What are your ideal clients reading?

Getting press coverage is a tough mountain to climb – which is why many companies invest a substantial chunk of their marketing budget in hiring a PR agency.  These experts will devote their time to finding publications that are willing to publish articles that feature your business or expertise in some way.

If you’re a small business it’s tempting to think that your local weekly or daily newspaper is a good place to start – but it’s probably not the easiest nut to crack.  Every other small business in the area will be hoping that their press release will get published and the editors have seen most of the stories before.

Your best bet is to get into the professional or trade publications that your target audience reads.  Most industries have them – People Management for HR and Training managers, The Caterer for the hospitality business, The Grocer for the retail food industry, Accountancy Age for Accountants ... and so on.

If you’re a plumber you don’t want to appear in the Heating & Plumbing Monthly – as the readership is likely to be other plumbers, but you might want to get featured in The Property Hub as an expert in property refurbs.

I get clients who will argue that a specialist publication has a relatively small distribution – perhaps only a few thousand, while getting into a national or glossy magazine puts them in front of millions.  The problem is that those millions are not all your ideal clients – in fact, very few of them are likely to be – while the right industry journal gives you a captive audience who are predominantly the right readers.

How to get your article published

Firstly, read an issue or two or the publication you’re aiming for – and see what kind of article they feature.  What could you write about that would fit into their publication?

Secondly, forget about press releases – you’ll be coming at this from a different angle.  This isn’t about you promoting your business directly, it’s not a ‘news’ piece.  You should aim to share something of value – a ‘how to ...’ article or ‘the 3 mistakes ... and how to avoid them’ or a ‘what you need to know about ...’ article.

Thirdly, get in touch.  The best way to get published is to talk to the editor and ask some questions.  These are some examples:

Do you accept articles that aren’t commissioned?

Would you be interested in an article on [subject]?

Is there another topic around [your expertise] your readers would be interested in?

How do you prefer articles to be submitted?

What is the deadline for your next issue?

If you can comment on previous issues it will show you’ve bothered to do your research.  If you can explain why you think an article about X would help their readers it also helps to make your case.  Don’t just send an article in on spec.

Many industry journals don’t have a big editorial staff, so good articles are often welcome.

Remember not all publications appear in hard copy, there are many digital publications too.

Do some planning and reading and you’ve a much higher chance of getting in front of people who could be your next clients.

10 Top Marketing Tips

These are the things I find I have to ask my clients the most before we can get their project off the starting blocks!  Knowing the answers will put you several steps ahead of your competition:

ONE – Know who you want to reach

You may think you know who your target audience is – but how detailed is that ideal client profile?  Every marketing message you send out will be ten times better if you are aiming it at a very specific audience.  Take a look at this to get your ideal client profile polished up.

TWO – Be clear about the purpose

If you’re going to invest in a website or a new flyer ‘because everyone else has one’ is not a good enough reason to spend your marketing budget.  What do you want the outcome to be from your investment?  Be specific – so, for your website, not ‘lots of sales enquiries’, but ‘three genuine sales enquiries per week that convert to business’, not ‘bums on seats’ for a course or presentation you’re doing, but ’25 people who will really benefit from the event’.  When it comes to distributing flyers this will help to ensure you place them in the right hands too.

THREE – Be seen as an expert

Create content that demonstrates your knowledge and expertise.  Post it where people will see it – LinkedIn as an article, your blog, link to it on social media, get it into your ideal clients professional journals, use it to populate email campaigns that deliver value, lead your newsletter with it.  You need to do this regularly and sustainably.

FOUR – Stay on message

When you’re been on the planet a good few years you’ve almost certainly developed a wide range of knowledge and it’s easy to want to use it to help people.  However, it’s important that you are seen as the ‘go-to’ person for a particular skill or product type – not a jack-of-all-trades.

Of course, there are people who have a portfolio of skills – many people present themselves as a speaker, trainer, author, coach – but around a specialist area.  If you’re offering business development services and aromatherapy you’ll end up with a big sign over your head that says ‘dabbler’ – unless you can find a way to integrate these two into a logical package.

FIVE – Be visible

I learned this lesson the hard way some years back – I stopped attending networking groups and, after about three months, there was a noticeable drop off in business.  I network locally and nationally offline and locally, nationally and internationally online.  That means I turn up for regular networking meetings and events and I also dedicate some time each week to posting material on the platforms that suit my market best.

As ALL my business comes from networking and referrals – I rest my case!

SIX – Package your offer for your ideal client

What you want to say and what your potential client wants to know are not usually the same things.  Go and look at things through the eyes of your ideal client and present what they want.  If you’re not sure, ask a client (or former client) who fits your perfect client profile what they would want to know, read about, be offered.

SEVEN – Build your list

Permission based marketing is very powerful – and it works for every industry and business type – not just high profile online marketers.  With both national and international data protection it’s important that you do have permission to send emails to people – so ensure you set up a system that gathers people’s contact information, with permission.

This will also help you to identify those who are really interested in what you have to offer.  They may not buy the first time of asking – and not all of them will become customers, but once they’re on your list you can keep them in the loop about what the latest offers and developments are.

EIGHT – Deliver value

If the only communication you get from a company is ‘sell, sell, sell’ you’re likely to start deleting their emails, unread and unsubscribing from their list.  The same applies when you’re sending information out.  What can you send that will be of real help to your database?  The better you’ve done item ONE, the easier it will be to pin this down!

If you keep sending out information of value you’re building something called ‘reciprocity’ – and that means people will have a good feeling about you and your business and feel more inclined to choose you when they’re ready to buy.

NINE – Build relationships 

People buy people, not organisations (unless they’re household names).  Getting to know people whether it’s online via social networking, offline through local networking groups or professional bodies – it’s important to start from a position of wanting to help.  You’re building your reputation and being known as a helpful expert is a good position to be in.  Remember people are interested in people who are interested in THEM!

TEN – Plan!

When you have a plan for your marketing you’ll find it’s all much easier.  You’ll be able to put time and budget aside for key elements and knowing what needs to be done ahead of time allows you to schedule things.

Planning ahead will save you wasted time and money.  If you rush into things you don’t always make the best decisions and can spend more money that you need to on last minute things – like printing.  Having your Christmas cards designed and printed in August will usually cost you much less than waiting until December!

*****

Good luck with putting these top tips into action!

What do you use LinkedIn for?

It’s a powerful platform and successful – or it wouldn’t have so many users (467 million from the last stats).  Microsoft wouldn’t have bought it if it didn’t have a future and that means that millions of people use it – but what for?

Job hunting

When it first kicked off in 2003 LinkedIn was very much aimed at the recruitment market.  There were no groups, no company pages, just a personal profile – and even that was limited to a CV style arrangement.

Profile owners were encouraged to post their company’s vacancies and job hunters were able to ask people in their network who were connected to someone in that company to introduce them.  Employers liked having a third-party validation before getting to the point of interview.

It’s still a very effective platform for both employers looking for staff and people looking for the right role to develop their career.

Communities

Somewhere around 2005-6 LinkedIn introduced groups.  As this was around the time Facebook started up and included groups on their site, I suspect this might have been an influencing factor.

Typically LinkedIn was set up to encourage account holders to join their peer groups – so as a writer I was pointed at writers and publishers, authors, etc.  This is an excellent way to be part of a collaborative community.  However, if you’re trying to build relationships with potential employers – or customers – it’s better to join the groups where they hang out!

Visibility

LinkedIn’s updates are a good way to improve visibility.  They’ve developed from just comments to being a multi-media experience!

Posting the right kind of post can engage many of the other LinkedIn members who comment or like your post.

Articles have added another dimension to this and allow account holders to share their expertise, knowledge and opinions.  This can be a bonus whether you’re an employee, looking for a new job or running a business.

• An employee who demonstrates their value will gain extra brownie points.
• A potential candidate who has a wealth of published material online gives employers more to get their teeth into and can be the deciding factor between two similarly qualified candidates.
• Sharing your expertise as a business owner lets potential clients know the breadth of your knowledge and know-how, making it more likely that they’ll choose your company as their supplier.

Business development

LinkedIn has a number of tools – and also the option to upgrade to a paid account that offers useful services to help you to find people in your market and build relationships with them.

If you know how LinkedIn can be a serious revenue generator.  It’s not a quick fix – but pays off if you use it effectively and consistently.

Do you need a paid account?

My advice: first get to grips with all the tools available on the free account – and only if they’re not getting the results you want, take a look at the various levels of paid accounts.

How much copy does your website need?

I’ve been writing web copy for well over a decade and clients still ask ‘how much content to I need?’  The glib answer is ‘as much as is needed to get your message across’, but it’s never as simple as that.

In the ‘good old days’ web pages would often have as much as 600 words (that’s a couple of A4 pages of text)  because the SEO people had said that was what the search engines gave you ranking points for.

Even in those days nobody read that much content on a page, so if your call to action was at the end of the content, very few people would ever get to it.

Worse still there was the issue of key words and key word density.  That was the percentage of relevant key words or phrases in the content.  Most sensible SEO people used to aim for around 2%, but I was once asked to write copy with the key word density for a single word at 8%!  That meant that the word appeared on virtually every line.  You can imagine that the reader found this kind of copy hard going, so from a retention point of view it wasn’t good.

Then search engines got smarter and SEO people reduced demands to 250-300 words with at least one or two mention of your key words.  But that was when there was only one piece of content on each page – including the home page.  Today home pages are more like a magazine contents page with bits of information for everything the site offers.

Also the human interaction with the screen has changed.  Our attention span has diminished – possibly because we’re faced with so much information that we’ve had to develop our scanning skills and now read very little in depth.  More people are accessing the web via their mobile devices and flicking up and down websites at a rapid rate.

This means that every word on the page has to earn its place.  Mark Twain is credited with this P.S. on a letter he sent to a friend:

“Sorry for the long letter, I didn’t have time to write a short one.”

Some people think this doesn’t make sense – until they try to get a complex concept across and are limited to just a few words.  Anyone can ramble, very few can deliver clarity in just a few words.

So what are the essentials for getting your message across:

• A strong attention-grabbing headline – focused on the reader.
• A short introduction (two short paragraphs) that entices the reader to explore further.
• A call to action telling the visitor what to do next.
• Something that makes taking action no effort – so if you want them to phone, put the phone number; if you want them to move to another page, put a link or, better still for mobile devices, a button.

Every page needs these elements, although some pages will need a little more information and, perhaps, some benefits.

Invest time (or engage an expert) in these elements and your website will work well for you.

How to create a newsletter with the minimum of effort

What’s the point of a newsletter?

There should be one – and the best answer to the question is that it’s a great way to build relationships, but only if the content is what your list wants to read.

Let’s be honest, none of us want any more ‘stuff’ in our inboxes that’s not useful so your newsletter needs to deliver value first and foremost. This means that you can forget about telling people about:

• Your successful achievement of sales targets (they don’t care)
• New recruits (they’ll only be interested when it affects the service they get – positively)
• Expansion of your business (as long as they’re getting a good service – or can see they will do so if they’re not already clients, they aren’t interested in how big or small your organisation is)
• Moving to a new office (if they have to visit you they will need the address, but otherwise it’s irrelevant – no matter how excited you are about it!) 

Yes, there are justifications for all of these pieces of information – but, first and foremost, people want something that gives THEM value, everything else is ‘fluff’.

So how do you deliver that value without slaving over a hot Word document for hours?

Don’t reinvent the wheel!

Every business has information that is of value – so leverage yours.

Do you have:

• A blog that has good articles in it?
• Case studies that show how people benefit from specific services?
• Questions – with your expert answers – that customers often ask?
• Strong views on an industry topic (your customers’ industry, not yours)?
• Articles you’ve read that you think your list of readers will find useful?

These are all potential material for your newsletter, whether it’s as a lead item or a supplementary item.

My advice is that your newsletter should have anything from one to three pieces of information.

You don’t have to write information that will only be used once in your newsletter – ideally you can use information that has already been created and simply collate it.

If you’re smart, putting a newsletter together each month won’t take you long – and your readers will look forward to something interesting popping up in their inboxes each month.