Marketwire and Expansion Plus "Doing More With Less" Webinar Helps Communications Professionals Strategize in Downturn Economy

TORONTO--(MARKET WIRE)--Jan 13, 2009 -- Marketwire, a full-service newswire and communications workflow solutions provider, partnered with Expansion Plus, an Internet marketing and public relations firm, to deliver "Cost Effective Marketing and PR Strategies for 2009" via a free, hour-long webinar on January 6. Presenters Thom Brodeur, Marketwire senior VP, global strategy & development, and Sally Falkow, Expansion Plus president and social media strategist, offered valuable tips on how to deal with the current economic downturn, and marketing strategies to not only survive, but thrive during these uncertain times. Doug Hay, Expansion Plus founder and CEO, moderated.

Highlights / Key Facts

• You can now get better mileage from your PR dollar than you can from your advertising dollar, particularly in today's new media landscape.



• To successfully maintain your brand in the online world, your communications must be relationship-based, take advantage of search marketing, social media press releases, lead nurturing, and online communities.



• Organic search results are more trusted by both consumer and business searchers than are paid searches, with 94-97% of clicks occurring in organic listings.



• The most important marketing tactics for 2009 are:
• Social Media
• E-Newsletters
• Blogs
• Online Video


• Social media is not a passing fad. It is a sea-change in consumer and buyer behavior, and it is affecting the way we do business and the bottom line. PR 2.0 is today's Communication Revolution in action.



• A successful social media campaign is multifaceted and consists of:
• Setting goals
• Monitoring conversations
• Finding communities that matter and identifying influencers
• Creating a content strategy, choosing tools and delivering content
• Engaging and facilitating conversations
• Measuring results

Marketwire will offer an in-depth social media strategy workshop in the near future. Enter your contact information here to make sure you're on the invitation list.

Quotes

Thom Brodeur, Senior VP, Global Strategy & Development, Marketwire

• "There are hundreds of thousands of points of presence on the Web that are paid attention to, that are measured, and that are watched. If you are conspicuously absent, you may find yourself [unpleasantly] surprised. So it's important to not only maintain your brand online through your own corporate website, but to begin finding ways to engage online communities, social networks and bloggers."



• "At Marketwire, over the past 18 months we've begun to see considerable uptake in our clients leveraging more multimedia content in their press releases. It's an example of using your press release as a marketing tool as opposed to just a tactic to get a message to the media."



• "What you are trying to do in using a Web 2.0 tool is to make sure you get the content, in the right format, into the hands of the people who will best repurpose it... reuse it... recycle it... to push your message further."



• "Adding multimedia content to your press release, even in segments no longer than just a two- to three-minute video clip broken into three 30- or 40-second spots, helps bloggers or social networkers pull out just the segments that make the most sense for them and their audiences."

Sally Falkow, President and Social Media Strategist, Expansion Plus

• Social media "is a complete change in the way people are communicating and interacting, and it has given people a voice. Where for 100 years people really had to be the effect of all our messaging, that's not the case anymore. They have the power of voice and they certainly are using it -- and that is affecting the way we do business."



• "One of the biggest things you have to learn to do is to listen. For so many years, we've been in the mode of... 'we figured out our target audience, what we want to say, how we are going to say it, where are we going to put it.' The audience never had an opportunity to give us feedback. Now it's the end of that. The flow of communication has changed. It has turned around."



• "You have to find communities that matter, and yes, we all know that there are millions of people on Facebook, but niche communities actually do better. People are more engaged and they tend to be more passionate because they are collecting around something that really means something to them."



• "Figure out what it is that you want to say, what do all these people want to hear, and where is there a gap in what they're showing interest in. If you are not going to blog yourself, then at least you have to start on the blogger relations. One of the easy ways to do that is with articles, press releases and images -- and put them into an RSS feed."

Resources

• Download the presentation "Cost Effective Marketing and PR Strategies for 2009":
• PDF of PowerPoint
• Video/Audio
• Audio Only


• Access Marketwire's online resource to Learn more about PR 2.0



• Download the free whitepaper "Top 10 Strategies for Boosting ROI Despite Shrinking Budgets and Dwindling Resources"

About Marketwire

The only fully integrated North America-based global newswire, Marketwire, Inc. is a full-service partner to IR, PR and MarCom professionals seeking top-tier press release distribution, media management, multimedia and monitoring solutions. Marketwire's customer-centric corporate philosophy focuses on being the best by infusing every aspect of its business with the following core attributes: precision, adaptability, innovation and simplicity.

Marketwire delivers its clients' news to the world's media and financial communities, fulfilling disclosure requirements in North America in compliance with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), and serving as Primary Information Provider (PIP) with the UK's Financial Services Authority (FSA). With a reputation for technology leadership, Marketwire offers innovative products and services -- including Social Media, Search Engine Optimization, Dashboard Mobile Financial, News Dashboard coverage reports, exclusive access to networks such as the Canadian Press Wire Network, Easy IR and Easy PR workflow solutions, and more -- that help communication professionals maximize their effectiveness while ensuring accuracy and best practices. Having merged companies (Market Wire and CCNMatthews) in April 2006, and enjoying a combined history of 25 years of service, Marketwire is now majority-owned by OMERS Capital Partners, the private equity arm of one of Canada's largest pension funds.

Marketwire distributes the majority of press releases issued by publicly traded companies in Canada and serves more than 8,000 clients worldwide through 20 offices on four continents. For more information, visit us at www.marketwire.com.

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     For additional information:
     Paolina Milana
     Marketwire
     (310) 765-3250
     pmilana@marketwire.com