Business Promotion in the New Age of Digital Public Relations

There was a time where a business could hire a 'PR Guy or Gal' and have them either write press releases on the company and/or have them schmooze at various business events.

And the PR hire's salary would be paid for several times over by the uptick in business.

Does that condition still exist today?

CAN a business actually make money doing so-called traditional public relations in the digital age?

Of course the answer is the old stand-by, non-satisfactory answer: it depends.

What kind of business do you have?

Where do 80% (or at least a majority)  of your customers come from?

What is your product or service offering?  What is changing in the offering(s)?

Have you gained or lost customers and business over the last three years?

What is your industry trending over the last year?

What promotions have worked over the last three years?

And on and on as any good business coach would interrogate you.

Adopting a Feed-the-Winners-Starve the Losers Philosophy

"It's so easy for businesses these days marketing online..." is what a business coach recently told me. Their point was that with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google Search there are a lot of places to tell an organization's story.

Well, I did not tell him this, but if he reads this, he knows who he is, but the client offerings this business coach is marketing, a first-year marketing consultant would kill to represent!

Now I know a marketer's job is different from a PR person's job, but both of the skill sets have to approach their job in telling their employer's story in a compelling way.

And the main way many of us get to the area of  'compelling' is to test and re-test approaches, press releases, white papers, schmoozing events, teaching or seminar opportunities and joint venture opportunities and...whew!

Public relations has to be compelling enough so that people respond.

It's no more complicated than that.

There is a lot happening to and within public relations these days.

On What Media Do Your Potential Customers Mostly Hover?

Now I've got to be open and transparent here. I have a marketing group and we have guided clients AWAY from their usual advertising mix.

Yes, that includes at times local newspapers, phone books and general-audience publications--both online and off line.

There has been a tremendous online shift in newspaper and phone book publishers. I suppose it is a 'convert or die' scenario.

There are SO many options local newspapers have to be alive and healthy that they are not doing. But that's another story for a different topic!

However , I have also guided potential advertisers AWAY from advertising in the Quad State Business Journal, too! (Gasp!) The QSBJ is in the middle of an 18-month ramp up as an online publication and we are not quite ready to take local online ads just yet.

So where do we steer clients to get business with their public relations activities? 

Content Is King--But Distribution of that Content is the Queen!

No doubt about it, businesses face a heavily-packed content world of getting their message out these. There is SO MUCH content online that business owners often throw up their hands and go back to advertising in their local newspaper--often settling for a fraction of an ROI they could enjoy otherwise.

We don't have the heart to throw content in here that we could or even should, but we want to BRIEFLY develop the public relations smorgasbord available to businesses and nonprofit organizations right now.

A Quick Guide  on Terms for Quizzing Your Potential PR Hire

You do the work and effort to become familiar with the terms yourself and THEN you will see clearly enough to see if a potential hire really knows her stuff or is just trying to dazzle you with her footwork.

This is where is world of business is heading--or already is profiting. What we will do is state the term and give a 'good for' type of feed for best-for businesses or situations.

Types of Content in the Marketplace:

Advertorial--This is a paid editorial type of presentation. In short an advertorial is simply a display ad written as a news piece.  You are seeing more advertorials today in many newspapers as well as in a lot of print and online media. You will know them by the smaller-font 'Sponsored Content' or 'Paid Advertising' message somewhere near the piece.

Newspapers originally rejected these kinds of ads, but now some eagerly accept them. (Don't be upset with newspapers doing this or thinking less of them. They are simply trying to stay in business.)

Good For--There are SO many businesses and situations that advertorials can cover the waterfront. I do not know why more newspapers are not out selling advertorials as a regular part of marketing their advertising division.

Banks and mortgage companies come to mind as first thoughts, but the potential number of types of businesses can be limitless if one thinks about it.

Native Facebook Feeds--This is the win-win nature of Facebook--and why their founders are billionaires. Facebook in the early days refused to be purchased by Google and this is the reason they knew they should not sell out. Facebook endured a lot of flack in the press as to the information they asked from users.  (BTW, when you see the word 'native' it usually means paid.)

And now you know why. A business can now target Facebook as to a particular region, a city, a zip code sequence or areas of interest in dozens of ways.

Good For--Restaurants use Facebook targeting a lot, but also a host of other businesses. Physician and dental offices are also getting on the bandwagon here.  It is cheap advertising. You are just buying clicks (as per so many other things in our digital age). You don't have to pay the big bucks fee for exact keyword matches as you do with Google's Adwords and it brings you almost the same results.

Native LinkedIn Feeds--Did you know this about LinkedIn? Not too many businesses know this about LI, but this is why their stock price continues to remain strong.  LI is an ideal place if your offer needs to reach professionals in any capacity of their life. Targeting is done a little differently than Facebook, but works pretty much the same. Many businesses learn LI well and develop prospecting strategies where they don't have to pay a dime--just their time.

Good For--Headhunters and specific recruiting work, travel and vacation firms also are prominent on LI.  Schools and colleges are also developing strategies, but any business with a product or service appealing to people in an executive or managerial capacity.

Native Twitter Feeds--Believe it or not Twitter is now being used more and more for business. Twitter itself is getting a lot of media attention these days. However, I can take you to a photo equipment distributor in our Quad State region who I believe was the first business in our area to sell via Twitter. It was 'way back' in 2007.

Good For--Mostly two-step promotions--meaning a link to a report or white paper a business is offering.  Twitter, as of this writing, is not a strong as contender as Facebook or LI. It does not ask a lot of information from its users and therefore targeting can be a chore. The entire Twitter process works best, of course, when one has a large following or a business can buy a large following. Twitter is good for the marketplace in that the creative marketers have another option for their employers.

Native Press--Aka Paid Content  with some wonks as seeing only this medium as the go-to medium. This is basically a paid recommendation offering. It may be in the shape of a monthly or weekly column, a full web page or any number of ways. It may not be spelled out like this, but it is what it is. It's a good tool for businesses representing a ton of different industries in my opinion. As to promotion on a website or outright media recommendation ("Buy your car from Fluff Motors!"), it can be a lot more subtler in presentation.

Good For--I believe banks and financial institutions are missing out big time in not taking advantage of this format. They could have their lead trust officer or whomever handles estates and estate planning or business loans or other area write a weekly column and THEN promote the links to customers and vendors. I know the QSBJ would love to see this form of native action take place. We believe it would be extremely profitable over time. Of course banking is not the only industry, but also those whose clients in business--or in the field where the media reaches into.

Native Newsletter (E-Letter)--This is for both online and off line publications. This means that the entire piece/web page is devoted to promoting the things from your business or organization. Probably the worst representation of an offline newsletter by an industry was years ago by the accounting industry. CPAs would sign up for X amount of months of content, slap their name on it and present the same-old, same-old drivel that virtually every other accountant had. And they'd do it because they couldn't stand to write. And they weren't creative.  This format has great potential, but it is limited to  certain industry usage.

Good For--Accountants and other professional service providers as long as they hired a LOCAL writer and offered local pieces--about local clients, local events and so forth. Therefore make it interesting to read for goodness sake!

The point of ANY public relations activity, at least in the offensive part of business promotion, is to generate interest in the business itself. Maybe even to generate business leads.

If managers and owners cannot see a real ROI for their public relations activity--at least with the above items--it may be time to either hire someone from the outside as an independent marketer, or to hire someone else!

Not many businesses can afford to drift along month after month after month on a process without showing a solid return on that process.

Go forth and conquer your market!

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 Article first appeared in www.QuadStateBusinessJournal.com 

Happy 26th Anniversary, Rush Limbaugh: Business Lessons for Quad State Owners

Frankly, An Editorial

If you are one of those who are 'kinda embarrassed' telling your friends that you listen to Rush Limbaugh's radio program, it might pay you to listen up.

Starting the 27th year is wonderful for ANY business, let alone being a radio program. Shoot, many of us don't even like the same music, revere the same business guru, or even like the same food we did 26 years ago, right?

 

While I have not had the time luxury to listen to all the three hours of one of Rush's programs for years, or even snippets of it for weeks at a time, there are some take-aways in business that we can take to heart.

Find What You Love to Do and You'll Never Work a Day In Your Life

You've heard this statement before--probably from a wise parent--if not from a favorite business mentor. It is true nonetheless.

If you've followed Rush's career even lightly, you'll know that he is fond of saying that he 'knew what he wanted to do' in life when he was 16 years of age--have something to do with radio. It was his love of country and truly wanting the best for all US citizens that gave him his thoughtful opinions that he turned into parody to communicate those opinions.

As a marketer, Limbaugh is quite at home with the concept of niche marketing. When he was at a single radio station in Sacramento, California, he came to the conclusion that there was a large swath of conservative thought in America. He needed to be on many stations across the USA in order to capture that audience.

He convinced his initial investors to fund a nationwide syndication in 1988 and the rest, as they say, is history.

While he started out as a lone voice in the conservative movement, there were scores of both local and national conservative talk shows that launched in his wake. Yet he has remained THE #1 talk show (not just conservative talk show) in the media for 26 years.

Some radio executives even say Rush Limbaugh saved AM radio. If you remember the late 1980s, FM radio was 'the' thing. And AM radio stations were dying and going bankrupt. Their advertising sales were in the pits. And then Limbaugh came along.

We have several radio stations right here in our Quad State footprint that owe their success to the Limbaugh program. However, as one owner told me in the late 1990s, he knows of other owners who say the same thing. However, he said they would NEVER admit the fact due to the so-called 'polarizing' impact of Limbaugh, no matter how true it was.

What is amazing to me is Limbaugh's shrugging off oftentimes cutting criticism. I've been amazed that there seems to be SO many in the media, whether they have a vindictive agenda or they simply are intellectually lazy, consistently mistake or lie about Limbaugh's opinions. I've witnessed this with my own ears.

What Ever Your Hand Finds To Do, Do It Heartily 

We all have different work habits. Some of us work fast in short 1-2-hour bursts and do an 'editing' job on our efforts or leave that to others.

Others work methodically over long stretches of time. I've known business writers and even business owners with an idea for a new business spent 8-10 hours or more straight.

The watch-word in business, no matter what your working style is to always work as if you have a deadline. If you remember your high school or collegiate athletics, you've probably had a coach that told you to 'leave 100% out on the field.'  My own football coach told us if you still have any spring in your step after a game, he will assign laps!

The great pains with which Limbaugh documents his opinions is also amazing. In fact, Tom Sullivan, president of the national opinion research firm The Sullivan Group, has been given complete access to both the live radio broadcast and the printed document of every word uttered on the program documents every statement.

As a result Limbaugh's opinions measured against the documented truth about a topic--not just polls or public opinion--Limbaugh has enjoyed being 99.8% accurate in his pronouncements.

Whatever Your Hand Finds To Do, Do It With All Confidence

I'm reminded of the book of Joshua in the Bible, first chapter, in fact occurring many times in the chapter, "only be strong and very courageous" in carry out your assignment.

The one thing in business, whether we sell a product or a service, is to know what we know and realize that we have the best service/product that our customers will have the pleasure of experiencing. We are going to make them glad they talked to us!

Limbaugh could be a good pitchman...maybe not only the order of Ed McMahon (the old Johnny Carson Tonight Show)  or Billy Mays (of infomercial fame), but he takes on advertisers very carefully. He's got to believe in the product/service just as the advertisers do.

And as those in the audience witnessed, advertisers who questioned Limbaugh's pronouncements, take pronouncements during the Sandra Fluke controversy, and succumbed to boycott threats--and then tried to get back on the show after the boycott was proven phony--were politely told to find another advertising medium.

Confidence In Knowing What You Believe and Why You Believe

Having confidence means that you have confidence in your ideas--both on and off the field of business. It means having thought through what and why you believe--about your product or service, your employees, your market, and your life.

Having confidence doesn't mean necessarily that you blab it all over the place and thus become obnoxious to be around. No way. But it does mean that you will not shy away from giving your opinion--about business, markets or even life--when someone asks.

I could launch into a very touching dissertation as to one reason why I feel that those of us in the business world lose out is due to a lack of confidence and all--but I won't!

This Writer's Personal Encounter with The Rush Limbaugh Show In our Quad State Region

It was 1994 and I was working with one of my local clients who had purchased a business about a year earlier. If you remember, Limbaugh had been on the air nationally about six years at that time. And was just coming to the end of a bunch of public appearances.

I just love to work with family businesses. And I really enjoyed this client. My client's father and all three of his sons had their own businesses. (Personally, while I love to watch a husband-wife work together on their one business, I think that in this case, it was the fact that what helped them develop, was because they each had INDIVIDUAL businesses.)

Anyway, my client was creating a new division with new products and services. My job was to develop 'everything that had to do with marketing and promotion.' (Just love that type of assignment!)

I was listening to Limbaugh's program when I was travelling a ways in the car. Rush told the audience that while he really enjoyed going around the country and meeting listeners, he said he had made up his mind to do only one more public appearance.

As he had not stated where that final appearance was to be, I called Rush's Chief of Staff, Kit Carson. Kit told me that the criteria for the 'last Rush Limbaugh appearance' was NOT going to be in or even near any major city, but somewhere in the hinterlands.

I thought "Wow, we have a lot of hinterlands in our Quad State region--away from Washington, DC and major cities. I called Kit back and asked him if I could ask my client to sponsor it."  After all my client would not have to put out any money for Limbaugh, but just accommodate listeners in the area coming to the event.

I thought that although my client had an in-town location, he did have a large parking lot. And there was plenty of parking nearby.

When I asked my client and he thought it would be interesting. Especially as the dates were pretty flexible. And that he could see my tie-in to his new division that he was just launching. I was excited.

I was deflated when he said, "We just don't have room, ask my brother" His brother's business was out in the country, yet along a main road. Lots more room for people and for parking. It was perfect.

I sat in front of his brother whom I had known previously. He asked me to come back a couple of times. He had a fast-growing business and wanted he got all the information so that he could make an informed decision.

I was excited once again. I made another call to Rush's 'H.R.' Kit Carson. He looked up the new location and he was excited.

But alas, my client's brother said no also-. Sigh! And he was a HUGE Rush Limbaugh fan. He didn't say as much but my guess was that as he was going to be running for office in a couple years, he didn't want to have any 'lightening rod.' Really sad.

Well, I just re-lived that point. And I'm upset again. Ha! It could have been SO GOOD for our Quad State region if he would have said yes.

The point here is to never miss an opportunity to give your business a voice in your noisy marketplace--you may not have another chance!

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 Article first appeared in www.QuadStateBusinessJournal.com

How Do You Test a New Product or Service In Your Business?

 

With the big wave of new franchises comes the idea that 'buying a franchise means people have already put a lot of money into marketplace testing and research.' Yes, that may be true, but there's a 'but' here.

But just because the prospectus says it will work anywhere and has all these wonderful testimonials by happy, satisfied franchise owners, does that mean it will work where YOU want to put it?

No, you don't get to test franchises out at your location. There is just too much money involved—by both sides of the desk. You have the right to visit other franchisees at their locations, ask questions and query customers at those locations. Yet is your area the same apples to apples comparasion?

The Case of the Major Market 'Can't Lose' Hotel Sucking Up Cash—In Spite of 'Wise' Counsel

This case should send shivers up any entrepreneurial spine.

The owner already owned a fast-food franchise that was throwing off a lot of cash. The fact that the franchise was located just off one of the major Interstates in our region AND on the way to a popular ski area enhanced an already-popular brand.

Having popular businesses on the way to major tourist or recreational attractions allows for an easy strategy to site another franchise nearby. Doesn't it? After all wasn't that how Wendy's and other fast-food franchises got their start by buying or leasing real estate near McDonald's?

Our Quad State entrepreneur thought about his situation for a few years. Here he even purchased land that was not only nearby his popular fast-food franchise, it was just off of one of the interchanges of one of two of our major Quad State interstates.

What other business could he place there?

It was really a no-brainer as far as what business. All his internal and external counsel suggested a hotel would be perfect. He could not only give travelers a respite away from major cities in our region, he could tap the ski resort traffic in the winter. A win-win for sure!

He was counseled not to get one of the low-budget hotels, but really sink some coins into a solid upper tier property. He settled on a very good 4-Star property. He figured that his location of being in a small town off the Interstate could give him the 'large duck in a small pond' ambiance that his customers were looking for.

But would a hotel really work at that particular Exit ramp? He gathered what he said were good real estate pros, franchise pros (not the ones with the franchise hotel he invested in), paid for traffic studies (at least in his mind he paid for traffic studies). Every professional gave the same enthusiastic thumbs-up for his commitment to the 4-Star hotel.

He took the plunge.

A couple, three million dollars (in building costs alone) later an extremely handsome 4-Star hotel now stands just off one of the exit ramps of a very well-traveled Interstate. No turning back now.

His counsel was correct—at least for some of the winter months when the ski resort had snow. The place was hopping with folks from the Washington, DC and Baltimore areas. As of this writing we do not know if our fast-food entrepreneur turned hotelier ever had a sell-out of rooms, however...even in the busiest of months.

The first summer—April to November even--was virtually dead as far as rooms-sold was concerned. The second summer a little better. He thought he could see riding out the dry times and then the property would also be throwing off cash.

The third year the ski resort even had a hard time manufacturing snow...ergo, not too many people were eager to travel to the resort. Result? Both a summer and a winter where he was happy to have the cash from his fast-food store support his hotel. Did I tell you that it is a very nice hotel? Oh, I did.

He has now hired a full time marketing person with a great local background to market the hotel. Time will tell. The hotel manager told me that it would sure be great if he could wean the hotel off the fast-food cash infusions, but he doesn't see a time, as of this writing, when he could do that.

How Do You View Testing In Your Own Business Launches?

While I do not wish to go into what our entrepreneur could have done to think through building the hotel (that would probably identify him too closely), I do think we should treat testing our new products and services with a little more reverence.

I refer to 'little more reverence' being the condition of not pulling the trigger so quickly. You have marketing consultants like me telling you that you need a stream of new products and/or services coming out regularly. And that is true. But you need to be wise about it.

Those entrepreneurs among us who truly enjoy shooting from the hip because of the thrill of hitting a marketplace bulls-eye will save ourselves a lot of trouble by developing low-cost, no-cost tests.

These tests could take the form of reports in dry runs (product promised) or wet runs (product delivered). I've even seen entrepreneurs take to flea markets and booths at events in order to test products and services.

How to Tell If You Are the 'Shoot From the Hip' Type or the Wise Entrepreneur

This got to me when I first read it. I wished I had not taken years for me to learn to adapt, but the Henry Ford hiring test will give you an indicator as to which side your tendency lies.

It is fairly well known that whenever old Henry Ford would hire anyone for an important position, he would have lunch with them.

If the potential employee would salt their food—without tasting it first—Mr. Ford would not hire the person. Period. Why?

Salting the food before tasting it indicated that the person would implement a plan before testing it. And if that was you having Mr. Ford buy you lunch, you didn't get the job.

Everything counts. Test everything. Invest the time. Enjoy the results.

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First appeared in www.QuadStateBusinessJournal.com

Finding a Job in the I-81 Quad State Region

We have a job-hunter's bonanza here.

I have even been asked to put this article in a special report for the Journal—and maybe I will. There is a lot of great stuff. (Even through I'm the butt of a negative reply at the end as you will see!)

The following might be a record for the longest article we've ever had in the Quad State Business Journal. But our editorial group decided, that with the 'contrary' opinions to what I wrote, it will be terrific resource material for job seekers in our I-81 Quad State region.

This is going to be an article from the other side of the desk from what the Quad State Business Journal usually focuses on. It's another way to show us how strong businesses and strong economy are interlocked. (No one likes to get 'beat up' about what they write, but I'm doing this for the team!)

Maybe you have a job you like and merely want to see if the grass is indeed greener on the other side of the proverbial fence. Maybe you owned a business before and, for one reason or the other, the business had to fold and you still need to find a way to put food on the table and a roof overhead for your family.

Our Quad State region is unique in that being close to the intersection of I-70 and I-81 gives businesses a great launching area as to product and service distribution. Add to that the huge Intermodal railroad terminal in Franklin County and our other inter-active transportation hubs and we've got a pretty darn good opportunity for a wide variety of businesses—in all of our contiguous counties.

Some Businesses In Our Region Wonder Whise They Are Going to Get the Employees

It has been reported in the QSBJ earlier this year that thise have been conversations with HR managers who have expressed fear that they 'don't know whise' additional employees are going to come from once a new initiative kicks in later this year.

But business is about individuals every much as it is about nebulous areas of 'markets' and 'resources' and 'mergers & acquisitions' are. Thise is a person behind every activity.

To that end we wanted to present a job-hunting article in QSBJ. Maybe more. We'll see what we get in response. We urge you to tap the resources right in your own county, right in your own city and right in your own personal network.

First, Get Prepared

Maybe you’ve been thinking about switching jobs, or maybe you want to put a toe in the water by applying for a job or two to see what happens.

Maybe you’ve been job-hunting for months without success, and getting the feeling that what you need is a job-search plan! hise is a step-by-step guide to getting your job search underway, whethis you’re out of the closet as a job-seeker or keeping things hush-hush until the right job offer comes along.

Do you want your present employer to know about your efforts?

The best employers will always be as up front with current employees as much as possible. If thise is a new piece of legislation that is going to impact a section of the firm's workforce, an employer may let any impending layoffs be known.

That way you can tap a huge network of both company and outside outplacement resources.

If you’re going to be conducting a stealth job search that your current employer doesn’t know about, use caution. If you update your LinkedIn profile as many job-seekers do, set your notification settings to Off so that your contacts (including your workmates and clients) don’t get notifications from LinkedIn advising them of your profile-updating activity.

If you are stealth job-seeker, common sense should rule your activities (even when it's not as much fun!). hise are a few more things you cannot do if you want to be secretive in your job search:

• Go to job fairs
• Post their resumes online at career sites (that includes ANY of them)

• Send blast email messages to their friends to say “Hey! I’m job hunting, could you help me out?” (We've all heard variations on this theme: 'Old man Codger has dissed me for the last time by giving the promotion I should have received to his son...etc.')

This last bit may surprise you. 'Hey, my friends have nothing to do with my current employer nor their business. Why not have them help me?' One simple reason...

Sure as shootin' one of your friend, in an effort to help 'old Jim' or 'sweet Susie' will send an e-mail blast to THEIR contacts. And your search seems to have a great chance of ending up in your boss's computer—people love to help and the 'help' lands in many directions in this digital age.

Of course putting the word CONFIDENTIAL in all caps—several times in your message- 'could' help your job hunt remain, well, confidential. But how many of your friends actually read every word you write before they get the idea and 'help' you blast out your message?

'Gee, I'm sorry your boss found out about your job-hunting, Jim. I was only trying to help. I'm busy, too, you know, and I can't read everything. I was just trying to help.'

What Kind of a Job Are You Looking For?

We all have to know our strengths—building up strengths will pay off much better than shoring up weaknesses. I trust you have taken a strength-finder type aptitude test. Maybe even paid for it yourself.

Thise are a lot of free strength tests out thise. But the ones whise you have to pay a little for deliver so much more.

To that end, a business acquaintance of mine, Perry Marshall, has a solid inexpensive one that has been declared to be far better than the $200+ tests—at a fraction of the cost—see http://bit.ly/1nICp4Z

Every job seeker, in stealth mode or not, should update his or his LinkedIn profile and begin to envision the job you want. Answer each of these questions for yourself:

• What will my ideal job title and description be? 
• How will this optimum job help me grow as a person and a professional?
• What will be my ideal job pay?
• What sorts of people or teams will I be working with?
• What sort of company or organization will I be working for? (Hopefully you've already done this kind of research!)
• What kind of 'business pain' will my employment solve for the organization?

[Sidebar: Every good marketer worth his or his salt knows about finding and solving business pain in the sales and marketing arena for their clients. What I've done is simply taken that to the 'employment' level. You'll see why in a moment.]

Gaining Altitude Begets Attitude Which SHOULD Beget Gratitude

Now you have an idea of what you want in a new job. If you didn’t, you’d run the risk of jumping from the frying pan into the fire, going from one so-so job into another one.

Get your ideal situation clear in your mind so that you can compare real-life job opportunities with the Ideal Job you designed for yourself.

Your next step is to get altitude — that is, perspective or the 35,000-foot level--on your own career so far. What have you learned in your current job, that you’ll take with you to the next one?

What have you found to be your greatest strength as a working person, the one thing your colleagues would say you were born to do and should always be doing?

If you’re a visual person, draw a roadmap on a piece of paper and fill it in with your path since childhood. Where did you live at each point in your life, and what did you enjoy?

If you’re a writer, write your autobiography. Your life story has incredible wisdom hidden inside it. Unleash that information now as you prepare to make a major life move!

Getting Focused On Targeting Your 'Sweet Spot' Job

Your job search’s success relies on your ability to target the employers you can help the most and vice versa. You can’t go on a white-collar job search in 2014 with the brand “I can do anything.” The nineteen-eighties style resume with bold text trumpeting Sales! Operations! Customer Service! Accounting! went out the window years ago.

These days, the name of the game truly is targeting.

Your career sweet spot lies at the intersection of the things you do especially well, the things you love to do and the things employers will pay for. That means thise must be pain points associated with your area of specialization.

When you’re clear on those three elements, you’ve got your sweet spot and you’re ready to brand yourself for your job search.

Whethis or not your talent is in marketing, as a job-seeker you ARE a marketing right now!

What Pain Would Hiring You Relieve for an Organization? (What 'Pain Letters' Are)

Maybe an example is in order. Let's say we have George (a real person we worked with). George worked at an employer for 25 years and got laid off in a merger. This was in some way OK for George as he was growing sick and tired coming into work at the same old, same old.

George was asked to draw intersecting circles on a whiteboard with three main things in his job search.

• What he loves to do (training, program management and customer hand-holding)
• What he’s good at (all of the above plus budgeting and managing staff members) and...
• What the market will pay for.

George learned about the market’s desire to pay by browsing the job ads on Indeed and SimplyHired. he took the terms from his first two bullets above (program management, e.g.) and plugged them into the What field and added his city location to the Where field on each of those two mega-job-search sites. his search gave his back lots of job ads for Account Managers and Sales Training positions, so that’s whise George will focus his job search as it begins.

Targeting Yourself: Think of Yourself As a Service that Will Solve Employer Issues

Now George needs to create a target list of employers. he is not going to waste his time tossing off resumes in response to every job ad he sees. he is driving his own job search, not reacting to job ads that happen to be posted online.

George is going to divide his scarce and valuable job-search time and energy into three equal parts. One-third of his time and energy will go to responding to posted job ads that meet his sweet spot requirements.

A second one-third will go to his own outreach to hiring managers he finds on LinkedIn. These folks don’t have job ads posted, or if they do George hasn’t seen them. That’s okay!It’s a new day. You can send a Pain Letter (aka in some circles Needs Letter or Solution Letter) to anyone you want.

The last one-third of George’s available job-search time and energy will go to networking. That’s not just for leads and advice — he can use the moral support, too! Networking also gives George a chance to advise his friends, a great thing for anyone in transition to do. When we help our friends with their issues, we remember how smart and capable we are!

Finding and Focusing On an Employer's Corporate or Positional Pain 

Steve Lanning has stated that in his career as a copywriter for products and services in helping his clients, that finding the prospect's 'real' pain (not perceived) is the marketer's biggest challenge.

Well, George is focusing on Account Manager and Sales Trainer roles. Next he’ll focus on the Business Pain that a hiring manager would bring his in to relieve.

What sorts of pain do Directors and VPs of Account Management have? Accounts worthy of their own Account Manager spend big bucks with vendors. They can’t be left to languish. They need to be handled with kid gloves. VPs and Directors of Account Management worry that big accounts or potentially much-larger accounts are falling through the cracks.

The target company's calls don’t get returned. Their orders aren’t shepherded through an order processing system. These are the pain points George will focus on when he’s pursuing the Account Manager side of his job search.

On the Training side, the pain is different. Training Managers know that it’s hard to get time and attention from busy and over-scheduled trainees, yet executives and regulatory bodies require people to have up-to-date training.

George knows that Training Managers worry about trainers who can’t engage an audience, or aren’t flexible when face-to-face or synchronous training isn’t the right answer. (Synchronous training is the kind that happens when all the trainees are being trained at the same time.)

When training isn’t working, people are disengaged and don’t participate. Their managers get frustrated, and reasonably so. George is going to hit these pain points when he sends his to Training Managers.

We are on the launchpad. The countdown has started. He’s nearly ready to go!

How To Write a Pain Letter

George is going to write his first Pain Letter. he’ll write one for a Director of Account Management whose job ad he found online. He’ll write a second Pain Letter to a Training Manager he spotted on LinkedIn, at a company about five miles from his house.

In order to write his Pain Letter, George is going to spend time on each company’s website to identify his hiring manager (if he can’t find the right person on the company site, he’ll zip over to LinkedIn and use the Advanced People Search function there) and to get clues that will help his be even more specific as he writes about each manager’s pain in business.

We have people in our Quad State area, maybe right in your county, who can help you with your pain letter in getting it ready for prime time.

Making Technology Work For You: Customizing Your Human-Voiced Resume

Now George needs a resume to send in the mail to his hiring manager (No Black Holes! Life is too short) along with a customized pain letter. He'll start by writing a hard-drive version of his Human-Voiced Resume or HVR (you may have to Google this one) to keep on file and update whenever he gets the urge.

Next, he’ll create two variations on his Human-Voiced Resume: one for Account Manager jobs, and the other for Training opportunities.

As a final tweak, George will customize his HVR even more for each hiring manager he approaches. his first Account Manager opportunity is with a major lending firm. When he was with the phone company, George had a big lender as a client, so he’ll throw that brand name into the version of his HVR that he sends to the Director of Account Management at the lending firm. The more you can look like a ‘friendly’ in your first approach to a hiring manager, the better!

After Lift-Off...

George is ready for prime time now. he’s going to print out his customized Human-Voiced Resume and his Pain Letter, each one printed in black ink on white bond paper (he’ll use a better grade of printer paper than he uses for his everyday printing, but he’ll avoid the 1980s-style nubbly beige and pink “Resume Paper” that brands his as out of date and out of touch).

he’ll staple his one-page Pain Letter to the front of his two-page Human-Voiced Resume with one staple in the upper left hand corner of the page. he’ll sign his Pain Letter at the bottom and then slide the Pain Letter-HVR combo, unfolded, into a pristine white 8.5 x 11-inch envelope. he’ll block-print his hiring manager’s name on the front of the envelope, in the center, along with his or his job title, company name and company street address, which he found on the company website.

he’ll block-print the recipient information rathis than send the envelope through his printer. he learned at our job-search workshop that printed envelopes from non-clients-or-vendors get tossed in the wastebasket in the company mailroom, while hand-printed ones are allowed to sail through to the hiring manager’s daily mail delivery.

Tell Your Network

George relaxes with a cup of iced tea once his Pain Letter-HVR packet is in the mail. The next day, he starts writing a list of people who should know about his job search – friends and ex-coworkers, book club members and everyone he knows. he’ll write to these folks in small batches and invite each person for coffee or lunch. If he’s saving money (and who isn’t?) he might invite them for a walk around the lake instead. At his one-on-one networking get-togethiss, George will talk about his job search but much more than that, he’ll catch up with his friend and help them with whatever life issues they’re facing now.

George didn’t realize until he started reconnecting with old friends how powerful their medicine is for his as a mojo-depleted job-seeker!

Rinse and Repeat

Now George has a plan. he’s going to shoot for two networking get-togethiss each week and four Pain Letter-HVR combos going out in the mail every week, too. Pain Letters historically have a 25% hit rate. That means that hiring managers will respond positively to a Pain Letter about one-quarter of the time. So George figures that by sending out four Pain Letters a week he’ll generate a new, live job-search lead once a week, and that’s not including his networking contacts!

Publisher's Note: We have some sort of contrary opinions to Jill's article and we would also like to share them with Quad State Readers—with Jill's enthusiastic support we might add!

FROM A CURRENT CEO:

The individuals who are most successful at landing a job are the ones who rather than sit at their computer flashing resumes to everyone in the alphabet, are actually researching employers that represent a best fit for their talents and then take themselves there to speak to someone about employment. Being assertive paves the road every time.

You do, however, absolutely have to be prepared to do your stuff at that moment and sell yourself because if you're bold enough to capture their interest, you'd better be able to deliver or it will all come tumbling down just as quickly.

Absolutely no disrespect to Jill whatsoever, but I've read a number of these cheer-leader articles that lather readers with all sorts of motivational tweaks and what I call distance-tactics.

Jill normally does a great job, but I wanted to get 'the other side of the desk' represented with this piece. There isn't an executive on this planet, yours truly included, that wants to read a "pain" letter any more than the boilerplate cover.

It's a matter of dislodging us from the process altogether by rescuing us from having to go through it all. We don't like the hiring process. It's an unappealing and festering boil that works to immobilize our feet in concrete because of the very nature of elements you're reading about in articles like this one.

Forget all the nonsense about painting your nose brown, or even blue. You want employment? Then here it is, straight up:

Find the company and position you want, get your game-face on and hit the ground to go and get it. Be determined, don't take no for an answer and work until you land in a seat before the hiring authority, well-prepared to sell yourself on the meaningful contributions you can make.

Not the ones that you think everyone wants to hear or that some coach rehearsed into you, but truly what you can competently perform with enthusiasm and hunger.

And the last caveat I'll offer from an exec who oversaw 4500 employees and ruled the hiring corral with a steel whip; never grovel or give feigned praise to someone you never knew before you wanted the job.

The person you're seeking employment from doesn't care to be manipulated, regardless of how you choose to characterize it. We're looking for talented and confident individuals who will take our companies farther up the food chain. We're looking for individuals who are forthright, demonstrate self-confidence and most importantly, genuine.

I say that because for you, the target is gaining employment. For us, it's everything you do after we hire you. That's how the process gets divided, depending upon how you approach a career decision.

So make absolute certain that you don't approach a hiring official with all the effort you can muster toward merely gaining employment. Forget about whether you're going to get hired in the interview. Forget about it entirely.

Instead, go in there and provide a straight-forward assessment of yourself and how you would like to deploy your talents in the company. Period. Double Period.

If you've got the right skills and can demonstrate firewater that has nothing to do with getting hired and far more to do with how you can perform for the company, you'll more likely than not get a job. In fact, folks like us will sometimes even make a place for you.

Good people are indeed hard to find. Great pretenders are a dime a dozen. The above principals are eternal—or as writers would call ongoing valid material—it's evergreen.

FROM A JOB SEEKER PER Jill's ARTICLE:

Note: The anonymous job-seeker had the opportunity to read the CEO's comment to Jill's letter.

I agree with everything the CEO had to say – Here’s a perspective from a job seeker:

Regarding matching a company with yourself – this was me for the first 3 months I was unemployed. A lot of this depends on the area you live in, and the economy. After 3 months or so, a person starts to get worried and applies for anything they think they can get.

After 6 months, I just needed a job, not just for the income but for my sanity. After a year I had given up, and was working (volunteering) for Habitat for Humanity for no pay. At that point I was only applying for anything that I thought I might have a chance at, even at $9 an hour. I couldn’t even get hired as unskilled labor. I avoided recruiting companies because I believed they were only collecting resumes.

I personally like the idea of showing my skills in a pain letter to the hiring manager. Everybody agrees it’s hard work finding work, but let’s face it, some people have an easier time than others. What works at one company doesn’t work at another. However, addressing a cover letter to the hiring manager isn’t as easy as Jill makes it sound.

Finding a hiring manager on Linkedin in 2 minutes is a fantasy unless it’s a very small company. For example, the title of my current leader (yes, I did eventually land a great job) is Director of Technology.

There are 15+ Director’s of Technology here – which one do you choose? Even if you get it right, your letter goes to the HR office first, and addressing the wrong person. You can address the HR person then it’s addressed wrong when it gets to the hiring manager.

I read somewhere roughly only 40% of new hires were actually the correct decision. I’ve been on both sides of the desk and I sympathize with the candidate a little more. I’m surprised how often I hear the complaint that it’s hard to find good hard working people.

I am one of those good hard working people, but I think too many HR people and hiring managers want me to fit in a certain mold. If 60% of the hiring decisions are wrong, then perhaps they need to check their egos and reconsider some of those candidates.

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Article first appeared in www.QuadStateBusinessJournal.com