Westchester County Business Journal + Focus Section : Marketing & Sales

When thinking of brand-building techniques, we consider typical methods of communication through traditional advertising, public relations and Web sites. However, most often overlooked are internal employees or “brand ambassadors,” as I prefer to call them. These include salespeople and customer service as well as technical support, billing/accounts payable, accounts receivable, etc. Customers have direct access to your staff when calling with a billing issue, Web site inquiry, request for return authorization, or technical issue or question. Without properly educating and training these staffers, you are losing valuable opportunities to retain existing customers and maintain consistent messaging about your brand. Ultimately, this will lead to unforeseen market share erosion and profitability loss.

Measuring publicity effectiveness whether on- or off-line
By SUE and BOB COLE

Many companies understandably choose not to pay for expensive monitoring systems to see if their public relations is effective. Instead, they simply resort to measuring the value of a story by computing the advertising costs for that space or air time and then factoring in the circulation figures. But that’s a mistake that undervalues Internet coverage and misses out on the basic difference between advertising and publicity. Publicity builds credibility and trust with prospects. How do you measure that?

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