Pitching New Business: An Integrative Approach with Social Media Marketing

Once again it's that time of year when my associate Jeff asks me and my colleagues to do a guest lecture at his class of PR and communications students at Cal State Northridge. Our MarCom Broadband creative director, Brad Stone, is heading there today. And I will talk on Friday.

When I was chatting with Brad this morning about his presentation, it came up that now, with the press and the Internet, media don't need PR folks as much because they can research whatever they need online. And to get the media to respond to a pitch is becoming more and more difficult. Nowadays we wrap video right along with website links inside email pitches.

Having been in marketing and advertising for several decades, it's easier to see trends, and as the saying goes what comes around goes around, because patterns tend to duplicate. What I mean is that many years ago when we pitched new business, we gave a killer presentation, provided our creative ideas and often won the account (whether advertising or PR) based on the creative ideas within. We had to start getting the potential clients to sign and promise not to steal our ideas and use them without hiring us. Then along came technology and the dot com world, where that went out the window. We never gave any creative ideas away UNTIL we were hired. Our proposals where based on case histories and results for prior clients.

Today we are back in the place where with social media marketing and search engine optimization being wrapped into our presentation, and with competition out there, we are doing more presentations with creative ideas inside. Now back to a place where we need client signatures again.

Social media marketing is becoming a part of all of MarCom's new business pitches -- even though many clients still request just one thing - like PR. We must incorporate it into all of our marketing, advertising, PR and social media marketing strategies these days.