Here’s the problem with promoting your company or product using social media: the audiences are too small.
Clients skin us alive if we book them on a Sunday morning public affairs program. A puny audience of 5,000 makes them see red, and likely gets us fired. Today, marketers fall all over themselves writing posts to movie theater-sized groups.
The sooner you realize the limitations of social media marketing, the faster you will find your way back to the land of Mass Marketing.
The bigger the audience, the better. And the biggest audiences are found in the media. Not only are they big, they are cheap to reach. By contrast, host a gathering for 100,000 and see how much that costs. Publicity is cheap, effective mass marketing: four of the sweetest words a marketer will ever hear.
In a nutshell, most companies have only three of the big four promotional mix channels covered; they have a sales staff, ads and a website. But publicity? It’s non-existent.
Not everyone is missing the boat. Yesterday one prospect bought eight stories. He sells in just one market and thought two stories per quarter would fit his needs. Another prospect bought five for a little test project. He’s the CEO of a large national company and will probably end up buying hundreds. We also got in a contract for 50 stories from another national client who wants them within a nine-month window.
Some businesses aggressively hunt media coverage, some sit and wait for reporters to show up. Guess which strategy works?
We charge a flat fee for the stories we arrange and we’ve bird-dogged tens-of-thousands of them.
Heather Champine (952-697-5269) heads up our team of publicists. She can quickly assess how much media coverage is available and how long it will take to get it. Don’t be fooled when she tells you how simple our rates are. Behind the scenes, we are a sophisticated PR firm. Give her a call. Fifteen minutes later you will be a lot smarter about using publicity to increase sales.
