More Holiday PR Pitch Tips

November 3, 2011 Leave a comment

For the past few blogs, I’ve been reviewing why and how to launch a PR campaign for the holiday season.  To quickly recap, the three primary reasons are:

1)      People are prepared to spend more money during this time of year.

2)      The media is more open to stories and pitches during the holiday season.

3)      You can more firmly establish your brand in the fourth quarter and carry that on into the New Year.

As I discussed earlier, whether you should launch a marketing and public relations campaign during the holiday season is not the question; the real questions are when will you launch and what will your primary focus be.  Remember your job when pitching stories to the media is to make the media’s job easier.  You want to give them stories that are interesting, entertaining, educational, intriguing and, during this time frame, pitches that tie into the spirit of the season.

That doesn’t mean all of our pitches have to be up, cheery and ho ho ho.  The holidays have different sides, if you can address helping runaways during the holidays, or holiday food drives for those who need a hand during the season, or dealing with holiday depression, those are not only important stories, but they make for compelling features for print and TV.  Regardless what your business or profession is, you can develop a holiday story idea to pitch.  Although I covered a few PR pitch ideas in my previous article, below are a few more to review.

Musician – Put on a free holiday concert that benefits a charity for the holidays.  Or let the media know that you can discuss which holiday songs are the most important.  Come up with a list of the most important holiday songs.  Make it controversial and fun.

Spa – Create unique holiday packages.  Come up with special holiday treatments to help reduce stress, or create holiday gift packages that are unique and original.

Jeweler – Create that perfect holiday gift.  Even if the design is overly expensive or just works for the holidays, come up with something different that makes for a good story.  The perfect luxurious holiday gift.

Attorney – Put together consultation packages that you can offer, or can be given as gifts for the New Year.  Then come up with the 7 most important year end tips everyone should know.

Nutritionist – Develop a list of perfect holiday recipes.  Make a list of holiday eating myths that you can debunk.  Develop a roadmap for how to eat right and have fun during the holidays.

Assisted Living or Long Term Health Care Center – Let the media come in and experience a holiday meal or sing along with the residents.  Invite a local grammar or mid school to have a group of kids come and sing holiday songs for the seniors.  Put on a seniors Winter Olympics.

Acupuncturist – Create packages and treatments for keeping healthy during the holidays.  Or develop an acupuncture facelift procedure.  Give the gift of youth for the holidays.

Although these ideas might not cover your business or profession, you get the point.  See how you can tie in what you do with the season and start developing pitches.  Get creative.  Have fun with it.  This is a time when purse strings are loosened and the media looks for stories, use both of those facts to your advantage.

Copyright © Anthony Mora 2011

Filed under Beauty Industry PR, Entrepreneur PR, Marketing, Medical PR Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How To Create A Niche Market For Your Business

September 8, 2010 1 Comment

It’s tempting to think that your product is perfect for… everyone.  Now, there is a broad market sector.  Generally when a company markets to everyone it’s listened to by no one.

Not only that, if you want to market to everyone, that means your marketing has to be everywhere, which generally means you need to invest millions in your campaign.

There are times where your product or service will define your market for you.  For example, if you produce golf clubs you have a pretty good idea of who to market to, although even within such a defined market you can generally drill down quite a bit and define a variety of different markets within the overall target audience.  Let’s get a little more general, let’s say you develop a line of lipstick.  You’re primary market is female, that is somewhat safe to say, but that still leaves you a rather large terrain.  Is your primary market teenage girls, women in their 20s to early 30s, women over 40?  Are you focusing on women who shop at Wal-Mart, Nordstrom’s, or trendy boutiques? These are just a few of the questions that you’d need to answer before you launched your line of lipstick.

Let’s broaden the scope even more.  Let’s say you’re selling a new brand of bottled water. Everyone drinks water.  Your market is infinite, right?  Wrong.  What you need to discover is who drinks your brand of bottled water.  Are you targeting men, women, teens, seniors, athletes, moms, who are your customers?

Finding a niche market does not mean that you will only focus in that arena, it means you will create a following a loyal group of buyers who know and trust your product or service.  Once you establish yourself in a niche market, you can then branch out and develop customers in other arenas.  By targeting your approach, your odds of success are also much greater and your risks are reduced.

But how do you know what your market is?  First and foremost know your product or service.  What does it offer? What problems does it solve? Whose life does it make easier?  If you truly know and understand your business it will lead you to your customers.  Be honest with yourself. Don’t develop a product that is perfect for college students that are on a budget and then market it to private jet owners.  That is an exaggeration, but I’ve seen companies who refuse to see their true customer base because they had a preconceived idea of the market they wanted to capture.

To start, you need to be sold on and passionate about your product or service.  If you don’t believe in it, don’t expect anyone else to.  Know your business.  As I mentioned, if you truly know your product or service it will help define your market for you.  Take some time to research that there is a need for your product.  Don’t create a business solely because it interests you.  A hobby is not always a business.  In some cases it can be, but make sure you have researched the need and demand for your business.

Now if the demand is there, you’re onto something.  Create the best product or service that you can and go forward.  Figure out exactly who your potential customers are.  Where do they buy?  What magazines or newspapers do they read?  What TV shows do they watch? What sites would they visit on the internet? Once you have that information, you have your direction.

If you’re working on a limited budget start with a targeted PR campaign combined with a social media/blogging campaign.  If you have the funds hire a public relations firm, otherwise, do some homework, learn the basics and start by launching your own targeted niche marketing campaign.  You can broaden your scope and target other markets as you grow, but to start, find a niche, develop your marketing and media relations campaign and grow your business.

Copyright © Anthony Mora 2010

Filed under business, internet marketing, Marketing, Media, PR, PR Campaign Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How to Find Your Customer base & Successfully Market to Them

May 10, 2010 Leave a comment

One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a business owner is to not clearly define your target market.  Before you start promoting, before you launch a public relations campaign, or start to Tweet, or blog or launch an Ad Words campaign, know who it is you’re targeting.  Who is your audience?  Who precisely is your target market?

If you’ve developed a new anti-aging skin cream and are marketing it to teenage boys, you’d better take another look at your strategy. I know that example is a bit extreme, but in more subtle ways, business owners make that type of mistake on a regular basis.  You need to initially know who your market is, you then need to know how to contact them.  You may indeed have the best product or service out there, but if you’re pitching the wrong target audience, it’s not going to work.

Believe me, this isn’t an uncommon mistake; more businesses than you think have done everything right and gone belly up because their targeting was off. This is one of the basic aspects of launching a successful business.  Know who your prospects are.  Know your clientele. That’s not always as easy as it sounds.  Often the idea of a particular market clouds business reality.  For example, if you have developed a jewelry line that you’d like to see carried by Tiffany’s, but your true target market is Walmart, you have a problem.  Best you learn that now and learn it quickly.

The following are some tips on how to study your competition to help define your particular market:

  1. Utilize the internet; it can be a goldmine of information.  Google your competition as well as any keywords related to your business.  You’ll be amazed at what you can learn w. (which brings up another topic of knowing your keywords- check out next week’s post on Knowing Your Keywords).
  2. Study your trade publications.  Most fields have publications, newsletters or websites dedicated specifically to that particular business sector. Study them.  See who else is out there working in your field and study how they are positioning themselves.
  3. Study ads and articles in mainstream media.  Whether it’s a local newspaper or a national magazine, see how others in your field are positioning themselves and learn from what you read.
  4. If applicable, actually visit your competitions’ places of business and study how they deal with clients, how they market in-house and how they present their business.

Once you’ve defined your market, you can focus on defining your PR and media relations target market, which is a very different process.  Here you’re looking for the magazines, newspapers, TV programs, blogs, social media sites and other communication and information outlets that speak directly to your prospective clients.  This is a different process, but equally important.  If you define your customer base correctly, but miss the mark when it comes to your PR and marketing campaign, you’re not going to be reaching your clients.  It’s like drilling for oil with the right equipment, but drilling in the wrong place.

Defining your market doesn’t need to be that hard a process.  Be realistic about your business. Not every product or service has a huge market, but you don’t need huge, you need one that’s realistic and well-defined.  Describe your perfect customer and client base.  Look at your competition; study who they target.   Now develop a marketing plan to effectively reach your customers or prospects.  Once you’ve successfully defined your customer base and designed a targeted media campaign, you’re in the business of growing your business.

Copyright © Anthony Mora 2010

Filed under Marketing, Media, Public Relations, small business, small business Public Relations, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

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