| |
| |
|
PR Information |
|
|
|
Publicity: A Financial Planners Best Marketing Friend
There's an old African proverb: "If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a closed room with a mosquito." There's a message here for financial planners who want to get free publicity exposure, and use it as a smart marketing tool to grow their practice. Actually, two messages: --You don't need to be a big name to get big-time, business-building publicity. --Publicity is a powerful and well-suited way tool for financial planners to get their story out. In fact publicity, being essentially free, often packs far more punch dollar for dollar than advertising or direct mail for smaller businesses. It raises visibility, enhances credibility, and provides the best shot, for the buck, at lifting a business to the next level of growth. In the competitive marketplace, publicity is the great equalizer. You win - and beat out bigger rivals for free media space - by being smarter, not by spending more. Smaller companies outscore giants in free media coverage every day -- simply by being more resourceful, effective, and proactive in publicity. With advertising or direct mail, the only way to get more exposure is to spend more. There's another crucial advantage to publicity. Those advertising dollars - and it's great if you have them - buy you visibility. But publicity earns you credibility¬ - if professional journalists have selected your story to present to their audience, most people believe, your product or service must be good. Smart businesspeople use that publicity to gain more recognition, credibility, and market share. It opens doors to new business, new financing, new markets - to any audience that responds favorably, as most people and institutions do, to favorable media coverage. How do publicity-successful financial planners do it? They just learn how to give media people what they need to create great stories. In publicity the coin of the realm - the ticket to success -- is good ideas and creativity, not dollars. Any company, regardless of size, can get significant media attention. Financial planners are full of information that clients need and pay for: How to negotiate taxes and handle finances. How to protect assets. How to start and run a business. The media never stop running stories on these topics - and all those articles quote experts like you! Look closely at the pages of the major business and personal finance press: sprinkled heavily in there, along with representatives of the industry giants, are scads of quotes from solo and small firm financial planners. Why not you? Cumulatively, this publicity is a powerful business-building tool. And it's there for the getting. It just takes a little work in mastering the knack of how to press the right buttons that get the media paying attention. Fortunately, media savvy is like any other resource. It can be bought or rented (by hiring a staffer or retaining an agency); it can be taught, learned, and developed internally. Any of these routes is far cheaper than advertising. For the financial planner, publicity is a lot like that stone David slapped into his slingshot when he took on Goliath. Affordable. Accessible. And, when aimed properly, way more effective than more expensive tools. Ned Steele works with people in professional services who want to build their practice and accelerate their growth. The president of Ned Steele's MediaImpact, he is the author of 102 Publicity Tips To Grow a Business or Practice. To learn more visit http://www.MediaImpact.biz or call 212-243-8383.
MORE RESOURCES:
PR - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Public Relations Productivity Should it be measured in "publicity by the pound," or by how well external audience behaviors help achieve the organization's key objectives?I opt for holding public relations responsible, first, for recognizing that people act on their perception of the facts leading to behaviors about which something can be done. And second, for how well its practitioners create, change or reinforce that opinion by reaching, persuading and moving-to-desired-action those people whose behaviors affect the organization. Best Approach For Free Advertisement Product/service publicity is the superhighway to business success everyone dreams. Then imagine having your product/service written on newspapers, trade publications, aired on radio and viewed on television absolutely for free!!! That's going to skyrocket your profit target only if you know how to use the best method of getting free publicity. PR: Behavior Modification Specialist While awaiting economic recovery, business needs to attract the attention of its most important external audiences in a more targeted and focused way. Primarily to impact the perceptions of those key outsiders so that resulting behaviors help those managers achieve their objectives. How To Get Zero Cost Publicity For Your Business Part 1 Would you like to expand the volume of your business? You can let thousands know about your service, your store, or your new product without spending a penny. Whether you want to make more sales or get an offer on television, you can broaden the scope of your clients by free publicity. How to Get Some of Paris Hilton's TV Time When your book is mentioned on television, sales go up. Immediately people start looking in book stores and on the internet to find out how to buy it. Inoculate Yourself Against Bad PR What is bad PR?Well, if you're a business, non-profit or association manager, bad PR does nothing positive about the behaviors of those important outside audiences of yours that most affect your operation.It fails to create external stakeholder behavior change leading directly to achieving your managerial objectives. Right PR Empowers a Manager Business, non-profit and association managers are in a stronger position to succeed when they use their public relations resources in a way that alters individual perception leading to changed external stakeholder behavior.A mouthful, but true. Grandma Says... Southern grandmothers have often said, "there are only three times a respectable person's name should be in the paper: when you are born, when you are married, and when you die." This is the one area in which I part company with my grandmothers. PR: Am I Getting a Good Deal? You are getting a good deal when you accept the fact that the right PR really CAN alter individual perception and lead to the changed behaviors you need.Especially when you recognize that people really DO act upon their perceptions of the facts they hear about your operations, and about you as a manager. PR Buyers Beware! It can bite you and waste your public relations budget when the program emphasizes communications tactics instead of how to make certain your key outside audiences understand who and what you are.Especially sad when tactics are placed in motion before you really know how your key target audience views your organization, and exactly at whom those tactics should be directed. Writing a Press Release: The Medias Dirty Secret There's a dirty little secret about press releases that the media doesn't want you to know. The fact is, most of them travel directly from the sender's computer to the reporter's trash box. 10 Ways to Get the Media to Love You So you've put yourself "out there" with a public relations campaign. Your dealings with the media now become critical. Effective Media Relations Tips- What To Do After The Media Interviews You! Effective Media Relations Tips - What To Do After The Media Interviews You! By Thomas Murrell MBA CSP, International Business Speaker You've done all the hard work - prepared a media kit, engaged with a reporter and they've listened to your message and asked questions.What now?Well, effective media relations doesn't just stop once you have been interviewed. Put Yourself in the Reporters Shoes Imagine you're the technology reporter at a daily newspaper. You learn that a new computer virus is making the rounds on the Net and you find that it has shut down three local banks within the past few hours. Mastering the Media What do Monica Lewinsky, Shoshanna Lowenstein, and even Richard Hatch have in common? Media exposure. They were ordinary people who became household names. PR? Why? Well, for starters, because good public relations can alter individual perception and lead to changed behaviors among your key outside audiences. And that can help business, non-profit and association managers like you achieve your managerial objectives. Business Gifts for Your Clients and Employees Tis' the season for business and corporate gift-giving! If you believe in the law of reciprocity, and if your business is the least bit successful you must; you know that giving back is not only the right thing to do, but it's very smart business as well. Let's look at some of the benefits and mechanics of Christmas and holiday gift-giving. How to Use Community Relations to Grow Your Business Community relations is one of those marketing strategies that isn't talked about much, even though I venture to say practically everyone ends up doing it at one time or another. Basically, community relations is when you and your business become involved in your community. Media Relations: When Google Got Googled Before meeting my soon-to-be-wife for the first time, I "Googled" her. Google, with its amazing alacrity, turned up several documents in less than a second. Talk Back Radio - Tips To Be A Star On-Air! Talkback radio offers a fantastic opportunity to access thousands of people instantly and relay your or your company's messages. An interview opportunity is highly sought after in today's business and to learn ways of working effectively with the media invaluable to any business.
|
| home | site map |
| © 2006 |
