David Scott - The New Rules of Marketing and PR

Music is a particularly important aspect of Trinity Cathedral’s podcasting efforts. “If you go to England, one of the things that people do is go to the great cathedrals to attend choral Evensong to listen to the men’s and boys’ choirs sing,” Lind says. “Well, we do that at Trinity every week, and we think there’s nobody in the country podcasting choral Evensong. So we started podcasting that, which is a way of making us unique. People listen to really extraordinary choral music every week, and they count on the podcast.”

Marketers at companies whose buyers include a segment of older people frequently assume that the elders are not online and that they won’t engage with a web publishing effort. I’ve always pushed back on this notion. So does Lind, who has demographic data to show how misguided those conventional ideas can be. “We find that in our 1,000-member congregation, all but about 10 adults are on the Internet,” she says. “Only 10 adults are not using the web, and that includes our elders. Most of our elders are actively social networking and on the Internet. When we suspended our print newspaper, I got just one complaint.”

Trinity Cathedral attracts a very diverse group of people in the Cleveland area, and the web publishing efforts aid in building the community of people who become members. “Our market is clear,” Lind says. “We’re trying to attract progressive people of faith who are concerned about the city and who want to be a part of an intentionally inclusive, diverse, engaged congregation. We’re trying to attract change agents. We’re intentional about trying to attract the 20s and 30s, but there’s also great value in the world of the empty-nesters, and also in the ‘third half of life’: boomers, those reinventing aging. I think of one of our audiences as those who listen to NPR—thoughtful, but not necessarily highly educated. We attract a lot of really thoughtful working-class folks that you wouldn’t otherwise think would be coming. We’re racially diverse. We are always interested in families that are wanting something other than the bland suburbs for their kids—so a lot of alternative families, blended families, adopted families, LGBT families, single moms, single dads.” Lind considers each of these markets as she creates information to publish on the web.

Developing and maintaining the publishing program at Trinity Cathedral is a major effort for an organization tight on resources. But reaching buyers through the blog, podcasting, social networking, and the email newsletter is essential, given the changing ways people relate to their churches. Just like so many leaders of for-profit businesses, Lind has had to convince stakeholders of the importance of online marketing. “When I got to Trinity, there was one computer in the place, and it was barely used. That was in 2000. Part of the dilemma is the amount of money that has to go into communications, which is an enormous paradigm shift for churches. Frankly, my communications director is as valuable as a priest. That is a shift that is sometimes hard to explain to people.” But it’s one that will be essential for traditional churches to understand if they are to survive and thrive in the age of the social networks.

On the speaking circuit and via my blog, I am often asked to critique marketing programs, websites, and blogs. My typical responses—“What’s the goal?” and “What problems do you solve for your buyers?”—often throw people off. It is amazing that so many marketers don’t have established goals for their marketing programs and for websites and blogs in particular. And they often cannot articulate who their buyers are and what problems they solve for them.

An effective web marketing and PR strategy that delivers compelling content to buyers gets them to take action. (You will learn more about developing your own marketing and PR strategy in Chapter 10.)

Organizations that understand the new rules of marketing and PR have a clearly defined business goal—to sell products, to generate contributions, or to get people to vote or join. These successful organizations aren’t focused on the wrong goals, things like press clips and advertising awards. At successful organizations, news releases, blogs, websites, video, and other content draw visitors into the sales-consideration cycle and then funnel them toward the place where action occurs. The goal is not hidden, and it is easy for buyers to find the way to take the next step. When content effectively drives action, the next step of the sales process—an e-commerce company’s Products button, the B2B corporation’s White Paper Download form, or a nonprofit’s Donate link—is easy to find.

Working from the perspective of the company’s desire for revenue growth and customer retention (the goals), rather than focusing on made-up metrics for things like leads and website traffic, yields surprising changes in the typical marketing plan and in the organization of web content. Website traffic doesn’t matter if your goal is revenue (however, the traffic may lead to the goal). Similarly, being ranked number one on Google for a phrase isn’t important (although, if your buyers care about that phrase, it can lead to the goal).

Ultimately, when marketers focus on the same goals as the rest of the organization, we develop marketing programs that really deliver action and begin to contribute to the bottom line and command respect. Rather than meeting rolled eyes and snide comments about marketing as simply the T-shirt department, we’re seen as part of a strategic unit that contributes to reaching the organization’s goals.

While on an American Airlines flight I was introduced to a well-behaved German shepherd named Kobuk. His handler is Elizabeth Fossett of the nonprofit Maine Search & Rescue Dogs team. She told me how Kobuk had searched for hours to find a 77-year-old woman with diabetes and dementia who had been lost in the woods for several nights: no water, no food, and none of her medications. Kobuk had just traveled across the United States with Fossett to attend a ceremony at American Humane. For saving the woman’s life, he was being honored with the 2016 Hero Dog Award: Search & Rescue Dog.

Of course, I had to get a photo with Kobuk!

And then, naturally, I had to share it with my followers. So I tweeted the photo with the text “Psyched to meet Kobuk – 2016 @AmericanHumane National search & rescue hero dog – on @AmericanAir.” Within a few minutes, American Airlines thoughtfully tweeted back to me: “@dmscott Oh wow! We’re sure that was a great moment. #smile.” Seeing that response—and many others like it over the years—there was no question in my mind that the airline’s people pay attention to every message they receive and, when appropriate, craft a personal response. There are no generic “thanks for sharing” type responses on the @AmericanAir feed.

American Airlines is also fast to respond to Direct Messages on Twitter, and to similar communications in other social networks. As a frequent traveler on the airline, I sometimes tweet questions. A response typically comes within 15 minutes.

I was impressed and wanted to learn more about how the world’s largest airline uses real-time communications. I flew to the company’s Dallas/Fort Worth headquarters to spend the day with Jonathan Pierce, director of social media and content services, and more than a dozen of his American Airlines colleagues.

I went there expecting to learn how the airline uses real-time social networking to engage with customers and solve their problems. But I hadn’t expected to learn how important these interactions are to the entire company and its brand. I was fascinated to learn how real-time customer data is used all the way to the CEO level as a major source of data informing how to run the company. For this, American Airlines is at the forefront of a new way to manage business.