PR

Conference Speaking Opportunities can be an incredibly powerful communications vehicle for building executive visibility. But how do you go about securing the righ speaking slots for your exec?

The first step on the road to successful free speaking is to identify your brief.

Think about:

• which audiences you want to reach – vertical? horizontal? what geography?
• who in your team can speak and are they trained?
• what issues and customers can you talk about?
• do you have the resources to write presentations?
• can this fit into your PR and marketing mix?

Once you have your brief and objectives in place, decide what performance indicators you want to measure. Will you target a specific number of events, number of delegates reached, speaker evaluation, or a mixture of these?

Now it’s time to start researching the conference market.

You will no doubt have relationships with some conference companies, but are you just speaking to the sales manager? If you want to speak without paying, you’ll need to ensure you’re speaking to the right person, i.e. the conference producer who puts the agenda together.

Look for events that match your brief. Think about the audience they are targeting, the overall focus of the event and the history – how successful it was last time and what the conference company’s pedigree is.

When it comes to pitching your speaker and topic, every event will have a different requirement. You will always need a biography of your speaker, to spell out why he/she will add value to the conference, and some form of topic proposal. This might be a short synopsis, a title with bullet points or even a white paper.

The submission process will also vary. It may be a closed call for papers, you may deal directly with the conference producer, or you might be selected anonymously by an international panel of subject experts.

Depending on which of these you are facing, you may not be in a position to be selective about session time. Obviously you want to try to avoid sessions at the end of the day or just after lunch – the so called grave yard slots.

Lastly, it’s important to approach the conference company at the right time. Some complete their event agendas up to nine months before the event, though four is more common. If you see an agenda with speakers up on the website, you have probably missed the boat (for this year at least).

As a communications professional you’ve no doubt looked at using events and conferences as part of your marketing mix. How else can you hope to meet up with such a large number of prospects and customers in one day?

The vast majority of technology vendors pay for sponsorship and exhibition programmes, but there is another way – conference speaking opportunities.

So what are speaking opportunities and how can you make the most of them?

A speaking opportunity is basically the chance for one of your executives to stand up and discuss your company’s experience on a topic related to the main conference theme. It’s also of course an opportunity to talk about your company, its business, its customers and to develop your position in the marketplace without paying.

So what are the main benefits of going down this road? There are many advantages to securing free speaking opportunities, not least:

• they are highly targeted
• audiences are interested as very often they’ve paid to attend
• participation is easily measured – audience numbers, speaker feedback etc.
• they are good for raising awareness, managing your reputation and driving opinions
• they reach international and domestic audiences
• they drive delegates to your exhibition stand

Sound good?

Well speaking opportunities certainly can be, but you need the right approach to make it happen.

I’ve been doing a reasonable amount of public speaking recently. Both for business at the Chartered Institute of Marketing, SME 2.0 and Tag Tribe events, but also over the past couple of years I’ve had the pleasure of being a best man a couple of times.

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PR 2.0 – is your communication online, on-message? was the title of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations’ Marketing Communications Group’s latest seminar, held on 26th November 2008.

The perils and opportunities for PR professionals are many – with social media such as Facebook, blogs, video and audio clips but most PR practitioners lay way behind, it emerged.  A show of hands revealed that less than 20% of the audience of PR professionals was up to speed digitally.

The key message from Kevin Murray, Chairman of Bell Pottinger, Matthew McKay, Head of Public Relations for BioMed Central and Tim Rowell, Digital Publisher of the Telegraph Media Group was that the internet has changed fundamentally the way PR people work.  As Kevin Murray put it, he had a ‘Copernicus’ moment when he realised that the world of media had changed.

Matt McKay, a seasoned practitioner in digital media, showed that digital techniques are not difficult to use and are not necessarily that costly – but they require trust.  A blogger is not a journalist but will need to trust you.  Don’t forget, Matt said, that anything you post on a blog or forum will be there forever so be careful.

As to journalists themselves, they are now bombarded with messages both off and online.  Tim Rowell explained that the Telegraph had shifted from analogue to digital since 2006 and is now a totally digital 24/7 news operation.  Its new integrated newsroom is the largest digital space in Europe.  Editors, picture editors, news and feature teams update the website constantly.  Good planning and the knowledge of what the journalists require are essential and the implication for PRs is more opportunity for adding a wide range of material, including video clips – but PRs must act quickly.

All in all, the seminar was a great success and will be followed by further events in 2009, which will be posted on the CIPR’s website.

Guest post written by Marianne Malone and Eugene Bacot from the CIPR’s Marcoms Group Committee.

I’ve worked with a lot of small companies and always they want to get involved in some PR activity. However more often than not they struggle to really understand how to engage with journalists. This is one of the key skills a good PR consultancy will bring: the knowledge of what journalists want, when they want it and crucially, which journalists are most relevant for your story.

However, that’s not to say you can’t do a good job yourself, given enough time. I came across a fantastic blog post yesterday that I think any small business owner would benefit from reading. It’s written by Sally Whittle, a freelance journalist based in the UK, and outlines 5 great tactics for small businesses in getting to grips with PR.

A tactic Sally mentions is entering awards competitions. This is something I have been working on with one of my clients – an architectural practice – for some time. In fact we have now won one award and are finalists in another, both national awards in the UK. Aside from the obvious PR opportunities of entering, they have actually been beneficial on other levels too. For example, it now helps in the sales process to mention the client is an award winning practice.

Anyway, check out Sally’s post and don’t forget to leave a comment on her blog to say thanks.

Great Advice Sally.

The Daily Telegraph (a leading British newspaper) recently published a list of the top company PR blunders which makes for quite an entertaining read. Clearly inspired by the recent fiasco at Heathrow’s Terminal 5, the article includes a fantastic example of when a single executive can create havoc through bad publicity.

Formerly head of Ratners, one of the biggest high street jewellers in the UK, Gerald Ratner once famously criticised his own products during a speech at the Institute of Directors. It was picked up by all the major newspapers in the UK who either took his quote out of context, or quoted him as saying all his products were “total crap”. I believe one tabloid’s headline was actually “crapners”! This essentially rocked his business, costing it over £500m (yes roughly $1bn) and of course his job.

I don’t want to copy any of the article’s excellent examples and steel the thunder of a nice bit of writing, so head over the the Telegraph to read the full article. But for a simple bit of very good PR advice, follow the words of an old boss of mine:

if you aren’t happy seeing what you’ve said on the front page of a newspaper, then don’t say it.

Very nice advice too if you ask me.

In an attempt to improve its customer service, internet company Easynet recently surveyed its customers to find out what they actually wanted from their business relationship. The conclusions drawn are very interesting and useful if you run a business to businesses operation. Easynet’s focus was on receiving good service as a customer, but to my mind, the ten ideas they highlighted could just as easily be used to improve service delivery.

You can read the full report at Easynet but below I’ve summarised some ideas for how you could use these tips to improve your own service delivery:

1. Know what your customers want – ensure you know what your customers objectives are before trying to sell a service. You can’t deliver an excellent product if you don’t fully understand why the customer is making the purchase. A good example is when you buy a mobile phone, the retailer always asks you about how you use your phone before trying to sell you a call plan – this way the product choice will better match your needs. The result, you’ll be happier with your purchase.

2. Choose carefully – if you are fortunate enough to be selective over your clients, then make sure you choose carefully. Think about whether you can deliver a quality product, but also factors such as can they actually afford to pay? When delivering your service, do you need to work with partners or contractors? If so how can you ensure they provide the service level you expect for your clients? Choose partners carefully.

3. Ask for and enforce a Service Level Agreement (SLA) – negotiate your SLA carefully with clients and don’t overestimate what you will actually be able to deliver. Always expect your clients to enforce the agreement, even if you think on a personal level they will not. For example, many PR agencies may be measured and paid on a performance by results basis, but the results target has to be fair to both client and agency.

4. Hold regular reviews – ensure you report to your client regularly on progress. If things are going badly, it’s better to identify this early and work out a solution with your customer, rather than burying your head in the sand. If you are performing better than expected, it doesn’t hurt to ensure the client is aware of this.

5. Integrate the supplier into your company - as a service provider I have often found myself kept at arms length from my client and unable to really get under their skin. I can always provide a more valuable service when I have a good feel for the culture and a good understanding of how the company works. With that in mind, I try to imbed myself as much as possible with my clients. Can you do the same? If you offer accountancy advice, would you benefit from visiting your clients premises ad getting to know some of the key staff?

6. Get involved - if you can allow your customers to participate in the service delivery, then they’ll better understand what they’re getting and how it adds value. For example, if you are an architects practice, can you involve your client more in the design process? If the client adds more to the design stage, can you demonstrate how their decisions impact service delivery?

7. Do unto others as you would do unto yourself – a no brainer really.

8. Be realistic – again another no brainer. Don’t over promise and under deliver, after all would you be happy with that? What is in your SLA?

9. Feedback and feedback again – this fits well with the regular reviews in point 4. If you are struggling to provide what your customer has asked for then let them know. But also feedback to your client if their performance is impacting your ability to provide a good service. For example if you’re a PR agency, you will need good information from your client to provide an effective service. How often do you get this?

10. Learn a language - this point is about the benefit of learning a few words of your customers local language. But it could just as easily apply to corporate terminology and industry jargon. The more you know about your customers and their industry, the better you will become at providing an effective service.

Overall an excellent and extremely useful report and I congratulate Easynet on taking such a proactive approach to delivering good customer service. One of the highlights of the report to me is this quote “It was clear that the key to success is to develop an open, honest business relationship” with business partners.” I agree entirely, be open, be honest and most importantly be clear in your communications and relationships.