paul

I refer you and everyone else to the page listed on RHS that is called "Pitch Me".   In it I explain the areas that I write about and about which I am pleased to be approached.

 This does not and has never included information about Mothers' relationships with brands trying to sell them stuff.  Nor use of the word 'insightful'.

Just so you know.

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Pete Lerma – Click Here/The Richards Group

Over the past 10 years we have seen  a bit change in digital. 

Integration = leveraging a variety of marketing communications platforms and using each to their maximum potential.  Digital doesn't have to follow the traditional creative lead.  

When you do it right the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

How are agencies addressing integration?  They use 'brand vision' as the highest calling for the brand and is a workshop with clients.  e.g. Disney – in the business of keeping alive the magic of childhood.  Around this core they add brand positioning, brand personality and brand affiliation. 

Models of integration

1. Generalist model – the agency says they can handle whatever is needed.  consistent strategy / excecution and convenicne but may not be best in class in both digital and traditional platforms
2. one agency but 2 groups – separate teams of digital and trad who work together seamlessly
3. Goodbey farms out 90% of the production of their digital projects.  The client sees one agency but it is hard to ensure consistency and who is responsible for what
4. multiple agencies – there is a 'holding company' model of having to work with others – geography issues and territoriality – a battle for control.  The agency doesn't want to lose the strategy but if you give up some control it benefits the client.  

Goodbey has mandated from the top that every employee needs to know interactive.  Creative people embrace the fact that digital is where their ideas come to life… "they are done with starting from the 30 sec TV spot – now they start with interactive".  It's about a mindset.

Brands are more open to finding efficiencies than finding best in class work from their agencies.  This is a concern.

We do want to get good revenues and how do you balance doing the right thing and making money for your company becuase digital earns less than traditional advertising.  We start with a principal and a creative head who run a client's business – we work hard to educate and convince the advertising team and it's their obligation to the client to put forward the most well-rounded ideas. 

Client side models

1. some one person in charge of everything
2. advertising group and online markeitng group – separate

How do you determin which portion of the fee splits between each team.  Lead principle on the business decides.  We do a lot of cross-training e.g. PR and social media platforms.  We try to be as co-operative as possible.  Their media group is still split between digital and traditional teams.  Online media buying and planning is so sophisticated nowadays and someone from the traditional side couldn't keep up with that.  So we have trained them on where to recognise that digital is an appropriate part of a campaign.  Weekly media directors meeting. 

Training – we've done creative, media and account handling.  It is a 12 week programme meeting for 2 hours each week and explained every aspect of digital – strategy, creative for websites and advertising, media, production, multimedia, back / front end production, QC.  This was mandatory – backing of CEO key. We also join other team meetings to show off recent work to keep them up to date.  We also started a shadowing programme for a couple of weeks so they can see the day to day reality.  Doing each team separately was important because they want to know different things.  Production was the team that caused us the most problems.

Integrated success stories at brand level – a client who manages their agency roster actively.  Whoever comes up with the idea we get the digital execution. The client sets the boundaries.

"creative hoarding" creates static and friction as one part of the agency grows faster than the other.  2007 Weiden + Kennedy lost part of Nike because they hadn't got interactive.  That year we let a lot of staff go while still growing the interactive hiring.  

The agency is built in layers – is this person a star, do they have potential to be a star or will they never be a star.  We assessed the whole agency.  By discipline, how do we get better – what are we doing right, what are we doing wrong, what systems do we have in place already (e.g. status meetings).  Now we know our gaps what do we have to do to close the gaps.  We did it first by discipline and then company wide.  Continuous improvement.  Using a lot of freelancers hits a cultural change project like this hard.

The future agency model – everyone will be a generalist and able to talk intereactive to some extent.  You will always need a specialist if you want to do best in class work.  

Digital integration spectrum - 

Big idea ———————————————————————–digital manifestation of the big idea

digital idea comes out / tech platform decided / visual design / technical development

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Karly Hand – Karly Hand @identitycrisis

Erin Portman – Erin Portman PR @erinportman

Brian Solis – PR 2.0@briansolis

Peter Shankman – HARO @skydiver

In a world riddled with ADD are PR agencies still relevant?

Solis – Twitter is changing everything – an opportunity as communicators / brand managers.  Real-time flow.  Is it distracting? Where do people go from Twitter – they click out and go to a load of new and different places – discovering information.  building a network around context.  Engage with people who are inteersted in you curating interesting. As a PR person you have to not share what you're having for lunch…..
you should curate information – you are the brand that you represent. information. 

Shankman – as  PR your job is no longer to do your own PR and is now to get others to do it for you.  Twitter is the ultimate example of how to do it. Send thank yous and freebies to people who write about your brands….. Hannibal Lecter – you covet what you know. 

Say something that's worth re-tweeting. 'informational yoghurt' not just plain yoghurt. 

Solis – FB is going after twitter aggressively – how you communicate with your social graph.  A new homepage on FB a timeline for conversations and updates "the statusphere".  Contextual followers.  don't forget Facebook.  The API is now open.

How are PR agencies redefining themselves for SM?

Shankman – Press releases will be dead within 24 months.  The smart agencies are realising that they have to play in this world tha anyone can now play in it….. 70k people are doing their own PR using these tools.   Dedicated people to read the blogosphere just like you used to read magazines.  The beauty if that young PRs have been doing it already search.twitter.com Find ways to get involved – not own the conversation, engage and listen.

 Is it worth putting something out on PR newswire?

If every releaee you put out becomes an irrelevance – some people want to get information on different ways. Journalists are doing searches.  Are you SEOing your releases?Write a release as a formality – social media release written not like a release (use keyword density at the start of the text) write it well – tell the story.  Channels of distributing informaiton.  Changing what you share.  You now have the ability to connect directly with your market don't market at them but find places they hang out.  I use releases on the wire as googlejuice and you can get this for free.  The Press Release is dying.  But this does not mean you don't know how to write.  You still need this key skill!  Writing the story that you want to read about is how you should look at your releases.  Give the background in this way. Putting it out on the wire and hoping for pick-up is just lucky.

What are the most influential digital trends / tools that are reshaping the PR industry?

Erin – the stonrgest are social networks like FB, Myspace and Twitter.  More people use these than use emaiil.  Anecdote about the Girl Scots organisation shutting down a girls cookie selling website because itwas illegal for their terms of service.  She was doing it to raise money to send her troupe to camp.

Start by listening to work out where you need to be. Just joining up won't do it – you create nothingness.  It all has to start by listening before talking.  What are they saying, how and about what? 

How can a PR firm engage a skeptical audience?

A firm should have familiarity with the tools and should work hand in hand with their clients.  Be upfront if you are writing a blog for your clients and you are an agency.  Be transparent.  If you are teaching the client how to use this stuff it 'damn well better be the CEO' because if you get caught you are sunk.

Twitter doesn't make sense for all brands to tweet – but you should use it as a search tool.  A focus group for free.  If you are a brand report back on jounalist work and the news out on the social mediasphere.  Ask your agency to report back on it.  Peoplbrowser tracks a range of conversations on different platforms – a dashboard that's free on the web. Each one has a different culture.  This will tell you how to engage in each one and the language they use.  Be a genuine participant in the communities.

The me-too syndrome is huge.  Everyone tracks useful information.  Agencies are not dying – but some will close.  YOu have to be traditional and also adapt these tools.  Mass-spamming emails of press releases is the wrong way to use these tools.  If you claim you are a SM expert I'll check how many twitter followers you have to see if you are saying interesting stuff that others want to read.  If you are an expert in your industry people should find your talk engaging.  Before we didn't have the ability to track.

Will firms move to managing a message rather than putting it out?

Businesses are constantly reacting – people use agencies because they don't have the in-house resources to deal with them.  Be proactive get the message out there.  

How to measure success of a SM campaign?

This is the wrong question.  Applying today's metrics to new ways of communicating doesn't work. Drive what you want to measure by your activities.  Design the campaign around what you learn by listening and measuring.  Use micro-sites and measure the hits and linkbacks – design around a destination which enabled us to measure by isolating it from the client's main site.  Listening will tell you everything.

Examples of companies that succeed and fail.

 McDonalds have a search base on their brand name.  They traced his tweet back to him and gave him a Arch Card with cash credited to it.  They were listening on aFriday afternoon and got a solution out by the next day.  Hardy's send gift cards and focus on what people say.  Florida Aquarium – tweets one interesting fact a day and get loads of followers because of it.  Embracing an audience who use the search feature to find this.  Fan pages – these may not be worth developing.  Some make the fan page on FB into a profile instead…. create a personality around the brand.  The Skittles campaign rather went about messaging in the wrong way.  Motrin magazine's Moms row blew up because they didn't listen first. 

Richard@dell is engaging on Twitter and the social web.  He doesn't only help celebrities.  

At what point does it make sense to outsource your PR?

 When you don't have the talent or resources to do it.  You need help.  Remember corp com teams need tocover HR, Finance as well as marketing.

Recommendations for companies not yet in SM

Start listening.  Own your name on every platform.Even if you don't use it straight away.  Listen.  Turn to an intern who knows the space and ask them what they think.  Let them teach you.  There's always more to learn.  Don't try to learn everything at once.  Just because college students play doesn't mean they can translate it into business. You need to continue to use your own business acumen. Curate your content carefully because it's all indexable from the social web.  Use"usernamecheck" to find what's available and to find squatters on your brand name.  You teach the intern what to say, they teach you how to use it.

Rules of engagement to follow for SM?

  the communities dictate the rules.  Pay attention to that.  Transparency and honesty is critical.

PR agencies thinking that they were the gatekeepers has died.  What's the business model that will thrive in future?

 
We thought we had control – what we really had was the ability to steer and shape perception.  We now have a greater ability to do this in the communities.  The business model – note competition from new places digital agencies, community management, blogger relations, and freelancers.  We need to adapt to bring in all these things.  Brian Solis has hired librarians to index the data so we can use it.  community managers to listen and tell the cleint to respond to situations.  We don't charge for email blasts any more.

 Agencies can add value through 'adult supervision' adding message and strategy for external publics. Metrics matter – agencies showing monthly reports on metrics not mentions.  Skillsets beyond Google Analytics – tools that can add value.  Work with blogger.  Trad industry analyst relations still work.  The trad method of engaging with journalists may take 6 months to get results.  You can get results within hours with this new media.  Know who you are trying to reach and where they consume media.  Not everyone is like you.

Part of the model is dead – from the ashes rises the phoenix of the future.  What will die? 

press releases, not engaging in conversation, broadcasting messages at audiences, the blast fax.

What's a proper reply to a tweet that is relevant?

 what's appropriate?  Advertising is when you're doing it and PR is when someone is doing it for you.  Your goal is to create raving fans who will tell the person posting on your behalf.  Yelp is a useful service for when someone mentions your company. Offer a great free service to the complainer convert them to your way.  Approach directly.  But there is a creepiness factor that people have to just work through. The individual conversation dictates the response.  Every conversation requires a unique response you can't cut and paste the same replies.  An age of customisation. 

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THe good just got really great.

sending unsolicited and inappropriate marketing messages has always been close to what we now call spam.  

In the blogosphere, this direct approach without first establishing an online relationship and credentials / rights is considered more invasive and inappropriate than in the offline or email-only world.

Bloggers are very good at negative publicity.  And at campaigning / lobbying.

This wiki suggests that people blog these PR companies' URLs.  I.e. get no email at all from them (and probably report them to spamcop and get the domain blocked at server level). And heres a list of individual email addresses blocked by the author of "The Long Tail" and editor of Wired Magazine.

How damaging will that be to your business?  Imagine, no emails getting through certain servers and to some key journalist/blogger individuals – and all because a colleague made a mistake… 

ACTION – check your PR company is not on that list and your individual PR representative isn't either.  Your brand is doomed online.  Move your business elsewhere. 

Companies that I know who are on the list include [note I am not linking this text] Edelman, Bigmouth, Bite, FourtyThree, Global Results, Lewis, Ogilvy, Porter Novelli, 

Wise up. 

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