Is All Publicity Good Publicity?

Posted on November 10, 2015 by Mark Macias

By Mark Macias

All publicity is not good publicity – contrary to the popular myth. In fact, sometimes even good publicity is wasted when it’s published on the wrong avenue.

I recently had a conversation with a NYC hotel marketing director who was trying to attract business travelers to her downtown hotel. She told me about her recent media campaign that targeted “mommy bloggers.”

When I asked why she was targeting stay-at-home mothers when her targeted clients were business travelers, she repeated that popular PR saying – “all publicity is good publicity.”

It’s important that every media campaign target its audience or you risk wasting valuable money on publicity that doesn’t bring a return. Yes – that publicity with mommy bloggers helped the hotel with exposure it didn’t have, but it would have been more effective if they would have devoted those same resources to business or travel writers.

If you’re a tech startup, dig deep to identify your targeted audience. What news outlets are your customers or clients reading? If it’s a tech B2B, it’s even more important to target the publications and trade magazines to ensure your campaign is successfully helping with your new business outreach.

So the next time you get publicity for your business, take it a step further – ask yourself: did this reach my targeted audience? If it didn’t, you might as well have posted a big billboard on an alley that no one sees.

Macias PR was named the 2015 “PR Consultant Firm of the Year – USA” by Finance Monthly. The firm was founded by Mark Macias – a former Executive Producer with NBC and Senior Producer with CBS in New York. Macias is a weekly contributor with CNBC.com and author of the communications book, Beat the Press: Your Guide to Managing the Media, which has been featured in the NY Times, Fox Business, NY Post and others. Macias PR has run media campaigns for tech startups, financial groups, service providers, nonprofits and politicians.

Top Financial PR Firm of 2015 – Macias PR Selected

Posted on November 2, 2015 by Mark Macias

By Mark Macias

During my time with NBC and CBS, I was nominated for five Emmys in five different categories. It felt good to be honored by my journalism peers, but today Macias PR received an international recognition that feels even better than those five Emmy nominations.

The international publication, Finance Monthly, announced today that Macias PR is the 2015 top “PR Consultant Firm of the Year – USA.” The M&A Awards contained several big named firms, including Deloitte, KPMG and PwC, but Macias PR was the only Public Relations firm selected from the USA.

Every industry and era inspires a business or technology that tries to disrupt the status quo. In a critical thinking profession, like public relations and journalism, I suspect it may take a few decades before robots learn how to gather news and pitch publicists.

But I’d like to believe Macias PR is slowly disrupting the public relations industry, and challenging the PR giants on innovation, cost, strategy, expertise and deliverables. Now, Finance Monthly has validated that belief by selecting Macias PR as the “PR Consultant Firm of the Year.”

The Finance Monthly editorial team of researchers applied a 10-point criterion to select and identify the top PR firm in the USA that included measurements of:

Strategic Thinking and Planning
Expertise and Innovation
Innovation in Client Care
Peer Recognition and Personal Achievement
Deliverables in the Previous 12 Months Compared to Industry Peers
Involvement in Significant Transactions
Size (value) of Involvement within Transactions & Deals

Our team always knew that we delivered more media placements at a faster pace than any big-named PR firm, including many of the largest tech and financial PR firms. If we are fortunate enough to earn your business, I believe you will see why our team has discovered passion and conviction, combined with hard work and critical thinking will always outperform the industry leaders in any profession.

PR for Client Acquisition

Posted on October 28, 2015 by Mark Macias

By Mark Macias

What’s the secret sauce to PR? It’s one of the most popular questions I hear from tech startups and business owners who want to understand the process or formula for media placements.

That’s like asking a defense attorney, how do you get your clients out of jail, but for simplicity sake, every PR campaign must be unique and tailored to the client for it to succeed with media placements. There is no such thing as one size fits all when it comes to getting a story placed with the Wall Street Journal, USA Today or CNBC.

Earlier this week, I spoke with the CMO of a private equity firm who asked me about the process of PR. After I explained how PR works, I turned the question back to her and asked about her firm’s “process” for finding new clients. She said it involved emails, press releases and conferences.

Let me compare those three processes – email, press releases and conferences – to PR, as a form of client acquisition.

Emails – An email marketing blast is only as good as its list, but what is your personal response to spam? Do you view it in a favorable light? My PR firm has sent out invites to hedge fund/private equity forums, using email services like Chimp Mail. We weren’t selling our services – only inviting people to a free forum that discussed emerging trends in alternative assets. Less than 3 percent of the respondants even opened their email from Chimp Mail. This approach didn’t even give us a chance to introduce the forum because spam filters kept the message out. When I asked that CMO about their ROI from email, she admitted, it didn’t perform too well. This marketing approach will become even less influential as cyber hackers attempt to penetrate more emails via spam.

Press Releases – The term Press releases are thrown around randomly in the world of business. For clarity, a press release is not a method for getting a story on the news – contrary to what most people believe. A press release is posted on a PR newswire and no journalist, reporter or producer will go to the PR newswires to look for a story idea. However, a press release can help you with SEO when it is written correctly with key SEO terms. Ask yourself, what is the purpose of my press release before you send it out. A press release can be especially effective for tech startups that need to establish an online presence or put a milestone on the record, but if you’re hoping it will lead to a story in the Wall Street Journal, it’s a waste of money.

Conferences/Networking – We all need to network and conferences provide intimate opportunities to meet potential business partners in a less threatening environment. I’m actually speaking on a panel this week at a hedge fund conference in Las Vegas. If 100 people hear me speak and I meet another 100 new people, I will consider it a succeess. But it’s hard to introduce your services on a larger scale at conferences. Even if you bring a large team to the conference, most of us can’t associate a face with a business card after 15. And with some conferences now costing upwards of $8k, that is money that could be invested in a multi-month PR campaign that better spreads your message.

PR – I’m partial because I own a PR firm, but I’ve seen how a story in the news can lead to new clients. Mobile apps are one of the best ways to quantify the value of a PR campaign. Earlier this summer, Macias PR launched a communications app, Blush No More, to help position our top-rated firm in the news. One story in the Daily Mail UK led to more than 900 downloads. That Daily Mail story led to interest by Channel 11 in NYC, which ran a TV story on our mobile app. Another 800 new app downloads followed that Channel 11 story. But you don’t need to be in the B2C space to take advantage of PR. Media campaigns can target trade publications, giving your business an opportunity to find new business. Next month, our B2B client will be in Wall Street Lawyer -a prominent B2B Reuters publication. That story will introduce this company to new potential clients that can use their services.

Online advertising is another new business approach and for tech startups it can be their first thought for publicity, but a recent Google report showed that roughly 50 percent of all online ad views are seen by robots. You know what that means? Advertisers are getting cheated from their ad buys because companies are paying for a certain number of page views and only half of those are legitimate. Keep in mind, the source of that report is Google – an online advertiser.

So the next time your CMO wants to measure the ROI of the different marketing approaches, think about why we actively solicit news articles and actively avoid viewing ads.

Is PR the next Disruption to Finance?

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Mark Macias

By Mark Macias

Technology has sent the giants falling like dominoes.

Blockbuster Video, Tower Records and others – destroyed after they failed to adapt to technology.

Asset management has remained primarily immune to any major disruptions from technology but that could change soon.

In September 2015, Macias PR hosted a hedge fund and private equity forum where we brought together industry leaders to discuss some of the emerging trends and threats they are seeing in alternative assets. One of the panelists detailed how cyber security is a potential tech disruption to fund managers and predicted it will hit the small and medium sized funds hardest.

But there is another potential disruption that could hit the alternative asset industry. It’s a legislative disruption, called the JOBS Act, which drastically changes the way fund managers find new investors.

I meet hedge fund managers all the time who say they don’t need publicity. But when I ask them: would you want your fund to appear in a Wall Street Journal story? All of them say yes.

One-on-one introductions with investors won’t go away, but now that the JOBS Act allows funds to market themselves to investors via the media, suddenly smart fund managers can reach thousands and even millions of targeted investors with only one news story.

Keep in mind, I’m not talking about advertisements. I’m talking about news stories that appear inside the influential financial publications, like the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and Institutional Investor Magazine.

Here’s an infographic that takes a closer look at why PR is positioned to disrupt the financial industry.

How to create a media narrative

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Mark Macias

By Mark Macias

I like to give PR tips on our Facebook page. Earlier this month, a tech startup entrepreneur inspired a post after she said she spent 30 minutes on the phone with a New York Times reporter, but her business was never mentioned in the final story. She never identified a media narrative. It led to this post:

PR Tip of the Day: A great narrative is important when dealing with reporters, but your pitch must always include enough intrigue that the media can’t do the story without you as the expert.

On a macro level, this is similar to what we are seeing right now with VP Joe Biden’s potential entry into the race. Will he run or won’t he run? The suspense is putting Biden in the center of the narrative, which if he decides to run, will give him an advantage with his media campaign.

How can intrigue work to your favor with the media?

Click here to read the media analysis I gave to CNBC and how VP Joe Biden is using it to his advantage.

ROI of PR vs. Advertising – Infographic Analysis

Posted on October 6, 2015 by Mark Macias

By Mark Macias

I converse with business owners on a daily basis and the conversations inevitably lead to the various marketing strategies/trends, along with the ROI they bring. Surprisingly, there are many misconceptions of PR in the business community, including you can’t quantitatively measure the ROI of PR.

Our team put together this infographic that compares the ROI of two of the most popular marketing strategies: PR and Advertising. Everything is sourced for your own analysis.

Mark Macias is a former Executive Producer with NBC and Senior Producer with CBS in New York. He’s also a weekly contributor with CNBC.com and author of the communications book, Beat the Press: Your Guide to Managing the Media, which has been featured in the NY Times, Fox Business, NY Post and others. Macias consults small and large businesses on how to get publicity. You can read more on his firm at MaciasPR.

Top PR Consultant Firm of the Year – 2015 Winner

Posted on September 23, 2015 by Mark Macias

By Mark Macias

It feels great when we are able to secure prominent news stories for our clients with the most influential news organizations, but I have to admit, it feels even better when your peers and clients recognize your hard work with an international award that honors your achievements.

Macias PR was just named the “Top PR Consultant Firm of the Year – USA” for 2015 by Finance Monthly. It’s a prestigious industry recognition that evaluates talent, expertise, creativity, innovation and deliverables for advisory and legal consultants across Europe, Asia and the USA.

A team of researchers from Finance Monthly evaluated key categories to identify and select the top PR firms from around the world.

Their identification and selection process involved a 10-point criterion that included a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the firm’s expertise and deliverables within the financial media. Their researchers also interviewed both clients and journalists in assessing the PR firm’s media strategy, media expertise, innovation and industry expertise.

What does this mean to you as a client or potential client?

This recognition by financial journalists demonstrates why strategy trumps size. We don’t want to be the biggest PR firm in the world. We want to be the best PR firm for you. And in 2016, we will continue to out-work and out-think the global PR firms as we strive to help our clients grow their business on the international stage. We will never throw bodies at campaigns, like the big PR firms promise. Instead, we will throw minds at every problem and come up with the most original strategy tailored for you.