Monday, October 24, 2011

PR Equals Free Publicity


There are three key areas of public relations you can use to boost your advertising results ten-fold over your paid advertising.
The key to public relations lie in:
• Public relation or publicity
• Merchandising
• Promotions

With a solid plan in place that encompasses all these areas, you’ll have a great approach to use public relations in the best way possible.
Public relations include all that is the media. Don’t limit yourself. The attention of newspapers, television, radio, magazines, bloggers, ezines and more are all equally powerful. Online marketing is just as, if not more, important as conventional media.

Here are the steps to get noticed by the media:
1. Put together a press release for your company. The press release should be relevant to your target market and address consumer interest, not just announce your business.

2. Compact your press release to include one hook and one angle. Choose the most attention-getting to make sure the media person you are sending it to is interested in reading it.

3. Put your press release in professional formatting. With press releases you need a dateline, the most important information at the top, facts, figures and wrap it up with contact details including who and how. Print the press release on your letterhead.

4. Send your press release to all television and radio stations, local and metro newspapers, national newspapers, industry magazines, and any other form of media that reaches your target market. Don’t forgot to include relevant blogs, ezines, press release submission sites and to industry professionals.
More importantly than a perfect press release is to make sure you have addressed the needs of your target market in the products/services you offer and made that clear in the press release. If you are provided people a solution to a problem, a way to avoid a problem and an opportunity to enhance their life the media and public will be interested.

If you have a connection (or the ability to get a connection) with a celebrity, this can practically guarantee you’ll get attention. Make sure you are offered newsworthy information, and then follow up with media outlets to make sure they are publicizing that information.

“One of the most powerful techniques every business should use is free publicity. As the name implies, there is no cost, just the time and effort required to attract attention to your business.” Jay Abraham

Our FREE test drive can show you how to put together press releases that work! Check out how the pro’s do it and craft the perfect press releases for your business.
Contact me or go to www.marketingandsalesuniversity.com for a free 30 day trial. Download as much information as you can to help you grow your business.

Turn Prospects into Customers Overnight!


Today I’d like to talk about how to turn prospects into customers and retain them for future marketing to. While, your marketing is doing its job, you need to be working on turning those prospects into customers.

There are a few key ways to draw them in and seal the deal.

You need to be:
• Inviting
• Informative
• Enjoyable

The biggest fear of most new customers is the dread buyer’s remorse. You want to avoid this at all costs and this should be mitigated if you’ve provided a quality product/service that delivers on the marketing claims you’ve made.

However, this can still occur. There are two ways to deal with this:
• Offer to refund money-no questions asked
• Offer a bonus they can keep even if they return the product

These offers alone will also mitigate buyer’s remorse because the customer will trust you more, just for offering these things.

There are number of other ways to turn a prospect into a customer:
1. Offer a special price as an opportunity for you to test the market.
2. Offer a lower price with the reason of pushing inventory to pay a tax bill, for your kid’s' braces, or another tangible reason. Customers love that this makes you feel so much more human.
3. Offer a referral incentive.
4. Offer a smaller, more inexpensive product first to build trust.
5. Offer package deals.
6. Offer to charge less for their first purchase if they become a repeat customer.
7. Offer extra incentives-longer warranties, free bonuses if ordered by a set date.
8. Offer financing options, if applicable.
9. Offer a bonus if they pay in full.
10. Offer special packaging or delivery.
11. Offer “name your own price” incentives.
12. Offer comparative data or other comparison tools.
13. Offer a trade-up or upgrade to something they already have.
14. Offer additional, educational information to help them make the decision.

The options really are as limitless as you make it. You can use these or other ideas to find what works the best for your business, products/service and target market. Remember this…

“By making it inviting, easy, informative, non-threatening, educational, inspiring and fun to do business with you, you’ll loft your company above the competition.” Jay Abraham

Need help with figuring out the best strategy for converting prospects into customers? Our FREE test drive gives you exclusive access to the mountain of resources and tools, along with information from some of the greatest marketing minds on Earth.

Checkout www.marketingandsalesuniversity.com Get the lastest information and take a free 30 day test drive. If you have a story you want to share, contact me at kenselt@sympatico.ca

Thursday, October 13, 2011

How Did Starbucks Build A Multimillion Dollar Empire Using A Basic Commodity?

You can buy a cup of coffee at 7-11, Quik-Trip, Dunkin Donuts and even McDonalds. and buy it for $3.50 less than you can at Starbucks. So WHY are so many people Starbuck junkies?

Why is every airline bankrupt or nearing bankruptcy, and yet Southwest has made a profit every quarter but one since it started flying its planes in 1971? How did Apple come back from the dead and resurrect itself so it now sits at the top of the communications world?

What you need to know.

Starbuck's didn't just happen to get "lucky." This was a very carefully planned and crafted assault that was years in the making. In most cases, when you sell a basic commodity such as coffee, you're forcing yourself into a market that competes on nothing but price.

Well, that's what everyone else was indeed doing. 7-11, Quik-Trip, Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds were locked in battle to see who could offer the cheapest cup of coffee. In fact, most of them were providing it at cost as a way to entice customers to come in more frequently. They figured they could make up the lost profit with additional sales.

Starbucks looked at this and said "these guys are all fighting over who can offer a 50 cent cup of coffee. I wonder how we can get these same people to buy our coffee. and pay us $4 a cup in the process?"

Why you need to know this.

Obviously, they were successful. So how did they do it? In a word. "INNOVATION!"
If you want your business to grow and flourish, then you must stop competing on price. You have to find out specifically what your customers "want" from your business, and then innovate your business to not only give them what they want, but do so in a way that can only be described as "extraordinary."

Customers don't go to Starbucks to pay $4 for a cup of coffee. They pay $4 for the "experience" they enjoy at Starbucks. Starbucks innovated their stores to give their customers what they "wanted." Customers don't want to buy their coffee from a clerk. They want to buy it from a "barista." They don't want to buy coffee from a convenience store or a fast food restaurant. They want to buy their coffee from a specialty coffee establishment where the barista knows them by name and knows what they want to drink without them having to ask for it. In short. they want an "experience," and they're willing to pay $4 a cup to get it.

The cost to you if you fail to act.

* Do you know exactly how to find that "sweet spot" that your competition knows nothing about?
* Do you know how to use that "sweet spot" to instantly attract new clients whenever you want?
* Would you like to finally understand how to separate your business from all of your competition?
* Would you be interested in positioning your business for market dominance?

You can learn to do this for your business. IF you can discover specifically what your customers want. and create an experience that compliments what they want.
For more information, check out my new Marketing University, get as much information as you want and take a test drive on our system.To take a Test Drive on our system visit http://marketingandsalesuniversity.com/guidedtour

Kensel Tracy is the Marketing Coach and owner of Marketing and Sales University, a resource for small and medium sized businesses that want more information on marketing.