The Squeaky Wheel Gets the Grease
Every morning, when the dog licks my face and I hobble out of bed, I’m reminded that I’ve been a product publicist for 35 years. It takes a while to get the creaks out of my joints. Then I do some stretching, light exercises, and once I’m moving: watch out!
The benefit of having been in the business for so long is that you can observe patterns. One pattern I’ve observed is that new technologies always attract the most attention. Rightly so. However, the abuse of those technologies is also rampant. When I started my business back in 1976, the telephone was the “tool of the day.” Telemarketing got the grease. Then word processors became popular and everyone wanted to send personalized letters using mail-merge. Personalized direct mail got the grease. Then the fax machine gained acceptance and you guessed it: became the squeaky wheel. See a pattern?
Today the squeaky wheels in the advertising world are e-mail marketing, SEM (search engine marketing) including PPC (pay-per-click) and SEO (search engine optimization). The question for small manufacturers and distributors though is always one of budget allocation. Where to put the grease? Much of the basis of that question though relates to a lack of understanding of the marketing mix. I had a prospective customer recently, who had been in business for 20 years, ask me the difference between advertising and publicity? Asking a question like that, how on earth is he going to decide where to invest his scarce and valuable marketing dollars?
One of the reasons why small business folks don’t understand publicity relates to the squeaky wheel theory. Advertising is powerful. Building brands is essential. And they see the power of IBM, 3M, Microsoft, and the many other players with extensive resources and budgets lubricating the marketplace with messages about their products and services. Naturally, they want to emulate them, but cannot afford to. So, how do small companies compete effectively with the big dogs? Assuming they have quality products, there is only one way.
The answer to that question comes back to the difference between advertising and publicity. It really is quite simple: publicity is news and information [content] presented to readers and website visitors by editors and advertising is a sponsored message that is purchased. As it happens, the quality of the news ultimately dictates the advertising rates. Therefore, if you can get your message into the news section of the media, the part that readers are paying attention to, it has much greater value. Besides, it is free if you have the expertise to get it.
Beyond the economics of publicity, are the many benefits. Publicity identifies your company as a problem-solver or expert because of the real or implied “third-party” endorsement by the editor. This exposure, of course, generates sales leads and website traffic. And because of Google’s page rank technology which is based upon the number of websites linking to a document, rather than the characteristics of a document, it also helps your rankings in search engines. In other words, by getting widespread publicity in quality media outlets, you enhance your odds of being listed early on when prospective customers conduct product searches.
Perhaps the most important misunderstanding created by the squeaky wheel syndrome is the idea that “if someone needs my product they’ll Google it.” The reason this is a fatal mistake was best expressed by Peter Nielson, the Boats+Gear editor for “Sail Magazine” who chose one of our clients products for his column and wrote, “this is one of those handy little gizmos you never knew you needed before you saw it.” What publicity, especially product publicity can achieve for small manufacturers and distributors is product credibility. Done properly, you can stimulate a prospect by illustrating ways that your product can solve a problem. This not only gets prospects to “Google” you, but it gives them useful ideas. It is also a great way to expand products into new market niches.
Despite the utilization of product publicity by the brightest businesspeople like Steve Jobs, whose Mac introduction in 1984 was legendary, the great irony is that product publicity isn’t a squeaky wheel and doesn’t get any grease until someone like me creates some friction. Unlike a huge, fancy advertisement or billboard, great publicity isn’t obvious: because it is news!
