How to promote your business

Public Relations (PR) is a profession we love to hate. It has inspired satirical TV shows and been dismissed as spin, yet it is also the engine driving most successful Australian businesses.

At its heart, PR is about communication – getting your message out to the people most likely to respond. And, whether you’re paying for professional help or going it alone, it can be an effective and low-cost alternative to paid advertising. 

When Tina Shaw started her online magazine The Single Parent Bible, she had virtually nothing to spend on promotion. Advertising was out of the question, but the PR strategies she followed were so successful that she was inspired to write a book about them. Start a Business With Less Than $100 is now available nationally through Officeworks and online.

“You don’t need to spend a fortune promoting your business,” she says. “All it takes is time, energy and enthusiasm. Don’t get me wrong, advertising has its place, as do publicists. But I took a leaf out of Donut King’s book; they have never paid a cent for advertising in 20 years of business.”

Where to start

The first step in any promotion is to identify your target market. Who could use what you have to sell? How old are they? Are they male or female? What do they like and dislike? And, most importantly, what do they read, watch and listen to?

Once you know, you can create a wish list of relevant newspapers, magazines, radio programmes and TV shows.

You can phone for details of the best person to contact. “If you can afford it, it’s also a good idea to purchase a media directory or editorial contact management software to develop a comprehensive list of editors, reporters and writers,” says Natalie Moutia of NM Marketing Consulting.

The next essential is a killer media release.

Rachael Bermingham has co-authored and promoted two best-selling books, Read My Lips and Four Ingredients, and now acts as a consultant for businesses around the world.

“When I started getting really busy, I hired a girl who was studying PR,” she says. “The first press release she wrote had no colour, no photos, a boring headline and was sent as an attachment. She said that was the way she’d been taught to do it. When I showed her ones I’d done myself she’d never seen anything like them!

“I just try to think what would jump out at me if I were a journo receiving 200 press releases a week. I make them colourful, always with photos, a logo – a bit of flash and bang – and always a curiosity-peaking headline, something to spark people’s imagination and make them want to know more.”

One trap many self-publicists fall into is making their media release sound like an advertisement.

“If it does, the recipient will either bin it or pass it on to the advertising department,” says Shaw. “To prevent that from happening, you need to think of an angle that is appealing for a general editorial readership. Try to think of yourself as a reader, not the owner of a business who wants a plug.”

However well-produced, a single media release very rarely gets results.