The importance of good marketing

A recent conversation about marketing & PR, brought about as we are planning a marketing feature for the next issue of Glass Times magazine, has fanned the flames of two of my favourite pet hates – badly written PR copy and social media.

The reason I am particularly sensitive to these is that I’ve worked on both sides of the fence, predominately as an editor on trade magazines, but also as a director for a full-service marketing agency representing a number of leading fenestration clients.

For anyone who is considering taking on an external agency, then I would suggest that a good starting point would be someone that can work across multiple channels, including traditional print advertising, email, PR, online content such as videos and blogs, social media posts and the like.

And I would urge caution with anyone that puts too much weight on digital outlets, including social media, at the expense of everything else. Marketing departments are fond of digital channels, because they can demonstrate engagement to a client – and justify their fees.

But in my experience, social media posts that generate a lot of likes are not necessarily guaranteed to deliver equivalent value.

Getting a 1,000 ‘likes’ because someone has brought a new puppy into the office will look good on a monthly report, but it’s unlikely to sell any more windows or doors.

And when it comes to PR, I cannot stress how important it is to hire someone that understands the target audience and can tailor content for different channels.

Don’t get me wrong, the majority of the PR that lands in my in-box is very good. But there’s also a lot that is completely unsuitable for a trade readership, or a print magazine, or lacking any valuable content.

It’s much harder to put a value on PR that appears in magazines, especially in print, because you don’t get any neat, digital metrics for every time someone turns a page or reads an article.

But that doesn’t mean it’s any less valuable. And if you’re paying someone to represent your company through PR, and editors have to edit or delete vast swathes of it because it’s not up to standard, then not only are you wasting money but you run the risk of losing key messaging, which in turn could significantly reduce the impact of a broader marketing campaign.