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Guest Post: Another HARO success story

We're big fans of Peter Shankman's Help a Reporter Out (HARO) mailing list here at the Marketing Mix blog. Previous guest poster and NYC-based feng shui consultant Ann Bingley Gallops is, too. Check out her latest experience with the list, and how she addressed the reporter in question to maximize her chances of becoming a journalist's resource.

I am on Peter Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out (HARO) mailing list. One of last Monday's editions (editrix's note: HARO goes out three times daily) contained the following query:

"I need an expert in the field of Feng Shui to speak about how harmonizing your bedroom/house will help relationship dynamics. This article will be posted on Beauty News NYC, an online beauty publication with over 400,000 unique visitors monthly. This is an opportunity to promote yourself as an expert. High resolution photo needed.”

I responded immediately with the following email:

"I am a Feng Shui expert here in NYC and have just given an entire workshop on this very topic, Feng Shui in the Bedroom.  In Feng Shui, the bedroom is one of the top three most important areas in any home. I love to talk about it because there are so many things people can do with Feng Shui to enhance their love lives in the bedroom."

I signed off with contact information and a link so that the reporter could check out my credentials.

The result? The reporter contacted me immediately to ask about my background and experience, and out of over 30 respondents to her query, she chose me for her piece. She told me that unlike the other responses she received, mine was "the most sincere". I interviewed with her the next morning and will be going to her home for a sample Feng Shui consultation. The results will appear on BeautyNewsNYC.com throughout the month of December. 

What did I learn? That “Be Yourself” applies in the field of media relations just as it does in so many parts of business life. This reporter didn’t want to hear about all the credentials I’ve accumulated until she was convinced that I was passionate about what I do.

Reader ideas about telling success stories

In my latest tip, with the subject line, "Are your success stories ready to tell," I gave some ideas for avoiding "blank mind syndrome" when someone asks you for "success stories" and linked to a worksheet from our book, The Designer's Guide to Marketing and Pricing, to help you mine your own stories. (If you missed that, read it here.)

A couple readers responded with a few more ideas:

• Bob Bly, longtime Marketing Mentor client and inveterate marketer, wrote, "Here's what I do. I tell the prospect to go to www.bly.com and click on Testimonials. When he is on the page, I tell him: "Here are my success stories."
• Audeliz Perez wrote, "When I first started selling real estate, I didn’t have any success stories, but that didn’t limit my ability to tell one. I would listen to what the other realtors were doing and what success they had. Then I would relate those same experiences to my clients; sometimes I related them in the first person and sometimes I told it as an all-knowing, 3rd person outsider. Ironically, the successes were received the same, as long as I believed in the story. Maybe when you someone asks you for a success story, they are looking for reassurance and maybe they’re looking to be motivated. The morale to this story is: learn to tell a story in any business, even if it’s not your own."

Any more ideas from the peanut gallery?

The news isn’t all gloomy

Don’t let depressing economic news get you down. Help is here, in the form of a hands-on workshop (with a special discount) I’m giving this Thursday for the Freelancers Union (sign up here) and in the form of tips from the trenches, where things aren’t all bad! I got this message from Jonathan Cleveland of Cleveland Design last week:

We are being bombarded with work. Why? Because the economy is tanking and large companies are laying off in-house design teams (they are always the first to go). A couple of our clients have greatly reduced the size of their internal design groups in the past month. They are also cutting budgets and getting rid of large external agencies. I think the work is ripe for the picking at this point for the small business or freelancer. Spread the word.

Jonathan’s experience just proves what I’ve always noticed about the economy: when one aspect is up, another is down. The savvy business owner is observant and nimble, watching closely to see how to adapt.

So I had a little chat with Jonathan to see if he had specific tips. Here’s an excerpt of our conversation:

Q: Why are internal creative departments the first to go?
A: Because they can outsource it in a second. There are plenty of freelancers out there ready to do the work.

Q: Who specifically can benefit from this?
A: If you have already established relationships with your prospects, you’re in a much better position. But even if you haven’t already done the up front relationship-building, focus on the large companies (the ones you’re most intimidated to call). They’re the ones who had people on staff but may not anymore, so they need the most help.

Q: Do you really think they are spending money on communications?
A: The thing to remember is a majority of the work still needs to be done, especially in financial services. They still need to have active business communications to develop new business. But they’re definitely looking for easier and lower-cost ways to do it. The fact that you’re not on their payroll makes you more attractive to start.

Q: So what exactly should we say?
A: There are two things you want to convey. The first is a question: If you know they have indeed laid people off, ask, “Are you hiring freelancers to help out on marcom (or marketing communications)?”
Secondly, you want to let them know you offer a better value compared to a larger firm. You can say, “I understand your team has been reduced; I can help you out. I can offer you great work at a great value.” Then, emphasize that your creative skills are at the same level as those in a large firm but you have less overhead and can therefore offer a better value.

Anyone else experiencing this too?

Guest Post: Conquering fear in one easy (cold) call

As she herself admits, Judith Reppucci should be a killer cold caller. She's a successful marketing copywriter with 15 years' experience in old-school, pound-the-pavement sales--for the Yellow Pages! So, fearless, right? No problem, right?

Well, the following account just proves that no one may be immune to fears about cold calling. And also that there is a way out, and it just might be Ilise & Peleg's no-nonsense, low-key approach to cold calls. Listen to Judith's experience of putting the information and inspiration she found in the Designer's Guide to Marketing & Pricing Podcast into action—serious action!

Six months ago, I met an mailing house exec at a New England Direct Marketer’s networking event. When she heard that I specialized in direct mail fundraising copy, she told me to call her coworker in the nonprofit side of their business. “They might be looking for some help,” she said. She even gave me the extension number, and told me to say she asked me to call.

Really, could there possibly be a better warm lead?

I have a folder of cold calling advice. I’ve read a half dozen books on how to cold-call. I’ve even been videotaped for cold call critiques. No matter. I was still stuck, mired in the fear that my value proposition wasn’t good enough, and that I’d get nervous and fumble (it’s happened before). I’m beyond ashamed that I’m such a big old wuss.

Then, a few weeks ago, while I was recovering from surgery, I started listening to your wonderful and very generous podcasts (thanks, Peleg, you’re great,too.) And, just listening to your casual, low-key delivery has made all the difference. Gee, you mean, you really don’t have to dial with all your marketing guns blazing? You don’t have to reel off a phony sales spiel when you‘re transferred to voice mail? And you can actually act, hmmm, natural and even genuine?

Yesterday I listened to Marketing Mentor podcast number six, the one with cold call role plays. “I can do that,” I told myself.

And guess what?

I did!

In fact, I just hung up from a great phone call with that prospect I’ve been avoiding.

When I gave the name of my referral at NEDMA, the prospect said, “Oh, sure.”

When I told him what I did and who I’ve worked for he said, “Oh, if you work for them, I guess you do a lot of hospital work.”

When I asked if he uses outside copywriters, he responded, “Not right now, but we’re expanding to more cause based clients, so this call might be coming at a good time for the fall appeals.”

And the rest of the call continued like something out of a cold call success story. Yes, indeed, he agreed it would be a good idea for me to send him a package of my work and my business card. Yes, he’d like it if I stayed in touch – and he readily gave me his e-mail. Yes, in fact, he wanted me to give him a call later this summer.

I've got to wrap this up because I have to send off my e-mail follow-up (gotta do it within 30 minutes, right?), but thanks again for all the easy-to-follow advice on the podcasts.

Oh—and speaking of podcasts, as a result of listening to yours, I’ve already ordered The Designer’s Guide to Marketing and Pricing. It’s very clear that you have great advice for copywriters, too!

Judith Reppucci is an independent copywriter, and she lives on beautiful Cape Cod. She crafts fundraising appeals for direct marketing consultants and nonprofit organizations. She also writes marketing collateral and online material for business and healthcare organizations. You can reach her at judith AT reppucci DOT com or at her website.

***

Have you learned anything from the Designer's Guide podcasts (not just for designers anymore!) you've already put to use? Got a great story, flash of insight or other fantastic tidbit to share with the class? Email me (colleen AT marketing-mentor DOT com) and maybe we can help make everyone a little bit smarter.

Looking for leads at the Fancy Food Show

One of our new Marketing Mentor clients, Dani Nordin of The Zen Kitchen, is a real foodie. So her target market -- no surprise -- is the specialty (especially natural) food and beverage industry. That's why she went looking for leads last weekend at the Fancy Food Show in NYC. (Next one is in San Francisco in January 2009.)

Check out her blog to read about all the incredible prospects she made contact with.

Guest Post: There’s Gold in Them There Tweets!

Looks like the communicatrix ain't the only Twitter apologist in the Marketing Mentor fambly; previous guest mixer and Marketing Mentor client Drury Bynum of Workerbee Creative—that's @drubynum for those of you on Twitter—also has good words for my current favorite time-waster—er...social media space.

You can't throw a rock in the blog world and not hit someone evangelizing about how social networks have changed everything. But I've always felt it hard to justify my time spent adding friends to Facebook, photos to Flickr or alerting my 68 followers on Twitter that I drink too much coffee this morning. I've always thought, "Am I really making connections here, or am I just personality spamming?"

Well, now I’m a believer because I actually I turned a relationship on Twitter into a paying job.

Twitter is a public instant messaging service, where you can subscribe to the posts of whomever you like, and vice versa. Like most, I originally didn't see the value. Yet it started to become clear when one evening I posted, "Thank God, or whomever, for Pandora." The next morning Pandora was following me. Pandora was obviously searching for Twitter entries (probably with a 3rd party app like Summize) that contained their name, and, as a bonus, accolades. I realized then the value of access to an audience that is actively listening.

The Twitter call to action is “What are you doing?” It should be, “What are you focused on right now?” This clarifies the point a bit – if you answer the first question, you may say, “I’m drinking coffee,” which is a dead end. But if you say, “I’d love to find a way to keep my coffee warm to the last drop,” (I did this) then you’ve created an invitation to respond. If your Tweets (individual Twitter entries) are useful, interesting, entertaining, part of a larger conversation or contain keywords that others are searching for, then you will get attention.

So how did I turn this attention into a paying gig? After posting a link to a video that I had created, one of my followers viewed it and sent me a direct message (via Twitter). "I've been following you on Twitter for a little while now and was checking out your blog." In the next sentence, she offered me a video job. Shortly after that, I came very close to securing a video shoot in Portugal after sending a casual tweet to a member of a large filmmaker network. I didn't get the assignment, but the point was that I was in the right place talking to the right person.

There is obviously no formula for getting work from Twitter, but if you use your imagination and talk about things that are valuable to the Twittersphere, then you will make some valuable connections.

How far would you walk for a good idea?

I don't know about you, but it's pretty easy for me to let an entire day go by without having moved more than about 30 feet from my desk and computer. Between the work I do (design, writing, consulting), the communicating I have to do to get it done, and just plain horsing around on Twitter, I put on a good (or bad) 7 lbs. in about 18 months!

So it was vanity that got me up and moving initially; I instituted a 2.5 mile walk every morning just to keep fitting in my pants. But as I wrote on my own blog recently, I quickly found that taking the walk in the morning had a particular benefit: setting a good tone for the rest of the day.

Now, with the rising price of gas and concern over my ecological footprint, I've added another challenge: replace one day's driving with walking. Last week, I had to drop off my car for servicing, so I scheduled it for the morning, dropped it off the night before, and tacked on another 4.5 miles each way, still sticking to my regular 2.5 miles on top of that.

Apparently, my breakthrough point for ideas is somewhere around 6 miles. I got blasted with so many creative solutions to problems I've been carrying around in those last couple of miles, I was worried I wouldn't get home in time to write them down. (Yeah, yeah—never forget your notebook. I know, I know...)

On top of everything else, I feel like the ideas keep flowing a lot more easily once I'm back at my desk, too.

All of this makes me curious: do you have a mile-marker or time-marker where you've noticed that your ideas start flowing faster? Or am I nuts, here?

HOW we met...

Ilise and I just returned from a 4 day visit to Boston where we spoke at the HOW Design Conference. This year, 4000 designers and creative types gathered to learn and get inspired and yours truly helped make that happen. 

On Sunday, Ilise and I delivered a 4 hour marketing and pricing workshop to a sold out room of 130.  It has been a while since the both of us shared the stage. The day marked a very important day for the both of us. 15 years ago that Sunday Ilise and I met at the 1993 HOW Conference in Chicago. It was Ilise’s first speaking engagement ever and my first time attending a conference.

I was only 2 years into running my own business and had no clue as for what I was doing. Marketing? What’s that? Ilise opened my eyes to the wonderful world of self-promotion and that was the turning point of my career.  The next 15 years blossomed into a wonderful friendship which turned into our Marketing Mentor business partnership.

So why am I telling you this story? Well, besides the fact that I was so proud to see how the work we are doing with Marketing Mentor is inspiring change in our industry I wanted to share the idea of how powerful networking can be. If I hadn’t come up to talk to Ilise 15 years ago at that first conference, and had I not followed up with her and kept in touch we may have never been where we are today, right here writing this blog!

We always talk about the 5 essential tools of marketing and networking is number one on our list. Where are you meeting your clients, prospects and collaborators? How much do you nurture your relationships? You just never know where people can lead you to. So next time you’re sitting at a conference and you’re totally amazed by the speaker and feel intimidated and insignificant, remember yours truly sitting at that same spot 15 years ago and having the guts to go up to Ilise and talk to her after her talk. And then of course, follow up.  It took a little moxie and effort but it sure paid off.

Goal setting works!

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that, although one of the things I do for my Marketing Mentor clients is help them set and achieve marketing and financial goals, it wasn't until this January that I set some solid financial goals for my own business.

And guess what?

It works!

I am amazed at how magical it seems but actually is not.

All I have done is hold the monthly number in my mind and, as I get closer to month's end, check to see how close I am.

This past month, I wasn't close enough. So I got on the phone and started making calls to prospects who had expressed interest but hadn't yet taken the leap to work with me. I also lined up a few more speaking gigs, which are investments toward Q2 and Q3 goals. It took about 2-3 hours and by March 31st, I had squeezed past my goal.

It wasn't difficult; it just took a bit more effort than usual.

Not only that, yesterday, two clients reported surpassing their goals. More proof that it works.

Are you doing it? If so, do you have goal-setting success stories that could help others take this essentially simple step toward the growth of their business?

Guest Post: How to go from pro bono to corporate sponsor

EDITOR'S NOTE: I've been immersed in Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Effective People lately, and one of the most significant lessons I'm getting from it is the benefit of striving for solutions that are not me-based or them-based or even compromises, but we-based, synergistic solutions.

That's exactly what designer and Marketing Mentor client Jonathan Cleveland did to turn around a situation with a pro bono client. I loves me a win-win situation—and Covey would be proud! And now, here's Jonathan...

A recent tip from Peleg changed my status from “in-kind” donor to Corporate Sponsor for a nationally recognized non-profit client. Here’s how it happened.

For over 6 years, my firm, Cleveland Design, has done work for this non-profit at a reduced fee, but the donated “time” has never gotten me much exposure, which is one of the reasons I did it. I was always stuck in the Thank You list next to the company that donated the napkins.

When I first approached the client about improving our status, they claimed they didn’t have a category to put us in since we weren’t making a cash donation. Eventually they came up with “Marketing and Design Sponsor,” which was better. But I kept seeing the other companies listed above us and I knew our time was more valuable then the cash they were donating.

Peleg’s tip was simple: Invoice the client for the full value of the project, then turn around and write them a check for the portion you want to donate.

I approached the client with this plan and they were open to investigating it with their higher ups and legal department. Because this client is on a retainer with us, it was easy to set up a contract to reflect what we would bill them each month and what we would donate each month. Soon, the contract was signed by both parties and we automatically became an official “Corporate Sponsor.”

This way of giving is beneficial to all parties, and gives us the advantage of being a major donor and recognized as a Corporate Sponsor. It also gives us an advantage for tax purposes, since donated time does not count for charitable gifts, but donated cash does.

Plus, being seen as a Corporate Sponsor has changed our status in the community that this non-profit serves. At past fundraising events, we were invited but had to wait and see if there were empty seats at the assigned dinner tables. Now, we get one of the prime tables up front and our logo is plastered all over the promotional collateral and signage.

This is now the only way we will work with non-profits in the future. It gives us the recognition we deserve for our talent and time. And, it turns into great free publicity for our firm.