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The New Rules of Marketing and PR
How do the 'new rules' of marketing differ from traditional methods?
What are buyer personas and why are they critical for success?
How can newsjacking help a brand gain instant media attention?
How do the 'new rules' of marketing differ from traditional methods?
The "new rules" of marketing represent a fundamental shift from traditional methods by prioritizing direct communication, engagement, and content creation over mass-market advertising and media gatekeeping.
The following are the key areas where these methods differ:
1. Interruption vs. Engagement
• Traditional Methods: These rely on interruption, where advertisements are designed to stop people from what they are doing (like watching a TV show or reading a magazine) to pay attention to a one-way message. This is often described as the "buy, beg, or bug" approach: buying advertising, begging the media to tell your story, or bugging people with sales calls.
• The New Rules: Marketing is about delivering useful content at the precise moment a buyer needs it. Instead of coercion, success comes from thinking like a publisher and providing information that educates and informs.
2. Mass Appeal vs. Niche Targeting (The Long Tail)
• Traditional Methods: Advertising traditionally needed to appeal to the masses with broad, "lowest-common-denominator" messages.
• The New Rules: Marketers now focus on the "Long Tail" of marketing, targeting vast numbers of underserved niche audiences via the web with precise messages. This allows small, specialized organizations to reach their specific buyers directly at a fraction of the cost of big-budget advertising.
3. Media Gatekeepers vs. Direct Access
• Traditional Public Relations: PR used to be exclusively about talking to the media. The only way to get "ink" was to convince a handful of reporters and editors to write about you, with the ultimate goal being the "press clip".
• The New Rules: The web has made PR "public" again by allowing organizations to communicate directly with buyers. Companies no longer need to wait for a media filter; they can use blogs, online videos, and news releases to reach their audience themselves.
4. One-Way Broadcast vs. Two-Way Conversation
• Traditional Methods: Marketing was essentially a one-way broadcast from the company to the consumer.
• The New Rules: Modern marketing is about participation and connection. It involves engaging in a conversation with prospects and building relationships through social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
5. Siloed Disciplines vs. Convergence
• Traditional Methods: Marketing and PR were separate disciplines run by different people with separate goals and measurement criteria.
• The New Rules: On the web, the lines between marketing and PR have blurred into one set of rules. Because "content is content," it does not matter if a buyer's first exposure to a brand is a news release, a blog post, or a video—the goal remains to drive action.
6. Planned Campaigns vs. Real-Time Response
• Traditional Methods: Advertising was based on campaigns that had a limited life and were planned months in advance.
• The New Rules: In an "always-on" world, buyers expect instant, 24/7 communications. Success is driven by speed and agility, allowing companies to respond to news and customer inquiries in real time.
What are buyer personas and why are they critical for success?
Buyer personas are essentially representative profiles of the different types of people who might be interested in your organization, product, or service. Rather than being simple job descriptions, they are "short biographies" that capture the typical buyer's background, daily activities, goals, and the specific market problems they are trying to solve.
Buyer personas are critical for success for the following reasons:
1. Enables Targeted Content Creation
Breaking your audience into distinct groups makes it easier to create content targeted to each specific demographic. For example, a university might have different personas for prospective students (who care about athletics or campus life) and their parents (who care about safety and financial aid). By understanding these unique needs, you can provide the right information at the precise moment a buyer needs it.
2. Shifts Focus from Ego to the Buyer
Most organizations suffer from an "egotistical perspective," where their websites only describe what the product does. Buyer personas force a shift in focus toward the problems the buyers face. When you stop talking about yourself and start providing content that describes how to solve a buyer's specific issues, you build credibility and lead them through the sales cycle to a commitment.
3. Improves Search Visibility
An effective web marketing plan requires using the exact words and phrases that buyers use when they search. By researching personas through interviews and monitoring what they read, you identify the specific keywords they enter into search engines. This ensures your content surfaces when they are looking for help solving their problems.
4. Eliminates Guesswork and Wasted Resources
Deeply knowing how your buyers think eliminates the "agony of guessing" about what to say or which channels to use. This prevents organizations from wasting budgets on broad, nontargeted programs that do not resonate with anyone. Instead, it allows even small organizations to reach niche audiences at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising.
5. Guides Product Development
Buyer persona research doesn't just help with marketing; it can inform product features. For instance, a refrigerator company might add a specific compartment for rice storage after learning through persona interviews that this is a critical need for consumers in a particular global market.
In summary, understanding buyers and building a content strategy to reach them is critical for success because it transforms marketing from one-way interruption into a useful dialogue that builds trust and drives action.
How can newsjacking help a brand gain instant media attention?
Newsjacking is the art and science of injecting your ideas into a breaking news story to generate media coverage, sales leads, and business growth. It allows a brand to gain instant attention by providing journalists with the additional information or unique angles they need at the exact moment they are scrambling to cover a story.
Here is how newsjacking helps a brand gain instant media attention:
1. Providing the "Second Paragraph" for Journalists
When news breaks, the basic facts are easy for reporters to find, but they struggle to find background information or a unique angle to round out the story. By reacting in real time with a blog post, tweet, or media alert, you provide the content that journalists find when they search Google or Twitter for experts while writing their stories.
2. Leveraging Real-Time Search and Social Trends
Modern search engines index content in real time, meaning your take on a story can appear in search results instantly. Using appropriate hashtags on social media, such as #DeflateGate or #VPDebate, ensures your message is seen by journalists and the public who are monitoring those specific trending topics.
3. Bypassing Traditional Media Gatekeepers
Instead of "begging" the media to tell your story, newsjacking allows you to reach the marketplace of ideas directly. If your take is clever or adds genuine value, it can go viral on social networks, which often prompts mainstream media outlets like the BBC or the New York Times to pick up the story.
4. Creating Low-Cost, High-Impact "Free Ads"
Successful newsjacking can result in massive exposure that would otherwise cost millions in traditional advertising. For example:
• Wynn Hotels waived a celebrity's bill during a highly publicized scandal, resulting in mentions in over 3,600 news stories, effectively serving as free global advertisements.
• Krispy Kreme and Michelin used the #DeflateGate sports story to create clever tweets seen by millions of people at no cost.
• Symantec newsjacked a Justin Bieber single release with a witty "security warning," leading to an 18% spike in online sales within 48 hours.
5. Positioning the Brand as a Thought Leader
By consistently offering expert commentary on breaking regulatory changes or industry news, a brand can be cited as an authority by news organizations. This builds credibility and ensures that when buyers or reporters search for a topic later, your organization remains at the head of the pack.
Key Tactics to "Make it Happen":
• Speed is essential: Acting within minutes or hours is required to catch the news cycle before it peaks.
• Monitor keywords: Use Google Alerts or Twitter to track industry terms, competitors, and serendipitous news.
• Use media tip lines: Outlets like CNN and TechCrunch allow anybody to contribute scoops or story angles directly.
• Remain tasteful: To avoid damaging your brand, ensure you have a legitimate tie to the story, especially regarding negative events or tragedies.