Where You Can Get Exposure Or Low-Cost And No-Cost: Inexpensive Ways To Build Your Brand

You’re working to ensure it’s your brand that speaks to customers and drives them to purchase:
Attend fairs and trade shows  - find out what’s involved to become a speaker

• Create a website - promote it – then add features and promote it some more
• Got business cards handy? What about facts sheets about your company?
• You’ve heard of the elevator speech – do you have a two-minute speech about your company ready to share with others? Do you actively share it?
• Do you give back to your community? Participating in community service projects builds visibility and strengthens ties to the people who live there
• Join a professional organization in your industry, and network at clubs and associations – get out there and make your business known
• If you can’t write a press release, maybe your writing style lends itself well to writing articles on your area of expertise
• Wear corporate apparel that appropriately reflects your company image – incorporate your company logo
• Befriend journalists in your area, either geographically or based on your subject matter – you’ll be recognized as an expert in your area

How to get free publicity?

• Organize a public event – identify speakers in your area, then arrange for a presentation at a local library or on a local college or university campus
• Become the best in your area of expertise – then, publicize it
• Publish a book on your area of expertise – then participate in a book signing at bookstores in your area
• Is there a non-profit in your area that needs help? Create opportunities for your staff members to volunteer – organize philanthropic activities
• Run for office in the local administration – join committees and volunteer your time
• Innovate - invent, manufacture or offer a new product or service
• Send an editorial about a major news events to your local papers
• Offer apprenticeships and training programs in your business – recruit local college students to work in your offices or from your Alma Mater

The size of the event doesn’t dictate the results you experience: often a small, novel approach to an issue of interest in your community can gain you widespread attention. What’s important is the way the subject is approached and how it’s handled - you can gain closer, direct access to journalists by organizing smaller events.

Reasons To Issue A Press Release

• Announce your move to a new office location, or reaching a major company anniversary, or the opening or expansion and renovation of a new branch or satellite office
• Recognition for the company, product, service or associates by a publication
• Announcing a public appearance on television or other media
• Recognizing an educational achievement, award, or additional certification and participation in industry training by you or members of your staff
• Promoting or hiring new associates, interns, co-op students or managers
• Annual financial reports and quarterly earning projection announcements, or an annual general meeting
• Starting a new business – more unique the business, the better
• Launching a new product/service or Web site
• Acquiring or working with a new client who also happens to be well known to the public, a high-profile personality or celebrity
• Teach at a professional conference or offer a seminar to local business owners on your area of expertise
• Offer franchises or other affiliate programs to expand your business reach
• Reaching a company milestone, in sales volume or profit margin
• Participation in an industry trade show or exposition, sponsoring a workshop or seminar
• A high profile VIP visits the company
• Announcing polling or product survey results
• Structural re-organization or corporate restructuring through an acquisition, a new partnership or merger
• Changing the company name – rebranding product
• Publicizing the changing of the guards in a family-owned business

Long-Term Impact On Readers

You want to write something your target audience will read and then act on, either by getting in touch with you or making a purchase from you: you want to write content that attracts attention.
Building trust is a long-term proposition that builds slowly - a process that over time encourages the public to take what you say as truth. That’s why it’s so critical you are consistent with issuing your press releases.

As people become familiar with you and your product/service, they begin to trust that what you’ve put forth is trustworthy – they start buying your product, and, once they know your products are good, they will start trusting you.

Trust is hard to build and can be quickly and easily destroyed. Years of hard work can be eliminated by a single mistake. 

Although you have established trust, will the public be convinced enough to buy your product/service? When they recognize in plain language the benefits they receive, they will.

 

How To Get Started

The most effective way to get journalists’ attention is to learn their styles and to learn about the kinds of stories local publications like to cover. Follow the newspaper regularly for angles on the kinds of articles that make it into the paper: keep the story ideas listed above in hand and check the list against the articles found in the business section of the newspapers you read.

Within a short period of time, you will begin to recognize the types of stories that appeal to the editors of the newspapers. Within a week, you can get a fair idea about what kind of news items to expect. You might even begin to spot other kinds of stories we haven’t mentioned here – add those to your list.

Now that you’ve got a handle on how other companies make the news, it’s your turn to sit with the list in hand and identify ways your company can make the news. Make notes – use your list to help you plan a series of releases.

The difficult part is not in finding reasons to write press releases about something related to your company - the challenge lies is making it readable by the prospects. Only when they read will they get an idea of what you have to offer - the whole trick is to write a press release that speaks to its intended audience.