Step back when examining your Marketing & PR programs

I have had several conversations with customers during the past few years and I often hear a common refrain, it can vary but it is basically, gee we had this great hit in The New York Times, (fill in pub name here) and we only saw a slight up tick in sales. Well first, if you saw any upward movement in your sales that is a good thing is it not? But more importantly, you missed the point entirely on what PR can accomplish for you.

Public Relations is an incredibly valuable tool and helps in ways that are too many to count. But it has the same weakness of any marketing tool. It is not designed to function as a sole agent for driving change. Quite the opposite, it can offer a slight up tick like mentioned above but the chances for long term success are virtually non-existent. In a discussion I once participated in, I likened a PR program to going out running after a long lay off. You will feel terrible and probably feel like you're going to die. Now you can assume running failed to get you healthy, or you can keep forcing yourself out there day after day and before long, you're amazed at how your body responds and how great you feel.

The same holds true for marketing and communications. You can not simply sit back and cherry pick a success and say that it's not working or this worked and that didn't. In fact evaluation needs to be taking place in an ongoing fashion and needs to examine not just the marketing mix but how other elements in the organization such as sales are helping. A complete and exhaustive examination may show that other elements in the organization are hindering the development and execution of both the brand as well as the communications program.

We live in a world that tells us we should expect instantaneous results and that we should act in an instantaneous fashion. The down side to this idea is that we are surrendering the ideas of perspective and focusing on evaluation and adjustment. It is much better to do it right once and invest a little more time in a program than rush it and be disappointed in the results.