or is better publicity better?
by bruce w. marcus
professional services marketing 3.0
in the early days of publicity, when it was low-down press agentry and not high-blown public relations, the idea was to get your client’s name in the paper. often. in any context. just spell it right.
in the early days of marketing professional services, it became clear that merely to get your firm’s name in the paper, in any context, didn’t help much. ego, maybe, but nothing more. a new approach to publicity had to be developed.
what worked was to get individual firm members’ names quoted in a context of expertise. “you can save a million dollars on estate taxes,” according to john smith of smith & dale, “by…” or, “the party liable for your accident may be the person you’d least expect…” according to harry writ, of writ & writ.
this, in conjunction with such valuable activities as by-line articles and interviews on consequential subjects, was at the heart of the public relations program for quite a few years. some firms developed it to an art, and could produce clippings in multiples of their competitors’. soon, the competition for space was fought with clippings. who got quoted more in the wall street journal? or business week? or the new york times?
but is this still the way to go? is more still better?
probably not. in the early days, when few firms were doing any sophisticated public relations, the few firms who could play the numbers game skillfully generated very high visibility. but ultimately, five interesting facts emerged:
- any name recognition generated by repeated mentions quickly faded when the mentions diminished for any reason. the staying power of name recognition built by these quickie mentions was very short-lived.
- as more sophisticated marketing techniques were brought into play, publicity became part of the overall program, and not necessarily the spearhead. while publicity is invaluable, the numbers game seems to contribute very little to the overall program.
- how do you convert those mentions, however many, into sales? true, reputation is important, and particularly the reputation for expertise. but it won’t stand on its own, without moving people into a sales configuration.
- there got to be an easy tendency to rely on volume of mentions, rather than quality of mentions. this meant that a lot of effort was going into irrelevant publicity.
- as everybody learned the technique, everybody was getting into print, and nobody was distinguished. what had been exclusive became a mob scene, diluting the value of each mention for each firm. how do you compete effectively when everybody is doing the same thing, and saying the same thing?
an important element of publicity, in professional services marketing, is leadership. when you can’t lead the pack, and are merely one of the pack, you’re accomplishing nothing to enhance or establish your reputation.
no, more is not better. better is better. less publicity, but each placement more relevant to the firm’s marketing needs. fewer clippings, but each with more impact to the firm’s reputation for expertise.
and relevance is better. relevance to the overall marketing objective. not publicity for publicity’s sake, but for a reason.
bruce w. marcus is a pioneer in professional services marketing and coauthor of “client at the core.” this is adapted from his new book, “professional services marketing 3.0,” available for purchase here.
copyright. used by permission.