PR Ideas

Think Ahead for Better PR Results
If you're doing your own PR, up-to-date editorial calendars are a must! Contact the publications that cover the issues your business deals with and ask them to mail or fax an editorial calendar to you. This will give you the chance to review the subjects that each publication is planning to publish in the coming months, allowing you to "slant" your articles to the kinds of stories the publications can use, increasing the chances that your articles will be accepted.

"Pass For Press" At Trade Conferences
Have you had at least three print articles published in local, trade or regional newspapers/magazines lately? If so, chances are good that you can qualify for a press pass to the next major trade conference in your field. It's a great way to network and collect material for additional articles you can write. Plus you'll save on conference fees. It's also likely that you'll be able to attend all the conference seminars, which usually cost a bit.

Contact the conference management service at least 6 weeks before the show and request a press kit. Most contain information on how to "pass for press".

Fillers Work in PR
Take the tips you mention to your clients that help them do business and create "fillers", one or two paragraphs of copy that an editor can use to fill in the extra space in his publications. Editors are receptive to fillers as they help tremendously to fill in the gaps when a deadline is approaching.

Voice & E-Mail PR
Want to pitch a story about your business to a newspaper or magazine? Use voice mail & e-mail.

Many editors now have e-mail capability. If you send a press release via e-mail to an editor, be sure to include a subject line in the message that states "PR: (Insert Subject of Your Story Here)" This can help the editor determine whether he or she is interested in the story you have to tell.

If you call to "query" an editor about your story, don't be afraid to leave a message on the editor's voice mail if he or she is not available. State the details of what your story is about along with your phone number. Most editors are under tight deadlines and may not have a lot of time to chat.

Web Ideas

Web Marketing...Every Place!
Look around your office for offline marketing opportunities for your Web site:

• Voice Mail/Answering Machine Message: Let all your callers know about your Web Site by including your URL as part of your voice mail/answering machine message.

• Fax Cover Sheet: Put some of that extra white space to work by including your URL and e-mail address on your standard cover sheet.

• Invoices: Include your URL! The folks in Accounts Receivable may be interested in surfing your site...or passing the word about it!

Standard Banner and Button Sizes for Web Sites
Want to place banner ads and buttons on your Web site but are unsure about the dimensions? Lots of talk in the advertising industry right now about standardizing banner and button sizes. Here are the latest suggested sizes (in pixels):

468 x 60 Full banner
460 x 55 Full banner
392 x 72 Full banner with vertical navigation bar
234 x 60 Half banner
125 x 125 Square button
120 x 90 Button
120 x 60 Button
88 x 31 Micro button
120 x 240 Vertical banner

uReach.com: Smart Marketing
We all know that time plays a crucial role when marketing our businesses. Ever lose the chance to bid on a job because you were traveling and didn't receive the e-mail or voice mail message in time to respond to the proposal request?

Enter the first free all-in-1 consumer communications service provider that enables you to manage those important communications using the Web and telephone. All your communication tools including voicemail, email, fax, calendar, address book, file sharing, and group information are stored in a central location for easy access from the Web and telephone. It's the only free service that reads e-mail, addresses, appointments, or to do lists over the phone. You can also use e-mail to send faxes and voicemail. Your uReach account also has a free personal 800 number that clients and prospects can use to leave you those important timely messages.

Translate Your Web Site for Free
If you have a Web site, you have the possibility of attracting prospects from all over the world. You can translate your HTML pages or the e-mail messages that you receive with the free Web-based translation service from AltaVista and Systran Software.

Simply type in your URL, press a button and your HTML content is translated from English to one of five different languages (French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish). When your HTML page appears in the translated version, view the source code, copy it out, paste it into your HTML editor and save it as a separate HTML document.

You can also translate from one of the eleven languages. Paste text into Babel Fish and it will translate the message. This can help you respond to an e-mail request from overseas.

Sales Ideas

Don't Do a "Vendor Bender"
It pays to treat your vendors like family. One manufacturer we know always includes a picture and info blurb about one of his trusted vendors in his company's monthly newsletter. Result: Many of the vendors order reprints of the newsletters to send to their clientele. Increased business!

Do the "Wave" At Your Next Trade Show
The owner of a temporary staffing company we know doubled the traffic to her booth at a regional trade show by "doubling" her trade booth staff in a unique way. She had full-length photos of her sales staff prepared and hired a printer to create life-size cardboard cutouts that "waved" hello. People were attracted to the "motion" and entered the booth to find out why hiring one of the company's temporaries "is like having two workers instead of one".

Voice Mail Benefits
Voice mail...the cold-caller's nightmare? Not necessarily. When you leave a message, state three terrific ways this person can benefit by meeting with you and also leave a specific time and date that you'll stop by to see them. Also state that they should call you if this meeting time doesn't fit their schedule. Chances are good that they'll return the call. You can then start the prospecting process.

On-the-Spot Referrals
Visiting a customer? Ask your client to "phone a referral" for you while you're sitting there. If the referral is positive, you can get on the phone and talk to the prospect right there to set up a "go-see".

Planning Ideas

Include Your Clients in Your Speeches and Articles
Doing your own PR and presentations? Tap your clients' knowledge in order to enhance an article or speech that you're preparing. Be sure to send a reprint of your published article to the client with a note of thanks. Have your speech recorded "live" and send a tape to the client as a "thank you".

Smart PR for Small Businesses

PR consultant Earl Ross, with over 32 years experience in public relations, extends the following advice to small business owners about using PR to rectify mistakes in his article "Small Business PR":

"Sooner or later, chances are every business is going to do something wrong. What can PR do then? Here are the first ten rules to follow when something goes wrong:

1) Own up to your mistake and try to rectify it ASAP. 2) Ditto 3) Ditto 4) Ditto 5) Ditto 6) Ditto 7) Ditto 8) Ditto 9) Ditto 10) Ditto.

To illustrate, here's an actual example. It happened to my wife. She had purchased a fairly expensive skirt from a local department store, wore it once and took it to a nearby dry cleaners. A week later, she returned and found that her skirt had been ruined. Instead of admitting she had made a mistake the cleaner asserted that the skirt was a cheap one and that is why it had come out so poorly.

Despite my wife's remonstrations the cleaner remained adamant -- she would take no responsibility for the ruined skirt. My wife walked out of the store, never to return. By trying to save a few dollars, the cleaner had lost a valuable customer. Apparently, my wife wasn't the only one to have had difficulties with this cleaner. Her attitude toward all her customers was surly. Moreover, she generally waited on customers clad in a housedress and with a head full of curlers. Clearly, a walking example of the worst in public relations. The proof of the pudding was that within a few short months, she was out of business."

Read the rest of Earl's "Small Business PR" article.

From the "Find the Need and Fill It" Department...

Kevin Siegel, technical trainer and owner of independent publishing company IconLogic (410-956-4949) in Riva, Maryland, started his company in 1993 when he found an industry need that wasn't being filled:

"I'd been teaching various software packages for years and never found a book that was perfect for a classroom setting. If the book was beautiful, odds were that the text was too small to read and hard to follow. If the content in a book was well-presented, the quality of exercises left something to be desired.

Finally tiring of these relentless inconsistencies, I started teaching without any books at all. Over the next several months, many students asked if the things taught in class came from a book. "If so," they asked, "Where and how can we buy it?" That sparked an idea and I began to ask students what they wanted in course manuals. Their feedback became the driving force behind each and every IconLogic training manual.

All of the training manuals are designed in an easy-to-use, "self-tutorial" format that effectively supports both instructor-led and self-study training methodologies. Each is set with large type, has plenty of room for notes and contain plenty of student exercises. Each book is 8 1/2" x 11" and spiral bound so students can lay them flat and each book comes with a student data disk (when required). Since all of the manuals are modular, they can be customized to meet specific skill requirements."

IconLogic has over 70 unique "skills and drills" training manuals that have sold internationally. Who says that students are the only folks who learn something new in class?

Advice About Student Intern Assistance
Small business owners should contact their local university and college business departments concerning student marketing interns. According to Gene Holand, who is with the Business Division of Columbia Basin College in Pasco, WA, there's plenty of help to be had…for free:

"No matter how hard we try to get the word out to the communities and businesses, they don't seem to call. Contact college (2 yr. as well as 4 yr.) placement offices. There are government subsidy monies available to help defray the labor costs."

Marketing Ideas

Here are scores of categorized
marketing ideas to help develop your
own unique strategy.

Experienced professionals have studied the ideas of others for as long as marketing has been around. Not to copy, but to jump start thinking. Choose a group of marketing ideas from the ideas and articles column to your left, or from the icons below to help begin your own productive thought process.
For variety of read, you'll find many ideas expressed in two formats- shorts for quick reads and articles for more in-depth information. In either case, the idea is to begin jotting down unique adaptions of ideas that better serve your unique needs. Whatever the result, it follows that such a process should satisfy your marketing goals better than the original material that got things started.

Make sure that your idea really works.

The great test of an idea's merit is to put yourself in your audience's shoes. Pretend that you are on the receiving end of this new initiative to be sure it anticipates every concern someone might have. Repeat this kind of scrutiny more than once or twice. Because our state of mind is effected by all manner of outside forces we suggest that you carefully review your idea at relaxed times on at least four different days. At the end of that time, if you are still convinced of its ability to excite and communicate, you will also feel the commitment needed to provide adequate support.

The ability to stick with a marketing strategy for the long run is where many inexperienced marketers fall short.

The good news is that the vast majority of us aren't mega advertisers who must come up with a bunch of new campaigns every year. We simply don't need to match the degree of creative variety demanded by audiences of companies like Apple, Coke, Ford and Gap. Further, trying to emulate their nimbleness can be a mega mistake. Without the huge budget necessary to support frequent changes, those who try to mimic marketing leaders often confuse their own audience by changing spots too frequently. The right idea is to create and forward a marketing idea that is meaningful and appropriate for us. ISBF's creators are experienced in providing marketing solutions for corporate levels up to, but not including the biggest entities in the world. We know that it is vital to execute an idea well, given that 20 to 30 impressions are usually needed to be remembered. In many cases, we advise clients to improve on existing momentum rather than start from scratch.

Even for the most talented and seasoned professionals, consistently taking a marketing idea from start to dazzling finish is a challenge.

Nevertheless, we've discovered from our own experiences with clients at many levels, that there is no shortage of those who are eager to get more deeply involved in this aspect of their own businesses.
Because of the appreciative response Idea Site For Business has gotten over the last few years, it's possible that we may be shedding some light on the creative process. That ISFB is actually helping to improve understanding between clients and their creative providers. We may also be building enough confidence to allow a small business to successfully implement its own marketing idea. In any case, our community continues to grow through word of mouth, email press releases and by adding all the useful ideas for creative business people we can possibly gather. There it is, the same marketing idea that has worked for us from the very start.

3 Small Business Marketing Ideas That You Can't Do Without

If you have a small business or you are thinking about starting a small business, you need marketing ideas. Fortunately, small business marketing ideas do not require that you be a rocket scientist to get the job done. All they require is that you have the Internet and some time. You can also throw a little bit of imagination in there. That is a combination that will work out beautifully.

You will then take that beautiful combination and you will apply it to operating a Google Adwords campaign. You need to know what tools to use such as whether or not you want to advertise on the search network or the content network. You also have to figure out what times of day your niche should be advertised. Then there is the fact you need to set up a budget. This will require a bit of thought.

You can also try article marketing. You can write articles or have someone write them for you and submit them to directories. This will send individuals to your website and result in more money for you.

Lastly, you can go for social networking. Create yourself a profile page and market to individuals. You have millions of people to market to, so make sure you make this a part of your marketing plan. It is also free.

So if you take all three of these and you combine them, you're going to see customers coming your way. That sounds pretty good, doesn't it? If so, give it all a try.

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The Challenge for Business Owners

This article focuses on helping you to master the concept of Marketing your business and provide you with marketing ideas and tools.

It is a simple fact that how well you Market your business, determines the level of wealth that you will create through your business. If Marketing is one of the only wealth creating functions in a business, why is it that so few businesses ever really master it, and as a result deny themselves of the profits that are rightfully theirs?

The Challenge for Business Owners

That fact is that whilst having only two jobs as a business owner sounds good in theory, it is not so simple in practice. First of all, as a business owner, you probably have many more than two jobs to start with. In fact, as the Chief, Cook and bottle washer you probably struggle to find time to put your Marketing Manager and Innovation Engineer hats on. Secondly, ‘doing' good marketing is not as easy as it seems. In fact, what in the hell is Marketing anyway? Isn't it just about putting an ad here and whipping up a brochure there? In fact Marketing is really just a fluffy waste of time…. It's sales that bring the dollars in right…..Wrong!

Your Beliefs about Marketing shape your profits

In fact, the biggest thing that may be holding your business back is the false beliefs and confusion about Marketing. The only thing that is stopping you from tripling your profits is the stories that you are telling yourself about why marketing doesn't work.

Demystifying Marketing

There are many definitions of marketing around. Here is my definition.

Marketing is an all encompassing philosophy that places the customer at the centre of business. Marketing is about generating an abundance of profitability by meeting your customers needs and wants innovatively and better than your competitors. Marketing is about having a strategy that takes you from where you are today to where you want to be in the future, by using an integrated and synergistic arsenal of tools such as product, price, promotion, distribution. Marketing is about having a formalised system that is proactive and works on the key areas that lead to geometric business growth.

You can break the first and most fundamental aspects of Marketing down into one simple question.

What business are you in?

The answer to this question ultimately shapes how you market, advertise, and communicate with your customers. It determines the words that you use in a sales letter, the headlines you run in a press ad, how you speak to your clients on the phone, what you put on your website, and all of your stationary. So you can imagine, that if your answer to this question is way off, then so to will be your marketing.

What happens if your Marketing is off you may ask? It simply fails to communicate effectively to the people you want to speak to. What does this mean? Potential customers will pick up the phone and call your opposition instead of you, or not click enquire now on your website, or not purchase from you in a retail front, or not go ahead with your quotation.

The fact is that even if your Marketing is close but not quite right, then you will get close to getting the customer, but you wont get the customer. You see in Marketing you either hit, or you miss. There is no in between. You either get the sale or you don't. So unless you are hitting the mark exactly, then even if you have pretty good marketing your business will fall victim to someone who has outstanding marketing.

So what business are you really in? We now understand that the degree to which you answer this question will ultimately determine your success and profitability as a business.

The founding father of Marketing Theodore Levit once said that “people don't buy ? in drills. They buy ? inch holes”. So rather than thinking in terms of what you are selling, think in terms of what people are buying. How does that make them feel? What are the emotions that your product or service engenders?

So if you were previously in the photography business, perhaps now you are in the business of providing memories. If you were selling suits then perhaps you are now helping business people to succeed through image. This may sound like semantics, but the implications for a small change like this are remarkable.

When you start talking your customers language, coming from their point of view, touching their hot buttons and thinking about what it is that you are really doing for them, then your business changes. With this change you create a whole new future landscape for your profits and you pave the way towards living the lifestyle that you have always wanted. When this occurs you will know that you have succeeded in your vocation.