|
Part 3 of a four part series By Michael Hepworth, from choice Magazine
Sponsored by: 
NEVER COLD CALL AGAIN - GETTING QUALIFIED PROSPECTS TO CALL YOU
Michael Hepworth is the StreetSmart Marketer; coach, mentor and author. The StreetSmart Marketer guides business owners to out-perform; their history, their competition and their expectations. More free practical marketing tips can be found at www.streetsmartmarketer.com PART THREE: GETTING PUBLICITY FOR YOUR BAIT PIECE! In part 2 of this series we discovered how to create a "bait piece" to lure customers in the door. Part 3 continues with tips on how to create a buzz by developing publicity about your bait piece. Publicity is powerful because people tend to believe what other people say about you, than what you say about yourself. More importantly, with a little creativity, you can get lots of free publicity. Often this free publicity gives you coverage that would cost many thousands of dollars if you were to buy the equivalent in advertising space or time. The first question you need to answer is what media targets your customers? Once you know the answers then you have a number of choices for where you'd like to target your publicity efforts. Some magazines and newspapers will publish articles written by outsiders, but most have a paid staff who look for news stories and who write articles or do interviews for the publication. This is also true for radio and television stations. The best way to reach theses journalists is with a well written press release. With your written article or press release, always include your by-line. A by-line is your opportunity to tell readers who you are and how to get in contact with you. If you direct readers to a web page, make sure it's a page that will enable you to capture their names and contact information in exchange for information. If you'd like to see this in action, visit www.streetsmartmarketer.com. This web site is only designed to do one thing; capture peoples names who visit the site. You can't buy anything. You can also send your press release to various websites that either publish press releases or syndicate articles depending on what you have put together to publicize your bait piece. If you've done a good job of writing your press release or article, you can expect a certain number of people to ask you for help. Turning these interested people into customers should not be difficult if your bait piece is well targeted and provides valuable information to your target audience. Advertising Cheaply Another more obvious way to promote your bait piece is to advertise it. The question however is how to do it cheaply so that you don't break the bank. The first thing to remember is you are not selling a product, you are offering valuable free information that helps makes your prospects more informed buyers and helps them set buying criteria that you can fulfill. Preferably only you can fulfill. Don't try and sell your products or services. That can wait until your customers are ready to trust you. Offer your bait piece free in exchange for their contact information. If you can afford it send out hard copy as that is more likely to be read. Also it enables you to collect mail addresses as well as e-mail. Mail is still a more effective medium in the direct response world than e-mail. Once prospects have contacted you for your bait piece, this is an opportunity to offer them your free newsletter so you can stay in touch. Include a letter with every bait piece you send out, inviting them to call you. This will begin the process of making you phones ring with interested prospects. Develop a script to deal with the callers and a follow up script so that every person who receives you bait piece gets at least one call. Here are some other places where you can advertise your bait piece without overspending:
In Part 1V we'll cover some ways to do this. Michael Hepworth is the StreetSmart Marketer; coach, mentor and author. The StreetSmart Marketer guides business owners to out-perform; their history, their competition and their expectations. More free practical marketing tips can be found at www.streetsmartmarketer.com Feedback
is welcome at ExpertSeries@choice-online.com
choice
Magazine
customer
service phone: 310-941-7249
|
