Summary: The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use Content Marketing, Podcasting, Social Media, AI, Live Video, and Newsjacking to Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott

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Marketing and PR approaches must evolve to align with new consumer expectations and shifting digital norms, explains best-selling author David Meerman Scott. The lines between marketing and PR have blurred in the online realm, says Scott, and those working in both fields have a shared common mission: to drive consumer action by creating great content. In the 8th edition of The New Rules of Marketing & PR, Scott offers comprehensive guidance for those hoping to keep pace amid massive technological change, designed to help you harness the power of everything, including podcasting and AI.

Take-Aways

• The old marketing and PR rules are obsolete – today, content creation is crucial.
• Align content creation with your business goals, positioning your marketing team strategically.
• When humans leverage technology, teams can create better customer experiences.
• Keep pace with the real-time news cycle and consumers’ expectations of instantaneous communication.
• Create high-quality content to engage potential customers.
• Podcasting can help boost your brand’s credibility and trustworthiness while expanding your reach.
• Powerfully market products and services with videos and images.
• Stop spamming reporters – create great content and consider their needs instead.

Summary

The old marketing and PR rules are obsolete – today, content creation is crucial.

Before the digital age, organizations relied on buying expensive advertising slots to win consumers’ valuable attention. Today, organizations that rely on traditional advertising formats will fail to win customers. Traditional advertising attempts to gain mass market appeal, demanding attention by interrupting people with one-way messaging that focuses on selling a product. But people today don’t want to be bombarded with ads that feel like ads, nor do they give them their attention or place their trust in companies using such manipulative formats.

“We have been liberated from relying exclusively on buying access through advertising or convincing mainstream media to talk us up. Now we can publish information on the web that people are eager to pay attention to.”

Forget many of the old norms of PR: Gone are the days of only sending out press releases with third-party quotes and depending on the media to gain exposure. Instead, align your efforts with shifting consumer behaviors and expectations. Stop focusing exclusively on the mainstream, for example, working to serve more niche or underserved demographics instead. Approach your audience with information when they need it – rather than bombarding them when they don’t want to be disturbed. People don’t like spin – they demand authenticity and expect you to share useful information to help them make informed decisions. People don’t want to consume passively, so your content should help them participate more in the buying process, empowering them to make better choices.

Align content creation with your business goals, positioning your marketing team strategically.

Whether you’re creating blogs, videos or e-books, your organization can reach buyers directly and share expertise, while engaging consumers in conversations using social media platforms, online forums and chat rooms. Those in marketing and PR must think and act like publishers in many ways, creating the content their target wants to consume. For example, the Belize eco-resort The Lodge at Chaa Creek publishes content about nearby tourist destinations and rain forest wildlife to attract and connect with guests. The keywords that people considering a trip to Belize use most often guide content creation. The Lodge has driven up business by 80% by providing prospective travelers with useful information. In contrast, hotels following the old rules might pay an online travel site an expensive commission to feature their hotel and still fail to differentiate themselves.

“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.”

Your organization’s content should attract visitors, encouraging them to consider purchasing while making it easy for them to take your desired action (for example, a nonprofit would have a clear “Donate” link). Focus less on meaningless metrics, such as website traffic and leads, and more on metrics associated with your business goals (for example, revenue growth). Driving up website traffic only matters if there’s a clear correlation to a revenue increase, for example. Marketers must position their team as an essential part of the strategic unit contributing to achieving their organization’s desired outcomes to stay relevant.

When humans leverage technology, teams can create better customer experiences.

Today’s marketers must leverage the power of artificial intelligence – which refers to the technologies, algorithms and mathematics that power smart machines. You can use machine learning programs to automate routine tasks, enabling you to focus more on strategic thinking. To figure out what tasks you can perform more effectively with AI, make a list of everything your marketing team does over a given period, then rank each item depending on how much value automating it might create. You can use AI to complete many tasks, including tagging images and creating a list of blog topics based on what your target reader will most likely share.

“Your life is already AI assisted. Your marketing should be too.”

AI can help you better understand your customer – IBM’s Watson Personality Insights, for example, can predict consumer needs, personality characteristics and values. Marketers must use the data they glean about individuals to better serve them with more personalized offers and communications. Be mindful of the potential negative outcomes and consider AI’s impacts on users when creating your AI strategy. For instance, AI algorithms will show social media users content related to their interests, which can amplify a user’s patterns, whether positive, neutral or negative. Facebook can show one user more photos of owls if they like bird-watching while showing others more content about conspiracy theories and “fake news.” Marketers need to be particularly skilled at recognizing their biases, as AI can amplify them. Bear in mind that there are many things AI cannot offer that humans can, such as empathy, intuition, imagination, curiosity, creativity and emotion. AI cannot replace human workers for this reason.

Keep pace with the real-time news cycle and consumers’ expectations of instantaneous communication.

Many companies are wary about allowing employees to use social media in the office, preventing companies from harnessing the possibilities of this technology. Such “draconian command-and-control measures” prevent companies from positioning themselves as forward-thinking organizations. Imagine social media and other modes of connection, such as blogs and forums, as the digital equivalent of cocktail parties. Just as you wouldn’t waltz into a room of people you don’t know, demanding they buy your product at a party, your company shouldn’t present itself this way on social media. Opt to listen to others and provide valuable information when needed.

“In the emerging real-time business environment, size is no longer a decisive advantage. Speed and agility win the moment.”

Companies must keep pace with the fact that news breaks in real-time on social networks, while customers also expect you to resolve their issues accordingly. Focus on creating real-time marketing and PR initiatives while developing your capacity to meet customers’ expectations of split-second communication. Focus on being fast and agile, engaging the market first with new products while making customers, or “fans,” feel they have insider status when they’re the first to learn about your latest offerings.

Create high-quality content to engage potential customers.

Create compelling content by doing the following:

• Consider consumer needs – What problems do your desired customers have, and how could you help solve them? Segment your customers into groups, clearly identifying the goals of each.
• Be thoughtful – Don’t write tired sales copy. Instead, share content that shows customers that your company is full of smart people who deserve their business.
• Be accessible – Consider differences in cognitive ability, sight, hearing and movement when creating all forms of content. Don’t neglect to make your website and all platforms you use mobile-friendly. Also, consider the needs of non-native speakers.
• Uphold ethics – Create a consistent policy for your communications, ensuring that those representing your brand understand the ethics you want to uphold and know what constitutes unwanted behaviors, such as sexual harassment.
• Avoid jargon – Stop using marketing buzzwords like “scalable” and “cutting edge,” and use words that mean something to your customers. Speak to customers in their language, and avoid creating content that sounds identical to those of other companies by using overused words. Don’t be afraid to inject a little humor into content as well, perhaps taking the opportunity to liven up dull product descriptions.
• Build your brand with blogging – Publishing a blog can help you monitor public perceptions through blog engagement, engage other bloggers by commenting, create a platform for influencers to share their ideas and shape industry conversations.
• Humanize your brand – If publishing a white paper, strongly consider adding the author’s name rather than the company itself, as people like to connect what they read to the writers. If you don’t have internal thought leaders, consider recruiting external ones.

Podcasting can help boost your brand’s credibility and trustworthiness while expanding your reach.

You can create a podcast in under a month by following these steps:

• Make a small investment – It costs a few hundred dollars to achieve a lower-end sound and slightly over $1,000 to achieve a professional sound. However, you may have to pay a monthly fee to use an external server to host audio files.
• Prepare – Gather ideas for shows and create a script while also ensuring you know how to pronounce guests’ names and affiliations in advance. Podcast hosts commonly plug their guests’ businesses as well, so ensure you have the details to do that ahead of time (for example, web addresses).
• Record and edit – If using your computer, you can record using your speakers, editing with software such as Pro Tools and GarageBand. If using a mobile device to record, perhaps because you’re at an event, purchase mobile recording gear from companies like Zoom. If conducting phone or video interviews, you can record with videoconferencing services such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom, or using a digital recorder. To further edit your audio, consider using software packages like Audacity and GarageBand. For more complex post-production edits (for example, getting rid of the hum of an air-conditioner), you can use a free tool such as The Levelator.
• Tag audio – Add text-based information to your audio files to rank it higher in related search engine listings.
• Choose your host and distributor – You can use a service, like Liberated Syndication (LibSyn), to host large audio files, syndicating them to a distribution network (for example, iTunes or Spotify).
• Promote your podcast – Guests will often help you promote your podcast, and you should engage in your promotions via social media, news releases, and offline materials such as business cards.
• Create a companion blog – Doing so can help search engines index text directing people to your podcast.

Powerfully market products and services with videos and images.

Don’t neglect using images and video to spread your brand’s message and enhance your storytelling, whether creating visualizations of complex data with infographics or sharing original photos on social media. Avoid using generic stock photos – opt for original photos to stand out from the competition. Today’s customers increasingly prefer to consume business-related video content with a more casual, less formal aesthetic, so avoid creating overly polished corporate videos if you want to stay relevant.

“Both professionals and citizen content creators now reach readers and viewers faster and with less interference from the stuffy conventions associated with content creation.”

You can create “business-casual” video content with little-to-no cost within a few hours (or minutes). Forget worrying about high-wattage lighting, hiring makeup artists or only featuring people who speak like they have an elite academic education. Often, all you need to create great videos is your smartphone, enabling you to interview employees, industry analysts and customers quickly, on the spot, to post short clips to social media. Consider shooting short videos that showcase how you make your product or feature people using it. There are many video formats you can experiment with, such as embedding videos in your blogs (vlogging), or “videocasting,” which refers to creating a podcast-like video series.

Stop spamming reporters – create great content and consider their needs instead.

The norms surrounding media relations have radically transformed in that spamming reporters with press releases is no longer the path to getting coverage. Today, creating great content will attract reporters to you while making you easier to find on search engines, as Google ranks web content higher when it’s useful to readers (as opposed to being manipulative). If you plan to reach out to reporters directly, do so with carefully targeted pitches that you craft with their interests and reporting beats in mind.

“To make the new rules of marketing and PR part of your personal world, you may have to change your mind-set.”

When contacting reporters, try “newsjacking” – connecting commentary from your company’s leaders to trending and breaking news items. Connect with the mainstream media by creating a visible Twitter account, as reporters monitor tweets in real-time to identify breaking stories. Look out for reporters using hashtags such as #journorequest, #HARO (help a reporter out) and #prrequest to get a sense of who may be looking for sources in your industry. You may have to convince your higher-ups to take social media seriously, as many organizations still have leadership teams with outdated ideas about its value. However, taking the initiative to help those at your organization shift their mind-sets surrounding marketing and PR could future-proof your company.

About the Author

David Meerman Scott is a best-selling author, marketing speaker and strategist who has written 12 books, including Fanocracy: Turning Fans into Customers and Customers into Fans.

Review

“The New Rules of Marketing & PR” by David Meerman Scott is a comprehensive guide that explores the rapidly evolving landscape of marketing and public relations in the digital age. Scott’s book provides valuable insights and actionable strategies for individuals and businesses looking to leverage content marketing, podcasting, social media, AI, live video, and newsjacking to directly connect with their target audience and achieve marketing success.

The book starts by challenging the traditional methods of marketing and PR, emphasizing the importance of adapting to the changing dynamics of the digital world. Scott argues that the power has shifted from the hands of corporations and media outlets to individuals and communities, and organizations must embrace this change to effectively reach buyers.

One of the core concepts explored in the book is the significance of content marketing. Scott highlights the importance of creating valuable and relevant content that engages the target audience, positions the author or organization as a thought leader, and ultimately drives customer action. He provides practical tips and examples on how to develop compelling content, optimize it for search engines, and distribute it across various channels.

In addition to content marketing, Scott delves into the emerging trends and technologies that are reshaping the marketing landscape. He discusses the rise of podcasting as a medium for storytelling and building an audience, the power of social media platforms in connecting with customers and building brand loyalty, and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics in driving personalized marketing campaigns.

Furthermore, Scott explores the potential of live video streaming as a tool for real-time engagement and customer interaction. He emphasizes the importance of authenticity and transparency in live video content and provides practical tips on leveraging this medium effectively.

Another strategy covered in the book is newsjacking, which involves capitalizing on timely news or trends to gain media attention and reach a broader audience. Scott explains how organizations can identify relevant news stories, create compelling content, and distribute it strategically to enhance brand visibility and credibility.

Overall, “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” is a well-researched and thought-provoking book that offers valuable insights and practical advice for marketers, PR professionals, entrepreneurs, and anyone interested in utilizing digital channels to reach and engage buyers directly. Scott’s writing style is engaging and accessible, making complex concepts easy to understand and apply.

One of the strengths of the book is its emphasis on the importance of understanding the audience and delivering value through relevant and compelling content. Scott provides numerous examples and case studies throughout the book to illustrate his points effectively.

However, it’s worth noting that the book was published in 2017, and the digital marketing landscape continues to evolve rapidly. While the core principles and strategies discussed in the book remain relevant, some specific tactics and platforms may have changed or evolved since the book’s publication.

In conclusion, “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” by David Meerman Scott is a highly recommended resource for anyone looking to navigate the ever-changing world of digital marketing and PR. The book provides a solid foundation of knowledge and practical strategies that can help individuals and organizations effectively leverage content marketing, podcasting, social media, AI, live video, and newsjacking to connect with their target audience and achieve marketing success in the digital age.