Posts Tagged ‘Doom and Gloom’

Publicity, you can never have enough that’s why I had Joan Stewart, the Publicity Hound on a teleseminar recently.  One of her points was that you always have to be looking for opportunity.  She told the story of a Wisconsin Five and Dime store owner who, while reading the Milwaukee Sentinel saw a quote, “The dime store is dead.”  The right thinking owner took a black magic marker to a sheet of paper and sent a fax to the reporter, “We’re Not Dead.” The reporter drove up to the store with a photographer to interview the owner and got a front page article. That is great publicity.

What’s bad publicity? Thinking a sorrowful story will bring in customers. It won’t.  However, the media will eat it up.  A & E’s We Mean Business did a makeover with a woman who had maxed out her home equity to support the business and ultimately lost it.  That makes great TV but what does it say to your customers?  We aren’t going to be around long.

Another story I watched on MSNBC showed a business owner saying she didn’t have the capital to fill orders for her products.  She had pages and pages of orders she was holding. She should have gotten 50% down so she could create the products but she stubbornly showed her predicament.  What message was she sending to her customers – the ones who were waiting for orders? Not getting anything soon. And what message was she sending to perspective customers? We’re a risk.

The media is getting tired of telling more gloom & doom stories.  They are hungry for your positive story now.  They know their readers or viewers  want to hear about winners, how you can succeed, what innovation you’ve done, how you’ve used something like Twitter to build your customers’ loyalty.  They only cover what people make them aware of.  You can change that.

Do the work for a reporter, what is the angle you can offer? What is something everyone struggles with regarding your product?  Instead of thinking about an event or a publicity stunt you’re having, what is the story only you can tell to that reporter?  For example, how will the Economic Stimulus plan effect you?  Are you upgrading your POS system to capitalize on the accelerated depreciation? Then tell them why – what will it do for your customers.  That’s the right type of publicity.

Or how about today’s WSJ story by Geoffrey Fowler, Socks Don’t Match? How About A Subscription? where an entrepreneur came up with an online solution Blacksocks.com to men’s socks being eaten in the dryer?  Genius publicity!

You never know where being proactive to draw attention to your business will lead – but you do have to decide whether you want to appear wounded or victorious.  It’s the difference between people watching You’ve Got Mail where Meg Ryan loses the store or rooting on Mel Gibson in Braveheart. If I were you, I’d pick the later.