When you attend a conference with the goal of marketing your business, you need to know your audience. Who are the attendees? What are their occupations? Their interests? Their income level? You must know who you are talking to before you step out.
As I mentioned, I was at a blogging conference over the weekend. There were about 1400 attendees, most of them women who blog. A large number of them are moms. But there were single women, married women, foodies, crafters, and even a handful of men. And a lot of the marketing was aimed at moms.
Moms are a hot …read more

Newsletters are a good marketing tool for your business. But should you go with an electronic newsletter? Or should you stick with paper? The answer depends on your audience.
I just got a paper newsletter in the mail from our vet. And occasionally I get an electronic one from the eye doctor. While I may only skim both of them, I’m more likely to read the vet’s letter. Why?
While the eye doctor is a little more eco-friendly with her letter, she’s competing with a lot of other e-newsletters. I get so much email that I am now more likely to read …read more

When you launch a new product, you’ve already done a lot of homework. You need to know what image your product is going to convey and what audience you plan to target. And you’ve done your homework to make sure you know your potential customers: their likes, dislikes, what works within their age group and income bracket.
But sometimes the image you want to convey conflicts with the one that actually comes across to your customer. Or maybe it misses the mark. Oops. What do you do then?
First, depending on how bad the reactions are, you want to start with …read more

Media used to be a solid thing: newspapers, TV, radio.
Now, with the Internet, and Web 2.0, it’s all beginning to blur. I’ve seen it. You’vve seen it. And now, someone has quantified it.
Ketchum and the University of Southern California Annenberg Strategic Public Relations Center recently released thier survey results which says that media isn’t quite as solid as it used to be. And because of it, target markets are fragmenting.
Shannon Nelson (the other great PR Shannon, who happens to be from Pierce Mattie) tells us that education and creativity is key in helping PR firms and their clients reach these …read more

The basis of any PR campaign, no matter what tool you use, is to identify your target audience, right?
Then what the heck is going on with the folks on Facebook?
I don’t know if you are experiencing this, but I’m getting a lot of invites to events promoted on Facebook from my ‘friends.’ The problem is that they are just blindly emailing all their Facebook pals their promotion, whether they are in the target market or not.
For example, I’ve gotten invitations to events and classes where I will learn:

to find true love in 2009 (I’m happily married)
the strategies to keep the …read more