Planning your PR and marketing for 2015?
At this time of year, many manufacturing and construction businesses are planning for 2015.
Here are 10 top tips for making the most of your marketing in 2015.
1) Review and evaluate the past year
It’s a great time of year for companies to review what has worked and what hasn’t this year, to give you a benchmark for planning your PR and marketing in the year ahead. Did you launch any new products this year? What was the press coverage generated from each? What sales were achieved and how successful was any advertising you placed? It’s worth talking to the trade magazines to ask them for their ways of monitoring the success of your campaign.
If you monitor your own Google Analytics, then compare this year with the previous year, in all aspects, such as unique visitors, bounce rates, page visits and goal completions. If you work with an PR/SEO agency like Dragonfly PR, ask them to give you a complete review of the year compared with 2013. It is a good time to review your goals and also your SEO activity, allowing you to plan for the year ahead.
2) Look at press coverage achieved and set a target
Review and evaluate the press coverage in terms of advertising value equivalent (AVE) that you have achieved this year. If you work with a PR agency, they should be able to do this for you to work out how it compares in terms of Return on Investment. An average ROI would be 5-10 times that of the fee in terms of media coverage. If you are not happy with the results, ask our PR team to make recommendations and set targets for your PR activity in 2015.
3) Are you engaging via the right social media channels?
Review your social media channels. Which social media do you use and are they working effectively for you? Do you have a record of visitor numbers at the end of 2013? It’s always worth making a note of visitor levels for each social media channel at the end of each year, to compare how much it has increased by throughout the year. Are some of your social media channels not working for you – if so, ask yourself why this is? Is it that you’re not posting regularly enough? Is the content engaging and relevant to your audience? Is it maybe the wrong channel to reach your audience? Are there any new channels you should be using? If you’re not sure of any of the answers to these questions, speak to our social media team on 01709 300130 as we provide free social media audits for potential and existing clients.
4) Review what’s new in 2015
Look at your product portfolio for the year ahead. Do you have any new product launches planned? When will these launches take place? What PR and SEO support will they require? Ask your PR and digital marketing agency to build a campaign around any new products or services, as part of an overall plan for the year ahead. This is an area we can help – especially construction and manufacturing companies where we have extensive experience in supporting new product launches, through press conferences, exhibitions and webinars.
5) Is your PR and marketing activity clearly planned and visible for 2015?
A PR campaign works best when it is planned, so it’s a good idea to ask your PR agency to put together schedule of activity for 2015. This should contact relevant forward features, product/service launches, relevant events, major trade or regional/national or international events. The plan is best if it can demonstrate a whole year’s activity on one single sheet of paper. This should become a working document for PR and marketing activity in the year ahead.
6) Don’t forget community engagement
Review how your community and employee relations have been this year. Do you need to improve morale and motivation of staff or relationships in the local community? It could be a good time to ask a PR agency, like Dragonfly PR, to draw up a community engagement plan which takes into account all of your stakeholders, including employees. A stakeholder map is a great place to start, from which your PR agency can then develop a schedule of consistent activity throughout the year to reach out to all relevant target audiences.
7) Engage via newsletters
Communicating with customers, staff and stakeholders is essential in any organisation. Do you currently have a programme of internal or external newsletters in place to communicate any changes to the business to these audiences? E-newsletters work extremely well and are relatively inexpensive to produce. Dragonfly PR produces a number of e-newsletters for clients and we report back on newsletters opened, links clicked and visits to your website. Newsletters can be a great way of retaining open communications with customers, as well as generating sales leads.
8) Hold a customer event
It’s a great idea to have a customer event planned as a focal point for your marketing activities throughout the year. These work really well, if there’s a strong, newsworthy angle and especially if they are backed by media support. We can help to plan, organise and publicise, customer events. This also includes inviting either trade, regional or national press to attend, which helps to build the relationship with the media. It also means we can secure major in-depth articles about your products or services following the event. Worth considering? Definitely!
9) Win awards
Did you win any awards in 2014? If not, is that because you didn’t enter any or because you didn’t have the resources to dedicate to it? As a PR agency, we are very experienced in writing awards entries for regional, trade, consumer, national and international awards and provide this as part of an overall PR programme or as an ad-hoc service. Whether it is the Queens Awards for Enterprise, Innovation or International Trade, or your local Chamber of Commerce business awards, we can help with putting together an entry that will get you noticed.
10) Review your PPC
Are you paying for Pay Per Click at the moment? It’s a good time to review whether your online advertising is working for you. Many of our business to business clients, particularly in the construction and manufacturing sectors, are recognising that organic search via SEO is working much better for them than simply putting all their budget into PPC. We would be happy to review your activity and recommend an ongoing SEO campaign that increases your search engine ranking and places you on page one.
If you would like the PR or SEO team at Dragonfly PR to put together a plan for 2015 for your business, with no obligation, please contact us on 01709 300130 or email hello@dragonflypr.co.uk.