Small Business, BIG Marketing™

by Will Dylan ©2004

CHAPTER 2 - START MAKING HEADLINES

Most small businesses focus all of their marketing efforts on paid advertising or sales activities. We’ll talk about those topics a little later. First, let’s cover the most overlooked weapon in the small business marketing arsenal : free publicity. 

Be The Local “Expert”

If you could afford it, you would buy TV commercials wouldn’t you? And if you currently run TV commercials, you’d like to run more, right?

The problem is that it gets expensive in a hurry. Each 30 second spot on local TV is costing you hundreds of dollars (at least). So how do you get more TV time or newspaper space at a lower cost? It’s easier than you think. Start making headlines!

Think about the last time you watched the 6 o' clock news. There was the usual variety of depressing stories about car accidents and house fires. But there were also stories about local issues, and usually in those stories people appeared on camera from the local area to offer a comment. For example, when summer barbecue season rolls around, a local reporter will often visit a local retailer who sells barbecues to ask about what’s new this year for backyard barbecue enthusiasts. They might also consult a local food expert to talk about great BBQ recipes for the summer. They may also have the local fire chief on to cover off some safety tips for using BBQ’s. Three local residents or small business owners all received free exposure on a well watched local newscast, and all they had to do was talk about what they do everyday.

It’s called publicity, and it’s probably the best marketing weapon a local businessperson has to get added exposure for their company at no cost. But how do these people get on air or in print? They must know somebody, right? Actually no. In fact, when you’re watching a news related show and they consult an “expert”, chances are that person is no more an expert in their field than you are in yours. And they got on air by pitching the story idea to the station. Of all of the times I have appeared on TV, I was the one who initiated the story idea at least 80% of the time. And the story was always about the business that our company was in.

The local newscast is one hour every night. It doesn’t matter whether or not there was one hour’s worth of news during the day, they still have to fill the airtime. On slow news days, newspeople are looking for local stories just like the one I mentioned above that will appeal to a wide audience (who doesn’t like a BBQ in the summer time?!) and that they can put together without a lot of research or effort.

The same is true of newspapers. Reporters often need to generate a story idea for tomorrow’s paper, and they would jump all over a good local story that is of interest to a wide audience.

Continue Chapter 2 >>

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