As a PR professional I am well used to putting my clients’ first, promoting their products and services, creating content and media opportunities. Yet when it comes to marketing my own business, I am sadly lacking. Just recently, it occurred to me that I have been running my business for almost 15 years and during this time I have done pretty much nothing to actively promote my company, my products and my services. Astonishing isn’t it!
Other than plain old good luck, I put Bay PR’s success and longevity down to two things – 1. Referrals and 2. Retaining clients for long periods. The reason I have retained clients I guess is my commitment to doing a good job and being hard working. I genuinely like happy clients because it makes me feel happy and appreciated – which essentially is all anybody really wants. Plus I love PR and am very passionate about it!
In spite of retaining clients and achieving good results, as a service provider, I am always going to be subject to changes taking place in my clients’ companies - take-overs, new teams, competition from other agencies, budget cuts and the like.
Which is why I have decided to finally allocate some time into marketing and promoting Bay PR. The thing is, after years of being dedicated to marketing my clients, I’m not actually sure where to start!
I have spent some time researching all the possible ways I can market my business to other businesses and all of the options are both exciting and a little overwhelming. Do I invest money in SEO or is this a waste? Should I do a Google Ad Words campaign? Will networking help? What about blogging, vlogging, Facebook ads? There are so many options out there!
Bay PR turns 15 next month and so to celebrate this exciting milestone, I thought it would be fun to try out 15 marketing tactics on a shoestring and document them – the trials, the tribulations, the learnings and outcomes along the way.
I have decided to try out as many things as I can and to share it with you, my business network. I am hoping to receive your tips, help, feedback, thoughts and guidance as I take the first steps towards building an effective marketing campaign for my business.
Just as with a PR campaign, I have started by putting a marketing plan in place and I have outlined my goals and objectives. There’s no point in setting out to sail without some sort of idea of where I’m going and what I want to get out of the journey.
I am interested to see if any of my chosen tactics will help me achieve the following objectives by the end of this year:
1. Gain two retainer clients
2. Establish a second-tier service for start-ups and small businesses requiring PR services to help
them grow
I have kept these objectives simple for the purposes of the experiment. It will be interesting to see which, if any, of the following tactics deliver on these objectives!
The tactics I have decided to trial in my marketing experiment are based are as follows:
1. LinkedIn
2. SEO
3. Blogging
4. EDMs
5. Instagram
6. Online quiz
7. Free stuff
8. Facebook advertising and content
9. Cold calling/emailing
10. Networking
11. Video - gulp
12. Exploring Twitter
13. Podcasts
14. Hosting an event
15. PR for the PR
I look forward to receiving your feedback, comments and advice as I start my experiment!