Dummy-Runs: Housekeeping Rules for PR Campaigns
I regularly do mass PR campaigns for clients. This means driving traffic in the double digits to their brand. But there's a huge amount of groundwork to be done before we even issue a press release to the local rag.
The one problem I commonly see with clients brands are simple mistakes, from spelling errors on their website to inconsistent messaging across their web and print collateral and broken "Contact Us" forms. Why is this a problem?
If you're driving mass numbers of potential customers to your website, what will their impression of your company be when they see all these errors? You include 24/7 support in the product cost but you can't even fix the technical issues on your own website?
Think back to your school days. If you got a date with the best looking guy/girl in your year, you'd want to make a good first impression because there's dozens of other girls/guys after him/her. Sames goes for customers. If the company is going to be hit by mass exposure, it needs to leave a good impression on the market. Bad impressions are hard to reverse.
Before I press launch on client PR campaigns, I suggest to clients that they round up 40-50 of their friends/acquaintances/well-wishers and ask them to hit their website, product, Facebook and Twitter profiles simultaneously. What do they notice? What buttons aren't working? This exercise is a dummy run. It's purpose is to expose flaws in your product before a mass market finds them via hype and word of mouth. Their expectations will be significantly higher than your friends and family so it's an important test. What's more, it'll give your team a taste of dealing with support issues while under pressure.
It's very easy to forget the bread and butter processes that make your business work, like an auto-response confirmation email sent to customers when they sign-up or even a "Contact Us" option (I have seen online businesses that forgot to include this on their website when it was customers only means of making an order!). In the excitement of building a new product or adding new features, priorities get lost. As long as they're dealt with before a PR spike, that's okay. If they are not, you're paying your PR company to kill you with bad publicity.
TechFluff & Co specialize in PR and marketing campaigns for media and technology companies and startups. Need more sales? Want to increase downloads of your app? Generate regular media coverage of your product? Email Lyra McKee at lyra@techfluff.co.