Weiss Report Blog

After a long, hard day at work, he sits in front of the fireplace. Humidor in hand, he savors the woodsy aroma, anticipating that long-awaited cigar. As he carefully lights it, all his stress and worries melt away. For just a minute, life is care-free, life is good.

As any cigar aficionado knows, for best possible taste cigars must be properly stored. Improperly stored cigars can suffer from bitter taste, mold, uneven burn, lighting problems, and tobacco beetle infestation, among other things. A humidor is a box, room, or case specially designed to keep cigars at optimum taste and freshness. An effective humidor should keep cigars at a temperature of 68 to 70 degrees and a humidity of 68 to 74 percent. A cigar that is too wet will have a sour, unpleasant flavor. A cigar that is overly dry will burn too quickly and taste acrid. A cigar humidifier helps ensure that the humidity level in the humidor is at the correct level. Some humidors come equipped with a cigar humidifier; some are sold separately.

Cigar humidifiers can also be used in cigar rooms, display cases, and large armoires. They are available in a variety of sizes depending on the size of the humidor and the amount of cigars being stored. They work by sending a cool mist into the air. Cigar humidifiers are generally cool mist models. They have a holding tank filled with water. A wick draws the water out. Then a fan blows it into the air where it will evaporate. To avoid the possibility of mold growth in the humidifier, use distilled water. Do not use spring water as it can contribute to a build-up of minerals. Generally, water will need to be added about once a month.

With a cigar humidifier set at the right humidity and an effective humidor, cigars can stay fresh-tasting indefinitely.

Humidifiers Info provides detailed information on house, furnace, cigar, and ultrasonic humidifiers, as well as humidifier filters and product reviews. Humidifiers Info is the sister site of Dehumidifiers Web.

Your media pitches can go straight over the plate. With a little forethought, and a few tips, you can throw fewer balls and more media relations strikes.

Brevity is the soul of wit. Shakespeare could have been giving media relations tips when he penned this gem several hundred years ago. If you can’t get to the point in your subject line in 10 words or less, you need to work on your message. Keep the subject line short and to the point, and include the time frame if it is important to the pitch. For instance: “Entrepreneurs Storming NC General Assembly Tuesday”

Surprise! If you have a startling or interesting fact, use it as a hook. I am developing a story idea about local home prices. My initial thought for a subject line is: “Average Lake Norman Home Listing Price Spikes To $413,000.” Recently I used these subject lines to get coverage: “Interest Rates Hit Six Month Low” and “No Credit Score, No Problem”.

Humor Me. Humor is not for everyone. It is best to use it only if you know the reporter has a sense of humor or appreciates quirky items. Maria Stainer, assistant managing editor of the Washington Times, was quoted recently about an email pitch that got her attention and coverage. “Teach Your Dog To Meditate” was the line that hooked her on a story about a new book on animal behavior.

Don’t Get Too Attached. Don’t ever attach word documents or photos files to an email pitch. Did I mention that you should not send attachments? To get past email filters and to avoid hacking off your media contacts, wait until they ask for additional information before sending photos and documents. And, if you make them mad, your next pitch may be deleted before it is ever read.

Be Cool. You’re fired up to fire off that media pitch you have just written. Don’t. Let it cool off a bit first. Ask for input from others before you send the pitch to the media, particularly if you are trying to use humor or be quirky. You don’t want your pitch to fall flat.

Be Relevant. Friend David Mildenberg, a reporter at the Charlotte Business Journal, has the best tip of all. “I think email pitches can be effective for all the obvious reasons: If they contain news relevant to the publication and its readers, if the pitches are concise and if the pitches are understandable,” he says.

Wind up and start pitching.

Harry Hoover is managing principal of Hoover ink PR. He has 26 years of experience in crafting and delivering bottom line messages that ensure success for serious businesses like Brent Dees Financial Planning, Focus Four, Levolor, New World Mortgage, North Carolina Tourism, TeamHeidi, Ty Boyd Executive Learning Systems, VELUX, Verbatim and Wicked Choppers.

…makes the rules, of course.

But when the gold takes the form of top-notch public
relations, she AND he get to make rules like these:

Our PR concentrates on delivering what we really need.

Our PR does something positive about the behaviors of
those outside audiences that MOST affect our organization.

Our PR persuades those key outside people to our way of
thinking, then moves them to take actions that allow our
department, division or subsidiary to succeed.

In other words, our PR uses its fundamental premise to
deliver external stakeholder behavior change, the kind that
leads directly to achieving our managerial objectives.

And that fundamental premise? Here’s what it looks like:
People act on their own perception of the facts before them,
which leads to predictable behaviors about which something
can be done. When we create, change or reinforce that
opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-
action the very people whose behaviors affect the organization
the most, the public relations mission is accomplished.

If you do just what we’ve covered so far, what kind of results
might come your way? How about welcome bounces in show
room visits; community leaders beginning to seek you out;
membership applications on the rise; customers starting to
make repeat purchases; fresh proposals for strategic alliances
and joint ventures; prospects starting to do business with you;
higher employee retention rates, capital givers or specifying
sources beginning to look your way, and even politicians and
legislators starting to view you as a key member of the
business, non-profit or association communities.

But you had best get your public relations people involved
by getting them on board this kind of approach to PR. Be sure
everyone buys into why it’s so important to know how your
outside audiences perceive your operations, products or
services. Be especially certain they accept the reality that
negative perceptions almost always lead to behaviors that can
damage your organization.

Reason together about how you will monitor and gather
perceptions by questioning members of your most important
outside audiences. Questions like these: how much do you know
about our organization? Have you had prior contact with
us and were you pleased with the interchange? How much
do you know about our services or products and employees?
Have you experienced problems with our people or
procedures?

And do remember that your PR people are already in the
perception and behavior business and can be of real use for this
opinion monitoring project. Of course you can always use
professional survey firms, but that can be a budget buster.
However, whether it’s your people or a survey firm who
handles the questioning, the objective is to identify untruths,
false assumptions, unfounded rumors, inaccuracies, and
misconceptions .

Your next chore is identifying which of the problems
outlined above becomes your corrective public relations goal -
clarify the misconception, spike that rumor, correct the false
assumption or fix a variety of other possible inaccuracies?

Fact is, you can meet that goal only when you select the right
strategy from the three choices available to you. Change
existing perception, create perception where there may be
none, or reinforce it. Picking the wrong strategy is about as
cool as serving a meat and potatoes guy an asparagus and
broccoli casserole with braised celery on the side. So please
be certain the new strategy fits comfortably with your new
public relations goal. You wouldn’t want to select “change”
when the facts dictate a “reinforce” strategy.

And now the toughest part of this job — create a persuasive
message aimed at members of your target audience. Always a
challenge to put together action-forcing language that will help
persuade any audience to your way of thinking.

Because s/he must create some very special, corrective
language, be certain you have your best writer on the assignment.
You need words that are not only compelling, persuasive and
believable, but clear and factual if they are to shift perception/
opinion towards your point of view and lead to the behaviors
you have in mind.

Happy to say that things get easier. Identify the communications
tactics you need to carry your message to the attention of your
target audience. Insuring that the tactics you select have a record
of reaching folks like your audience members, you can pick
from dozens that are available. From speeches, facility tours,
emails and brochures to consumer briefings, media interviews,
newsletters, personal meetings and many others.

As often is the case, the credibility of the message can be
dependent on the credibility of its delivery method, you may
wish to deliver it in small getogether-like meetings and
presentations rather than through a higher-profile media
announcement.

Requests for progress reports will probably be heard from various
quarters. Let that signal to you that you and your PR team had best
undertake a second perception monitoring session with members
of your external audience. You’ll want to use many of the same
questions used in the first benchmark session. But now, you will
be watching very carefully for signs that the bad news perception
is being altered in your direction.

And rest easy when things seem to be slowing down. These
matters usually can be accelerated by adding more
communications tactics as well as increasing their frequencies.

The bottom line is, this workable public relations blueprint will
help you persuade your most important outside stakeholders to
your way of thinking, then move them to behave in a way that
leads to the success of your department, division or subsidiary.

So, no matter who has the gold, the public relations rules that
will best serve any business, non-profit or association manager
read this way: the people you deal with do, in fact, behave like
everyone else - they act upon their perceptions of the facts
they hear about you and your operation. Leaving you not
much choice but to deal promptly and effectively with those
perceptions by doing what is necessary to reach and move
your key external audiences to actions you desire.

end

Please feel free to publish this article and resource box
in your ezine, newsletter, offline publication or website.
A copy would be appreciated at bobkelly@TNI.net.
Word count is 1190 including guidelines and resource box.
Robert A. Kelly © 2005.

Bob Kelly counsels, writes and speaks to business, non-profit and
association managers about using the fundamental premise of public
relations to achieve their operating objectives. He has been DPR,
Pepsi-Cola Co.; AGM-PR, Texaco Inc.; VP-PR, Olin Corp.; VP-PR,
Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.; director of communi-
cations, U.S. Department of the Interior, and deputy assistant press
secretary, The White House. He holds a bachelor of science degree
from Columbia University, major in public relations.
mailto:bobkelly@TNI.net Visit:http://www.prcommentary.com

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Throughout any sales process advertising has taken place somewhere along the line to convert a prospect into a customer. With the nearly instantaneous sales process of the internet, you need to be at the top of the advertising game or your prospects will go elsewhere quicker than the blink of an eye or click of a back button.

Advertising on the internet has become big business; Google alone has managed to take a multi-billion dollar stake in the Pay per Click or PPC Industry. However, if you are reading this article you already know that. The premise here is how to create good ad-copy and avoid costly mistakes within your PPC campaign, a checklist so to speak from keywords to tracking.

Pay-per-Click Keywords

The objective for this article is to bring down the overall cost per acquisition or CPA, also known as cost per action. The first thing to do would be to develop a very broad base of keywords or search terms related to your products or services you are offering. You can make use of online tools to research your keywords such as Overture’s Keyword Selector tool or WordTracker. After you select your keywords, you’ll need to create the hardest part of the PPC campaign process, your ad-copy.

Pay-per-Click Ad-Copy

Google Adwords is currently the leader in the PPC game. Matter of fact, the originator, Overture, now Yahoo Search Marketing, has recently changed their ad displays to be more “Google-like” in appearance. Presently, the long descriptive ads synonymous with Yahoo Search Marketing have been truncated to better compete with Google Adwords.

With that stated, I’ll stick to the fundamentals of Google Adwords herein for my examples. First, you will want to create one ad-group for each keyword. Next, create around 3-9 ads per keyword. The key here is to test, test, and test until you are running an ad that had both a high Click Through Rate and secondly a high Conversion Rate. Again your objective is lowest possible CPA. When you test, don’t use your opinion on what you think your customers want. Use the ad with the best data representing CTR and highest conversion even if the ad is not something you feel is very good, always go by the numbers.

Ad-copy is a funnel process, from the attention getter to the call to action. There are 4 display lines in Google Adwords ads:
1. Title -The attention Grabber - 25 Characters Max
2. Description Line 1 - Talk about the product or service offered - 35 Characters Max
3. Description Line 2 - Call to action - 35 Characters Max
4. Display URL - 35 Characters Max

Tip: Ensure the ad-copy that you are creating is relevant to the keywords that you are creating the copy for.

Pay-per-Click Landing Pages
This is the page where prospects turn into leads, the page where the lead is persuaded about your product or service. The tips here are easy to explain, do not send all your prospects to the same landing page for each keyword or ad. Your landing page needs to be relevant to your ad. So, if your ad was targeting tires and your ad sends the prospect to the homepage talking about everything from seat covers to dash covers you will lose the prospect which will result in a low conversion rate. If your ad is about tires, send the prospect to your tires page. You have roughly three seconds to grab the attention of your visitors so ensure the landing page is the correct one or they will go back and click on a competing ad to find what they are looking for.

You will also want to ensure your landing page loads correctly in all browsers. Although your landing page may appear within Internet Explorer, it may not load correctly within Mozilla Firefox. The page will need to load as quickly as possible, stay away from using a lot of large graphics and flash elements.

Less is more in regards to content on a landing page. Have your call to action at the bottom of the page and ensure your landing page is giving what the prospect is looking for in a clear and easy to read format. Make use of your 800 phone number if you have one for your business. You may not have a toll-free number. If you don’t have one that is fine, use your regular phone number.

Paid Search Tracking
Tracking can be done simply by using the free tools provided by Google. Conversion Tracker within Google Adwords can be used to track Conversion Rates for each keyword. Google Analytics is free and is good for monitoring which keywords and which ads are converting best. Other tools that charge a fee are Did-it, KeywordMax and Atlas One-Point.

Be realistic about conversion rates and click through rates. Do not expect unrealistic returns. Realistic click through rates are 1% - 2% and realistic conversion rates are 1-2%, but anything below 3% for conversion rates is considered low when your PPC campaign is managed correctly. I’ve personally achieved conversion rates as high as 44% with click through rates at 1.8%. I have also had Click Through rates of 21% with conversion rates at 6%. Stick with what works according to your statistics, not according to your opinion.

Truth in Numbers
The best method is to use what works for your business in the most cost effective manner. By applying the techniques above, you could improve your campaign. However, how well your PPC campaign performs is based on keyword centric ad-copy relevant to your business, short and sweet landing pages that not only load quickly but that give the prospect what they want, and lastly good tracking so you can see what works and what doesn’t by focusing on the numbers, not your opinion.

Warren Pattison is the Director of Search for Elixir Systems, a full service search engine marketing company specializing in organic search engine optimization services, online public relations management and paid search or PPC management. For more information visit http://www.elixirsystems.com.