ACPR Blog

Check in every week with ACPR to get new ideas to help you market your business.

This week we’re looking at your marketing your business through networking.

Word of mouth is one of the best ways to get new business: people take personal recommendations seriously. You need to be businesslike about generating recommendations, through, and networking is a good place to start growing the number of people who understand what’s great about your business and will tell friends and colleagues.

An endorsement or coverage in the media can be stronger than any advert as readers and viewers see it as an independent rating of your business. Using the media can be a low cost way to raise your business profile and attract new followers.

The key to effective networking is finding the right places to network, both online and face to face. Try a number of networking groups or websites. You will soon work out which ones show dividends for your business. Make regular networking online part of your daily activities, and build in face to face networking events as often as fits with your business.

Here are some networking activities to build into your marketing plan on a regular basis:

1. Develop great business cards with a call to action to pass on
2. Find online networking sites that suit you
3. Try a few face to face networking meetings to find one that works well for you
4. Practice your elevator pitch so you can sell what’s great about your business in less than a minute
5. Look into affiliate networking systems

We’ll look at your promotional materials for marketing next in this series. For more ideas to help your business grow, buy A Guide to Promoting Your Business: The Ultimate Workbook for Business Owners by Antonia Chitty.

Check in every week with ACPR to get new ideas to help you market your business.

This week we’re looking at your marketing your business through the media. An endorsement or coverage in themedia can be stronger than any advert as readers and viewers see it as an independent rating of your business. Using the media can be a low cost way to raise your business profile and attract new followers.  

Think about the activities in the following list and consider which ones could work for your business. The key to getting good media coverage is to send out regular news. Work on your media relations little and often by building your chosen activities into your marketing plan on a regular basis:

1. Pitching and writing articles
2. Writing and sending news releases
3. Writing and sending letters to print media
4. Offering expert comments
5. Seeking out and putting forward case Studies
6. Holding media briefings
7. Supplying photographs and product images
8. Creating and sending media packs
9. Providing spokespeople
10. Running surveys and polls
11. Writing and promoting white papers
12. Product launches
13. Offering competitions

We’ll look at social networking for marketing later in this series. For more ideas to help your business grow, buy A Guide to Promoting Your Business: The Ultimate Workbook for Business Owners by Antonia Chitty.

I suggested in my last post that you choose a different promotional activity to work on for one week each month. First, let’s think about your PR week. I’d suggest that you spend the first week coming up with 6-12 ideas for press releases, so you know whether you will be sending a press release every month or bimonthly. Slot the ideas in your diary so that you know which ideas you will work on each month.

Then work out a routine for what you need to do during your PR week. Initially you will spend more time finding contacts. You’ll need to write the press release, send it out and then follow up. This may take more time the first time you do it, but you will speed up with practice.

Promoting your business is easy if you break it down into small steps and do a little each week. Make some time to work out what you will do to promote your business this year. A simple way to do it is to work on a different activity each week, every month. You could do something like this:

• Week 1 PR
• Week 2 Advertising
• Week 3 Online marketing
• Week 4 Offline marketing

Write this into your diary or set a reminder on your computer each week to remind you what you should be working on. Over the next few dys we’ll look at different ideas for each week.

The key to making the best use of your resources for promoting your business is to understand what gets results. and the only way to know what works is if you ask your customers one simple question. Build ‘where did you hear of us’ into your order form and sign up forms and you will know where to invest your time and resources for maximum results.

Making sure that your press release contains real news is so important, and can be hard if you are doing your own PR. I’ve written some tips on newsworthy press releases for a new site, Top 10 Tips. Read my top 10 tips for newsworthy PR and see if they help you write your own press release.

I talk alot about planning your PR, but it is also important to work out how you will put your plans into action. Ask yourself:

• How much time can I spend on promoting my business and on how many days each week?
• What jobs should I do myself and which ones should I find other people to help out with?

I’ll be talking about this, and more, at the Everywoman conference next week. You can also find out more about planning your PR in A guide to promoting Your Business.

Are you really clear about why your customers should be buying your products or services? What makes your business usnique, special and different to your competitors. Spend some time thinking about this over the week. I’ll be talking about this, and more, at the Everywoman conference next week. You can also find out more about being clear about what makes your business different in A guide to promoting Your Business.

Promoting your business is something that can’t be done in one big burst. Spend a few hours planning your promotion and then break your plans down intop small manageable chunks. Spend 15 minutes each day on promotion. I’ll be talking about this, and more, at the Everywoman conference next week. You can also find out more about planning your PR in A guide to promoting Your Business.

If sending a press release the traditional way, sort out how it looks. Number the pafes, staple them together and insert ‘more/over’ at the bottom of the first page. This tells the journalist if the second page has gone astray. Label samples and images with your company name and contact details in case they get separated from the release.

For more tips like this, buy A Guide to Promoting Your Business.