Sales and Marketing

How do you get your money�s worth for PR?

SBOCTeam — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:38:00 GMT

by PR_Boston

Business owners large and small are looking for ways to cut expenses. So the question arises: Do I need PR? Here are a few reasons why you should say yes and feel good about the expense.

PR is a cost effective alternative to advertising. Even though web ads can cost 25% of those in old-line media, advertising is expensive. And, there are so many ads you have to wonder which ones really stick. People are exposed to thousands of messages everyday: in the supermarket line, at the gas station, on websites-not to mention the ads on the radio, in the newspaper and on TV. We are faced with ad fatigue.

PR provides third party validation. When someone else-an independent person-- writes about you and places that article in a public place, it has intrinsic value. That's why companies want to be featured in the media whether it's in the town paper or on the Today Show. A good PR plan includes strategies for promoting your story to the right media.

Many people think PR is expensive. It doesn't have to be. If you're a small business consider working with a small PR firm. A small business owner is used to being the point person and could be frustrated dealing with a junior level executive at a large firm. Plus, small firms are cheaper.

In PR, unlike in advertising, spending less doesn't mean you get less. Cutting an ad budget means you lose your reach and frequency and that can undermine a good ad. But, cutting your PR budget and signing on with a smaller, more nimble firm can still result in an effective media placement. Similarly, opting for a black and white ad instead of color means you could fail to attract enough eyeballs to get the ad noticed. But working with a PR firm on a project basis as opposed to a costly monthly retainer can still get you featured on TV. In the end it comes down to how well your PR pro develops your message and leverages it with the media.

In today's economy, ROI is more critical than ever. While PR is never a guarantee, it can be a cost effective way to get you message to the right people, and if you can still throw some money behind advertising-that's even better.

Partner Up

SBOCTeam — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:44:00 GMT

Broadening your network of business contacts and seeking out additional referral partners is an excellent way to let your friends build your business for you. Just make sure you return the favor

By Max Berry

You can never have too many people in your corner. That goes double for a small business owner. Without the resources for a massive advertising campaign, an entrepreneur needs to rely on a little help from his friends to spread the word. Seeking out a fellow entrepreneur-or several-to help spread the word about your product or service can help you get new business the old fashioned way: through word of mouth.

The Power of Diversity
"Diversity is key," says Dr. Ivan Misner, Founder and Chairman of global business networking organization BNI (http://www.bni.com). "I mean diversity in every sense of the word. Most networks are clumpy, they're cluster-like, and they become insular." An entrepreneur may have the tendency to seek referral partnerships with small business owners solely from his or her own field. After all, how much help, for instance, could a Mary Kay consultant be to a film producer? As it turns out, quite a bit.

Misner recounts the story of a Mary Kay consultant visiting a client's home to perform a facial. When the client's husband, a film producer, came home disgruntled about something at work, his wife asked him what was wrong. A graphic designer he'd lined up for an important film project had just backed out and he found himself in the lurch. But the Mary Kay consultant, on hand to perform her own business, happened to be carrying the card of a graphic designer she knew. She gave it to her client's husband, who called the designer and struck up what turned into a long-term, and exceptionally lucrative, working relationship with the designer.

The story illustrates the reasoning behind Misner's belief that an entrepreneur should never rule out a helping-hand partnership with anyone. As he puts it, you never know "whose house someone might be in."

"A powerful network has people who are connectors, those who connect you to people you never would have met otherwise," says Misner. "The more connectors you have, the better off you are."

Help!
When looking to connect with a fellow entrepreneur, there is one key mistake every small business owner should steer clear of. "Too many people are looking to close a deal," says Misner. "It's a huge mistake to build a business that way." People, especially small business owners with their own bottom line to think about, often resent an unsolicited pitch, especially when the pitch is couched in a disingenuous affability.

To build a strong partnership, a small business owner must first build trust. And the only sure way to trust is through sincerity. "You have to find an opportunity to help someone in some simple way," says Misner. "And help doesn't mean ‘sell a product.' Help means ‘help.' When you meet a like-minded small business owner, talk to them. Ask questions. If rapport builds, ask them what the biggest challenges are in their line of work and, if possible, show them a route they may not have been aware of. Refer them to someone in your network who may be able to lend a hand. The broader and more diverse your network of referral partners becomes, the more readily you'll be able to do this-and the more likely your partners will be to refer someone to you if they find themselves in a similar position. As Misner likes to say, "Networking is more about farming than it is about hunting."

Come Prepared
"The problem is we don't teach networking in schools and colleges," says Misner. "[Schools] teach advertising [as if] every college graduate, in their first job, gets to run a multi-million dollar advertising campaign." Of course, few small business owners, let alone recent college graduates, get to do that. Instead, you need to rely on some basic, day-to-day practices to increase your chances of forming a valuable referral partnership.

Always carrying a business card is rule number one, but Misner recommends taking the practice one step further. Not only should you carry your own business cards, but also-remember the Mary Kay consultant-the cards of your referral partners. This is an instant means of spreading the word about the people in your network. Once you do so, they'll be more than happy to return the favor.

There are also established services, like Misner's own BNI, that will provide referrals for you and put you in touch with other entrepreneurs looking for referral partners. The Referral Institute (http://www.referralinstitute.com) is another organization that gets Misner's endorsement.

"You can network any time, anywhere, any place," he says. The key is to keep your eyes open for the right person and be ready to make contact. As Misner puts it, "Networking is a contact sport. You've got to get belly to belly."

Internet Advertising

SBOCTeam — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:21:00 GMT

When does it make sense for small businesses?

By Christopher Freeburn

The Internet has been a great leveling technology, evening the playing field between small and large businesses by giving small companies easy and cheap access to a worldwide marketplace. The Internet has also provided unprecedented advertising opportunities for small business, permitting not only access to a global marketplace, but the ability to target and alert potential customers on a local, regional, national, or global scale for a fraction of what traditional marketing programs would cost.

The Growing Online Ad Market
Internet advertising totaled over $21 billion in 2007, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), putting it far behind television, close to magazines, and ahead of radio as an advertising medium, based on ad revenues. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, more than 32 million Americans have made an online purchase after clicking on an online advertisement. Social networking web sites, which boast more than 86 million users are almost exclusively run on advertising revenue.

In testimony before Congress in June, Randall Rothenberg, president of the IAB, noted that Internet advertising is particularly advantageous for small businesses. "Online advertising has created regional markets out of local markets, and national markets out of regional markets. Items once sold in local garage sales and pawn shops are now available nationally and internationally via advertised interactive auctions, in which some 40 million Americans participate annually," he said. "Importantly, the online networks not only enable small businesses to communicate to niche communities through small sites; they allow large brand marketers to reach narrow communities as well, contributing to an unprecedented democratization of the media landscape."

So, how do you get your company's ads on the web?

Advertising options
Before selecting a particular type of online ad, you must determine what works best for your business and suits your level of online capabilities.

Search Engine Advertisements
These ads are posted on search engines' web sites. Since most people begin their Internet browsing with a visit to a search engine, advertising on these sites is often a logical place for a small business to place its ads. The two largest search engines, Google and Yahoo, have created advertising programs tailored for small businesses that want to advertise on their sites. The ads usually appear as links to your business, highlighted and set apart from the other links generated by the search. The ads appear whenever a user searches for specific keywords or phrases in the search engine. These keywords or phrases will be related to the sort of product or service your business offers. So, for instance, if you run a business providing surfboards, you ads would appear whenever someone searches for information on surfing. Other search engines offer similar programs.

The cost of these advertisements varies and is often dependent on how many people actually click on the ad and visit the advertisers web site. Each time a potential customer clicks with their mouse on the ad and visits the advertiser's web site, the advertiser must pay a "click fee" to the search engine. Such fees are usually pennies per click, depending on the search engine hosting the ads.

Search Engine Optimization
Search engine use is so popular, and the traffic generated by search engines so considerable, that in addition to posting "pay-per-click" ads on search engine web sites, many businesses seek to "optimize" where their web site will appear during a keyword search. Search engines scan millions of web sites every day, tagging them according to key words and phrases that appear on the web site. When a user searches for a word or phrase, the search engine lists web sites whose content has been tagged with that word or phrase.

In order to improve the number of hits your website receives from search engine queries, a number of online media firms will "optimize" your web site's content. These services start by examining the type of customers who comprise the market for your products or services and will adjust your web sites content and language so that the programs that scan and tag web sites will be more likely to list your web site near the top of lists generated for a given keyword or phrase. Fees for this service vary among search engine optimization firms.

Banner Ads
Usually appearing as rectangular patches or horizontal bars containing text, pictures, animation, or company logos at the top or bottom of web sites, banner ads date back almost to the beginning of commercial Internet use. Internet users who are interested by the ad will be directed to your company web site when they click on it. Most banner ads use simple HTML code to convey text or pictures, but more complicated ads can be created using popular multimedia applications like Java and Flash. The latter, while more eye-catching, are considered somewhat risky since many browsers do not come with Java or Flash software built in, and consumers are not likely to wait to download and install such software just to view your ad.

Banner ads are deployed on other web sites either by direct agreement with that web site for a specific consideration (you pay another web site owner to host your advertisement, or agree to host his or her banner ad in exchange), or by paying a banner network company (such as DirectClick or Flycast) that will post your banner ad on a number of web sites for a specific fee.

Pop-Up Ads
A Pop-Up ad is a paid advertisement that automatically causes a user's browser to open a new window when visiting a particular web site. The new window, which is
generally small and opens in front of the page the user intended to open, contains the advertisement. Unfortunately, while eye-catching, numerous surveys of Internet users indicate that most people find them highly irritating, and many browsers now come with features to disable pop-up windows. Thus, pop-ups have declined significantly in popularity and are now considered a poor advertising choice.