Become A Super Promoter - Lesson 3

Subscribe to or Get Everything You Can About Your Niche Markets

Subscribe to e-mail newsletters, news services, and specialized publications.  These sources enable you to take the pulse of your industry.  Trade magazines cover all the issues that affect your niche, while providing up-to-minute information you won’t find anywhere else.  If you can’t afford all the magazines, you might be able to find them in a library or read back issues on Web sites.

Don‘t just study the contents of the articles, note who writes them.  Because writers often specialize in an industry, you will see their names again and again.  These people can become valuable sources of information and potential messengers for your business.  Set aside dedicated times to read these publications and clip articles of interest.

Make frequent trips to a good business bookstore, and look for books that address your industry, niche and type of work.  Develop a reference collection you can turn to for immediate, dependable information.  Read regularly and act on what you learn.  Allocate a budget for books and materials that keep you up to date and advance your expertise-seeking agenda.

Become the Leading Expert

Becoming a resource within your target market starts with sharing your knowledge.  You can give away free information – booklets, reports that make a difference to your prospects, valuable Web-site content – in a way that attracts interest but applies no sales pressure.  The more you become known as a source of expert information, the more potential clients trust you.  You become part of their world, a center of influence, and because people like to do business with people they know, or know of, you will be their first choice.

Centers of influence are always “present” within their target markets.  Visibility is part of their formula, so they cultivate opportunities to be seen, read, and heard by the people who matter most.  They make sure their prospects hear from them on a regular basis.

Most importantly, centers of influence “walk the walk” as well as “talk the talk.”  Their credibility skyrockets because they are confident in what they do and consistent in the messages they send.

Media Strategies that Work

When you read about a business in the newspaper or hear about it on the radio, chances are you immediately elevate that business about its competitors.  It has solidity and credibility.  This is precisely why media relations (usually referred to as “public relations” or simply “PR”) are the ultimate leading expert marketing strategy.  No other marketing method delivers so much impact for so little investment of time and money.

The public values the media, and so should you.  In one way or another, the media reach and influence everyone with a direct impact on your business.  Thus, when properly pursued, media strategies will help establish your reputation and build your brand, researching far more prospects than you could in person.

Getting media attention requires knowledge and effort on your part, but it’s not magic.  The strategies discussed in the following chapters are designed specifically for small businesses, and they are within the reach of anyone with a basic understanding of how the media works.  For those who take the time to understand and follow the guidelines that will be offered, the results can be spectacular.

The Rewards of Media Exposure

Media Relations, or PR, is first and foremost about obtaining favorable media exposure for your business – but unlike advertising, it’s free.  And though usually the result of a lot of work, it’s hard to find a more cost-effective way to reach potential clients.  The rewards are very real.  Here are the kinds of results you can look for:

• Increased Sales – although PR is often seen as merely an image-building tool, it can directly bring new clients.  When your phone number appears in a magazine article, for example, you generate inquiries and orders.
• Instant Credibility – The approach to embrace the media is built on the understanding that everyone is swamped with marketing messages, and with so many alternative clamoring for attention, it’s hard to know who is authentic.

Advertisers and marketers agree that the more often someone sees your name, the more predisposed they are to buy from you – an effect that grows when your name appears in contexts that simply you are competent.  PR works because it associates your name with the authority of the media.

• Enhanced Status – As a businessperson, you undoubtedly possess special knowledge.  But what good is that expertise if nobody knows about it?  When your name appears in print or on the air, you acquire an aura of expertise that will get you more business with less effort.
• Expanded Reach – No matter how much you network or attend meetings, you can only go so far on your own.  Public relations can quickly take you to a larger audience, sometimes focusing national. Attention on a small, local operation.
• Continuing Benefits – Any media coverage you obtain can be effectively utilized long afterward.  Reprints of articles you’ve written or been quoted in, and copies of audios or videos of media appearances, make excellent marketing materials that are less expensive, and more convincing, than anything you create yourself.  Article reprints can send out cassettes of a radio appearance to prospective clients, or, if you are quoted in a magazine or newspaper, you can photocopy the article and send it to prospects as a no-pressure means of keeping in touch.