Upcoming Events & Webinars

Most Viewed

Optimizing Press Releases: SEO is Now About Natural Writing, Social Sharing & Interesting Content

How Public Relations Can Help Your Small Business Grow

The Communications Cycle

Most Emailed

Drive Media Interest at a Trade Show

Driving Marketing Results at Your Key Trade Shows and Events

Case Study: Lorrie Thomas Web Marketing and Web Marketing Therapy Take their Marketing Program to a New Level through ProfNet

Overview
Lorrie Thomas owns a boutique online marketing consultancy, Lorrie Thomas Web Marketing (LTWM, www.lorriethomas.com), and is the founder and CEO of a full service web marketing agency, Web Marketing Therapy WMT www.webmarketingtherapy.com. The mission of LTWM is to make small businesses BIG with smart marketing. Web Marketing Therapy implements “Healthy Marketing for Wealthy Organizations”

Lorrie Thomas and the Web Marketing Therapy team believe that the future of marketing is online and that the web can work as a stellar marketing medium to generate awareness, distribute information, communicate messages, serve customers and close sales.

Challenge
WMT represents clients in all industries who make their passion their profession.  This principle helps to distinguish WMT’s clients from their competitors and is key to how WMT designs and executes marketing campaigns. 

In examining the services it provides, WMT realized that while it offers a comprehensive set of web marketing services it was not fully leveraging the one aspect of its clients that make each truly unique – the people who are responsible for bringing the passion to their profession.    WMT understood that all of its clients were leaders in their space, but lacked the tools to translate that expertise into positive exposure. 

Solution
WMT never thought of themselves as “PR” professionals, however, the firm realized that if it was to build interest in its clients as experts in their fields, they would need to incorporate public relations into the service offering.   As Ms. Thomas researched various strategies and techniques for publicizing expert sources, she came to the conclusion that the only way her firms would be able to produce significant and repeatable results is if the firm employed tools that were recognized by the PR industry as best-in-class.  Based on these criteria, there was only one service appropriate for WMT – ProfNet.

ProfNet, PR Newswire’s industry leading expert network, is a full communications platform where expert and reporter are able to connect and exchange ideas, directly and efficiently.  For communications and marketing professionals, ProfNet provides access to thousands of media contacts looking for sources for articles, books or speaking engagements.  The queries, which are delivered via email multiple times per day, enable communicators to liaise directly with the reporter or event planner about the opportunity and their expert’s ability to comment.  

Unlike other media services, ProfNet also enables communicators to develop individual “expert profiles” that detail a person’s areas of expertise, viewpoints on issues and general availability to comment.  Reporters, authors and event coordinators can then access the expert dossier and contact the expert directly for article opportunities, speaking events and authored contributions. 

Using ProfNet, WMT was able to immediately search for media queries that were appropriate for its experts. In addition, WMT was also able to build profiles for all of its clients in ProfNet’s expert database in order to help journalists search and connect with each source. They also took advantage of PR Newswire’s comprehensive press release distribution services to help clients achieve greater online recognition.

Results
As a boutique agency without a huge budget, investing in PR Newswire and ProfNet was a gamble, but after one year as a ProfNet subscriber, that investment has paid off and ProfNet has become an integral tool for both LTWM and WMT. Through ProfNet, Lorrie Thomas and her team have secured major client placement wins including a two page cover spread in INC Magazine, quotes in Consumer Reports, various speaking engagements and many other high profile opportunities that enabled clients to share their expertise with new audiences. ProfNet allowed the WMT and LTWM teams to take their marketing programs to a new level by securing quotes, placing feature articles and providing its clients with the same access to the media that a large agency would boast. 

Quotes:
“PR Newswire provides my agency, with a powerful PR vehicle to help our clients brand, build and boost business.  Our expert clients are in ProfNet, giving us the ultimate vehicle to help our clients get more visibility and boost exposure for their businesses.

“PR Newswire has added depth to our boutique agency’s suite of marketing services. Our approach to PR is more “’Pajama PR” as we are a wild web virtual team, but no matter how we work, ProfNet always WORKS.    Our clients are enjoying placement wins like two page cover spreads in INC Magazine, quotes in Consumer Reports, speaking gigs and more.  I realized I cannot afford NOT to have this as part of my agency suite.”

“The team at PR Newswire treats us like partners and we are continually expanding our work with them.  If our clients are happy, then we are happy…..we are very, very happy with our investment in PR Newswire and ProfNet!”

Lorrie Thomas, Marketing Therapist, Web Marketing Therapy www.webmarketingtherapy.com and www.lorriethomas.com