Northeast Treaters transforms 35,000 square feet of roof into a solar photovoltaic power plant.

We’re accustomed to absorbing discouraging news in the national and regional press. Teeth-gnashing politics, tear-gassed protesters, sex abuse scandals, devastating storms… we need to know.

News for trend trackers

But there is more to the news than imminent doom. There’s problem solving. van Schouwen Associates’ team provides client media relations, so our relationship with the news involves dealing with the nuts-and-bolts (and electrons and microchips, etc.) of business trends and challenges. When a company engineers a way to deal with a business or environmental challenge or harness an opportunity, talking about it in the press helps effect change.

This time, a client is harnessing sunshine.

We’re working with client Northeast Treaters, which has good news stemming from a forward-thinking project. Belchertown, MA-based Northeast Treaters has developed a 35,000 square-foot solar photovoltaic plant that generates 80 percent of the electricity used by the company. It was built by local and regional workers, with materials from the region and the U.S.

Local green jobs, local green energy.

Last week’s open house to celebrate the solar endeavor drew customers, influentials and the media. The press so far has done the project justice, and we extend our appreciation to Springfield, MA NBC affiliate -Channel 22, Springfield, MA CBS affiliate Channel 3 and The Republican (among others who will create a story about the project) for taking the effort to highlight how one company can make a difference in the local economy and to the environment by putting action behind its commitment to both.

Isn’t it great to see good news for a change?

It’s this, and any marketing firm worth its salt should know it and tell you, although many don’t.

Today, the best marketing is all about building relationships by communicating value – and this means that communications are not linear but genuinely (not just nominally) a circle of talking, listening and responding. This simple tip can expand to include a whole range of marketing efforts. To start, marketing is not just about delivering messages, although that’s still a major part of it.

Marketing is a bigger deal than ever… but it has changed its stripes. It now includes outreach, support, conversation, customer service, technical support, training, and interaction. It encompasses accepting and integrating feedback from customers and influentials and then letting them know you did. It means providing information, resources and forums prospects and customers want. At its best, marketing now means – dare we say it – building a modicum of brand loyalty in an environment in which loyalty is nigh unto impossible to earn and equally hard to keep.

If your marketing is still all about telling, try completing a circle of communication in which  your company not only accepts but elicits feedback and ideas, provides support, hears and responds to needs, and in many ways talks with – not to – the people you need the most.

Easier said than done? Or course. But building relationships by providing and communicating value via a genuine circle of communication is one of the best ways your company can build a sphere of influence (no pun intended) and enhance its positioning in its industry.

Evidently, just about anything we can do on an illuminated screen, we WILL do on an illuminated screen. Take for example reading (Nook, Kindle). Exercise (Wii). Meetings (GoToMeeting, Skype). Keeping up with friends (Facebook) and with news and gossip (Twitter). Finding love (Match, eHarmony). Business networking (Linkedin).

At the vSA office, we’re finding that some of the work we identify as being part of that catch-all “client marketing” has in fact merged with something more akin to “facilitating the process by which our clients bond with their prospects, customers, influentials, and affiliates”.

In more than a few cases, this means Web applications. Whether the illuminated screen in question is a desktop, notepad or mobile phone, the need to create synergy and loyalty is well-served by applications that let the user do something that either is not possible or is less convenient any other way. Examples include online training modules, B2B planning tools, calculators both simple and complex, members-only apps, custom purchasing programs, catalogs for sub-licensing, and even games to play to learn about new products. Typically, the process is to build the app, test and test (and then test!) the app, and at last make sure the intended audience knows it’s out there and understands how to use it. Depending on the application, a company may make it freely available, or use it as an incentive or reward for customers and prospects who meet chosen criteria.

Some people remember the Web in its commercial infancy, when creating a good-looking site – essentially an online brochure – was the ultimate goal. Next came Web 2.0, with its more personalized experience and its tracking of the user’s every move (useful for business, questionable for privacy)! Now, the Working Web presents business with almost unlimited opportunities to provide value – and to bond, so to speak – with the people it most needs to engage.

We’re seeing a difference in the way our various clients are marketing right now.

The entrepreneurial, smaller to mid-size companies are continuing to put up a good fight. They’re either marketing aggressively and continuously, or adding new capabilities such as Web sites to augment their sales efforts. Our largest corporate clients are, in some cases, a different story. More oriented toward detailed budgeting and do-or-die profit projections (as well as being observed by anxious shareholders) their marketing has been somewhat more cautious, with projects going on hold or reduced in scope, and decisions put off by higher-ups until the next quarter or so.

As marketers, of course we’re pro-marketing. You can’t hide your way out of a recession. Silence is NOT golden in this case. However, as strategists, we’re also sympathetic to the way different organizations must do business.

So… what’s quick, affordable and can yield results exciting enough to stimulate the next activity?

Create a single initiative to motivate your customers. Run an End the Recession Promotion. If customers buy a particular new product or open an account, you give them a related gift or incentive… or perhaps a second product free.

Get people together. There’s no better way to laugh in the face of adversity than to make clear that your company is not taking part in any further downturn. Mind you, this get-together is special. It’s one in which you make your new energy, direction or differentiation clear either through an important announcement, an incentive toward buying your newest and greatest offering or a funny and motivational speech directed toward the audience’s interests. Build relationships, and then follow up after the event.

Call the media! Do you have a new product, market or major initiative? Celebrate it with a press conference. Include (as appropriate) product demonstrations, a tour of the manufacturing facility or an introduction to the creative force behind the new idea… you know, like meeting Steve Jobs.

Do it online. Spring clean your Web site. Does your Web site bore even you? Does it look like your Uncle Leon designed it? The Web is very important now as your public face. Use it to inform, inspire, communicate, and (yes!) perhaps even sell. It’s an investment that will pay you back.

Become a thought leader. Write a bylined article (or we’ll do it for you) about where your industry, or its technologies, or consumer demand is going. Publish it in publications that your prospects read. Reprint it and send it out to prospects. Let your salespeople hand it out as yet more evidence of your expertise.

Start a GOOD newsletter. Let it convey what’s new, why customers are lucky to work with you, why now is the time to invest in what you want to sell. Do it at least twice a year. E-news or print… it’s up to you.

Partner with another company. You sell window treatments, they sell windows. For a limited time, customers who buy windows get a 40% discount on any of your fashionable designs!

Add your own idea here. Inaction isn’t useful, but daring outreach is. You’ll be glad, whether in three months, six or a year that you moved aggressively while others did not. What will work for you?