Advertising

Category: Advertising

Get Out of the Rat Race

Posted on June 27, 2016 by Andy Turner

We’ve all worked in jobs we hated. We were underpaid, underappreciated and bored out of our minds. We either quit these jobs or were fired for poor performance because we just gave up. Instead of taking that approach you need to consider every job an opportunity to learn something new that you can apply down the line to find success.

When you give people the tools they need to come up with non-ordinary solutions, you are enhancing their lives for the long run. You need to take this approach. What if one of your terrible jobs had been one with no pay at all and you needed to come up with some ingenious ways of making money? I bet you could have found a diamond in that rough. This idea can also be used in your own company.

Now, I don’t recommend going into the next meeting declaring that no one will receive pay anymore, but you can tell them that their potential raises, bonuses and other perks are now dependent on their creativity in ways to enhance business.

Let’s talk about a great concept called financial literacy. This certainly isn’t something they taught you in school, but is still essential to know. So, what is financial literacy?

The old school way teaches people to be good employees and not employers. This mindset will never make you wealthy. You need to focus on becoming a good employer. You also need to learn how to not only attain wealth, but sustain wealth for generations. This is what financial literacy is all about.

So, how do you get out of the rat race and start working toward a wealthier future? You need to understand the difference between an asset and a liability. Take a look at your own life and you’ll probably find the following:

Assets

Real Estate
Stocks
Bonds

Intellectual Property

Liabilities

Mortgage
Consumer Loans
Credit Cards

You’ve probably been fooled into thinking things like your house, car and entertainment system are assets. They aren’t! Assets should be continuing to MAKE you money. When you continue to struggle, you are not building wealth. If you’re primary income is from wages and each time you make more money, you pay taxes – you’re not really creating wealth either, are you?

So, if buying a house isn’t an asset (and it’s not because you spend about 30 years of your life paying it off), then what is? Here are some of the best assets to attain and when you can start to actually see wealth being created because of it:

Average time of holding on to an asset before selling it for a higher value:

1 year

Stocks (Startups and small companies are good investments)
Bonds
Mutual funds

7 years

Real estate
Notes (IOUs)
Royalties on intellectual property
Valuables that produce income or appreciate

So, here are the steps to getting out of the rat race and onto your journey of creating wealth:

Understand the difference between an asset and a liability.
Concentrate your efforts on buying income-earning assets.
Focus on keeping liabilities and expenses at a minimum.
Mind your own business.

If you need help getting out of the poor mindset and into the wealthy one, Click Here to try our FREE test drive and get all the help you need from a sales and marketing strategist.

We went through the first three and next time we’ll talk about how to mind your own business to keep your eye on the prize.

Prepare for Lift Off!

Posted on June 20, 2016 by Andy Turner

Last time I gave you a laundry list of tips and tricks you can use to make your word of mouth program work for you. Hopefully you’ve taken a look and decided which ones are the best fit for your company, products, services and target customers, so you can put them to work in your word of mouth campaign.

We are going to wrap up this series on word of mouth where we give you the specific steps to create a word of mouth campaign.

Now, let’s take a look at those steps:

Seed the market. Find some way to get the product into the hands of key influencers.
Provide a channel for the influencers to talk and get all fired up about your product.
Offer lots of testimonials and other resources.
Form an ongoing group that meets once a year in a resort and once a month by teleconference.
Create fun events to bring users together and invite non-users. Saturn, Harley-Davidson and Lexus have all been successful with this approach.
Develop cassettes, videotapes and clips on your Website featuring enthusiastic customers talking with other enthusiastic customers.
Create custom CDs/DVDs for each potential customer.
Hold seminars and workshops.
Create a club with membership benefits.
Pass out flyers.
Tell friends.
Offer special incentives and discounts for friends who tell their friends.
Put the Internet to work.
Do at least one outrageous thing to generate word of mouth.
Empower employees to go the extra mile.
Encourage networking and brainstorm ideas.
Run special sales.
Encourage referrals with the use of a strong referral program.
Use a script to tell people exactly what to say in their word of mouth communication.

These are all amazing ways you can get the word out about your products and services and start a word of mouth campaign that takes on a life of its own. Before you can release your word of mouth campaign out into the world, you need to go through the checklist to make sure you’ve covered all the essentials.

Here’s your word of mouth campaign checklist:

Are all of your communications sending the same simple message? If it can’t survive word of mouth, it’s not a compelling story.
Is your product positioned as part of a category? E.g.”A dandruff shampoo that doesn’t dry your hair.”
Are your examples outrageous enough to be shared?
Do you enhance your materials with success stories from real people?
Are you using experts effectively and in an objective manner?
Have you created mechanisms so people can follow up on the word of mouth they hear, as well as simple ways of enquiring or ordering?
Have you made the decision process easy for customers?
Have you created events and mechanisms so that once a year your prospects hear about your product and it is easier to try or buy?

These are all essential elements to take keep in mind when taking a second or even third check over your word of mouth campaigns. I hope you’ve found this series on word of mouth to be a great resource and are getting ready to put it into action for your own products and services.

Remember, if you need help with anything in this series, Click Here to try our FREE test drive and to gain access to the best resources, tools and sales and marketing strategist you can find.

Put it to Work!

Posted on June 13, 2016 by Andy Turner

In the last post we talked about how to conduct word of mouth research and then put that research to work. Today we’re going to give you some great tried and true ways to use word of mouth when building and executing your campaign.

We’ve done it in a list form, so you can go through and highlight the ones you want to put into action. These are offered by George Silverman which you can find in his amazing book The Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing.

Here they are:

Give them something worth talking about
Cater to your initial customers shamelessly
Give them incentives to engage in word of mouth
Ask them to tell their friends
The customer is always right
Always tell the truth
Surprise the customers by giving them a little more than they expected
Give them a reason to buy, make them come back and refuse service from anyone else other than you
Make eye contact, and smile, even through the telephone
Find ways to make doing business with you a little better: a warmer greeting, a cleaner floor, nicer lighting, a better shopping bag, extra matches, faster service, free delivery, lower prices, more selection.
Never be annoyed when a customer asks you to change a large note even if he doesn’t buy anything.
The customer is your reason for being. Never take her for granted. If you do, she will never come back, and will go straight to your competition.
Always dust off items, but never let the customer see you doing it.
Never embarrass a customer, especially by making him feel ignorant.
Never answer a question coming from a desire to show how smart you are. Answer with a desire to help the customer make the best decision.
Never shout across the store, “How much are these condoms?” or anything about the personal items a customer is buying.
When you don’t know, say so. Do whatever you can to find out the answer.
Every customer is special. Try to remember their names.
Don’t allow known shoplifters into the store.
Don’t ever let two sales staff talk when a customer is waiting. The worst thing you can do is count your cash while a customer is waiting.
If you can suggest something better, they will be grateful. Always respect their choice.
Never pressure anyone into buying anything.
Never knowingly give bad advice. Just help people come to the right decision.
Personally visit the store of the competition or assign people to visit and report back to you.
Hire a shopping service to prepare periodic reports on how your people are treating your customers.
If you hear of a store where the management is insulting the customers, buy it, then put up the sign “Under New Management” outside. Then sell it later based on the increased sales.
One expert (in the pharmacists case, a nurse or doctor) who is convinced you are better brings hundreds of customers and their friends through word of mouth.
Always look for ways to make a stranger a customer.
People will walk several blocks to save a dollar, or see a smile, or be treated right.
Always run a sale promotion or an offbeat event. Make them come back to see what you are cooking up next.
Use the best sign-maker you can find and pay him more than anybody else.
If someone is mad at you, they will tell everyone who will listen for as long as they are angry, maybe even longer. So correct any dissatisfaction, and ask customers to send their friends.
Treat your employees and salespeople who sell to you the same way you treat your customers.
Have a zero error system. There may be terrible consequences for example, if a mistake is made filling a prescription. Have people check each other’s work for safety.
Occasionally make intentional mistakes to see if people are checking.
Always measure your performance.
Always ask a customer to “come back soon”
If customers say they are moving away, offer to send them their favourite items by post.
Tell jokes.

I know this is a lot of information to digest, so we’re going to wrap up this lesson and leave you with the homework of going through and taking a look at the tips and tricks you like best. Also, look for tips that fit your company, products, services and target customers for the most effectiveness.

If you need help with this process, Click Here to try our FREE test drive and get all the help you need from a sales and marketing strategist.

Search & Implement

Posted on June 6, 2016 by Andy Turner

People only remember the extraordinary, strange, wild, surprising and unusual. You need to make sure your ideas and marketing reflect these reactions. This doesn’t mean you have to have a product or service that is completely out of the norm, infact, this could easily drive customers away. You need to have a product or service that is high quality and easily marketable, then you need to market it as extraordinary and new.

As you research word of mouth, there are some questions you need to ask along the way:

What are the users willing to tell the non-users?

Exactly how do your customers describe your product?
What are the non-users willing to ask the users?
What are the things they need to know, but are unwilling to ask?
What happens when these issues are raised?
Exactly what do your prospects have to know in order to trigger purchase?
Exactly how do your customers answer the objections, concerns, and qualms of your prospects?
How do your customers persuade their friends to use your product?
How do your customers suggest they initially get to know or try your product?
What warnings, safeguards, tips and suggestions do your customers suggest to your prospects?
Are your sales messages, positioning and important facts about your product getting through and surviving word of mouth?
What messages do you need to inject into the marketplace in order to turn the tide in your favour and how will you deliver them?

There are two main reasons why word of mouth research is so important:

To get the real impression and feedback from customers
To define word of mouth itself and the concept it creates

There is a simple formula that can help you conduct your word of mouth research. It’s called the “2-2-2” model.

2-2-2- Model

What this breaks down to is:

2 groups of customers
2 focus groups of prospects
2 mixed groups (enthusiasts & skeptics)

In these groups you need to ask the following questions:

What would you tell a friend?
How would you persuade a skeptic?
What questions would you anticipate from a skeptic?
How would you answer their objections?

The best way to conduct these groups is by teleconference. This ensures you’ll get a good variety of demographics for your customers and potential customers. It also allows people to feel safe and more able to express their true feelings. These teleconferences should not be conducted by you, but an independent party to avoid adding pressure to the situation.

We’re going to transition a bit and talk about how to construct a word of mouth campaign. First we’ll take a look at the essential ingredients you need to put together a campaign. These ingredients are:

A superior product
A way of reaching key influencers in your marketplace
A cadre of experts willing to bat for you
A large number of enthusiastic consumers
A way of reaching the right prospects
One or more compelling stories that people will want to tell to illustrate your product’s superiority
A way to substantiate, prove, or back up your claims and how the product will work in the real world
A way for people to have a direct, low-risk experience, a demo, sample or free trial
A way of reducing overall risk, an ironclad guarantee

Once you have those ingredients ready to use, you should consider the situations in which your company can benefit from a strong word of mouth program. Some of these situations are:

When there are credibility problems
When there are breakthroughs
When there are marginal improvements
Where the product has to be tried in large numbers or over time
Where there is high risk in trying the product
With older or mature products that have a new story that people tend to ignore
With unfair competitive practices such as spreading rumours, or telling lies about your product
When there are governmental or other restrictions on what you may say or claim directly

While, most of the word of mouth tactics are positive for your word of mouth program, there are a few products to avoid using in this program. They are:

Products where a seminar would not provide meaningful added value
Products that can’t be tried and where there is no consensus among experts
Products that are clearly inferior, without having a compensating superiority for similar products
Products that are so personal or emotional that rational discussion is irrelevant to the decision
Products where the decision value is so small (low price/low volume) the medium will not be cost-effective.

This wraps up this post on word of mouth research and how that research can be used when putting together your word of mouth campaign. If you need help with the research and a plan to use the results of that research, Click Here to try our FREE test drive to get all the help you need with our world class resources and tools.

Science of the Memes

Posted on May 30, 2016 by Andy Turner

Today I’d like to discuss the science of the memes and how spreading ideas around and through society is ingrained in humans.

Memes

This refers to types of ideas that spread the fastest through society, why they spread fast and how that affects consumerism. You can use this same information to create a lasting positive impression about your company, products and services. People are more likely to try a new product or services when they feel protected and reassured by the masses.

It’s been determined that spreading ideas is essential to the survival of a society. There are 5 main situations where this occurs. They are:

Crisis
Mission
Problem
Danger
Opportunity

Think of evangelism. This is a prime example of people not only spreading the word, but convincing people to jump on board and start to spread the word themselves. To do this effectively, you need to incorporate a few key things that always catch people’s eye:

Sex
News
Unique Results
The Unusual
Helping Others
Secrets

Next we are going to switch gears a little and talk about viral marketing. While, traditional marketing can be used to your advantage, the reality is viral and online marketing is the king of the castle. You can spread the word online like the plague, if you know what to do. Here are some simple steps to do this:

Find an interesting idea
Make it easy for people to experience or trial
Spread the idea while people who are in close contact with others
Take advantage of existing communication methods
Develop the way of trying your product in such a way that it automatically draws more try-ers

Some great places to use viral marketing are:

Geocities
Ebay
Roger Wilco
ICQ
AOL Instant Messenger
MSN Instant Messenger
Winamp
Hotmail
“Tell A Friend” Buttons
E-Greeting Cards

There are six things everyone should be doing to benefit from word of mouth on the Internet:

Put word of mouth components on your website
Assign people to monitor your viral marketing
Place testimonials in different places on your website to walk a customer through the purchasing cycle
Set up an email marketing campaign
Stay up to date on what products and services the experts in your industry are recommending
Use your website to demonstrate the great ways people are using or finding success with your products and services

Here are other non-viral Internet opportunities to explore:

iPhone’s
Handheld PC’s
Blackberrys
and other well connected electronic devices

This wraps up the lesson on traditional and viral marketing. If you need help putting together any of the plans or successes in this lesson, Click Here to try our FREE test drive to get all the help you need to put these plans into action.

Decoding Word Of Mouth Messages

Posted on May 23, 2016 by Andy Turner

Today’s lesson will talk about how word of mouth messages are delivered and how you can influence those messages.

There are essentially 3 methods of word of mouth:

Expert to Expert
Expert to Peer
Peer to Peer

When experts are talking about your products or service you will usually receive an amazing rush of sales and new customers, so obviously this is one of the best things that can happen. You can also help to facilitate this by offering free products to experts for them to review.

Expert opinion can also bring about new ideas that help to fuel new products, services and operating systems within your company. If you take the time to change or develop the opinions of even a small group of experts, you will have the opportunity to help your market explode.

There is a standard word of mouth delivery system that, in most cases, takes a few years. But, you can speed this up into only a few weeks. The standard system is:

First impressions from an expert
Organised trial of your products or services
Pooling peer experiences

It’s important to know exactly who is advocating for your products and service. Take the time to find out who they are and reward them. While, you may already have a customer service system for filing complaints, do you have one for compiling praise? Most likely not. If you take the time to show these people appreciation, they will help take your products and services to the top.

Some of the ways you can show them appreciation are:

Invite them to a customer appreciation dinner
Offer to video tape their testimonials
Ask to interview them for feedback to improve with
Offer them a premier customer membership
Ask them to join a referral incentive program

There are lots of things you can offer your biggest fans to help spread the word about your products and services.

Conventional media has been around forever and while it can still be effective, it’s lost a little of its luster over the last few years. There are a few reasons for this:

Expensive and doesn’t necessarily return results
Boring, lacking something fresh and new
Too short of a time slot to offer enough information

While these are all true, there are ways you can make conventional media work for you. For the information to be effective it needs to be presented in the right sequence, come from the right sources, be relevant to the target customer, be credible and be delivered at the right time in the medium.

We’re going to switch gears a little and talk about the two phases of the product adoption cycle. Traditional media is great for taking you through the information stage where you can offer the information you need to your potential customers, but it’s not so great for measuring the results of those efforts.

Without these results you can’t fine tune your marketing and therefore can easily miss the boat and lose potential customers and waste a whole lot of money. Once a consumer has the information they need, they’ll go through a verification process as they analyse whether or not the purchase was a good one. They generally get their information through:

Direct experience with the product
Interaction with peers using the same product
Experts’ experience
Scientific journals and other resources
Independent reviews and opinions

You can accelerate this process by:

Providing your own demo’s and free trials
Offer them indirect experience through the experience of others
Offer a good true story that can be passed around

Once you have the ability and are able to work through these concepts, you will be able to target your customers much better. If you need help with any of this along the way, Click Here to try our FREE test drive to gain access to our experienced sales and marketing strategist.

Harness the Power of Word of Mouth

Posted on May 9, 2016 by Andy Turner

Today we’re going to talk about how to harness the power of word of mouth. Including the six step process to success and the 30 (that’s right, I said 30) ways to harness the power of word of mouth. So, let’s get started!

There are six steps to harnessing word of mouth:

Understand your customers’ values and priorities, this will help you understand why they would buy your products.
Understand the different adopter types: innovators, early adopters, middle majority, late adopters and laggards.
Identify which decision stages are needed for your product to be adopted.
Use the information from steps 2 & 3 to figure out which wording and word of mouth tactics are going to work using the Decision Maker Matrix (we’ll talk about this in a minute).
Put together the resources for the highest word of mouth impact.
Create and implement your word of mouth campaign.

The Decision Maker Matrix is based on years of trial and error by George Silverman. It essentially charts to different concerns you may come across when working with different adopters and putting together a decision process for each one.

We are now going to move on to the 30 ways to harness the power of word of mouth:

Use Experts

Experts can come in many forms and all their opinions should be taken into consideration when putting together a word of mouth campaign. Some experts to gather information from include:

Customers
Suppliers
Experts
Salespeople
Experts’ roundtables
Experts’ selling groups

Seminars, Workshops & Speeches

These venues are a perfect opportunity to gather information. People who attend these types of events are used to giving feedback, so you can use a survey or other method to gather information you can look over later. Some events to use are:

Speakers program
Seminars
Group selling
Dinner meetings
Peer selling groups
Teleconferenced experts’ panels
Trade show events/opportunities

“Canned” Word of Mouth

The concept of “canned” word of mouth is using hard and online products to get feedback and offer information at the same time. Some ideas for these are:

Videotapes
Audiotapes
World Wide Web
CD’s

Referral Selling

As we’ve talked about before a referral program can help with a variety of things in building your business. By using some of the following tactics and opportunities you can find out exactly what you need to do to generate positive word of mouth. These tactics and opportunities are:

Testimonials
Networking
Referral Selling Program

“New” Media

The concept of “new” media is the use of up and coming media sources and opportunities to get the word out about your products and services and listen for the feedback about them. Here’s some of the “new” media options:

Hotlines
Faxback services
Web-based word of mouth, such as forums, e-mail, etc.
Call centers

Using Traditional Media for Word of Mouth

Using traditional media is a great way to get feedback. These are still considered main stream ways of interacting with the public and consumers. Some traditional media outlets are:

Customer service
PR
Placements
Events
Promotions
Word of mouth in ads, sales brochures, or direct mail
Salesperson programs, sales stars, or peer training,
Word-of-mouth incentive programs (“Tell-a-friend” programs)
Customer gifts they can share with their friends (articles, how-to manuals)

Internal Word of Mouth

Encourage employee word of mouth and sharing feedback with family, friends and others
Offer rewards or commission for word of mouth success

As you can see there are tons of ideas you can work with to increase your level of positive word of mouth marketing. If you need help with any of this, Click Here to try our FREE test drive to access our exclusive resources that can help you put this whole thing together.

Word of Mouth Tactics – Part 2

Posted on April 25, 2016 by Andy Turner

In the last post I started our series on word of mouth and talked about how to make your customers purchasing experience a short, easy one. I am going to continue with that theme a bit today. I’m going to talk about the power of word of mouth and how to mould it to your advantage.

The reality is everyone needs an advisor to guide them to make a decision. We rely on the expertise of others to make the right decisions as they are explained to us. When you take the time to understand exactly what and how word of mouth works, you’ll see all the great advantages it has to offer you. Remember this path when working to understand word of mouth:

Accelerate the decision making process for increased profits.
You can accelerate product-making decisions by making the process easier.
Instead of low-ball advertising and the used car salesman approach, try delivering on your word of mouth promises.

Traditional advertising draws about one response for every thousand ads and most of those are to ask for more information before the customer even considers purchasing. When you get information from a friend, you are more likely to take their word for it and act. On average customers purchase two out of every five recommendations their friends make. That’s a HUGE difference.

So, what exactly is word of mouth? Well, we know how powerful it can be, but to define it: Word of mouth is a communication that happens between a customer and a potential customer. There is usually a relationship of some kind between these two people with an established level of trust.

Now, compare this to advertising where you are providing a message to a potential customer where they have not established a relationship with you or level of trust. Who are they more likely to take advice from? The answer is clear!
We talked above about the benefits of word of mouth now let’s take a look at some reasons why it works. Some of these are:

The information is custom tailored to the potential customer because of the friendly relationship of the referrer.
It’s more personal, relevant and believable.
It’s customer driven.
It’s self-generating and can take on a life of its own, especially with the information age of the Internet.
It becomes part of the product’s description.
The source of word of mouth can be important and more effective when coming from an expert.
Word of mouth saves you time and money.

To fully utilise word of mouth you need to understand:

Where is your word of mouth coming from?
What products are being affected by word of mouth?
How is your word of mouth traveling?

Once you know these things you can work out a plan on how to trigger more word of mouth. This wraps up this lesson on word of mouth. If you need help understanding word of mouth and how it can impact your business, Click Here to try our FREE test drive to access our wealth of resources and tools.

Next time we’re going to dive into the nine levels of word of mouth. These levels help you understand which word of mouth is positive and which is not.

Do It Like the Big Dawgs!

Posted on September 14, 2015 by Andy Turner

Today we’ll take a look at how the kings of industry wine, dine and otherwise cajole prospects.

Most of successful professionals use a series of information based ads that build emotion and a call to action. These are much more effective than a standard company branding advertisements. The same principles that go into putting together a high impact (and, often, high priced) ad campaign can be adapted to fit your needs with similar results.

Here are some ways to put together and execute a professional, effective ad campaign:

Put together a short report that’ll you’ll automatically send to prospects when they contact you. This should include a short description of your business and what you specialise in. Don’t forget to include case studies, samples or other proof of your success.
Develop value-oriented yellow page ads.
Consider newsletters as a way of educating and informing customers about your industry and services offered.
Offer a free seminar, webinar or other lecture to build awareness of your business, but make sure you make the information pertinent to your target market and find speakers who are respected and known in the industry.
Buy an existing business, introduce better marketing and grow this new business faster than a “from scratch” business.
Always test different versions of your ads to find the most effective ones.
Use direct mail marketing to grow your business.
Put together a database of previous customers and send them new information.
Offer incentives such as frequent purchasing benefits, loyalty programs, referral programs or others.
Approach large firms who may need your services and negotiate a deal to be their exclusive expert in your field.
Offer a 24-hour information line with a regularly updated recorded message. Make this available to all past and future customers/clients.
Donate time or materials to local charities to show support in your area.
Offer public clinics for the general public to come along and discuss what they need that’s free and approachable.
Organise seminars your customers/clients can pay to attend by putting together a high-perception value package.
Approach local newspaper by offering to write a weekly column about your area of expertise. Don’t ask for money, just a byline and bio.
Develop a weekend or other destination seminar for customers/clients, not only does this give you an action-packed weekend with the most important people, it gives them a tax-deductible business adventure.
Take a good seminar and turn it into written form as a home study, member site program, audio or video program.
Approach large companies and offer to give seminars to their employees, investors or management.
Be proactive with your marketing plan.
Barter for your marketing. Offer products or services in lieu of payment.
Be willing to bring in new clients, even if at an initial loss because it will likely pay off later.
Regulate your marketing budget to maximise the potential income from them to hit the next year and try to push back advertising costs for the next year to offset your expenses.
Make offers to target markets or target market businesses to pay them for referrals or shared databases.
Offer loaner products to replace equipment that’s being repaired or refurbished.
Give away something free to everyone who brings in a print version of your advertisement. This is a great way to see which ads are giving you the most bang for your buck.
Continually consider what new products/services you can offer to current customers/clients.
Develop a mail order division of your company.
Offer a proposition to your competitors to trade customers/clients you were both unsuccessful in selling to.
Use different marketing tactics as an excuse to attract new customers/clients with new offers and goodies.
Offer a “you-choose-the-price” program. This is especially good for product you just can’t seem to sell.

So, there are 30 great ways to market to other professionals and businesses. Some other great ways to get your name out there for little or no cost are:

Get involved you in your community- volunteer, donate to local events etc.
Join your local Chamber of Commerce and attend the networking and other activities throughout the year.
Join local education and networking events e.g. BEN (Business Entrepreneur Network) Dublin & Louth
Join a local, state or regional professional associates for further networking opportunities.
Become a board member of a local organisation.

Advertising should never be your only method of marketing, there are a myriad of ways to get your name out there in a way that feels personal to potential customers/clients.

“Effective advertising…must be used to get your name out to the public. If your name is not familiar to people, they will not come to you.” Jay Abraham

If you’re not sure where you start with your marketing plan or how to reach out to your local community, competitors, customers/clients and others who could influence your business in a highly positive way, try our FREE test drive to experience the tools and resources we have to boost your business to the next level and beyond.

Go to http://vanguardmarketingacademy.com/myguidedtour

PR Equals Free Publicity

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Andy Turner

There are three key areas of public relations you can use to boost your advertising results ten-fold over your paid advertising.

The key to public relations lie in:

Public relation or publicity
Merchandising
Promotions

With a solid plan in place that encompasses all these areas, you’ll have a great approach to use public relations in the best way possible.

Public relations include all that is the media. Don’t limit yourself. The attention of newspapers, television, radio, magazines, bloggers, ezines and more are all equally powerful. Online marketing is just as, if not more, important as conventional media.

Here are the steps to get noticed by the media:

Put together a press release for your company. The press release should be relevant to your target market and address consumer interest, not just announce your business.
Compact your press release to include one hook and one angle. Choose the most attention-getting to make sure the media person you are sending it to is interested in reading it.
Put your press release in professional formatting. With press releases you need a dateline, the most important information at the top, facts, figures and wrap it up with contact details including who and how. Print the press release on your letterhead.
Send your press release to all television and radio stations, local and metro newspapers, national newspapers, industry magazines, and any other form of media that reaches your target market. Don’t forgot to include relevant blogs, ezines, press release submission sites and to industry professionals.

More importantly than a perfect press release is to make sure you have addressed the needs of your target market in the products/services you offer and made that clear in the press release. If you are provided people a solution to a problem, a way to avoid a problem and an opportunity to enhance their life the media and public will be interested.

If you have a connection (or the ability to get a connection) with a celebrity, this can practically guarantee you’ll get attention. Make sure you are offered newsworthy information, and then follow up with media outlets to make sure they are publicizing that information.

“One of the most powerful techniques every business should use is free publicity. As the name implies, there is no cost, just the time and effort required to attract attention to your business.” Jay Abraham

Our FREE test drive can show you how to put together press releases that work! Check out how the pro’s do it and craft the perfect press releases for your business.