Free Press

Let's talk about something that every business wants but very few actually get.

Free press.

There are countless magazines, newspapers, radio stations, weekly publications, local news groups that want your information. No, in some cases they NEED your information. We look at the big news stations, the glossy magazines and we hope that one day we'll do something so significant that we will be featured along side Brittany Spears, Brad Pitt and Barack Obama.

You Are Important
Come on now. You're going about it the wrong way. You are already doing so much more than some of those people. You are already a story. Give yourself some credit.

You Need To Know Who You Are
You Need To Know What They Want To Hear
To get press you need a system and you need to know what you want people to talk about. In other words you need to be focussed on what you want them to know and why you are indeed the celebrity for that "thing".

That "thing" can be an issue, and idea, a product, a service, an event or any number of other ideas. The trick is that you take ownership of it and are the person to talk to around the globe. The press don't talk to you about just products they talk to you about how those products can benefit people's lives. They are selling relationships to people. I'll explore the reasons and the rational behind a press program in further entries but suffice to say, you want to be in the media and if you want your business to succeed then you need to be there. This is free advertising with the added benefit of total credibility. After all you are the expert.

A Story:
This year four of my friends and business associates decided to race our bikes across Canada in aid of Juvenile Diabetes. Well,like your company, this endeavor was like setting up a business because we had huge goals and wanted every dime to get to the charity. We wanted our marketing to be free and our expenses to be nill. Sound familiar?

Our goal was to raise over $600,000 and to relay across Canada by bike in 9 days.
We raised $900,000 and finished in 8, setting a Guinness World Record. Not bad for five normal guys.


What is more important here is that treating this like a business we had to do it in 8 months inclusive of marketing, training and executing. Sound familiar? Start ups are cash starved and if you want my opinion, established businesses should starve their marketing departments so they begin to think. More on that rant later though.

Your business needs this type of urgency and response. Press and media give you this type of exposure. This group, called Team H2V, received over 11,000,000 media hits [or impressions] completely free including full exposure on Discovery Channels Daily Planet. We raised money by letting people know what we were doing. We also had a few great hooks.

We became celebrities and after we were finished we, my partner and I, wrote a book to further increase the fund raising...and the publicity! The legacy of both still lives on.

You Can Do This
The point is that you can do this to. You can create a whirl wind around you and your business with effort and knowledge. PR firms cost thousands of dollars and if you don't have any money or aren't sure of your return then it is difficult to pay for it. You can go it alone if you study and apply.

So what do:
Here are a few steps I would take to increase your PR knowledge and some places I recommend going to get some more information. Which is a note we should make: NO MONEY MARKETING is a business that is going to help you find the best information to make you the best business. If we don't have the answer we'll get it for you and we do the research to save you time. Our goal is to spell it out so that more businesses stay in business and more business owners live the good life.

1. Check out some of these free press release sites. www.free-press-release.com, www.pr.com, www.prleap.com and www.24-7pressrelease.com. Each one has great information, which may be hard to totally digest right now, but explore a little bit so you find out what a press release is, where to deliver them, and even ideas like what a press kit and media room are.
   
2. Which leads to my next point. Go to some sites online, like National Geographic or IBM and check out their media rooms. Don't reinvent the wheel. If they are doing it you can do it to. Here is one of my own media rooms based out of a blog. This particular business has all the information people may need and I can update it whenever and however I wish. Is it the greatest Media Room on the planet? No. But I have one, it follows some industry protocol, there is a show of intention that we care about media, we are experts, have some stories, and also care for the media. That counts a lot.
3. Learn how to write a press release and all the parts that are needed. My friend Paul Hartunian, the guy who sold the Brooklyn Bridge - no really - is literally the best at 'dumbing' this process down so that the intimidation is removed and the confidence is increased. I have his PR system and I can truly say it has been one of the greatest investments in myself I have ever made. Between my four businesses and all the events I host for charities I can honestly say this has paid for itself 100 times over. I mean we did get of 11,000,000 impressions for our charity ride alone...and that yielded more than a $300,000 increase on our financial goal. We made money and you can too. But you must know how to do the little things well. Big business or small, free press is an essential NO MONEY MARKETING tactic and Paul is the best. You have to learn about his easy to use system.

Free press or being in the media is one very important No Money Marketing tools and you must begin learning how you can get into the news by being the news. That's all for now but believe me we will continue to explore this topic and give you more hints on how to hone your PR skills. Start researching now and start applying that knowledge right away.

Let us know if you have any questions and continued success keeping your money YOURS.

p.s. further to the post on starting a blog I read a really great little write up on why to start a blog by Tina at ThinkSimpleNow.com. It really puts into words exactly what we believe here when it comes to blogs. Her site is really captures the spirit of a blog I contribute to call Swim Upstream Life so I feel bonded already. I read the post on blogging here on problogger.com and it was awesome. Everyone can make it happen. Really. You too.

p.p.s. Man I have a lot to say today! I'm all geeked up. Here's a link if you'd like to take a look at the book I referenced earlier, The Principles of the Ride. $10 from every book goes to help cure Juvenile Diabetes. Thanks for the support.

Your List

There are literally millions of businesses that can help you learn to build a list of customers. they will tell you that it is the single most important thing you do when in business. They will tell you how much it costs to get a new customer and then how much less it costs to keep that customer.

While I agree that a list of people is extremely important it is NOT a simple as just getting names. Anyone can buy names. Anyone can get a bunch of people pay attention to them for a few seconds. Youtube caters to just that market all day, every day.

What really matters is that you gain a list of members that want you to talk to them regularly, and are even desperate for you to provide them information. In fact they want to communicate with you rather than you with them. This is not an only online discussion. This is for every style of business .

It is better to have a list of 100 passionate people eating up every morsel of information you give them rather than 100,000 people that don't care one iota what you say. In fact people are so lazy and their trust level with information dissemination so low that chances are they get your email or postcard and just delete/chuck it. 100,000 people that think you are SPAM. The absolute worst thing ever.

So how do you build this list?

The first things are technical in nature and we will help all of you find information to get your list building going for free. Try feedburner for your blog and that will capture some names for you to talk to regularly. Of course RSS feed your blog so that people can easily choose to hear from you and then we will continue to provide exact information on what else is available in future articles. Today is about keeping your names happy and talking about you.

Give your list something to talk about. Help them with your expertise. Don't waste their time.

It sounds like hard work but feeding other articles that bore people or just writing trash is useless. There are millions upon millions of choices. The only way you build a list is through credibility and giving people something they want.

This is the cold hard truth. Like my Dad said, "you get nothing for nothing". Slowly the Internet and blogosphere is realizing this as well. You give nothing you will get nothing.

Period.

So talk to your list, become their friend and confident, and do this by making sure every single thing you do helps them, informs them and makes them want to then help you.

An Essential Tactic

So you've opened your business and put together your business plan because you want to be one of the smart ones; on of the survivors...one of the "thrivers".

The business plan. A work of art as far as your concerned. Now it is time to go do what you do best. Sell the widgets, your service; basically do what you love to do.

This is the usual demeanor within our shop keepers [internet and brick and mortar]. Open and sell.

The problem is that the world is full of places to shop and unless you get noticed there really is very little chance you will thrive. You need a plan.

A large number of business plans consist of numbers but rarely consist of an exact how-to plan for getting, keeping and selling to customers. the plan shows what will happen based on the assumption there definitively WILL be customers.

In a No Money Marketing world the essential tactic is to have a detailed plan for your marketing. A detailed plan so you stay within your budget, you never make a rash and costly decision and so you know where and how you will begin to gather customers. the rest of your business plan will then work because you will have customers and more probably money.

Businesses are essentially 80% a like. That's why financial data can be compared. The other 20% is just the differences in business style. Those that survive to thrive understand that 5% of their business is about expertise and 95% is about marketing.

Marketing, marketing and marketing.

So here is the essential topics in a great marketing plan. Just topics here. Each section can be a manual unto itself but this is what makes a plan.

1. who is your key market - if nothing else you NEED to know this
   
2. what do you want that market to know about your business
3. what do you want that market to do when they find out about you
4. how does your market find information
5. what are the key mediums [newspapers, magazines, websites] that your market uses
6. how do they receive these mediums, how do they look for them
7. do a competitive analysis if your business plan hasn't already got one in it; where does your competition display itself
8. establish your competitive advantage and create your brand around it
   
9. determine what mediums you want to use [all NO MONEY options first!] and how
   
10. take action by creating a calendar of marketing action items

Now, this isn't everything in a marketing plan but if you can answer the above questions and create a rough sketch for yourself you will see better results from your marketing and a more focussed business plan.

A business plan is not a marketing plan. A marketing plan will see your business plan succeed. It costs nothing but time and will save you a great deal of money as your business ages.

Can we help you create a plan?

Branding No Money Marketing

What is the secret to creating a brand?

More importantly, what does it cost a company to create a brand? Well, in keeping with the No Money Marketing theme... you guessed it... it doesn't cost a cent to create a brand.

The answer to the first question is, simply, passion.

Passion for giving a company an identity... for instilling that same passion and enthusiasm into each and every person working within that company.

People... not products... are the foundation of every brand. It costs nothing to facilitate pride and ambassadorship amongst owners, employees, suppliers and customers. It begins with passion.

Willie and I have joined forces because we share a passion for No Money Marketing.. and a passion for teaching people the art of No Money Marketing. We are living our brand, and developing our brand under your watchful eye... we are our own guinea pigs.

You are part of the brand that is No Money Marketing. We want you to ask us questions... we want to know what you need to learn about... what are your challenges? Your feedback will literally determine the content of this blog and the many other products we will bring to you. We will build our brand based on you. We have the passion, you have the need. What a brand it will be!

We are committed to providing complete, step by step instructions for every one of you to actually be able to create a plan, and, most importantly, execute that plan, with the ultimate result... a stronger market presence and a bigger bottom line.

We are just getting started, so pony up with the questions and enjoy the ride!!

Blogging Course

I've just stumbled upon this tool. Now I'm not sure it is a great course but these guys have done some good things in the past [based on people I trust who are good marketers in their own right].

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

If you want to check it out go here and get your copy...it's got No Money Marketing written all over it and it is free for only a little while longer.

I run over 35 different blogs on 5 different websites, and I am not a techno-wizard by any stretch, so once I've taken this course I'll give you my thoughts and hopefully we all have a winner.

Build your business. Keep your money.

The Virtual Blog

Largely businesses use advertising because they don't know what else to do, don't have the time to do the research and so, like their RRSP contributions, they get and 'expert' and trust them with their money.

This is lazy and it is one of the main reasons that 90% of businesses end up out of business.
I'm sorry, but we are hear to help and not telling the truth just wouldn't be prudent.

You need to stick to a plan and you need to realize that there is an extensive amount of marketing that can be done the old fashioned way. With effort and using your brain.

With that said here is another tactic that makes endless amounts of good will and will invariably improve your bottom line.

Public speaking.

What are you an expert at? Call up your local rotary club, chamber of commerce, school or PTA and ask them if you can come an help their members out by educating them on your expertise.

Just like a blog entry is giving people information, your real world blog - speech - should give people information that they really want. Information that will make them want to contact you again so that you can sell them your products as solutions.

Inform the public of what you do, how you do it and why, and if you do a good job they will reward you with sales.

The only expense is your time.

Start a Blog!

The simplest means to develop your marketing is to build a list of people that want to hear what you have to say or want to understand what it is you do. A blog is the savvy marketers easiest and simplest way to have internet presence, build a data base, and keep in constant contact with your clients.

There are so many ways to set up a blog and they don't need to take a lot of time. You can re-purpose material [legally of course], write down your own thoughts and hopefully lead a horse to your water.

There are more than just a few platforms you can use to develop your own blog. Here are a few:

• blogger
• word press
• Typepad

Each of these platforms explains exactly how to set up your blog but slowly, and by reading here, you can learn new little techniques to help you develop your list and web presence.

The point today is that you start communicating, trying to build a culture around what you are talking about and some buzz for what you are doing.

Write regularly, write something that matters to your niche and give value.

to take your blog one step further research this site, www.feedburner.com, so you can really start building a list.

Build that list.

What Is No Money Marketing

Well here we go...

Since I have been 19 years old I have owned my own retail store. Sustaining that business from a University students wage [which is to say not much money at all], becoming an author, a publisher, an event producer, a consultant and meeting thousands of others like me cam e the idea for No Money Marketing.

Now as I grow older, not necessarily wiser, I am looking back upon the things these companies have done on a tight budget and looking forward I see such a world of opportunity for the tight budgeted and passionate marketer - no matter what business style they currently exist in.

No Money Marketing is not as much a company as it is a mindset we want to help instill in the minds of the world's shopkeepers. It is about teaching people to use the least amount of money to market their companies, yield the same or better results from this marketing as traditional "cash-out" marketing, and help shop owners [Internet and 'brick and mortar'] to reach the dreams they had when they first opened.

No Money Marketing is about helping businesses reach their goals faster because instead of spending their profits they keep them.

No Money Marketing is about helping businesses create a plan, execute it and stay focused on the goals.

No Money Marketing is about helping your business stand out from the rest because you are worth it.

No Money Marketing is not for the weak, meek or mild. It is difficult, like all other marketing, and requires people willing to reach the finish line. It is for those that want the best form life.

Welcome. We will do our best to showcase all that is No Money Marketing in these pages and we beg for your feedback examples and thoughts.

To all those that aspire to use marketing as merely the means to get where they need to go, we honour you. Marketing without spending will yield the results you want. Are you up for the challenge.