How to Get Media Coverage for Your Business

Getting featured in the media is GREAT for credibility, traffic, and sales.

How to Get Media Coverage for Your Business; picture of reporter

Here’s a simple free technique to make it more likely a reporter or producer will call you.

Organize a group on Meetup.

Why does this work?

Turns out producers and reporters are always looking for people and businesses to use as real-life examples in their stories.

How do I know this?

My sister is a former television news producer, and Meetup is one of the places she searches for sources.

Surprisingly, many times the producer gets no response to their email inquiry.

Remember, reporters are on a deadline, and need a fast response. Even if they can’t use you for their current story, they’ll remember you if you do respond, and you may become their go-to source the next time they have a story in your niche.

So make sure to:
  1. Set your email preferences in Meetup  to ‘Email me when someone sends me a message’.
  2. Write a good description of your group.
  3. Keep your Meetup group active.

If you’d like even more tips on how to get media coverage for your business, check out this interview with an Emmy winning news producer How to Get Featured on Network TV.

When Is It Better To Give Than Receive in Business?

time to share visual for business sponsorship. 5 tips to decide if your business should be a sponsor

With the holidays approaching, the question of how much your business should give to sponsor worthy causes comes to the forefront – and may provide a basis to create a sponsorship budget for 2015. Maura Raffensperger, founder of Your Chief Simplicity Officer, and a proud Elite Member Sponsor of the National Association of Women Business Owners, Ventura County (NAWBO-VC) knows this dilemma well after 17 years in business. “Like many business owners, I am frequently asked to sponsor non-profits;” says Maura, “It used to be hard to say ‘No’, but I have found answering five key questions makes the decision easy, and creates a ‘win-win’ for both of us.”

Maura offers these 5 tips to help simplify your business sponsorship decisions:
    1. The organization aligns with your values.
      NAWBO, for example, is ‘a cohesive community of women business owners sharing best practices and support for each other’ which is a great fit for my mission statement and business and personal values.
    2. The organization has a written sponsorship policy.
      What do they expect of you? Are there multiple types of sponsorship? Pick the best fit.
    3. There is a responsive contact within the organization for sponsors.
      In a non-profit, this person may change every year. Do you know how to contact them? Do they get back to you? Ideally, you would like to build a relationship with this person.
    4. You will take advantage of most, if not all, of the sponsorship benefits.
      You may think they just want your money, but they want your participation, too. If your sponsorship includes seats at a banquet, for instance, they want to see those seats filled. You can be creative, and offer the tickets to clients, employees, or a student who might benefit, but it is your responsibility to make sure there is not a lonely empty table with your company name on it.
    5. They want to recognize you – make it easy for them.
      Respond promptly with their initial requests for your logo and company description, so they can add you to their promo materials and website.

You are free to publish and repost this content as long as long as you attribute to Maura Raffensperger and link back to this post.

As part of my sponsorship of NAWBO-VC, I am the title sponsor for their November 20th meeting and I would love to see you there. Click here for more information and to register. Use Promo Code MAURA to receive a 10% discount on your (non-member) registration – if you register by Monday, November 17!

How Partnering Can Make You Money

I just added 900 new names to my email list and made over $1000 (and counting) – and it was only possible because of partnering with a competitor.

There was no sleazy marketing involved; CAN-SPAN rules were followed; everyone freely gave me their email address, and even confirmed their permission by clicking a link in a confirmation email. But none of it would have happened if I had not reached out to partner with someone else.

There are lessons here that can be applied to any business.  First, the specifics:

  • I had a goal to increase my mailing list size to 3000. I have read that 3000 is the ‘magic number’ where your list begins to pay off, i.e. when you make offers, you make (enough) sales.
  • Although I have held teleseminars in the past, my list size and social media reach was not large enough to add more than a few new names to my list at a time.
  • Holding a telesummit with multiple speakers was one way to increase list size. Every speaker would promote to their own list, so collectively we would all reach a larger audience that any of us could alone.
  • Although the initial idea was mine, I am very happy I discussed this with my mastermind partner and we agreed to co-host this event. In retrospect, we both agree that, had been doing this solo, there are many times we would have just given up. What kept us moving forward were the commitments we had made to each other.

Why It Made Sense to Reach Out to Competitors

On the surface, even my mastermind partner and I are ‘competitors’. We each consider ourselves business coaches, and even though we live in different parts of California, we can both coach over the phone or by Skype. The reality, though, is that we have different areas of expertise, and will appeal to different types of clients. Also, we have built a level of trust with each other over the last 2 plus years we have been accountability partners that is exceptional. Reaching out to Rachel was really a ‘no-brainer’.

As for the other 19 speakers in the tele-summit, we chose them based on two criteria: a topic of interest to business owners interested in building their business, and list size. Again, some of those we chose had at least some surface overlap as ‘business coaches’, but their topic and/or area of expertise was different enough that they could provide information to our audience in an alternative way. And, let’s face it, we all have people on our lists that never buy from us, even though we know they spend money with other providers. Sometimes it’s the novelty of hearing the information in a new way, or simply feeling more of a ‘connection’. For Rachel and I, the goal was to build our lists, and that required us to reach out to other people who shared our target market and had active mailing lists. In addition, the large number of people who registered (for free)  meant that our offer to buy the entire package of 21 recorded interviews was accepted by enough people to make us a nice profit.

Lessons You Can Apply to Your Business

  1. Be open to partnering with a competitor; consider the potential ‘win-win’ of the partnership
  2. Will the partnership help you achieve one of your goals faster than you could on your own?
  3. Be strategic – in our case, we only partnered with people with active mailing lists of at least a moderate size.
  4. How much work will you be required to do? Is the potential payoff worth it?
  5. Are the risks minimal?

What Hiking Can Teach You About Running a Successful Business

It’s a struggle for me to write a weekly blog post – which is one reason I love it when you comment, and I know something I have shared hit home for you.

For me, just getting into the habit of blog posting weekly was a big step. But, as the terrific infographic below (courtesy of DonCrowther.com)  shows, there is so much more that needs to be done.

However, it’s good to remember that a system does not need to be built all at once. It’s the same ‘one step at a time will get you to the peak (and back again)’ lesson I learned from hiking. Instead of getting overwhelmed, the key is to pick one additional thing to add. Once that is working well, I will return to the infographic and pick another area to add to my blogging process.

I’ve chosen to work first on the ‘On-Page Factors’, because I think I can create a system with my VA to make sure these items are addressed. In fact, after our monthly strategy call this week, she installed Yet Another Related Posts Plugin, which gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site. This will be a great help to include a self-referential link on each page.

What will you pick to implement first? Share your commitment in the comments (and help make my day!).

[stextbox id=”info”]If you want to learn more about how to build systems to help your business grow, register for my FREE TELECLASS  How to Work Less, Make More, & Love Your Business Again! coming up on Aug 21.[/stextbox]

Embedded from DonCrowther.com

 

 

Do You Have An Exit Strategy?

Exit StrategyA good military leader grooms his replacement.  Likewise, the sooner you, as the owner, start planning for your exit, the more you can get.  You should put strategies in place about 5+ years before retiring, because you need time to find, then groom a replacement, put in new procedures, marketing to bring a higher value to the business, thus a higher price for you.

[This is the third in a series of 4 Sunday guest posts. Today’s guest blogger is Del Hegland, who, in addition to being an extremely knowledgeable insurance professional, always has a smile for you! Read more about Del at the end of this post.]

There are two kinds of owners: 

you are the business: you are performing the service, e.g. appraisals, a painter, a plumber, horse trainer, masseur, realtor.  You have the knowledge, the relationships with customers and suppliers.  Staff, if any, is there to organize your day, order supplies, arrange meetings.  But you leave, the business ceases.  You retire, the value of the business = the furniture, your customer list (maybe);

you have staff and you are involved in much but the staff can operate without you: you take a vacation and the business can keep going.

If you are (2), your business can have value when you go, thus can supplement retirement by selling the business and keep staff and clients going.  Your focus now is solidifying the value of the business and includes many factors, including:

  • Setting Exit Objectives
  • Determining Business Value
  • Determining potential buyers/ owners: including family, staff (e.g. an ESOP), competitor, outside party;

And: Challenge: The Loss of the business’ #1 talent—You!
A Solution: A Buy/Sell Agreement plus a Key Employee policy

The key man/ woman:

For many or most small businesses the loss of a critical person – a great sales person/ controller/ buyer/ assistant/ partner/ inventor/ financial backer can mean a serious, even fatal setback: business is lost, accounting is inaccurate and late, etc., especially if the loss is unexpected and sudden.

One owner, “Joe”, had two key staff that had been with him for years, “Jim” and “John”.  Jim had been with him for 18 years, knew all the potential problems and how to fix them, and knew all the key clients well.  At 47 yrs. he fell off a ladder at home, broke his neck. A $70-$120/mo. term life-insurance premium would have given the owner a $500,000 benefit to cushion the financial blow and buy him time to rebuild.  A bit more and the wife could have had an additional $250,00o

What if the key person (KP) who died was Joe?  Without proper grooming and job structure in place and adequate liquidity (life insurance is often the most cost-effective) to buy time for the business to recoup, the business will often collapse.  Consider this likely scenario: staff promptly starts looking for new jobs, customers don’t return,suppliers switch to COD, creditors, and the bank, call in their debts and liquidation follows.  A life insurance policy can be a business savior.  However, if no one is trained and willing or is available to run the business, the death benefit might best be used to close the business, pay off debts, donate to loyal staff, etc.

A Buy/Sell (BS) Agreement: 

A BS agreement is simply an agreement for A to transfer ownership to B or B to A under certain circumstances, such as A wants to retire or quit, or becomes permanently disabled and can’t work, or he/ she dies. It provides a valuation and a means of payment set up when there is no duress and a means or formula to update the valuation.  Parties and spouses, if appropriate, all sign off.   It should be updated when circumstances change, e.g. the business value changes, there’s a divorce, etc.  In the case of death, the simplest solution is having a life-insurance plan on each relevant party.  If A dies, B gets the life-insurance benefit but must hand that to A’s spouse by contractual agreement,.  This is really relevant when there’s a partnership.

The inadequacy of a BS is that, while, if A dies and B now gets the business free and clear, B now has to do A’s work as well and maybe B can’t add that or doesn’t have the skills, etc.  I recommend adding a KM policy to make up for the lost business until the business is restructured or a replacement is finally found.

A One-Way Buy-Sell: 

Here, the provision can be for a key person, say John, to replace the owner, say Joe, if Joe dies.   Again, I’d add the KP.  Say there’s a $1 mil. policy on Joe.  Joe dies, John, who has insured Joe, gets the funds which he must hand to Joe’s wife.  John is the new owner and, because of an additional $500,000 KP policy on Joe, the business is liquid enough to keep paying bills, staff, product, etc. and to make up for lost business for some time.  Banks are comforted as are the creditors and staff.  If there’s been proper grooming, John is already familiar with the accounting, legal, marketing, service &c. of the business.  BUT, you need time for finding and grooming the right person.

About Del Hegland: I have three jobs; (i) to help others get a better grasp of what is often a complicated financial world; (ii) to help ensure that their decisions are acted upon; (iii) to keep their strategies up-to-date. Business owners, professionals and families – very busy people who struggle for time to really focus on their insurance and financial goals – are my clients. And I work with other advisors, or can suggest some. Contact me at: 805-563-1000, or email me at dlhegland@ft.newyorklife.com