DIY PR by Penny Haywood Calder

Generally, the high value sales “follow the face”, especially in the early stages of generating business-to-business service sales, even if the sale and most of the service delivery happens online.

1-2-1 networking and building relationships and referrals is key at this stage.
But you can accelerate a business relationship in between seeing people face to face by staying in contact in a thoughtful and helpful way. For example:

1) Provide personalised news snippets – maybe send a link and a note - like a personal Tweet?
2) Keep them up to speed with e-newsletters if you have contact permission and know they'll be interested
3) Hang out online and comment on their blog, answer or comment on their forum posts - that's really good for generating feel-good as many blogs don't generate much feedback.
4) Ring if you have news that could be very useful – keep it light. No pressure.

It's worth keeping in mind when you are desperate for a sale that they tend to come when you don't push. Not everyone is immediately ready or able to buy immediately, so these contact efforts are never about in-your-face selling. It's about being a familiar and trusted contact - and being at the front of their mind when they are ready.

This is the fifth in a series of posts re-visiting some of the 30 low cost or free publicity techniques featured in PHPR's founder's best-selling book: DIYPR, the small business owner's guide to 'free' publicity by Penny Haywood.

The 30 techniques are a mix of digital and offline sales, marketing and PR tools because you need to work all three disciplines (sales, marketing and PR) to effectively boost a business.

That's because:

PR raises awareness.
Marketing describes the features and benefits of your offerings and decides how to position them in the market (positioning for price, gaps in the market, distribution etc versus your competitors).
Sales matches the benefits to an individual buyer's particular needs and handles the mechanics of the sale and after sales service liaison.

As the series develops, choose a few to trial for a few months.

The aim is to work up to 10 varied publicity techniques that work for you and your business to create a rolling PR Plan for success.

Your feedback is most welcome and may be included (with proper attribution) in the forthcoming revised edition of DIY PR.

Labels: boosting your business, business promotion, DIY PR, ecommerce, online sales, PR, public relations, publicity

posted by Penny Haywood Calder  # 16:51