Universal Information Services

On the eve of a new marketing campaign, I find myself reflecting on what our objectives are for this campaign. With message points like, “Are you sure your news monitor is tracking all your news?” and “How much news are you missing?”, it seems we’re trying to appeal to a person’s sense of doubt.

Doubt is something that seems to be innate, a primary function of our rational being. For this blog, I would say this falls into that category of #samerules for people. Ironically, doubt has become a positive force for compelling buyers to make a change from their existing vendor. Sales teams use this doubt in order to get you to simply consider their pitch. The #newtools of social media let marketing and sales greatly amplify doubt across many buying channels.

Doubt can take many forms. Marketing professionals try and get you to doubt the price you pay for service, doubt the features you get for a price, and most commonly doubt the results of the product or service you are receiving. The hope, if you will, in using doubt is that you will stop what you are using and switch to the new vendor.

My feeling is that doubt is nearly related to skepticism. With skepticism you get cautiousness, and from cautiousness you hopefully arrive at a point where you fairly evaluate your options. It is in evaluating your options that one finds the truth…but that truth is not always easy to see. In our marketing campaign we hope that prospective clients will only question who they are using for news monitoring and media analysis, asking themselves if they are truly getting what they need.

If it sounds like I’m talking in circles, that’s because I probably am. The circular nature of moving from doubt to decision seems to ultimately bring you back to doubt. Even if and when you decide to change your vendor, that choice eventually falls victim to that doubt once again. This recurring doubt is most often introduced by the next vendor in line.

At Universal Information Services one of our Core Values is Honest and Direct Communication. If we do nothing more than help educate the PR professionals and corporate communicators we serve, we have done a good job. If these prospects have doubts about their current vendors, maybe we can help either confirm they are using a good service, or maybe compel them to look elsewhere. We, of course, hope these prospects look at Universal, but most importantly, they look at the best service to fulfill their needs. Personally, I have no problem naming services like Cision and BurrellesLuce, in addition to Universal Information Services, as complete news monitoring services that do a great job.

If you doubt my opinion, leave a comment. Cheers!