Power PR, an industrial PR firm that specializes in generating a large volume of print and online trade editorial articles that promotes their clients for branding and lead generation, is celebrating its 25th year in business in 2016.
Perhaps more impressive, Power PR is still delivering the same highly successful marketing publicity program for lead generation, initially conceived in 1991 by company founder John W. Elliott.
Another key element that has not changed in the past 25 years is the company’s guarantee of published articles. Elliott pioneered the concept of performance-based PR and to this day the company continues to guarantee clients up to 55 published articles per year, depending on the program. All contracts are month-to-month with no retainer fees.
The manufacturing industry has fluctuated between upturns and downturns, and the publishing industry has also changed dramatically, says Elliott. However, the basic formula required to generate promotional articles in quantity remains virtually the same.
To achieve these goals, Power PR utilizes professional technical writers to create feature-length editorial (not advertising) articles that promote and differentiate the clients’ product or service. Whenever possible, the articles include third-party endorsements from customers or industry experts. The company then uses dedicated media relations specialists that call and e-mail editors to secure placements on a one-on-one basis. There are no blind e-mail blasts in the hope of the occasional placement.
The end result of this approach is a larger-than-normal quantity of placements due to the quality of the articles and the polite pressure the company exerts on editors to consider and ideally publish as editorial.
At that point, the final published article appears to have been produced by the magazine itself, giving it the credibility of an objective industry article. This differentiates it from a paid advertorial.
By utilizing this formula, Power PR reached another significant milestone last year by crossing the 25,000 published article mark, a staggering number of articles for any PR firm.
Articles address and handle key sales objections in a credible manner, says Elliott. This can help close sales and shorten the length of the sale.
Elliott explains that the other aspect of lead generation is the large number of published articles, with repetition, over time. This is also the essence of brand building.
Although Elliott is still actively involved in the company, at 78 years old, he now relies on his co-owners (and children), who have been with him since the beginning. Heather Metcalfe has been with the company since its founding and is responsible for sales and accounting; Jeff Elliott joined in 1993 as a feature article writer and later had stints as a media relations specialist and Account Executive. He is now the president of the company, where his main focus for the past 15 years has been overseeing all aspects of the delivery of the service.
According to Elliott, although industrial print trade publications have become smaller and some have gone out of business, the primary difference in the past 25 years is the ever-increasing importance of the articles in the online trades, which show up at the top of most search engine results. This has become such a major factor that Power PR now intentionally includes key search terms in all its articles to facilitate first and second-page results.
In one client example for a manufacturer of cooling towers, industry online trade articles appear in 9 of the top 20 results using the company’s primary search term in Google. Best of all, online articles can remain active in the results for many years.
Ten years ago, clients would say they didn’t want online articles, only print, but that has changed dramatically due to how manufacturers, purchasers, and engineers research products online, says Elliott. Now we have companies coming to us that are primarily interested in getting online articles. Power PR still advocates a mixture of both print and online for best results.
The only other wrinkle Power PR has added since its founding is a direct e-mail marketing campaign designed to generate immediate and ongoing leads to supplement the broader work of the article campaign.
At any given time, 90% or more of the rest of its 30-40 client roster is comprised of manufacturers that sell to general manufacturing, electric utility power generation, oil and gas, aerospace, medical equipment manufacturing, water & wastewater, plastics, rubber, mining, and other industrial markets.
For more information, contact Jeff Elliott, Power PR, at (310) 787-1940 or e-mail jeffe@powerpr.com. Power PR is located at 20521 Earl Street, Torrance, CA 90505.