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Interviews |
Interviews are another good way to garner publicity. To obtain an interview, send a short
note to the relevant outlet presenting yourself as a potentially interesting interviewee.
Suggest a topic that you can discuss, and provide your contact information. Don’t
ever request interviews from major media; you’re not going to get them. Local weeklies
might be a bit better, but with fan sites and niche Web communities, you can definitely
get away with a direct suggestion to be interviewed. Sometimes you can even
write your own interview of 8 to 10 questions on a topic, and send it to very small,
individually run sites, and they’ll run it as is. |
| Letters to the Editor |
You may be able to gain publicity by writing letters to the editor. If you see any story
that you can comment on after the fact with your expertise as a storeowner, then sit
down and write a short letter, including your name and link in the signature. Here is an
example:
Dear Editor,
Your recent story on great ideas for home decorating failed to mention the
importance of good lighting. I have found more often than not that a few
improvements in lighting, which many people can easily afford, will improve the
look of a room profoundly. People looking for more information on lighting a
room can find some great resources at LightingMagazine.com, a free resource
on the Web.
Gordon Summers
LightWorks.com
Letters to the editor will be hit-or-miss, especially given that your “letters” will be
thinly veiled commercials. However, for a few minutes of work, you might just land a
published letter |
| Radio |
As with print media, you can pitch yourself to radio shows for interviews. The trick is to
spend the time finding radio shows that might be interested in you. Major radio shows
probably won’t be, but there are hundreds of community and college radio stations with
shows on a wide range of topics. Most of them run at odd hours and on weekends,
outside of prime time and drive time. If you can email the host or the producer, you might be able to snag an interview.
Pitch them an interesting topic, such as hot sellers or advice to people shopping for the wares you sell. Sometimes these are call-in shows, and the radio station will love
it if you can provide a product or two to give away to listeners. Listenership for these
programs is usually small, but it’s still great publicity. Sometimes, if you ask, the radio
station will even send you an .MP3 of your interview that you can post on your site for
people to listen to.
Here are a few tips for doing radio interviews:
- Never do an interview via cell phone or cordless phone. You can’t risk losing the
connection, static, or cross-interference with another call. Use a landline, regular
phone.
- Stand up when you do the interview. You’ll have more energy and better vocals.
- Keep your answers short. Give the host time to ask more questions.
- Stay on the line until you’re absolutely sure the host has switched you off.
- Lock the kids, pets, and other noise outside of the room!
- Don’t be too commercial. Good hosts will set you up with questions to promote
your site, such as “Tell us about your Web site,” and they’ll pitch your store’s URL
for you. If they haven’t, just work in something simple with the URL toward the
end, such as “Thanks for having me on. People can find me on the Web at…”
- If you have call-waiting, call the station yourself; don’t have them call you.
Deactivate call-waiting by hitting *70 before dialing the station’s number.
- Lots of stations would rather have you in-studio. If the station is close by, offer to
do the interview in person. You can usually get more airtime this way, too.
- Check in the day before to make sure it’s all still a go. Be ready up to 20 minutes
ahead of time.
- Spend a few minutes afterwards critiquing yourself. Think about how you could
have answered the questions more quickly and better, and file it all away for next
time.
- When you’re through, immediately sit down and write a thank-you note to the
host and/or producer
|
| Etiquette |
Obtaining publicity requires a certain level of etiquette, some of which we’ve already
covered, but it’s important to offer a few more pieces of advice:
- Don’t constantly send the same press release to the same reporter or Web site.
- Make sure that press contacts have an easy way to remove themselves from
your distribution list.
- Don’t ask a reporter to see a story before it is printed.
- Never assume you’re going to be quoted; focus first on helping the reporter.
- If corrections are needed, send a note to the reporter first (not the editor), and be
courteous.
Non-Media Publicity Tricks
Aside from pursuing search engines, links, and mass media, there is a final category of
publicity moves that you can make. The following are tricks more than anything, but are
well worth putting into your traffic-building arsenal. |
| Mailing Lists |
| One of the most important publicity initiatives you can undertake is the building of your
own mailing list. There are two types of mailing lists. The first is an email distribution
list. This allows you to email all the people who have previously given you their email
addresses in order to be informed about special events and the like. The second type
of mailing list is a more robust form that captures all mailing information, both electronic
and otherwise. Although email is certainly cheaper than mailing out letters or postcards,
sometimes receiving a color postcard or a catalog in the mail can have a higher impact
than an email. This means you’ll want to capture both email and mailing address
information. Most of the time, you’ll capture this level of information through orders. You
also could create a contact form on your site that includes this information.It’s also recommended that you put your collected customer data in a program like
ACT! (http://www.act.com), which lets you manage customer records. This allows you
to do things like distinguish customers who’ve ordered before from those who have
just left an email when visiting. With this sort of differential data, you can target emails
to unique groups. Other types of targeting might be to people who’ve ordered several
times (i.e., your most loyal customers) and people who’ve ordered less frequently but in big amounts (i.e., the big spenders). All of this data can be compiled with a little work
and good record keeping. Typically, you will want to conduct mailings about once a month. More frequency than
that should only be done when you’ve got the type of store that features a constant
stream of new products, like a record store or toy store. During run-ups to big events
like Christmas, you might send out mailings with more frequency. |
| eBay and Amazon Leads |
| Depending on what you sell, adding a few products for sale on eBay and Amazon
could potentially bring in new customers who troll those sites looking for products.
You can include your domain as the seller of record, and put your store name into the
descriptions posted with the products. Not only will this result in some sales, but it also
will drive traffic to the larger product listings and selections that are featured on your
official store site. |
| Promoting Your Products |
Much of what has been discussed so far is promoting your store and yourself. For
those of you selling products that you produce yourself, it is equally or more important
to obtain publicity for the products themselves. This can also be important for retailers
who are selling unique products that might be rare, such as imported stationery or
fabrics. The best way to get product-specific publicity is to put together tip sheets on the
products with good-quality photos. A tip sheet should include the suggested retail
price, important basic data on the product, its suggested users and uses, what makes it
unique compared with similar products, and where to buy the product. Product photos
should be very high resolution (3 mega-pixel or better), so that they can be properly
reproduced for magazines and newspapers. Be sure to indicate whether the product
is available only via your store, or if it’s available elsewhere as well; if you’re the official
distributor for the product within a certain region, say so. Send this information in a package, or “press kit,” to various media outlets that cover
new products in the categories you sell. You can also offer to send products for
review purposes to key media if requested. Depending on the cost of the product, you
can even send the entire product in an unsolicited manner. Usually a mix of the two
methods is best. Send the product outright to key outlets and reviewers that you know,
and send just information and a request form for review products to the rest.Product reviews usually require some level of follow-up. A simple email a few weeks
later can sometimes improve your chances of having the reviewers feature your
product. However, not everyone is going to like or want to review the products. Don’t
demand reviews and don’t badger reviewers. Focus on new product announcements
first and then reviews. You sometimes can obtain two news items this way: one
announcing the product’s existence, and a second later on that is an explicit review. |
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