Soaring Communications

Posts Tagged ‘Pr Campaign’

Communications and PR specialist, Soaring Worldwide has recently been selected by the Harrogate International Centre to take on the management and planning of its PR activities and reputation management.

The PR campaign is aimed at raising the profile of HIC across the business events industry using both traditional PR and social media marketing techniques.

Soaring Worldwide has extensive knowledge of the business events industry and will be helping HIC focus on its core market. HIC is about to undertake a multi-million pound development of its facilities, adding two new flexible event spaces.

HIC, brand manager, Lynne Farrow: “We have chosen to work with Soaring Worldwide to benefit from their extensive industry knowledge and understanding of our market.  HIC is growing rapidly and the launch of the new event spaces will mark a new phase in our expansion plans.  It is the perfect time to start raising our profile and we were keen to work with a team that combines expertise with a love of the destination and venue.”

Soaring Worldwide’s, managing director, Adam Baggs: “Working with HIC is already proving to be an incredibly rewarding experience.  Both HIC and Harrogate have so much to offer and we are truly excited at the prospect and challenge of increasing their profile across a range of media and markets.”

Swindon based Virtua, one of the UK’s leading providers of resources and solutions to the mobile telecoms industry are repositioning their offering with a raft of new marketing initiatives to better reflect their growth plans and commitment to clients.

The campaign has been created and managed by Lechlade and Oxford based Soaring Worldwide, a communications and PR agency specialising in message creation and dissemination.

The new initiatives have been led by extensive customer, engineer and staff feedback conducted in December 2009.

Andy Watts, director, Virtua UK Ltd: “We work in an incredibly fast moving industry and it is vital that our business reflects the pace with which our clients and potential clients are moving forward.  Our business is growing dramatically and this refinement in our market positioning and message better reflects the business we are now winning.”

From 17th February onwards, Virtua’s new strap-line will be: People. Passion. Performance.

Virtua’s name will remain the same but communications and involvement with customers is set to increase with the introduction of newsletters to clients and engineers, a twitter campaign (@Virtuateamtalk) and regularly updated blog (www.virtuateamtalk.uk.com).  Additionally, Virtua will be conducting an ongoing PR campaign with the relevant media.

Virtua also intend to re-develop and improve their website over the course of the next few months.

Andy Watts: “Virtua is going through some exciting changes at the moment, driven by our customers.  This refinement is bringing our positioning more up to date with the evolution of our customers rather than a complete change of our positioning. We want to make sure our clients and staff embrace the new, whilst staying true to our core skills and services.”

“It’s not easy for a technology and people company like ours to get the right sort of support from a marketing agency. We wanted people who we could work with and who understood our business, whilst bringing the right creative edge.   Above all we wanted to do business with people.  Adam and his team are people we like to work with and have already demonstrated that they are great at what they do.”

Soaring Worldwide, managing director, Adam Baggs:  “It is so exciting to take an existing brand and really develop its potential.  The management team at Virtua are so enthusiastic and quite simply – great fun to work with.  The next few months will be full of exciting developments and we look forward to creating a long term relationship with Virtua.”

A small business owner recently asked me for some suggestions for a PR campaign  he planned to run himself.  Specifically he wanted to try and set some achievable goals.  I thought the subject interesting enough to include a section in the PR guide mention several posts ago… and also thought I would share some of those thoughts here. 

Whilst the following are specifically aimed at smaller businesses they can apply to business of any size.

What do we want to achieve?

Deciding what you want your PR campaign to achieve will be one of the key elements to its success.  But for a small business this should primarily focus on sales and new business.

Don’t be afraid of setting your goals high but always bear  in mind the time you will be able to invest to achieve those heights.

There will of course be a few “soft and fluffy” goals that you may wish to achieve along the way but it is hard sales that will ultimately determine the success of your campaign.

The following are some PR goals you might want to consider.

Our PR Campaign will…

…drive up the sales of our services and products

…raise our profile with potential and current clients (don’t forget – it is easier to keep a client than find a new one)

…build up our database of targets …allow us to shout about the uniqueness of our products and services

…promote our business as an industry / community leader

…ensure our reputation continues to grow

…promote our senior staff as industry experts

…ensure we are aware of and react to appropriate industry issues

…help our business attract and keep top quality staff

To achieve these you could also consider the following goals:

• Coverage in at least two target publications each month
• Mention on relevant radio stations or TV  shows twice per year
• Mention on at least two target websites each month
• To speak as an expert at two events/meetings/conventions each year
• To win an award each year