Tag Archives: Digital marketing

November 29, 2016 · 8:31 am

A Gift From The PR Gods

I received an invitation a couple of weeks back that I thought I’d share with you all today. It’s a wonderful example of so many things gone wrong that I hardly know where to begin. Sorry if I sound delighted, but I’m always happy when fodder for the screed pops into my inbox.

It begins innocuously enough:

This Friday, Keith, we are doing a last minute gift guide mailing to the top 30 influencers who need products for their short lead holiday gift guides and long lead Valentine’s Day gift guides and we thought Consult Keith, might be a good fit.

Let’s stop there and think for a moment. Does anyone give blogs as gifts? I certainly don’t but maybe I’m behind the times. Had I already done what I’ve repeatedly threatened to do and turn these 2,000 or so posts into a book, I might have something tangible to send along. Still, I’m always up for increasing the readership of this thing so let’s keep reading, shall we?

Next, there is a list of 33 media outlets (yes, 33, not “the top 30”) of various sorts which reach widely divergent targets. Some skew very female, some quite male, some fairly old and some quite young. Now while I get that a gift guide might contain things the target would buy for a different demographic, it strikes me as odd that this is as untargeted as it is. No offer to segment the list either. But what do I get?

And what do I need to give you?

  • 30 pieces of product (with a press release attached to each)
  • A paragraph descriptor of your product
  • Photo of the product on a white background

Nothing like getting included in a group of indeterminate size, right? The invite doesn’t mention any limit on how many products will be placed on the desks of these influencers, and one can only imagine how the 30 pieces of your product will be divided across the 33 names on the recipient list. Of course, given what I know about building security in New York (where many of these outlets are located), there is a very good chance that the “direct delivery” won’t happen, especially since the product is to be shipped to Los Angeles. The cost is only $849. Oh – plus the product cost. And shipping the product to LA. So if you have an item that costs you $35, that’s $1,050 in product cost plus shipping for 30 items (let’s figure $10 each) plus $849. So for just under $2,200, you can be included in a bunch of stuff that gets given to someone at a media outlet for possible review and/or mention. Such a bargain…

I don’t mean to be a total cynic here. PR is important, especially at this peak shopping time of the year. But I back up to the very fact that I received this invitation to send along product in the first place. My product is this blog or maybe even my consulting services. Neither are a fit for this, obviously, but the note calls into question how carefully this PR firm will execute the program since they can’t even screen the recipients of this invitation and the target list is a scattershot approach to messaging. They can’t seem to count to 33 either, and if PR NewsWire is the extent of the marketing they’re doing, I’m underwhelmed. Those are  pretty big red flags. Then again, we’d never do anything as off-target as this, would we?

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November 28, 2016 · 12:03 pm

Feeling-based Vs. Fact-based

Before the Thanksgiving break, I did a free consultation with a prospective client (you can get yourself one too just by asking!). We talked about where the business has been and where he thinks it should be going. The problem we identified was that much of his information was feeling-based and not fact-based. I can hear  the frequent readers of this screed preparing for yet another rant on the value of data, so let me surprise you a little today.

English: Cyber analytics is the science of ana...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The hardest thing in business is seeing over the horizon. Oftentimes we need to shut our eyes and project ourselves forward in time, carried on the magic carpet woven from what we know so far and our own intuition. The reason is that in today’s business climate the future is often very different from the past and the analytics that reflect past behaviors have to be projected forward in the context of what might be the future environment. The more ambiguity the future holds for your business the greater the reliance on your own gut.

The issue for this business is that the leadership team was either young or inexperienced in business (they are scientists, mostly) or both. That’s why it seemed as if bringing in experience and intuition (that would be yours truly) made sense. You might not be in that situation but you might be feeling uneasy about your firm’s future direction even as you act in accordance with all the business measures you have in place.

Please don’t mishear me. If you have any sort of digital presence (website, social, email, etc) and aren’t using your analytics to inform you about traffic and how users are engaging with you, you’re not doing your job. If you don’t know or understand those things, find someone who does. If you can close your eyes and feel your typical customer, that’s fantastic, but if the reality of your data doesn’t match your feelings, you need to try again. You can’t let run a business making feeling-based decisions alone. Don’t over-think, but don’t under-inform. OK?

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November 16, 2016 · 12:29 pm

Why Can’t You Yell Fire?

I think we all know that you can’t yell “fire” in a crowded movie theater. It will cause a panic and someone will get hurt. At a minimum, the odds are that someone will also call in a false alarm that distracts the fire department. That is a common-sense limit to free speech. Almost 100 years ago the Supreme Court said that the First Amendment, though it protects freedom of expression, does not protect dangerous speech.

I thought of that the other day when Google and Facebook announced that they would take what I think is a great first step in purging themselves of fake news by cutting off the access those sites have to revenue-generating or promotional ads. As Reuters reported:

Google said it is working on a policy change to prevent websites that misrepresent content from using its AdSense advertising network, while Facebook updated its advertising policies to spell out that its ban on deceptive and misleading content applies to fake news.

As someone who is devoted to the First Amendment, you might wonder why I’m OK with what seem to be limits on free speech. Fake news – or outright lies – are a big source of the divisive atmosphere most of us recognize exists in our country. They’re not hate speech, which I’m actually OK with because it’s so obviously slanted. They’re worse because they wrap themselves in a cloak of truth. As we’ve discussed here many times before, many people – both in business and out – don’t bother to do the research to find out if what’s being presented to them in factual. The presence of these sites and their fabricated BS makes a very difficult search even more so. No, the Pope didn’t endorse Donald Trump and yet 100,000 people shared that story as if His Holiness did.

By removing the financial incentive to create and promulgate this crap, Facebook and Google are taking a positive step in helping those of us who want to make decisions based on factual material. It’s not censorship; it’s arresting the idiot who’s yelling “fire” for a profit. Hopefully, the next step is some method to annotate and fact check the sites that remain. I also see that Twitter is suspending the accounts of some alt-right leaders.:

In a statement, Twitter said: “The Twitter Rules prohibit targeted abuse and harassment, and we will suspend accounts that violate this policy.”

There is no question that Twitter has become a bit of a cesspool and they certainly need to take some actions that clean up the rampant trolling and harassment that goes on. This, however, doesn’t sit as well with me since it starts down the slippery slope of censorship. The difference is my mind is that the fake news folks are making stuff up for profit while the hate groups are expressing (in theory) their own beliefs, however misguided.

Interesting times, aren’t they?

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