Why Small Business Should Insource

February 27, 2009 By Leave a Comment

A buzzword you’ll be hearing more and more about in the coming weeks and months is “insourcing.” With the recession kicking into high gear, companies of every size will turn towards insourcing to help lower costs. The theory mirrors the same principles of multi-tasking, where people take on non-traditional roles to save costs on services provided by vendors not affiliated with the company.

Basically, insourcing is a sexy way of saying Do-It-Yourself – or finding others inside your company to take care of an issue.

For small business, insourcing can be the difference between success and failure. If an employee at Home Depot’s corporate headquarters has a computer problem, for example, that employee can easily request a member of Home Depot’s IT department to fix the problem. A small business owner most likely doesn’t have that same luxury since they don’t have an IT department. Instead, they would have to call an outside IT services provider like Geek Squad for help. In today’s economy, if that same small business owner was able to fix the computer problem him/herself, they’d save a lot of money. This is known as insourcing.

But even large industries are dealing with insourcing, especially the auto industry.

Understanding Marketing helps companies with two portions of their insourcing – marketing and public relations. It can cost a small business owner up to $10,000 every month to hire a PR firm so they can get written about in newspapers and magazines, and placed on television and radio news stations for publicity. We realize there aren’t many small businesses that have this kind of budget. Instead we’ve developed the first e-book in our series of Do-It-Yourself (insourcing) resources to help the small business owner easily do their own PR. This information can be found in our PR Toolkit ($29.99).

There are many other areas where a small business owner needs help for insourcing. Legal matters, tax and accounting issues, business development and customer service, to name a few. Successful small business owners will find a way to insource a majority of these areas to save on costs. To give each small business the best advice for these areas, check out the #smbiz small business chat, hosted on Twitter each Tuesday night from 8-9 p.m. (Eastern). This chat serves as an open forum where small business owners get free advice on anything they have questions on in running their business.

Tell us your insourcing issues and success stories here by leaving a comment.

Filed Under: Marketing & PR Strategies Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

When Should You Do PR?

February 18, 2009 By Leave a Comment

A friend of mine who owns a small business recently sat down with me to talk about the new PR Toolkit. He understands how PR can help him get more exposure for his business. He’s even seen immediate results through increased traffic in his store with customers saying they read about him in the newspaper.

But his biggest question by far was in regards to how often he should be doing PR. At one point he even turned to me and said, “I’ve gotten a few stories in the local media and now I’m seeing more traffic in my store. I guess that PR stuff works and I’ll now know how to do it next time I want more customers.”

Whoa. Wait a minute. Let’s back up a bit.

I responded by telling him PR is not like a light switch. You can’t just turn your PR on and off because it’s based on a relationship you build with a reporter. Relationship being the key word here. PR is too important when building your brand.

Making friends is like PR and building media relationshipsThink of it a different way. Let’s say you move to a new city and you’re looking to make a few new friends. You start participating in local community events and some social outings in your area. After a few weeks of socializing you’ve met a handful of people in your area that you now go to dinner with and invite over to your house. The friendship is growing.

After a few months, though, you start to miss your down time and turn down offers to go out with these friends so you can now spend more time by yourself. Eventually, many of your new friends think you’re not interested in socializing anymore and stop calling you altogether.

Then you get lonely and want to start the process all over again. No surprise here, you find it just as hard to start making new friends (and rekindling the old ones).

PR for a business works the same way. In order for it to truly be successful, you must work at it each week to build your relationships and constantly be developing new stories to feed those reporters. When you watch FOX News Channel each weekend doesn’t it seem like you always see the same guests on the show? That’s because they’ve worked hard at developing their relationship with the hosts and producers of those shows. And trust me, it’s paying off for their business since they’re getting so much media exposure.

I’m not saying you need to stop running your business just so you can focus all of your attention on PR. Just like having a mix of going out with friends and staying home to enjoy some down time, you need to find the right mix.

One more thing. Doing PR consistently helps you become better at PR. Like other professional traits, you want to always improve at it so that you don’t send out a bad PR story or press release.

I often tell small business owners they should spend a minimum of 15 percent of their week on marketing and PR so they’re always understanding marketing. But it’s important to do this every week so you can build solid relationships with the media you’re targeting.

How much time do you spend each week on PR for your small business?

Filed Under: Public Relations Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

How PR Makes Your Company Look Bigger

February 10, 2009 By 1 Comment

A leading reason why so many small businesses decide not to attempt to get publicity for their company is because they feel they’re too small to participate in a news story. Most small business owners feel there is no reason why a reporter would be interested in speaking to them. It’s good to have some sort of publicity plan, even if it’s a few small ideas for a publicity stunt.

The truth is, reporters are always looking for someone to quote for a story. Even if the story is about a large company like Microsoft, there are different angles inside the story where a smaller business could offer input, insight or statistics. They key is finding these angles and letting the reporter know you’re available to talk about it.

How many times have you read a big story in the paper and then turned to one of your associates or employees and offered an opinion on how/why that story would affect your business? Well, call up a reporter and tell them! They want to hear from you. If you aren’t sure how to identify a reporter or how to get them on the phone, here is an excellent resource that’s a good PR Toolkit. And use HARO to find stories reporters are already working on.

Even though a publicity campaign can be easy to achieve (when you work at getting it), the perception exists that it’s nearly impossible to get into a news story and be quoted by a reporter. Because of this, when you do get quoted, the rest of the world reading the story wants to know who you are. They want to know what it is about you and your company that made the reporter want to talk to you. They will immediately visit your Web site. They may even call you up on the phone. But most importantly, they will learn who you are and that can lead to increased business.

Don’t think of yourself as a small business in terms of PR. Instead, think of yourself as a business owner that can offer lots of valuable insight to a reporter that is working on a story about your industry or location. After all, no one knows that information better than you.

What kinds of reasons prompted you to call a reporter and offer your opinion or information for a story recently?

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Why Work At Home Moms Can Be PR Machines

February 3, 2009 By 2 Comments

The work-at-home revolution has been growing over the past few years and will continue to accelerate throughout the economic downturn as more people choose the freedom and flexibility of a home office over a return to corporate life. Work At Home Moms, otherwise known as WAHMs, represent a large and ever-growing portion of this type of career since it offers the perfect mix of work-life balance and entrepreneurial spirit.

WAHMs are amazingly brilliant entrepreneurs that have leveraged the Internet and developed impactful business models to offer a number of products and services that appeal to a diverse consumer audience. Some leading WAHMs include Wendy Piersall of Sparkplugging.com, Jessica Smith of JessicaKnows.com, and Emily Hill of GeorgieTees.com.

WAHMs represent the ideal entrepreneur poised to do their own marketing and Public Relations. No one knows their business, audience profile and value proposition better than they do, meaning they can save considerable money bypassing the need to hire an expensive marketing or PR firm for representation. Like millions of other small businesses, though, the mere thought of doing your own PR initially raises more questions than answers. For these start-ups, entrepreneurs and WAHMs, many of these questions can be answered through this new PR Toolkit, a how-to guide that unveils lots of proven tactics and secrets of how to do your own PR.

The Internet has opened the doors for millions of would-be entrepreneurs, enabling everyone to turn their favorite hobby or passion into a profitable business. For the majority of these budding business stars, their 15 minutes of fame is about to begin. Because in the same breath that virtually everyone can start their own business, everyone can also now do their own PR.

PR is powerful because it promotes your business, establishes solid credibility and offers you the chance to create “buzz” about you and your business. Getting a reporter to do a story on you can be difficult, though, since there are literally millions of other businesses also trying to get their company written about in newspapers and on television. Once you know how to become a PR expert, you can build very rewarding relationships with people in the media and serve as a talking expert whenever there is a story that touches your area of expertise.

Are you a work at home mom that has had success doing your own PR? Tell us what has worked for you.

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