Category Archive
The following is a list of all entries from the Marketing Messaging category.
Writing Press Releases to Promote Your Small Business
Getting started marketing your small to medium-sized business can quickly become overwhelming. Whether you are an entrepreneur or business principal, or an internal marketing manager, there are many tactical approaches to consider. Recognize that the discipline of marketing is broad and deep, and best practices can vary based on your vertical market, and whether you sell B2B (a business that sells to other businesses, who in turn sell to another end-user) or B2C (a business selling directly to consumers). After 20+ years as a marketing professional, I do recommend a couple of smart marketing basics, one of which is Public Relations and writing press releases to promote your successes and accomplishments.
Writing press releases to promote each of your business successes is a easy, actionable strategy that can fits any marketing budget. What results can you expect you ask? Issuing press releases regularly helps to keep your company top of mind with prospective customers; it builds awareness for what you do, and the value you provide; and it is a “smart marketing play” that can get your company known.
The press release has also evolved, from a simple news announcement sent only to journalists and media outlets, into a powerful marketing tool for organizations of all sizes. With the Internet and social media venues as prominent communication vehicles for both business and consumer audiences, readers can come across your news in several places, and can take multiple actions after viewing your announcement. For example:
- Press releases can be indexed by Yahoo and Google, and shown in search engine results.
- Press releases can be posted to your company website and optimized with your keyword phrases to improve your search rankings.
- Press releases can be re-tweeted by readers to their followers on Twitter, who share the same interests.
- Press releases can be used by your sales teams as conversation starters on cold calls.
- Press releases can be pushed out to mobile phones, through RSS feeds, and redistributed to news syndication and aggregator sites.
- Check out our marketing templates downloads page
- Access our Press Release Tutor interactive templates, and
- Subscribe to the Smart Marketing Basics blog for continual marketing tips and help.
Crafting the Perfect Company Boilerplate Description for Your Press Releases
Small business marketers often struggle to find the perfect words to describe their organization, mostly because they lack a proven recipe for putting one together. Even the best product strategists tend to focus on developing a ‘catchy tagline’ or ‘pithy elevator pitch’ as their approach. However, this strategy often times falls short because you wind up with a meaningless phrase, instead of a clear, concise and compelling description of the specific value your company provides, and to whom.
Using press releases to market your business is a smart marketing basic for any small business, and the key to writing effective press releases is to start with a solid message. Your company boilerplate plays a key role in your message, and should always be the last paragraph of any press release you create. By including your company boilerplate in every press release you issue, you ensure that you are communicating a clear, concise and compelling message about your organization.
To create a company boilerplate description, small business marketers need to ask themselves a few basic questions to identify who they are, what type of company are do they have, and what type of solutions to they provide and to whom. The answers to these questions provide the inputs into creating a concise, compelling story about your firm.
TEMPLATE: Drafting up a company boilerpatle description does not have to be a daunting activity. Below is a quick and easy template to follow. Take a few minutes to think about how you would complete each field in brackets […], as it would apply to your small business:
[Company name] is [company type] specializing in [keyword phrase] for [target industry or customer]. Rather than using [alternative product/service], [Company name] enables [specific role, or end user] to [specific user benefit] without [a negative repercussion, such as adding staff, incurring extra costs]. Since [year founded], [Company name] has helped more than [total number of customers] successfully [key business value]. To learn more, please visit: [company website].
INGREDIENTS: A good boilerplate description features these key ingredients:
[company type] – what type of company are you, a technology provider, a law firm, a non-profit, etc.
[keyword phrase] – how might people search on Google for your type of company? What common terms would they use ( i.e. accounting software, family legal services, food banks).
[target industry or customer group] – who will benefit from your service, for example, law firms, or the construction companies.
[specific role/end user] – specific staff titles or roles within an organization that will use your product or service, such as an attorney or paralegal, a operations manager.
[negative repercussion] – a common objection or misperception a prospective customer might have about your offering, such as it is too hard to learn something new, or too costly.
[key business value] – what problem do you solve, or value do you provide? Think of a short phrase that starts with a verb, such as ‘reduce costs in managing legal documents’, etc.
EXAMPLE: Imagine a fictitious technology solutions company, named Dander-Mufflin that provides software to the legal industry. Their products help law firms to manage and track the thousands of legal documents for each of its clients. They have been around since 2000, and have a proven track record of clients. Using the template above, their company boilerplate would look something like this:
Dander-Mufflin is a technology solutions provider specializing in document management software for law firms and corporate legal departments. Rather than using manual, paper-based filing systems, Dander-Mufflin enables attorneys and paralegals to quickly categorize and locate legal documents without increasing client billing costs or adding administrative headcount. Since 2000, Dander-Mufflin has helped more than 50 legal firms successfully reduce document storage costs by 50%. To learn more, please visit: http://www.dander-mufflin.com.
Try following this template to create your own boilerplate, and feel free to comment on how it worked for you in our comments section. Remember, having a clear and concise description trumps a fancy slogan anytime! It’s more important that your reader take away from your press release a clear understanding of who you are and what you do.
MORE TIPS & TEMPLATES:
For more templates and tips on creating professional press releases, check out the Press Release Primer – a small business guide to writing professional press releases. This 23-page guide details how to build your own release, describes how to create your company boilerplate description, and provides 3 different press release templates for announcing: 1) a new product or service; 2) a new customer win; and 3) an award or special recognition.
Five Fast Tips for Writing Press Releases
In today’s world of fast, instant communication, the effective writing of press releases seems to becoming a lost art! The new communication tools found in social media tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, certainly encourage more sharing of information, but they don’t necessarily encourage thoughtful message strategy before your start writing your latest tweet or post.
Whenever I work with small businesses, they easily acknowledge that they should be using press releases to market their small business (see my previous post on this topic), but it is hard for them to get started. Without an easy-to-follow blueprint or press release template, as well as simple inertia, and then competing demands of running their business, small business marketers can find it hard to make fast progress.
Here are 5 fast and easy tips for any business manager or entrepreneur that is trying to get started:
1) Templates: Don’t reinvent the wheel, or try to become a PR expert overnight. The trick is to find some basic templates that will walk you step-by-step through the press release writing process. If a small business marketer can get 80% of the way there in drafting a release, they will be successful. There are lots of free and low-cost templates, both available that can help any marketer get started. Simply do a google search on “sample press release” or “press release templates” and lots of resources will come up.
2) Newsy, Meaty Headlines: Be sure you feature the news of your announcement in your headline. Your headline must identify with the reader fast, and provide a “so what” factor, or explain why this is news. Your headline should be short and sweet, and convince the reader to continue on.
3) Sticky Introduction: Make sure your 1st paragraph is a short, to the point summary of your news, in 50 words or less. Your first paragraph should succinctly state exactly what you are announcing (don’t pussy-foot around, or you will lose readers’ interest). Follow it up with who should care about this (your target audience) and why should they care (your value proposition), and how this will improve your readers’ lives (the business problem that you are solving for them).
4) Call to Action: Rather than try to tell the entire story, your press release should provide just enough information to get the reader interested, and then offer a “next step”. This is called the call-to-action. You should feature the call to action early on in the release, and later on as a wrap up. Remember, tell your readers what they should do next. For example, “ACME Corporation announces a new version of its Office Manager software that helps office managers and payroll specialists to track and manage time cards online, saving them time over paper-based payroll time cards. Sign up for our free demonstration webinar by going to […insert your URL here..].”
5) Customer or Industry Quotes: Give your news credibility by including customer quotes or thoughts from an industry analyst. Readers shouldn’t just take your word for it, so back up your value statements and claims by getting a customer to comment on how appealing your product or service is, or by getting a subject matter expert from your industry to validate that the problem you are solving is an important one.
These are just a few tips to help you get started writing press releases. More free small business marketing insights are available in our educational Smart Marketing Playbook article series at SMBmarketer.com.
BTW, SMBmarketer.com offers the Press Release Tutor templates, which provide an interactive method that asks basic questions about your business, then takes your answers, and turns them into professional releases instantly. You define your company messaging, and the Press Release Tutor walks you through how to create a press release in 5 easy steps. You can check it out at SMBmarketer.com.
Writing Press Releases to Market Your Small Business
Throughout my career as a technology marketing professional, I have spent a lot of time counseling small businesses on effective marketing, and helping them to justify investments in marketing. Often times, they have tried a tactic or two, without understanding what their overall strategy should be, or how different types of campaigns are designed to bring different types of results.
As a small business owner or marketer, it is key to invest in marketing to promote your product or service. This does not have to be an overwhelming or costly endeavor, and there are many smart marketing plays that are proven for small business. You can start by downloading our free “Smart Marketing Playbook” article, Using Press Releases to Promote Your Small Business.
Writing press releases to promote each of your business successes is a easy, actionable strategy that can fits any marketing budget. What results can you expect you ask? Issuing press releases regularly helps to keep your company top of mind with prospective customers; it builds awareness for what you do, and the value you provide; and it is a “smart marketing play” that can get your company known.
The press release has also evolved, from a simple news announcement sent only to journalists and media outlets, into a powerful marketing tool for organizations of all sizes. With the Internet and social media venues as prominent communication vehicles for both business and consumer audiences, readers can come across your news in several places, and can take multiple actions after viewing your announcement. For example:
- Press releases can be indexed by Yahoo and Google, and shown in search engine results.
- Press releases can be posted to your company website and optimized with your keyword phrases to improve your search rankings.
- Press releases can be re-tweeted by readers to their followers on Twitter, who share the same interests.
- Press releases can be used by your sales teams as conversation starters on cold calls.
- Press releases can be pushed out to mobile phones, through RSS feeds, and redistributed to news syndication and aggregator sites.
- Check out our marketing templates downloads page
- Access our Press Release Tutor interactive templates, and
- Subscribe to the Smart Marketing Basics blog for continual marketing tips and help.
My Favorite Marketing “Tweets” for Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners
It is not hard to argue the importance of marketing to the success of any business. For entrepreneurs and small business marketers, the challenge seems to lie in simply getting started. The discipline of marketing is vast, encompassing many practice areas where most marketing professionals focus on mastering only a few specific skill areas.
After spending 20+ years in the marketing arena, my experience has shown that startups and small businesses need actionable, easy ways to get started marketing, and they need to do it fast. They can’t usually afford in the beginning to invest in a lot of staff, agencies or consultants, and so having some easy templates and strategies to get them going is key. If the initial steps seem too complicated, they simply won’t do it. Think easy, actionable tips – or in this case, tweetable tips!
If you subscribe to my blog, Smart Marketing Basics, or follow me on Twitter @SMB_marketer, you can see that I write on this topic often. Below I feature some of my favorite ‘tweets’ that highlight two “must do” marketing tips for small businesses simply trying to get started with marketing:
1) Use PR to promote Your Business
This is easier than most people think, and is a low cost of entry investment. Even if you are not doing a big PR blitz around a new product launch, creating press releases give you a sales tool for cold calling, helps with drive better search results to your website, and gives you content you can email to prospect lists. You should regularly write press releases on what your business is up to. One idea is to seek out local business and industry events where you can speak on a topic related to your business. Here are some of my favorite tweets on this topic:
Small Business Marketing Should Include Speaking at Events: http://t.co/rGtjxjJ
Tips for small business on how to write winning press releases: http://t.co/3bsxyoj
2) Good Marketing Starts with a Solid Message
Most small companies don’t invest in this activity, and so initial marketing results meet with poor performance because their messages are not clear, concise and compelling to readers. There are cheap, easy templates available from many sites to help get you started (including ours, www.SMBmarketer.com). Here is a favorite tweet on this topic:
Smart Marketing Starts with a Solid Message: http://t.co/ZpyamxZ
I hope these tweeted tips give you the marketing inspiration you need to get going! Don’t get overwhelmed by all the marketing possibilities out there. Rather, focus on doing a couple of things first, and then build from there. Once you are ready to add more to your marketing mix, check out our free article, Ten Marketing Basics for Your Small Business on our website.
Article: Ten Marketing Basics for your Small Business
Email Marketing Best Practices for Your Small Business
As a 20+ year marketing veteran, and founder of the website SMBmarketer.com, (templates and tips to get small businesses marketing fast), I often get requests for email marketing tips on how small businesses owners and marketers can avoid their outbound emails being considered as “spam” by propsects they reach out to.
The two main things I ask them to focus on are: 1) developing and managing a quality list, and 2) creating compelling messages and content that resonates with their list recipients.
List development
It is important to seek out list sources that let you filter against a variety of demographics and job titles, so you can reach someone who is as close to your target customer as possible. Generic lists to an untargeted mass audience will lead to a high number of spam blocking and unsubscribe requests. The more targeted you get, and the better your open rates and click through metrics will be.
Focus on quality contacts, versus quantity. A bigger list isn’t always better. Requiring your targets to “opt-in” to your list, versus you spamming them without permission, will lead to a better email responses. For example, having a form on your website, or including an offer in your outbound emails, that ask them to sign up to receive your content, leads to a better quality list. Additionally, asking your list contacts to re-opt in on a regular basis, say annually, guarantees that you keep your list clean and healthy.
Lastly, be sure to use a legitimate email service provider, whether its Constant Contact, MyEmma, or proven marketing automation vendor, that can provide you with master unsubscribe capabilities – this is a must-do to keeping your email reputation clean!
Content and Message
Another key factor to avoiding high levels of unsubscribes, is to be sure you provide relevant and compelling content to your email recipients. This does not have to be an expensive or daunting undertaking. At SMBmarketer.com, we advocate marketing your thought leadership by developing case studies, customer win announcements, and providing other business insights, such as a top ten list of tips around a certain topic (these could focus on the basic services that your company offers).
For example, if you are a small business providing accounting services, you could create a “top ten list for year-end tax planning” email message and provide relevant action items, and a call-to-action to get more insight through a free consultation.
Content development seems to be a big obstacle for small businesses to undertaking, but it can easily be done (we offer templates to help with this). All a small business has to do is look at their daily business activities for ideas.
Hope this helps, and I would welcome your comments and insights. For more help on creating compelling messages for email marketing, check out our low cost templates available for download by going to:
New PR Tools Are Effective for Small Business Marketers
It’s easy to understand why small business marketers can feel overwhelmed when it comes to marketing their firm. A lack of marketing knowledge, time and budget can all be valid reasons. However, the value of marketing and specifically public relations has been proven over and over again. The good news is that there are now more options tailored to small businesses that want to start marketing their companies, without investing a lot of time and money up front.
Here is a great article, published on OPEN Forum, that talks about two public relations platforms that are both affordable and easily accessible to small businesses. the article by Alexander Hotz talks about two websites, HARO, which stands for Help A Reporter Out, and NewsBasis. Check out the full article at: http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/managing/article/are-press-platforms-worth-it-for-small-businesses-alexander-hotz?cid=em-smartbrief. I subscribe to HARO, which provides daily emails of reporters requests for topics and experts interviews. It’s pretty easy to scan through the requests and identify a relevant topic that you can reply to. Check them out, and feel free to provide comments with your experiences or tips.
Engaging in public relations for your small business does not have to be a huge endeavor. With some helpful marketing templates and tips, you can quickly get on your way to issuing press releases regularly about your small business. It’s important to create a simple calendar, or list of news you would like to publish and also to commit to a target, or a number of announcements to issue each quarter. For example, start out by targeting two announcement per quarter, and then work your way up to 1-2 per month.
Remember, having fresh and relevant content on your website is a key search engine optimization strategy. Additionally, if you published your releases over the wire, or on news directories, your website will also benefit from the inbound links that are created. You can also optimize your press releases for search by including keyword phrases that are relevant to your business, as links within the body/text of your press release. For more marketing tips on how to use press releases to market your small business, check out our free article downloads at: http://www.smbmarketer.com/featured-articles/
A good public relations strategy begins with a solid message. See my previous blog post on this subject, https://smartmarketingbasics.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/smart-marketing-starts-with-a-solid-message/.
At SMBmarketer.com, our mission is to provide easy, actionable tools and marketing advice to help get you started. For a minimal investment, you can get some fast tips on creating a basic marketing plan, as well as templates to help you create your message and content. The Press Release Tutor is our featured template – this interactive tool that takes your answers to basic questions about your business, and turns them into a professionally written press release. With the Press Release Tutor, small business marketers can create a press release in five easy steps:
1) Select an announcement template (new product, event, promotion, etc).
2) Develop your company message using our questionnaire.
3) Create a boilerplate description.
4) Complete and edit your template.
5) Preview your draft and download your press release.
You can learn more about our templates by going to: http://www.smbmarketer.com/
Small business marketers can create professionally releases in five easy steps
Smart Marketing Basics 