Ripley PR

The Favorite Local Expert

Home service tradesmen are an invaluable asset to homeowners. Your home needs a check-up just like your dental and wellness. How do you become a local household name and build a steady clientele?

Here are some ways you can boost engagement and become the favorite home service expert in your community.

Communicate seasonal wellness– Encouraging area residents to practice regular home health maintenance will help you manage your demand seasons. Get ahead of your peak seasons by sharing the value of a home check-up before problems occur.

Share knowledge-You are a wealth of knowledge in a very important trade. Share tips and advice in community publications. A specialized home service public relations agency can help you share your knowledge and position you as an expert in your service territory.

Build trust– You often encounter your customers at a time when they are very overwhelmed. They want a fix to their problem but they want reassurance they are given a fair price. Listen carefully to their problem. Communicate the steps you took to investigate, explain repairs and reasons why they are needed,and offer options such as postponing non-immediate fixes. Trust leads to repeat business.

Give back-Be charitable within the community. Partner with a local nonprofit or create a giving campaign that services a local family in need.

If you want your home service business to be the go-to in your town, a home service public relations agency with talent and expertise can help you get there.

As the No. 1 home service public relations agency in the U.S., Ripley PR would love to talk with you about growing your business. We know we can elevate your company to expert status.

This post was written by Kaitlyn Clark on January 17, 2019

Let’s Get Real: Authenticity is Key for Marketing and PR

Today’s audience is inundated with ads and marketing all day, every day. As a result, they’ve grown thicker skins when it comes to attempts to sell. They’re viewing advertising and marketing with a skeptical eye. According to Statista, in 2017 only 39 percent of American consumers said they trusted advertising, down from 50 percent in 2014.

Earning Trust

So, how can you earn and keep your clients’ trust? The answer is brand authenticity, the drive for ads and marketing to get real. In an article for Marketing Land, Peter Minnium summed it up like this:

Brand authenticity is rooted in the overlap between what a brand does and what consumers want. It is an expression of how a brand transcends the pursuit of profit, whether by keeping customers informed about a product’s ingredients to enable healthy choices or by giving them more time to spend with friends and family through a simplification of their daily routine.

What Can I Do?

Authenticity is all about putting aside pretenses and embracing who you really are in every communication with consumers, including advertising, marketing, B2C or B2B public relations. You can set your business on the road to authenticity by:

Defining your mission – What does your business do? What are your specialties? What do you and your employees care about? These are the cornerstones of authenticity.
Living your truth – Now that you know your mission, put it up front and visible in everything your business does.
Telling your story – Authenticity doesn’t help you if no one knows about it. Maybe it’s time to rebrand or use content marketing to get the message across.

Be sure to watch out for common pitfalls, though. Some businesses are tempted to pander to what they see as desirable markets or to manufacture values they don’t really hold dear. Today’s audience is savvy enough to see through these tactics. They know when they’re being “sold,” especially if businesses misuse slang or cultural idioms and will gleefully call offending businesses out on social media.

We Can Help

An experienced marketing and public relations firm can help your business get real and stay real, though. At Ripley PR, we’re adept at helping businesses tell their stories. If your business is ready to get real, call us at 865-977-1973.

This post was written by Shannon Carey on January 17, 2019

Picture Outstanding Tech Public Relations

Tech firms would never use outdated hardware or software, but when it comes to the photography on their websites and in their marketing material… Well, let’s just say it can often use a major upgrade.

Ripley PR can help. We understand that quality, professional photography and other corporate communications and public relations tools are well worth the investment and can offer our advice, expertise and help.

Pros worth the investment

For the same reason you would never let your niece or nephew use an iPhone to take your wedding photos, you shouldn’t let amateurs handle your business photography. Put another way, just because someone owns the latest Mac doesn’t mean they can create high-end programming or apps for your tech business. They need the right background and experience for the job.

Help gain media coverage

The same holds true for public relations. A good PR firm will pitch your stories to earn coverage in the best outlets. Quality photography can make that much easier. For example, if you want to recruit new employees with a state-of-the-art waterfront campus, nothing will help sell that story to trade publications like stunning photography. The old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words is true. But you need to make sure those thousand words are effective or you’ll simply bore your audience.

Help sell your story

While media outlets like Inc., Entrepreneur or The Wall Street Journal will send photographers onsite when covering your tech firm, strong in-house photography can help us get them there in the first place. (And yes, we’ve helped clients land stories in all three publications.)

Ripley PR’s senior-level professionals can take your tech public relations to the next level. Call us today to learn more at 865-977-1973.

This post was written by tshaw on January 16, 2019

Your Franchise Needs a Unified Social Media Strategy

It’s no longer a question of whether or not your franchise should be using social media. In 2019, it’s a requirement. Social media use was up 13% in 2018 with over 3.1 billion people using it, and 11 new people start using it every second. That’s a lot of potential leads and customers for your franchise company. So, is your franchise taking full advantage of all the social tools at its disposal?

The thought can be daunting. How do you manage multiple locations? There are numerous online software platforms that can help you manage multiple locations. Should you manage each account from the corporate level or individual franchisees? Both. The corporation should be posting strategic messages and imaging to franchisee’s social media pages, and franchisees should monitor and supplement those posts with their own content. How many social media accounts should your brand have? At least 3. The typical social media user has 3-8 platform accounts. However, you shouldn’t go where you have no audience. For example, Pinterest and Snapchat aren’t a one size fits all for companies. They have very specific audiences and demographics.

I could keep going with these questions and answers, but what you really need to focus on is a unified strategy for the entire franchise brand. That’s where an experienced franchise public relations firm can help. Social media is an extremely effective tool for telling your franchise business’ unique story. Our experts can provide creative content, monitor and respond to negative/positive feedback, and generate engagement across all of your platforms. Managing all of these items through one source can help unify your messaging across all franchise locations. Plus it is more cost effective than hiring your own social media content creation department.

At Ripley PR, we can draft the right messaging for your entire franchise brand that can be used across all social media platforms. Contact us today to discuss how we can help you create an all-encompassing social media strategy for your franchise brand.

This post was written by Kristin Hankins on January 15, 2019

3 ways to use PR to increase sales for your construction app

Apple’s old advertising slogan, “there’s an app for that,”has never been more true since the iPhone debuted back in 2008. As smart phone use and the app markets have grown, technology has been able to permeate throughout every industry.

Construction is no different, and builders are looking for apps to help them manage projects, balance budgets and complete jobs faster. With the constructionlabor shortage facing the country, technology can help builders find ways to do more with less. There’s big money to be made from being the go-to software for construction firms, as the industry has largely been underserved by the tech industry.

If you have software or an app that would serve the construction industry well, the next question is: how do I get people to buy it? Construction public relations can help you get the word out to potential customers. Here are three ways to get the word out using construction PR.

Expert positioning

Identify someone within your company who can be the official spokesperson, and position them as an expert in the field. This can be accomplished through speaking engagements, bylined articles and being a go-to source for journalists in technology, construction and construction technology.

Keeping yourself in the news

How do you position yourself as an expert if you don’t have a reputation to build on? By keeping your company’s name in the news. Whenever there’s a new hire, major software update, company speaking engagements, new partnerships or any other newsworthy developments, getting that news in the media can lend credibility to a name that no one has heard before.

Become a presence in trade publications

One of the top rules of PR is “know your audience.” If your audience is construction executives, then making sure your news makes it to the trade publications they read is a great way to get in front of a group of potential buyers. The readers of those publications area a more targeted audience that are more likely to buy from you, even if they have smaller audiences.

Ripley PR has worked with the construction industry on both the software and builder side. If you want to increase sales for your construction software, contact us today.

This post was written by Chris Martin on January 11, 2019

A well-rounded public relations agency can help you achieve all your goals

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the futuristic technology I saw in movies and on TV. Handheld communicators, flying cars and computers that held the knowledge of the universe seemed so fantastical, I couldn’t imagine ever seeing such things come to fruition.

Fast forward a few years, and I may not have a flying car, but I do have the ability to communicate and access to a ridiculous amount of knowledge in the palm of my hand, thanks to my cell phone. Companies across the globe are making technological advances and improving lives every single day.

We work with companies that are changing lives and streamlining processes in industries that have been underserved by technology for decades. We also work with businesses in those underserved industries that are experiencing growth and financial success due to the adoption of that same technology. In other words, we work with tech innovators, but we also work with tech users. You might think this makes Ripley PR well-rounded, in general, but it also makes us an experienced tech public relations agency that knows how to speak to media outlets on every level.

No company wants to remain stagnant, and that’s especially true for a tech company. We know that you’re always making advancements, updates and looking to improve the quality of your product. We can not only help you share news with your contemporaries but your target customers, too.

Have you created an app that revolutionizes an industry? Is your software changing the way companies do business? Maybe your tech isn’t work-related at all, and you’re simply trying to make a smarter TV or a quicker way to make coffee. We can not only help you share the word about your innovation, but we can help you generate leads, as well, by helping you reach the right audience. Give us a call and let us get started.

This post was written by Amanda Greever on January 7, 2019

How PR can help manufacturers beat the labor shortage

Americans think manufacturing jobs are essential to the 21^st-century economy. Eighty-three percent of us say manufacturing is important to the country’s overall economic prosperity, and seven in 10 say the U.S. should invest more in manufacturing jobs. That’s according to a recent study by Deloitte, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Manufacturing Institute.

But that same study also uncovered a disconnect in how the public think about these jobs. Even though they recognize the importance of manufacturing, many people don’t consider it a realistic option, either for themselves or for their families. One-third of Americans would not encourage their children to pursue careers in manufacturing, citing stability and pay as their chief concerns.

These negative perceptions contribute to a labor shortage in manufacturing that experts predict is going to get worse over the next decade. But companies that effectively challenge those perceptions will have an advantage in recruiting the most talented young employees – and public relations is an essential tool for manufacturers who want to tell the real story about their industry.

The truth is that modern manufacturing is high-tech, innovative, fast-moving and well-paying – everything that millennials and the generation following them are looking for in a career. Here’s how an experienced manufacturing public relations team like Ripley PR can help you tell the right story, and then deliver it to the right audience.

Media coverage
We’ll help you get coverage in local and national press – stories about your business or articles that present you as an expert. Every piece of coverage, from radio and TV to newspapers, magazines, trade journals and online publications, is a chance for you to tell an audience of potential employees what manufacturing is really like.

Social media
At Ripley PR, we can manage your social media in order to create a strong brand, present the right public image for your industry and make important professional connections. Among the most important connections you can make on social media are with young jobseekers, who are far more likely to see news about open positions on social media than your website or a newspaper.

Awards
We’ll help you navigate all the opportunities for industry awards and recognition. Our team of experienced manufacturing PR professionals can help you compete for the awards that matter – and save you time by steering you away from the ones that don’t. Your brand’s reputation will benefit, and your message will reach a whole new audience.

If you want to give your manufacturing company an edge in the recruiting game, Ripley PR can help. We’ll tell your story and reach the talent you’re looking for while you focus on what makes your company great.

This post was written by Matthew Everett on January 3, 2019

Grow Your Franchise Reputation With PR

Franchisors have to work hard to communicate their value proposition to potential franchisees. Before signing on the dotted line, entrepreneurs want to know they’re investing their hard-earned money in a solid business opportunity with a reputable network.
One way for a franchisor to better communicate value to potential leads is by promoting its corporate leaders and franchise owners as subject matter experts. So, how do you do that?

Getting the Word Out

On a corporate level, franchise leaders can promote their expertise by earning media coverage and being interviewed in trade and national publications. They can write informative articles about franchising and business topics. Speaking at trade shows or industry conferences is another way to establish a reputation as a reliable expert.
At the individual franchise level, owners should be seeking interviews with newspapers and appearances on local TV news programs. Reporters are always looking for sources to talk about topical subjects like preparing for extreme weather, holiday preparations, or news events. The more the public sees a franchise owner as a trusted expert, the more they’ll turn to them for service.

Always Be Useful

It’s not enough to just appear in the media, though. To be known as an expert, you must have something useful to say. Writing in Entrepreneur, Ben Simkin emphasizes the importance of being helpful rather than just self-promotional:

That’s why you should focus on being a genuine resource for potential customers. Your emails, social media channels and blog posts should constitute a gold mine of useful, actionable content for anyone interested in your field. This will encourage people to revisit your site, check out your other material and sign up for your email list.

Get Expert Help

Now you know what to do, but you may have questions about how to do it. An experienced franchise public relations agency like Ripley PR can help. Our team is experienced in helping to raise the profile of successful franchise businesses like yours with a well-executed communications strategy.
If you’re franchisor in need of help boosting your reputation, contact Ripley PR at (865) 977-1973. We’re ready to help.

This post was written by Joel Davis, Content Supervisor on January 1, 2019

Rev Up Your Automotive PR Through Storytelling

The automotive industry has always been in the business of stories. The allure of cars has been a prominent thread winding through popular culture for generations.

People aren’t interested in just buying automotive products. They are interested in the stories those products tell —stories about the freedom of the road, about luxurious lifestyles, or about power and adventure.

The power of storytelling

Quoted in Forbes, Damien Dally, now head of commercial development for the Jeep brand EMEA region, emphasizes storytelling as the core of automotive marketing:

“Storytelling in the automotive industry has been key in marketing campaigns for some time, especially since the advent of interactive/social media. This can be something metaphoric, yet simple, like a journey, to something more in-depth, with use of roles and a plot for the more adventurous. Portraying your brand as the protagonist in either case is essential.”

The best automotive public relations strategies depend on finding the stories that most interest consumers. Here at Ripley PR, our team of automotive PR professionals has years of experience in finding and crafting these stories into compelling narrative hooks.

Coping with the wrong kind of story

There are also stories that can hurt automotive firms. These could be stories about defective products or corporate missteps, stories about the dangers of new technologies or business setbacks. Automotive firms must be prepared to respond to unfavorable narratives in a transparent and truthful manner.

In the case of a crisis, the key to responding correctly is pretty simple: be transparent and let the public and investors know what your company is doing to make things right. An experienced automotive public relations agency like Ripley PR can help your company develop a crisis communications plan to respond to unfavorable stories. If you need help or want to learn more, call us today at 865-977-1973.

This post was written by Joel Davis, Content Supervisor on December 31, 2018

Identity crisis: What are you really building?

As a global agency that specializes in construction public relations, we often ask this question of our clients when they first partner with us. But we’re not asking what types of projects they work on (residential, commercial, industrial, etc.), instead, we’re asking what type of company they are trying to build.

Creating a new structure—whether a home or a high rise—involves careful planning and execution to complete successfully. The same can be said of your company’s brand. The way you present your business in the construction industry, and the planning and executive of your communication efforts, is one of the single most important factors in building the business you envision.

In business, you ultimately sell yourself, and the desire to know who you are, what you do and why you do it is an inherent question that resonates with everyone—from the people and companies you do business with, to the employees you hope to hire and develop.

So, with that new information, I ask again: What are you really building?

If the answer doesn’t come to you immediately and isn’t clear and concise enough to be said in less than 30 seconds, you have an identity problem. But don’t worry, you can fix it.

Below are a handful thought-provoking questions we use with our clients:

Who are we and what do we do?
How did we get to where we are?
How do we want people to know us?
What are our expectations for our employees?
What should our employees expect of us?
What should our clients/business partners expect of us?
What’s our vision? Why should anyone believe in it and follow/do business with us?
What does success look like? How will we measure it?
What changes need to be made to make this happen?

In order to discover who you are and what kind of company you’re really trying to build, you need to be able to answer these questions. The insights drawn from these questions can then be used to develop a strategic communications plan that tells the right audiences (clients, partners, potential employees, etc.) who you are and why they should care.

If you’re in the construction industry and you’re having an identity crisis, or just need a clearer picture of who you are as a company, we’d love to help. Give Ripley PR a call today at 865.977.1973.

This post was written by JD Sizemore, Account Director, Client Services on December 28, 2018