This is a guest post by Terry Taylor, a communications professional with more than 30 years of experience in financial services. Terry holds a master's degree in economics from Case Western Reserve University, and his expertise includes investment management marketing, investor relations and financial communications.

 

One of the most important things a publicly traded company has to address is how it communicates with the investment community. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re a small, growing firm or an established industry leader – you have the same needs to access capital markets, maximize shareholder value and keep your owners happy.

The challenge is putting structure around what you’re doing to get the most for your efforts. Every investor relations program should address four questions:

1. Where is my company now?
2. Where do I want my company to be?
3. What do I do to get it there?
4. Once launched, then what?
   

1) Where is my company now?

Most of us want to start with the second question and speak to the grand strategy. But a successful investor relations framework demands that you think through the environment in which your company is operating and how it’s perceived today, asking yourself:

• Where is my company now and what is its outlook?
• How is my industry doing within the context of the economy?
• How do I stack up versus my peers?
• Which analysts cover my stock? Which ones cover my peers?
• How much of my stock is owned by institutions?
• Which companies are the best regarded in the investment community and why?
  

2) Where do I want my company to be?

How do you define success? Just like any other business initiative, your investor relations program has to have clearly defined targets. For example:

• Targeted total return versus a market benchmark and a peer universe.
• Increased liquidity of company securities.
• Levels of institutional ownership.
• Expand investment analyst coverage.
  

Make sure your objectives are reasonable and attainable.

3) What do I do to get there?

Next comes the creation of a communications program.

For each objective you set, there should be a defined approach and set of deliverables. If your objective is to increase institutional share ownership, your approach could involve increasing security analyst coverage and portfolio manager interest. Deliverables would include presenting at institutional investor conferences, calling on analysts and portfolio managers with your management team, creating and distributing a quarterly company fact sheet and strengthening your web site to make investor material available.

Be clear on accountability for each deliverable. It’s true that many tasks are shared, but someone has to be on the hook.

4) Once launched, now what?

Now that the investor relations program is under way, what do you do?

• Track your results but be patient. Some of your actions will take time to see outcomes.
• Listen to the market’s feedback and decide if your program needs to adapting.
• Remember: The ability to achieve some of your objectives can’t be divorced from the real world. If the company isn’t doing well or doesn’t inspire confidence, no investor relations program in the world is going to fix that.
  

Other questions, including how to integrate investor relations with public affairs, have to be answered too. But you’ll be well on your way to establishing an effective program if you build using a thoughtful step-by-step process.
 

A day in the life of an entrepreneur . . .

Today started like most others. After a restless night of tossing and turning, the thought of my pre-dawn venti Americano pulled me out of bed.

I arrived at the office and got the day rolling with a quick check of email before moving on to the prior day’s Website stats. I looked at the usual suspects — page views, keywords searched and referring sites, which is when the day took a bit of a turn.

In the referring sites I noticed a domain name (which will remain nameless for now) that appeared remarkably similar to our brand name (which is a registered trademark).

Curious to see where this link was coming from, I clicked on the referring URL. Much to my surprise, I landed on a Website for another PR firm and found text and services that appeared to be copied almost verbatim from our Website.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, they actually had an active link to our site from one of their services! No joke. I clicked on Press Release, and it took me to my own site.

Now when we published our service and pricing guide in early 2006, I figured that other PR firms would eventually consider evolving to a model of standardized services and set pricing, but I never thought anyone would be quite so blatant when doing it.

Now What?

Before contacting my attorneys, I pulled a few bits of background information from the Internet:

• Checked Go Daddy for domain name registration, which amazingly enough was public with the primary contact’s email address and phone number.
• Found the president of the company on LinkedIn (same contact as I found on Go Daddy).
  

From there I contacted my attorneys and drafted an email to the firm’s president. Hopefully the story ends there.

The Moral of the Story

• Be vigilant when monitoring and protecting your brand.
• Analyze your Website stats every day. You never know what you’ll find.
• For other entrepreneurs . . . be original. There’s nothing wrong with copying a successful business model, but at least put an original spin on it.
• Keep a good business attorney on retainer.

 

 

When PR 20/20 launched in November 2005, we set out on a journey to, “lead and create leaders,” as our mission states.

My theory to grow a wildly successful and influential PR firm was to hire talented, intelligent and motivated professionals, provide them with the systems and infrastructure necessary to succeed, and then get out of their way.

We wanted to develop and retain the industry's premier public relations and marketing consultants. Professionals whose services and expertise bring immeasurable value to our clients, and directly contribute to their growth and success.
 
The Marketing Consultant Laws were originally created in August 2008 and distributed as an internal document to give us (the Consultants) direction and focus, and challenge us to become stronger and more valuable, individually, and as a team.

I’ve decided to share them here on our blog (unedited) because most of the Laws have wider application to professionals in any industry, not just PR and marketing consultants.

Hopefully the Laws provide some sort of motivation or guidance to professionals who are looking to differentiate themselves, and become leaders.

The Marketing Consultant Laws

 

Deliver Results: Tasks, milestones and activity reports are a means to an end. Our job is to deliver results.
 
Pay Attention to Details: Maintain a vigilant focus on details in all communications and projects. Never make mistakes due to lack of focus or effort. Always ask yourself, “Is this the best I can do?”
 
Be a Proactive Communicator: Don’t ever leave your clients or peers wondering. Anticipate their information needs and maintain a high level of communication at all times.
 
Challenge Yourself to be Great: Always challenge yourself and those around you to improve. There is no limit to what you can achieve in business and in life.
 
Bring Solutions: “I don’t know” is not an acceptable answer. Your clients and your peers rely on you for solutions. Use your experience and the endless resources available to you to find answers.
 
Maintain a Career/Life Balance: Your career affords you the opportunity to live a full and rewarding life, but don’t let it consume you. Maintain balance among work, wellness, relationships, community involvement, professional associations, friendships, hobbies and interests.
 
Grow Your Accounts: The life-blood of every consultant is their client base. It is your job to retain and grow your accounts by maintaining an in-depth knowledge of your clients and their industries, building relationships, delivering results and keeping a pulse on opportunities.
 
Be Creative: Show imagination in your strategic thinking, and bring creativity to every project.
 
Be an Independent Thinker and Risk Taker: Don’t get stuck in the rut of conformity. Look beyond traditional wisdom and conventional solutions. Be willing to take calculated risks and make mistakes.
 
Strive for Excellence: Set high performance standards, and always strive towards personal and professional goals.
 
Think Strategically: Challenge yourself to see the big picture. Always be analyzing —perceptions, audiences, objectives, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Find connections in seemingly unrelated news and trends.
 
Hunger for Knowledge: Don’t ever stop learning. Consume the wealth of information that is all around you, and share your knowledge for the betterment of your clients and peers.
 
Stay in the Moment: You will see and do things in your career others can only dream of. There will be highs and lows, victories and defeats. Cherish those moments, but don’t dwell on them. Your job is to stay in the moment, and appreciate it for what it is.
 
Have Fun: Positive energy is contagious. Bring enthusiasm and passion every day.

Earlier this month, the Treasury Department began its distribution of nearly $100 billion in economic stimulus payments to more than 130 million households.  
 
But long before the checks came rolling in, marketing professionals were planning ways to capture consumer attention and grab a share of the windfall.  

The challenge was two-fold: 1) convince consumers that they should spend instead of save, and 2) make them spend it on their company’s goods and services.
 
The following NY Times article outlines several examples of companies pitching consumers on where to best spend, and stretch, their checks.
 
As Stimulus Rebates Go Out, Stores Want the Whole Check
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD and MICHAEL BARBARO, May 10, 2008
 
“…The government wants the checks to spur the economy through consumer spending. But the oxymoronic nature of the marketing campaigns — spend money to save money — has prompted finger-wagging from some corners, particularly about offers that require consumers to spend hundreds of dollars at only one store…” Full article

Where's It Really Going?

Measuring the success of these campaigns may be easier than planned, as consumers are volunteering details on the things they are paying for with their stimulus checks through news articles, online forums and even blogs, such as How I Spent My Stimulus.
 

If you check your Website’s Alexa Ranking on a regular basis, chances are you noticed a change over the past week.

Whether your Alexa Ranking improved and you started patting yourself on the back for your SEO skills, or it weakened and left you scratching your head, you can rest assured that you (fortunately or unfortunately) most likely had little to do with it.

Thanks to the Internet marketing gurus at HubSpot, we know that the drastic change experienced by many sites occured because Alexa recently changed its algorithm.  Here are the basics:

• Rankings now include more data sources.
• Alexa has improved the methodology behind its algorithm.
• The changes provide you, the one concerned about how your Website traffic stands up on the World Wide Web, with more accurate rankings.
  

Learn more about the new Alexa Rankings straight from the source.

Not sure what we’re talking about?

Find out more about Alexa, a free online tool that ranks your Website traffic and how it compares to other sites on the Web – including those of your competitors.

Bestselling author and entrepreneur Seth Godin has an uncanny ability to illustrate the simplest of marketing concepts in ways that really drive home the point.

In a recent blog post “The bad table,” he gives a first-hand account of receiving the “bad table” at the back of a restaurant, and the marketing challenge that ensued:

“Hence the marketing dilemma: who should get your best effort? Should it be the new customer who you just might be able to convert into a long-term customer? Or should it be the loyal customer who is already valuable?  Sorry, but the answer is this: you can't have a bad table.”

He continues to explain how no one wants second-rate service, products or salespeople – and that there are creative ways to turn bad tables into good tables.

He concluded with, “Treat different people differently. But don't treat anyone worse.”

In this world of Web 2.0, consumers have the ability to share opinions and influence behavior like never before, leaving no room in business for a bad table.

As public relations and marketing consultants, we have the responsibility to make sure our clients are providing only good tables to their customers, and in turn, every one of our clients, no matter how small the account, has a seat at the good table.

Bad Tables Turned Good

Whether through pricing, promotions or positioning, organizations are constantly finding ways to alter perceptions and make their bad tables look good (think baseball bleacher seats).

Every organization needs to take a critical look at its products, services and employees, and find creative solutions to change perceptions, strengthen customer loyalty and grow their business.

"The next 5 years will hold more change for the advertising industry than the previous 50 did."That, according to a new report from IBM (NYSE: IBM) Global Business Services.

In "The End of Advertising as We Know It," (all apologizes to Sergio Zyman who published a book in 2003 under that exact title), IBM surveyed more than 2,400 consumers and 80 advertising executives globally. The report shows, "increasingly empowered consumers, more self-reliant advertisers and ever-evolving technologies are redefining how advertising is sold, created, consumed and tracked."

Report Highlights

• Broadcasters must change their mass audience mind-set to cater to niche consumer segments.

• Distributors need to deliver targeted, interactive advertising for a range of multimedia devices.

• Advertising agencies must experiment creatively, become brokers of consumer insights, and guide allocation of advertising dollars amid exploding choices.

• All players must adapt to a world where advertising inventory is increasingly bought and sold in open exchanges vs. traditional channels.

• U.S. users report more usage of social networking sites and user generated content than almost any other content services category:
  • 45 percent use social networking sites
  • 29 percent visit user generated content sites
  • 24 percent use a music service such as iTunes 
  • 24 percent subscribe to premium television content

• In biggest DVR market, users report extensive replay of television programming. This is resulting in ad skipping and revenue shakeup unless producers and broadcasters reinvent marketing formats and messaging: 
  • 24 percent have a DVR in their home, and 48 percent have used video-on-demand from a cable company or other provider
  • While 33 percent report watching more television content than before the DVR, 53 percent report watching at least fifty percent on replay

• Users feel extreme regarding new forms of advertising. Marketers have to work harder than ever to understand individuals and micro-segments:
  • Nearly 50 percent reported that video spots online – during, pre-rolled or as sponsorships – were the least annoying form of advertisement. Other formats tested were banner ads, pop-ups, and contextual search ads

• However, nearly the same level of consumers responded the same forms of advertising were most annoying online

• Additionally, 11 percent said they’d be willing to pay a little for ad-free viewing of video online

Check out the full report from IBM.

Mainstream media (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, etc.) continues to play an essential role in every PR campaign; however, social media sites such as Digg, Reddit, Mashable and Del.icio.us are becoming more relevant and rapidly changing the way people consume news.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ)recently released an intriguing report - "The Latest News Headlines - Your Vote Counts" - comparing the news agenda of the mainstream media for one week with the news agenda found on a host of user-news sites for the same period.

Here are a few of the key findings:

• The news agenda of the three user-sites that week was markedly different from that of the mainstream press. Many of the stories users selected did not appear anywhere among the top stories in the mainstream media coverage studied.
• The sources news sites draw on are strikingly different from the mainstream media. Seven in ten stories on the user sites come either from blogs or Web sites such as YouTube and WebMD that do not focus mostly on news.
• The user-news agenda, at least in this one-week snapshot, was more diverse, yet also more fragmented and transitory than that of the mainstream news media.

The report goes on to conclude that, "For now, the percentage of Americans who rely exclusively on news from user-driven sites is just a fraction of what it is for mainstream news sites. And in this increasingly fragmented era, many who visit Digg, Del.icio.us, and Reddit may also be reading the online versions of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal."

"But whether or not we see further divergence between user-driven sites and mainstream media over the next few years will surely remain a key question for researches, journalists, and of course, citizens."

While the debate continues, one thing is for sure - the PR industry is evolving, and traditional agencies that don't quickly adapt to integrate social media will be left behind.

See what The San Francisco Chronicle wrote about the PEJ report:

User-news sites offer diverse stories, some questionable source
The San Francisco Chronicle
By Joe Garofoli - Sept. 12, 2007

. . . The traditional news outlet wants to put a lot of gravitas on their front page. They want the readers to eat their spinach," said Kourosh Karimkhany, general manager of Wired Digital, which owns Reddit. Technology allows users to create their own news "agenda" from multiple online sources, rendering a traditional front page increasingly "irrelevant," he said.

Instead, on these growing sites - Digg welcomed 19.5 million unique visitors last month - consumers rely on the "wisdom of crowds" (other readers) to figure out what are the top stories of the day.

The study found that the news items on these sites are "more diverse, more transitory and often draw on a very different and perhaps controversial list of sources." It found that 40 percent of the stories on user-news sites originated on blogs and 24 percent came from mainstream sites like BBC News. Only 5 percent came from wire services. . . .

Eric Clemens, president of Acroment Technologies, and IT consultant extraordinaire, recently sent me a copy of The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris.

I have to admit that I was highly skeptical of the title at first, but after devouring the book earlier this week on a trip to Vegas, I am pleased to report it has changed the way I look at success, and given me valuable insight into ways to increase the efficiency and productivity of our PR and marketing agency.

Some of the concepts are a bit far-fetched for service-based businesses like PR 20/20, but there are lessons to be learned for every professional, especially entrepreneurs.

Check out 15 of my favorite excerpts, and then grab a copy for yourself. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised:

1. “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” - Mark Twain


2. “I can’t give you a surefire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.” - Herbert Bayard Swope, American editor & journalist; first recipient of the Pulitzer Prize


3. “Having an unusually larger goal is an adrenaline infusion that provides the endurance to overcome the inevitable trials and tribulations that go along with any goal.”


4. “It is easy to get lost in minutiae, and the key to not feeling rushed is remembering that lack of time is actually lack of priorities.”


5. “The end product of a shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater focus.”


6. “Don’t ever arrive at the office or in front of your computer without a clear list of priorities.”


7. “If you prioritize properly, there is no need to multitask. . . . Divided attention will result in more frequent interruptions, lapses in concentration, poorer net results and less gratification.”


8. “Stop asking for opinions and start proposing solutions.”


9. “An interruption is anything that prevents the start-to-finish completion of a critical task, and there are three principal offenders: time wasters (those things that can be ignored with little or no consequence), time consumers (repetitive tasks or requests that need to be completed but often interrupt high-level work) and empowerment failures (instances where someone needs approval to make something small happened).”


10. “There is a psychological switching of gears that can require up to 45 minutes to resume a major task that has been interrupted.”


11. “For the employee, the goal is to have full access to necessary information and as much independent decision-making ability as possible. For the entrepreneur, the goal is to grant as much information and independent decision-making ability to employees or contractors as possible.”


12. “If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.” - Frank Wilczek, 2004 Nobel Prize winner in physics


13. “Life is too short to waste, but it is also too long to be a pessimist or nihilist.”


14. “Surround yourself with smiling, positive people. . .”


15. [This one is my personal favorite] “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking that you have something to lose.” - Steve Jobs, Stanford University Commencement, 2005

If you aren't familiar yet with 37signals, and its founder, Jason Fried, do yourself a favor and check out this video from Crain's Chicago Business. Founded in 1999, the company designs web-based software for individuals and businesses. 37signals estimates that more than 1 million people use its products. To date, Jeff Bezos of Amazon is its only outside investor. Their products are simple and affordable, and as their Web site says, "they do everything you need and nothing you don't." Here are a few outtakes from the Crain's video, Talking Management: Leadership Lessons from Jason Fried. He offers an interesting perspective as the leader of a high-growth technology company that has become a media darling, and is sought after by investors:

• "We're not big into increasing our headcount. We're big on increasing our influence."
• "Interruption is the biggest enemy of productivity that there is."
• "We have free versions of all of our products. And that's actually the best way to get someone to pay for something."
• "We're focused on building things that provide way more value than they cost."
• "People are always willing to pay for something they find valuable."
• "I love the idea of building simple tools that work really well."
• "I don't think you need to be a big company anymore to do big things."