Know-How Exchange : Strategy

A few answers from a consultant who works with small, modest businesses.

Firstly you do not need someone who is in the wine business. Marketing is about people, if you can understand them and their needs in your circumstance - that is important here. The details - that is to say the who, why and wherefore of your business are secondary. A good marketer will have the imagination that allows them to fit themselves to your needs.

Answers to your specific points:

1) To my mind there are disadvantages to both kinds of agency that you mentioned. You need an agency that can compose imaginative campaigns whilst at the same time being able to meet the needs of a big client like you.*

2) You should be asking yourselves who you are serving. Your best customers are the lifeblood of any business be they small or large. You need more of them. Now this isn't asking yourselves about agencies - this is asking yourselves about your own customers. Information you have right here and right now. Because hiring in an agency isn't just to engage someone. It's to invest your money with someone who will bring you more and better customers - who will bring you 10x what you invested in them. Discuss ;-)

3) If I were in your shoes, I would ask them how they will find you more and better customers. It's not so hard to do which is why I'm surprised that so few actually think of customers at all. That is, after all their job.

4) First warning: be very, very careful of the agency that agrees with everything you say, meets your needs exactly and only suggests the things you want to hear. I call them suits, others term them sirens in the manner of Homer. In other words, tie yourself to the mast.

You need better customers, not fanciful advertising. That means you need a business that will be honest with you, and one you can trust to give you straight answers. Look for an agency that extends the hand of trust first - that is to say, they're honest with you. This isn't common. An agency that says they're honest may not be: find an agency that demonstrates it first, and doesn't wriggle when confronted. It's easy to be fobbed off by people who intimidate you with their high-class degrees, only when they use it as a defense when they've messed up, it shows they're not being honest.

5) I define success for a business in terms of how many good customers I bring to them. This is not an easy thing to judge however. Just finding out what makes a good customer is usually enough to know. It will make your approach to PR effective. Most people use the advertising slots to go to the kitchen or the bathroom. Aardman of Bristol (Wallace and Gromit - if you've heard of them?) did a campaign for Lurpak using an animated trombonist made of butter - and had people shouting from the livingroom to come and see it again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lurpak

That's the kind of advertising you want. More to the point, it still needs to connect with your best customers. Get that right first and no few problems are ironed out right from the beginning.

WHERE NOW? My advice is to get in touch with Mr Goodman here or contact Perry Marshall in Chicago who has a long list of sensible, no-nonsense marketers who can meet your needs. https://www.perrymarshall.com/ (312) 386-7459


*For example my approach to a business is to find out who is buying and why. Uncovering the motives of your best customers will make your advertising effective, in whichever medium it is found. Just having a TV ad won't make your advertising effective, it may have you thinking you're doing all you can. Believe me you won't even have started.

A PR Agency is great to use when you have news that matters to your target audience. But it's unclear from your recent makeover if that's sufficient "news" to be attractive to the media (who PR will attempt to engage). You may choose instead of lead with advertising (guaranteed placement) or better yet, create stories/contests that will engage your target audience (everyone who tries the new POS system in-house, is entered into a prize drawing, or a photo contest, etc.) and work to spread these stories (with a social media person/agency).

Moriarty,

I appreciate the insights to the PR market you provide. I especially like the answer to the questions we need to ask ourselves and the agencies. Who are our best customers, and how does the agency plan to engage prospects similar to those "best customers".

As to the definition of success, as always, the real definition of success will be more customers buying more wine. The hard part, and the part I need some help with, is to figure out which available metrics should I use to judge the agency we hire. We have an advertising budget upwards of $500,000 separate and distinct from the PR. I don't see how we could measure the lift from PR as opposed to advertising.

We were talking about defining success as as the distinct actions - appearances in print or broadcast media, event attendance, blog mentions, etc. My question is more along the lines of: should we accept any print exposure as a point of success, or should we only accept it if it coincides with the items we have decided we want to promote?

Paul

Jay,

Thank you for your response. As I posted above, we already have a decent advertising budget. With that, we're in print, ppc, Facebook, as well as some specialized media.

We're looking for a PR agency who will publicize all of our initiatives. A store remodeling may not be sexy enough for the NY Times to cover, but when many of our online reviews comment on how crowded it is and how difficult it is to maneuver when we're busy, it is very important to us to get the word out about the changes. Getting the word out about our new POS is important for the same reason - it will make the store experience better.

If we can get the right publicity for our events, it makes it much easier to sell tickets to future events. It may also bring us to the attention of someone who hasn't heard of us.

Regarding the questions I would like some help answering, would it be better to see a picture of Celebrity A at one of our events on Page 6 (NY Post gossip page) or a twelve paragraph report on the event in the Upper West Side free newspaper? In the first, we'll get mentioned in a much more widely read paper. We would be more likely to hit new eyeballs with the first, but would anyone notice us or would it just be about Celebrity A? In the other, we would be the focus of the story, with a much narrower, more local readership. We would, in that instance, be talking to our "best customers".

Clearly, I have more questions that answers, and that's why I need help.

Paul

The role of PR here is to get people curious and to get them talking about you.

In the wine business you'd do well to look at the efforts of Gary Vaynerchuk and his incredibly successful WineLibraryTV.

https://tv.winelibrary.com/

Here, I'm not advocating that you copy Gary, merely that you review some of the things he did to raise awareness and to turn his parent's business into an eight figure per year concern.

The two biggest questions to ask of both companies are:

What have you done for other people, with what kind of results, over what period of time, and at what cost?

Who have you worked with that you'll gladly put us in touch with so we can chat with them about the ways in which your delivered on your promises?

Then you need to ask yourself several serious questions:

1. What's our goal here? Where do we see ourselves being as a result of this PR campaign three months, six months, a year, and two years from now?

2. By raising this awareness, what do we want people to do, learn, and remember?

3. If we're looking at only one action that we want people to take as a result or learning about us, what do we want that thing to be?

4. What's the long term value of a news customer and how many new customers do we want to attract?

5. What kind of risks are we prepared to get ourselves noticed and to get ourselves remembered (for all the right reasons). What have our competitors done that's in any way different? Bear in mind here that in marketing, the majority is always wrong. If all you do is echo or emulate the efforts of your competitors how will you possibly stand out as being worthy of new attention?

6. How much share of mind, share of wallet, and share of market do we have now and how much more do we want to capture?

7. What do WE think our current customers want and what do they REALLY think, want, like, and value most about doing business with us? How can do we reach more people just like these customers? Where are these people and what appeals to and what MATTERS most to them about wine and about us?

8. What do we do, offer, or provide and how do we do this BETTER than anyone else in our niche, and how does this thing (or how do these things) make people's lives better, richer, and fuller? Do we advise buyers, do we have a wine club, do we help our buyers feel special, valued, knowledgable, smart, and important? Do we offer something or some service that no one else offers and what value might there be in asking our existing buyers to invitee their wine-loving friends to try our wines and to try our services in exchange for a low dollar, high value gift with purchase?

9. Where do the people we want to reach hang out? What magazines do they read, what TV shows do they watch, what social media channels and which blogs do they read? Which caterers do they use, which party and event planners? Which salons for hair and nails do they frequent and how often? Which New York clubs are they members of, which gyms do they belong to, which parties do they attend, where in the Hamptons do they strut their stuff in the summer and who caters those parties and events? Who shops with us that's well connected and who might be willing to offer access to their social and business Rolodex? Where do our primary buyers live, work, eat, and shop? How can we partner with the kinds of restaurants, clubs, bars, and hangouts that people similar to the people who buy from us patronize and how can we show these people that people just like them buy from us because we're the best at what we do?

Why not throw a party and/or lecture series in your new space? That's the best way to get the word out - first through advertising the event(s) and then by people talking about the event(s) with their friends. In fact, consider teaming up with a local fashion house/school, and having a fashion show (or another similar type event that your target audience will likely care about). A single PR mention is unlikely to do much for your bottom line - you need to keep the mentions going.

Gary,

Thank you for your very detailed response. We've asked many of those questions, but there are a few very important ones we haven't addresses as a group.

I don't know the share of mind, wallet or market we hold. We have neighborhood, local and national competitors. On a national basis, we have less than 0.1% market share. In our neighborhood, we have at least 20% market share. In our local market, we have a market share approximately equal to about dozen competitors.

We've chosen the things we would like to emphasize based on customer feedback, both to us and in store reviews.

The answer to question 9 is one we hope the PR firm already knows. That would be a key factor in figuring out who to hire, and one I'm glad to have pointed out.

Many excellent points to consider.

Joseph,

I think you hit the nail on the head as to "need to know who are those people. The success of this effort will be measured by how effective the publicity is in reaching them."

It goes along very well with Gary's "Where do the people we want to reach hang out?"

I think I've received some very useful information here, as usual.

Jay,

I like events - we plan on hosting several, both in-store and at restaurants. That includes a "Grand Tasting" when the remodel is done. The last "Grand Tasting" we did had 26 tables with over 120 wines. We have regular tastings like most wine shops, but we've also hosted book signings, themed group tastings, hosted winemaker dinners, and more, but all within the scope of our regular business. As for a fashion show, we'd have a hard time competing with Fashion Week, across the street! And yes, we have a few partnership efforts in the works with companies exhibiting at those shows.

It still comes down to publicizing the events, and our other initiatives. It's not about creating more events - just getting the message out to the people we're trying to reach.

But - is the agency that can get us a national tv spot the right one to promote our remodel to our neighborhood customers? An agency with lower fees might not get us that spot, but might get us into a bunch of blogs that are targeted to our neighborhood, and get us some event coverage.

I looked at your profile, and I see that you have worked with mid-size companies like ours on their marketing. While this is just about PR and not any other facet of marketing, do you have an opinion on the type of agency we should use? Is it better to play for the three run homer, or to try putting together a string of singles?

BTW ever heard of a gentleman called Oz Clarke?

To recap what I have really taken away from the discussion so far:

1. The pros and cons of both types of agencies, things under the surface that we may not be looking at.

-- An agency that has experience with business of our size and reach.
-- An agency that has experience reaching our target audience.

I haven't had as much response to this part of the question as I've had to some of the others, and this is one I really hope to learn still more about. What should I look for to know how an agency really operates?

2. The questions we should be asking ourselves before we get too far into the search process.

-- Who are our best customers?
-- What do they have in common?
-- What is motivating them to buy from us?
-- Where are they hanging out, both in real life and media wise?
-- What kind of risks are we prepared to to take get ourselves noticed and to get ourselves remembered?

3. The questions we should be asking the agencies, and should we be asking the same questions of both types of agency.

-- Where do they plan to find prospects similar to our best customers?
-- Where do our primary customers live, work, eat, and shop?
-- How does the agency plan to engage those prospects?
-- Do they have the contacts that will allow them to reach our prospects?
-- What have they done for other people who were trying to reach similar customers?
-- How do they plan to measure success?

4. Things we need to be aware and/or wary of.

-- Sirens in the manner of Homer, who lure us in with big promises and watch us crash on the shore.
-- An agency that wriggles when confronted - doesn't give straight answers.
-- Fanciful advertising

5. How should we define success?

-- How effective the publicity is in reaching our target audience.
-- How many new customers we add.
-- How the media (including social media) reacts to our campaign.

Is there anything I've really missed from the previous comments?

I'm going to leave this open for another round (if folks are willing to continue to contribute) then close it down and distribute points.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed already.

Moriarty,

I wouldn't be much of a wine geek if I hadn't heard of Oz Clark!

Paul, just checking ;-) I love his descriptions, and they've inspired some of my copy/ads too.

Let us know how you got on!