BizConnectionsNow.com - The Community for Entrepreneurs & Investors

It disturbs me on a fundamental level that the concept of the press release has really died. There used to be a time that a well written PR could make it in papers around the country, informing the public about your product or service, letting them know the salient points, invigorating interest, and generally announcing to the world that something new has arrived.  This was a good system, and it had a simple purity to it that I frankly miss today.

The fact of the matter is that press releases, like so much else, have become a question of knowing the right people and not promoting a quality product. A purchase from sites like PRWeb is pretty much a waste of money if you’re hoping to see your press release actually make any sort of print. It’s a fundamental problem with a system that used to work, but simply can’t keep up with the sheer bulk of information that is available on a daily basis. Especially with print media slowly bleeding out all over the world wide web, editors have to play an educated guessing game with every piece they publish, asking whether this one will somehow draw people’s attention in ways that another piece might not. It’s no different than trying to predict fashion trends, only the odds are that their efforts will prove ultimately futile in the end and the print media empires will have to change drastically or go the way of ancient Babylon. At that point, why not simply cultivate friendships, especially if you might need a job? See my post on business models for more of my feelings on that topic.

In today’s business world, press releases are valuable not because they actually make it into the press. They’re valuable for their digital content. Blast emails to websites that may reprint your PR have a potential to increase your internet traffic. It’s a fair to decent way to promote your website and get the search engine spiders to believe that you are being linked by third parties. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work well or for long, and often you’ll find that you’re spending a lot of money on press releases (remember when you sent them to the papers for free?) that doesn’t translate into profits since there’s really no way of controlling your target audience with the kind of coverage you need in order to manufacture search engine relevancy.

It’s unfortunately, but soon we’ll have seen the end of the press release. A part of my past will be gone along with what used to be an important step in any product rollout. The world is changing, and we have to keep up, but the basic disconnect between company and customer that this represents, that businesses have lost one tool to communicate directly with people, makes me a little sad.

In what seems to be a continuing series on how to innovate from within your company, I’d like to talk a little bit about what you can do with the things you’ve found. Sure, that unmarketable gizmo looks a little different now than it did when you originally put it on a shelf, but you still don’t know what to do with it. Maybe, instead of looking outward, look to your left and your right. It’s not only the mass of consumers that can benefit from your work. Other companies can make customers just as easily as any singular person.

Now that you’ve found something to work with, ask yourself, “Is there anybody with a problem that this can solve?” This is not an easy question to ask: by definition it’s not always easy to know what another company’s problems are. However, like with any other product, finding the niche for it to fit into will make it potentially valuable. Marketing your failed product or service around with a smart sales force actually might reveal where those problems are and put you in a position to take advantage of being the first to offer a solution.

Take some time to also consider what five other companies might want your product, either to use or to sell. Do some roleplaying and put yourself in the shoes of people like you, both competitors and non-competitors alike. How might a competitor approach the product differently? How do they generally approach things differently from you? What might somebody in another industry do with this type of service?

By thinking outside of your own company, you’ll find new markets to tap. Commerce doesn’t flow in a straight line from you to the customer. It branches along many roads of which you are a single hub. Consider your connections to the rest of the people in the corporate world and how what doesn’t work for you might be something they want or need.

Affiliate programs are not a new idea. They’ve gained a form of rebirth lately due to the ease with which the internet lends itself to their use, but in the end the idea of rewarding somebody for bringing business to you is as old as business itself. I can easily imagine merchants in ancient Egypt or Greece paying others to support their businesses. It’s neither revolutionary nor particularly risky in most cases as all you have to do is run your business and hope people follow it to your Seller.

While there is money to be made in affiliate marketing, keep in mind that there are pitfalls that you have to watch out for as well. It’s easy to get involved in the excitement of a new business, invest yourself and your time into it, and see small or no returns on your efforts, so pay careful attention to what you’re looking at and how you approach it.

First of all, any article, blog entry, or casual mention of “affiliate marketing” will probably get several comments inviting the author to join their program, that many of them are scams or sound too good to be true, but this one is different and worth trying for a small investment. Let me say now, I’m not interested in joining your affiliate, so please keep any comments to a discussion of the article.

That being said, they are right that a lot of affiliate programs sound too good to be true. They promise quick returns for minimal effort, simply putting a banner ad on your website or posting it on a social networking place. These will often be accompanied by testimonials that prove that with hardly any work you can make remarkable amounts of money. Even if this is true of some people, the odds are heavily against you, and the more a company tries to assure you of the safety of their investment, the less trustworthy they likely are.

It’s also worth noting that affiliate programs are a form of work. You are working for another company to advertise their product, service, website, etc. If you get a job in an office, do you pay your employer for the privilege of working there? Then why should you pay for the honor of being an affiliate to another company? If they’re asking you for an investment of your capital in order to work for them, consider that perhaps they’re not making enough on the click-throughs to otherwise make a profit, so why would you?

The truth is no matter what you become an affiliate for, it’s going to involve hard work like any business. It’s a marketing technique like any other, and the company you’re working for will expect you to spread the word about their company by any effective means. It may be traditional methods like email marketing, SEO, or even display marketing. It might be in the form of reviews or clever blog entries. But the point is that there is no easy money to be had, and it will require effort on your part.

I’ve often heard small business owners wonder how to cut their capital output. All businesses have a finite amount of money to work with, so smart practices that help them spend less of it are always in demand. That’s why programs like service exchanges are such a good idea.

For those who haven’t heard of it before, a service exchange is where two businesses, rather than charge one another directly for complimentary services, perform the functions of their business for one another instead.  For example, a cleaning company might do monthly carpet treatments for a consulting firm that pays them in discounted or free service.

Now, the big problem with this is that there is a certain outset of money involved in service exchange. Our example cleaning company still needs to pay its cleaners, buy solutions, move their supplies, etc. The consulting firm has to spend time and resources developing strategies. However, the time and supplies are still a small fraction of what full charge would otherwise be for what they are receiving, especially new businesses that may not have a lot of business yet to keep them busy.

More important than the monetary incentive is the social one. No business can thrive on its own. It requires the good service of other companies, people who it depends on for resources. I wouldn’t suggest that any company wouldn’t do its job when being paid for the service, however too much distance between a company and a supplier means they have no personal incentive to go above and beyond for you. Service exchanges cut down on monetary gain, but they create a close relationship with a supplier who may be able to help you with referrals or at the very least will work harder to recognize the “favor” you’re doing them.

It may mean working for less or even for free, but a service exchange encourages communication between businesses and gives you an opportunity to do what you do best in exchange for what somebody else does. Moreover, the savings in capital outlay will add up very quickly.

Many factors go into properly targeting your advertisement to potential customers. The problem is that people often cast so wide a net that they waste time, energy, and, most importantly, money on too diffuse an effort. Rather than trying very hard to reach as many people as you can, focus instead on pinpointing the people you’re looking to target and keeping an eye on the scope of your efforts. Too much is just as bad as too little, and can actually be worse as it will tend to be more costly.

The first thing you want to look at is who you are looking for in terms of customers and clients. Not every business is geared to every person. A store that sells high end men’s clothing is wasting their time advertising in women’s magazines or discount websites. Buying radio space to promote your rock band’s new album on an R&B station probably won’t help you. There are outlayers in all cases (a woman might buy a gift for a man in her life, somebody may like a wide variety of musical genres, etc.), but for the most part it’s a poor approach to seeking out customers. We would all like those outlayers, the exceptions to the rules, to become loyal and repeat customers, but that should serve as a bonus to building a successful business supported by the kind of people that are most interested in what you have to offer. It’s always nice to see the middle-aged woman in your laser tag arena, but she won’t make up for the loss of the dozens of 8-12 year old boys that you normally would find in there.

Next, examine how you’re approaching your customer base geographically. If you have a storefront, are you spending your time advertising two or three towns away? Are they close enough that what you have to offer is worth bypassing nearer competitors? How far are you from your nearest competitor? You should be able to examine your business and determine things such as whether the bulk of your customers will come from the immediate area or have to travel a little to get to you. This will depend, for example, on where you are located (nearer to residential areas means more walk-ins) and what you do (businesses that target children will have more success in a smaller area as children walk or ride bikes/scooters/etc. to get there). Make sure that if you’re looking to draw in business to your location that you consider working outward in your advertising and taking advantage of convenience before you start trying to compete with older businesses on terms like price or customer confidence.

If you run an internet-based business, geographical targeting can still be important. Anything involving shipping means that a larger bulk of orders from nearby can save you money. Culture can play a role in advertising and how you present yourself may have more of an effect in one geographical neighborhood over another, meaning that you need to be aware of how to get and keep the attention of the people you want to spend their money on your product or service.

Being aware of how you target customers and why you choose those specific ones can save you time and effort over a long period. The trick is to keep a close eye on who is most interested in what you have to offer and make sure that you change your strategies when that factor changes.

There are many people out there who seem to think that advertising online is somehow different to advertising in what they would call the ‘real’ world. However, the longer I spend in the world of online marketing the more I see a host of similarities with marketing in the real world.

Of course, there are differences but many of the principles that apply out there also apply here. If you want to compare the form of real world advertising that comes closest to what you would do online then you only have to look at billboards.

Two of the most important factors with billboards are visibility and traffic. You don’t just advertise on any billboard; you want one that is visible for the longest period of time as a car approaches it and you want one that has lots of passing traffic every day and it’s the same online.

You want to advertise where people will see your ad for the longest period of time and you want to advertise on websites that see a lot of visitors every single day. And you also want to place your ads on sites that your target audience will visit too.

Another similarity between billboards and online advertising is that you really must keep the message simple and the calls to action plain! Billboards that are stuffed full of information just don’t get read and it’s the same with online advertising. Your ad has to be eye-catching and engaging but also very simple and not full of so much information no one stops to read it.

The call to action in your online ads needs to be simple too. ‘Call this number’ … ‘click here’ … do this and do that all need to stand out and catch a person’s eye and you really only have a split second to do that.

The one major difference between advertising in the ‘real’ world and advertising online comes in how you’re billed for the ad. With a billboard there is usually a set rate that covers a set period of time. In a magazine or newspaper the cost of the ad is assessed on the size and the circulation of the publication where your ad will appear.

With online advertising you can pay by the month for advertising on sites that don’t see a huge amount of traffic or you pay a set rate per thousand impressions. An ‘impression’ is registered every time your ad is displayed to a person who is visiting the page on the website where your ad is to appear.

So the take-away for those new to online advertising is to keep your ads simple but eye-catching and engaging and make sure that you advertise on sites that are targeted for your market place and that get a lot of visitors.

When you’re in business you need to advertise because without advertising your business will simply fail. But where do you advertise your business and how do you make your business heard above the clamor of all the other businesses that advertise out there? What do you need to do to target your advertising so that the right people get the message and hear it too?

To be effective you need to advertise where your target market will see it. Now that may sound like basic commonsense … and it is … but over the years I’ve seen some terrible mistakes made by local businesses when it comes to advertising in the right places.

So before you jump in and start booking up ads in various parts of the media you need to now where the most effective place to get your message in front of your target market will be.

Do the people who will buy from you read the newspapers and if so which ones? Do the people who will buy from you listen to the radio and if so which stations? Do they watch TV, do they surf the web and do they use the Yellow Pages?

How do you find out this information? Well I wouldn’t look at the circulation figures for the newspapers or listen to the ratings and viewer statistics that TV advertising execs might want to throw at you. Instead I’d ask your customers and see where they go for information.

Once you know where to advertise you then need to know what to say in your advertising. You need to know what it is about your business that will attract people. You need to know what it is that will make them want to come to your business rather than to a competitor.

When you understand what it is that will bring people to you rather than your competitors you then have the headline for your advertising … the hook that will attract people who see you ads and encourage them to read further. It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate … in fact the simpler it is the better.

Sadly there aren’t many advertising people at the local level who recognize the importance of keeping the message simple no matter what the medium … but that’s definitely what you need to do.

So to bring all this together … successful advertising needs to be targeted and to do that you need to know where to advertise, you need to know what to advertise and you need to keep the message simple.

For a computer shop we know of a headline of “Guaranteed Computer Repairs” accompanied by a photo of the owner and a short personal message brings in far more work than a typical computer shop ad full of prices and pictures and “great deals”.

His message is targeted and his business is booming.