Guerrilla Marketing (GM): Marketing By Press Release and Marketing by Publishing

Guerrilla Marketing (GM)—

Market-by-Publishing and Market-by-Press-Release

Two of the most important techniques for getting your name known using GM are marketing by media release and marketing by publishing.

A friend of mine, Todd Jamieson, the President of EnvisonOnline.ca uses market by publishing to get both his name and his firm’s name out there.

“I can't give away all of my secrets,” says Todd, “but here is a main site that gets a lot of exposure: www.ideamarketers.com. This will allow you to post as many free articles as you want. The main thing also is to keep the content brief to 3/4 of a page in Word or less. Other sites can be found through Google by typing in: Submit Free Articles. I submitted my article on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and other articles to a lot of "free article" web sites. I am all over the net now - with links back to Envision.” It also helps that Todd is a good writer.

You can submit free articles on the Internet, that’s a start but it doesn’t hurt to also have your material appear: in the local newspaper (in their op ed pages or even letters to the editor), in your community newspaper, in a trade publication (in your field), as a speech you have given for a trade organization, on your personal web site and, of course, in a peer-reviewed journal (best of all).

Another friend on mine, Rob Hall, runs a successful company, Momentous.ca. They have to be the Canadian champs for issuing media releases. Momentous.ca owns Zip.ca (a DVD to Home movie service), Pool.ca (a domain name back order service), numerous domain name registrar firms and hosting companies.

Here is their list of media releases just for Zip.ca: June 6, 2004, June 3, 2004, May 29, 2004, May 26, 2004, May 20, 2004, May 10, 2004, May 2004, May 2004, April, 2004, March, 2004, March 18, 2004, February 24, 2004, February 24, 2004, February 10, 2004, September 9, 2004, September 9, 2004, August 5, 2004, June 10, 2004, May 14, 2004, May 11, 2004, May 5, 2004, April 28, 2004, February 11, 2004.

This is for a company that is less than two years old. But they don’t just issue media releases. They follow it up by making their President available for on air interviews (for television) and telephone interviews (largely with the print press but also with radio hosts). Rob also does in-studio appearances and has written a tech column from time to time for one of the local (Ottawa) newspapers. It doesn’t hurt that Rob is an articulate interviewee (he has had some training by one of the best media trainers in the business, Barry McLoughlin at CEO.TV but some of it is Rob’s natural ability to think on his feet too). It also doesn’t hurt that Rob is good writer as well.

But even if you’re not the best interviewee on the Planet, so what? You can get better at it over time. I know that when I started doing media interviews, I was terrible. A friend of mine (kindly) pointed out how bad I was and gave me a few hours of media training and I did get better at it. Being a basically shy person, I had to really work at it.

His tips included—

· look directly at the camera,

· don’t shift your eyes from side to side,

· try not to fill in the blanks using ‘Umm’ or ‘Ah’,

· keep your answers short (but not too short—definitely not monosyllables),

· smile from time to time,

· be sincere,

· tell the truth (actually, he told me to tell the ‘smart truth’ like Bill Clinton’s “I did not, never sleep with that woman”),

· try to be yourself,

· try to relax (but don’t be too relaxed),

· be friendly (but, remember, the media are not your friends—they will build you up when you are a new story and then tear you down using ‘Gotcha’ ‘investigative’ journalism later on (their motto is ‘Comfort the Afflicted and Afflict the Comfortable’)—that’s how they get promotions and journalism prizes),

· live-to-tape or live radio or television interviews are better than print or taped interviews because with the latter, they can and will edit what you say and how you look to slant the interview one way or the other (both undoubtedly bad for you),

· don’t answer hypothetical questions like: “We understand that you beat your wife?” which results in headlines like “Smith Denies Beating Wife”,

· don’t repeat ‘bait’ words like: “We understand that your Company screws its clients and customers?” which results in headlines like “Acme Enterprises Denies Screwing Customers”,

· answer hypothetical questions with statements that reflect your position and may have nothing to do with the actual question you were asked (politicians do this all the time to get their message across),

· don’t answer a question with “No Comment”—you can use the above tip instead (basically, answer your own question),

· keep your voice from rising at the end of every sentence which makes everything you say sound like a question and makes you sound uncertain,

· be prepared—do your homework and rehearse, preferably the day before you do your interviews (so you can sleep on it and let your subconscious do some of the work),

· always answer the same question, the same way no matter how many times you get asked it,

· if you put out a media release, be available and accessible right away—nothing is worse for your credibility that to have journalists call in for an interview just to find out you took off for a two week vacation,

· be available and have a strategy in place even if it’s bad news you are dealing with,

· get a pro to help you because media have a way of thinking around corners and surprising you—remember they do this every day of their working lives and you do it once in a while so it is a (very) unequal power struggle.

There is a lot to this and media training sure can help you cope. After all, you can speak to more people in 7 seconds on a popular newscast (like in a small market such as Ottawa where popular local station CJOH has a nightly newscast audience of more than 200,000) than if you can if you gave a speech to 1,000 people every day for 200 days. (Thanks to Barry McLoughlin of CEO.TV for this analogy.)

When you are starting out, how do you make contact with customers in a way that you can afford? You use GM, that’s what you have to do.

Now GM isn’t any different from main stream marketing in the sense that the way all the various marketing that you do weirdly interacts to mysteriously produce results. I realize how important it is to track marketing results from each initiative you undertake but sometimes if you take away (i.e., stop doing) one leg of your marketing that you didn’t think was doing much for you, the rest of your marketing or some elements of it stop working too.

Marketing is more an art than a science, I am afraid, and how it all comes together is still a ‘mystery’.

For a small storage company like the one we run (BlueHeronStorage.com), we do a (relatively) large amount of marketing including: door to door mail drops of our flyers, advertising in the local community newspaper, on-site signage, off-site signage (sandwich board signs and lawn signs), yellow pages, well-constructed web site, Search Engine Optimization, media release, local Directory Phone Book, decaling the company van and trailer. Still to come are local sponsorships, membership in the BBB (Better Business Bureau) and other local organizations, coupons and contests. Blue Heron gets involved in community projects too—like trying to bring high speed Internet service to a local rural area.

Also, Blue Heron offers complementary services like selling packing and moving supplies or U-Haul trailer service (by a nearby franchisee). We trade flyers with the U-Haul franchisee and we co-promote.

GM is all about substituting brains for money; when you have a limited marketing budget (and what SMEE doesn’t these days), you can’t usually afford mainstream media like television ads or billboards or, sometimes, even radio. But most businesses and organizations do have many, relatively low cost alternatives (like PSAs (Public Service Announcements), lawn signs, on-site signage, flyers, what have you) that can be remarkably effective. If they aren’t, your business or organization isn’t sustainable—if you can’t attract, sign and keep customers cheaply and effectively, you are doomed anyway.