by tradesmeninsights | May 15, 2019 | News, Press Release, Tradesmen Insights
Marketing communications firm wins silver award in the “feature article” category for its article on the subject of water quality.
CLEVELAND – May 2019 – Sonnhalter, a communications firm marketing to the professional tradesman in the construction, industrial and MRO markets, received a silver award in the “feature article” category at the 16th Annual Public Relations Society of America’s (PRSA) Cleveland Rocks Awards competition.
Rosemarie Ascherl-Lenhard, PR foreman, Andrew Poulsen, PR technician, and Matt Sonnhalter, vision architect, of Sonnhalter accept the silver award for feature article category at the PRSA Rock Awards.
The feature article, “Go with the Flow: Best Practices for Maintaining Water Movement in Plumbing Systems,” was written in collaboration with Viega, a leading manufacturer of pipe fitting installation technology. In 2018, Sonnhalter targeted and reached out to a top trade publication in the plumbing industry and pitched a feature article on the subject of water quality. Once accepted, Sonnhalter interviewed and collaborated with Viega personnel to develop an article that focused on how to reduce the spreading of water system-related illnesses. The winning feature article outlined a number of best practices for maintaining water flow and temperature with the intention of informing plumbing system designers and installers of some of the new ways to combat the risk of waterborne diseases. (more…)
by tradesmeninsights | Apr 2, 2019 | Social Marketing, Tradesmen Insights
By Rosemarie Ascherl-Lenhard, PR Foreman
Since the social media scene developed years ago, it’s become cluttered. There are accounts on all social platforms that sit, gathering dust for years. Do any of those accounts belong to you or your company?
Thanks to Marie Kondo’s recent popularity, we’ve become obsessed with decluttering and organizing, so we thought it might be a good time of the year for a little spring cleaning of your social media.
By now, most companies have several social media accounts that have been running for quite some time and even a few accounts that have shut down (Google+) or become less relevant as a social media platform (Flikr). It doesn’t take much time to conduct a quick audit of your social media platforms and get back on track, if you know what to do. Here are a few pointers to get you started. (more…)
by tradesmeninsights | Jan 11, 2019 | Marketing Trends, Tradesmen Insights
By Rosemarie Ascherl-Lenhard, PR Foreman
It’s a new year, and a perfect time to take a quick review of the past year. Before we start doing the same old thing, we should take a minute to make sure what we’re doing is getting us the results we want. We’re cleaning, purging and issuing new challenges in our personal lives, why not do it for our marketing lives? Makes sense, doesn’t it?
As we are making these evaluations, it doesn’t hurt to check on industry predictions that can help us adjust our strategies to respond and align with recent discoveries.
Heidi Cohen’s blog post makes 10 predictions for content marketing success in 2019 that we find valuable as we navigate the shifting landscape. Here are a few highlights:
- Content saturation continues to increase, which is raising the cost of content marketing necessary to break through and get acted upon. Instead of creating new content, improve and transform pre-vetted content and use content audits to keep content relevant and increase traffic.
- Customers expect more personalized content experiences. Segment your email and other communications to deliver targeted messages.
- Post sales experience increases in importance. While customers may buy from you once, if you don’t gain their trust, they won’t stay customers.
- Content formats continue to diversify. Due to the use of more devices and screens tailored to personal and environmentally relevant needs, content consumption patterns continue to change.
- Influencers including brands remain relevant for content creation and distribution. Work with micro-influencers who have deeper connections with their followers.
Heidi has more predictions and recommendations, but the idea is to take the time to evaluate what you did last year, so that you can improve on it this upcoming year.
Happy New Year! Let’s make 2019 a successful one.
by tradesmeninsights | Oct 30, 2018 | Public Relations, Tradesmen Insights
By Rosemarie Ascherl-Lenhard, Public Relations Foreman
It’s that spooky time of the year — so it seems like a good time to rehash some of the aspects of public relations that can be the scariest to clients.
We find the realm of public relations to be fun, exciting and consistently fresh, but some areas of our field can be scary to our clients. Here are the top five fears people have about public relations, and why you shouldn’t be spooked by them.
1. You can’t control what the media does with a story once you’ve given it to them.
“Earned media” is highly credible because readers know that you didn’t purchase the space to promote your company. Public relations and media relations professionals cultivate positive relationships with media, we work with these folks on behalf of multiple clients most of the time so we’ve built the foundation for positive coverage before they even get your story. In B2T public relations, we’re working with trade publications primarily and their goal is to be a source of helpful information for their readers.
It can be scary not to see the actual article before it’s published, but with long lead times of trade media, it can be a sweet surprise to see your words in print. 
2. Negative comments on blogs and social media.
Your responses to negative comments offer an excellent opportunity to show off your wonderful customer service. Negative comments happen, and if they happen on your social media, you can control the outcome with your response and the community response from your other fans. It’s actually scarier to hide your head in the sand or cover your ears when it comes to social media.
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