No No's in Marketing

1. Exaggerate your claims: Sooner or later your hype will catch up with you. It’s bad for business to underestimate the intelligence of your potential customers and if you do sell them something that does not work then they will tell others and a bad reputation and demands for refunds will follow.
   
2. Not testing: Make sure that our ads are effective. Just think of the TV ads that are very memorable, but you can’t remember the product that was being advertised. Monitor the response from your ads and make changes as needed. If you are getting loads of traffic but no sales – that’s a message to you – your sales page is not working. If you have an ad or article that gets a lot of click thrus then find out why? What was different?
   
3. Expect immediate results: Responses to your ads increase the more they are seen. Many people will see your ad but not need your services at the time – but if you are consistent they will know where to look when they want you – provided that you ad is still there of course!
   
4. Not making the best use of unpaid advertising. Make yourself into an expert, provide press releases, write columns, offer advice in forums AND always, always leave your name and web link. These are all the essentials of public relations!
   

by Lee Lister

For these and other ideas, make sure to visit the Action Strategies website

Using Effective Public Relations to Attract Investors

Here are a few considerations to put in place so that potential and current investors are attracted to the natural value of your company:

1. Monitor online forums - Streamed all over the Internet to hundreds of potential investors, any savvy investor will be on the look out for the newest development or innovation that could catch on like what iTunes did for Apple. The forums you monitor should be archived, so the reach to the investment community is extended long beyond the date of any event or product lauch you hold.
   
2. Targeted your message(s) to a specific industry sector and present in-depth content from keynote speakers and corporate executives. In an environment saturated with information from the media you can grow your shareholder base by communicating your message directly to a live audience of investors by making a CEO's speech available on the company website.
   
3. Build relationships with reputable stockbrokers, venture capital and investment banking firms. In most major cities, angel investor associations are also an excellent group to reach out towards.
   
4. Make sure your corporate fact sheets are professionally written and designed. The Corporate Profile should become an integral part of your overall Investor Information Package.
   

Digg.com, a competitor to traditional news media?

Recently, I attended a ZONE5 event held through OCRI (www.ocri.ca). Presenting before the group was an expert in new techniques in electronic communications and marketing. What I found most interesting about the presentation was a mention of a new website: www.digg.com.

What is digg? With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do. The more readers ''digg'' what it is you have to say, the further up your story gains attention. Could this present a challenge to the traditional means of pitching stories? Who knows!? My guess is that this could form one other avenue for the practice of public relations and gaining publicity for professionals and companies.

The message is sure to get out over time. Action Strategies (www.action-strategies.ca) is sure to watch this and may even develop means of leveraging this kind of service for its clients. Stay tuned!

Canadian Subsidy Guides

One of the key features of interest to many non-profits, municipalities and associations with whom I have worked has been "Where and how can I get money from the government?"

Just with any lobbying effort, the challenges in this regard can be as steep as any GR effort. In fact, long gone are the days when provincial and federal governments were the cash cows of the 1980's. Nonetheless, there are tools out there that can help a municipality or non-profit move one step further to getting government assistance. One such tool I have come accross is the Canada Subsidy Guide (http://www.canadabooks.net/).

This guide and the many others I have used in the past have been enormously helpful. That being said, don't count on these books alone as your means to finding help. Once you've identified a source, there's no guarantee you'll get it. You will still need to develop your government networking skills to make it happen!