How to Subtly Promote Your Business As A CEO

In today's hurly-burly world of information overload and interconnected global economies, it can be quite difficult for companies and enterprises to successfully promote their products and services. While a mix of advertising, marketing, PR-driven strategies and activities and new-age social media opportunities can go a long way, it is the subtle, nuanced and often more interactive way in which a CEO or the top management of any organization communicates with customers, shareholders, employees and other stakeholders that ultimately helps a business to grow. Such an approach calls for a well-crafted medium- to long-term strategy with well-defined, near-sequential work-flow processes to create, consolidate and capitalize on a brand identity and leverage its benefits.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• PR agency
• In-house corporate communications
• PC/notebook
• Small office library
• Efficient in-house researcher or an established freelance ghost writer (optional)

1. Establish ground rules with a PR firm or in-house corporate communications department. As a CEO, state your intent to communicate in the form of features/columns in newspapers, magazines, vertical trade publications, blogs and other social media and possible industry-trade speaker engagements. Have the firm or department designate a highly motivated employee (preferably young or at a formative stage of growth in the organization) as a keen researcher/idea-generator. This researcher can also end up being the ghostwriter if no external, competent ghostwriter can be sourced.

2. Arrange for meetings with the public relations (PR) firm. Articulate the growth vision of your firm (1- to 3-year time frame), efforts in research and development (R&D), if any, possible new products/services rollout and tell the PR firm to draw up a list of periodicals, e-zines, Web portals, high-traffic and popular Web editions of newspapers and network/cable channels that encourage and invite CEOs to contribute. Alternatively, cajole the PR firm to create openings in other relevant industry and trade publications for authored columns and features, to lobby for speaker opportunities in public forums and as guest moderators on blogs and Websites and panel-based programs/feature capsules on television channels.

3. Know the importance of the PR firm. They must be proactive in ensuring lead generation for a possible series of columns in peridiocals, e-zines or popular information portals. The CEO should hold frequent review meetings with the PR team to get updates on possible opportunities for brand building. He should get the relevant account executives of the PR firm to develop a small library of books, periodicals and other offline/online resources in his organization to ensure the necessary knowledge-oriented environment for such a sustained promotional and image identity program.

4. Encourage pitching for features or arranging for speaker engagements. Not all CEOs of various businesses are invited to write by the mainline and mainstream publications, so it is incumbent on the PR firm and even the in-house corporate communications team to feel the pulse of emerging stories/features where their client or a top management professional can give her input/quotes for relevant business domain/industry articles.

5. Incentivize the process. Every PR agency worth its salt knows how hard it is to get a CEO-written column in mainstream publications and to get prominent air time on capsules of relevant programs/features on network and vertical/niche television channels. Such an approach calls for a devotion of substantial resources and time apart from routine PR activities. Thus for every column published in a high-profile publication or a sound bite on a highly visible television channel, the CEO should offer substantial monetary incentives--which are not linked to the retainer fees--to the PR agency.

6. Collaborate with your researcher/ghostwriter. A CEO, with his many responsibilities and day-to-day tasks, will not always find the time to write full-length articles, columns and features; blog regularly; or even conduct research for TV-based panel discussions and other sound bites on news-based programs. The CEO must make time to meet his researcher/ghostwriter at fairly regular intervals, brief her on certain conceptual aspects of products and the "innovation" of a certain product line/service, articulate some strategic imperatives of the company vision and relevant industry outlook, goad her toward original idea generation and get her to write a number of features. Some of these features can be part of a bank that can be disseminated or placed in vertical trade or specialized publications at regular intervals.

7. Engage/interact with readers and bloggers whenever possible. Most publications now allow CEOs and other invited writers to include their email addresses while writing columns. Many business development leads--especially from sustained exposure or from a regular column by a CEO in trade and specialized industry publications--can be generated from interested parties replying/commenting on an insightful column.The CEO should make it a point to respond to most queries or authorize the ghostwriter to reply back with the necessary monitoring of possible business development opportunities by the sales and marketing team.

Tips & Warnings

• A CEO can update herself with industry trends and specific developments through regular executive briefs and notes provided by the PR agency and the ghost writer/researcher.
• Quickly jot down any "brilliant ideas" or a sudden brainwave for a column or an article and pass them on to the researcher to extrapolate on these thoughts.
• Develop good conversational skills and voice/speech clarity so you can articulate opinions and views in public forums whenever necessary.
• All the budgets and resources devoted to PR-driven brand management programs may not result in quick-fire or instant results. Such an outlined program has to be flexible with necessary tactical shifts to suit changing business environments or relevant contextual shifts.
• It's also a given that established and mainline publications like the "New York Times," "Washington Post," "Boston Globe," "Los Angeles Times," "Financial Times," "BusinessWeek," "Fortune," "Forbes" and so forth prefer seeing big-name and high-profile CEOs as occasional contributors and columnists. However, in recent times, the online editions of such publications and even the mainstream news channels have several Web-exclusive sections that can be tapped by CEOs of any "under-the-radar" or future breakthrough growth company or a high-performance small and medium business (SMB).
• Depending on budgets, marketing/communications outlays and availability of time, CEOs of SMBs or low-profile firms can also perpetuate or evangelize new products or specific industry aspects through signature blogs--where interactivity and instant feedback can be higher and lead to subtle promotion of specific products and services.