PR Squared: Marketing Never Ends

"Never rest on your laurels. Better to burn down the laurel tree."

That's not something anyone ever told me, but I wish they had. Maybe if they had, I would not have been smacked upside the head this month.

December 2006 was mostly a very good month. The year-end numbers looked great. I'd had a great time in our San Francisco office, where all was humming, and returned to our Boston office last week to find everything running smoothly. Clients & staff were happy. Meanwhile, our pipeline has been swelling up with high-quality prospects, many of whom went out of their way to tell us about "all the great things we've heard about you guys." It's been the type of month where you DON'T want to pinch yourself, for fear that the dream will end!

So, of course, some guy pinched me. He's a prospect; came to us through a mutual friend. But when we happened to ask him whether SHIFT would have been on his agency short-list in spite of the mutual friend, he said, "Actually, I'd never heard of you guys." Ouch.

Andy Grove was right. Ya gotta stay paranoid. We could dismiss this fella's lack of awareness as an outlier, but we're better off thinking that he's in the majority.

You can be the best at what you do, but if no one knows it --- or if they forget --- that's your problem. It is your responsibility to remind them, respectfully and repeatedly. Marketing never, ever ends.

Tags: public+relations, pr, marketing