I was talking to a client from Australia the other day, and he shared with me how excited he was about his upcoming event. He eagerly told me about all of the marketing activities he was doing such as posting about his event in forty Facebook groups and driving around his neighborhood hanging flyers. And I had to jump in right then and tell him that he was making a mistake. The same mistake I’ve seen other entrepreneurs make in their PR efforts. What was that mistake? He wasn’t giving people a way to stay connected to him, which meant all this marketing effort was going to waste.
Let me explain. If you don’t give people a way to join your community or opt into your subscriber list, you’re just shooting yourself in the foot. You’ve done all this work posting in Facebook or getting featured in the media, but if your audience has no way to stay connected to you, then the next time you want to promote something, you’re in effect starting over. And this is especially true with I come across people who have told me “oh I was interviewed on TV but I didn’t see any results so I don’t think PR works for me.”
In all likelihood, the reason why it didn’t work for them is that they put all their eggs in the media basket, hoping that one appearance would drum up business for them, instead of using that appearance to give their potential buyers a way to stay connected. And by connected, I don’t mean having them just follow you on social media. I mean having them connect with you on your email list or in a forum where you can continue to nurture the relationship and serve them. Part of the reason why I’ve had such great results in getting my clients regularly featured on TV over and over again is that I have a system to help maximize each media appearance. And one of the cornerstones to that system includes making sure the audience has a way to stay connected.
That way, the next time you have an event or a book launch or anything else going on in your business, you have a way to build on the visibility and publicity you already generated and get the word out in a more powerful way. This tweak may sound simple but it’s one of the most powerful ones you can do!
