Insights for Leaders Navigating
Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
Back in January 2009, we wrote a blog post about our experience working with Mobidia, a provider of data solutions, and raising awareness of the company with third-party influentials leading up to Mobile World Congress.
In the past year, Mobidia has made significant progress and has executed more than 14 network lab and field trials with mobile operators in Europe, Asia and North America. In fact, on Jan. 19 the company announced performance results from recent testing and trialing on a tier-1 European network. The results showed an impressive average of 25 percent increase in efficiency on the tier-1 mobile operator’s network during peak load times.
Given this news, we decided it was time to reconnect with some of the industry analysts following the company’s activities.
Thus far, we’ve coordinated discussions with the following analysts:
- Dean Bubley, Disruptive Analysis
- Abraham Joseph, Inteligentis Limited
- Michele Pelino and Chris Silva, Forrester Research
- Susan Welsh de Grimaldo, Strategy Analytics
- Godfrey Chua, Amy Lind and Elisabeth Rainge, IDC
- Michael King and Sylvain Fabre, Gartner
- John Fletcher, SNL Kagan
- Chetan Sharma, Chetan Sharma Consulting
- Rob Bamforth, Quocirca
Mobidia also will meet with analysts from ABI Research, Strategy Analytics and Rethink Technology Research in Barcelona during Mobile World Congress 2010. It has been a pleasure reconnecting with some of the analysts that we briefed in 2009.
We look forward to connecting with even more analysts and other third-party influentials on behalf of Mobidia. To learn more about the company visit http://www.mobidia.com/ or send us an e-mail at [email protected].
On Fri., Jan. 22 our book, “Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness the Power of PR” jumped to the number two spot on Amazon’s most popular books on public relations. While our book has received strong reviews and positive mentions in several publications, including The Costco Connection and PRWeek.com, this was quite a jump in the rankings and it was due to an increase in the sales of our book.
So what led to the sales increase and jump in our book’s ranking on Amazon.com? Our book was not photographed on the floor of Tiger Wood’s car, nor was “Strategic Public Relations” selected for Oprah’s Book Club.
Instead, as part of our integrated communication strategy, we decided to advertise the book on Peter Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out (HARO). In the ad, which Peter writes himself, Peter included the following testimonial about our book,
“Check out Strategic Public Relations: 10 Principles to Harness the Power of PR – A new book that I read, liked, and recommend. The principles in the book are straightforward and simple, so they can be applied to any business.”
The HARO e-mails reach a targeted audience of more than 100,000, many of whom are focused on public relations and communications. This, coupled with a 75 percent open rate, ensured the message about our book was going to reach individuals interested in strategic communications.
The HARO e-mail helped spread the word about our book and Peter’s endorsement influenced readers to purchase our book. The day our ad appeared on HARO’s morning e-mail, sales of “Strategic Public Relations” significantly increased.
We are thrilled with the results. We anticipate January will see our highest number of sales from Amazon since the book was published last year. We have also seen an increase in Web site traffic.
The bottom line is that we are huge fans of Shankman’s HARO. If you have a product or service that is relevant to his audience, we encourage you to reach out to HARO as it can be an excellent vehicle for increasing visibility and driving awareness.
Differentiating your company and its products and services from the competition can be critical to the success of your business. Consider wireless service providers. AT&T Wireless, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint work hard to differentiate their service based on price, network coverage and their selection of phones.
As you work to thoroughly analyze your competitors’ product and key messages, and develop effective positioning, consider these five tips:
- Know Your Competitor’s Product. Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein recently found himself in a pickle when he divulged to Kara Swisher of All Things Digital that he had never used an iPhone, the largest competitor to the Palm Pre. Rubinstein commented, “We don’t pay that much attention to Apple – I know it sounds really strange. I don’t have an iPhone. I’ve never even used one.” One of the key elements to differentiating your products and services from the competitor is to have a firm understanding of the key features and functionalities of your competitor’s offerings.
- Understand Your Competitor’s Claims. This will enable you to analyze your company’s key messages and vision, and develop messaging that demonstrates how your products and services differ from competitive solutions on the market.
- Determine Your Key Points of Differentiation. Next, begin to craft effective messages that will resonate with your key audiences. These points of differentiation could include cost, quality, performance, technology, leadership, service or customer support. Whenever possible, include supporting data points to help reinforce these points of differentiation.
- Be Realistic. It’s important to be realistic in understanding how your company stacks up to its competitors. Otherwise, you’re doing your company a disservice and potentially making claims about your product or service that are misleading or simply aren’t true. Having a realistic outlook on your product/services’ strengths and weaknesses will enable you to set achievable expectations and goals for the future.
- Test Your Positioning with Third Party Influencers. Once you have your competitive messaging in place, test it with a third-party influencer to ensure it resonates with potential audiences and validates your company’s messages, market strategy and overall product and service outlook.
Having a thorough understanding of your competitors’ messages and products will enable your company to develop clear and concise messages and effectively differentiate your company from others in the market. Ultimately, this will help you take market share from competitors and relay a unified image to customers, investors and business partners.
To learn more about distinguishing yourself from competitors, send us an e-mail at [email protected].
The e-book market is hot and there’s a pricing war on the horizon. The wild popularity of the Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble’s recent launch of its e-book reader Nook, and talk of Apple joining the game with its Tablet service has caused the publishing industry to take a closer look at pricing strategies for e-books in an effort to maximize sales of both hardcover books and e-books.
Communiqué PR’s client, Digonex, a provider of real-time pricing solutions recently offered its perspective on the e-book pricing war in a recent guest column in Publisher’s Weekly. Digonex’s CEO Jan Eglen and economic consultant Rafi Mohammed argue that while the publishing industry has cause for concern over the pricing of e-books, dynamic pricing technology provides a viable strategy for publishers to effectively navigate these new waters and continue to maximize revenue opportunities.
Eglen and Mohammed state, “The publishing industry is right to be concerned over $9.99 price tags for bestselling e-books. One price has the potential to disrupt the current publishing model, as well as change how books are marketed and priced in the future. The good news is that pricing techniques can be used to effectively manage this transition.”
The bottom line is it’s impossible to set one price on a vast catalogue of products such as e-books that is right for all. According to Eglen and Mohammed, “as the marketplace has learned through iTunes, all music isn’t worth the same price, and all e-books aren’t worth $9.99.” A dynamic pricing strategy can give publishers the flexibility to price e-books based on consumer demand to maximize revenue opportunities.
Apple’s entry into the e-book market could be a major game changer leading to a publisher-driven selling platform that would allow publishers to take back the pricing power that Amazon currently holds. One thing is clear, the e-book pricing war is just heating up and I anticipate we’ll be hearing the roars get louder in the coming months.
We recently worked with GKD on a redesign of our firm’s Web site. The process was extremely valuable as it provided an opportunity for us to re-evaluate our firm’s positioning, our brand attributes and the value we deliver clients. I found it inspiring and motivating to focus on the future vision of our business and how we would like to see our business develop in the coming years.
Our goals with the redesign of our site were to ensure we accurately positioned our business, updated the look and feel, made sure our book and blog were better integrated, and made sure we had an easy way to update information. We also wanted better integration with social media platforms – after all, six years ago when our original site was developed Twitter wasn’t even in existence.
Allocating resources for a Web site redesign in this economic climate is not an easy task; however, a dated site can do more damage than good. A company’s Web site often creates a first impression with a prospective customer, partner, investor or employee.
As you evaluate your Web site, you may want to ask yourself the following questions:
- Does your current site make the best impression?
- Is it accurately communicating the right messages about your organization?
- Is the site easy to navigate?
The reality is businesses evolve, new products are developed, messages shift, technology changes – and all of this impacts a company’s Web site. Many times these changes happen incrementally, but before long a Web site that was an accurate representation of your company and its messages may look dated, be off target and confuse potential business partners.
I would encourage you to evaluate your current site on a regular basis to determine if the messages are accurate and current, it is easy for visitors to find information and the company’s current brand is accurately represented.
Last week I attended the 2010 Ticket Summit in New York with Communiqué PR client Digonex. Targeted toward the secondary market (i.e. ticket brokers) this year’s Ticket Summit brought together more than 500 experts from across various parts of the industry to discuss today’s ticketing challenges.
Harry Sandler, director of strategic ticketing for Digonex, spoke to a standing room only audience on a panel entitled, “How to Price Your Tickets.” In attendance were not only ticket brokers, but ticket operations directors from a variety of sports franchises and venues who are looking to begin experimenting with dynamic pricing technology to help their organizations maximize revenue opportunities while keeping fans in the seats.
Dynamic pricing continues to be a hot topic among the ticketing industry as these organizations evaluate alternative pricing structures to combat the challenging economic climate, declining event attendance and increased competition for the entertainment dollar. After hearing several panel discussions, one thing is clear: 2010 could see significant changes in the ticketing industry.
In addition to speaking at the conference, Digonex met with several trade and national sports business reporters including Associated Press, The Deal Reporter, Sports Business Journal, Venues Today and Ticket News TV. This was a great opportunity for Digonex executives to foster relationships with key reporters and provide their perspective on why dynamic pricing technology provides a fair-for-all solution for primary ticketing organizations, ticket brokers and consumers.