Publicity it is…
Patrysha Korchinski
Marketing, SEO and PR, The Passion Project
Since this is my first post for the community blog with its great new format, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Katherine for providing such a wonderful platform for sharing our passions with others.
For those who don’t know me, I’m passionate about marketing and promotion for small business. I’m big on the kind of marketing that delivers a healthy return on investment.
I thought long and hard about what I wanted to concentrate on for this blog. I personally find it so much easier to blog or write articles on themes, so I wanted to choose one topic area that you can count on me focusing on for my scheduled posts (that’s not to say I won’t wander off a bit with my unscheduled posts). In any case, I’ll spare you the details of all the brainstorming and list making that I went through to finally arrive at the topic and just tell you that I’ll be talking about publicity.
I mean, radio rocks and there are tons of great ways to market online and there are definitely opportunities through direct marketing and print advertising - but my heart will always belong to publicity. Whether you go the do it yourself route (which is doable if you have a strong commitment to getting it done right) or hire someone to handle your public relations needs - it should be a part of your marketing strategy.
There is no reason I can think of that a business owner with a good product or service, a dependable delivery method and great customer service, should not be able to get some buzz going through publicity. All it takes is a newsworthy angle that you can capitalize on.
Yes, of course it takes effort to do the research to uncover the newsworthy angles and it takes some creativity at times to relate those angles directly to your business in a flattering way. It takes time to develop the relationships with media outlets so that your message is likely to be heard above the competition. So, I’d be lying if I said it’s not work to develop a good publicity plan - but the payoff is worth the effort.
If you develop a publicity plan that you commit to, that takes into account your unique selling proposition and targeted directly at the media your target market consumes, I am confident you will see results.
The results, of course, will vary.
All any outside marketing (and that includes publicity) can really do is drive people to your business, once. It remains up to you to close the sale and provide follow up services to retain that customer. Outside marketing may make a former customer remember your business, but their previous experience will be the deciding factor in whether they come back or not.
So, if you are confident all systems are go at the core of your business - (And this doesn’t mean they have to be perfect, as long as you have a system in place to ensure your customers are more than satisfied with their experience) - then creating a publicity plan is a great method of increasing your market share.
Your first step is deciding what kind of traffic you want. Do you want local traffic coming into your brick and mortar store or more website visitors? While there is some overlap between online media and traditional sources, it’s better to choose one vehicle if you are doing it yourself. It almost always requires a professional touch to balance online and traditional PR effectively and successfully.
Your next step is studying the media and more importantly studying the media that is being consumed by your target market. Where are your prospects getting their news and information and what are they looking for? Once you figure that out, the rest of the publicity plan will start falling into place.
We’ll discuss how to find that information in my next installment in June!
Patrysha Korchinski @ May 6, 2008
Patrysha Korchinski
I get confused Patrysha between publicity, marketing and advertising - do you think you could define each of them here?
Very interesting post Patrysha. I’m looking forward to the June installment!
Patrysha,
Thanks for an interesting article. I must say that I have a very difficult time writing press releases. I don’t know if it because it has to be written in a generic manner, without “salesy pitches” or what, but I seem to be “tongue-tied” and cannot figure out what words to use. Ask me verbally what I want to say, and I’m great with that but writing to send off to the media, not knowing if they will accept or reject what I wrote, makes me plain darn nervous!
Thankfully writers like you are here to help people like me avoid being stuck and unable to get the job done!