September 14th, 2011
by Jennie Jacobs
Recently I had the chance to watch my colleague at WMT (wild web woman Lorrie Thomas Ross) speak at a local event for business executives on the topic of traditional and new marketing rules for increasing money and your business success. Specifically the talk was titled “Double Your Money Marketing with Traditional & New Rules for Success!” and the concept was pairing a traditional PR firm with our “new rules” web PR approach for a panel discussion on the topic.
Lorrie stole the spotlight with her ability to relate to what people need and by really making the audience feel empowered to help themselves lasso the wild web and all of it’s marketing offerings.
Here are few things from the discussion, both from traditional PR to the new school web marketing, which I found useful and interesting:
Marketing is about maximizing relationships: The ideas are the same for both traditional PR and web marketing strategies; you want to connect with an audience whether it is writing the perfect press release to get you noticed in print or sharing your expertise on a blog.
List all of your media channels and do your research: Just like anything you do for your business you want to know and understand what your options are. Make a list of all of the media channels available to you (radio, tv, magazines, newspapers, web) and do your research on them. Understanding how you can maximize these channels will give you and your marketing an upper hand.
Something to always keep in mind: Publicity is free and advertising is paid. Getting on the front page of the paper can’t be bought people!
Utilize the freebies: Marketing can be tricky but don’t underestimate the power of educating yourself. Find free sources to learn the tricks; just because you don’t have a huge PR budget doesn’t mean you can’t do it! Great sources for press release writing and other free marketing tools can be readily found on the web. Here are few examples that were brought up in the discussion:
- Web Marketing Therapy’s PJ PR-How to Generate and Distribute Your Own Powerful Press Releases WMT offers a great selection of free E-books to get you going.
- PR Web is a great source for learning how to write and distribute a press release. See their Press Release Writing Fundamentals and get writing!
- Google Places: get your business on Google for no charge. Simply follow the steps and wait for you confirmation postcard. Free!
Marketing Multitask: Put your traditional PR press releases to work and repurpose them in a blog post. Highlight your organizations spotlight in the media by housing a press page on your website. Co-mingle the traditional PR work with your web marketing arsenal and you have got yourself a powerful partnership.
So the moral of today’s post: don’t limit yourself in your marketing strategies. Traditional PR and web marketing strategies go hand in hand. The same concept of maximizing relationships applies across whatever method you choose. Utilize both schools of marketing and multitask your way to greater visibility and credibility for your organization.
