John Elliott, Founder of Power PR, has led his manufacturing and technology marketing public relations firm into a whole new realm of PR over the past seven years. In fact, it’s a new category of product marketing called Performance-based Marketing Publicity.
Power PR offers guaranteed published stories, month-to-month contracts, razor-sharp marketing strategies, and an unusual performance/statistics-driven account management team set-up.
“Performance-based Marketing Publicity can bring a company from non-existence into national prominence in a matter of days,” says Elliott. It can educate prospects about a complex product at a fraction of the cost of display advertising. It can establish credibility for a company like no other product marketing tool.”
“Results like 1,000 inquiries from a single article are possible,” according to Elliott, when using Performance-based Marketing Publicity . “We have had as many as 450 inquiries in one day, from one article. We guarantee a client from 3 to 5 stories a month and it’s not unusual for us to exceed these figures; with statistics like these we have no problem meeting our guarantee. Our clients clearly see there are real benefits to our Performance-based Marketing Publicity over traditional ‘unsecured’ PR.”
Elliott points out the biggest single reason advertising doesn’t work or pulls with poor results is because product marketing was not used first. “Done right, it can increase the advertising response rate by 200% or more,” says Elliott. “Product marketing is to mass media what word-of-mouth is to one-on-one contact. Its effectiveness is based on the power of objective third party endorsement. Everyone agrees that word of mouth is powerful promotion. Our program is like having thousands of word-of-mouth messages happening at once. Because of the number of stories we get published, it makes a very efficient form of marketing compared to advertising.”
In the development of Performance-based Marketing Publicity , Power PR has basically stripped public relations activity to its bare bones and rebuilt it based on the fundamentals of sound product marketing techniques, including market research, competitive analysis, and strategic positioning.
This allows the firm to provide an unprecedented strategic marketing capability for its clients, and integrate this marketing strategy throughout every aspect of their PR campaigns. The result is stories with a high level of acceptance by both the client’s targeted audiences and publication editors.
This is the first cornerstone of Performance-based Marketing Publicity, and one that clearly differentiates it from “traditional” publicity efforts.
Second, Power PR’s Performance-based Marketing Publicity program deals with editors at industry publications quite differently than traditional PR firms. Instead of employing a mass blast fax in a shotgun approach, Power PR chooses instead to communicate and interest editors directly through one-on-one phone communication. In doing so, editors are more likely to see the true value of the article for their publication and, therefore are more willing to use the article. Consequently, Power PR is typically able to generate a larger quantity of quality published articles for its clients.
Finally, Power PR’s Performance-based Marketing Publicity program mandates a very highly tuned project management team, each member of which is fully accountable for the success of the client’s program. This team encompasses the hands-on marketing, media, creative and account management personnel, as well as senior-level account supervisors, who use daily production targeting and statistical management to maintain optimum production for their clients. It also ensures that clients receive continual communication on their projects, and that the team is available to their clients whenever desired.
This level of project management and client accountability is relatively unheard of in the PR world, but necessary to bring about consistently successful campaign results.
With the above systems in place, the Performance-based Marketing Publicity program can then provide and deliver upon its published article guarantee of 3 to 5 stories monthly, depending on the program. But also, it gives Power PR the confidence and leverage to offer clients a month-to-month contract, which, of course, is very appealing to any client. The point being that if the program is delivering, clients have no interest in leaving.
“Using traditional PR methods, no PR firm could offer a guarantee or a month-to-month contract and stay in business very long,” says Elliott. “The only way you could do it is to provide a Performance-based Marketing Publicity program, based on sound marketing strategy, personalized publication handling techniques, and truly accountable client management. Only that could ensure published stories, such as we have in place here.”
First, the firm specializes only in product marketing. Second, localized or regional campaigns are not accepted. Clients must be willing to go at least national. And third, Power PR is very selective in what companies it takes on board, with only a limited number of clients accepted at any given time. Frequently, there is a waiting list.
But if you do get on Power PR’s roster as a client, results are pretty much guaranteed. “Power PR can deliver to your organization an audience exposure that is more cost-effective and credible than advertising,” says Steve Johnson, Marketing Director for DPI Labs, Inc., an aerospace manufacturer in La Verne, California. “They have shown a consistent ability to place within industry-specific publications high-quality, detailed articles about our products and services. The result has been our exposure into the minds of prospects and customers – hundreds, if not thousands of major decision makers.”
As more and more manufacturers are exposed to Performance-based Marketing Publicity and become accustomed to the volume of published stories and the client-agreeable business climate, it is only a matter of time until “traditional” public relations approaches become obsolete.
As sales increase to new heights, expansion will occur.
Here are some examples of Power PR clients that have achieved expansion through marketing publicity:
What is their secret? These companies launched an aggressive, sustained marketing publicity program to deliver their message and it led to generation of leads and sales. And expansion occurred.
However, expansion and growth can also be fragile. Expansion must then be maintained by continuing to communicate and repeat your message through marketing publicity.
Just as it has already proven for these and a large number of other companies, a well-crafted marketing publicity program is an increasingly vital element of any marketing plan. Look for marketing publicity to gain increasing acceptance as the millennium’s newest tool to help any organization expand its business.
