more media coverage, more often
Leigh Nissim, Managing Director
It wasn’t St Minver’s first priority to have a public facing brand. It is important however, that we make a name for ourselves in our industry as well as have the right kind of presence to attract more brands to our business model. Alex and his team understood this need and has been instrumental in helping to shape the perception of our company as one of the key players in the UK gaming market.
Daniel Simmons, Owner
“As someone who is skilled in helping enable others to professionally articulate what their goals, intuition and ambitions are, I was surprised to find that when it came to articulating my own vision from a sales perspective, I was hitting roadblocks and hurdles. I was also wary about asking for help, let alone engaging another person.
After one session with Alex all those doubts were erased. He has the rare gift of listening and yet still processing, translating what you think you are saying about your business to what the customer understands and experiences as actually being said. He does this without diluting the substance or potential impact of your messaging. On the contrary he allows your messaging to reach its higher aspirational goals whilst still ‘selling’ your key bullet points.
I come away from the sessions with Alex, feeling listened to, heard and understood and equipped with the tools to take my sales messaging to the next level. Most importantly I come away feeling more energised, excited and most importantly clearer about my business. A rare feat to achieve!”
Marcus Cauchi, Owner
Alex and his team are easy to work with. I’m not. Yet they have managed to find a way that works for both of us. They set clear agreements up front and makes sure you understand what’s expected on both sides.
We book a time and date to meet, They ask me good questions and keep me on topic and we get the job done every time, on time. They did excellent groundwork upfront and ensured I invested the time they needed to really understand my business and what I’ve planned to achieve.
They took time to understand my writing style, my delivery style and my objectives; naturally, by understanding from so many angles, why I needed help, often before and better than I did, they learned thoroughly and fast. We reached an understanding of how to communicate efficiently much faster than with other advisors I’ve asked to help.
Cleverly, they have protected both of us from wasting our time and when I was holding things up I appreciated that they told me while keeping my dignity intact.
They are perceptive and systematic and move seamlessly between strategy and tactics. They ask good challenging questions and their questions naturally encourage you to give good answers. I value their ability to translate my answers into relevant messages that engage your target audience and catch the eye of journalists and editors.
Gillian Nissim, Founder
One of our greatest successes was the media coverage resulting from our annual survey. Thanks to Alex’s teams great planning and execution, coverage ranged from BBC online and BBC News 24 to key HR and recruitment titles as well as relevant consumer press both online and offline. This has resulted in a significant and ongoing increase in traffic to our website, but most importantly in a significant rise in the number of employers and candidates actively using our service. I am delighted with our success.
Iain Gray, Owner
Before I worked with 9mm, I knew what I wanted to write. I knew how I wanted it to sound. And I knew how often I wanted to write it. It just didn’t seem to be happening.
I regularly sat down in front of a PC completely stuck for what I was supposed to do next, despite having plenty of things to say, once I got started. I also often looked at pieces once I’d written them and felt they didn’t do me justice – but I couldn’t say why.
Thanks to Alex’s coaching and support, I have seen great progress on these in just a few short weeks. My writing has improved massively, I’m starting to find a voice I’m happy with and I’m really enjoying writing every day.
A good thing really as it’s a critical skill for someone in my role! Alex has been great to work with because he has a wealth of experience of what does and doesn’t work when it comes to writing compelling pieces that your audience will read, enjoy and take action on.
He also gets the balance between encouragement and critical feedback spot on. If you have a lot of ideas you want to share with the world, but you just don’t seem to be able to get them “out on paper” (particularly if you secretly find the idea of writing for publication to be an intimidating prospect), get in touch with Alex now!
Melanie Grant, Owner
“The guys at 9mm took my online concept and refined it beautifully. They understood my aims and added the missing piece of the puzzle. A must for any online business seeking to wow its clients.”
Roop Chandwani, Owner
“Alex and his team were a genuine surprise. When we engaged him to help us with messaging and profiling, he grasped our business and industry sector (pharmaceuticals, healthcare) with ease. He helped us refine our target markets and the profile of the people we are targeting and put together press releases that had immense positive feedback.”
Retainers are not for everybody.
They say that the majority of buying decisions are made in order to get the buyer away from something painful they are experiencing. If this is true, then it might make sense to think of your prospects in the same way as friends that come to you for advice.
Why is this important? Well like your friends in need, your prospects are looking for someone who can help them overcome a problem that is bothering them in some way.
Also, like your friends, oTnce they believe that you can help them, they will come back again and again and there is every possibility that they will send their friends with similar problems.
Unlike your friends, however, your prospects don’t have the benefit of a history with you. They don’t know you from Adam and they certainly don’t trust you like your friends would. It is up to you to build that trust and that process can begin even before they have made first contact.
How?
Let’s start with why you are the go to person for friends in need.
A friend comes to you for help because:
a) You have helped them out of a spot before and they trust your judgement
b) They know that you have successfully resolved something similar in the past and they hope your experience can help them achieve a similar or better result
Option A is off the table until you have established a relationship with your prospects, so option B is where you want to spend your time for the moment.
One of the most powerful tools that you have at your disposal for achieving option B is the case study. These success stories are ideal for helping prospects to discover that you have successfully helped other companies resolve similar issues to their own.
The problem is that many case studies are robbed of their potency because the people creating them focus on the wrong bit. Formats vary but in essence case studies are split into 3 sections, the challenge, the solution and the result.
Experience tells me that the focus is always on the solution. I guess it makes sense. This is the bit that the company was most involved in and they want to show off what they did and how they did it. The problem is that it is this section that the prospect is least interested in, at first at least.
What they really want to know is; can you help me get out of my pickle? The only way that you can answer that is by properly explaining the challenge that your client was facing. Clearly your clients come to you because of all kinds of problems, but you can bet that if one client is suffering from something that there are a lot of companies with the same issues. Interview your clients. Get to the bottom of what was going wrong.
I prefer to present the challenge as a story. I have found that people not only prefer reading them but more importantly they identify with them. They also bring out emotions in the reader, placing them in a state conducive to forming a relationship and being sold to.
The second most important bit is the result. Be careful here. The work that you do generates a lot of different successes metrics, some more powerful than others. Your job is to identify the results that matter most. You want to focus on the tangible, measurable metrics that have the people guarding your budget rubbing their hands together with glee.
The solution is also important but realistically people don’t really care how you did something. They just want to know that you were successful. Things that work really well here are the reasons why your clients chose you. These reasons tell your prospects why you are different to the competition far better than any USP.
Feel free to email me, if you would like to see some examples of case studies that follow these rules.
PR successes is all in the planning.
Do the necessary work upfront and your public relations programme will have longevity, consistency and the power needed to attract and convert traffic into profit.
Don’t do it and you could come unstuck. It’s not unusual for PR programmes to get off to a good start only to sputter to a stop after only a few months.
If you want a plan that targets your key audience with the right messages from day one and does so consistently for the life of the plan, we can help.
We have developed a planning process that ensures your PR keeps going for as long as you want it to.
It’s why our clients stick around for an average of 3 years.
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