Marketing

Reaching The Market Outside Your Home Town

Reaching The Market Outside Your Home Town

Garth Beyer

Marketing Outreach

This is a longer post than I usually write. You could easily skip it and respond to the notification awaiting you on your phone. Alas, I hope you find this as practical, if not more.

We’re All Marketers

I’ve never understood PR folk talking about “outreach” in their own community. To me, that’s inreach, as in, easily in reach; as in, if your business is remarkable enough, the success of it will have enough momentum to touch all those in reach. A great business has inreach built in. Steven P. Dennis calls the hometown diehard fans of a business the obsessive core. Marketers, therefore, are for reaching out beyond the core.

Business plan = inreach.

Marketing = outreach.

Clear? Now let’s tackle the outreach by going over a few tools every marketer needs to understand to reach the market outside their zone, their base, their marked territory.

Not Your Average Advertising

As complicated as Facebook advertising is to understand, it’s quite easy to use to target consumers outside common ground.

Say you’re marketing MobCraft Beer to a state other than Wisconsin where they are based and a current Wisconsin resident follows Mobcraft’s FB page. This follower also has a few out-of-state friends she regularly interacts with. Facebook’s advertising algorithm will pick them up and advertise directly, noting to them there Wisconsin resident friend has liked MobCraft Beer’s FB page and they should too.

All social network advertising, not just social media networks are taking into consideration the value of connections, of handshakes, of conversations over the value of eyeballs. You don’t want the mass, anyway. You want those who matter. Right? Advertising isn’t what it used to be. (That’s a good thing for us marketers.)

Working Email and Mailing Address Lists

There’s no reason not to be A/B testing.

A/B testing in its most simplified definition is trying two different things and seeing which works better. Does a zen-like website page get more click-throughs than a collage-designed page? Will a handwritten card with a great photo on the front work better than a brochure? Will emailing small-time bloggers be more effective than a press release to those in authority? It’s time to find out.

Test and measure, test and measure.

And remember: Don’t get on the scale unless you’re willing to change your diet and exercise routine and don’t change your diet and exercise routine unless you will regularly step on the scale. Test and measure.

Surfing the Internet

If I’m not doing some grunt work, I know I’m not doing the best marketing I can. No matter what client I’m working with, I search on multiple search engines to find forums, blogs, and other places where the tribes have gathered. (And, yes, I go into the depths of Google, far beyond the first, second and third pages of results.) The long tail matters. Every small tribe matters.

A smart place to start is Reddit. A fellow PR daily contributor, Mickie Kennedy wrote a short bit on how to use Reddit for PR.

Through surfing the Internet, you’ll realize very quickly (if you haven’t already) how critical being human is. Most online tribes are skeptical; they will downvote blatant advertising and seek clarification of credibility before they upvote, make a purchase or share what you offer.

You’ll also learn (if you haven’t already) those who are the most loyal to brands are the most likely to turn their shoulder to a brand if they feel the outreach is robotic, if they believe the email they received is the same email everyone else on the list received, if they think you’re just in it for the money or job security or because it’s what your boss told you to do.

Moreover, Outreach has Changed/Improved/Realligned

When I get a pitch that tells me I am part of a company’s ‘blogger outreach program,’ it feels condescending to me. My inclination is to get bristly with the person doing the pitching. Other social journalists feel the same way.” – Shel Israel

Now, I wouldn’t be the first to say you have permission to market to everyone, but why would you need 10,000 strangers when you can make 10 friends, 10 people who trust you, 10 acquaintances who respect you, 10 passionate folk who need you.

Permission is one thing, participation is another. Participation is what matters. Find the 10 avid bloggers who need your product or service and connect with them. Find 10 die-hard craft beer drinkers and get on a Google Hangout together. Successful outreach rarely comes from a single click of “send;” it comes from continuous care, effort, and conversation. There’s another obsessive core out there. Reach out to them.

Successful outreach has improved since the days of mass advertising. It’s not about eye balls anymore; it’s about eye contact.

Now is your chance to build your tribe, to establish connections that matter. As for my last PR/marketing tip: never refer to people you are reaching out to as your target market, as part of your outreach program, as part of your market. They are not a special case because they are outside your hometown, your normal campaign realm, your regular target market. They are all strangers at first, then friends, then customers, no matter what geographical market they are in.

 

Stay Positive & Only Reach Out If You Plan To Truly Lift Someone Up

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Making Marketing Sense Of The Domino Effect

Making Marketing Sense Of The Domino Effect

Garth Beyer

Domino Effect

If you have three lines of dominoes and topple the first domino in each line, it doesn’t make sense to race toward the end of the lines and try to knock dominoes down along the way, right? They will be knocked down anyway.

The cheapo marketer will see those dominoes down the line as a safe target audience and will race to tip a domino further down the line instead of searching for a different line of dominoes. Why?

In the way things trend from friend to friend, it makes sense to go down the line and say “hey, all your friends are doing it! Why not be one of the first too?” Targeting these folk makes the marketer look like what she’s doing is successful. Profits are up, subscriptions are up, sure. But as said, they would have gone up without the effort.

Marketing sense is when you know a business is remarkable enough to have a domino effect. In these cases, the marketer needs to do the difficult task of finding new domino lines instead of targeting one’s already scheduled to tip.

Careful who you trust. All marketers are liars, right?

 

Stay Positive & Know When Your Story Is Remarkable Enough To Market Itself

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Giving Whenever Asked

Giving Whenever Asked

Garth Beyer

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If I signed up for everything my friends and acquaintances asked me to, I would be spread out, seriously vulnerable and broke. If I gave whenever asked to give, I’d have nothing left to give. Out of time, of money, of resources. I have to say no to people I care about more often than you may think. I’m not necessarily a hard sell. I’m just selfish. I have to be.

For those I say no to, I wish I could help, but I can’t. For those I say no to, let me suggest something new and give you a newsflash. Newsflash first.

Newsflash: You don’t need my help, my tribe, my resources to be successful. You have the power to gather your own tribe and create a strategy for success.

Something new: Do the hard work. Don’t seek out the people who can make your success happen with a wave of their wand and don’t seek people out who you can piggyback off their success. Do the hard work of developing your one page marketing plan, the hard work of seeing it all the way through, the hard work of starting out small and growing over a long period of time.

If you’re not in it for the long run, why are you in it?

 

Stay Positive & Enjoy The Journey, Really, Enjoy It

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You’re Not All Over The Place

Garth Beyer

You’re evolving regularly, you’ve implemented fast feedback loops, you are focused on representing significant changes. I’ve got your back. The entire market does, actually.

I’ve taken enough looks at businesses thinking they were all over the place in their strategy and checked back in with them months later to find they are at the forefront of a trend.

They evolved into trend-makers rather than trend-followers.

 

Stay Positive & What Are You?

 

Use All The Advertising You Want

Garth Beyer

Or save that money to make sure you can keep your business afloat and add value to your product while you reach out to the users and establish relationships. Start conversations. Send emails. Make contacts. Show up.

Instead of paying for ad space in Denver, drive there.

Instead of paying for ad space in the Silicon Bayou News, contact a reporter, share your story and establish a relationship. Your story is advertising enough. (right?)

Instead of paying for ad space where your target audience hangs, go hang there yourself.

Instead of paying for ad space between television shows, go create an incredible (sharable!) YouTube video.

Advertising is great fun when you have the money to try remarkable things with it, but when you don’t, money is better spent adding value to the experience, to the story than it is trying to show the experience to people with an ad.

After all, if you have to pay for a product to be in someone’s face to get their attention, is your product really worth it? A lot of people are beginning to wonder the same thing.

 

Stay Positive & Experience Speaks For Itself And People Are Happy To Relay The Message

The Truman Set

The Truman Set

Garth Beyer

Harry's GQ Magazine Ad

Harry’s is a brand of men’s shaving products. I’ve had a browser tab open with a Harry’s product (the Truman Set) for nearly a week. I want it. I think it will be something worth talking about. And I’ve had the same big brand razor for at least 4 years. I’m tired of it.

Yet, each time I open my laptop and see the Truman Set, I wonder why I haven’t committed to the purchase. I’ve been asking myself over and over, “What’s missing?”

I think I figured it out.

When you look at the Truman Set you see the handle, two razors, and cream. Harry’s, who tells an exceptionally beautiful story with their products (and advertising!) falls short on putting some of that humanity into the product package. There’s a missing emotional, personal, human factor in the product package.

Perhaps a card verifying the integrity of the product signed by Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider? Perhaps a 5-tips guide to shaving written by them? Perhaps a coffee packet or Simply Orange coupon or a unique spoon to get people to share pictures of them owning their AM?

It’s hard to create a flawless product. It’s harder sometimes to remember to add a little humanity to it… sort of the opposite of flawless.

 

Stay Positive & Add Some Surprise To Every Gift

To add a bit of humanity to this post, I’ll have you know each time I refreshed my home page to edit this post, Harry’s advertisement came up on it suggesting I “Shave goodbye to my old razor.” I think I will. 

The Marketer’s Lost Touch

Garth Beyer

While studying up on some public relation strategies in regard to various businesses focused on beer I’ve found one consistent bit that leads me to believe there are still a lot of marketers with a lost touch, especially when it comes to press releases.

Erik sums up the typical press release well, “We have something new (usually beer) and we think what we have created is pretty cool. Would you like to share this news with your readers?”

I’ve seen emails, Twitter direct messages and FB posts with the a similar paraphrased marketing message.

For the marketers reading this who believe this kind of “outreach” works, you’ve lost your touch (or perhaps never had it to begin with).

The duty, privilege and opportunity of any marketer is to craft a unique message per person. Journalists, businesses and now even bloggers won’t give a damn about your press release unless you give them a reason to give a damn about you or you first somehow show by any means other than a press release that you care about them and understand what they cover.

Most press releases have an exceptional story to tell or have an update on a really exciting product, but unless you talk to people the way people talk to people, your story won’t get told. Good marketing is a conversation. Great marketing is turning strangers into friends.

 

Stay Positive & Don’t Go Losing Your Touch Again

Oh, and this seems like a fair place to let you know I have a tumblr blog where I document bottled beers I’ve had. I rate them, describe the taste for you and share the memory of when I first tried the brew. Feel free to stop by.