Many Small and Medium businesses (SMB's) struggle for a piece of the action in very competitive markets. They find it difficult to spend great amounts of money on advertising, yet fear being left behind if they don't. Public Relations can be a cheap or even free alternative to regular marketing and advertising efforts, sometimes producing even better results (since news items are considered more trustworthy than advertising).
Below I list some ideas to help you run creative Public Relations campaigns. Better get those phone lines ready - your business is about to get some attention!
Clearly the following ideas must be adapted to your type of business, your strategy, your clients, and the available media and journalists, but they should provide you with a general direction you may follow:
1. Turn a part of your business into a unique community meeting place:
* Getting people to come to your business is obviously the first step on the road to making them your costumers. If your business is off the beaten track, or if there's a lot of competition in the area, you can start getting people to visit your business by providing them with a special meeting place.
* You need to choose a theme for the meeting place which fulfills the following criteria:
o Provides an interesting activity to members of your community (such as a mini-museum, a lecture, some fun game).
o Is more likely to be a "Hot" news item - something that has never been done before in that area, and that deals with an issue of concern to the majority of the community.
o Is related to your business service, strategy and reputation as much as possible (if you are selling natural food additives, for example, a meeting place related to environmental perservation).
* Organizing all this does not necessarily require high costs. You may find ways to keep this cost very low, for instance by:
o Offering young performers and professionals a place they can gain experience and recognition, without having to pay them much (these could be aspiring artists, comedians, hairdressers, etc).
o Invite and convince volunteers to help you with the project. This should not be too difficult if you link this meeting place with some good-will or charity activity - such as preparing gifts for kids at the local hospital, etc.
2. Try to break a record or hold a special competition:
* If your place is a diner, for example, organize an event in which people will attempt to break a Guinness World record in eating a certain food. If you are a carpenter, try to set a record yourself for making a chair in the shortest possible time, and invite customers and their families to bet on the result.
* Organize competitions for special groups of people, that are likely to make it to the news, such as:
o Competitions for unique and "interesting-news-items" groups of people (children, homeless people, disabled people)
o Provocative competitions - do this only if this is what you wish your business image to be - provocative!
o "Man against Machine" type competitions - against the computer, a vehicle, a robot (all should be related to your business).
Amir Elion is a management and innovation consultant and facilitator. His Practical Creativity website on
http://www.best100ideas.com includes numerous creativity and innovation tools. The ideas on this article as well as other creative ideas in many fields and creativity tools, may be found on the free monthly Creative Ideas newsletter:
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