The Marketing Mix | official blog of the Marketing Mentor community

Guest Post: HARO Creates Buzz for Your Business

I've been a fan of PR genius Peter Shankman's Help a Reporter Out mailing list since I first discovered it this spring, talking it up here, in my own newsletter and in countless emails, conversations and presentations. (In fact, one of the highlights of my recent trip to Seattle was getting to meet the man in person—he's everywhere, is Peter, and just as funny, sharp and generous as his thrice-daily messages would lead you to believe.)

I've used it to raise the profile of Crohn's disease a bit, in an article for MSNBC online. Ilise was recently interviewed for a piece on shyness to run in the NY Post in November. And here, Marketing Mentor client Dara Turransky shares her experience, as well as some tips on how to get the most out of a terrific service.

HARO is an excellent resource for creating some buzz for your business. I used HARO recently to find radio interviews for two of my clients. The pitches worked out great. My clients received much needed exposure, and I looked like a hero to them.

The best part about the service is that it's FREE. All you need to do is sign up for the daily inquiries and HARO is sent to you three times a day. HARO reporters are always looking for experts to interview for articles ranging from the latest Halloween trends to best marketing practices.

Keep in mind these simple tips to get the most out of HARO:

• Only answer inquiries that match your business objectives.
• Craft your pitch to match what the reporter is looking for as closely as is humanly possible.
• Don't SPAM any of the reporters with off-topics.
• You can forward inquiries to friends, but don't post them on the Web or on any blog.
• You aren't allowed to harvest the reporters' email addresses in any way. There are severe virtual consequences for anyone who does.
• You don't need to know a great deal of PR to use the list, just be yourself and professional. If you're so inclined to learn a bit more about PR, then I would read Michael Levine's Guerilla PR 2.0. He writes in an easy-to-read format with great tips and lots of examples on how to write a pitch that delivers results. You will also find most of the actionable items in the chapters can be scaled down for a one or two-person shop.

You can sign up for HARO here and join the other 36,000 subscribers on the list. Information on Michael Levine, his book as well as his PR firm is available here.

Dara Turransky is the Founder and Creative Director of 7 Lucky Dogs, a marketing agency for the pet industry. Learn more about her agency by visiting her website or email her at dara AT 7luckydogs DOT com.

Stunt Marketing

Some of you may think that on the hottest day on record in the city of Los Angeles I would choose to stay indoors and avoid the 105 degree sun, especially in the middle of the day. I would have probably done that if it wasn't for a marketing stunt that I was invited to participate in.

My husband sings with the Gay Men’s Chorus. Last week they received an invitation from Universal Pictures to join other choruses from the Los Angeles area to join voices and burst into ABBA songs in a middle of a Dodgers baseball game. Yes, you are reading this right. ABBA and Baseball. Two things you would never put together. But read on, it gets better.

The Chorus didn’t think twice and accepted the invitation. Lucky for me, Chorus members could bring guests to the event so here we were, about 30 guys on a bus to a 1:00 pm Dodgers game.  On the bus we received a lyric sheet for 3 of the songs we were going to sing. You see, this little stunt was to promote and get a street buzz for the upcoming movie Mamma Mia! based on the songs of the Swedish super group ABBA. I do have to make a small confession and let you know that I really didn’t need those lyric sheets. I’ve been an ABBA fan since I was 10 years old and I must have heard these songs thousands of times by now.

When we arrived to Dodgers stadium upon exiting the bus we each were handed a Dodgers blue t-shirt with the Mamma Mia! Logo proudly displayed on the front. We found our seats and joined the other partners in crime. We now waited for our queue to burst into song.

No one in the stadium knew what was going on. This was completely underground and unexpected. When we finally started singing the first song, the theme from Mamma-Mia! Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at us. Soon after, big smiles and dancing in the aisles joined our singing. We sang and danced for 4 more times and every time we got a little louder.

This type of street marketing is becoming more visible these days. Companies realized that the power of a good buzz can get a lot more attention than a print ad or a TV commercial. So they are looking for creative ways to get people to talk. And if you think about it, a marketing stunt like this would be a much cheaper tool to use. If you think about it, this little stunt didn’t cost Universal much money in the big scheme of things. Buy a few hundred baseball game tickets, rent a bus, print some t-shirts and let the word spread out. I am sure this stunt will show up on YouTube sometime around the opening week of the movie and will get thousands of hits. That’s thousands of people who will be exposed to the same stunt and probably forward the video to a person or two. After all, everyone knows at least one ABBA fan.

(and for your viewing pleasure, here is a video clip of us singing):

Should You Sponsor A Sports Team?

I never thought I would sponsor a sports team, but when one of my clients in New Jersey asked me to, I thought, "Why not?" As long as I can go to the game.

I have no idea who will be in the stands watching the game, which parents of these kids have their own business. But seeing the company name on the back of the jersey spreads the word about "Marketing Mentor," expands the brand and who knows, maybe one day we'll have a whole line of Marketing Mentor gear.

Have you ever sponsored a team?

HARO: Help a reporter, help yourself

Speaking of P.R. opportunities, Peter Shankman, one of your cooler P.R. people on the planet (he sky-dives! he runs marathons! he's not a tool!), runs one of your cooler mailing lists around.

It's called "Help a Reporter Out"--or, "HARO", for short--and quite simply, it exists to match journalists with the people they need to help tell their stories. Originally developed as a more efficient way to help out his many reporter friends who were always emailing him for sources, HARO moved from its original home on Facebook when the group (quickly) reached the service's 500-person limit.

Now he's approaching a membership of 10,000 with his free, thrice-daily mailings. They're brief, well-organized and the intros are almost always amusing.

You can sign up for the list here (or, if you're a journalist, you can sign up here). The only rules are that you ONLY reply to stories you are absolutely qualified for. Failure to do so will get you banned, no questions asked.

I've already submitted one item that may run in SELF magazine; even when there's nothing there for me (which is most of the time), I sometimes see something that a friend or colleague may be able to answer, and forward it (along with the warning, of course!)

Too little, too late from Starbucks?

Last week in USA Today I stumbled across an interesting article about Starbucks. Most of us never think about the coffee giant as being in trouble or needing to reinvent themselves but that was the underlying theme at their annual meeting in Seattle this past week.

Starbucks' chief Howard Schults took the Steve Jobs approach in trying to inspire his team to focus on the next big thing. What would that be for Starbucks, you might ask? What would be Starbucks’ version of an iPhone or other bit of marketing genius that would increase foot traffic in their stores?

You may think it’s some kind of a new hybrid, "green" coffee bean—I did, too, for a moment. So imagine my surprise when they announced that they are going back to their roots: grinding fresh coffee in each of the stores, introducing a new coffee called “Pike Street Blend” (named after the location of the first Starbucks store), starting a social networking website and implementing a loyalty card program.

It’s clear to me that Starbucks has woken up and realized that they lost the one thing that people were drawn to in the first place, the one thing that made them a huge international success: connecting people. You see, At Starbucks, it’s not about coffee. It’s about creating and maintaining a community.  And that’s what marketing is all about. Creating connections and building a community.  Giving your customers a place where what they buy connects to their core values.

My fear for Starbucks’ strategy is that it may be a little too late. Networking sites, loyalty cards or fresh ground beans have been around for a while now. For Starbucks to position themselves as an industry leader, with new ideas and exciting fresh approaches, this might come off as desperate and could actually be the beginning of the end. I wish their ideas could wow me like Steve Jobs’ and I wish I liked their coffee enough to want to go into one of their stores.

Post your articles on Biznik

Remember last year, when we introduced you to Biznik, the great new networking web site for independent professionals with the extremely memorable tagline: business networking that doesn't suck?

Well, they've just launched a new section on the site called "Learn," where members can not only read but also post their own articles.

So for anyone with material to recycle (especially the clients I've been nagging about re-using all that great email newsletter content into articles that can get more visibility and therefore increase your search engine rankings), check  out the how-to. or the section itself.

Do you have to blog to have a presence in the blogosphere?

While searching for an article about blogging in the NY Times' (now free!) archives, I came across an equally interesting article about commenting on blogs (free registration required).

The article talks about a number of people who have become famous (well, relatively speaking) not by having their own blogs and initiating conversation, but by joining in the conversation on other people's sites.

It leads with the story of "DaShiv," a part-time wedding photographer who hit the big time (again, relatively speaking) because of prolific and excellent commenting.

It makes sense: some people are better at initiating conversation, while others excel at dissecting--the old artists vs. art critics thing. And critics aren't a bad thing, necessarily--a lot of times, they illuminate points for others of us who are a little behind in the subject.

Plus, often, they are profoundly hilarious/brilliant in their own right: the comments on salon.com articles can be as good or better than the articles themselves.

In short, if you're not blogging, maybe don't worry about it. Getting out there and just commenting is not only a great way to get the lay of the land--it can also be a great way of leaving your mark.

Any thoughts on this? Comments are open!

Mixmasters Elsewhere: Ilise on Your Regular Marketing Regimen

As one who practices what she preaches, Ilise has been hard at it on the interview circuit with the release of her latest book.

The Q&A at the Notes on Design blog is particularly good, chock-full of the kind of gems Ilise is known for.

Tips galore...my favorite thing!

Real-life branding snapshot: Marci Alboher

I met Marci Alboher a couple years back. She was in the audience at a talk I gave about self promotion.

I was talking about email addresses, saying that they should be relevant and convey information.

Marci raised her hand and asked if I thought "heymarci@whatever.com" was effective from a self promotional point of view, because that's how everyone seemed to address her.

Well, she has since continued the Hey, Marci branding process.

Now she's got The Hey Marci Blog

And all her email addresses are heymarci@whatever.com, including the NY Times, where she has a new online column called "Shifting Careers" that seems to be a lot about self promotion.

Check out Monday's column on Introverts (free registration required).

Marci also has a book out, One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success (Warner Business: 2007), which I know a lot of us can relate to. More info about that here.