According to business strategist and perpetual entrepreneur Woody Woodward, every entrepreneur and small business owner is full of “B.S.”(both the traditional kind and their Belief Systems) that affect the way they approach PR and especially their ability to use free and low-cost PR techniques with finesse.
So I’ve asked his opinion on the best low-cost and no-agency strategies he used to get his own products to market. At age 42, he has generated more than $60 million in retail sales. He sold his first product to publicly-traded clothing company Zumies at age 16 and sold his first business at age 23. For the last 25 years he’s built and sold multi-million dollar products and companies by keeping his focus on the thing he prioritizes most highly: measuring what matters (calls, leads, conversion rates, revenue and sales.)
The main purpose of PR is to get an audience’s attention and to narrate the story of your products, service or message, Woodward says. Too often we feel we need to be on every media outlet or post on all social sites. This, he maintains, is “BS”—your belief system holding you back. When Woodward’s 12th book was published, Your Emotional Fingerprint, the publisher demanded he hire an expensive New York based PR firm that would cost a minimum of $15,000 a month with no guarantee and no way to measure results. He refused and instead used his budget to create a low cost infomercial that would allow him to obtain precise metrics on how many calls would lead to how many sales. It also attracted international publishers, which led to a six-figure deal in 2009 during the heart of the recession.
Woody Woodward has led the PR for each of his entrepreneurial ventures (Image courtesy of Wikipedia.com)
For other entrepreneurs, here are three ways he recommends creating low cost PR that allows you to continually measure results, which has been his greatest key to success:
- Free to Fee. When you are launching a new product or service and need PR to attract potential customers, the best solution may be to move from free to fee. This allows you to get your product in the hands of the public—thousands of the public—with a free offering that converts them to raving fans. For example, when chemical engineer Spencer Silver created an adhesive that didn’t stick very well he turned to a co-worker Art Fry for suggestions. Fry started using the adhesive on the back of pieces of paper so he could mark his choir hymnal without damaging the book. Together they created Post It Notes. For 12 laborious years they were turned down by everyone at 3M MMM +0.00% until they struck upon the idea of creating free samples for the secretaries at 3M corporate. This led to eventual permission from top brass to do a four-city test without the help of the sales department. The two engineers quickly became their own PR team and sent free samples to every secretary they could find. When the secretaries wanted to reorder, they routed the calls to the sales department. Eventually, the department was forced to take notice. The free samples converted the users into fans and the interest into sales.
- Social Proof. Social psychologist and author of Influence, Robert Cialdini, illustrates the six principles of persuasion: Social Proof, Scarcity, Authority, Consistency, Reciprocity and Likability. The principle tied most closely to PR is social proof. For example, before the ice bucket challenge swept social media and the traditional press, the ALS Foundation would raise roughly $2.8 million a year. But with the social proof that emerged from the ice bucket challenge, they raised more than $100 million. During the 2012 London Olympic Games, headphone manufacture Beats by Dr. Dre did one of the best PR stunts in history. Instead of paying tens of millions of dollars to be the official headphone company of the Olympics, they gave away headphones to individual athletes if the person would post a picture of themselves wearing the headphones. U.S. Olympian Michael Phelps was seen using the headphones in the Aquatics Center to help block background noise before becoming the most decorated Olympian of all time. The social proof Beats gained through this activity allowed them to dominate their industry with a 76% market share before being acquired by Apple AAPL -0.54%.
- Free Media. What most business owners don’t understand is the full cost to getting into traditional media. From hiring a PR firm, travel, wardrobe, and product samples it can be extremely expensive to get yourself onto a national talk show, but you can’t necessary measure the outcome. Many authors and entrepreneurs sat on Oprah’s couch, for example, but did not see their book sales or business revenues increase. However, for the financially conservative entrepreneur, free media (think viral videos) is an activity that you can measure and track. Blendtec Blenders was a high-end blender company with only $50 in their marketing budget to somehow revitalize their brand and create top of mind awareness for consumers. Then Blendtec’s VP of marketing and sales happened to stumble upon the CEO, Tom Dickson, feeding a wooden 2×2 into one of the blenders as a routine strength test. He found it fun to watch, and the idea for “Will It Blend” videos was born. “Will It Blend?” became the 33rd-most-viewed series ever on YouTube, helping drive sales of the company’s $400 high-end consumer blender up by a full 500% in 2008.
So what Belief System is holding your company back as you move into 2016? Forget traditional methods, and learn to challenge your prior beliefs during the coming year. Commit to finding new ways to market your business in 2016 that can get you aligned in the public’s vision while also allowing you to measure and track your results.
To spur your thinking further, readers can find Woody Woodward’s newest book B.S. and Other Advice About Money here.
Information about Cheryl Snapp Conner’s Content University program for businesses and executives is available here.
Source: Forbes
