News & Opinion

Congratulations to our VP of Client Services, Beth Braen on being honored with the Woman of Valor Award from Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles.   The award recognizes Beth’s many contributions to the Temple, where she is a Past President of the board and is still active on many committees. As a long-time volunteer she continues to offer her expertise, support, time and good humor to the Temple community.   Throughout her many years as an active member of the congregation, Beth has followed the mission of Temple Isaiah as being at the intersection of tradition and innovation.   At Bob Gold & Associates, Beth helps develop relationships with new and prospective clients and is an integral part of our legacy of championing clients. To her co-workers, she is a great source of wisdom, support and business acumen.  

Public relations is a cost-effective way to bring awareness to a brand and insert key voices into industry-shaping conversations. This can be invaluable, especially for startups or smaller-sized operations that may have less capital. However, success cannot be achieved with a cookie-cutter methodology. Instead, it requires creativity and constant momentum; otherwise, you might find yourself treading water with wasted wire distributions and misplaced news.   To help you tap into your full potential and build momentum, here are some tips to ensure an effective PR strategy: Make the most of your news: If you have ground-breaking news, great! Additionally, it’s also ok to praise newly appointed associates and promote a solid company culture with news releases, but these types of announcements should be augmented by tying them into key messaging, themes and objectives to make the biggest impact. The idea is to create engaging content while tying in your key messages, so they relate to your target audience’s interests. Pitch your news: If you want attention for your brand, it’s not enough to post news solely on your company blog or social media. Make sure you’re distributing news to the proper media channels. Stories such as a new client, a fresh case studies, or even just a product update can be of interest to the right journalist. Find the right journalists: Unless you’re Google, Amazon, Facebook or a similar giant in your industry, posting on the wire alone won’t get you beyond the “press release” feed of local broadcast station landing pages. To ensure your news is seen – and covered – it’s critical that you directly engage with the key journalists covering your industry. Simply reading the news, and knowing who is saying what, will help you find the most appropriate journalists and guide you into the right conversation. Synergize PR & marketing: Marketing content like a white paper, byline or case study can create useful website and social copy and help PR secure coverage at the same time. Therefore, it pays to have your marketing and PR teams operating in sync, so everything comes together, your company news is fresh to reporters and your messaging reaches a broad audience. Leverage original data: Reporters can’t get enough data, and if it’s exclusive, it’s that much more newsworthy. If you don’t have your own in-house generated data, use a platform like Google Survey or SurveyMonkey to generate new data. This could place your company at the epicenter of a developing conversation, and you may see your name quoted a lot in citations.    Developing an innovative product or service is not enough. You must find a way to communicate to the public and maintain momentum. Follow these tips to develop a well-rounded PR program, and if you don’t see the success you think you deserve, reach out to a reputable PR agency, such as BG&A, to leverage industry connections.  

Networks need to focus on the consumer experience and not use B2B language says Bob Gold, CEO of Bob Gold & Associates. This is one of the pearls of wisdom from Gold's recent survey of industry professionals about streaming media services like Netflix, Hulu and start-up video brands.   [embed]https://youtu.be/7vpAE8UHwaw[/embed]   Gold points out that, with so many choices, a strong brand becomes more important than ever to gaining consumer eyeballs. To that point, in an OTT world with a seemingly infinite number of video choices, a strong brand will be more important than ever. This should be to the local operators’ advantage, as they have a recognizable brand in the communities they serve and can provide value by making these services easily accessible with payments integrated into a common billing mechanism.   He likens today’s environment to the early days of cable when people who had “free” broadcast television, asked why they needed cable and its additional channels.   His survey indicates that people are frustrated with the bundle and the seeming chokehold of the traditional set-top box and associated DVR fees. Integrating streaming services into more traditional offerings, as many providers are just beginning to do, could reduce churn and cord cutting and satisfy consumers.   As in the early days of cable when operators would provide free premium service weekend previews, this HBO veteran says that free service trials are critical to showing prospective customers the value proposition of any given service. It goes beyond a free offering, however, as the ease of signing up for and, as importantly, cancelling a service is important. Gold stresses the importance of having a trusted brand in this process.   In the interview, Gold indicates that online and streaming video is at an inflection point, and now is the time to really put the consumer first because they are no longer limited to the traditional linear video bundle.   Join the conversation on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/viodi?lang=en    

Roxanne Leone, director, marketing & communications I grow businesses by developing and implementing public relations and marketing initiatives each measured by ROI. I’ve learned a few tricks and tips and hard knock lessons that I want to share with you.  For example, it’s always best to leverage core messaging, resources and creative assets to get the most mileage out of any communication plan. One of my former clients was challenged to show steady growth with its investors. Before joining the team, it was pre-determined that the company would take its limited budget and jump into pay-per-click advertising with the hopes of converting leads into customers in 3-6 months. The majority of leads generated were early in the buying cycle, were not properly set up for nurturing in a CRM system and sales representatives didn’t have the patience to walk leads through the buyer’s journey. Therefore, conversions remained flat, there was high employee turn-over and investors were losing interest. For this young organization, engaging with a public relations agency would have been the more cost-effective solution to raise brand awareness, draw in more educated prospects, and satisfy investors with a solid pipeline. If you’re operating like a start-up, consider a public relations campaign to lay a solid foundation for a more successful marketing program to follow. Choose public relations over marketing when you want to: Elevate your reputation and brand: If you wish to improve your reputation and drive brand awareness with key audiences, public relations will help you build credibility through earned media placements, awards and speaking opportunities. Generate newsworthy content: Your marketing team may take the lead on messaging and funnel it into your PR department, but the way you communicate your story through a sales team is much different than the way you tell your story to journalists. PR professionals understand the needs of journalists and seek to dive deeper into supporting statistics and case studies to pitch a newsworthy story to the media to secure press. Improve investor buy-in: By earning positive media coverage investors see organizations as more established and aligned to meet audience needs. This helps pave the way for a sensible timeline to plan and incorporate an integrated marketing campaign, gather leads, close new business and keep current customers informed. Raise stakeholder awareness: Communicating internally is just as critical as managing your reputation with the media and your prospects. When your staff at every level of the organization speaks to the same message, the organization is positioned for success. It’s in the best interest of your staff to understand what you’re doing and why, and to give them the right tools to leverage correctly. In a 2017 study by USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, 47% of public relations professionals and more than 60% of marketers surveyed felt that the two disciplines will become more closely aligned with each other within the next five years. So, why are there still internal battles to secure budgets and leverage content and creative assets? At Bob Gold & Associates, we are a public relations firm first and foremost, but we have the talent and expertise to know when and how to leverage marketing to get the most out of your investment. Reduce frustration and seek the advice of a full-service PR agency. Contact us today for a free consultation. We want to hear your story.