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Guest ColumnPressed for Advertising Cash?
by Bryan Eisenberg, Future Now Inc.
When my brother and I started Future Now, we had an unbelievable advertising budget. Want to know what it was? Close your eyes. Do you see nothing? Exactly, and that was our entire ad budget; simply unbelievable. This was in the heat of the dot-com boom, back in 1998 when eyeballs mattered, and consultancies were raising gazillions of dollars. Jeff and I had to figure out how a self-funded startup in Brooklyn, NY would compete for share of mind. Clearly, we were different, with our focus on conversion rates. Yet no matter how different we were, it was challenging to market into all that noise. Our non-existent advertising budget had no room for reaching anybody much less
reaching them with any frequency, that left our entire strategy dependent on communications with a high impact quotient. What to do? Question: If you donât have the advertising budget to compete with the big boys how can you equalize the playing field? Answer: Cultivate an effective Public Relations strategy. Every business with $250 million or less of annual sales needs a public relations strategy but few have one. Our expert advisor is Dean Rotbart. Dean is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated former Wall Street Journal columnist and founder of the TJFR Group. Every business must have competent advisors; an accountant, attorney, banker, and a PR expert. Public Relations is one of the most leveragable marketing tools that a company can have. Done well, it can do better than any paid marketing or advertising. Unfortunately, it is often not done well. Companies hire him to get results with the journalists. Dean is not a big fan of canned press releases; leave those for when you have to issue earning reports or otherwise dry content. Deanâs secret to success is to develop relationships with those journalists that have influence in your industry. Hereâs a tip, develop an internal ăReporter of the Monthä club where all you do all month is study that one journalist at a time. Learn what he or she cares about, whom and how they quote people, and get to know what makes them tick. Youâll want to talk to them about whatâs relevant
to them. Dean explains, ăPrint out and read every story they wrote in the last year. ă Journalists are creatures of habit; ask yourself have they written about something similar to what you have in mind. Highlight every person they quoted and what kind of person they are. If they quote one person often contact that person and find out how they got to know them. Dean elaborates äOnce you get to know them send them a note commenting specifically on one of their stories.ä This is NOT an opportunity to be self-promotional. ăWrite it as an intelligent and cogent reader. Explain why the article was helpful, you can subtly add a note about you and you expertise, the key is being subtle. Maybe after a couple of these intelligent notes you can call. Journalists are flattered by someone who knows their work and chose them above all others.ä Dean likes to remind people Journalists are people too. Deanâs advice works. We watched many Internet consulting companies fail since we started. In the meantime we learned to build our business by getting free (hence very high ROI) exposure from the ăPressä and by publishing. With the valuable perspective of hindsight it was the perfect strategy for the long term. If your focus isnât long term itâs probably not for you since it doesnât have the immediate impact of advertising, PR takes patience and hard work before it yields results but the results are worthwhile.
----- 2401 East 23rd Street ~ Brooklyn, NY 11235 Phone: 877.643.7244 or 718.332.1205 The Conversion Rate Specialists: Persuading your prospects to take ACTION. Submit your "Guest Column" today directly to our staff at Tjfr@NewsBios.com. July 31, 2002 |
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Has your marketing budget been trimmed? Are you still expected to keep the top line growing? Are there unreasonable expectations of what results you should be achieving? Welcome to the new ănew economyä! Donât despair, as long as your focus is long-term Iâm offering another marketing tool you can put in your quiver to help 
