I’m jumping ahead in my list of 15 tactics here as I just had an article published in an industry publication. To see an article I wrote, rather than a client media release, published is very exciting!

It really is so ironic that as professionals, we seem to spend so much time looking after everyone else, we fail to use our skills to look after our own business needs! The chef that eats beans on toast, the accountant whose books are in a mess…the PR who doesn’t do PR for herself!

The fact is that whether I wrote it for myself or for a client, there is something still incredibly thrilling about seeing your work published. I have to say I feel incredibly lucky that after over 25 years in PR, I still love what I do. I am as chuffed today as I was all those years ago when I saw my first stories appear in print.

This recent story, interestingly, is something I wrote from the heart as a memory of two people I had worked with many years ago who recently passed away – celebrity chef Margaret Fulton and marketing consultant, David Hammer who worked for one of my clients.

Thank you to Appliance Retailer for publishing my story, you can read it here: https://www.applianceretailer.com.au/2019/08/vale-margaret-fulton/

Everywhere you go, everybody is talking about having the right lead funnel, building up your database, keeping in front of your potential customers and getting everything set up and automated so you don’t need to waste all day every day on it. Easier said than done!

When I first set up my website years ago, my designer advised I needed a ‘find out more’ or ‘click here’ button but the thought of having to constantly provide content and ‘feed’ your website, was just too overwhelming: ‘Extra’ I called it and dismissed it.

Fast forward 15 years and I guess, on reflection, she was right. These days, it’s important to give something back in order to get something in return – ‘permission selling’. It’s a funny thing running a PR agency, always coming up with great ‘angles’ and story ideas for clients but when it comes to coming up with the same for our own businesses, we are often lacking and time poor.

As part of my ’15 marketing tactics on a shoestring’ experiment, I am going to need to give a great deal of thought as to how I could even begin to get ‘subscribers’ to my website when a. Bay PR currently ranks at 100 or more on Google; b. I don’t have a ‘lead funnel’ in place and c. I don’t have a budget to spend up big on advertising and nor do I want to.

Just thinking it through, I guess I need to consider what the benefits are of having a regular newsletter going out to those who sign up to my database and if it’s even worth doing. The main benefit I can see is to stay relevant and top-of-mind amongst potential clients as well as keeping existing clients up-to-date with our business and the world of PR generally.

But – in the spirit of my marketing experiment, which is just as much about me pushing my own boundaries as anything else, my plan is:

1. Establish a database of contacts I am already connected to via social and the ‘real world’

2. Send them an email/do a social media shout-out to tell them about my experiment and ask them to sign up

3. Formulate an EDM content strategy

4. Get my head around automating it

5. Do it

6. See how it goes

OK so if any of you get an email from me, then I’d really appreciate it if you can sign up to receive Bay PR’s newsletter and (hopefully!) informative downloads, PR tips, tricks and advice! In the meantime, if you’re on this page, please click here: https://baypr.us20.list-manage.com/subscribe

Look forward to seeing how this goes!

6. Public Relations

4. Electronic Direct Marketing (EDM)