Outreach

How To Get Clients, Customers, And New Consumers

Garth Beyer

New Client Call

What’s the first question I get asked when I tell people I freelance as a PR strategist?

“How do you get your clients?”

Outreach, new customers, more clients is so important to any businesses. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling tennis ball recycling pods or leading an architectural organization or selling cupcakes, you need an income from your actions. Where’s that money come from? People. And where do those people come from? That’s the question I’m answering.

I started out doing freelance work for friends and family. If you can’t sell to your friends then you’re either selling something that’s not remarkable or you’re selling something that you’re not passionate about. Start here because it’s the perfect indicator of whether you should continue your endeavor or not.

No one wants to do work they don’t want to do. You want to do work that isn’t really work, and for that you’ve got to be doing something you’re passionate about. I decided to only work with businesses that I am passionate about. I’ll consult with any business, but the actual product, the creation end of my work, I focus on people and businesses I believe in. Being picky works in your favor (and your clients!).

From there I meet new people, check out new businesses and get involved as much as I can with the community. I go to events that the information at flies over my head. Yesterday I was at an event talking about Microsoft360 and using cloud data. The only thing I understood from the 30 minute session was that Microsoft acquired Skype, but while I was there I met a couple of folk who I could see myself working with.

Once you have a comfortable number of clients, customers and new consumers, now it’s on you to over promise and over deliver. The best way to get more clients is to treat the ones you have now. The best way to lose clients is to be off working to find new ones.

That’s it. Easy to understand. Difficult to execute. So the work of remarkable goes.

 

Stay Positive & Anything Different Work For You?

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Simple, Quick, Cheap Way To Get More Attention

Garth Beyer

Write letters to 10 influential followers, past client or old friends you know are working on something new.

The $10 it will cost in stamps and envelopes will certainly be better than the $10 you could spend on Facebook advertising.

“Hey, I know your wildly busy and striving for success. Is there anyway I can pitch in? Let me know. *phone* *email*”

You’ll either come out remarkable or memorable to the recipient, and even to those that don’t respond.

 

Stay Positive & Let Me Know How It Goes

Where The Real Analysis Needs To Take Place

Where The Real Analysis Needs To Take Place

Garth Beyer

All Signs Point To

After someone makes a transaction, makes their purchase, opens the book, follows through with your call to action, it’s all tweaking at that point for you.

If you see most people don’t read blog posts longer than 2,000 words, that’s easy to tweak. If few people opened up your press release, the title is easy to tweak. If no one is sharing your YouTube video, making the share button more visible is easy to tweak.

The place analysis is most important is in the conversations leading up to the transaction. How did they get to your blog in the first place? How is their email on your list to begin with? Why would people want to share the video anyway?

No transaction is as simple as “this for that” anymore. There are conversations going on before every transaction. Conversations customers have with themselves. Conversations they have with you. Conversations they have with their friends.

Maybe the focus needs to be less on tweaking and more on reaching the right people to begin with.

If you don’t analyze the conversations before a transaction, you’ll be at the mercy of always tweaking, always making adjustments.

 

Stay Positive & Hard To Move In The Right Direction When You’re Moving In All Directions

Photo credit to my awesome friend Krista Ledbetter
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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Problem Solution

Garth Beyer

It has almost been a year since I attended Seth Godin’s Pick Yourself event in Tribeca. When I was sifting through a box of my memorabilia I found a card. Not a thank you card, not a blank card, but a life changing card.

Seth gave out these life changing cards that, as you can see in bold, said, “PROBLEM.” You can guess what was on the back, but we will get to that in a moment.

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We were asked to think of the (or any) problem that we were facing that was holding us back from shipping, making the call, and in general, committing to something. Then we wrote it down on the card. We were then told to switch cards with the person next to us and they would fill out the back.

(Jumping forward real quick, this is not my card, we were supposed to keep our own but the lady I did the activity with accidentally kept mine and I kept hers. Not a problem, I’m actually thankful for it. It’s allowed me to write this post.)

The first half of the idea behind this card is that we have to face our fear. We have to think about what truly is holding us back. We had to make sure the problem was one actually worth writing down. Most importantly, we had to let someone else – who we barely even knew – see it.

As you can read, she has a real problem. It’s hard to sell anything to an audience you don’t have and even harder to an audience you have no clue where they are. Obviously, she needs a solution. That’s where I came in.

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Three solutions to her problem.

1. “Just start dedicating time to grow audience and the audience will form themselves.” When you’re just starting out. Forget the audience. Commit to revealing yourself first. No one is going to follow someone they can’t see, someone they can’t connect to, someone who is invisible or a mere shadow. Here’s a thought: Seeds flowing in the wind never land on soil that is never watered. You have to water the soil before any seeds will consider planting themselves.

2. “In order to find your audience, you have to go after everyone by testing your ideas and see the response.” Naturally, this is the second step once you begin “watering the soil.” It’s great to have an idea of what your audience is, but no one knows your audience better than your audience! – and if you’re just starting out, it’s likely you’ll be wrong a few times before you’re right. Better to make the big mistakes now than later.

I started a PR blog to show what I know when other professionals or employers checked me out. Soon I discovered that my audience was made up of students and people interested in learning about PR, not necessarily my original intention. You can have foresight, but never let yourself have a narrow mind.

3. “Take 10% of your time to grow your audience.” That’s not a lot of time, for good reason.  Get good at creating first. Get good at seeking criticism. Get used to challenging your fears. Get in the habit of shipping your work. Then follow-up by connecting, by interacting, by messaging like-minded people.

(Note: The third solution can work in reverse.)

Did this solution help her, I’m positive it did, but believe it or not, that’s not the point or the goal.

The point is that whatever problem(s) you have, there is always a solution. The moment someone else sees that, you’re held accountable, you can’t lie to yourself anymore that there is no solution, and above all, you have no excuse, nothing holding you back.

 

Stay Positive & It’s Often A Move We Have To Make

Garth E. Beyer

We got tricked into this by not knowing what we were doing, why were doing it, or what we would have to do later. It takes someone bold to express what their problem. Are you up to it?