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October 21, 2004
Systematizing Your Business
I love high school state tournaments. They're living examples of how people, when the pressure's on, can perform at levels they have previously only dreamed of achieving.
Last night I went to my daughter's state tournament volleyball game - not the championship yet, just the prelims, but it was still the state competition.
It also could be my daughter's last high school game, as she's a senior, and it's a single-elimination tournament.
The excitement was high as we walked into the gym. Prairie, my daughter's team, had played RLH 4 times during the year, and have never won a single game, much less a match. Our hopes were high, but expectations low.
Then we saw something we hadn't seen before - these girls were playing volleyball, real volleyball, the way it's supposed to be played. Oh, they've known the theories all season long, and had even shown moments of greatness prior to this game, but those moments always passed, and hopes were dashed.
But all of the sudden, we saw a Prairie team playing like they'd never played before. And then we looked at the scoreboard and realized a win here was possible!
The first game ended with Prairie on top 25-23. I was already hoarse from cheering. The Prairie side of the stands was rocking and rolling. (An interesting site as most of us were parents - picture a generic rock concert...or better yet, Mick Jagger in concert!)
Posted at 04:42 PM
Writing Articles For Profit
As you know, articles can be a powerful way to get great publicity for your company.
But one of the main questions I get is "where do I get ideas for articles to write?"
One of my favorite sources is what I call "The Cosmo Method" This method involves grabbing the last 10 issues of the magazines that your customer reads, tearing out their table of contents, and studying them.
This practice shows you several powerful things:
1. What the marketplace is thinking about (especially true if you see multiple magazine running similarly themed articles)
2. How those themes are being positioned in the marketplace (giving you a great opportunity to provide a contrarian point of view)
3. What headlines are being used to pitch this information (a powerful exercise that I recommend you do at least once every quarter to keep your headline-writing machine well lubricated.)
Since I don't have access to your particular industry's publications, let's look at Cosmopolitan. Here are just a few of the headlines from a sample issue (in creating this list, I'm leaving out most of the articles that have to do with sex)
Posted at 03:48 PM
October 20, 2004
How to Clinch Radio Interviews
Alex Carroll says that if you want to get onto radio talk shows, the host or producer probably won't book you for an interview unless you can do one of these 6 things, passed along to us by Joan Stewart:
- Tell listeners how to save time or money
- Give them information that will make them rich
- Tell an amazing story
- Make them laugh
- Share little-known tips or secrets to teach them something new
- Make them angry
Alex should know. His topic? How to talk your way out of unfair speeding tickets. He has done more than 1,200 radio interviews that have generated more than $1 million in direct sales for his book. He's the master at knowing how to catch the attention of producers, shine when you're in the spotlight, and get invited back over and over again.
He also says there are four ways to convince hosts to book you:
Posted at 11:53 AM
What's That Again? Leaked Memo
You know that things aren't quite right when you see the following headline:
"Leaked Memo Warns Against Leaking Memo"
I guess that was one memo that was too tempting to the leaker...
Posted at 11:47 AM
October 08, 2004
Positioning: How To Own A Piece of Your Customer's Mind
Did you know that you can actually own a piece of your customer's mind?
You do it through positioning.
Here's the technical definition: Positioning, in its noun form, is the role one's brand or product plays in the consumer's mind versus the set of alternatives available to the buyer to fill that particular need. For example, in the world of jeans, several brands may be successfully positioned in the consumer's mind. One may be positioned against comfort, another against long lasting, another as the best looking pants to wear on a casual date, etc..
A successfully positioned brand is one that fits into the same spot in most of the people's minds in that particular brand's target market (12-18 year old girls) against an particular attribute (comfort) that is a major purchase driver in the category. Ideally, the positioning would be exclusive and well known, so that if one was to ask a bunch of teenage girls "What brand of jeans is most comfortable?" the answer would be instant and universally the same.
I'm a visual guy, so I like to use visual examples. I like to think of the mind as a giant room full of file cabinets.
In that room there's a drawer for every need.
Each drawer contains two folders in front and a bunch of unfiled papers laying in a jumbled heap behind them. (The mind isn't the neatest filing system out there...)
Let's take, for example, the drawer labeled Airline Transportation. Pull it open, and sure enough, inside are two folders and a bunch of pieces of paper behind them. Each piece of paper contains the name of an airline.
Posted at 04:06 PM
Schmoozing at Trade Shows
Trade shows are great places to generate all kinds of publicity.
Joan Stewart points out that among the thousands of attendees at trade shows, you'll sometimes find hundreds of reporters who are hungry for stories about new products and interesting people behind the products. But you must do your homework.
- Even before you pack your suitcase, know your goal. What do you want reporters to write about? Do you want to be positioned as the market leader in your category? Do you want attention for a new product? Once you've identified your goal, write a positioning statement that you'll use over and over again in your marketing materials, in your elevator pitch and in your media kit.
Posted at 03:17 PM
Niche Stuff from 101PublicRelations.com
We have a number of products that don't get talked about much because they are focused on specific niches. But these are some of the best tools to gaining publicity in their respective fields. If you work in any of these fields, there's much you can learn from these audios!
Here's just a few:
PR Firms: Create New Business NOW!
A guide to using gaining more clients to build your PR practice (and any other service business, for that matter!)
Posted at 02:24 PM
What's That Again? How Do You Really Feel?
Here's an interesting one from an actual phone book. You can't help but wonder if this particular listing for the IRS might not have been an accidental misspelling:
"Interanal Revenue Service"
Posted at 01:20 PM
October 04, 2004
Once Simply Isn't Enough: Frequency In Public Relations
When the average person thinks about the process of creating advertising, they think of the glamour of commercial shoots, copywriting, and possibly the huge amounts of money that it takes to place an ad on that one big football game played in January.
But there's an additional aspect to advertising that most people don't see called "media placement".
Media placement is the process of selecting where your advertising will run, negotiating contracts, then actually getting payment and the creative (the film, recording or print layout) into the hands of those who actually run the advertisement for you.
While the process of writing the creative and producing the commercial is a fun and fascinating process, the process of media placement is just plain work. Fascinating work, but it's still work. (That's why I always outsource this function!)
As marketers buy media we use two measurements to determine the potential effectiveness of the media that we are buying. These are called reach and frequency.
It all starts with your budget and your target market (women 18-25, etc.)
Reach measures what percentage of that target market that will actually see or hear your advertisement.
Frequency measures how many times your target market will be exposed to it.
So you may target 80% reach, with an average frequency of 4.3 times. Of course, there are tradeoffs - assuming you have a fixed budget you can try to reach a higher reach percentage or to have a higher frequency, but usually not both.
This is all based on a set of research which shows that the more often the audience sees your advertisement, the more likely they are to buy. The actual number of exposures we target varies based on the latest research, but most models show that somewhere between 3 and 5 exposures is the magic number which balances consumers commitment to purchase with the cost to achieve a higher frequency of expose consumers.
To get untechnical here -
Most people need to see your message 3+ times before they're going to respond. I've also seen lots of data that says that number should be 7 or more.
Think about this the next time that you decide to run just one advertisement in the convention issue of your trade magazine.
It takes an investment to create a customer.
Let's bridge now into the world of Public Relations.
Posted at 09:49 AM
October 01, 2004
Readers Are Raving
I know that you're busy, and that I tend to wax prolific. But, if you didn't get the chance to read last week's issue all the way through, you're missing out on two things.
1. Our article "The Most Powerful Word in the Marketer's Toolbox" was a huge hit, with many of you writing to say how valuable you found its message.
There's one other thing that I failed to mention in that article. The key to having a great "because" is to have a viable differentiating point for your product / service. If you don't have that, your marketing and sales will always be weak. I strongly encourage you to focus your energy on developing that differentiation as it will be key to your short and long-term success.
2. Our new Crash Course In PR - a new email-delivered course that teaches you the foundations of public relations. And best of all, it doesn't cost you a penny! Here are some comments that we've gotten about this course in the last several days (since I don't have time to get permission from each one of the senders, I'm just including their comments without their names. Sorry...)
"I'm sending you a short note to say what I think of your email series I'm receiving. In a word ... excellence ..."
Posted at 09:04 PM
How To Profit From Political Debates
America's presidential debates, which started last night, are a super chance for you to find your way into print or on the air.
Joan Stewart provides these tips on how you can piggyback onto the historic debates:
- On the day after the debate poll employees at your company and ask who they think won the first debate, and why. Then let local newspapers and the TV stations know. The results will probably fall along party lines, but that's OK. Or, better yet, round up a dozen or so undecideds and let them choose the winner of each debate. Be sure to let the media know which employees would agree to be interviewed.
Posted at 04:50 PM
What's That Again? Personal Ads and Sushi
I forgot to include the What's That Again section in last week's entry, so today you get two!
Here's a personal advertisement:
"PIG
I saw you at Tiki Bobs. You grabbed my b^tt and I told you that if you did that again, I'd kill you. You did., I need your address now." (followed by contact information.)
I bet that one generated great results!
Here's the name of a Sushi restaurant in the Toronto area:
"IKKI Sushi"
Some names just don't translate well!
Posted at 03:19 PM
PR Basics: Taking Reporters To Lunch
Is it ethical and/or acceptable to take a reporter to lunch?
More and more media outlets today have rules that state that lunches are a conflict of interest. But not all...
A great way to find out is to call the media outlet and ask, before you extend the invitation to the reporter. That helps to reduce discomfort on both of your parts. The same thing applies to any gift, tickets to the game, etc.
Food, however, can be a powerful tool in raising your visibility with the media, (Krispy Kreme knows that!) so much so that we've even created a whole special report just on this subject. The Do’s and Don'ts of Offering Food to the Media, discusses this in much greater detail.
Posted at 02:05 PM
