6 WAYS TO GET FREE PUBLIC RELATION HELP TO PROMOTE YOUR START-UP.

Launching your business into the dog-eat-dog marketplace is every entrepreneur’s moment of truth, and it pays to get a jump on your competitors by doing it with as much innovation and flair as you can muster. Two absolutely critical ingredients in any launch strategy are advertising and publicity whose job it is to get your business noticed and patronized.

Pat Fallon, former President of Fallon McElligot Rice, a U.S based advertising agency, said "it’s tough to get good advertising in today’s brutally competitive marketplace without spending a good deal of money--- but it’s not impossible’’. What you have to realize is that good advertising cost fortune, it may gulp as much as your start-up capital or even more sometimes. I guess you don’t have that kind of money to spend, then, you’ve got to be awfully smart to get what you want.

  The following guerrilla tactics can jumpstart you in getting that PR help you desire:

1. READ MARKETING AND ADVERTISING PUBLICATIONS. A diligent search in marketing and advertising publications can expose you to tons of powerful and helpful info needed to fly your newbie into the public as fast as you desire at little or no cost to you. These materials are available offline; you can even

assess some of them online.  In them you can find a good number of advertising free-lancers who do ridiculously low-cost campaigns. These guys do brilliant campaigns for small clients with little money you can afford. They are more interested in doing a successful ad for you to raise a name for themselves than the cash you have to offer them. Listen to Pat’s experience, ‘’When my partner and I started out our free-lance business we spent almost seven years doing nothing but what in most cases were brilliant campaigns for small clients with little money’’.

2. DO SOMETHING NEWS WORTHY. Media representatives, daily scout for events and happenings around town that will make catchy headlines. For instance, identifying a CSR need in your community you can address with your employees talents and skills, and addressing it. There are no hard and fast rules as to newsworthy events you can do to attract attention. You may as well give away whatever you’ve got practically free for the period you can afford. That way you warm your way into the hearts of the public and your target customers/clients. Free publicity is important and feasible for you but to get it you’ve got to do something newsworthy.

 

3. EMPLOY CROSS-PROMOTION TECHNIQUES. One of the cheapest and easiest ways to promote your newbie is to employ the cross-promotion strategy. It is a win-win concept that helps you and another business owner get what you both want. Here is a story that clearly illustrates how this technique works; there was a fitness center run by three entrepreneurs. These men approached the owner of a Racquet club in town and showed him a magazine article in which some fairly popular tennis personalities can be seen using their fitness center’s equipment to increase their stamina, the power of their serve and so forth. They told the owner of the tennis club his members would greatly benefit from using their equipment, and suggested he offer them an exclusive, half-price introductory membership at their center, with his compliments. The first thing he asked them was ‘how much is this going to cost me?’ he was told it won’t cost him a cent; and they will even take care of the printing and mailing the offer to his one thousand members.  The whole thing cost the guys a little over forty dollars and they ended up with six new memberships worth $1,800. Cross-promotion technique entails identifying how your business can partner with another firm in a related business in a way that will benefit and promote both businesses. You’ve got to be smart enough to look out for a business that is doing well in its line of business or that possesses what you need to promote yours, and then leverage on it.

4. ADD PUBLIC RELATIONS PROFESSIONAL TO YOUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS. Getting seasoned public relations professional to serve on the board of your business will prove a worthy strategy in enjoying some free public relations help. You may have to sell them some inexpensive founders’ stock, but you’ll get good public relations and general business advice in return, and probably gain access to some wonderful new contacts. 

5. ATTEND SEMINARS BY PUBLIC-RELATIONS PROFESSIONALS. Showing up at speeches and seminars organized by PR professionals is another way to get your business some good advertising and publicity. You can either talk to them about your business right there in the spirit of the seminar or pay a visit to their office.  If you let them know you’ll like to work with them you’ll usually get quite a bit of useful information in an hour or so and it doesn’t cost anything. Some PR people will even allow you to hire them for a few hours or half a day of consulting, and if you don’t ask them for a written report, the cost can be fairly modest.

6. JUICE UP YOUR SALES PEOPLE. The sales team responsible for getting your product/services into the hands of customers holds a crucial place in ensuring you get good advertising and publicity. Motivate them with a juicy and irresistible offer of reward to make them go all out. There was an author of a book, who wanted to make sure his book didn’t get lost among all the other titles his publisher was hawking, what he did was to give each member of the sales team one two dollar share of stock in a new hotel chain, accompanied by a personal letter extolling the virtues of his book. PR experts believe that young companies can do a great deal to position themselves in the marketplace, and decide what to say about their business and to whom, without spending a fortune on public relations. So, if you’re just starting out in business with scanty resources, you’ve got to use every imaginative strategy you can think of to rise above the pack and get noticed.

MAXIMIZING THE POWER OF "EXECUTIVE INTELLIGENCE" IN YOUR BUSINESS

The business terrain globally is becoming increasingly challenging and fiercely competitive. Globalisation and technology are re-defining patterns of doing business. Great business leaders are constantly on the lookout for change in their business environment and seek means of maximizing the change to their advantage.

However, alterations in business environment would not happen without concomitant effects (attendant challenges). Some business leaders thrive successfully managing these problems, which is why they are successful in the first place. Others who lack the know-how pay dearly for it. In reality successful business leaders have come to recognise effective constant problem solving as an integral part of their responsibilities. Problems are viewed as normal occurrence in business. Their ability to focus on problems and treat them just the way they are is one of the secrets that earned them a place in business success. Problems are mere issues that require objective and realistic thinking and actions to be solved. Anything short of this gives the problem a false outlook and makes it solution difficult to attain.

Solving problems effectively sure requires a strategic approach but not necessarily a complex move. Business executives more often neglect the place of simplicity in choosing and executing strategy in their business. They look too far and high for solutions they could have got as close as their pockets. They are simply not maximizing Common Sense--"Executive Intelligence".

The term "Executive Intelligence" is no special concept but Common Sense.

Over and over again simple business strategy/Solutions have proven to be the best and deliver optimum results, while the most intricate ones bring little or no result.

In the words of Napoleon Bonaparte "The art of war does not require complicated maneuvers; the simplest are the best, and common sense is fundamental. From which one might wonder how it is generals make blunders; it is because they try to be clever".

Neglecting the place of simplicity in designing corporate strategy has resulted in lack of sustainability in business performance, thereby forcing organisations to unnecessarily change strategies too often. The consequences among others include sheer waste of resources and time.

Business organisations can create a culture that promotes "Executive Intelligence" by installing management practices that encourage individual initiatives and experimentation. This will not only create room for executives to help organisations solve its most daunting business challenges effectively but also position it for a continued evolutionary progress.