The Value of Publicity

To compete with big companies today, small businesses should target market niches.  The challenge of competing with large companies who have broad product lines, leverage with the big box stores to get shelf space, and economies of scale is too great to compete on price.  The most effective competitive marketing tool is product publicity.  Product news…

We Need Faster Horses.  In marketing today, everything seems to revolve around “Search.”  There is a huge implicit assumption, however.  And that assumption is:  your prospective customer knows what they need and are looking for.

When you have an opportunity to learn directly from prospective customers what they think about your products, I recommend that you listen and pay attention to them.  Using product publicity for market research will allow you to get feedback from potential customers about your products. What follows is a true story.

According to Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah in their landmark book, “Inbound Marketing Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs”, Google Ranking in search is based on two things: relevance and authority. 

He just started his business and arranged to get himself on the agenda as a speaker at a major electronics industry trade show in Texas.  Naturally the exposure at the show was helpful and even generated purchase orders.

Inspiration occurs in many ways.  For me, there was an article in “Advertising Age Magazine” entitled, “What Product PR can do for you in today’s advertising world.”

“Content is King,” is more than a cliché.  The one thing about content that hasn’t changed since Gutenberg and the first printing press is that content is “news and information” which is “of interest” to a readership or audience.

I’m reading another book about attracting and engaging more customers by integrating SEO, social media and content marketing.  The book is entitled, “Optimize,” by Lee Odden.  Early in the book he writes, “To meet brand needs to engage customer

For over 36 years I’ve been telling owners of machine shops and similar service businesses to think in terms of “what your customer receives from you on his loading dock.”  In other words, don’t promote your service, promote what you deliver. 

The more books and articles I read about B2B Marketing in the internet age, the clearer it becomes that product publicity is key when it comes to branding.  In the book, “Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing, Lee Odden writes about B2B content marketing optimization. 

According to Wikipedia, “content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation and sharing of content in order to attract, acquire and engage clearly defined and understood current and potential consumer bases with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

You’ve all heard that old expression that the three most important factors in real estate are: location, location, location.  Do you know the answer to this question: What are the three most important factors affecting industrial and technical B2B marketing? 

Sales and Marketing Management magazine’s cover story for the May/June 2012 issue was, “B2B Marketing in the age of social media.”  I am very proud to have been a part of this issue.

Product news releases have always been the most powerful marketing tool.  Today, however, they are even more powerful because, in addition to editors and web hosts telling your story for you, the internet lets you tell your story directly to potential customers