Happy Sunday! The last one of 2018 no less!
How has your festive season been? I hope good fun with lots of mince pies and boozy brandy butter – well that’s what I have been consuming (gym ‘n’ swim here I come!!!).
I am popping into your inbox before all those resolutions are made tomorrow night…with a special invite that will help your marketing resolutions.
Here is my ‘workie’ resolution suggestion for you:
“To plan ahead and not to be ‘random’ with my PR and marketing efforts for 2019”
I say that as I was guilty of doing ‘spray and pray’ marketing campaigns when running my first business selling luxury alpaca knitwear.
I would suddenly wake up and think:Â “HELP! I have box loads of stock of beautifully designed and handcrafted items I need to sell, it’s October and I have a very limited selling window as knitwear is really only in demand from September to December.
I must do something right now to try and promote my range.”
That is called being random and not planning ahead.
So I would go into a mad flurry of calling magazines and newspapers to be told – sorry, we’ve already chosen our berets for the feature in the shopping pages….we did that 6 weeks ago.
And sure enough, I would open up the dream publication (it was HEAT magazine if you must know!) and see a beautiful double page spread with bright and colourful berets…but not one of mine in sight. That hurt. I can still picture that spread now, 8 years on!
But, I learnt my lesson.
I resolved to be better at planning ahead and to be ahead of the game.
Let me tell you, the reason why it hurt so much was that one small appearance in a publication can make a huge difference to your sales and visibility.
PR works so well for small up and coming brands, and we can all have a crack at the whip, it’s not just for the big brands. We can all pitch and get published, if we do it right.
Sam who runs PhoneHug had a 300% sales surge thanks to being featured in The Notebook, another entrepreneur had a £10,000 sales frenzy when she appeared in The Telegraph, another one secured a contract and new business contracts worth £210,000 after he appeared in a national newspaper. The list goes on…
When I was running my knitwear business I was always wanting a tool that would help me plan my pitches, a press release template that works, a promo calendar and just generally a helping hand for my marketing and PR efforts. I scoured the internet and couldn’t find what I wanted and needed.
So as Rapman says, ‘pressure produces diamonds’ and from my need I spotted a niche, and created a PR service that would help my fellow entrepreneurs, exactly what I had been hunting for whilst running my knitwear business and use all my mistakes as essential learnings to help give a fully functional service.
Take a look at my lovely beret below- I think Heat missed out, don’t you think? And below this image is a selection of the press coverage I managed to secure for my brand. Some pretty good names there…Vogue, Marie Claire, Sunday Times, You magazine – and all of these appearances meant more sales and from people in places I had never heard of!
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So in order to help you *not* get frustrated like I was, and to be fully prepared for your PR in 2019, I would like to invite you to do two things:
1. Download my 2019 PR Planner, click here:Â
https://amandapr.com/2019-pr-planner
2. Join my PR Planning live virtual workshop on Jan 9th at 12pm
https://amandapr.com/pr-planner-trainingÂ
The planner has over 50 events that you can check out and decide AHEAD OF TIME to tie your brand in with. It also has the all important pitching windows so you won’t do a ‘Heat’ and miss out like I did.
To really help you, I am offering a PR Planning Training Session on Jan 9th where you will:
So how’s that to kick-start your year?
I really look forward to hearing back from you – LMK if you’re doing the training and if you have a burning question about any of the events, fire me an email and I will try to answer it on the call!
Happy New Year celebrations!
Amanda
PS If you just want to speak with me and hear how I can help you attract more clients to your business by using the power of PR, then book a PR Discovery call using this link:Â www.amandaruiz.co.uk/apply