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Publicizing and Promoting By Helping People the People You Can Help the Most

Tactics and strategies for getting the best publicity that creates interest and sales

It’s perhaps the most common question I hear after a client walks in the front door. I wrote a book, now what do i do?

I reviewed many years of doing PR and marketing for thousands of clients and from experience, it appears that it all comes down to …

HELPING THE PEOPLE YOU CAN HELP THE MOST

What is the most effective communication that you can put in front of people that will get them interested in what you have to offer? What type of message will attract more of the right type of people to you and will create the best and lasting impression? How can you maximize your sales with the lowest possible budget?

There are several types of news releases or marketing communications that you can choose to use to get peoples’ attention and interest. Sure, you can create a product announcement, a book review or a personal story about your quest to create a book or a product. But these types of messages tend to produce a relatively low impact on how much coverage you get and how many products or services you sell. That’s because it’s all about you and you fail to really give the media what they want the most.

The best media coverage results when you offer something of value that appeals to lots of people in the audience at a deep personal level.

By far, the highest impact media coverage and sales comes from value-packed problem solving messages placed before needy people in a dramatic way.

What this means is that you if you want publicity and sales you need to craft your messages and couple them with actions so that you help the people you can help the most.

With authors and publishers this usually means that you create and use a problem solving tips article approach which identifies a crucial problem and offers your best advice on how to solve or alleviate that problem.

Then when people read or see this type of message, they experience hope and desire for these benefits, and they contact you and purchase the book, product or service that you offer.

There are three key questions you need to answer to use this technique successfully.

• What can you do to help people?
• Who are the people you can help?
• How can you reach them to let them and others know you can help them?

This technique is very powerful. Helping people in need gets attention. It brands you as a helpful person. It motivates people to find out more about you. Depending on the value of your help, it even creates a sense of obligation that triggers a reciprocal response. Of course, the beneficial impacts this has on your relationships with your prospects and customers dramatically reduces the barriers to sales. It can also be so powerful that people realize that to get as much of you as they really need, they need to hire you or buy what you offer.

With non-fiction books, products and expert professional services this technique the help you offer is based on the topic in which you are most expert. The people you focus on are those who need your expertise the most.

Even if you are a fiction author, you focus those people who are most interested in your type of work and you choose to be helpful, entertaining, inspiring and galvanizing so that they get interested in you and what you have to offer.

What is Help? To help means to give support or assistance that solves a problem or improves a situation in some tangible way. To help means to give a remedy or provide relief to someone or do something for someone else that enables them to achieve something they want, need or desire.

Help can be a noun. You can give people something tangible or intangible that they do not have enough of.

Help can be a verb. You can do something for people that they cannot do by themselves.

To offer help you must identify a problem or issue that people are experiencing. You can identify the barriers or challenges people face. A barrier to progress is an opportunity for problem solving.

Then you must identify what they must do to address or overcome that barrier. You have to look inside yourself and find knowledge and experience that you are particularly qualified to present in a fashion that people will trust with confidence.

You then organize these actions or ideas into a presentation and deliver them to the people you are trying to help so that they can receive the support or the assistance and can act on your advice to receive and experience the benefits you offer.

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP PEOPLE?

Step one is to identify what you can do to help people.

There are lots of ways you can people. Think about what you do best. Think about what you created. Think about how you have learned to make a difference to people in their lives. Decide to focus and harness your energies to help people. Think about the biggest problems people in your target group face. Identify what you can do to help them.

Look over this list of possible ways to help people. Then come up with your best ideas.

Physically

Go to them
Go with them
Be with them
Lift them up
Pick them up
Transport them
Shelter them
Protect them
Bring whoever they need to them
Bring whatever they need to them
Bring them wherever they need to go

Mentally

Guide people to better choices
Consult, give advice, provide counsel, listen and console
Teach people how to do something better
Explain how to do something important
Explain how to do something better
Tell people exactly how to build, create, develop, find, or achieve something
Tell people how to avoid disaster, pain, anguish, or negative experiences
Provide interpretation to help people achieve greater understanding
Simplify and explain a complex poorly understood issue, topic or mystery
Tell stories to demonstrate a concept
Provide information to fill in a lack of knowledge

Materially

Give people what they need or want
Give money, food, shelter, materials, water, staple items, essential sundries, tools,
Provide tangible aid, support and resources where too few are available
Provide personal or technical expertise
Volunteer time, expertise, services
Send manpower — people to provide capability
Canvass a neighborhood asking for material supplies for the needy
Collect and store material supplies for the needy.
Deliver supplies to the needy.

Socially

Introducing someone to others who can help them
Giving referrals to others who can help someone
Communicate with others on behalf of someone
Get other involved or engaged in helping someone
Raise awareness of a need or situation
Enlist others to devote energy to needy people
Lead or manage an effort to get an organization to focus their resources and effort on a problem

Financially

Give money – donate funds
Give time to help raise money
Tell people about someone else’s financial needs
Create a fund for someone
Conduct or support a fundraiser for someone
Ask others to give money
Get visible in public raising money
Call people by phone to raise money
Write people by letter and email to raise money
Go see people and ask them for money and support
Get other involved, motivated, and committed to give or raise money.

No doubt there are lots of other ways to help people. Use this list as a checklist to identify the things that you can do.

There are things that fall in the category of ACTIONS.

There are things that fall in the category of IDEAS, ADVICE, OR GUIDANCE.

Most authors will tend to focus on the advice and guidance elements. But some of the best publicity that creative people can get couple advice with real social action and when thy go out into the community to find and help the people who need their help the most. Action attracts people. People in motion doing things gets attention.

WHO ARE THE PEOPLE YOU CAN HELP?

Step two is to identify the people who you can help the most.

Look at your customers. Consider that each one is representative of other people with similar interests and problems.

This is the miracle of the microcosm. It is the most powerful tool for creating a targeted marketing plan there is.

When you solve the problems of one, you have a solution that you can now offer and deliver to for many others with the same problem.

So no matter where you are, you can develop a process for helping someone and achieving a sale. Then you can target these people and re-play the messages that resulted in you being able to satisfy your original customer.

So look at your customers carefully. Identify their:

Age
Sex
Personal characteristics
Social characteristics
Employment characteristics
Religious characteristics
Physical characteristics
Education
Professional credentials
Professional affiliations
Hobbies
etc.

Do this for each of your customers. Make a list of these factors. Identify the common characteristics of your customers.

Do this systematically for each type of customer you have.

Now this is very important – now identify how many customers fall into each factor and what they spend or are worth to you.

Now put them into a tentative priority list from most value to the least value.

HOW CAN YOU REACH THEM TO LET THEM AND OTHERS KNOW YOU CAN HELP THEM?

Step three requires you identify how you can effectively reach the people who you can help the most.

So where do you find more of the people you can help the most?

For each one of the demographic characteristics you identified, think of where you will find more people just like your customer. Now you need to identify where you can help them and how you can communicate effectively with them.

You can communicate with people by taking action, by writing, by or by speaking, either in person or from a distance.

Where can YOU do this readily and comfortably? What exactly do you need to propose and get people to agree to?

You can communicate with them using directly in person, by phone or by email and the Internet.

You can also use media to communicate with them. To target media you ask the question: What do my customers read, watch or listen to, particularly when looking for the type of help that I’m offering? The targeted list of newspapers, magazines, radio, tv, news services, syndicates and Internet media that results is a structured set of people that you want to contact to see if they will help you reach your target audience.

You can also identifying the key places where you will find more people of like mind:

Groups
Associations
Clubs
Institutions
Foundations
Support Groups

Search to find ways to reach out and touch more people just like your customer. Use the communication technologies that these people are accustomed to using to communicate with their friends and peers.

You can use the list brokers and also search the Internet and make use of online subject directories and databases.

This can be done nationally, regionally or this can be done locally town by town.

If you use search engines in particular you can target the places where you find similar groups of people with similar interests or needs. Use a plus these plus a to zero in on web sites in specific geographic areas like this:

Then you create and present the right type of pitch to offer your help to them.

If it is direct aid you offer, you say, “Can I come over and help you?”

If it is an speaking event, you say “Can I talk to your group?”

If it is an article, you say, “Will you publish this helpful information?”

If it is an interview, you say “Will you let me share these ideas on the air?”

And so on. You craft your offer to help to match the situation and your capabilities. You also craft your messages to convey the appropriate ideas and actions.

Do it. Get out there and help the people you can help the most.

1. you know how you can help
2. you know who you can help
3. you know where they are located
4. you know how they communicate with each other
5. now take action to help them and communicate with them

Helping people is a natural attraction to media. It is very easy to get media to pay attention to a community involvement event.

If you schedule an event to help people let your local target media know what you are doing.

Write up a problem solving tips article that presents your support or assistance or describes what you do or did to help people. Let the media know when and where the event will happen.

Target similar people with similar problem solving actions and advice.

Create a value-packed problem solving action, package or article. Target the right media and ask them to share your message so that you help people. Target the organizations and support groups that your target audience belongs to and ask them to share your message so that you help people.

Use your value packed problem solving abilities, stories, and content in a variety of ways:

News releases for articles
News releases for interviews
Email
Business proposals
Phone conversations
Street mail
Brochures
Pamphlets
White papers
Audio
Videos
Live, taped, telephone or web presentations, speaking events, workshops or seminars

You can also tailor this same content and use it for

Search engines for key word discovery
Web page content
Blog posts and tours
Ezines and newsletters
Mailing Lists and discussion groups
Forums and Article Posts
Social media

Adapt your problem solving stories and tips articles so that your best most helpful actions and guidance are also incorporated into your marketing communications.

Leverage your core content and make use of the diverse technologies and places where you find the people that you can help the most.

What are the best ways to convert web visitors into web buyers? Make candy.

describes my candy theory for making money on the Internet

One of the discussion groups I’m on fielded a great question.

What are the best ways to convert web visitors into web buyers?

My theory on this is that web sites are just like vending machines.

What’s a vending machine?

It’s a device that’s packed with candy and parked in a trafficked location.

How does it work?

People go by, see the vending machine. They come over. Make a selection, drop in their money, grab the candy and away they go.

Now what happens?

If it’s really good candy, they remember exactly where they go it.

That’s because the physical sensation of pleasure releases a flood of hormones into your body. These chemicals in the brain result in the information being remembered.

Candy produces such pleasurable sensations that it results in chemical memory. People always remember where they got good candy. It’s imprinted! It’s a biochemical mechanism for survival.

And that’s what you need to make if you are going to be successful on the Internet.

Candy.

Now to me a web site is just like an electronic vending machine. It’s a machine sits there and offers things for sale.

Now generally on the Internet you see web pages that have only four basic types of candy.

Products, services, software and information.

Products need to be manufactured and delivered.

Services need to be performed.

Software can be downloaded or transmitted.

Information can be password protected, transmitted by email, video, audio, or ebooks or by regular book.

And of course you have hybrids of these.

Now to have a successful web site, what you have to do is make candy. The website, your product, your services, — all of these have to be ‘candy’.

Even the ideas you present have to be candy – good intellectual candy.

Good ‘intellectual property’ candy.

You make ‘candy’ so that people like what you offer, remember how good it tastes, buy what you offer, and then come back again and again.

The goal here is to galvanize them into action, so that when you are done, they jump up and open their wallets.

You can do this if you focus and test, test, test till your web site and your products and services are truly the best candy you can make.

But most people don’t do this. It’s too hard. They create without testing. This is a sad situation because they’ve come so far and now face rejection and a failure to achieve and sales.

Brian Tracy has a technique he calls The 100 calls technique. It’s a wonderful process that gets you exactly to where you need to be.

What you do is make 100 sales calls in as short a time as possible.

This is the way you learn more about how to sell your product or services. It is also how you sell more product and services than you ever did before.

Then you go through a lessons learned and revise and redo your marketing communications so that it emphasizes and repeats what you did right.

That’s also how you develop your web site so it sells better than ever.

The beauty of this process is that once you learn what it takes, you get to utilize technology as a force multiplier to repeat the message.

BTW, if you want to read more about this subject you can read my article The Magic of Business

Now changing web copy to optimize your success with visitors is a time consuming process. But it can be done.

A company called Diligent makes a downloadable program that literally creates a heat map of where visitors spend time on your web pages. You can use it to uncover your best and worst performing areas so that you can keep what works, and revise what doesn’t. Here’s a video which describes this product.

Here’s a link to the video which explains this very useful program. http://www.blinkx.com/burl?v=BiotHIpBiExaBpKbmzdNurWbYNxn7yjY

You may have to sit through a commercial to see this video, but if you get to see the one I just watched with the sumo wrestler, it’s really worth it. Hilarious.

One last helper. Here’s the link to the Search Word Pro results page on the
key words ‘best way to convert web site visitors”

http://www.searchwordpro.com/shared.src?b=474-0484d60d4d-20080609

It’s loaded with helpful guidance.

The Seven Powers of Book Printing

What happened to books before, during and after the development of the Gutenberg Press.

The Seven Powers of Book Printing

What happened to books before, during and after the development of the Gutenberg Press. This wonderful video provides you with a perspective that should make any author or publisher think twice before finalizing their creative work.

How do you write something that will sell?

Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.

How do you know when you are done? When one prospect after another picks up and doesn’t let go.

Seth Godin on smart marketing

Seth Godin teaches smart marketing, the power of storytelling, and purple cows

Seth Godin looks at the world and sees things differently than the most people. He also has a remarkable talent when it comes to communicating what he observes and concludes.

There are a whole bunch of very important and insightful statements that he makes in this video, which he gave speaking to Google in 2007. This 48 minute segment covers material from his book “All Marketers Are Liars”.

One of the crucial ideas he conveys here is that technology simply doesn’t matter as much as marketing. Smart marketing is what creates success.

Who do you tell your friends to go see? Who do you tell your colleagues to go to for help? Who do you recommend when someone needs something?

This is where you need to be.

Another question is do you deliver your messages to people who want it when they want it? This is the essence of his permission marketing.

Then the real meat of this presentation (and Seth is a vegetarian) is all about how successful marketers convince people to believe a story.

Stories convince people because they make people feel a certain way. This is the challenge of marketing — to deliver on the story.

Another idea he covers is how the goal of creating a purple cow, that amazing remark-able product, that is so incredible you share it with ten of your friends because it is just so cool.

One superb nugget he delivers is that he compare how a super successful company spends ten times the money they spend on marketing on the design of the product. The average company spends ten times the money they spend on design on marketing and advertising.

Which one is more remarkable?

I see the same thing with people who write books. In my situation, the best book is easier to achieve success with. Want to get lots of publicity? Write a good book.

How do you create something remark-able?

How do you create something remark-able? Seth Godin talk on creating remarkable products.

The incredible Seth Godin talks about sliced bread and other marketing ideas in this amazing 18 minute You Tube video posted by the TED Ideas Worth Spreading.

Can you get your ideas to spread? How do you do that? What do you say and to whom? Where? You can also read my own thoughts and a process I describe on how to develop and create something ‘remark-able’ (e.g., worth talking about) in my article The Magic of Business (published as Chapter 27 in in Elite Books Einstein’s Business (Jan 2007) . Here is the link to a pdf file of the same article. By the way, the picture at the beginning of the chapter/article is me standing in front of a famous picture at the Museum of Natural History in New York City. My kids think this is proof of reincarnation. See the wrinkles? Same place!

The key to marketing effectively is to create something that certain people just really really like, and figure out where they are and how to talk to them. Pretty simple to say. very hard to do. But it’s a goal that you can describe in a phrase and that’s a big start.

Best quote in this video is when he points up to his presentation slide and says “That’s Soap Lake in Washington. If that’s nowhere, Soap Lake is right in the middle of it.” Followed by audience laughter…

Hell I live just an hour away!